Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

53

Molly chatted through most of the drive to the church. Jesse didn’t know what got Molly going, whether it was how the planets aligned or if it was that her friend Ginny was finally being laid to rest. Whatever it was, Jesse was glad for the chatter. Though no one who knew Jesse now would have believed it, one of the things he missed about his old job in Robbery-Homicide was the camaraderie with his partners. That job entailed long hours during stakeouts, waiting around the courthouse, hours filled up with chatter.

It was a holdover from his ball-playing days. Even loners and self-contained men like Jesse Stone missed being part of a team. Anyone who’d been in the military, inside a locker room, or on an endless road-trip bus ride would understand it. You didn’t have to like all the guys on the team or in your unit. Jesse certainly didn’t, but it was an us-against-the-world type of deal. You did battle together and that bred a closeness unlike any other.

Things were different for him now that he was the boss. And when you’re the boss, the dynamics change. There was no longer talk among equals. He missed talking baseball. He remembered arguing over which was the best East L.A. taqueria or which restaurant served the best barbecue in Koreatown. In the end, it was his last two partners that got him fired. When they went to Cronjager, Jesse’s boss, and told him they wouldn’t ride with Jesse because he was so drunk that they couldn’t trust him to back them up. That still stung. Not because he blamed them. He blamed himself and he guessed he blamed Jenn a little bit, too.

His time at the station with Molly and his occasional forays into the field with Suit were as close as he came to his days in L.A. So when Molly started talking about being a kid in Paradise, Jesse wasn’t about to stop her.

“Mary Kate and I were closer than my sisters and me. In a family, there are resentments, you know. My sisters and I competed for things, everything. Everything from my dad’s affection to who got the biggest piece of my mom’s strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. I loved that pie, how it smelled so sweet from the berries, but that when you bit into it it tasted tart, too. That was the best part. My mom doesn’t make it anymore, not since Dad passed. I try to make it for my kids sometimes, but it’s not as good as Mom’s. The competition, it wasn’t like that with Mary Kate. We shared stuff. We didn’t fight over things. We were always on each other’s side.”

“What about Ginny?”

Molly looked over at Jesse. “Ginny lived near us, spent a lot of time in our house, but we weren’t nearly as close as me and Mary Kate. I guess because she was around so much, she was competing for some of the same stuff as me and my sisters were.”

“I can see that.”

“It didn’t mean I didn’t like Ginny. I did. A lot. It’s just the difference between good friends and best friends. Like that,” Molly said, turning the cruiser onto the road leading up to Sacred Heart Church.

Jesse nodded.

“And Ginny was quieter than Mary Kate. I also think I was a little jealous of Ginny. You could see that she was going to be beautiful, even better-looking than Maxie. I think Maxie saw that, too. Probably resented her for it. Mary Kate and I used to talk about how easy it was going to be for Ginny to have all the boys she wanted, but Mary Kate felt sorrier for Ginny than I did. She was protective of Ginny, too. I guess that was because she didn’t live on my block and didn’t have to deal with Ginny and Maxie like my family did.”

Jesse said, “You and Mary Kate didn’t fight over things until Warren.”

Molly came to a stop at a light, checking her rearview to make sure the small procession was intact behind her.

“That’s why it hurt so much, I guess,” she said. “We had always been able to work things out between us without fighting until then.”

When the light went green, Molly eased off the brake and drove slowly ahead, the hearse close behind the cruiser.

“What happened?”

“I... I, um...” Molly faltered for the first time since she’d started talking.

Jesse let it go. He was glad for the chatter while it lasted and he loved seeing the young Molly make another appearance.

“You know, Jesse, it was me, not Mary Kate,” Molly said, seeming to have regained her voice.

“It was you what?”

“I was the one who tried stealing Warren away from Mary Kate, not the other way around.” Molly’s face reddened. “I gave him the one thing Mary Kate wouldn’t.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’ is right.”

“I can see how she might not want to talk to you after that,” Jesse said.

“She never forgave me. How could she?”

“She would have... eventually.”

“Thanks for saying that, Jesse. But I’ll never know that.”

“It might not have been right away, but when you both realized that this Warren guy wasn’t going to be either your prince or Mary Kate’s, she would have come back to you.”

“It wouldn’t have been the same,” Molly said.

He shrugged. “Whatever happened to Warren?”

“He got a full ride for basketball at some small school in the Midwest. Butler, maybe, or Davidson. Didn’t matter, because he was gone. He played one year, the year after Mary Kate and Ginny went missing. Then... then...”

“Then what?”

“We’re here,” Molly said, pulling onto the grounds of Sacred Heart, the huge church looming at the top of the hill.

Jesse was happier to see more people had turned out for the church services than had been at the funeral home. Molly’s big sister and her mom were there. Robbie Wilson, the fire chief, and a few of his men showed with their wives. Jesse saw the faces of some men who seemed familiar to him, though he couldn’t place them.

“From the demolition crew,” Molly said. “The guys who found the bodies. They came to Mary Kate’s service, too.”

Now Jesse could place their faces and it explained what Robbie Wilson and his men were doing there. Jesse remembered that he, too, sometimes would attend victims’ funerals, and not always to hunt for suspects.

Molly pointed out some of her old classmates to Jesse as well, but Alexio Dragoa was still nowhere to be found. Jesse considered stepping outside and making a call to see if he could get an update on the fisherman’s whereabouts. With everything that had gone on since yesterday afternoon, Jesse hadn’t bothered to check with Healy to see if he had followed through and arranged for someone to tail Dragoa. He resisted the urge to call. Either there was a man on Dragoa or there wasn’t. Nothing he could do now was going to change that.

Then suddenly, during a moment of silent prayer, the sound of ringing cell phones echoed through the cavernous stone church. Jesse, Molly, Robbie Wilson, and his men all grabbed for their phones, put them to their ears, and headed for the exit doors, many muttering, “Sorry.” Even before they made it outside, the insistent droning of the town fire alarm filled up the air. Wilson and his men ran for their vehicles. Many in the crowd looked to Jesse for an answer, but Jesse had no answer to give them as he and Molly headed for the cruiser.

“Suit, what’s going on?” Jesse said as Molly hit the lights and siren.

“We’ve got two big house fires in progress.”

“Maybe you have spent too much time at that desk. Last time I checked, Robbie Wilson was fire chief. Why call me and Molly? Dispatch two units for crowd con—”

“It’s where the fires are, Jesse.”

“Is this Jeopardy!? Do I need to ask you in the form of a question or are you going to tell me?”

“Sorry. It’s the dead girls’ houses.”

“The O’Hara house and—”

“The Connollys’ old place two doors down from Molly’s mom’s house,” Suit said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“You were right to call. Thanks, Suit.”