Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

71

He caught Molly at the station as she was about to leave for home. Jesse was inscrutable by nature. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. His face wasn’t an open book. So for him to look at her the way he was looking at her meant something was wrong, terribly wrong. Molly could feel her heart pounding. Her mouth was cotton, her palms wet. She was light-headed. Her vision blurred at the edges in stark contrast to the painfully sharp image of Jesse’s face.

“Is it Suit? Did something happen to Suit?”

“He’s fine, Molly. I just dropped him at home.”

“My kids! Did something—”

Jesse grabbed her shoulders and shook her just enough to get her attention. “It’s not like that. Come on into my office.”

He let go of her arms, but somehow she couldn’t move. She felt glued to the floor. Her legs leaden, numb. When she realized Peter Perkins and the other cops coming on shift were staring at her, and she remembered losing it outside the collapsed building where she had discovered the bodies of her long-missing friends, she talked herself into putting one foot before the other. She wouldn’t let the others see her be weak. She had had to fight that fight to be accepted as an equal for years and wasn’t up to doing battle on that front again.

Inside the office they sat on opposite sides of Jesse’s desk. They were quiet together. It was an intimate thing sometimes for two people to be silent together, and this was an intimate moment between them. Jesse broke the silence.

“We think we’ve finally IDed our blue tarp John Doe.”

Molly was confused. If Suit was all right and her family was fine and this was just about a body in the morgue, why, she wondered, had Jesse’s expression been so grave? She couldn’t make sense of it.

Jesse understood her confusion and handed a plastic evidence bag to Molly.

“We found that in Jameson’s jacket pocket.”

In the bag was a small, white-bordered, color-faded photo, what used to be called a wallet-size print. It was the type of print you used to get when cameras had film inside them instead of memory cards and folks carried photos in their wallets instead of in their phones. These prints were usually offered as bonuses by photo booths as an incentive to have the developing done by them. Print two or more thirty-six-exposure rolls with us and we’ll throw in small prints for friends and family. As Molly stared at the image of a pretty teenage girl in the arms of a tall, brown-haired boy, Jesse thought back to a time when every strip mall and parking lot in the country had a little photo hut.

“I don’t understand,” Molly said, her eyes locked on the evidence bag. “I don’t understand.”

It was clear to Jesse that Molly understood perfectly well, but that she needed his help to let her heart catch up to her head.

“That’s you in the photo, isn’t it, Molly?”

She nodded.

“You were really pretty even back then,” he said.

She smiled a heartbreaking smile as sad as a June day is long. “Not until that spring.” Her voice was choked and barely a whisper. “I was always so plain until then.”

“That’s Warren Zebriski holding you.”

She nodded again and then repeated, “I don’t understand.”

“The guy in the hospital, Jameson, he called the station and spoke to Suit right after we released the description of our John Doe and the photos of his tattoo. But he wouldn’t tell Suit anything. When I called back to talk to him, he had gone. To come here, I guess.”

“But what’s he got to do with Warren?” she asked.

“He’s got that same tattoo in the same spot. The two-headed rattlesnake around the horizontal crossbeam. Come on, Molly. I think you can stop pretending now.”

She nodded. This time, it looked painful.

“Can you give me a minute alone in here, Jesse?”

He came around the desk. “Sure,” he said.

“Please don’t let anyone come in here.”

“No one will come in here until you tell me. Take all the time you want,” Jesse said. “As long as you need.”