Stone Cold - Parker
Stone Cold - Parker
Stone Cold
By
Robert
B. Parker
FOR JOAN:
everything started to hum
1
After the murder, they made love in front of a video camera.
When it was over, her mouth was bruised. He had long scratches across his back. They lay side by side on their backs, gasping for breath.
“Jesus!” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She moved into the compass of his left arm and rested her head against his chest. They lay silently for a while, not moving, waiting for oxygen.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said.
He put his face down against the top of her head where it lay on
his chest. Her hair smelled of verbena. In time their breathing settled.
“Let’s play the video,” she
whispered.
“Let’s,” he said.
The camera stood beside the bed on a tripod. He got up, took the
tape from it, put it in the VCR, got back into bed, and picked up the remote from the night table. She moved back into the circle of his arm, her head back on his chest.
“Show time,” he said, and clicked the remote.
They watched.
“My God,” she said. “Look at
me.”
“I love how you’re looking right into the camera,” he
said.
They watched quietly for a little while.
“Whoa,” she said. “What are you
doing to me
there?”
“Nothing you don’t like,” he
said.
When the tape was over he rewound it.
“You want to watch again?” he said.
She was drawing tiny circles on his chest with her left forefinger.
“Yes.”
He started the tape again.
“You know what I loved,” she said.
“I loved the range of
expression on his face.”
“Yes,” he said, “that was great.
First it’s like, what the
hell is this?”
“And then like, are you serious?”
“And then, omigod!”
“That’s the best,” she said.
“The way he looked when he knew we
were going to kill him. I’ve never seen a look like that.”
“Yes,” he said. “That was pretty
good.”
“I wish we could have made it last
longer,” she
said.
He shrugged.
“My bad,” she said. “I got so
excited. I shot too
soon.”
“I’ve been known to do that,” he
said.
“Well, aren’t you Mr. Dirty
Mouth,” she said.
They both laughed.
“We’ll get better at it,” he
said.
She was now rubbing the slow circles on his chest with her full
palm, looking at the videotape.
“Ohhh,” she said. “Look at me!
Look at me!”
He laughed softly. She moved her hand down his stomach.
“What’s happening here?” she
said.
He laughed again.
“Ohh,” she said. “Good
news.”
She turned her body hard against him and put her face up.
“Be careful,” she murmured. “My
mouth is sore.”
They made love again while the image of their previous lovemaking moved unseen on the television screen, and the sounds of that mingled with the sounds they were making now.
2
It was just after dawn. Low tide. Several herring gulls hopped on the beach, their heads cocking one way then another, their flat black eyes looking at the corpse. Jesse Stone, with the blue light flashing, pulled into the public beach parking lot at the end of the causeway from Paradise Neck, parked behind the Paradise Police cruiser that was already there, and got out of his car. It was mid November and cold. Jesse closed the snaps on his Paradise Men’s
Softball League jacket and walked to the beach, where Suitcase Simpson, holding a big Mag flashlight, stood looking down at the body.
“Guy’s been shot, Jesse,” he
said.
Jesse stood beside Simpson and looked down at the body.
“Who found him?”
“Me. I’m on eleven to seven and I pulled in here to, ah, take a
leak, you know, and the headlights picked him up.”
Simpson was a big shapeless red-cheeked kid who’d played tackle
in high school. His real name was Luther but everyone called him Suitcase after the ballplayer.
“Peter Perkins coming?”
“Anthony’s on the night desk,”
Simpson said. “He told me he’d
call him soon as he called you.”
“Okay, gimme the flashlight. Then go pull your cruiser across
the entrance to the parking lot and call in. When Molly comes on I want Anthony down here and everybody else she can wrangle. I want the area secured.”
Simpson hesitated, still looking down.
“It’s a murder, isn’t it,
Jesse?”
“Probably,” Jesse said. “Gimme
the light.”
Simpson handed the flashlight to Jesse and went to his cruiser.
Jesse squatted on his heels and studied the corpse. It had been a young white man, maybe thirty-five. His mouth was open. There was sand in it. He wore a maroon velour warm-up suit, which was soaking wet. There were two small holes in the wet fabric. One on the left side of the chest. One on the right. Jesse turned the head slightly. There was sand in his ear. Jesse swept the flashlight slowly around the body. He saw nothing but the normal debris of a normal beach: a tangle of seaweed scraps, a piece of salt-bleached driftwood, an empty crab shell.
Simpson walked back across the parking lot. Behind him the blue
light on his patrol car revolved silently.
“Perkins is on the way,” he said.
“And Arthur Angstrom. Anthony
called Molly. She’s coming in early. Anthony’ll be down as soon as
she gets there.”
Jesse nodded, still looking at the crime scene.
He said, “What time is it, Suit?”
“Six-fifteen.”
“And it’s dead low tide,” Jesse
said. “So high was around
midnight.”
A siren sounded in the distance.
“You think he was washed up here?” Simpson said.
“Body that’s been in the ocean and washed up on shore doesn’t
look like this,” Jesse said.
“More beat up,” Simpson said.
Jesse nodded.
“He’s got some marks on his
face,” Simpson said.
“That would probably be the gulls,” Jesse said.
“I coulda lived without knowing that,”
Simpson
said.
Jesse moved the right arm of the corpse. “Still in rigor,” he
said.
“Which means?”
“Rigor usually passes in twenty-four hours,” Jesse
said.
“So he was killed since yesterday morning.”
“More or less. Cold water might change the timing a little.”
A Paradise patrol car pulled in beside Simpson’s, adding its
blue light to his. Peter Perkins got out and walked toward them. He was carrying a black leather satchel.
“Anthony says you got a murder?” Perkins said.
“You’re the crime-scene guy,”
Jesse said. “But there’s two
bullet holes in his chest.”
“That would be a clue,” Perkins said.
He put the satchel on the sand and squatted beside Jesse to look
at the corpse.
“I figure he was probably shot here, sometime before midnight,”
Jesse said, “when the tide was still coming in.
There’s the high
water line. The tide reached high about midnight and soaked him, maybe rolled him around a little, and left him here when it receded.”
“If you’re right,” Perkins said,
“it probably washed away pretty
much any evidence might be lying around.”
“We’ll close the beach,” Jesse
said, “and go over
it.”
“It’s November, Jesse,” Simpson
said. “Nobody uses it
anyway.”
“This guy did,” Jesse said.
3
When he left the beach, Jesse called Marcy Campbell on his cell
phone.
“I’m up early fighting crime,”
Jesse said. “Got time for
breakfast?”
“It’s seven-thirty in the
morning,” Marcy said. “What if I’d
been asleep?”
“You’d be dreaming of me. When’s
your first
appointment.”
“I’m showing a house on Paradise Neck at eleven,” Marcy
said.
“I’ll come by for you.”
“I’m just out of the shower,”
Marcy said. “I’m not even
dressed.”
“Good,” Jesse said.
“I’ll hurry.”
Sitting across from Jesse in the Indigo Apple Cafe at 8:15, Marcy was completely put together. Her platinum hair was perfectly in place. Her makeup was flawless.
“You got ready pretty fast,” Jesse said.
“Crime busters float my boat,” Marcy said.
“What are you doing
so early.”
“Found a body on the beach,” Jesse said.
“Town beach?”
“Yes. He’d been shot twice.”
“My God,” Marcy said. “Who was
it.”
“Don’t know yet,” Jesse said.
“ME is looking at him
now.”
“Do you get help on major crimes like that?”
“If we need it,” Jesse said.
“Oh dear,” Marcy said.
“I’ve stepped on a
prickle.”
“We’re a pretty good little operation here,” Jesse said.
“Admittedly we don’t have all the resources of a big department.
State cops help us out on that.”
“And you don’t like it when that
happens.”
“I like to run my own show,” Jesse said.
“When I
can.”
The Indigo Apple had a lot of etched glass and blue curtains.
For breakfast it specialized in omelets with regional names.
Italian omelets with tomato sauce, Mexican omelets with cheese and peppers, Swedish omelets with sour cream and mushrooms. Jesse chose a Mexican omelet. Marcy ordered wheat toast.
“Speaking of which, how is the drinking?”
“Good,” Jesse said.
He didn’t like to talk about his drinking, even to Marcy.
“And the love life?” Marcy said.
“Besides you?”
“Besides me.”
“Various,” Jesse said.
“Well, doesn’t that make me feel
special,” Marcy
said.
“Oh God, don’t you get the vapors on me,” Jesse
said.
“No.” Marcy smiled. “I
won’t. We’re not lovers. We’re pals who fuck.”
“What are pals for,” Jesse said.
“It’s why we get along.”
“Because we don’t love each
other?”
“It helps,” Marcy said.
“How’s the ex-wife?”
“Jenn,” Jesse said.
“Jenn.”
Jesse leaned back a little and looked past Marcy through the etched glass front window of the cafe at people going by on the street, starting the day.
“Jenn,” he said again. “Well
… she doesn’t seem to be in
love with that anchorman anymore.”
“Was she ever?”
“Probably not.”
Marcy ate some toast and drank some coffee.
“She’s going out with some guy from
Harvard,” Jesse
said.
“A professor?”
The waitress stopped by the table and refilled their coffee cups.
“No, some sort of dean, I think.”
“Climbing the intellectual ladder,” Marcy said.
Jesse shrugged.
“You’ve been divorced like five
years,” Marcy
said.
“Four years and eleven days.”
Marcy stirred her coffee. “I’m older than you are,” Marcy
said.
“Which gives you the right to offer me advice,” Jesse
said.
“Yes. It’s a rule.”
“And you advise me,” Jesse said,
“to forget about
Jenn.”
“I do,” Marcy said.
Jesse cut off a corner of his omelet and ate it and drank some coffee and patted his lips with his napkin.
“Is there anyone advising you otherwise?”
Marcy
said.
“No.”
“If you resolved this thing with Jenn,”
Marcy said, “maybe you
could put the drinking issue away too, and just be a really good police chief.”
“I’ve never been drunk on the
job,” Jesse said.
“You’ve never been drunk on the job
here,” Marcy
said.
“Good point,” Jesse said softly.
“It got you fired in LA,” Marcy said.
“After you broke up with
Jenn in LA. And you came here to start over.”
Jesse nodded.
Marcy said, “So?”
“So?”
“So Jenn followed you here and you still struggle with booze,”
Marcy said. “Maybe there’s a connection.”
Jesse ate some more of his omelet.
“You think anyone in Mexico ever ate an omelet like this?” he
said.
“Are you suggesting I shut up?”
Jesse smiled at her and drank some coffee from the big white porcelain mug like the ones they had used in diners when he was a kid, in Tucson.
Jesse shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Your advice is
good. It’s just not good for
me.”
“Because?”
“I will not give up on Jenn until she gives up on me,” Jesse
said.
“Isn’t that giving her a license to do whatever she wants to and
hang on to you?”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “It
is.”
Marcy stared at him.
“How does it make you feel that she’s sleeping with other men?”
Marcy said.
“We’re divorced,” Jesse said.
“She’s got every
right.”
“Un-huh,” Marcy said. “But how
does it make you
feel?”
“It makes me want to puke,” Jesse said.
“It makes me want to
kill any man she’s with.”
“But you don’t.”
“Nope.”
“Because it’s against the law?”
“Because it won’t take me where I want to go,” Jesse
said.
“I don’t mean this in any negative
way,” Marcy said. “You are
maybe the simplest person I ever met.”
“I know what I want,” Jesse said.
“And you keep your eye on the prize,”
Marcy said.
“I do,” Jesse said.
4
BobValenti came into Jesse’s office and sat down. He was
overweight with a thick black beard, wearing a blue windbreaker across the back of which was written Paradise Animal Control.
“How you doing, Skipper?” he said.
Valenti was a part-time dog officer and he thought he was a cop.
Jesse found him annoying, but he was a pretty good dog officer. In the fifteen years he’d been a cop, dating back to Los Angeles,
South Central, Jesse had never heard a commander called Skipper.
“We’re pretty informal here,
Bob,” Jesse said. “You can call me
Jesse.”
“Sure, Jess, just being respectful.”
“And I appreciate it, Bob,” Jesse said.
“What’s
up?”
“Picked up a dog this morning,” Valenti said, “a vizsla -
medium-sized Hungarian pointer, reddish gold in color
…”
“I know what a vizsla is,” Jesse said.
“Anyway, neighbors said he’s been hanging around outside a house
in the neighborhood for a couple days.”
Jesse nodded. Jesse noticed that the sun coming in through the window behind him glinted on some gray hairs in Valenti’s beard.
“Not like it used to be,” Valenti said.
“Dogs running loose they
could be lost for days before anybody notices. Now, with the leash laws, people notice any dog that’s loose.”
Jesse said, “Um-hmm.”
“So I go down,” Valenti said,
“and he’s there, hanging around
this house on Pleasant Street that’s been condo-ed. And he’s got
that wild look they get. Restless, big eyes, you can tell they’re
lost.”
Jesse nodded.
“So I approach him, easy like, but he’s skittish as a bastard,”
Valenti said. “I had a hell of a time corralling him.”
“But you did it,” Jesse said, his face blank.
“Oh sure,” Valenti said. “I been
doing this job a long
time.”
“Dog got any tags?”
“Yeah. That’s the funny thing. He lived there.”
“Where?”
“The house he was hanging around. Belongs to somebody named
Kenneth Eisley at that address. So I ring the bell, and there’s no
answer. And I notice that the Globe from yesterday and
today is there on the porch, like, you know, nobody’s home.”
“How’s the dog?” Jesse said.
“He’s kind of scared, you know, ears down, tail down. But he
seems healthy enough. I fed him, gave him some water.”
“He look well cared for?”
“Oh, yeah. Nice collar, clean. Toenails clipped recently. Teeth
are in good shape.”
“You pay attention,” Jesse said.
“I got an eye for detail,” Valenti said.
“Part of the
job.”
“Where’s the dog now?”
“I got some kennel facilities in my
backyard,” Valenti said.
“I’ll keep him there until we find the owner.”
“You got an address for Kenneth Eisley?”
“Yeah, sure. Forty-one Pleasant Street. Big gray house with
white trim got three different condo entrances.”
“The address will help me find it,” Jesse said.
“You got it, Skip,” Valenti said.
5
They sat in the study looking at digital pictures on the computer screen.
“Look at them,” she said.
“Aren’t they sweet.”
“Your photography is improving,” he said.
“Maybe it would be more fun to do a woman this time,” she
said.
“Variety is the spice of life,” he said.
“Any of these look interesting?” she said.
He smiled at her.
“They all look interesting,” he said.
“But we need to find the right one,” she said.
“Wouldn’t want to rush it.”
“She may not even be in this batch.”
“Then we’ll do some more research and come back with a new
batch.”
“That will be fun,” she said.
“It’s all fun,” he said.
“It is,” she said,
“isn’t it. The research, the selection, the planning, the stalking …”
“Every good thing benefits from foreplay,”
he
said.
“The longer you wait for the orgasm, the better it is.”
They looked at the slide show some more, the new picture clicking onto the screen every five seconds.
“Stop it there,” she said.
“Her?”
“You think?” she said.
“Un-uh.”
“Too old?”
“I think we should get someone
young and pretty this
time.”
“That feels right to me,” she said.
“Feels good, doesn’t it,” he
said.
“Yes.”
He clicked on the slide show again and they sat holding hands watching the images of young men, old men, young women, old women, men and women of indeterminate age. All of them white, except for one Asian man in a blue suit.
“There,” he said and froze the image.
“Her?” she said.
“She’s the one,” he said.
“You think she’s good-looking?”
“I think she’s great-looking.”
“She looks kind of horsy to me.”
“She’s the one,” he said.
He was very firm about it, and she heard the firmness in his voice. He said it again.
“She’s the one.”
“Okay,” his wife said. “You want
her, you got her. She does look
like she’d be kind of fun.”
“That’s her house she’s coming
out of,” he said. “Rose Avenue if
I remember right.”
His wife looked at the list of locations.
“Rose Avenue,” she said.
“Memory like a steel trap,” he said.
“So tomorrow we put her under
surveillance?”
“We watch her every minute of her day,” he said. “See who she
lives with, when she’s alone, where she goes, when. Does she drive?
Ride a bike? Jog? Fool around?”
“The more we know,” she said,
“the more certain it’ll be when we
do it.”
“And the better it will feel.”
He smiled. “During or after?” he said.
“Both.”
6
Carrying a tan briefcase, Jesse stood on the big wraparound porch at 41 Pleasant Street. There were two doors that opened onto the porch in front, and one that provided entry from the driveway side. Jesse rang the bell at 41A, where the name under the bell button said Kenneth Eisley. He waited. Nothing.
The name
at 41B was Angie Aarons. He rang the bell, and heard footsteps almost at once. A woman opened the door. She was wearing a black leotard top and baggy gray sweatpants. Her blond hair was pinned up. Her feet were bare. There was a faint sheen of sweat on her face.
“Hello,” she said.
“Ms. Aarons?”
“Yes.”
Jesse was wearing jeans and his softball jacket. He held up his
badge.
“Jesse Stone,” he said.
“Could I see that badge again?” she said.
“Sure.”
She studied it for a moment.
“You’re the chief,” she said.
“I am.”
“How come you’re not wearing a chief suit,” she
said.
“Casual Tuesday,” Jesse said.
“Aren’t you awful young to be
chief.”
“How old is a chief supposed to be?”
