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- Herausgeber: No Exit Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: A Jesse Stone Mystery
- Sprache: Englisch
Police chief Jesse Stone returns in the newest novel in Robert B. Parker's New York Times bestselling series, and this case hits right at the heart of the Paradise police force. Jesse Stone is back on the job after a stint in rehab, and the road to recovery is immediately made bumpy by a series of disturbing and apparently racially motivated crimes, beginning with the murder of an African American woman. Then, Jesse's own deputy Alisha - the first black woman hired by the Paradise police force - becomes the target of a sophisticated frame-up. As he and his team work tirelessly to unravel the truth, he has to wonder if this is just one part of an even grander plot, one with an end game more destructive than any of them can imagine. At the same time, a mysterious young man named Cole Slayton rolls into town with a chip on his shoulder and a problem with authority - namely, Jesse. Yet, something about the angry twenty-something appeals to Jesse, and he takes Cole under his wing. But there's more to him than meets the eye, and his secrets might change Jesse's life forever.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Critical Acclaim forRobert B. Parker
‘Parker writes old-time, stripped-to-the-bone, hard-boiled school of Chandler…His novels are funny, smart and highly entertaining…There’s no writer I’d rather take on an aeroplane’– Sunday Telegraph
‘Parker packs more meaning into a whispered “yeah” than most writers can pack into a page’– Sunday Times
‘Why Robert Parker’s not better known in Britain is a mystery. His best series featuring Boston-based PI Spenser is a triumph of style and substance’ – Daily Mirror
‘Robert B. Parker is one of the greats of the American hard-boiled genre’ – Guardian
‘Nobody does it better than Parker…’ – Sunday Times
‘Parker’s sentences flow with as much wit, grace and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist’– Newsday
‘If Robert B. Parker doesn’t blow it, in the new series he set up in Night Passage and continues with Trouble in Paradise, he could go places and take the kind of risks that wouldn’t be seemly in his popular Spenser stories’ – Marilyn Stasio,New York Times
For Ace Atkins and Tom Schreck
Contents
Critical Acclaim for Robert B. Parker
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Also by Robert B. Parker
About the author
It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.
– SCHILLER
1
She thought she might pass out from the ache in her side or that her heart might explode in her chest as she ran barefoot along the dunes. Her beautiful long beaded braids, of which she was rightfully proud, slapped against her shoulders, her face, and fell in front of her eyes. She stopped, trying to catch her breath and to listen for them, for their heavy footfalls, but the low roar of the waves swallowed up all the sounds of the night, much as they had overwhelmed her cries for help.
Too tired to think, she bent over at the waist, sucking in huge gulps of crisp sea air. Her throat was raw from screaming. Sweat rolled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. It covered her dark black skin and soaked through her sports bra, panties, and torn warm-up pants. As her wind returned to her and the stitch in her side subsided, she felt the burn of her sweat seeping into the nicks and cuts around her ankles caused by the brambles and sharp dune grasses. Her jaw was throbbing from where one of them had smashed his fist into her face. And as she pressed her fingers to the swelling, the absurdity of the situation rushed back in like the waves on the beach below. This can’t be happening to me. Things like this happen to other women.
She reached into her pocket to feel for the cell phone that she knew wasn’t there, the image of it on top of the nightstand as clear to her as if she were back in the room at the bed-and-breakfast. Her skin was suddenly gooseflesh, her perspiration turning cold with fear, and she wished she’d listened to Steve and taken her phone, wished she’d been able to hang on to her Harvard hoodie. But the man who’d laid her out with that one punch, the man who’d torn at her pants and climbed on top of her, grunting, pawing her, had clutched it even after she’d kneed him in the groin. It was only when she rolled out from under him and ran, hearing laughter in the night, that she realized the man who’d attacked her wasn’t alone. She ran down to the beach, hoping, praying, that she’d come upon another runner or a couple, maybe some kids around a campfire. But there was no one, not in either direction, not as far as she could see.
There were tears in her eyes. She was shaking and her heart was doing a fluttery thing she wasn’t sure she had ever felt before. She’d been able to hold it together until then, until she saw that she was very alone on that stretch of Massachusetts beach. She decided to double back and head north along the shore toward the B-and-B in Swan Harbor. She prayed the men chasing her had gone south, trying to get ahead of her to wall her off and pin her in. Besides, she had no idea what was down the beach beyond the edge of darkness. At least she had some sense of the beach in Swan Harbor and knew that at one point the beach became rocky. Maybe there was a cave or a cove she could hide herself in until sunup. The thought of that, of the sun rising over the Atlantic, stopped the tears and filled her with hope. It was short-lived.
