Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

27

Al Franzen didn’t look so much confused as defeated. Franzen sat on the other side of Jesse’s desk dressed in an expensive pair of gray wool slacks, a darker gray sweater, a black blazer, and black loafers. But the clothes hung off him, the way clothes often hung off gaunt old men. He had a hangdog expression on his tanned face. Yet as thin as he was, Franzen’s jowls and the skin of his neck had long ago succumbed to gravity. He wore his wispy gray hair in a bad comb-over and sat stoop-shouldered, with his bony hands in his lap. His hands were covered in brown splotches. But Jesse could see in Franzen’s age-faded brown eyes that he already knew Maxie was dead. It had been his experience that the next of kin often knew before they were told.

“Mr. Franzen,” Jesse said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

Al Franzen nodded as Jesse spoke the words he had repeated many times before. He had once tried to think of a different way to start these conversations. He had since given up trying. There was no good way to say it.

“Maxie is dead,” Franzen said.

Jesse nodded.

“I knew it.”

“How did you know it?” Jesse asked.

“I’m old, Chief Stone, not stupid. Even at my age I can put two and two together to make four.”

“I meant no disrespect.”

But Franzen seemed not to hear. “I was a millionaire five times over by the time your mother changed your first diaper. I’m not the old fool Maxie thought I was. I knew she thought she was taking me for a ride, but, God help me, I loved her. She was the most exciting woman I had ever met, and just being around her...” Then he gathered himself. “I’m sorry, Chief Stone, forgive me.”

“No need to apologize. But I have to ask you, how did you know Maxie was dead?”

“She wasn’t in the room when I got up. Her pillows were cold and untouched. Her side of the sheets was smooth and cold. And then Officer Crane comes to my door and asks me to get dressed and come with her, but won’t tell me why. Like I said, it’s simple math.”

Jesse asked, “Did she receive any calls or visitors last night? Did she make any calls?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid I am not a well man and I take medication that makes me a very sound sleeper. A bomb could have gone off in the next room and I wouldn’t have heard it.”

“But why did you assume she was dead, Mr. Franzen? She might just have gotten arrested or simply gone missing or run off.”

Franzen shook his head. “No, I knew. I knew from the minute we got the call for her to come back to this town that Maxie wasn’t going to ever leave it again.”

Jesse didn’t ask how or why he knew. He asked, “Do you think your wife was capable of suicide?”

The old man looked at Jesse as if he had spoken to him in Japanese.

“Suicide! Maxie? That’s crazy. You’re telling me she killed herself?”

“A jogger found her on the beach at the bottom of an area of Paradise known as the Bluffs. It’s way too early on in the process to draw a conclusion, but there are no signs of a struggle. Preliminary indications point to suicide.”

Maybe Al Franzen wasn’t defeated after all. He stood up and slammed a hand on Jesse’s desk. “Nonsense! Maxie was the most alive person I ever met. She wouldn’t.”

But instead of feeling boosted by Franzen’s reaction, Jesse sagged. He remembered how Maxie had reacted the day before. The truth was, you couldn’t ever really know what was in someone else’s heart. It was difficult enough to know what was in your own.

“She took the news about Ginny pretty hard,” Jesse said. “Yesterday, she fell apart sitting in that same chair when I told her she could collect Ginny’s remains.”

Al Franzen slumped back in the chair. He had put up a fight, a good fight, but Jesse could see that the truth was dawning on Al as it was dawning on him. Maxie probably had killed herself.

“When you said you knew Maxie was never going to leave Paradise again,” Jesse said, “what did you mean?”

But Jesse had lost him. Al Franzen had retreated into himself, his eyes as unseeing as Maxie’s. Jesse waited a few minutes to let Franzen collect himself before explaining to the old man that he would have to identify his wife’s body.