“Older than me,” she said and smiled.
“I’ll do my best,” Jesse said.
“Are you friendly with Kenneth
Eisley, next door?”
“Kenny? Sure, I mean casually. We’d have a drink now and then,
sign for each other’s packages, stuff like that.”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“Not for a couple of days.” She paused.
“Omigod, where are my
manners,” she said. “Come in, want some coffee?
It’s all
made.”
“Coffee would be good,” Jesse said.
“Cream and
sugar.”
She stepped back from the door and he went in. The walls were white. The trim was white. The furniture was bleached oak. The living room was to the right, through an archway. There was a big-screen television to the left of the fireplace, and an exercise mat spread on the rug. She brought him coffee in a large colorful mug.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“The good china is in the
dishwasher.”
“I’m a cop,” Jesse said.
“All I know how to drink from is
Styrofoam.”
On the floor near the exercise mat were several pieces of rubber
tubing, and a round metal band with rubber grips. She sat on a big white hassock.
“Why are you asking about Kenny,” she said.
“He has a dog?”
“Goldie,” she said.
“He’s a vizsla. You know what they
are?”
Jesse nodded.
“Goldie’s been hanging around outside looking lost for a couple
of days,” Jesse said. “The dog officer picked him up, but he can’t
locate Kenny.”
“Last I saw they were going over to the beach together to
run.”
“When was that?” Jesse said.
“Couple nights ago.”
Jesse took an eight-by-ten photograph from the briefcase.
“I’m going to show you a picture.
It’s not gruesome, but it’s a
picture of a dead person.”
“Is it Kenny?”
“That’s what you’re going to
tell me,” Jesse said. “You
ready?”
She nodded. He held the picture out and she looked at it without
taking it, then looked away quickly and sat back.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Jesse waited.
After a moment, she nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s
Kenny.”
Jesse put the photograph away.
“What happened?” she said.
“Somebody shot him,” Jesse said.
“On Paradise Beach two nights
ago.”
“My God, why?”
“Don’t know.”
“Do you know who?” she said.
Jesse shook his head.
“Goldie,” Angie Aarons said. “He
must have been running with
Kenny on the beach and was there …”
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“And then he didn’t know what to do and he came home …
poor thing.”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Do you have
any idea who might want to shoot
Kenny?”
“Jesus, no,” Angie said.
“What does he do?”
“Ah, he’s, ah, he’s a, you know,
stock guy, some big brokerage
in town.”
“Family?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know him
real well. I never saw any
family around.”
“Do you know how long he’s lived
here?” Jesse
said.
“No. He was here when I moved in three years ago.”
“From where?”
“From where did I move?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Am I a suspect?”
“No,” Jesse said. “The question
was unofficial.”
“Really?” she said. “I came from
LA.”
“Me too,” Jesse said.
7
Jesse was eating a pastrami sandwich on light rye at his desk, when Molly brought the girl and her mother into his office just after noontime on Thursday.
“I think you need to talk with these ladies,” Molly
said.
Jesse took a swallow of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. He nodded.
“Excuse my lunch,” he said.
“I don’t care about your damned
lunch,” the mother said. “My
daughter’s been raped.”
“Moth-er!”
“You might want to stick
around, Molly,” Jesse
said.
Molly nodded and closed the door and leaned on the wall beside it.
“Tell me about the rape,” Jesse said.
“I didn’t get raped,” the girl
said.
“Shut up,” the mother said.
Jesse took a bite of his sandwich and chewed quietly.
“She came home from school early and tried to slip into the
house. Her dress was torn, her hair was a mess, her lip was swollen. You can still see it. She was crying and she wouldn’t tell
me why.”
Jesse nodded. He drank a little more cream soda.
“I insisted on examining her,” the mother said. “She had no
underwear, her thighs are bruised. I said I would take her to the doctor if she didn’t tell me, so she confessed.”
“That she’d been raped?” Jesse
said.
He was looking at the daughter. The daughter looked frantic to him.
“Yes.”
“Anyone do a rape kit?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you take her to the doctor,” Jesse said.
“And have it all over town, God no. I had her clean herself up
and brought her straight to you.”
“Clean herself up?”
“Of course. Who knows what germs were involved. And I’m not
bringing her in here looking like a refugee.”
“Bath?” Jesse said to the daughter.
“Shower?”
The daughter wouldn’t speak.
“I put her in a hot bath,” her mother said, “scrubbed her myself
like she was two years old.”
Peripherally, Jesse saw Molly raise her eyebrows.
“What are your names,” Jesse said.
The mother looked startled, as if Jesse had been impolite.
“I’m Mrs. Chuck Pennington. This is
Candace.”
Jesse said, “So who raped you, Candy?”
“Candace,” her mother said.
Jesse nodded.
“Candace,” he said.
Candace shook her head.
“You tell him, young lady. I will not permit anyone to rape my
daughter and think they can get away with it.”
“I won’t tell,” Candace said.
“You can’t make
me.”
“No,” Jesse said, “I
can’t. But it’s hard to protect you if I don’t know who they are.”
“You can’t protect me,” Candace
said.
“He threaten you?”
“They all did.”
“All,” her mother said, “dear
God in Heaven. You tell the chief
right now what happened.”
Candace shook her head. Her face was red. She was teary.
“If I don’t know who they are,”
Jesse said, “I can’t stop them.
They might do it again. To another girl. To you.”
Candace shook her head.
“Don’t you even want revenge,”
Molly said. “If it happened to me
I’d want revenge. I’d want them caught.”
Candace didn’t speak. Her mother slapped her on the back of her
head.
“No hitting,” Jesse said.
“Molly, why don’t you take Candace out to the conference room.”
Molly nodded. Left the wall and put her hand gently under Candace’s left arm and helped her out of the chair and through
Jesse’s office door. Jesse got up and went around to the door and
closed it and came back to his desk.
“She’s been traumatized by the
rapists,” Jesse said. “She should
not be traumatized by her mother.”
“Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my daughter.”
“I don’t know a hell of a lot about
daughters,” Jesse said. “But
I know something about rapes. She needs to see a doctor. If nothing else he might be able to give her some sedation. Who’s her gynecologist? I can call him for you.”
“Is there some kind of medical thing they can find out who did
it.”
“The hot bath tends to wash away
evidence,” Jesse
said.
“Well then, I won’t take her. The doctor may not tell, but
someone will. The nurse, the receptionist. The doctor’s husband. I
am not going to have her the subject of a lot of filthy talk all over town.”
Jesse finished his pastrami sandwich and drank the last of his cream soda and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. He put the napkin and the empty can and the sandwich wrapper in the wastebasket. He rocked his chair back and rested one foot on the open bottom file drawer in his desk, and tapped his fingers gently on the flat of his stomach, and looked thoughtfully at Mrs.
Pennington.
“Why don’t I talk to her alone,”
he said.
“You think she’ll tell you things she won’t tell her own
mother?”
“Sometimes people do,” Jesse said.
Mrs. Pennington frowned. She put her palms together and tapped her upper lip with the tips of her fingers. She’s pretty good-looking, Jesse thought. A little too blond, a little too tan, a little too carefully done, maybe, teeth a little too white. Face is kind of mean, but a good body.
“This entire incident must remain
confidential,” Mrs. Pennington
said.
Jesse nodded.
“Can you promise me that?”
Jesse shook his head.
“You can’t?”
“Of course not. We don’t plan to blab about it. But, if there
are arrests, indictments, trials, someone will hear about it.”
“Oh God,” she said. “I cannot
bear, cannot bear, the
scandal.”
“Being raped is not scandalous behavior,”
Jesse
said.
“You don’t understand.”
Jesse didn’t say anything.
“I can’t discuss this any further.
I’m taking my daughter
home.”
“Sooner or later you’ll have to deal with this,” Jesse said. “Or
she will.”
“I want my daughter,” she said.
Jesse stood and went to his office door.
He yelled, “Molly,” and when she appeared he said, “Bring the
girl in.”
When she saw her daughter, Mrs. Pennington stood.
“We’ll go home now,” she said.
Candace’s eyes were red and swollen. A bruise had begun to
darken on her cheekbone. She seemed disconnected. Jesse looked at Molly. Molly shook her head.
“Candace,” Jesse said.
The girl looked at him vaguely. Her pupils were large. She had no focus.
“Is there anything you want to say to me?”
Jesse
said.
She looked at her mother.
“We are through here, Candace,” Mrs.
Pennington
said.
The girl looked back at Jesse. Their eyes met and held for a moment. Jesse thought he saw for just a moment a stir of personhood in there. Jesse nodded slightly. The girl didn’t say anything. Then
her mother took her arm and they walked out of the station.
8
“I’m here to cook you
supper,” Jenn said when she
arrived at Jesse’s condo with a large shopping bag.
“Cook?” Jesse said.
“I can cook,” Jenn said.
“I didn’t know that,” Jesse said.
“I’ve been taking a course,”
Jenn said and set the shopping bag
down on the counter in Jesse’s kitchen. “Perhaps you could make us
a cocktail?”
“I could,” Jesse said.
Jenn took a small green apron out of the shopping bag and tied it on.
“Serious,” Jesse said.
“Dress for success,” Jenn said and smiled at him.
Jesse made them martinis. Jenn put some grilled shrimp and mango
chutney on a glass plate. They took the drinks and the hors d’oeuvres to the living room and sat on Jesse’s sofa and looked out
the slider over Jesse’s balcony to the harbor beyond.
“It’s pretty here, Jesse.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s so … stark.”
“Stark?”
“You know, the walls are white. The tabletops are bare. There’s
no pictures.”
“There’s Ozzie,” Jesse said.
Jenn looked at the big framed color photograph of Ozzie Smith, in midair, stretched parallel to the ground, catching a baseball.
“You’ve had that since I’ve
known you.”
“Best shortstop I ever saw,” Jesse said.
“You might have been that good, if you hadn’t gotten
hurt.”
Jesse smiled and shook his head.
“I might have made the show,” Jesse said.
“But I wouldn’t have
been Ozzie.”
“Anyway,” Jenn said. “One
picture of a baseball player is not
interior decor.”
“Picture of you in my bedroom,” Jesse said. “On the
table.”
“What do you do with it if you have a sleepover?”
“It stays,” Jesse said.
“Sleepovers have to know about
you.”
“Is that in your best interest?” Jenn said. “Wouldn’t it
discourage sleeping over.”
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
“But not entirely,” Jenn said.
“No,” Jesse said. “Not
entirely.”
They were silent, thinking about it. Jesse got up and made another shaker of martinis.
“What is it they have to know about me?”
Jenn said when he
brought the shaker back.
“That I love you, and, probably, am not going to love
them.”
“Good,” Jenn said.
“Good for who?” Jesse said.
“For me at least,” Jenn said. “I
want you in my
life.”
“Are you sure divorcing me is the best way to show that?”
“I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”
“Old habits die hard,” Jesse said.
“It’s more than a habit, Jesse.
There’s some sort of connection
between us that won’t break.”
“Maybe its because I don’t let it
break,” Jesse
said.
“You don’t,” Jenn said.
“But then here I am.”
“Here you are.”
“I could have been a weather girl in Los Angeles, or Pittsburgh
or San Antonio.”
“But here you are,” Jesse said.
“You’re not the only one hanging
on,” Jenn said.
“What the hell is wrong with us?” Jesse said.
Jenn put her glass out. Jesse freshened her drink.
“Probably a lot more than we know,” Jenn said. “But one thing I
do know: we take it seriously.”
“What?”
“Love, marriage, relationship, each other.”
“Which is why we got divorced and started fucking other people,”
Jesse said. “Or vice versa.”
“I deserve the vice versa,” Jenn said.
“But I don’t keep
deserving it every time we talk.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
“I’m sorry. But if we take it so
seriously, why the hell are we in this mess.”
“Because we wouldn’t let it
slide,” Jenn said. “Because you
wouldn’t accept adultery. Because I wouldn’t accept suffocation.”
“I loved you very intensely,” Jesse said.
There was half a drink left in the shaker. Jesse added it to his
glass.
“You loved your fantasy of me very
intensely,” Jenn said, “and
kept trying to squeeze the real me into that fantasy.”
Jesse stared at the crystalline liquid in his glass. Jenn was still. Below them the harbor master’s launch pulled away from the
town pier and began to weave through the stand of masts going somewhere, and knowing where.
“That you talking or the shrink?” Jesse said.
“It’s a conclusion we reached
together,” Jenn
said.
Jesse hated all the circumlocutions of therapy. He sipped the lucid martini.
“Why do you think I’m so
wonderful?” Jenn said.
“Because I love you.”
Jenn was quiet. She smiled slightly as if she knew something Jesse didn’t know. It annoyed him.
“What the fuck is wrong with that?” he said.
“Think about it,” Jenn said.
“Think about shit,” Jesse said.
“Just because you’re getting
shrunk doesn’t mean you have to shrink me.”
“You think I’m wonderful because you love me?”
“Yes.”
They were both quiet. Jesse stared at her defiantly. Jenn looking faintly quizzical.
After a time, Jenn said, “Not the other way around?”
Jesse nodded slowly as if to himself, then got up and mixed a new martini.
9
Jesse’s hangover was relentless on Monday morning.
He sat behind
his desk sipping bottled water and trying to concentrate on Peter Perkins.
“We spent two days going over that guy’s apartment,” Perkins
said. “We didn’t even find anything
embarrassing.”
“And him a stockbroker,” Jesse said.
“So what do you
know?”
Perkins looked down at his notebook.
“Kenneth Eisley, age thirty-seven, divorced, no children. Works
for Hollingsworth and Whitney in Boston. Parents live in Amherst.
They’ve been notified.”
“You do that?”
“Molly,” Peter Perkins said.
“God bless her,” Jesse said.
“Coroner’s through with him,”
Perkins said. “Parents are coming
tomorrow to claim the body. You want to talk to them?”
“You do it,” Jesse said.
“You pulling rank on me?” Perkins said.
“You bet,” Jesse said. “How
about the ex-wife?”
“She lives in Paradise,” Perkins said.
“On Plum Tree Road.
Probably kept the house when they split.”
“Seen her yet?”
“No. Hasn’t returned our calls.”
“I’ll go over,” Jesse said.
“Swell,” Perkins said. “I get to
question the grieving parents,
you talk to the ex-wife, who is probably delighted.”
“Not if she was getting alimony,” Jesse said.
“That’s cynical,” Peter Perkins
said.
“It is,” Jesse said.
“What’s the ME say?”
“Nothing special. Shot twice in the chest at close range. Two
different guns.”
“Two guns?”
“Yep. Both twenty-twos.”
“Which one killed him?”
“Both.”
“Equally?”
“Either shot would have done it. They both got him in the heart.
You want all the details about what got penetrated and stuff?”
“I’ll read the report. We figure two shooters?”
“Can’t see why one guy would shoot someone with two guns,”
Perkins said.
“Any way to tell which one shot first?”
“Not really. Far as the ME could tell they entered the victim
more or less the same time.”
“Both at close range,” Jesse said.
“Both at close range.”
“Both in the heart,” Jesse said.
Perkins nodded. “Gotta be two people,” he said.
“Or one person who wants us to think he’s two people,” Jesse
said.
Perkins shrugged.
“Pretty elaborate,” Perkins said.
“And it gives us twice as many
murder weapons.”
Jesse drank more spring water. He didn’t say anything.
“We got his phone records,” Perkins said.
“Anthony and Suit are
chasing that down.”
“Debt?” Jesse said.
“Not so far. Got ten grand in his checking account.
Got a mutual
fund worth couple hundred thousand. I’m telling you, we’ve got
nada.”
“Somebody killed him and they had a
reason,” Jesse said. “Talk
to people where he worked?”
“No. I was going to ask you. Should I call, or go in to
Boston.”
“Go in,” Jesse said.
“It’s harder to brush you off.”
“You did a
lot of this in LA,” Perkins said. “You got any ideas.”
“When in doubt,” Jesse said,
“cherchez la ex-wife.”
“Wow,”
Perkins said, “it’s great working with a pro.”
10
She was taking the photographs of Kenneth Eisley down from the big oak-framed corkboard in the office.
“Leave that head shot,” he said.
“Memories?” she said.
“Trophy,” he said.
She smiled, and handed him the pile of discarded pictures.
“Shred these,” she said. “While
I put up the new
pictures.”
He began to feed the discarded photographs through the shredder.
“What is our new friend’s name?”
she said.
“Barbara Carey,” he said.
“Forty-two years old, married, no
children. Her husband’s name is Kevin. She’s a loan officer at the
in-town branch of Pequot. He’s a lawyer in Danvers.”
“They happy?”
“What’s happy?” he said.
“They go out every Saturday night,
usually with friends. They go to brunch a lot of Sundays. The second picture up, they’re coming out of the Four Seasons.
They
don’t fight in public. They both drink, but neither one seems to be
a drunk.”
“They own a dog?” she said.
“No sign,” he said. “I think
they’re too busy being successful
young professionals to get tied down by a dog.”
“That’s good,” she said.
“I still feel worried about Kenny’s
dog.”
She glanced at the remaining photograph of Kenneth Eisley.
“Somebody will find the dog and adopt him,” he
said.
“I hope so,” she said. “Dogs are
nice.”
He fed the last photograph into the shredder.
“Kevin usually leaves the house first in the morning,” he said.
“She leaves about a half hour later, at eight-thirty.”
“That means she’s home alone for half an hour every weekday
morning.”