There they were, above her, to her left along the dunes. She ran faster, then stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of a shadowy figure thirty yards ahead of her on the beach. She turned the other way, but it was no good. Two of them were there. She ran to the dunes, her churning feet sinking into the cool sand as they came around slowly behind her, their sneering laughter filling the night. One of them yanked her braids so that her head snapped back and she lost her balance, the sand slipping out from under her feet. She fell awkwardly onto her neck and shoulder, landing so hard that pain shot down her whole left side, the jolt of it taking her breath away.
When she came back into the moment a few seconds later, she wished she hadn’t. They had her pinned and he was on top of her again. Only this time his knees were on either side of her. She swung her head wildly from side to side, writhed beneath him, fighting to break free of the hands holding her down, but it was no good. He clamped a powerful hand under her chin to force her to look up at him.
‘You just had to go and knee me, didn’t you?’ he said, squeezing her face so hard that her teeth cut into the insides of her cheeks. The taste of copper and iron flashed across her tongue. Her body steadied as much out of exhaustion as anything else. ‘You made a mistake doing that. A very big mistake. Get her damned pants off. Time to teach her a lesson.’
She was at it again, her muscles giving absolutely everything they had left to give, and she screamed for all it was worth. But her voice was nearly gone, as was all of her strength.
‘You done now?’ he said in a whisper, his lips close to her ear. ‘Are you done?’
She was crying too fiercely to answer him, and before she could even think what to do next she felt his fist crash into her face again and again. Her body went limp and her mind empty. When she roused, she’d retreated into a peaceful world so deep inside her own head that she wanted to stay there forever. It was strange, she thought, how she could still hear the sea and could feel them dragging her by the feet, the sand and dune grasses tearing at her face. Then, just before she slipped completely away, she remembered that tomorrow was Columbus Day. The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. The Niña… She could no longer hear the ocean.
2
Everything was completely different, yet just the same. Paradise was as it had always been in the fall, the trees exploding with color, the wind blowing in off the Atlantic biting with sharper teeth. Jesse Stone wasn’t a man given to deep philosophical thought. He knew up from down, which base to cover when throws came in from the outfield, and, most important, right from wrong. His sense of right and wrong was like his North Star, guiding him through the wilderness of a world that had lost its way. Yet as he looked at the windblown swirl of reds, yellows, browns, and greens on the trees outside his new condo that morning, he could not help but think it strange that the beauty of the leaves was an expression of their deaths. As far as he could tell, there was only inevitability in human death and not much beauty in it. There was certainly no beauty in murder, the kind of death he was most familiar with.
He didn’t waste any more time contemplating the leaves or why the familiar now seemed strange. There was the fact that his house had been sold that summer and that he’d moved into a two-bedroom condo in a development at the edge of the Swap. That wasn’t it. He had moved many times in his life without it shaking his foundation. Nor was it that today would be his first day back on the job after two months away. He had to admit that it had taken some getting used to, being away from Paradise. Jesse hadn’t taken any real time off since he’d been forced to walk away from baseball and joined the LAPD. That was strange, too, because it felt like it had happened both only yesterday and a million years ago. He knew exactly what it was that was causing him to see the world with new eyes, and he knew he was going to have to spend every day for the rest of his life getting used to it.
Patricia Cooper at the donut shop raised her right eyebrow at the sight of Jesse standing before her. For an old Yankee like Patricia, a raised eyebrow was tantamount to a fainting spell.
‘Jeez, Jesse. Been a long time. Got so we were worried Molly would be warming your seat on a permanent basis.’
‘She would never let that happen.’
One corner of Patricia’s mouth turned up. ‘No, I s’pose not. An assorted dozen for you?’
‘Better make that two dozen and a large cup of coffee. We’ve got that machine in the station now, but I’ve thought about the taste of your coffee every day since I’ve been gone.’
The other corner of her mouth turned up.
Molly was seated at the front desk, not in Jesse’s office as he’d expected. They’d spoken a few times since he’d returned, but like everything else since he’d come home, their conversations had been just a bit different. The usual rhythm of their banter seemed out of joint. He’d supposed that was a function of Molly’s anger at him for sticking her in a job she never wanted and for staying away a few weeks longer than he’d planned to be gone.
Before he could open his mouth, Molly said, ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again, Jesse Stone. God knows why I love you in the first place, but it won’t last two more months of me sitting in that office.’ She pointed over her shoulder at the door with chief printed in black letters on the pebbled glass.
He placed the donuts in front of her. ‘Cross my heart, Crane.’
