Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

73

Jesse didn’t make a habit of driving over to the county morgue unless it was business. When he and Tamara were building their friendship, he avoided seeing her at work. He had spent too many hours at morgues and hospitals, spent too many hours with the dead and the dying. It was different at the murder scene. The bodies there were somehow less human when they were part of the crime scene, but when they were laid out naked on stainless-steel tables or slid out of a refrigerator, you could really get a sense of the violence and of what had been taken from them.

“Spend too much time with the dead, Stone, and you get dead inside,” his first detective partner said to him as they watched the autopsy of a fifteen-year-old girl. “Never become so familiar with it that you don’t see it.”

Those days in L.A. now seemed like they happened a long time ago and to someone else. Jesse hadn’t understood what his partner meant back then. He understood it now.

He’d sat outside in the parking lot for an hour going through Flint’s old accordion file. Jesse couldn’t find anything the Yarmouth PD had done that he wouldn’t have done or something they should have done that they didn’t do. What was pretty clear through all of it was that no one, from Stan White to the guy who owned the recording studio, was very anxious to discuss the recording sessions or who had participated.

Given the status of the musicians Roscoe Niles had listed for him, the ones rumored to have been part of the recording of The Hangman’s Sonnet, it was unlikely any of them would have taken the tape. But they certainly would have been people Jesse would have interviewed. It wasn’t as if the Yarmouth PD hadn’t tried. It was impossible to know what someone might have seen or overheard. One of the musicians might have knowledge about the theft that they weren’t even aware of. Yet White refused to release the names of the musicians involved, saying that they had only participated in the recording of the album under the promise of strict confidentiality and that he would never break his word to them. In Flint’s interview notes, there was a quote from White:

“Look, if it was up to me, I would cooperate with you and give you the names. But if I give you even one of their names, I can have the crap sued out of me and Terry. These musicians, they may all seem like drug-addled hippies to you, but believe me, they are anything but. They are sharks, and sharks with managers, lawyers, and agents. Besides, all the musicians were gone before the tape went missing.”

In the file was a blank copy of the confidentiality agreement. Jesse was no lawyer, but the agreement did seem ironclad. There were also many, many photographs in the file. Photos of the studio, of the box in which the tape had been stored, of Evan Updike and Stan White, of Terry Jester. Jesse had seen Jester’s face before, but the shots of Jester on his album covers were vastly different from the shots in the file. On his album covers, Jester usually wore a knowing smirk as if he was winking at the person looking at the album cover. You and me, we know the truth. The photos in the file depicted a man buried deep within his own head or of someone losing it, if not lost. Now what Stan White had confided to him earlier about Jester’s state of mind made more sense.

Jesse’s cell started buzzing like mad, but he didn’t answer the calls. They were from Nita, from the mayor, from Stan White, from Bella. He looked at his watch. Roscoe Niles had been on the air for an hour. Jesse wondered how many times he had read The Hangman’s Sonnet on the air by now. He turned on the radio, and with a Terry Jester song playing in the background, Roscoe was reading the poem. And by the time tomorrow morning’s Globe hit the streets, the story would explode. Jesse hoped his career wouldn’t explode with it. He shut off the radio and got out of the Explorer.

Tamara tried to hide her smile when he walked into her office. It was futile. She lit up, but her expression quickly turned to sadness.

“See that?” she said. “Leaving you is going to be tough. You’re the best goddamned friend I’ve ever had.”

“The friendship’s not going to stop when you leave.”

“I’m not so sure. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“The price you’re paying for fame, fortune, and the dead of Texas.”

She laughed that loud, goofy laugh of hers.

“You can always make me feel better, Jesse Stone.”

“That’s what I had in mind.”

“What?”

“Making you feel better. Tonight’s about the last sane time we’re going to have in Paradise for a while. Dinner?”

“Fine. I’m in.”

“Deal,” he said. “But let’s make it late. I’ve got to meet with Lundquist and then I’m going to have to do a lot of hand-holding for the next few hours after that.”

“Why?”

Without confessing his part in it, Jesse told her that word had leaked out about the poem and that it would be only a matter of time before the tape was offered up for bidding.

“Do you really think so, after all this time?”

He said, “I’m not much of a gambler, but if I could find someone to take my action, I’d put every dime I had on it. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

On his ride back to Paradise, he listened to Roscoe Niles play side one of Terry Jester’s second album, God’s Middle Name.