“Yes, but it’s a neighborhood where
everyone is home looking out
the window,” he said.
“So where will we be able to do it?”
“She does the food shopping,” he said.
“At the Paradise Mall,” she said.
She pinned the last of the pictures onto the corkboard with a small red map tack, then stepped back beside him and the two of them looked at thirty-five photographs of Barbara Carey going about the business of her public life.
“Big parking lot,” he said. “At
the Paradise
Mall.”
11
Molly Crane had a pretty good body, Jesse thought, for a cop with three kids. The gun belt always looked too big for her. She adjusted it as she sat in the chair across from Jesse’s desk.
“I’ve been doing a little off-hours
snooping,” Molly
said.
Jesse waited.
“Into the rape thing.”
“Candace Pennington,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“How you doing?” Jesse said.
“Well,” Molly said, “mostly
I’m just watching. I park outside in my own car, no uniform, and watch her come to school, and go home.
During lunch hour, I hang out in the cafeteria kitchen and watch. I know the food service lady down there, Anne Minnihan.”
“Find out anything?”
“Maybe,” Molly said. “There was
a moment this morning in the
cafeteria. Three boys sort of circled her and they stood and talked for maybe two minutes. They were all big and she was against the wall, and you could barely see her. One of them showed her something. The boys laughed. Then they moved away.”
“How did Candace react.”
“Scared.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. She was terrified, and … something else.”
“Something else?”
“Yes. I can’t quite say what. It was like whatever they’d shown
her was … horrifying.”
“Know the boys?” Jesse said.
“Not by name, yet,” Molly said.
“But I’d recognize all of
them.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “We
don’t want to cause this kid any more pain than she’s already in. You need to ID these three boys without
them knowing it.”
“They were big, one of them was wearing a varsity jacket. I’ll
check the sports team photos in the lobby,” Molly said.
“Out of uniform,” Jesse said.
“Just a suburban mom waiting to
see the guidance counselor.”
“Hey,” Molly said.
“I’m not old enough to have kids in high school.”
“Vanity, vanity,” Jesse said.
“Cops can be vain,” Molly said.
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“You’re thinking especially if
they’re female, aren’t
you?”
Jesse leaned back in his chair and put his hands up.
He said, “I don’t have a sexist bone in my body, cutie
pie.”
“Anyway,” Molly said,
“I’ve lived in this town my whole life.
I’ll get them ID’d.”
“Okay, as long as you keep the kid in mind.”
“Candace?”
“Yes.”
“Hard to investigate a crime without anyone knowing it,” Molly
said. “For crissake, we can’t even talk to the victim.”
Jesse smiled. “Hard, we do at once,” he said. “Impossible takes
a little longer.”
“Oh God,” Molly said, “spare
me.”
Jesse grinned. “Just be careful of
Candace,” he
said.
“You’re very soft-hearted,
Jesse.”
“Sometimes,” he said.
12
Kenneth Eisley’s former wife had resurrected her maiden name,
which was Erickson. She worked as a corporate trainer at a company called Prometheus Plus, which was located in an office park in Woburn, and Jesse talked to her there, sitting in a chair made of silver tubing across from her desk. The desk too was made of silver tubing, with a glass top.
“Do you have any idea why someone might kill your former
husband?” Jesse said.
Christine Erickson laughed briefly and without amusement.
“Other than for being a jerk?” she said.
“Was he enough of a jerk to get himself shot?”
“Not that kind of jerk,” she said.
“He was a harmless
jerk.”
“Such as?” Jesse said.
“He thought it was important, I mean he actually thought it was
seriously important, who won the Super Bowl.”
“Everybody knows it’s the World Series that matters,” Jesse
said.
Christine looked blankly at Jesse for a moment. Jesse smiled.
Her demeanor was calm enough, Jesse noticed, but her movements seemed tight and angular.
“Oh,” she said.
“You’re kidding.”
“More or less,” Jesse said.
“What else was annoying about
him?”
Christine was wearing a dark maroon pantsuit with a white blouse
and short cordovan boots with pointy toes and heels a little too high to be sensible. She was slim and good-looking, with auburn hair and oval wire-rimmed glasses. Behind the glasses, her eyes were greenish.
“He believed the ads on television,” she said without
hesitation.
She’s talked about his faults before, Jesse thought.
“He thinks what matters is looking good, knowing the right
people, driving the right car, owning the right dog … Oh God,
what about Goldie?”
“He’s healthy,” Jesse said.
“Dog officer has
him.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“I was hoping you’d take him,”
Jesse said.
“Me. God no. I can’t. I work twelve hours a day.”
Jesse nodded.
“Can you find him a home?” Christine said.
Jesse nodded.
“You think I should take him,” Christine said, “don’t
you?”
“I do,” Jesse said.
“I can’t have him home alone all day, peeing on my
rugs.”
Jesse nodded.
“Well, I can’t,” Christine said.
“‘Course not,” Jesse said.
“Hell, he was never my dog. Kenny just bought him because he
thought they’d look good running on the beach together.”
“They do that often?”
“Five nights a week,” she said.
“Kenny was always obsessing
about his weight.”
“Regular?”
“Kenny? Oh, God, yes, he was a schedule freak. Same time for
everything. Always.” Suddenly she smiled a thin smile.
“I mean
everything.”
“Good to know,” Jesse said. “Do
you have any idea who would want
him dead?”
“Oh,” she said, “God
no.”
“Does he pay you alimony?”
“No. I got my house in lieu of alimony. Hell, I make more than
he does anyway.”
“Where were you last Thursday night?”
Jesse said.
“Me?”
“Have to ask,” Jesse said.
She glanced at her date book, then looked up and met his gaze for a moment. He could see her thinking.
She said, “I was in bed with Neil Ames.”
“All night?”
“We were together from five-thirty in the afternoon until nine
A.M. the next morning.”
“I’ll need to verify it,” Jesse
said. “Where do I find Mr.
Ames?”
“Two doors down,” she said.
“He’s the marketing
director.”
“Does he think the Super Bowl matters?”
Jesse
said.
“No.”
“What does he think matters?”
“Money.”
“No fool, he,” Jesse said. “Can
you tell me anything at all that
might shed light on Kenneth Eisley’s death?”
“Have you tried at work?” she said.
“Maybe he lost somebody’s
life savings.”
“As we speak,” Jesse said. “Any
other thoughts?”
“No.”
Jesse took a card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Christine.
“Anything occurs,” he said,
“call me.”
“Even if it’s not about the
case?”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Maybe we
can schedule
something.”
Again the tight smile. Jesse smiled back. Then he went down the
hall to talk with the marketing director.
13
Jesse stood in the living room of Ken Eisley’s condominium,
listening to the silence. Jesse liked to go alone to places where victims lived, and visit for a while. Rarely did the silence whisper to him anything worth hearing, but that didn’t mean it
wouldn’t, and being there helped him think. The condo was a mirror
image of the one where Angie Aarons lived. On the living room floor, near the gas fireplace, was a big plaid dog cushion. On the low oak coffee table was a bottle of single malt scotch and two short thick glasses. Above the fireplace was a four-inch-thin wall-mounted television set that Jesse knew cost about $7,000. On an end table was a baseball enclosed in a plastic case. The ball had been signed almost illegibly by Willie Mays. To the right of the fireplace was a small maroon and gold replica model of an Indian motorcycle. In the kitchen was a set of stainless steel dog dishes in a black metal rack. There was a king-sized walnut sleigh bed and a large-screen television in the bedroom. On the bedside table were two copies of a magazine about men’s health and exercise. In the bathroom was a wooden container of shaving soap, a brush, and a double-edged razor. The razor and the shaving brush each had an ivory handle. A bottle of bay rum stood on the shaving ledge beside them. Everything was obviously new.
The fact that the marketing director had alibied Christine Erickson didn’t prove much, Jesse thought. There were probably two
people involved in the shooting. And each could be the other’s
alibi. But why? Jesse could find no reason for either of them to kill Eisley. According to Peter Perkins, Eisley was medium successful. He hadn’t made anyone rich, including himself.
But he
hadn’t put anyone in debtors’ prison, either.
He’d stayed about
even with a down market. Maybe he should go in and talk to people himself. Perkins was pretty good, but, like most of the department, he didn’t have much experience with homicide investigations.
In the den Jesse found another television and a big sound system. There was a gumball machine, a model of the original Thunderbird, a big illuminated globe, and some sort of glass slab filled with water through which bubbles rose endlessly. The world according to Sharper Image.
There were no photographs. There were no books. Jesse went to Eisley’s front porch and checked the mailbox. There was a J.
Crew
catalogue. Peter Perkins had the checkbook, bills, credit card receipts kind of evidence. He was perfectly competent to evaluate it. What interested Jesse was the emptiness. Except for the dog cushion. There was no hint that anyone lived there and enjoyed it.
It was monastically neat. If their timeline was right, Eisley had come home from work, put on his sweats, and gone out for a run with the dog. But there were no clothes draped on a chair or across his bed. Whatever he had worn he had carefully hung up, or put in the laundry bag. His shoes were lined up on the shoe rack in his bedroom closet. The refrigerator was nearly empty. The CD player seemed ornamental. Jesse smiled in the dead silent house.
Not even a picture of Ozzie Smith
…
Jesse moved slowly from room to room again. He didn’t open any
drawers or closets. He didn’t pick up any artifacts, he simply
moved slowly through the house. He saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing that would even hint at why someone had wanted to put two bullets into Kenneth Eisley’s chest. The kitchen
wall beside the back door had a doggie door cut into it, that led to a fenced run in the backyard.
Maybe I should get a dog.
Jesse had no yard. What would the dog do all day? He sat for a few more moments, then stood and left the empty condo, and locked the door behind him.
14
When Jesse came back to the station Molly was at the front desk,
talking on the phone. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger, holding the other three fingers straight.
“Does that translate to ‘I’ve
ID’d the three boys’?” Jesse
said.
Molly nodded.
“When you get a break on the desk,” Jesse said, “come see
me.”
Then he went on into the office and closed the door and called Marcy Campbell.
“You free tonight?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Can you come over to my place?”
“I’d be foolish not to,” Marcy
said.
“We can order in,” Jesse said.
“Chinese?” Marcy said. “You know
how erotic I get when I eat
Chinese.”
“Or when you don’t,” Jesse said.
Molly knocked and came into the office and lingered politely by
the door until Jesse hung up. Then she sat in the chair across from him, adjusted her handgun so it didn’t dig into her lower back, and
looked down at her notebook.
“Bo Marino, Kevin Feeney, Troy Drake,” she said.
“The three boys you saw hassle Candace.”
“Yes.”
“Got anything more?”
“Not yet.”
“You got a plan?” Jesse said.
“I’m going to haunt them,” Molly
said.
“You do have to work here sometimes,”
Jesse said.
“My time,” Molly said.
“Company time too,” Jesse said,
“when we can spare you. It is
company business.”
“It’s woman’s business,
too,” Molly said.
“I understand that.”
“I’m not sure you do,” Molly
said. “I’m not sure any man
does.”
“I don’t like rape much either,”
Jesse said.
“No. I’m sure you don’t. But you
haven’t lived with it since
before you even knew what it was.”
“Because it’s the worst thing that can happen?”
“No,” Molly said. “There are
several things worse. It’s one
reason women submit to it, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Like death,” Jesse said.
“Or torture or both. But rape is the thing your mother was
scared of. It’s the possibility that you have not only known but
felt, since little boys peeked up your dress.”
“You knew we did that?” Jesse said.
“Any woman has always known she is the object of sexual interest
from almost any man, and that almost any man, if he chooses, can force himself sexually upon her.”
“You ever been raped?” Jesse said.
“No. But almost any woman has had more sexual attention from
some man than she wanted. We all know about duress.”
“Not all of us are, ah, duressful,” Jesse said.
“No. But you know what they say - you have to judge what the
enemy can do, not what he might do.”
“Are we all the enemy?”
“Oh, God, no,” Molly said. “I
love you, Jesse … And my
husband …” She paused. “He’s
my best friend, my lover, my
…” She shook her head. “But there are things women know that
men may never know.”
“Which is why you’re all over this rape case like ugly on a
toad.”
“Yes.”
“Men may know things women
don’t,” Jesse said.
“I’m sure that is so. But rape is one of the things we know,”
Molly said.
Jesse nodded. “Control might become sort of an issue for some
women,” Jesse said.
“If they are with a controlling man,”
Molly said.
“You do a lot of thinking,” Jesse said.
“For an Irish Catholic
cop.”
“An Irish Catholic married female mother of three kids
small-town cop,” Molly said.
“Exactly,” Jesse said.
“So,” Molly said, “I’m
going to haunt them.”
“Just do everything right,” Jesse said,
“so if they did do it,
we don’t lose them.”
“I know.”
“And don’t forget that these may be high school kids but they
are bigger and stronger than you are.”
“It’s a thing women never, ever
forget,” Molly
said.
“Duh,” Jesse said. “I guess
that’s pretty much what you’ve been
telling me.”
“Pretty much,” Molly said, and smiled at him. “Don’t get
nervous, though. I won’t keep telling you.”
15
The woman’s body lay on its side, at the far end of the parking
lot in the Paradise Mall. Her head was jammed against the rear tire of a silver Volvo Cross Country wagon. A shopping cart full of groceries stood nose-in against the black Audi sedan next to the Volvo. Jesse sat on his heels beside Peter Perkins and looked at her.
“Two in the chest,” Perkins said.
“Look like small-caliber to
me.”
“Just like Kenneth Eisley,” Jesse said.
“At first look,” Perkins said.
“Keys were in her hand,” Jesse said.
“And she dropped them when
she was shot.”
“She probably popped the rear gate with the remote on her key
chain,” Perkins said. “Rear gate is unlatched but not
open.”
Jesse looked at the unemptied shopping cart. Behind them several
people, attracted by the blue lights on the patrol cars, stood in silence, held away from the crime scene by Simpson and deAngelo. In the distance a siren sounded.
“That’ll be the EMTs,” Perkins
said.
“She doesn’t need them anymore.”
“No,” Perkins said. “But they
can haul her away.”
Jesse nodded.
“So,” he said. “She food shops
in the market. And checks out and
wheels her cart out here … This her car?”
“I assume so.”
“Try her keys,” Jesse said.
Wearing gloves, Perkins picked up the key chain and pointed the
remote at the Volvo and clicked the power lock. The lights flashed and the door locks clicked. He unlocked the doors the same way, then dropped the keys into an evidence bag and made a notation on the label.
“Okay, so she comes out here to her car
…” He looked
around the parking lot. “Which is way out here because the lot is
full.”
“Friday night,” Perkins said.
“It’s always like this on a Friday
night?”
“Yeah. Worse before a holiday.”
“She pops her rear door,” Jesse said,
“to put her stuff away,
and gets two in the chest. She maybe lived five more seconds and turned half away before she died, and fell, and her head jammed up that way against the rear tire.”
Perkins nodded.
“That’s how I’d read
it,” he said.
The mercury floods in the parking lot gave everything a faint bluish tinge. In other parts of the lot cars were looking for spots and waiting for people to load their groceries and pull out so that they could pull in. If they saw the blue lights they didn’t react,
and having places to go, went.
The Paradise emergency response wagon rolled in to a stop and Duke Vincent got out. He knelt beside the woman and felt for a pulse. He knew, as they all knew, that he wouldn’t find one.
But it
was routine. It would be embarrassing to take a living body to the morgue.
“Can we move her yet?” he said to Jesse.
Jesse looked at Perkins. “You all set?” he said.
“Yeah, I’ve chalked the outline.”
“Okay, Dukie,” Jesse said.
“She got a name?” Duke said as they loaded her into the back of
the wagon.
“Driver’s license says Barbara
Carey.”
Vincent nodded. “You noticed she got shot just like the guy on
the beach,” he said.
“I noticed,” Jesse said.
“Just thought I’d mention it,”
Duke said, and got in the wagon
and drove away.
The people gathered to watch began to drift away. Suitcase Simpson came over to stand with Jesse and Peter Perkins.
“Whaddya think,” he said.
He spoke to both of them, but he looked at Jesse.
“Well, there was money still in her
purse,” Perkins said. “She
was still wearing her rings and necklace.”
“Unless it was a random shooting,” Jesse said, “the killer, or
killers, had to follow her here. Even if they knew she was coming here to shop, they’d have no way to know where she’d
park.”
“Which means they drove,” Simpson said.
Jesse nodded.
“And if they drove, they’d park near where she parked and sit in
the car and wait for her to come out,” Jesse said.
“Peter, you and
Suit and Anthony get the license numbers of any cars that could see her car from where they were parked.”
“You think the killer could still be here?” Simpson
said.
“Don’t know,” Jesse said.
“Let’s see.”
He jabbed his forefinger toward the parked cars.
“You bet,” Perkins said.
Jesse went to his car and called Molly on the radio.
“Got a woman shot to death at the mall,”
he said. “Driver’s
license says she’s Barbara Carey, Sixteen Rose Ave. See if she’s
got a next of kin.”
“If there is, do I notify?” Molly said.
“I’ll do that,” Jesse said.
“No,” Molly said. “I can do
it.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Let me
know.”
Among the few people still watching, a husband and wife held hands and whispered together.
“Who’s that talking on the
radio?” she said.
“Chief of police, I think.”
“He’s cute,” she said.
“I didn’t notice,” he said.