‘Put them in the break room yourself. Until you walk into that office back there, I’m still acting chief.’
‘Seems to me you’re pretty comfortable with giving orders.’
‘Seems to me I hated every minute of it.’
‘How about the extra pay?’
When Molly smiled up at him, he knew things would be all right. Just as his sense of right and wrong had been his internal guide, Molly had long since become the person by whom he could set his watch.
Jesse took two donuts out of the box and left the rest right where they were. ‘I’m going into my office now, Crane. You can make an executive decision about what to do with the donuts.’ He turned and walked away.
‘Jesse!’ she called after him.
‘What is it, Molly?’
‘It’s good to have you back.’
‘Good to be back. In ten minutes, come in and we’ll talk over personnel and what’s been going on while I’ve been gone.’
The office was much as he had left it, if neater and a tad less dusty. But the essentials were in place: his worn glove and ball on his desk, the flags in the corner, the photos of the past chiefs on the wall, the slats of the old blinds open on the yacht club and Stiles Island. He sat behind his desk, his eyes immediately turning to the lower right-hand drawer, the drawer in which he had kept a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label since he first arrived in Paradise. There was no bottle in there now. He was determined that there would never be one there again. He wasn’t just playing at not drinking anymore or, as Dix phrased it, holding his breath to prove to the world he didn’t need to drink. He’d been to rehab, finally, and had been sober for a few weeks. But he had been warned that the struggles might not begin in earnest until he got back to his familiar surroundings. Seeing the empty space where the bottle used to reside, smelling the scotch that wasn’t there, he felt a phantom twinge, as if from a limb that had recently been removed.
3
Molly sat across the desk from him, a small pile of files between them. Jesse picked up the top file, opened it, and scanned the few sheets of paper within.
‘How’s Suit?’
Molly shook her head. ‘Even more boring now that he’s married.’
‘Alisha,’ he said. ‘How’s she doing?’
Molly’s expression surprised him.
‘What’s that face about?’
She said, ‘I guess Alisha’s feeling her oats.’
‘C’mon, Molly, this isn’t Modern Farmer. What does that mean?’
‘It’s just that she’s not the shy, quiet, obedient rookie anymore. She questioned the way a few of the older guys handled some things. They didn’t like it much.’
‘Coming from a woman, you mean?’
Molly didn’t answer.
‘Or from an African American woman?’
Hiring Alisha hadn’t been a popular move with the Board of Selectmen. Some of it had to do with her race, though Jesse suspected it had less to do with her gender or the color of her skin than budgetary concerns. They would have preferred he take on a retired big-city cop who already had a pension and medical benefits. But Jesse knew that hiring a retired cop came with baggage. He didn’t need a cop who had bad habits or thought he was doing Paradise a favor, someone who could walk away the first time things got rough or he got an order he didn’t like. Jesse wanted someone he could train himself, someone who would be committed to Paradise. Jesse recognized that the town was changing, that people from Boston were moving in and commuting. He wanted a more diverse force and for his cops to reflect Paradise’s future and not only its past.
‘I don’t think it’s that, Jesse,’ Molly said. ‘She’s young, and you know how guys set in their ways can get.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I was going to have to tell you anyway, so I might as well tell you now. For the last few weeks, we’ve been having some trouble with bikers, mostly in the Swap.’
‘Bikers as in biker gangs like Satan’s Whores? I can deal with –’
She cut him off. ‘Not them, Jesse. These were skinhead types, belligerent, real troublemakers. They went into the Scupper and started squawking about how even lily-white places like Paradise were being overrun by “mud people and inferior races”.’
‘I’ve heard it all before. Same song, different day. We had them when I was a kid in Tucson and in L.A. Free speech comes in ugly forms, too. So what happened?’
‘Joey the barman phoned it in to the station when some of the patrons took exception, and Alisha was in that sector. I sent Suit and Gabe as backup… just in case.’
‘Good decision. It’s what I would have done.’
‘But when Suit and Gabe saw what was going on, they pulled seniority on Alisha and got between her and the skinheads. I wasn’t there, but Gabe says it was getting pretty heated. Sounded to me like they did the right thing by taking charge.’
Jesse asked, ‘You think I need to have a talk with her or with all three of them?’
‘That’s up to you. Alisha’s had a bit of a chip on her shoulder since, but her work’s still excellent.’
‘I’d have that chip there myself if the same thing happened to me, but I’ll keep an eye out. Anybody in the cells?’
‘One guy, a twentysomething. Talk about a chip on your shoulder,’ Molly said. ‘This guy’s got a whole city block on his. Showed up in town a few weeks after you left. Second time we’ve given him accommodations for the night.’
