Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

87

There was a false spring that late February. Temperatures hovered in the fifties and southern New England hadn’t seen snow since mid-January. Jesse had the softball team out for an early practice at the park. Mostly he wanted to see what he had with this year’s team. Things had changed since last season. They had new uniforms, just not the ones Bill Marchand had ordered. Their new sponsor, the Paradise Credit Union, had supplied them. Suit, who, owing to the gunshot wounds, had missed the bulk of last season, was back at first base. Jesse liked having him there even though Suit’s footwork around the bag wasn’t quite what it used to be. Jesse had been forced to shift Tommy Deutsch to shortstop to take Marchand’s place. Connor Cavanaugh had taken Deutsch’s spot at second. Cavanaugh was all hit and no field, but on a softball team full of aging jocks, wannabes, and never-will-bes, there were only so many places to hide weak links.

After practice, when they were at the Lobster Claw drinking beers and moaning about all the things that ached and speculating about how much worse they would ache tomorrow, Molly came into the Claw to join them. A few months back, Jesse thought, he would have dreaded Molly showing up unexpectedly. But after a few rough weeks of grief and regret, she had returned to her old self. And he was glad of that. It wasn’t only Molly who had returned to normal. Paradise itself had been quiet through the winter and now seemed to be the same little town it was before the trauma of the fall. It had put the murders and scandal behind it and resumed the natural rhythm of things. In L.A., he understood how that worked. Big cities are rife with tragedy so that one just swallowed up the next. Then he recalled Healy’s words about small-town secrets and shame. And now Jesse guessed he understood about that, too.

Molly waved for Jesse to come over to the end of the bar to talk.

“Beer?”

“Sure,” she said.

Jesse grabbed a pitcher and poured her a pint of Harpoon lager. “What’s up?”

“I heard from Drew Jameson today.”

Jesse asked, “How is he?”

“He says he’s better and asked me to have you thank your friend Dix for getting him into the program.”

“I’ll do that. What did you guys talk about?”

Molly smiled that sad smile he hadn’t seen on her face since the fall. “Warren. It feels good to be able to talk about him again. He was lost to me and Jameson brought him back.”

Jesse was hesitant to say it but, in the end, didn’t hold back. “Warren covered up a murder for twenty-four years.”

“I know he did,” she said, sipping her beer. “I’m not excusing that.”

“I guess in the end he tried to do the right thing. He sure paid for it.”

“A lot of people paid for it, Jesse. But what Jameson brought back to me was the Warren I knew for those few weeks before the world went upside down. Those were special days that are mine again.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

They clinked glasses and finished their beers in silence. When he was done, Jesse said his good-byes. Molly caught up to him at the door.

“Jesse, I almost forgot.”

“What?”

“Remember the missing cabdriver?”

“Wiethop? Sure. What about him?”

“The Connecticut State Police called. They found him dead in his car in a small lake that thawed early. They e-mailed over the full report as an attachment.”

“Drowned?” Jesse asked.

“Broken neck.”

“Broken neck, huh? Just like Maxie Connolly.”

“Maxie Connolly threw herself off the Bluffs, Jesse.”

“Or not.”

“We back to that again?”

“It’s suspicious. Thanks, Molly.”

Jesse felt as achy as the rest of his team and his shoulder was killing him. Nothing like the combination of stabbing pain and burning to let you know you’re alive. He didn’t go home. Instead he walked back to the station and looked at the report from the Connecticut staties. It was all there: the written report of the troopers, the detective’s report, the ME’s report, autopsy photos, photos of the car, photos of the items found in the car with Wiethop’s body. If he hadn’t been a little buzzed from the beers, he would have spotted it the first time he looked at the photos. Then, when he scrolled through the photos a second time, he saw it. When he saw it, he knew. And the last unexplained bit of business from last fall fell cruelly into place.