“What are the other cops doing,” she said.
“Taking down license plates.”
“My God,” she said.
“They’ll find our names.”
“So,” he said.
“They’ll find a hundred other names
too.”
“Do you think they’ll question
us?”
“It’s a small-town force,” he
said. “I doubt they’ve got the
manpower.”
“Be kind of exciting if they did,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What would we say.”
“We’d say we came here to pick up some groceries,” he said.
“Which we did.”
“I thought I might have an orgasm right there,” she said,
“standing beside her putting grapes in a bag.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand.
“Up close and personal,” he said softly.
16
“For Christ’s
sake,” Marcy said. “You can’t have
someone to dinner and just plonk three cartons of Chinese food on the table.”
“Of course you can’t,” Jesse
said. “I just wanted to see if you
knew that.”
“Yeah, right,” Marcy said.
She was looking through his kitchen cabinets.
“You can make us a cocktail,” she said.
“While I set the
table.”
Without asking, Jesse made each of them a tall scotch and soda.
Holding two wineglasses, Marcy said, “What wine goes with
Chinese food?”
“Probably a muscular cabernet,” Jesse said.
“Do you have any?”
“No.”
“What have you got?”
“Black Label scotch, Absolut vodka, Budweiser beer.”
Marcy nodded and put the wineglasses away. She put the cartons of food in a low oven and brought her drink over to the couch.
“How’s it going with Jenn?” she
said.
Jesse shrugged.
“That well?” Marcy said.
“She came over the other night and cooked me dinner,” Jesse
said.
“Good dinner?”
“Fancy,” Jesse said.
“She’s taking cooking
classes.”
“Was the evening all right?”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
Marcy was quiet, holding her glass in both hands, sipping.
“This works out very well for her,” Marcy said
finally.
“What?”
“This arrangement. She has you when she wants you.
If she gets
in trouble you’re there. If she needs sympathy or support or understanding you’re there. If she wants to see somebody else,
she’s free to.”
“That’s probably true,” Jesse
said.
“What do you get?” Marcy said.
Jesse went to the kitchen counter and made himself another drink. He brought it back and stood and looked out his picture window at the harbor.
“I’m in this for the long haul,
Marce.”
“Which means?”
“Which means, I love her, and I’ll stick until she proves to me
that there’s no way to fix things.”
“And she hasn’t?”
“No.”
“Does she say she loves you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to make you mad, but have you thought she might
just be manipulating you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And she’s not,” Jesse said.
Marcy sipped minimally at her scotch.
“Have you seen that shrink lately?”
“Dix? I see him.”
“Do you talk about this?”
“Some.”
“Am I getting too nosy?” Marcy said.
“Yes.”
Marcy took a big swallow of her drink.
“I heard about another murder in town,”
she said. “Up at the
mall.”
Jesse nodded.
“Any luck with it?”
Jesse shook his head.
“How about the other one, the man on the beach?”
“Nope.”
“Well,” Marcy said,
“it’s a long season.”
“Yes.”
They were quiet for a bit. It was full evening, and past where Jesse stood by the window, across the dark harbor, they could see the lights of Paradise Neck and Stiles Island. There was no traffic in the harbor.
“Talk to me a little about rape,” Jesse said.
“Rape?”
“Yes.”
“It’s never really been necessary in my case.”
Jesse smiled.
“Molly’s working on a rape case. She says it’s every woman’s
fear.”
“Well …” Marcy paused. Her
drink was empty. She held it
out and Jesse went to mix her another, and made himself one too.
“I would guess that most women are not unaware of the
possibility.”
Jesse nodded.
“What’s the worst thing about
it?” Jesse said. “When you think
about it.”
“It’s not that I wake up every day
worrying about
rapists.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “But if
you think about it, what would be
the worst part.”
Marcy put her feet up on the couch and shifted so she could look
more comfortably across the harbor. She drank some scotch, and swallowed and let her breath out audibly.
“If he’s not hurting you
physically,” Marcy said, “I suppose
it’s being degraded to a thing.”
“Tell me about that,” Jesse said.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“You’re not some kind of a pervert, are you?”
“I don’t think so,” Jesse said.
“Tell me about being a
thing.”
“Well, you know, it’s a woman being used against her will for a
purpose in which she has no part. Hell, the guy’s using her to jerk
off.”
“Or something,” Jesse said.
“Literally or figuratively,” Marcy said,
“you’re a
thing.”
“It’s not about you,” Jesse said.
“No,” Marcy said. “It is
entirely about the rapist and you don’t matter.”
Jesse nodded slowly. He walked from the window and sat on the couch beside Marcy. They were quiet. Marcy leaned her head against Jesse’s shoulder. He patted her thigh.
“This isn’t just about the
rape,” Marcy said after a while. “Is it.”
“No.”
“It’s also about Jenn,” Marcy
said.
Jesse nodded.
“Sometimes I think everything is,” he said.
17
Jesse was in the parking lot of the Northeast Mall, talking to Molly on a cell phone.
“Where is she now,” he said.
“Just coming out of Macy’s.”
“She alone?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone around you recognize?”
“No. This is the time.”
“Okay, pick her up and bring her.”
Molly didn’t actually have a hold on Candace when they came out
of the vast shopping sprawl, but she walked close and a little behind, herding her with her right shoulder like a sheepdog.
“Hop in,” Jesse said, when they reached him.
“What do you want?” Candace said.
“We’ll talk about it when you get
in,” Jesse
said.
Molly opened the door, Candace got in, Molly closed the door.
Through the open window she looked at Jesse. He shook his head.
“Is that smart?” Molly said.
“Probably not,” Jesse said.
“I’ll take it from
here.”
Molly shrugged and nodded and walked away. Jesse knew she disapproved. Sexual harassment was an easy charge to make against a male cop alone with a woman. Jesse put the car in gear.
“You want to slump down so nobody sees you,” Jesse said, “I
won’t take it personally.”
Candace sat with her back to the car window.
“What do you want?”
“To talk,” Jesse said. “The
elaborate stuff is to make sure no
one sees you talking to me.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t care. But I was under the
impression you
did.”
Jesse pulled out of the parking lot and went north on Route 114.
“Where are you taking me?”
“There’s a Dunkin‘ Donuts up
here,” Jesse said. “We’ll have a
cup of coffee.”
“I don’t want to talk with you.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “But I
think you have to.”
They were quiet while Jesse drove through the take-out window and got two coffees and four cinnamon donuts. Jesse carefully opened the little window in the plastic top of both cups and handed one to Candace. He sat the donuts on the console between them, leaning against the shotgun that stood in its lock rack against the dashboard.
“Bo Marino,” Jesse said. “Kevin
Feeney, Troy
Drake.”
Candace’s shoulders hunched, her head went down. She didn’t say
anything.
“We both know they raped you,” Jesse said.
Candace hunched herself tighter.
“And we both know they threatened you about telling.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m the police chief,” Jesse
said. “I know
everything.”
“I don’t know what you are talking
about,” Candace said in a
small voice, her eyes riveted on her own lap.
Jesse ate half a donut and drank some coffee.
“If you let them,” Jesse said,
“they will make your life
miserable as long as you live in this town.”
Candace shook her head.
“If you tell me about it,” Jesse said,
“I can give you your life
back.”
“My mother,” Candace said.
“I can help you with your mother,” Jesse said.
Candace kept staring at her lap. Jesse finished his first donut
and drank some more coffee. They were both silent. Candace’s hunched shoulders began to shake. She made no sound, but Jesse knew she was crying. He put a hand on her near shoulder.
“Off the record,” Jesse said.
“Just between you and me. No
testifying. Nobody knows you told me.”
Her shoulders continued to shake.
“Let it out,” Jesse said.
“You’re safe here. It’ll never leave the car.”
“Bo’s the football captain,”
Candace said and began to cry
outright.
Jesse took some Kleenex out of the glove compartment and put them on the dashboard in front of her. He patted her shoulder.
“He’s so strong,” she said.
Jesse stopped patting and simply rested his hand on her shoulder.
“You know behind the football field …
there’s this little
like valley … where the railroad tracks are? …
They
took me there.”
She was talking and crying at the same time. Her nose was running. She wiped it with a Kleenex.
“They force you?”
“They just … told me to come with them
… and, you
know … they are … so … so important
… you
know?”
Jesse nodded.
“Sure,” he said. “I
know.”
“And … they started … they
started talking …
dirty and they grabbed me and took my clothes off
…”
She stopped talking for a time and sobbed. Jesse waited, his hand gently on her shoulder. Finally she got enough control to talk.
“And they did it,” she said.
“All three?” Jesse said softly.
“They took turns … Two holding me down, one doing
it.”
Jesse put his head back against the car seat and closed his eyes
for a moment and took in a lot of air quietly through his nose and let it out. Candace cried, softly now, her hands folded in her lap, her head down.
“They took pictures,” she said.
Jesse nodded slowly, his head still back against the car seat, his eyes still closed.
“And they’ll pass the pictures around the school,” Jesse said.
“If you say anything.”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen the pictures?”
“I saw one,” Candace said.
“Are they in the picture?”
“One of them.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I couldn’t stand to
look.”
“Do you have the picture?”
“I burned it.”
“Too bad,” Jesse said. “Might be
evidence.”
Candace shook her head.
“I didn’t want anybody to see
it.”
“I understand,” Jesse said.
“They threaten you any other
way?”
“They said they’d do it again. You know.
If I told. And Bo said
next time they’d hurt me.”
“Your parents know what happened to you?”
Jesse
said.
“My mother knows I was raped, but not by who.”
“Your father?”
“My mother says we can’t tell
him.”
Candace wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Jesse was still for a
moment, staring straight ahead through the car windshield, drumming his fingers on his thighs.
“Okay,” he said after a time.
“It’s our secret.”
She nodded. Jesse took a card out of his shirt pocket and wrote
his home phone number on the back.
“You can call me anytime,” Jesse said.
“About anything. It’ll be
between you and me until you say otherwise.”
She took the card.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m going to keep you out of
it,” Jesse said. “But I’m going to
find a way, sooner or later, to bust all three of them.”
“You won’t tell,” she said.
“No,” Jesse said. “I
won’t.”
“I’m so scared,” she said.
“I know,” Jesse said. “Just
remember you’re not alone anymore.
We’re in this together.”
She nodded.
“Do you want me to take you home or back to the mall.”
“The mall,” she said.
“I’m meeting my friend there at
three.”
Jesse finished his coffee and a second donut as he drove back to
the mall. When he parked near the entrance she sat for a moment in the car.
“Do you think they’ll do it
again?” she said.
“I don’t know. Try not to be alone with them. Call me whenever
you need me.”
She nodded silently.
“Thank you,” she said.
Jesse smiled at her.
“You and me, babe,” he said.
18
Healy came in without knocking and sat down in Jesse’s
office.
“You called?” he said.
Jesse nodded. “Thanks for coming by,” he said.
“Not a sacrifice,” Healy said.
“You know I live up this
way.”
“We had a couple of murders,” Jesse said.
“I heard,” Healy said.
“Sent the slugs over to state forensics and your people tell me
they came from the same guns.”
“Guns?”
“Yeah. Both victims shot twice, one each from two guns.”
Healy frowned. “Two shooters?” he said.
“Or one shooter who wants us to think it was two.”
“Links between the victims?” Healy said.
“We can’t find any,” Jesse said.
“They both live here?”
“Along with twenty thousand other people.”
Healy nodded slowly.
“Well, you know how to do this,” Healy said. “I am not going to
ask you a lot of dumb questions.”
“All we got is four bullets,” Jesse said.
“Twenty-twos.”
“That’ll narrow it down for
you,” Healy said.
“People use a twenty-two because they don’t know one gun from
another and that’s what they could get hold of,”
Jesse
said.
“Or they are good at it,” Healy said.
“And like the twenty-two
because it’s not as noisy and makes less of a mess.”
“And maybe because they like to show off.”
“These people seem like they can shoot?”
“They put both bullets right in the same place,” Jesse said.
“Both victims. Either shot would have killed them.”
“So we gotta look for the guns,” Healy said.
“It’s a start.”
“How many twenty-two-caliber firearms would you guess are out
there in this great land?”
“Let’s assume a couple things,”
Jesse said. “Let’s assume
there’s two shooters. It’s more likely than one shooter, two
guns.”
“Yeah,” Healy said.
“And let’s assume that the shooters are from
Paradise.”
“Because both vies are from Paradise,”
Healy
said.
“No wonder you made captain,” Jesse said.
“So we get a list of everyone in Massachusetts who owns a
twenty-two,” Healy said.
“Or bought twenty-two ammunition.”
“And we cross-reference anyone who lives in Paradise,” Healy
said.
“And then maybe we’ve got some
suspects,” Jesse
said.
“If the shooters bought in Massachusetts,”
Healy said. “And if
the gun store did the paperwork, and if we didn’t lose it in the
computer, and if they live in Paradise.”
“Hell, we’ve got them cornered,”
Jesse said. “Can your people do
the clerical work?”
“Am I the homicide commander?” Healy said.
“Can they do it fast?”
“I am the homicide commander.
I am not
God.”
“I thought they were the same thing,”
Jesse said.
“Think how disappointed I am,” Healy said.
“It’ll be a long
process.”
“How long?”
“Long,” Healy said.
They were silent for a moment.
“I got a bad little thought,” Jesse said.
“About the two guns?” Healy said.
“Each vie shot the same way,
in the same spot, either shot kills them?”
Jesse nodded.
“Be good if you could speed the process up,” Jesse
said.
“Do what I can,” Healy said.
They were silent, looking at each other.
“You used to play ball,” Healy said after a time.
“Yeah, Albuquerque,” Jesse said.
“I was with Binghamton,” Healy said.
“Eastern
League.”
“You get a sniff at the show?”
Healy shook his head.
“Nope. I was a pitcher, Phillies organization, pretty good. Then
I went in the Army and came home and got married and had kids
…”
Jesse nodded.
“And it went away,” Healy said.
“You?”
“Shortstop, tore up my shoulder, and that was the end of
that.”
“Were you good?” Healy asked.
“Yes.”
“Too bad,” Healy said. “You play
anywhere now?”
“Paradise twi league,” Jesse said.
“Softball.”
“Better than nothing,” Healy said.
“A lot better,” Jesse said.
19
Jesse sat with Suitcase Simpson in the front seat of Simpson’s
pickup parked up the street from Candace Pennington’s home on Paradise Neck. The weathered shingle house sat up on a rocky promontory on the outer side of the neck overlooking the open ocean.
“She walks from here down to the corner of Ocean Ave. to catch
the school bus,” Jesse said. “Which Molly will be driving.”
“School bus company in on this?” Simpson said.
“No. They think we’re trying to catch a drug
pusher.”
“I used to ride the bus to school,”
Simpson said. “Lot of shit
got smoked on that bus.”
“Focus here, Suit,” Jesse said.
“You’ll follow her when she
walks to the bus stop, and follow the bus to school and watch her until she’s in the building. You go in the building after her and
hang around near where she is, and, at the end of the day, reverse the procedure.”
“What did you tell the school?”
“Same thing, undercover drug
investigation.”
“I played football with Marino’s older brother,” Simpson said.
“Half the school knows me. How undercover can it be.”
“Suit,” Jesse said.
“We’re not really looking for druggies.
It’s
a cover. It’s good if everyone knows you’re a cop, as long as they
don’t know why you’re there.”
“Which is?”
“To protect Candace Pennington, and, maybe, while we’re at it,
get something on the three creeps that raped her.”
“But no one knows that,” Simpson said.
“They threatened her if she told on them,”
Jesse said. “And I
promised her that I’d keep it secret.”
“Do I wear my unie?” Simpson said.
“No, I told the school to pretend you were a new member of the
custodial staff.”
“Janitor?”
“Yep.”
“Do I get one of those work shirts that has my name over the
pocket?”
“Yeah. Do you want Suitcase?
Or
Luther?”
“I should never have told you my real name,” Simpson
said.
“I’m your chief,” Jesse said.
“You tell me
everything.”
“Yeah, well, my mother comes by and sees me sweeping up, I’m
gonna refer her to you.”
Jesse smiled.
“Kid’s alone,” Jesse said.
“She’s been raped. She’s afraid it
might happen again. She’s sixteen years old and afraid, and they’ve
threatened to show her naked pictures to everyone in the high school. She’s afraid they’ll hurt her.
She’s afraid of her mother’s
disapproval, and I don’t know where her father stands.”
Simpson nodded.
“So we’re gonna see that she
ain’t alone.”
Jesse nodded.
“Suit,” he said. “You may make
detective
someday.”
“We don’t have any detective
ranks,” Simpson
said.
“Well,” Jesse said. “If we
did.”
“Hell,” Simpson said. “I already
made janitor.”
20
Monday through Friday evenings, when Garfield Kennedy got off the commuter train at the Paradise Center Station, he waited for the train to leave, then walked a hundred yards down the tracks and cut through behind the Congregational Church to Maple Street where he lived. This Thursday night was like all the others, except that it was raining, and, as he walked behind the church, a man and a woman approached through the rain and shot him to death without a word.
When Jesse got there he already knew what he’d find.
Squatting
on his heels in the rain beside Peter Perkins, he saw the two small bullet holes in the chest, one on each side. The blood had seeped through Kennedy’s raincoat and been nearly washed away by the rain,
leaving only a light pink stain.
“Same thing,” Jesse said.
