Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

4

Trench Alley was a dingy, crooked street in the ass end of the Swap. Backed up against Sawtooth Creek and dead-ended by Pennacook Inlet, it was as Dickensian as Paradise got. Even scenic New England villages need garages, body shops, cabinetmakers, plumbing supply houses, welders, and self-storage units.

Jesse pulled up behind a fire truck. Molly Crane’s cruiser was parked across the street, half on the sidewalk. The fire chief’s red Jeep Cherokee was parked behind Molly’s unit. When Jesse walked around the fire truck he was surprised to see Molly, Robbie Wilson, and the entire crew of firemen standing in the middle of the street, boot-deep in snow. But when he looked at the building in question, Jesse’s surprise faded away. The building was a squat red-brick affair with plywood where windows used to be, the plywood covered in generations of frayed handbills and posters about forgotten bands and closed musicals at the Village Playhouse. The building’s front right corner had collapsed into the street. You could look into the building and see that part of the back wall had collapsed inward as well.

“Robbie,” Jesse said.

“Chief Stone.”

“Unstable, huh?”

“Badly. If I didn’t get your girl out of there when I did, you might’ve had two bodies on your hands.”

Molly bristled at being called a girl. She was only two or three years younger than Wilson and disliked him even more than Jesse did. Jesse could see Molly was about to let Wilson have it. He shook his head no at her.

“Robbie, excuse us. I need to talk to Officer Crane for a minute.”

“Take your time. I’m not letting anyone in there, stiff or no stiff.”

As they walked toward Molly’s cruiser, she kept turning back to stare at Robbie Wilson. Wilson was pretty lucky that looks couldn’t actually kill.

“That obnoxious little bastard,” Molly said. “I should’ve kicked his ass in front of his men. Then we’d see who he’d be calling a girl.”

They sat in the front of Jesse’s Explorer, the heater blowing full blast.

“Relax, Molly. Two weeks back on the street and you’re already cursing like a sailor.”

She smiled in spite of herself. Jesse could do that to her.

“And no matter what he called you, he was right to get you out of that building. I can’t afford you getting hurt.”

“So you really do love me,” she said.

“You know I do, but that’s not it. With Suit on desk duty and Gabe Weathers still in rehab for his injuries, the department’s two men short.”

She punched him in his left biceps. Now it was his turn to smile. Then he wiped it away.

“The body in the tarp,” he said.

“A passerby called the building collapse in to the desk. I had the Swap, so Suit sent me over here. It was still pretty dark when I arrived on scene. I had to look inside to see if anyone was hurt. When I got into the building I saw that another part of the roof, toward the left rear of the building, had collapsed onto some metal plates. One of the plates had been dislodged by the debris so that the plate was forced upward like one end of a seesaw. When I shined my flash in behind the plate, I saw the tarp. At first I didn’t think anything of it. Maybe some forgotten equipment or building supplies or something. But when I looked at it under the flash for a minute, I saw that it was bound up with rope and shaped like a body. When I kneeled down and stuck my head into the hole, it was pretty obviously a body. I couldn’t tell much about it from looking. I pushed the tarp and it felt like flesh underneath. And before you say anything, Jesse, my hand was gloved.”

Jesse put up his palms. “I didn’t say anything.”

“But you would have. I know you, Jesse.”

“Maybe. Back to the body in the tarp.”

“Funny thing,” Molly said.

“What?”

“The tarp was pretty clean and the flesh gave when I pushed, but pushed back. It didn’t seem frozen or in rigor.”

“That’s a lot to tell from one push with your hand. No insult, Molly, but—”

“Did I say it was one push? I pushed a few times. Then...” She hesitated.

“Do I even want to hear this?”

“Probably not.” She said it anyway. “I climbed down into the hole.”

“You what? It’s a crime scene, Molly. You know better than—”

“I had to check to see if the victim might be alive.”

“Molly!”

“I swear, Jesse. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“And...”

“That’s when Napoleon showed up. Suit must have called the FD after he sent me over here. Robbie ordered me out of the building. He had his guys practically drag me out of the hole when I didn’t hop to. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think the victim was alive. He was physically unresponsive to my touch and to my verbal commands. No movement that I could detect. And when I put my hand on where I thought the chest was, there didn’t seem to be any respiration.”

“Anything else?”

“I think the vic’s a male. Would be pretty tall if you stood him upright. Maybe six-three or — four. Broad across the shoulders.”

“But you don’t think he’d been there very long?” Jesse asked.

“That’s my gut feeling. Of course, I don’t know these things like you would. In L.A. you must have seen bodies in all sorts of places.”

“Not in a snow-covered factory, Molly. We didn’t get much of that sort of thing in L.A. All right, let’s get back over there and see if we can’t get Chief Robbie to let us retrieve the body.”

But she didn’t move. There was something else besides Robbie Wilson bothering her. Jesse could see it on her face. He put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Molly. You did good. I’m proud of you for—”

“It’s not that, Jesse.”

“Then what?”

“I can’t put it in words. It’s just when I was down there with the vic... I... it was just strange. It felt like I had a connection to him.”

Jesse nodded. It was like that sometimes. On most occasions, a body was just a body to a cop. It wasn’t callousness. It was an attitude born of repeated exposure and self-protection. But there were moments when you couldn’t help but feel a kind of weird connection to the victim.

“It happens. I know. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Now, let’s go,” he said.

They got out of the SUV. Just then an inhuman groan filled the air.

“Watch it!” one of the firemen shouted. “Stand back. She’s going!”

The ground shook beneath their feet. Jesse and Molly ran around the fire truck and saw that the building was gone. The roof lay halfway into Trench Alley. It had taken down the rusted cyclone fence that had surrounded the empty, rubble-filled lot next door.

“Everybody okay, Robbie?” Jesse said.

“Fine. We’re all clear. You both all right, Chief Stone?”

“We’re good.”

“That stiff of yours is good and buried now.”

Not for long, Jesse Stone thought. Not for long.