‘Drunk?’
‘And disorderly.’
‘You charge him?’
‘Not officially.’
Jesse smiled at her. He knew he had been right to trust her with his job and his town. And the fact that she hadn’t charged the kid only confirmed it. The PPD wasn’t about arrests and statistics. It was about keeping the peace and doing right by the people. The truth was that putting someone into the system was a decision not to be made lightly. The justice system was overburdened and it tended to grind up the people locked behind its bars. As far as Jesse could tell, very few people came out the other end of time in prison better citizens for the experience. It wasn’t a popular attitude these days, but Jesse believed a good kick in the ass and a little understanding often worked better than time inside.
‘I’ll go have a talk with him. Name?’
‘Cole Slayton.’
‘We done?’
‘You’re the chief. Your decision.’
‘Wiseass,’ he said, standing. ‘Time for me to meet Mr Slayton.’
‘Good luck with that. Talking with him is like talking to a wall. He’s about as charming as you after a bender. Sorry, Jesse, I didn’t mean to –’
‘It’s okay, Molly. No tiptoeing around about this between me and you. I didn’t go to rehab because I drank too much Earl Grey.’
4
Jesse was surprised at the sight of the kid pacing back and forth behind the bars. He thought he’d find a hipster on a road trip, playing at being cool, or some asocial drifter with dead eyes, but that’s not who he found in the cell at all. This kid was scruffy, his black hair a mess and his face unshaven for a week, but he was an athlete. He had the build and the look. Even pacing the ten feet from one side of the cell to the other, he moved with fluidity and grace. Part of Jesse’s skill set as a ballplayer was the ability to spot your own kind, picking out the guy on the other team who was just a little quicker on the base paths or the one who could manipulate the bat and hit the ball where he wanted to.
‘Cole,’ he said, standing out of the kid’s reach. ‘I’m Jesse Stone, the chief of police here.’
The kid stopped dead, turned to face Jesse through the bars. He stared at him hard in the eyes. It was an intense, assessing stare, almost as if he was trying to look inside Jesse or through him.
The kid sneered, said, ‘So you’re Jesse Stone, huh?’
Jesse laughed. ‘I am. Why do you say it like that?’
‘Never mind.’ The kid went back to pacing.
‘You want to stop that? We need to talk.’
The kid thought about it, hesitated, stopped. ‘Okay, talk.’ He gave Jesse a cold look.
Molly was right about this guy. He had a sizable chip on his shoulder and seemed incapable of uttering a word that didn’t sound or feel like a challenge.
‘Officer Crane tells me this is the second time we’ve had to put you up for the night since you came into town.’
‘You going to threaten me now? Tell me I can get out of town or –’
‘Easy, kid –’
‘I’m not a kid.’
‘Sorry,’ Jesse said. ‘At my age, everyone under thirty is a kid. But no one’s threatening anybody.’ Jesse cleared his throat. ‘Listen, Cole, I’m going to kick you loose and we’re going to forget about the drunk and disorderly charges for now. But I don’t want to see you back in here again and I don’t want one of my officers to have to give you anything more than a parking ticket.’
‘Or else, huh?’
Jesse said, ‘Look, I don’t know what your deal is or why you seem to want to provoke me, but all I’m doing for you is a favor.’
Slayton glared at him. ‘You expecting gratitude?’
‘From you, probably not. My experience is that people with as much attitude as you don’t give thanks, because they think the world owes them something.’
‘I’ve got a long list of things I’m owed.’
‘No doubt.’ Jesse reached for the cell key. ‘Remember, I don’t want to see you in here again.’
Before Jesse could open the cell door, Suit Simpson came into the jail corridor. Suit waved Jesse over. They shook hands and slapped each other on the shoulder. Suit motioned for Jesse to step away from the cells and back into the hallway.
‘It’s great to see you, Jesse. I missed you. Man, don’t ever leave Molly in charge again. She gets really grumpy when you’re not around.’
‘You look good, Suit. You lose some weight?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, slapping his belly proudly. ‘Elena feeds me right and makes me go to the gym.’
‘I knew I liked that woman.’
Suit’s expression turned serious. ‘You okay, Jesse? I mean, I know things were rough there after Diana… you know. And you were away for a long time. I was worried about you. We all were.’
‘Thanks, Suit, but I’m fine. So why’d you come in here instead of waiting for me to come out?’
‘Molly got a call from the Swan Harbor PD. They got a serious assault there and Chief Forster wants you to have a look. You know those guys over there, they don’t like getting their nails dirty.’
‘Any details?’