“Name’s Kennedy,” Peter Perkins
said. “He’s a lawyer, works in
Boston. He lives over there, on Maple. Figure he got off the train, cut through the church parking lot toward his house … and never made it.”
“Family?” Jesse said.
“Wife, three daughters.”
“They know?”
“They came over to see what was going on,”
Perkins
said.
“Christ,” Jesse said.
“It wasn’t good,” Perkins said.
“I’ll talk with them,” Jesse
said.
The rain was washing over Kennedy’s face and soaking his
hair.
“And they won’t have any idea why someone killed him,” Jesse
said. “And I’ll ask if they know Kenneth Eisley or Barbara Carey,
and they won’t. And we’ll find no connection among the three of
them and the bullets will be from the same guns that killed the other two.”
“You think it’s a serial killer,
Jesse?”
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “Any fix on
when it
happened?”
“I talked with the pastor of the church and he says that the
church music director came in to practice on the organ at about four,” Perkins said. “And didn’t see anything. So, sometime between
four and when the call came in at seven-fifteen. Between four and seven-fifteen there were three commuter trains, the last one at six twenty-three.”
“Who found the body,” Jesse said.
“Couple kids skateboarding.”
“In the dark?”
“The pastor says the parking lot lights are on a timer and they
turned on at seven. They never changed the timer for daylight savings.”
“The kids still here?”
“Yeah. They’re in the cruiser with
Eddie.”
“Hang on to them.”
Jesse stood up. “Don’t move a
thing,” he said. “Everything just
the way it is.”
“Sure thing,” Perkins said. “I
still got to take my
pictures.”
Jesse walked away from the scene, a hundred yards up the railroad tracks to the Paradise Center Station. It was empty and dark. The last train would have been at 6:23. He turned and looked down the tracks. This time of year it would have been dark by six.
But if you were used to it, you probably wouldn’t have a problem.
He started down the tracks. He wasn’t used to it, but the light
from the church parking lot was helpful. Besides, I’m a natural
athlete. There was a pathway through the screen of trees into
the back of the church parking lot. He walked through this way,
carrying his briefcase. Lot was still dark. He’s walking down here,
toward Maple Street, and he sees a couple people walking toward him, and he doesn’t pay any attention and then they get close and
bang. He falls pretty much straight backward and, unless they weren’t shooting as good as usual, was dead before he was through
falling. He stood over the dead man and looked around the parking lot. There was a maroon Chevrolet Cavalier parked close to the church, and a brown Toyota Camry beside it. All the other vehicles were police and fire vehicles, lights on, flashers flashing. I wonder why cops always do that. I wonder why we don’t shut the damn things off when we get there.
He turned
slowly and looked around the parking lot. Across from him was the exit onto Sea Street. To the right a path led through another small screen of trees to Maple Street. Jesse walked to the exit and looked at Sea Street. To the left took you out of town, heading for Route 1. To the right was downtown and the waterfront. He walked back and through the path to Maple Street. Front lawns, driveways, garrison colonials. To the right, near the end of the street, one of the houses was more brightly lit than the others, with several cars parked out front. Kennedy’s house?
“You know which house is
Kennedy’s?” Jesse said.
“No, I can ask Anthony.”
Jesse shook his head.
“Okay,” he said to Perkins. “You
can close it
up.”
Perkins nodded.
“I’ll talk with those kids,”
Jesse said.
“First cruiser,” Perkins said.
“Where the skateboards
are.”
21
Jesse got into the front seat of the cruiser beside Ed Cox and turned to talk with the boys in back. The boys were about fourteen.
They reeked of self-importance. Too bad about the dead guy, but this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.
“My name’s Jesse Stone,” he said.
“We know who you are.”
“Did you tell your story to the officer?”
Jesse
said.
“Yes.”
“And give him your names and addresses?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, now I want you to tell me.”
“My name’s Richard Owens,” one
of the boys said.
He was short and slim and blond with a slacker haircut and a gold stud in his left earlobe.
“What do they call you?” Jesse said.
“You mean like my nickname?”
Jesse nodded.
“Rick,” the boy said. “Or Ricky
sometimes.”
“You?” Jesse said to the other boy.
He was an olive-skinned kid, with long black hair that had not fared well in the rain.
“Sidney Lessard,” the boy said.
“They call me
Sid.”
“Okay, Sid,” Jesse said.
“Officer Cox will take you someplace else out of the rain - you can use my car, Eddie.”
“How come we can’t stay
together?” Rick said.
“Police procedure,” Jesse said.
“What procedure?” Rick said.
“See if you both tell the same story.”
“You think we’re lying?” Rick
said.
“No way to know,” Jesse said.
“Yet.”
“For crissake …” Rick said.
“I’ll go,” Sid said.
“We ain’t lying. I’ll just go with
him.”
Cox got out of the driver’s side and opened the back door. Sid
got out and they walked toward Jesse’s car. Jesse reached over and
shut off the blue light.
“What’d you see, Rick?” Jesse
said.
“Me and Sid come over here to skateboard, you know, it’s nice
pavement, and they got that handicap ramp, and they turn the lights on every night.”
“Even in the rain?” Jesse said.
“Yeah, sure, we don’t care about
rain.”
“You got here after the lights were on.”
“‘Course, you can’t board in the
dark.”
“‘Course,” Jesse said.
“Anyway, so we’re boarding, maybe five minutes, and I come down
the ramp and hit a pebble and fall on my ass and the board goes off into the dark. And I go to get it and I see this guy and I yell for Sid and we can tell he’s dead, and -”
“How?”
“How what?” Ricky was slightly annoyed at the
interruption.
“How’d you know he was dead?”
“I … I don’t know, you can just
tell, you know. Ain’t you
ever seen dead people?”
“I have,” Jesse said.
“And he’s got this pink stain like blood on his front,” Rick
said. “So we run like hell for the church and tell the minister,
and he calls the cops, and you guys show up.”
“You see anything that might be a clue?”
Jesse
said.
“I told you all we seen,” Rick said.
“Aside from the cop cars,” Jesse said.
“There’s a maroon
Chevrolet Cavalier and a brown Toyota Camry in the parking lot now.
Did you see any other cars?”
“Just the Saab,” Rick said.
“Tell me about the Saab.”
“It was a Saab ninety-five sedan, red, with the custom wheel
covers.”
“Where was it?”
“Parked by the driveway over there, when we come by with our
boards.”
“Anyone in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you noticed the car and model and wheels,” Jesse
said.
“Sure, I like cars.”
Jesse smiled. “When did it leave?”
“I don’t know. After we seen the dead guy and run in the church
and told the minister, when we come out again it was gone.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Thanks for
your help. If you want to wait
around while I talk with Sid you can sit in my car with Officer Cox.”
“Okay.”
Sid came over and told Jesse essentially the same story. He pumped up his part in it a little, telling Jesse that “we found the
dead guy” but most witnesses aggrandize a little, Jesse knew.
When the boys were gone, Jesse stood in the rain with Peter Perkins while the EMTs bundled the body into the back of the ambulance.
“No flashers,” Jesse said to the EMTs.
“No sirens. There’s no
hurry.”
“You going to talk with his wife?” Perkins said.
“Soon,” Jesse said. “Give her a
little time.”
“Kids tell you anything?”
“There was a red Saab sedan, a ninety-five the kid told me, with
custom wheels, that was parked by the driveway and left after the kids discovered the body.”
“They didn’t get any kind of license number?”
“No one ever gets a license number,” Jesse said.
“I know.”
“But here’s what we’re going to
do,” Jesse said. “You remember
that we got a list of all the license numbers of cars parked around the woman shot in the mall parking lot.”
“Yeah,” Perkins said.
“Sixty-seven cars.”
“We’re going to go through that list and see how many, if any,
were red Saab sedans.”
“Half the yuppies in Massachusetts drive red Saabs,” Perkins
said.
“So right away we cut the suspect list in half.”
“Kid didn’t see who was in the
car,” Perkins
said.
“No.”
“Staties come up with a list of twenty-two gun owners
yet?”
“Not yet,” Jesse said.
“When they do we could cross-reference that with the car
list.”
“We could,” Jesse said.
“I can get on it after I do my shift tomorrow.”
“You can get on it first thing,” Jesse said. “I’ll have somebody
else pull your shift.”
“That’s gonna really squeeze
us,” Perkins said. “Suit and Molly
are already off the roster.”
Jesse looked at Perkins silently for a moment, then he said,
“That would not be your worry.”
“No,” Perkins said. “No,
‘course not.”
22
“You think we cut it a little
close?” he
said.
“That’s what makes it work for
us,” she said. “I lose the
feeling if we don’t stay close to the edge.”
“I know,” he said.
They were silent for a moment, holding hands, on the couch, with
a pitcher of martinis.
“As long as we keep control,” he said.
“It was difficult to stop
touching when those kids showed up.”
“But we did it,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I thought about
killing them
too.”
She shook her head emphatically.
“No,” she said. “We’re
not doing random slaughter. That would be like a gang bang, you know? Where’s the love in a gang bang.”
“I know,” he said.
“I’m just telling you how I nearly lost control.”
“Of course, I always nearly lose control. But that’s part of it,
to give ourselves to it, to let it possess us entirely, and then, at the very verge of the abyss, assert our will.”
He sipped his martini.
“It’s sort of like this,” he
said. “Martinis. You like them so
much you want to drink a dozen, but if you do
…”
“The precise joy of a perfect martini is gone. You might as well
slug gin from the bottle,” she said.
“So we shouldn’t hurry,” he said.
“No, but we can start focusing in on the next one.”
He leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth.
“Let’s go to the videotape,” he
said.
23
The three killings in an affluent suburban town led the local newscasts. The Boston papers gave it front-page coverage. Reporters and camera people hung around outside the police station. Jesse was interviewed twice, to little avail. And his picture was on the front page of the Globe one morning. When he came into the
station on a bright Tuesday morning, Arthur Angstrom was at the desk.
“Manny, Moe, and Larry are waiting for you,” Arthur said. “In
the conference room.”
“Perfect,” Jesse said.
When Jesse went into the conference room the three town selectmen were sitting at one end of the small conference table.
Jesse pushed a pizza box aside and sat in the fourth chair and waited.
Morris Comden cleared his throat. He was the chief selectman.
“Good morning, Jesse.”
“Morris.”
“You’ve been busy,” Comden said.
Jesse nodded. The other selectmen were new to the office.
Jesse
knew that Comden spoke for them.
“We just thought, Jim and Carter and I, that we probably ought
to get up to speed on things.”
Comden had a sharp face and wore bow ties.
Jesse nodded again. Comden smiled and glanced at the other two selectmen.
“I told you he wasn’t a talker,”
Comden said to the other
selectmen.
Carter Hanson had a dark tan, and silver hair combed straight back and carefully gelled in place. He was the CEO of a software company out on Route 128. He decided to take charge.
He looked straight at Jesse and said, “So what’s going
on?”
“Three people have been killed by the same weapons,” Jesse said.
“We can find no connection among them and we don’t have any idea
who did it.”
“We need more than that,” Hanson said.
“We do,” Jesse said.
“Well, let’s hear it,” Hanson
said.
Comden shook his head slightly and Jim Burns, the third selectman, looked uncomfortable. Jesse looked without expression at Hanson for a long moment.
“There’s nothing to hear,” he
said.
“That’s all you know?” Hanson
said.
“Correct.”
“You don’t have any clues?
Nothing?”
“Correct.”
“Well, Jesus Christ,” Hanson said.
Jesse nodded.
“Well,” Hanson said. “What do we
tell the press.”
“I like no comment,”
Jesse said.
Morris Comden had a yellow legal pad in front of him. He looked
down at it.
“Your department is costing a lot of overtime,” he
said.
Jesse nodded.
“Perhaps you could allocate your personnel a little better,”
Comden said.
He spoke more carefully than Hanson.
Jesse didn’t say anything. Burns spoke for the first time.
“Jesus, don’t you talk?” he said.
“Only when I have something to say.”
“Well, maybe you could stop this undercover drug thing you’ve
got going at the high school. We got a damn killer on the loose.”
“Nope.”
“For crissake, who cares if there’s a couple kids smoking dope
in the boys’ room,” Hanson said. “Where are your
priorities.”
“I’m a cop,” Jesse said.
“I been a cop for fifteen, sixteen
years now. I’m good at it. I know how to do it. You don’t.”
“So we just stand aside and let you do what you want?”
“Exactly,” Jesse said.
“Jesse,” Morris Comden said. “I
know how you don’t like being
pushed. But, for God’s sake, you work for us. We have to justify
your budget every year at town meeting. We have the right to know what’s going on.”
“I’ve told you what I know about the killings,” Jesse said. “The
undercover thing at the high school is just that, undercover.”
“You won’t even tell us?”
“No.”
“And you won’t put the personnel working the high school on the
killings.”
“No.”
“Goddamnit,” Hanson said. “We
can fire you.”
“You can,” Jesse said. “But you
can’t tell me what to
do.”
No one said anything for a time. Comden looked down at his yellow pad and drummed the eraser end of a pencil softly on the tabletop.
Finally Comden said, “Well, I think Jim and Carter and I need to
discuss this among ourselves. We’ll let things ride as they are
while we do.”
Jesse nodded and stood up.
“Have a nice day,” he said and left the room.
24
Jesse walked around his apartment. Living room, dining area, bedroom, kitchen, and bath. Through the sliding doors to his balcony he could see the harbor. Over the bar, in the corner of his living room, he could look at his picture of Ozzie Smith. On his bedside table, he could look at his picture of Jenn, in a big hat, holding a glass of wine. He walked around the apartment again.
There wasn’t anything else to look at. He sat on the edge of his
bed for a time looking at Jenn. Then he got up and walked into the living room and stood and looked at the harbor. The apartment was so still he could hear himself breathing. He turned and went to the kitchen and got some ice and soda. He took it to the bar and made himself a tall scotch and soda with a lot of ice and sat at the bar and sipped it. There was nothing like the first one. The feeling of the first one, Jesse sometimes thought, was worth the trouble that ensued. He let the feel of the drink ease through him.
Better.
He wasn’t as alone as he felt, Jesse knew: Marcy, the other
cops, Jenn, sort of. But that was just reasonable. In the center of himself he felt alone. No one knew him. Even Jenn, though Jenn came close. His cops were good small-town cops. But a serial killer? No one else but him was going to catch the serial killer. No one else was going to protect Candace Pennington. No one else was going to fix it with Jenn. What if he couldn’t? His glass was empty.
He
filled it with ice and made another drink. What if the serial killer just kept killing people? He looked at the lucent gold color of his drink, the small bubbles rising through it. It looked like that odd golden ginger ale that his father had liked and no one else could stand. He could feel the pleasure of the scotch easing along the nerve paths. He felt its settled comfort in his stomach.
Maybe he should walk away from it. Maybe I should just say fuck
it and be a drunk, Jesse thought. God knows I’m good at
it. It would certainly resolve things with Jenn.
He made a third drink.
If the killings weren’t random, they were certainly connected in
a way only the killer or killers understood. Which from Jesse’s
point of view was the same as random. He swallowed some scotch.
I feel sorry for people, he thought, who have never
had this feeling. So far they seemed to have killed only in Paradise. And the killings weren’t random in the sense that the
victims were merely those available at the moment. The woman in the mall parking lot could have been merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the murder at night on the beach, and the one down the dark tracks at the edge of the not yet lighted church parking lot were unlikely to be of the moment. Those victims probably had been preselected. Or the site had been. It was unlikely that the killer/killers were merely hanging around there. Say the killers had preselected the site. How did they know someone would come along for them to shoot? And how did they know that if they hung around in such unlikely places for long, someone might not get suspicious and a cop might not sooner or later show up and say whaddya doing. No, the least unlikely hypothesis was that he/they had preselected the victim and followed the victim to the site.
Elementary, my dear Ozzie. Now that he knew that, what did
he know?
Nothing.
He held the glass up and looked at the light shining through it.
He wondered if Ozzie Smith had been a drinker. Probably not. Hard to do what Ozzie had done with a hangover.
The bastards weren’t going to ruin that girl’s life, though. If
he did no other thing he was going to save Candace Pennington. He wasn’t clear yet how he was going to do that, but as the alcohol
worked its happy way, he knew that he could, and that he would, no matter what else.
Be good to save something.
25
At 8:10 in the morning, Bo Marino sat alone in the back of the school bus with his feet up on the seat next to him, smoking a joint. The smell of weed slowly filled the bus and several kids turned to look and a couple of them giggled. Bo took a deep drag and let it out slowly toward the front of the bus. The driver was a woman. Bo wondered if she even knew what pot was when she smelled it. Bo looked older than he was. He was already shaving regularly.
He had been lifting weights since junior high, and it showed. His neck was short and thick, and his upper body was muscular. He was the tailback in the USC-style offense that Coach Zambello used.
Several small colleges had recruited him, and he was very pleased with himself.
In the rearview mirror, Molly could see Bo smoking. She smelled
the marijuana. Well, well, she thought, Bo Marino
appears to be breaking the law. She called Jesse on her cell phone and spoke softly.
“One of the three young men we’re
interested in is inhaling a
controlled substance in the back of the bus,” Molly said.
Jesse was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “When you get to school, arrest him.
I’ll have
Suit meet the bus.”
“Okeydokey,” Molly said.
“Aren’t you supposed to say something like
‘roger that,’” Jesse
said.
