Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Reed Farrel Coleman (78) #78

78

An hour later, Jesse, Captain Healy, and assorted cops — state and Swan Harbor — stood on the rocks at Shelter Cove, a small wedge-shaped cut-in two miles north of the Swan Harbor town line. If the boat had drifted into the cove at night, it was easy to understand how she’d been missed. In the dark, she’d be nearly impossible to see. Now, ten feet below them, the Dragoa Rainha, secured to some makeshift moorings, bobbled gently in the water. Jesse had never been to Shelter Cove before, but he’d seen a photo of it. He just couldn’t remember where he’d seen it.

“My guys are almost done in there,” Healy said. “Then you can have a look before the marine unit tows her back to wherever the hell they tow boats to. Jeez, that boat smells of fish.”

“Fishing boats are like that.”

“Funny man, Jesse. Funny man.”

Jesse asked, “Where are the bodies?”

“On the way to the morgue.”

“You said something about a confession.”

Healy smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Jesse scowled.

“What bug crawled up your nose this morning?”

“It’s too neat.”

“You won’t be saying that when you’ve had a gander belowdecks. Looks like the floor of a butcher shop without the sawdust.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jesse said.

“Then what?”

“These two guys, Dragoa and Millner, they weren’t the confessing types.”

“I don’t know,” Healy said. “A man, any man, carries a burden long enough, the weight will begin to drag him under. Maybe that’s what happened here.”

Jesse shook his head.

Healy kept at him. “Look, aren’t you the one who’s always saying to follow the evidence?”

“I am.”

“Then follow it. You haven’t even seen the damned confession or the shape of the boat.”

Jesse asked, “Which one of them wrote it?”

“Millner.”

“Okay, that’s better. If you said it was Dragoa, I would have called bullshit on that.”

“Why, the fisherman a man of few words?”

“Few words that weren’t swearwords,” Jesse said. “Let me see it.”

“Tommy,” Healy called to one of his men. “Tommy, get me the confession letter.”

A few minutes later, Tommy handed him an evidence bag. Jesse could read the typed note through the clear plastic. The letter was addressed to him. He read it aloud.

Cheif Stone

I guess I shoud start by saying that me and Alexio killed Mary Kate and Ginny all them years ago. Not that it means nothing now, but we didn’t mean to do it. I swear. It just started out as some fun that went bad. Me and Alexio and Ginny was high and shitfaced. That bitch Mary Kate woudnt get high or drink or nothing. If she hadn’t gone all psycho on us, none of this woud of happened. We was all just supposed to go out to Stiles to Humpback Point and have some fun. Ginny Connolly and me kind of had a thing for each other and I asked her to meet me at the park that night and then to go out to Humpback Point with me but she said she woudn’t go out to Stiles without Mary Kate with her. And the only way I could get that bitch Mary Kate to come was to tell her Zevon woud meet us there because she was all hot for him. I figured if Mary Kate had to come along, I woud bring Alexio with me because we was pals. You wasn’t around then, Stone. Zevon is what we used to call Warren Zebriski. We was all on the Sacred Heart hoops team together. Anyways, we get out to Humpback and me and Ginny are getting naked and stuff and Alexio got carried away and started trying to kiss Mary Kate. She was screaming her head off and shit and Alexio ripped her clothes off and forced her. Ginny pushed me off her and went to help Mary Kate. When she tried pulling Alexio off Mary Kate, Mary Kate kneed him. That’s when it got real bad. Alexio lost it and stabbed Mary Kate and kept stabbing her like a million times. Finally I get him to stop but Mary Kate is dead. Then Ginny is freaking out, Stone. Next thing I knew I had a big rock in my hand and Ginny was on the grass there naked and not moving or nothing. Alexio took the rock out a my hand and hit her in the head again. He said we wouda had to kill her anyways. We waited until it was real late and the harbor had gotten emptier. We loaded the girl’s bodies on the rowboat. Alexio said he knew what to do. He knew a place to ditch them that nobody would find them. We rowed to a place Alexios dad told him about. A secret place where you could get into Pennacook Inlet. The rest was easy. That old building on Trench Alley was easy to get into. We scuttled the boat in the inlet. It’s still probably there. We was crazy nervus for a few months then things were cool. Then when Zevon came home that next summer him and me got drunk one night and I got all guilty and confessed. Me and Zevon was tight and he kinda freaked out. I was scared he would go to the cops but he didn’t. He just went away and if he stayed away I woldnt be writing this. But he came back saying he found God and needed to tell what he knew and that he hoped that me and Alexio would go with him and confess our sins. We coudnt do that, so me an Alexio, we done the one thing we had to. We killed Zevon the night of the big storm in the shed. Alexio was ditching his body next to the girls when the building started to go down. He figured he’d come back and get Zevon next morning and dump him out in the ocean but it was too late. Killing Zevon brung it all back to me and I coudnt take it no more. Alexio told me I shud get somebody to burn down the two houses because of DNA stuff you was talking about and to throw you off me and his tails. So I paid a guy I knew a few hundred bucks to do that and get rid a my van. Im going to tell Alexio that I gotta confess. I hope I got the balls to do it. Tell Mrs. O’Hara I didn’t mean it and I guess neither did Alexio. He was just crazy drunk. I think I’ll be telling Maxie Connelly myself soon.

Jesse handed the letter back to Tommy. Somebody called up from the boat.

“Come on, Jesse,” Healy said. “We can take a look now.”

Healy hadn’t exaggerated. The boat was slaughterhouse bloody. Healy’s forensics guy walked Jesse through it.

Knife is standing here. Gun is standing in front of Knife, maybe two feet away. Knife lunges. Stabs Gun. Gun fires, wings Knife in shoulder. See the hole in the wall and the blood spatter over my left shoulder? Jesse saw the hole and the spatter. We dug a slug out of there. Wounded, Knife stabs and keeps stabbing Gun. Gun fires again, this time wounding Knife in the abdomen. See the spatter and the hole behind me slightly to my right? Jesse saw the spatter and the hole. We dug a slug out of there also, but it wasn’t in deep in the wall. So now both badly wounded, they collapse to the floor. See those two large pools of blood, there and there? Jesse noted them. Gun drops weapon and crawls up the steps. Knife follows sometime later, weapon still in hand. On deck, both having lost considerable amounts of blood and in shock, they struggle. The deck slick with blood and seawater, they both go overboard. When the boat was found, it was out of gas and indications are the engines had been running. The boat drifted into Shelter Cove under power. The bodies were washed north by the current and came to shore. We recovered the .38 in the cabin and a four-inch Buck hunting knife up top.