‘No. They want you to hurry. Lundquist’ll meet you at the Swan Memorial Junior-Senior High School parking lot.’
‘Okay, thanks. Do me a favor, Suit. Cut Mr Slayton loose.’
‘You sure about that, Jesse?’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I’m the one that brought this guy in… twice. He started the fight both times. All the witnesses said he was almost begging to get arrested.’
‘Did he use any weapons? A broken bottle or anything like that?’
Suit shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t like that.’
‘Okay, then. It’s his last chance.’
‘Whatever you say, Jesse.’
As Jesse drove his Explorer to Swan Harbor, he thought about Cole Slayton. It had been a long time since he’d run into a character with that much attitude. Cole seemed determined to prove something to the world or to himself. Jesse hoped he’d do it without hurting himself or someone else and that he’d do it in another cop’s town.
5
Paradise was a town founded by merchants and fishermen. The town fathers would have also had you believe that whaling was a part of the town’s past. Jesse never quite bought the whaling stuff, but it made for a good narrative for the tourists. Mostly it helped local shopkeepers hawk their replica harpoons, oil lamps, and oars. Swan Harbor, the tony town just north of Paradise, was a place that wore its pilgrim roots like a neon sign. Though, of course, neon signs were strictly forbidden within town limits.
Swan Memorial was a picture-postcard old school building of red brick and ivy, with a majestic white bell tower rising up from the center of its sloped gray roof. Jesse followed the curve of Commonwealth Way past the front of the school’s granite steps and stone columns, and around to the athletic fields and parking lot beyond. The bucolic New England scene was shattered by the sight of ambulances, police cruisers, and trooper SUVs arranged at odd angles on the knoll outside the lot. All their blue, red, white, and yellow light bars whirled, strobed, and flashed in silence. Not even the gorgeous backdrop of turning trees and the ocean beyond could camouflage the tear in the fabric of serenity.
Jesse pulled up onto the knoll alongside Brian Lundquist’s unmarked Ford. It was officially Captain Lundquist now that he’d gotten the bump and taken over from Healy as the state’s chief homicide investigator.
‘Jesse,’ Lundquist said, offering his hand.
‘Brian.’ Jesse took his hand and shook it. ‘Congratulations on it being official.’
Lundquist, a big man who looked more like a Minnesota farm boy than a cop, nodded his thanks.
‘It’s not pretty, Jesse. Her face is a mess and there are nasty bruises around her throat. There’s some signs of sexual assault. She’s unconscious and the EMTs say it doesn’t look good. The assault had to take place somewhere else, though, and she was dumped here. Name’s Felicity Wileford, thirty-two. She’s up here from Boston for the weekend with a boyfriend to see the foliage.’
‘Boyfriend a suspect?’
Lundquist shrugged. ‘Can’t say.’
‘Any security footage?’
‘The security company says no, but I’ve got someone over at their headquarters reviewing whatever footage they’ve got. C’mon, let’s go take a look.’
As they turned to enter the lot, stepping under the crime scene tape, Jesse asked, ‘Why am I here, Brian? Not my town, not my jurisdiction. What are you doing here, anyway? This isn’t a homicide.’
‘Not yet,’ Lundquist said. ‘But it looks like it will be. Besides, they don’t have any detectives on their PD and I was in the area.’
‘I heard it was the chief who asked me to come have a look.’
‘It was my idea, but it’s not officially my case. I had to cajole the rustynuts chief here to invite you over. I’ll tell you what, Jesse, the cops in this town are acting like they’ve never seen this kind of thing before.’
‘They probably haven’t. No shame in that. I wish none of my cops had ever seen one.’
‘Occupational hazard, I guess, me making assumptions like that. I’ve already seen too many damaged bodies.’
‘Me too. But that’s no answer to my question, Brian. Why am I here?’
‘Come on, let’s hurry up before they move her. You’ll see.’
That was more of an answer. Jesse understood that there must be something about the appearance of the victim or the crime scene that would spark his memory. Either that or there was something about the victim and the nature of the assault that only an ex–LAPD Robbery Homicide detective would comprehend. But the moment he saw the way Felicity Wileford’s brutalized body had been positioned, Jesse knew it was the former.
She was a dark-skinned African American woman with long, beautifully braided hair. Her face was so battered that her eyes were swollen shut. A plastic oxygen mask covered her smashed nose and bloodied mouth. As they rolled the gurney toward the waiting ambulance, Lundquist demanded the EMTs stop and lower the sheet that covered her body from neck to toe. They weren’t happy about it, but they did as they were told. The swelling and bruising around her throat was obvious. Someone had written the word slut across her belly in lurid red lipstick.