“I like okeydokey,” Molly said, and smiled and shut off the
phone.
The bus pulled into the circular driveway in front of the high school and the kids got off. Bo stayed until last, smoking his joint, and pinched it out when there was no one else on the bus. He dropped the roach in his shirt pocket, swung his feet contemptuously off the seat, and stood.
As he got off the bus, the lady bus driver said,
“Hold it there
for a minute, Bo.”
He stared at her.
“Hold what?” he said.
The lady bus driver took a badge out of her purse and showed it
to him.
“I observed you using a controlled
substance,” Molly said. “We’d
like you to come down to the station.”
Bo stared at her. Peripherally he saw the janitor that everybody
knew was a cop walking toward the bus.
“A what?”
“A controlled substance. You were observed smoking a joint on
the bus. The snipe is still in your shirt pocket.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Bo said.
“We can go in my car,” Molly said.
“It’s parked over
here.”
“Fuck you, lady,” Bo said.
He started to walk past her. Molly stepped in his way.
“Don’t make me arrest you,”
Molly said.
“You?” Bo said. “Get out of my
way or I’ll fuck
you.”
He tried to move past her again, and again Molly blocked him.
Bo
covered her left breast with his right hand and shoved her out of the way. Molly took a canister from her purse and sprayed him in the face. Bo made a sound that might have been a scream and clasped his hands to his face.
“Ow,” he said. “Jesus Christ,
ow, ow! You fucking blinded
me.”
Molly put the Mace away, took her handcuffs and snapped a cuff on Bo’s left wrist. Suit came around the front of the bus in his
janitor’s outfit and pulled Bo’s right hand down, and together they
cuffed him.
Red-eyed, coughing, and head down, Bo was dragged into Jesse’s
office and put in a chair.
“My eyes are killing me,” he said.
“I need something for my
eyes. The bitch sprayed me for no reason. Gimme something for my eyes. My father’s gonna sue your ass.”
“Uncuff him,” Jesse said. “And
leave him with
me.”
Molly took the cuffs off and put them in her purse. Bo immediately began to rub his eyes.
“It’ll stop in a while,” Jesse
said. “Rubbing them won’t help.
We’ll go down and wash them.”
Molly put a bag on Jesse’s desk.
“When we arrested him,” Simpson said,
“naturally, we patted him
down for concealed weapons. Found this in his backpack.”
Bo stopped coughing just long enough to say,
“That’s not mine,
the bastards planted that.”
“Be my guess that there’s enough
here,” Molly said, “to support
possession with intent.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Jesse
said. “Anything
else?”
“No weapon,” Simpson said. “But
we didn’t look at
everything.”
Simpson put Bo’s backpack on top of the file cabinet next to the
window behind Jesse’s desk.
“You guys may as well go back to what you were doing,” Jesse
said.
“Cover’s pretty well blown,”
Molly said.
“Stay on it anyway,” Jesse said.
“I never had any cover to start with,”
Simpson
said.
Molly and Simpson went out. Jesse sat quietly looking at Bo.
“I need something for my eyes,” Bo said between coughs. “I need
a doctor.”
Jesse didn’t say anything for a while. Then he stood.
“Okay, let’s go wash you off,”
he said.
Rinsed and dried, Bo was still red-eyed and puffy-looking, and he still coughed sporadically.
“You call my father?” Bo said.
“We’re working on it,” Jesse
said. “Right now we got you on
possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, failure to obey a lawful command, threatening a police officer, assaulting a police officer, and being a general major-league fucking jerk.”
“That bitch can’t get away with spraying me like that,” Bo
said.
Jesse smiled. He didn’t say anything. Bo sat in the chair across
the desk staring hard at Jesse.
“So you gonna arrest me?” he said.
“Or what?”
Jesse didn’t answer him. Bo stood up.
“Fuck this,” he said.
“I’m walking out of here.”
“Nope,” Jesse said.
“You think you can stop me?” Bo said.
Jesse laughed. “Of course I can stop you,”
he said. “For
crissake a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman hauled you in here in handcuffs.”
“If you weren’t a cop
…”
“But I am a cop,” Jesse said.
“Sit down.”
Jesse’s voice was still pleasant, but there was a sudden
undertone in it that made Bo uncomfortable. He didn’t want to sit
down. He tried looking hard at Jesse. If Jesse noticed, it didn’t
show. Bo sat down. Jesse picked up the backpack and put it on the desk in front of him and dumped it out. He looked at what he had. A notebook, three ballpoint pens, some Kleenex, a packet of condoms, a ruler, a protractor, two packs of spearmint gum, and a white envelope. He opened the envelope and found four prints of Candace Pennington, lying naked on the ground. Bingo! Her face was
distorted by crying, someone out of the picture was holding her ankles, and Kevin Feeney was holding her wrists. Feeney was smiling. Jesse looked carefully at each print, then he put them faceup on his desk, facing toward Bo, and smiled at him and waited.
Bo didn’t look at the pictures. Jesse let the silence thicken.
Then he said, “Who’s the young
lady?”
“I don’t know,” Bo said.
“I found them pictures.”
“And the young gentleman?”
“I told you, I dunno. I found them.”
“Where?”
“In the school library, somebody musta dropped them.”
“The young lady looks like she’s
crying,” Jesse
said.
“You know how broads are, sometimes they cry after you fuck
them.”
“Really? And it seems that the young gentleman is restraining
her.”
“I don’t know,” Bo said.
“You don’t know what?”
“I don’t know nothing about that
picture.”
Arthur Angstrom opened Jesse’s door.
“Kid’s father is here,” he said.
Jesse nodded.
“He’s got Abby Taylor with him,”
Arthur said.
“Lawyer to the rescue,” Jesse said.
“Send them
in.”
26
Joe Marino was a large self-made man in an expensive suit that was a little tight for him.
“What the hell is going on here,” he said when he came into the
office.
“I didn’t do nothing, Dad,” Bo
Marino said.
“Shut up,” his father said.
“I’ll take care of
this.”
Jesse smiled at Abby Taylor, who had come in with Marino. She was dark-haired and good-looking, wearing a well-fitted suit with a short skirt.
“Hello, Abby,” Jesse said. “How
are you.”
Abby Taylor said, “I’m fine.”
“Hey,” Marino said.
“I’m talking to you.”
Jesse said, “You are.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“This your son?” Jesse said.
“Yes. What do you think I’m doing
here?”
“We’ve arrested him for possession of a controlled substance
with intent to sell, with resisting a lawful order, assault on a police officer, and maybe possession of obscene photographs.”
“Photographs?”
“That’s just a maybe,” Jesse
said.
“Lemme see the photographs,” Marino said.
“Nope,” Jesse said.
“I got a right to confront my accuser,”
Marino
said.
Jesse took in some air and let it out.
“Explain it to him, Abby.”
“Let me see if I can help with this, Mr.
Marino.”
“The bitch sprayed me with Mace,” Bo said.
“Shut up,” Marino said.
Jesse smiled at Abby and didn’t say anything.
“You can release Bo to his father,” Abby said.
Jesse shook his head. “We’ll hold him overnight and take him
over to district court in the morning.”
“Jesse,” Abby said.
“He’s seventeen. He has no previous record.
At most, in this instance, he’s guilty of a few minor lapses in
decorum.”
“He’s a tough kid,” Marino said.
“He stood up for himself like I
always taught him. Nobody pushes me around, I told him. Don’t let
nobody push you around, I told him, don’t take crap from nobody.”
Jesse nodded pleasantly. He was leaning back in his swivel chair, one foot up on the open bottom drawer of his desk, his hands resting motionless on the desktop.
“You’re looking at a fucking police
brutality suit, I’m telling
you that right now.”
Jesse picked up the phone and spoke to Arthur at the front desk.
“Molly still here? Good. Send her in.”
In a moment Molly opened the door and came in.
“This is the cop that roughed up your little boy, Mr.
Marino.”
Marino looked at his son and shook his head disgustedly.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Mr. Marino,” Abby Taylor said.
“It might go better if you let
me talk.”
“Broads,” Marino said and shook his head again.
“Thank you, Officer Crane,” Jesse said.
“You’re welcome, Chief Stone,”
Molly said and turned and left
the room.
“Jesse,” Abby said, “are you
really going to keep this boy
overnight?”
“I am,” Jesse said.
He turned his chair a little and looked at Bo.
“I want you to understand something,”
Jesse said. “You deny
knowing any of the people in those pictures. We will track them down and find out if that is true. If you are lying to us, you’d be
wise to say so now, with your attorney present.”
“I don’t know them,” Bo said.
“Okay, we’ll bring him over to district court first thing,”
Jesse said, “in case you want to be there.”
“Can’t you do something about
this?” Marino said to
Abby.
“Probably not,” Abby said, looking at her watch. “Especially
this late.”
“This is bullshit,” Marino said.
“I’m telling you, make it
happen.”
“Theoretically that’s possible,”
Abby said. “But in fact, at
this hour, I’m not going to find a judge and argue my case and have
him issue a writ, so, I’m sorry, but Bo will have to spend the
night.”
“Dad?”
“You little shit,” Marino said to Jesse.
“I’m not little,” Jesse said.
“I’m just not as fat as
you.”
Marino gave him a long stare.
“You didn’t have that badge,”
Marino said.
“Your kid said the same thing,” Jesse said. “Now unless you want
to spend the night here too, why don’t you and your attorney go
someplace and plan your brutality case.”
“She won’t be my attorney long,”
Marino said. “I’m going to find
somebody with a pair of balls.”
“By which you mean a man,” Abby said.
“Okay, since you asked, yeah. A man. I never seen a broad you
could count on when it was on the line.”
Jesse smiled.
“You’re right,” he said to
Marino, “she won’t be your attorney
long.”
27
Marino had left with Abby, and Bo was in the four-cell lockup in
the back of the station. It was after six and getting dark when Molly came into Jesse’s office with a pizza and a six-pack of Coors. She put the pizza on the desk. She separated out two cans of beer, set them on the desk next to the pizza, and put the rest in the little refrigerator where Jesse kept spring water.
“I know you’re married,” Jesse
said. “But maybe we could have an
affair.”
“I’ll put you on the list,”
Molly said. “You think we’ve got the little prick?”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
He picked up a slice and took a bite.
When he had swallowed, he said, “There’s no real grounds for an
obscenity charge. I don’t think the possession with intent will
stand up, but we should be able to make the case for assaulting a cop. We know he’s lying about the pictures. And now, we can investigate the rape without anyone thinking that Candace squealed on them.”
“Won’t that require Candace to
testify?”
“I don’t know. If we flip one of the other kids, there might be
a plea bargain and she’d never have to appear.”
“Why’d you keep the kid
overnight?” Molly said.
Jesse ate a bite of pizza and drank some beer.
“Because I don’t like him,”
Jesse said.
“How was the father?”
“The tree doesn’t grow too far from the apple,” Jesse
said.
The pizza was made with green peppers and mushrooms.
Jesse’s
favorite. He wondered if it was a coincidence, or if Molly knew. He decided that Molly knew. Molly knew a lot.
“You want me to go get Kevin Feeney?”
Molly said.
Jesse sipped some beer.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. We need
to make it look like we didn’t
know who he was and it took us a couple days to find out.”
“I can’t show those pictures
around,” Molly said.
“Get the Feeney part blown up,” Jesse said. “Eliminate
Candace.”
“Okay.”
“Show them around for a couple days, principal, guidance, a few
teachers and students. When we’re sure the whole school knows we’re
looking for Feeney because we found the pictures, then we’ll pick
him up. Get Suit to help you. Tell him, now that he’s got a legitimate reason to be there, that he can,” Jesse smiled,
“abandon
his disguise.”
“And we don’t mention Candace,”
Molly said.
“No.”
“Ever?”
“I told her I’d keep her out of
it,” Jesse said.
“And you keep your word,” Molly said.
“When I can,” Jesse said.
“When Bo gets out,” Molly said,
“won’t he go right to his
buddies and warn them?”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “But
they’re high school kids living at
home. What are they going to do? Flee the jurisdiction?”
Molly nodded.
“Might even work for us,” Molly said.
“The other two creeps know
we’re after them, it’ll make them jumpy.”
“The jumpier they get,” Jesse said,
“the easier to
flip.”
“And you think you can flip them?”
“My guess?” Jesse said. “All
three.”
28
In a spitting snow, Jesse sat in his car with the motor running
and the heater on, in the parking lot outside Channel 3. He looked at the digital clock on his dashboard. Jenn would have finished her six o’clock weather. He had the wipers on low interval and between
swipes the sporadic snow collected thinly on his windshield. At 6:40 Jenn came out wearing a fake fur jacket and a cowboy hat. She was with a man Jesse didn’t recognize. Jesse sat for a moment listening to his own breathing, feeling his interior self dwindle and intensify. Jenn looked up at the man and laughed and bumped her head against his shoulder. Jesse turned off the motor and got out of the car. He was aware of the gun on his hip, under his jacket.
Jenn saw him.
“Jesse?” she said.
“You didn’t return my calls,”
Jesse said. “I thought I’d catch
you here.”
Jenn looked at him silently for what seemed to Jesse a long time, then she said, “Jesse, this is Bob Mikkleson, our station
manager.”
Bob was tall and healthy-looking, with silver hair combed back carefully, and lovingly sprayed. He started to put his hand out, realized Jesse wasn’t going to shake hands, and put his hand back
at his side.
“I’m sorry,” Jenn said,
“but I’m up to here. You’re on the list, I would have called you tomorrow.”
Jesse nodded and moved slightly closer to Bob. He didn’t know
why, and he hadn’t planned to. There seemed to be a force outside
himself. Jenn was single; she had every right to be with Bob. Bob wasn’t doing anything wrong. Jesse moved a little more toward him,
as if compelled by gravity. Bob was frowning.
“What was it you called about, Jesse?”
Jenn said.
“Just to talk,” Jesse said.
“Well,” Jenn said. “Let me call
you tomorrow. Bob and I have a
dinner reservation.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
He was next to Bob now. What if I shot him?
The
possibility made his spirit expand. But, it would mean the end of whatever was left of Jesse and Jenn. Even if he got away with it, she could never get past it. He could feel himself contract again.
The muscles in his neck and shoulders bunched. He closed his eyes for a moment and took in a long drag of winter air.
Bob said, “You’re the
ex-husband.”
Jesse nodded.
“Are you all right?” Jenn said to him.
Jesse nodded again.
“You’re some sort of police
chief,” Bob said. “Somewhere on the
North Shore.”
Jesse realized that he was so close to Bob now that their sleeves touched. He nodded.
“Well,” Bob said.
“It’s been good talking to you, but we’re already late for our reservation at 9 Park, and you know how hard they are to get.”
Jesse neither moved nor spoke. He could feel Jenn watching him.
“Jesse,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“Jesse,” Jenn said again.
“We’ve done a lot of work since I came here from Los Angeles.”
Jesse’s shoulders moved, as if he were trying to loosen
them.
“Don’t ruin it,” Jenn said.
Bob was two or three inches taller than Jesse. His skin had the
smooth blue tone of a man who shaved twice a day. As close as he was, Jesse could break Bob’s nose with the first punch.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Jenn
said.
Bob nodded at Jesse, and the two of them walked toward Bob’s
car. Jesse watched them until they drove away. Then he walked slowly to his own car and opened the door and got in. He sat in his car with the door open and one foot still outside, and put his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing.
29
She was driving the Saab through the narrow downtown of Paradise. He sat beside her in the front seat with a Canon digital camera, which was small enough to sit comfortably in the palm of his hand.
“Her,” she said.
He photographed a copper-haired woman pushing a stroller.
“We doing a woman next?” he said.
“Even it up,” she said.
“We’ve two men and a
woman.”
He sang, “A boy for you and a girl for me.”
She joined him.
“Can’t you see how happy we will
be.”
They both laughed.
“How about that good-looking black woman?”
he
said.
“Certainly,” she said.
“We’re not racists.”
Again they laughed together. He snapped a picture of the black woman.
“Don’t see many black people in
Paradise,” he
said.
She giggled.
“If we decide on her, you’ll see one less,” she
said.
He nodded, his eyes scanning the sidewalks.
“I want this one to be a knockout,” he said.
“Your choice,” she said.
He photographed a tall woman in a lavender warm-up suit.
“This is fun,” he said.
She turned the car right onto a street leading to the waterfront.
“I suppose it shouldn’t be fun,”
she said.
“You mean other people would think it was awful?”
“Yes.”
He put the camera on his lap and leaned back against the seat.
“When I was in college,” he said,
“we had to read something in
English class by some old-time guy called the Venerable Bede. I don’t remember it much, but I always remember one scene.
There’s
this big banquet hall and it’s brightly lit and there’s a big warm
fire. Outside it’s cold and dark. But inside everybody’s eating and
drinking and having a hell of a time. A sparrow flies into one end of the hall, out of the cold darkness, and flies through the bright warm hall and out the other end into the cold darkness again.”
She glanced at him as she drove. He loved to pontificate.
“So?” she said.
“So human life is like the flight of the sparrow. Or maybe it
was a swallow. I can’t remember, but the point’s the
same.”
She pulled into the little parking lot by the town landing and parked in front of the restaurant.
“We’re only here for a little
while,” she said, “and we have the
right to make the most of it.”
“Some people collect postage stamps,” he said. “We like to kill
people.”
“Is it really the same?” she said.
“After we’ve done it, and we’re
making love, and the sex is like
nothing else either one of us has ever known … the feeling
… wouldn’t you kill for that?”
She breathed in deeply for a moment and reached over and put her
hand on the inside of his thigh.
“Yes,” she said.
“Me too,” he said.
They sat silently for a while watching the people. A dark-haired
woman in a tailored suit came out of the Gray Gull. She was carrying a briefcase and talking on a cell phone. He raised his camera and aimed.
“Her,” he said.
30
“I don’t know why I
went there,” Jesse
said.
“Why did you think you were going?” Dix said.
“She wasn’t returning my calls. I thought maybe I could catch
her coming out and we could have a drink or something.”
“Catch her,” Dix said.
“You think I was trying to catch her with a guy?”
“Do you?”
Dix was wearing a black turtleneck sweater today. And gray slacks. His bald head and clean-shaven face were shiny clean. His thick hands were motionless on the arms of his swivel chair, which he had tipped back while he listened to Jesse. His fingernails looked manicured.
“I want to kill anyone she’s
with,” Jesse said. “I feel like
I’ll explode if I don’t.”
“Because …?” Dix said.
“Because I love her.”
“But,” Dix said, “you
don’t kill anyone.”
Jess shrugged and smiled a little.
“Because I love her,” Jesse said.
“You win, you lose,” Dix said.
“You lose, you
lose.”
“Exactly. Ain’t love grand.”
“It might not be love,” Dix said.
Jesse straightened a little in his chair.
“Do shrinks believe in love?” Jesse said.
“I do,” Dix said, “loosely
speaking.”
“I love her,” he said. “If I
know nothing else, I know
that.”
Dix nodded.
“You accept that?” Jesse said.
“Sure,” Dix said. “But almost
everything human operates at more
than one level.”
“You think there’s something else at work?”
“Don’t you?”
Jesse sat for a moment, looking at the palm of his right hand, flexing the fingers.
“I imagine her with them,” Jesse said.
“Having
sex.”
“She ever tell you about it?” Dix said.
“God no,” Jesse said.
“So you don’t know what she’s
doing in fact.”
“I can imagine,” Jesse said.
His voice was hoarse. He cleared it. Dix was entirely still in his chair. Jesse saw that he was wearing black loafers with tassels, and no socks.
“Knowledge is power,” Dix said.
Jesse stared at him. Dix’s face never showed anything. Jesse
folded his hands and sat back in his chair with his elbows resting on the chair arms. The room was quiet. He heard his chair squeak as he shifted in it.
“But I don’t know what she’s
doing,” Jesse said.
“So you invent it,” Dix said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I guess I
do.”
“How long have you been inventing her life?” Dix
said.
“Always,” Jesse said.
31
Suitcase Simpson sat very straight in the chair across from Jesse’s desk. He was always serious when he reported. Like a kid,
Jesse thought, giving a school report on Denmark.
“Bo Marino,” he said, “is around
school bragging about how he
spent a night in jail. Troy Drake is staying clear of Bo, and Kevin Feeney hasn’t been in school for the past three days.”
“You try his house?” Jesse said.
“Not yet, I wanted to check with you first.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Go get
him.”
“What about Drake?”
“We don’t know that Drake was
involved,” Jesse
said.
“Candy said …”
“Candace,” Jesse said. “And we
didn’t get any of this from her,
remember?”
Simpson nodded.
“And take Molly with you,” Jesse said.
“You think I can’t handle this
alone?”
“I’ve seen you handle worse than this alone, Suit. Molly has a
calming effect on parents.”
Simpson looked pleased for a moment, and left. Jesse picked up the phone and called Abby Taylor.
“You still representing Bo Marino?” he said when she
answered.
“No.”
“Old man fire you?”
“He didn’t get the chance,” Abby
said.
“Good for you.”
“File him under life’s too
short,” Abby said. “Are you going to pursue this?”
“I am.”
“I wish you well.”
“You know who your replacement is?”
“No, but I’ll bet he’s a
loudmouth,” Abby said.
“No bet,” Jesse said. “Want to
have dinner some
night?”
There was a pause. Jesse waited.
Then Abby said, “Of course I would. I have always felt bad about
the way we, ah, ended.”
“Gray Gull?” Jesse said.
“Tonight?”
Again the pause. Again Jesse waited.
“Absolutely,” Abby said.
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Good,” Jesse
said and hung up.
He leaned back against his chair and looked up at the ceiling for a time. See if I can stay sober.
32
Simpson brought Kevin Feeney in with his mother and father.
When
they were seated in Jesse’s office, Simpson left and closed the
door behind him. Kevin’s face was pale and he swallowed often. His
freckles stood out starkly.
“Kevin says he doesn’t know why you
arrested him,” Kevin’s
father said.
He was a smallish man with thinning red hair and a somewhat unsuccessful mustache. Mrs. Feeney had long gray hair. Her flowered dress was large and shapeless.
“Actually,” Jesse said, “we
haven’t arrested him. We have asked
him to come in and answer some questions.”
“About what,” Mr. Feeney said.
His voice cracked a little. Jesse took a copy of one of the photographs from a folder and slid it across the desk.
Candace’s
face had been blacked out.
Mr. and Mrs. Feeney looked at the picture. Kevin did not.
Mrs. Feeney said, “Oh my God, Kevin, is that you?”
Mr. Feeney continued to stare at the picture. Jesse waited quietly.
After a time Mr. Feeney said, “Who’s the girl?”
Jesse didn’t say anything.
Mrs. Feeney said, “Kevin?”
Kevin looked at the floor.
“Kevin,” Mrs. Feeney said. “Who
is that girl?”
Kevin kept looking at the floor. He shook his head.
Mrs. Feeney looked at Jesse. “Who is she? Why is her face
blacked out?”
“No reason to humiliate her more than necessary,” Jesse
said.
“But how can we help if we don’t know who she
is?”
“Kevin probably knows,” Jesse said.
“Goddamnit, Kevin,” Mr. Feeney said.
“Who is she? What’s going
on?”
Kevin huddled up tighter into himself and stared harder at the floor. Both parents looked at Jesse.
“What’s going to happen?” Mrs.
Feeney said to Jesse. “He’s not a
criminal, you know.”
“We have a picture of him forcibly restraining a naked young
woman who is crying,” Jesse said.
“There’s probably a crime in
there someplace.”
“How can you tell she’s crying,”
Mrs. Feeney
said.
“I’ve seen the full picture,”
Jesse said. “Face and
all.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Mr.
Feeney said. “Should I get a
lawyer.”
“You won’t need one until we arrest
him,” Jesse
said.
“Arrest?” Mrs. Feeney said. “How
can you arrest him? He’s a
child, for God’s sake.”
Jesse got up and walked around his desk and sat on the corner of
it in front of Kevin.
“Who took the picture?” Jesse said.
Kevin stared at the floor.
“Did you rape this girl?” Jesse said.
Without raising his eyes, Kevin said, “I didn’t do
nothing.”
Jesse let out an audible breath.
“This isn’t skipping school, Kevin, or smoking a joint,” he
said. “This is jail time.”
“Oh my God,” Mrs. Feeney said.
“Oh my God.”
“I say there are three of you,” Jesse said. “You holding her
hands, somebody else taking the picture, and a third party, off camera, holding her feet.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Do you know Bo Marino?” Jesse said.
Kevin nodded. He looked as if he might collapse in his chair.
“Did he take these pictures?”
“I don’t know.”
“We found them in his possession.”
“I don’t know.”
“Was someone holding her feet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was holding her feet.”
Kevin began to cry.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Don’t yell at him,” Mrs. Feeney
said. “Leave him
alone.”
Jesse nodded slowly.
“Okay,” he said. “Kevin Feeney,
you are under arrest for sexual
assault.”
“No,” Mr. Feeney said.
“You have the right to remain silent,”
Jesse said. “Anything you
say can be used against you in a court of law.”
“Wait a minute,” Mr. Feeney said.
“Wait.”
“You have the right to an attorney to assist you prior to
questioning and to be with you during questioning if you so desire.”
“Don’t arrest him,” Mrs. Feeney
said.
“There must be something we can work out,”
Mr. Feeney
said.
“If you cannot afford an attorney you have the right to have one
appointed for you prior to questioning.”
“I don’t know a lawyer,” Mr.
Feeney said.
“One will be appointed,” Jesse said.
“Do you understand these
rights, Kevin?”
Kevin was crying noisily.
“Am I going to jail,” he said.
“At least until a judge sets bail,” Jesse said.
“Mom,” Kevin said.
“Oh God, Kevin,” she said.
“If he tells you?” Mr. Feeney said.
“I might not arrest him.”
“Tell him, Kevin.”
“I can’t rat out my friends.”
“Do you want to go to jail?” Mr. Feeney said. “Tell him, for
crissake.”
“They’ll be pissed at me,” Kevin
said.
He was able to speak briefly, between sobs. Jesse picked up the
phone.
“Molly, you or Suit come back here.”
Almost at once, Simpson opened the door.
“Take Kevin down to a cell and lock him up,” Jesse said. “Then
call the public defender’s office, tell him the kid needs a lawyer.”
Simpson put a hand under Kevin’s arm.
He said, “Come on, kid.”
Kevin was crying loudly. Mrs. Feeney was crying just as loudly.
Kevin’s father stood and leaned over his son.
“Was it Bo Marino?” he shouted at him.
“Yes,” Kevin said.
Simpson paused and looked at Jesse. Jesse made a wait-a-minute gesture.
“Who else,” his father shouted at him.
“Troy.”
“Troy Drake?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’ll sleep at home
tonight,” Jesse said.
33
Kevin had stopped crying. He was drinking a Coke.
Jesse said, “Who’s the girl,
Kevin?”
“Candy Pennington,” Kevin said.
“You’d have found out
anyway.”
“What happened?” Jesse said.
Kevin looked at his mother. No one said anything.
“It was Bo, really,” Kevin said.
“Me and Troy just went
along.”
Jesse nodded and waited. Kevin looked around. No one said anything.
“She was such a freakin‘
brownnose,” Kevin said.
“Kevin!” his mother said.
He didn’t look at her.
“Well, she was,” he said. “She
was always sucking up to the
teachers. Always acting like she was better than anyone else.”
Jesse waited. Kevin drank his Coke and didn’t say anything more.
The room was still.
“So you thought you’d take her down a peg,” Jesse
said.
“Yeah. Exactly. Bo said we should take her out in the woods and
pull her pants down.”
“Oh, Kevin,” his mother said.
“Embarrass her, you know. Maybe take a picture of her.”
Mr. Feeney had his head tilted back against his chair. His eyes
were closed.
“My God, Kevin,” Mrs. Feeney said.
“You’re not helping, Mrs.
Feeney,” Jesse said. “Let him tell his story.”
Mrs. Feeney clenched her hands together and pressed them against
her mouth. Kevin wouldn’t look at her.
“Bo told her a bunch of us were hanging out there, partying, you
know. So she goes out there with us and we, you know, did it.”
“What was ‘it’?” Jesse
said.
Mrs. Feeney made a little moaning sound into her clenched hands.
“You know, had sex. I mean we wasn’t going to, we was going to
just, like, look at her. But then Bo said we’d gone this far and
what the hell. And then he got on top of her.”
“And had sex with her?”
“Yeah.”
“And you?”
“Yeah, I went second.”
Mrs. Feeney moaned again. She was rocking slowly in her chair.
Mr. Feeney neither moved nor opened his eyes.
“And Troy Drake?” Jesse said.
“He went after me.”
“He had sex with her?” Yes.
“And how did she feel about this?” Jesse said.
Kevin shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How did she act,” Jesse said.
“She was crying,” Kevin said.
“When Bo did it she tried to push
him off, but she couldn’t.”
“Did she say no?”
“I guess so, she was yelling help and stuff.”
“And with you?” Jesse said.
“She just laid there,” Kevin said.
“Was she still crying?”
“Yes, but that’s all. It was like she decided to go along with
it.”
“She have any other options?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know.”
“So then what happened?”
“Troy did her. Then we held her down while Bo took her picture.
Bo told her if she said anything we’d show everybody in school the
pictures.”
Mrs. Feeney continued to moan and rock. Mr. Feeney continued to
sit immobile with his head back and his eyes closed.
“I’m really sorry,” Kevin said.
“Mom, I am. I’m
sorry.”
“I tried,” Mrs. Feeney said into her clenched hands. “I tried
and tried to teach you to respect women. Didn’t I?
Didn’t I drum
that into you since you were little. To disrespect one woman is to disrespect us all. In shaming that poor girl, you shamed me.”
Mr. Feeney opened his eyes, and without lifting it, he turned his head toward his wife.
“You know, Mira,” he said. “This
really is much more about Kevin
and that poor girl than it is about you.”
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Feeney said and pressed her hands to her face
again and began to cry.
Jesse reached over and shut off the tape recorder.
“I’m going to have that
transcribed,” Jesse said. “Then I will ask you to sign it.”
“Okay.”
“Mr. Feeney, you’ll need to sign it too, I think, since Kevin is
not of age.”
Feeney nodded.
“If he testifies against the other boys,”
Mr. Feeney said, “can
he get a break?”
“When you have a lawyer,” Jesse said,
“your lawyer and the DA
can negotiate that.”
“Will you put in a word for him?”
“Yes.”
“He’s never been in trouble
before,” Mrs. Feeney
said.
“And now he is,” Jesse said.
“But he won’t have to go to
jail?”
“Mrs. Feeney,” Jesse said. “He
participated in the gang rape of
a sixteen-year-old girl. He’ll have to answer for that.”
“Oh, my God,” she said and cried harder.
34
Jesse’s condo was only a block away from the Gray Gull, and they
walked to it after dinner. There was a hard wind off the harbor and Abby put her arm through Jesse’s and pressed against him.
Inside
the condo Jesse poured them each a Poire Williams and they stood at the glass slider and looked out past his deck at the dark harbor.
There was a storm coming up from the southwest and the water was restless.
Abby turned so that she could look up into Jesse’s face. She had
drunk two Rob Roys before dinner, and they had shared a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
“You look tired, Jesse.”
“Busy time at the office,” Jesse said.
“I know,” Abby said. “How many
television interviews have you
done?”
“Many.”
“And you always say it’s an ongoing
investigation and you can’t
discuss it.”
“I know.”
“I suppose they have to keep asking.”
“It’s sort of news
manufacturing,” Jesse said. “They do a stand-up in front of the police station and interview me, and ask me things like, have you caught the killer. And I say no. And they say, this is Tony Baloney live in Paradise, now back to you, Harry.”
Abby smiled.
“It’s not quite that bad,” she
said.
“I suppose not,” Jesse said.
“Sometimes they just ask if there
are any developments.”
“Are there?”
“Sure. We know that there were two
twenty-two-caliber guns
involved.”
“Two?”
“Un-huh. And we think he, she, or they drives a Saab sedan. And
we speculate that he, she, or they lives in Paradise.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Any connection among the victims?”
“Not that we can find.”
“You think the killings are random?”
“Don’t know. For all we know, he, she, or they had a reason to
kill one of the victims, and killed the others just to make us think it was random.”
“If that were the case,” Abby said,
“maybe the killings have
stopped.”
Jesse shrugged.
“Do you have a guess?”
“I try not to,” Jesse said.
“Sure, but you’re not just a
cop,” Abby said. “You are, after
all, also a person.”
“I’m better at being a cop. And
it’s best if cops don’t
hope.”
Abby was quiet for a moment. There was a break in the cloud cover and the moonlight shone briefly on the harbor, where the whitecaps were breaking, and the boats tossed at mooring. She sipped a little of the pear brandy. It was so intense that it seemed to evaporate on her tongue.
“I’m not so sure,” Abby said
after a time, “that you’re a better
cop than a person.”
“Lousy cop too?” Jesse said.
“No. You know that’s not what I
meant.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “Thank
you.”
They looked quietly at the foreboding whitecaps.
“I don’t feel good about breaking up with you the way I did,”
Abby said.
“You needed to break up with me,” Jesse said. “I am not really
available to anyone until I resolve all this with Jenn.”
“I know, but my timing wasn’t good. You were in trouble and I
…” Abby made a fluttery motion with her hand.
“It’s okay, Abby.”
She turned toward him and put her face up.
“It wasn’t okay,” she said and
kissed him hard with her mouth
open.
From a great distance, his ironic nonparticipant self smiled and
thought whoops! He kissed her back.
In bed she was urgent, and when the urgency had passed for both
of them, they lay side by side on their backs.
“Now it’s okay,” Abby said
softly.
“A proper good-bye?” Jesse said.
“I suppose so.”
“You’re still living with that
guy?” Jesse said.
“Yes … he’s out of town
tonight. Chicago.”
“You thinking of marrying him?”
“Yes.”
“You love him?”
“Oh God, Jesse, you’re such a fucking romantic.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Jesse
said.
“He’s a nice guy.”
“You’re marrying him because
he’s a nice guy?”
“I’m marrying him because my clock is ticking fast, and he’s the
nicest guy I have found who wants to marry me.”
“You’re a practical person,”
Jesse said.
The overhead light was on in the bedroom, and as Jesse looked at
her naked body, he could see still a faint trace of sweat between her breasts.
“Most women are,” Abby said. “I
always get a laugh out of the
popular mythology about romantic women and practical men.”
Jesse nodded.
“It is sort of laughable,” he said.
“Would it bother him if he
knew?”
“Of course. But he’s no virgin and neither am I and we both know
it.”