As the EMTs hurried her into the ambulance, Jesse turned to Lundquist and said, ‘The first murder scene I ever dealt with in Paradise was very similar to this, but you couldn’t have known about that. You were still chasing speeders down on the Mass Pike back then. Who spotted the similarity?’
Lundquist pointed to a uniformed Swan Harbor cop standing with a group of troopers and cops about twenty yards to the other side of the body. ‘Name’s Drake Daniels. Been on the job here for twenty-plus years. He told his chief, the chief told me… You know how it works.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He knew how it worked, but he didn’t like it.
‘Brian, I’m going to take a walk over to my Explorer. Send Officer Daniels over without drawing attention. I need to have a talk with that man.’
Jesse didn’t wait for Lundquist’s response. He just turned and walked toward his SUV.
6
The store for rent sign still hung in the front window of the old card shop on Main Street two months after the short-term lease had been signed. Main Street in Linz, New York, was no more or less dead than the Main Streets in many of the forgotten lock towns along the Erie Canal: forlorn little burgs whose downtowns were now essentially ghost towns. So nobody took notice of the fact that someone had rented the old card shop. There was hardly anyone around to notice.
The front room of the old card shop was still as empty as it was the day the lease had been signed. The display cases were just as dusty and the cobwebs remained untouched. But in one corner of the back room, boxes full of fliers were stacked three deep from floor to ceiling. A rectangular red banner was draped across one wall. At the center of the red flag was a white circle, and within the white circle was a black swastika. The Nazi flag was faded, frayed, and battle-scarred. On the opposite wall hung a like-sized American flag with a white, rounded-edged black swastika at the center. On a third wall was a map of New England and the mid-Atlantic states.
There was a desk, a black office chair, and a card table and some folding chairs. A fleshy man in his sixties, bald, with intense gray eyes, sat in the office chair. He stared across his desk at a man twenty-five years his junior who was standing at ease – legs spread, hands clasped behind his back. The younger man, dressed in jeans, black work boots, a black turtleneck, and a camo vest, looked straight ahead, eyes unfocused.
‘See that behind you, son?’ asked the man behind the desk, pointing at the old Nazi flag. He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘That flag was rescued from Berlin in April of 1945. A lot of brave Aryan men died defending that flag and what it stood for. We’re engaged in a desperate struggle to reclaim, for its righteous owners, the body and soul of our great nation. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you understand the concept of winning a battle only to lose the war?’
‘Of course I do, sir.’
‘Then why on earth did you permit to happen what took place last night?’
‘I was not directly part of the operation, sir,’ said the younger man, still looking straight ahead. ‘But I take full responsibility for the actions of those under my command.’
‘Under your command!’ The fleshy man pounded his desk. ‘Given what occurred last evening, son, I might choose to use another word than command.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did they give you an explanation for their actions?’
‘They did, sir.’
‘I’m waiting.’
‘The group leader said that the woman kneed and scratched him. Then she ran away and nearly escaped capture. He said he wanted to teach her a lesson.’
The older man pounded the desk again, this time jumping out of his chair. ‘A lesson! He wanted to teach her a lesson! He’s not a fucking professor and the lesson to be taught needs to be taught to him.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you explain to those nimrods that they may have dealt a severe blow to our cause?’
‘I did, sir.’
The older man seemed not to hear, strolling out from behind his desk to straighten a framed black-and-white photograph of a burning cross surrounded by hundreds of white hooded men.
‘All they were supposed to do was to shake her up, smack her around a little bit, to serve as a warning of things to come. And because she hurt your man’s pride, they nearly beat the bitch to death?’
‘Nothing like this will happen again, sir.’
‘You’re goddamned right it won’t, son.’ He reached under his jacket and pulled out a vintage Luger. He walked over to the younger man and pressed the muzzle to his left temple. The younger man didn’t flinch. ‘You take responsibility for what your men did?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘You ready to die for their mistakes?’ He put his finger on the trigger.
‘I am, sir. They were my responsibility.’
The older man holstered his pistol. ‘When the time comes for sacrifice, you know now who the lamb must be.’
Those words made the younger man react in a way not even the threat of being shot in the head could. He winced and stuttered, struggling for the words. ‘But… sir, he… he’s –’
The older man shouted, ‘Son, when the time comes, do you know who the lamb must be?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘Good. Now take two boxes and get the fuck out of my sight. I expect not to have to have any future little talks like this one with you again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now get over there and get those distributed as you’ve been instructed. The time for the clarion call is almost upon us. Listen for it.’
The younger man picked up two boxes and left without looking back.