“Do you feel like you’re cheating on him?”
“Yes, I guess so, a little.”
“But …”
“But you and I needed to be put to rest.”
“And this was it?”
Abby rolled onto her side and pressed her face against Jesse’s
chest.
“Yes,” she said. “This was
it.”
Jesse smiled and laughed softly.
“What?” Abby said.
“I’m the other guy,” Jesse said.
“The one I want to kill when
Jenn is with him.”
“Irony,” Abby said.
“You’ve always been a real bear for
irony.”
When she was dressed and her makeup was fixed and her hair was in order, Jesse offered to walk her to her car.
“I’m right in front of the Gray
Gull,” Abby said, “and besides,
it seems righter, somehow, if I kiss you good-bye here and go out the door.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
They kissed, and when they were through, Abby turned and went out the front door without a word.
There were only a few cars in the parking lot. Abby was grateful
to get into her car and out of the wind. She started the engine and put it in gear and drove out of the lot. A red Saab sedan pulled out of the lot behind her. Both cars turned down Front Street.
35
She had been shot twice in the chest, as she got out of her car,
in the driveway of her house on North Side Drive, her body turned toward the back of the car, as if she had turned to see what was behind her. Anthony deAngelo had found her on routine patrol. She had fallen with the car door open, and one foot still caught on the edge of the car. Anthony had seen the car with its interior lights on and stopped to take a look.
“It’s Abby Taylor,” deAngelo
said to Jesse when he
arrived.
Jesse nodded. Dead people don’t look much different at
first, he thought. Just like live people except that they
don’t move. He stared down at her face. No, he
thought, it’s more than that. You look at them, there’s
something missing. Her position would have embarrassed her.
He
reached down and moved her leg and smoothed her skirt down. She was still flexible. Peter Perkins arrived with his crime-scene kit.
Suitcase Simpson was setting up lights. The ambulance pulled in.
Anthony was stringing the crime-scene tape.
“She live alone?” Suitcase asked.
“She lived with a guy,” Jesse said.
He was still looking absently down at the body.
“Nobody answering the door,” Simpson said.
“Or the
phone.”
“He’s in Chicago,” Jesse said.
Simpson stared at Jesse and started to speak. Then he didn’t.
One of the techs from the ambulance came over and knelt down beside Abby. He took her pulse automatically, though he knew she was dead.
“Just like the other ones, Jesse,” the tech said. “Two in the
chest.”
“Her purse is still in the car,” Perkins said.
“Cold night,” the tech said.
“Make time of death a little
harder.”
“She died within the last hour,” Jesse said.
The tech looked up as if he were going to ask a question.
Suitcase Simpson put a hand on his shoulder. The tech glanced at him. Simpson shook his head. Perkins began to photograph the crime scene. A few neighbors had straggled out into the cold, coats on over sleep wear, hunched against the cold, staring aimlessly. Jesse was motionless, looking down at the body.
“You know where this guy might be in Chicago,” Simpson
asked.
Jesse shook his head.
“Anthony and I’ll ask a few
neighbors,” Simpson said. “Maybe
they’ll know. Or know where he works and the people at work will
know.”
Jesse nodded.
“Hate to just leave a note for him to call.”
“We won’t leave a note,” Jesse
said. “If you can’t reach him,
leave somebody here until you do.”
“What if it’s a couple days?”
Simpson said.
“Leave somebody here if you can’t reach him,” Jesse
said.
“Okay, Jesse.”
The other cops went about their crime-scene business very quietly. Like people in a sickroom. Jesse continued to look at Abby. After a while the EMTs loaded her onto a gurney and slid her into the back of the ambulance. Jesse watched them silently. The ambulance pulled away. Peter Perkins packed up his crime-scene gear and went to his car. Simpson and deAngelo finished talking to the neighbors.
“They told me he works at the GE in Lynn,”
Simpson said. “I’ll
call them in the morning. Anthony says he’ll stay here.
I’ll get
Eddie to come over in the morning and give him a break.”
“Do that,” Jesse said.
Perkins got into his truck and drove away. DeAngelo settled in behind the wheel in his cruiser in front of the house.
“I gotta get going, Jesse,” Simpson said.
Jesse nodded. Simpson shifted his weight a little.
“You, ah, gonna be all right?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Simpson said.
He walked back toward his cruiser. And stopped and turned back toward Jesse.
“I’m sorry about Abby,” he said.
“Thanks, Suit.”
Simpson got into his cruiser, started it, and drove down North Side Drive. In the rearview mirror he could see that Jesse was still standing where he’d left him.
36
The Paradise selectmen called a special town meeting, which authorized a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers. A telephone hot line was established and the number publicized statewide. The Paradise police were working twelve-hour shifts, and the hot line was manned in the town clerk’s
office by off-duty firemen. A meeting room in the Paradise Town Hall had been converted to a press headquarters. Vans from the Boston television stations were parked in the public works lot behind the town hall, and almost every day a television reporter was doing a live report standing in front of the Paradise Police Station.
Police in Paradise are pressing their search today for the
killer or killers in a series of seemingly random murders that have terrorized this affluent North Shore community. In a news conference earlier today, Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone said the full resources of his department, augmented by the Massachusetts State Police are being brought to bear on this investigation. But to this point the reign of terror continues.
Reporting live in Paradise, this is Katy Morton. Back to you, Larry.
That’s a tense situation up there, Katy.
Now to other news,
an heroic Siamese cat today …
Jesse shut off the television. With him in his office was a state police sergeant named Vargas.
“Jeez,” he said.
“Didn’t you want to know about that
cat?”
“I’ve got enough excitement in my
life,” Jesse said. “How many
people can you give me?”
“Captain says we’ll continue to help with the investigation, and
he wants to know what else you need. How many patrols you got out now?”
“Five cars, two shifts.”
“Ten people,” Vargas said. “How
many people you got on the
force?”
“Twelve,” Jesse said. “Including
me. Molly Crane covers the desk
days, and I stay here at night.”
“You’re swamped,” Vargas said.
“I’ll get some of our guys to
cover the night patrols. Captain says to tell you that we aren’t
taking this thing over. You’re still in charge of it.
I’m just
liaison.”
“You’ll need an office, and a
phone,” Jesse said. “You can set
up in the squad room.”
Molly came into the office without knocking. She was holding a business card. Her eyes looked heavy. She put the card on Jesse’s
desk.
“There’s a reporter from one of those national talk shows,”
Molly said. “Wants to interview you.”
“No,” Jesse said.
He didn’t look at the card. Molly smiled.
“He won’t like this,” Molly
said. “He’s kind of pleased that
he’s famous.”
“There’s a press briefing every
morning,” Jesse said. “Tell him
where and when.”
Molly nodded and went out.
“Press don’t like being
stonewalled,” Vargas
said.
“Who does.”
“They can say bad things about you,”
Vargas said.
“Who can’t,” Jesse said.
Vargas grinned.
“Don’t seem too media savvy,” he
said.
“My people are beginning to sag,” Jesse said. “How soon can we
get some patrol help?”
“Tonight,” Vargas said.
“Good,” Jesse said. “How close
is Healy to getting me a list of
people who’ve bought twenty-two firearms or ammo?”
“I’ll check,” Vargas said.
“Those records aren’t always
immaculate, and even if they were, people get guns from a lot of places.”
“I need whatever he’s got,”
Jesse said.
Molly stuck her head in the door again.
“Jenn,” she said, “on line one.
You want to take
it?”
Jesse nodded.
“Sit tight,” he said to Vargas.
“I’ll only be a
minute.”
He picked up the phone and punched line one and said,
“Hi.”
“Was that woman that got killed the one you used to date?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Jesse, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Jesse said.
“What’s up?”
“My news director and I had a fabulous idea,” Jenn
said.
Jesse closed his eyes and put his head back against his chair.
“Every news outlet in the country is dying for some sort of
inside something on this,” Jenn said.
“I know.”
“We thought because of our, ah, connection, you know? We thought
I could come out with a cameraman and track the investigation. An inside look at the workings of a police manhunt. We would stay out of your way. And when you catch the guy we’d have a whole series
about it, and maybe a special, and maybe we could sell it to one of the national outlets …”
“No,” Jesse said.
“Oh, I know, Jesse. Believe me I know what an imposition it is.
But we’d stay out of the way, and, Jesse, it would mean so much to
my career.”
Jesse still had his eyes closed and his head back.
In a soft voice, he said, “No, Jenn,” and put the phone back in
its cradle.
37
Chuck Pennington was an architect. He had been an intercollegiate boxing champion at Harvard and still looked in shape.
He must have been pretty good, Jesse thought.
There’s not a mark on his face.
He had thick black hair brushed straight back. He wore a rust-colored tweed jacket and a blue oxford shirt. He sat with Jesse in the living room of the house he’d designed, with his wife
and daughter and a lawyer named Sheldon Resnick. Molly Crane sat near the door. Through the glass back wall of the living room Jesse could look a long way out over the Atlantic Ocean. Mrs. Pennington was speaking.
“We wanted to spare you this,” she said to her husband. “We know
how important your work is.”
“My daughter is more important than my work,” Pennington said.
“But we can put that aside for the moment and listen to Chief Stone.”
“You promised to keep my daughter’s name out of this,” Mrs.
Pennington said.
“I did what I promised your daughter I would do,” Jesse
said.
“You spoke to her without me?” Mrs.
Pennington
said.
“It seemed the only way I could,” Jesse said.
“Sheldon,” she said. “I want you
to make that clear to this
policeman that we will not tolerate scandal.”
“Mr. Stone has been nice to me,” Candace said.
“Candace, you be quiet,” Mrs. Pennington said.
“No, Margaret,” Pennington said.
“You are the one that has to be
quiet.”
“Chuck …”
“This didn’t happen to you,”
Pennington said. “It happened to
Candace. It matters what Candace wants.”
“My God, Chuck, she’s
…”
Resnick put his hand on Mrs. Pennington’s forearm.
“Chuck’s right, Margaret. Now is not the time.”
Mrs. Pennington opened her mouth, then closed it, and clamped her lips and sat back in her chair and folded her arms.
Pennington turned in his chair and looked at Jesse. He had very
pale blue eyes.
“I know the kind of pressure you must be under now,” he said.
“And I appreciate your taking the time for this.”
“Candace has always known who raped her,”
Jesse said. “But she
and I agreed that if she blew the whistle on them, uncorroborated, we might not get them, and her life in Paradise would be ruined.”
Pennington nodded.
“They were going to show my picture to everyone,” Candace
said.
Pennington nodded again. He showed no emotion, though Jesse noted that the knuckles on his clasped hands looked white.
“Now they probably won’t,” he
said.
He looked at Jesse.
“No,” Jesse said. “They
won’t. They’re scared.”
“Good,” Candace said.
Jesse nodded slowly.
“And they’re scared of you,”
Jesse said.
Candace looked at Jesse, then at her father, and then, more covertly, at her mother.
“Excellent,” she said.
“The law always talks about justice,”
Jesse said. “We’re
officially in favor of it. But if I were you what I would want would be revenge.”
“Chief Stone …” Mrs. Pennington
said.
Her husband shook his head at her.
“That’s what I would like,” he
said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Marino,
Feeney and Drake have incriminated
themselves. If we didn’t know anything about you the pictures would
have led us to you.”
Candace nodded. She understood.
“So we need a statement,” Jesse said.
“And if we go to court
we’ll need you to testify.”
“Will anyone else see those pictures?”
Candace
said.
“If we go to trial,” Jesse said,
“the defense will argue that
you were a willing participant and made up the rape story. The pictures would be evidence to the contrary.”
“My God, naked pictures of my daughter,”
Mrs. Pennington said.
“In public. I won’t permit it.”
“We’re a long way past propriety here, Margaret. It’s Candace’s
decision.”
“She’s not old enough to decide something like this,” Mrs.
Pennington said.
“I’ll give a statement,” Candace
said. “And I’ll testify if I
have to.”
“Candace …”
“Good,” Jesse said. “Is there
someplace you can go and give
Molly your statement?”
“They can use the kitchen,” Pennington said.
As she followed Candace from the room, Molly smiled at Jesse, and, shielding the gesture with her body, gave him a thumbs-up.
Everyone was quiet for a moment. Jesse looked through the big window at the brisk gray ocean.
“Kids like Candace,” Jesse said, still looking at the ocean,
“often need some therapy after an experience like this one.”
“You mean from a psychiatrist?” Mrs.
Pennington
said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “If you need
a referral I can get one for
you.”
Mrs. Pennington looked at her husband.
“We’ll see,” he said.
“Thanks for the offer.”
“As far as the case goes,” Resnick said, after a moment, “a plea
bargain would certainly seem possible.”
“Be up to the defense lawyers and the DA,”
Jesse
said.
“But you agree that it could happen?” Mrs.
Pennington
said.
“It often does,” Jesse said.
38
“We had sex an hour before she
died,” Jesse
said.
Dix nodded.
“I’m sad,” Jesse said.
“And I’m insulted.”
Dix tilted his head slightly.
“I’m the chief of police and I’m
trying to catch these bastards
and they shoot a woman I just made love to.”
“You think it was intentional?” Dix said.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“But it makes me
mad.”
“And you think it was more than one
person?” Dix
said.
“Yes. The two guns don’t make any sense to me
otherwise.”
Dix was wearing a blue blazer today, and a white shirt.
Everything about him gleamed. His shaved head, his starched shirt, his thick-soled mahogany shoes. He sat with his hands laced over his flat stomach, rubbing the tips of his thumbs together.
“Jenn called me after Abby was killed,”
Jesse said. “And said
she hoped I was okay.”
Dix waited, moving the tips of his thumbs softly back and forth.
“Then she said she wanted me to give her special access to the
sniper killing, her and a cameraman, inside coverage, follow the whole investigation.”
Dix nodded encouragingly.
“Four people die, and she sees it as a career opportunity.”
“Why would she think you’d allow
that?” Dix said.
Jesse smiled without humor.
“Because she is the, ah, object of my affections,” he
said.
“Object?”
“Just being amusing,” Jesse said.
Dix didn’t say anything. They were quiet. The room shimmered
with stillness. Jesse took in some air. His movements were stiff.
Dix waited. He seemed perfectly comfortable waiting. Jesse’s stiffness loosened.
“She said once,” Jesse’s voice
was hoarse, “that what I really
love is my fantasy of her, and I keep trying to squeeze her into it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it was fucking shrink talk.”
Dix grinned.
“The object of your affection,” Dix said.
“More fucking shrink talk,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled.
“Sure,” he said. “I am, after
all, a fucking
shrink.”
39
There were too many of them for Jesse’s office, so they went to
the conference room in the station. Jesse was there, at the head of the conference table. Beside him sat an Essex County assistant district attorney named Martin Reagan. Molly and Suitcase Simpson stood against the wall. Bo Marino and his parents sat on one side of the table. Troy Drake and his mother sat on the other side. Two lawyers from a big Boston firm representing both families sat at the end of the table opposite Jesse. The lead attorney was a sleek red-haired woman named Rita Fiore. The other lawyer was a small man with a narrow face and a graying Vandyke beard. His name was Barry Feldman.
“Here’s what we got,” Jesse
said. “Or at least all of it I can
remember. There’s so much that Marty may have to remind me.”
Rita smiled.
“So we begin,” she said.
“We have a sworn statement from Kevin Feeney that he and Bo
Marino and Troy Drake raped Candace Pennington and photographed her naked.”
“I understand that he is clearly identifiable in the pictures,”
Rita said.
“He is,” Jesse said.
“How stalwart of him to admit it,” Rita said.
“We have Candace Pennington’s sworn
statement that Kevin Feeney,
Bo Marino, and Troy Drake raped her and photographed her naked.”
“Hardly a disinterested observer,” Rita said.
Martin Reagan said, “Rita, let’s wait until we get into court to
try the case. We simply want to question the suspects, and they simply wanted their attorney present.”
“Which would be me,” Rita said. She
glanced at Feldman beside
her, “and of course Barry.”
“Barry Feldman,” the other lawyer said.
Jesse nodded. He looked at Troy Drake.
“You got anything you want to say, Troy?”
Troy Drake was very blond with a full-lipped sulky mouth that made him look vaguely like Carly Simon. His mother was as blond as he was, and had the same sulky mouth.
“I’ve advised my clients not to discuss the case,” Rita
said.
Feldman nodded.
“You all planning to take her advice?”
Jesse
said.
No one at the table spoke.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “These
officers will read you your rights
and escort you to your cell.”
“You already arrested me and I got released to my old man,” Bo
said.
“That was for a different crime,” Jesse said. “This is a new
arrest.”
“Can they do this?” Mrs. Drake said.
“I’ll have them out in a few
hours,” Rita said.
“I’m going to ask for remand,”
Reagan said.
“Marty, don’t be ridiculous,”
Rita said. “These are
children.”
“So is Candace Pennington,” Reagan said.
“They can’t put my son in jail,”
Mrs. Drake said. “I know he
didn’t do anything.”
Mrs. Marino was crying. Mr. Marino was red-faced.
“You better keep my kid out of jail,” he said to
Rita.
“Mr. Marino,” Rita said. “I am
the chief criminal litigator at
Cone Oakes and Belding. I’m about as good as it gets. You don’t
frighten me. Nothing does, and it is not in your best interest to annoy me.”
Marino looked startled.
“The boys may have to spend the night in jail, but we can get