7
Jesse watched Drake Daniels amble over to where the Explorer was parked. He looked the role of an aging small-town cop. His gray hair was kept neat and short under his brown trooper-style hat. The same couldn’t be said of his gut, which had long ago reached critical mass, straining the bottom buttons of his tan uniform shirt and spilling over the edge of his black belt. His ample face was clean shaven and he smelled of too much Old Spice.
‘You wanted to see me, Chief?’ he said in a clear, strong voice.
Jesse nodded, staring into Daniels’s eyes, challenging him. Daniels met the challenge. The cop stared right back at Jesse. His clear blue eyes stood in sharp contrast to his sleepy demeanor. Jesse answered him with more silence. He wanted to see how the cop would react, whether Daniels would fidget or paw at the ground with his shoe. Jesse knew people had tells in life just like in poker and that their tics sometimes said more about them than their words. But Daniels was cool, standing right in front of Jesse, relaxed and looking straight at him. Jesse had to give the guy some credit. He seemed to understand that Jesse was attempting to unnerve him.
Finally, Daniels spoke. ‘I figure you’re pretty curious about how I knew about the similarities between this crime scene and the one at Paradise Junior High all those years ago.’
Tammy Portugal was a divorced mother of two who had gone out clubbing. Her naked body was found in the parking lot of Paradise Junior High School just as Jesse was first settling into his job as chief. slut had been written across her abdomen in red lipstick. She had been picked up at a local club by a muscle head named Jo Jo Genest. He’d raped and beaten her and broken her neck before dumping her body like so much trash.
‘Uh-huh,’ Jesse said. ‘I’m curious.’
‘It’s not that complicated, Chief. I was good friends with Anthony deAngelo. We grew up together and I got on the job here a year or two after he got hired in Paradise. He was first on the scene of the Portugal woman’s murder and he talked to me about it. It kind of freaked him out a little because he had never seen a murder victim before. Too bad about what happened to him.’
Jesse got a sick feeling in his belly, remembering how shaken Anthony was when he showed up at the scene that day long ago. Worse, though, was the fact that Anthony deAngelo was one of Jesse’s cops who’d been killed in the line of duty. He’d been working undercover at the mall, trying to catch a thrill-killing couple. The wife shot Anthony in his head as she and her husband fled.
‘Anthony was a good cop,’ Jesse said.
‘Good friend, too. I miss him a lot sometimes.’
Jesse moved on. ‘So what was it that made it click for you?’
Daniels knew what Jesse was asking. ‘Naked woman in a school parking lot with SLUT written on her in lipstick… not exactly a common occurrence in these parts, Chief. Thank God our vic was still breathing.’
Jesse asked, ‘You share this observation with anyone except your chief?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Not even with your friends I saw you hanging out with over in the lot?’
Daniels shook his head emphatically.
‘Okay, Officer, thanks. I have no jurisdiction here, so I can’t demand you keep this between you and your chief, but I’d appreciate it.’
‘You don’t think the cases are related, do you?’
Jesse didn’t answer and thanked Daniels again. The Swan Harbor cop turned and went back to the scene. A minute or two later, Lundquist, who’d kept a close eye on the conversation between Jesse and Daniels, walked over to the Explorer.
‘So?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jesse said. ‘He gave me the right answers.’
‘You don’t seem happy about it.’
‘I’m not. Says he knew about the similarities because he was friends with one of my murdered cops, a good guy named Anthony deAngelo.’
‘Healy told me about that. That was the serial-killing couple.’
Jesse said, ‘That was them.’
‘What don’t you like about what Officer Daniels had to say?’
‘How many stories have you read about the volunteer fireman who just happens to be driving by a burning house and rescues a family from the flames? Then it turns out that the hero fireman –’
‘Set the fire,’ Lundquist said, finishing Jesse’s sentence. ‘You think Daniels had something to do with the assault?’
‘Not my case, but I’d keep an eye on him is all I’m saying.’
‘Given her condition, it’ll probably be my case soon. This town’s chief couldn’t win at Clue even if he cheated. I’m heading over to talk to the boyfriend. You want to tag along? I’m interested to hear what you think.’
‘Sure.’
As they drove away from the school in Lundquist’s blue Ford, Jesse noticed that the knot in his belly hadn’t gone away. It had only grown and gotten tighter.
8
The boyfriend wasn’t what Jesse expected. Steven Randisi was a tall white man, maybe thirty years old, with a neatly trimmed crop of prematurely gray hair. He was a handsome man, but one with a grave, deeply etched face and light brown eyes, thousand-yard eyes. His eyes weren’t red-rimmed or teary. Randisi stared directly at Lundquist and Jesse, yet he seemed far, far away. Jesse had seen a lot of grieving faces in his time. He’d seen one in the mirror frequently over the last several months since Diana was killed. Still, Jesse thought, there was more than grief in Randisi. This was grief plus. That plus didn’t seem like fear or guilt or even confusion. And when Randisi pulled his left hand out of his jacket pocket, Jesse figured he knew what it was.
‘Lost it in Afghanistan,’ Randisi said, tapping the back of his prosthetic hand against the table. ‘I’m being fitted for a fully functional one. They tell me I should have it in a month or two. Helluva thing, losing a piece of your body.’
Lundquist saw an opening. ‘Having your girlfriend beaten nearly to death is also a hell of a thing.’
‘She wasn’t – isn’t my girlfriend.’
‘What is she, then?’
‘We dated a few times and we got along. Felicity said she was coming up here to see the fall foliage and asked if I wanted to tag along.’
‘You sleeping together?’ Lundquist asked.
Randisi nodded.
‘Any problems there?’
‘I lost my hand and most of my forearm. The rest of me still functions pretty well, and no, we didn’t have any problems there. As far as I could tell, we were a good fit in bed.’
‘How about out of bed?’
He shrugged. ‘We’re still feeling each other out. We are kind of an odd match, I guess. She’s studying for her Ph.D. in African and African American studies at Harvard. Me, I was helping out my dad at his autoparts store and going to Bunker Hill Community College just to keep occupied.’
Jesse decided to play the good cop and asked, ‘So where’d you guys meet?’
Randisi smiled, remembering. ‘Legal Seafood in Harvard Square. It was a long wait and we both asked for tables for one. Felicity said that we should just eat together. I think maybe she saw I was looking a little lost and felt sorry for me. I don’t know.’ He held up his prosthetic hand. ‘You always see in TV commercials and stuff, men and women with prosthetics looking all brave and courageous. Me, I felt like a freak, like all that people could see of me was this. And all I could see was that Felicity was beautiful and kind.’
It went on like that for about a half-hour. Lundquist’s questions getting more intense, taking on accusatory tones. Where were you last night? Why weren’t you together? Did you fight? Why didn’t you go running together? Was she running away from you? Can you account for your whereabouts? When did you alert the local police? Why not sooner? If you didn’t beat her, who did? Did you know anyone who wanted to do her harm? Jesse would mix in questions to ease the tension, turning things back to the more personal. His questions were more about where the relationship might’ve gone and what kind of future Randisi saw for himself. When they were done with him, Randisi looked pretty shaken.
‘One more thing,’ Jesse said, as they parted. ‘You said you lost your hand and part of your forearm.’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘How’s the strength in the rest of your left arm?’
‘The shrapnel fucked up my biceps and shoulder, too, but they were able to put me back together well enough to save my upper arm. I’m never going to win any arm-wrestling tournaments, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘What do you think?’ Lundquist asked Jesse as they made their way to his car.
Jesse said, ‘One look at the bruises around her neck will tell you he didn’t do it. She had deep bruising on both sides of her neck.’
‘Maybe he had help.’
‘I don’t know, Brian. I’d be looking somewhere else.’
‘I’ll check him out anyway. So, if not him…’
Jesse said, ‘Randisi says she went jogging. Should be easy enough to find witnesses. Not many black faces in Swan Harbor. My guess, she ran along the beach. That’s where a lot of folks in Paradise do their running.’
‘Good supposition, Jesse. It was the beach. There was what looked to be sand in her hair, under her fingernails, and between her toes. That was only a cursory exam. And, Jesse…’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The word that he wrote on her, let’s keep that between us.’
‘No one’s going to hear it from me, but a lot of locals and troopers saw it. I asked Officer Daniels to keep it quiet, but you might have some trouble containing it.’
‘I know. The whole damned Swan Harbor PD was there.’ Lundquist shook his head in disgust. ‘It was like they all came for a peek. I’ll be able to keep the troopers quiet, at least. C’mon, let me get you back to your vehicle. Will you please send over the old file on the Portugal woman’s murder? I don’t know what relevance it will have, but I have to be thorough.’
‘Sure. Soon as I get back to Paradise. And, Brian, keep me in the loop. I don’t have a good feeling about this one. Let me know if she survives.’
‘A woman was beaten into unconsciousness. What’s there to feel good about?’
Jesse had no answer for that.
9
Jesse had made it through rehab pretty easily. He hadn’t done it on discipline alone, on his ability to simply shut off his drinking for long periods. For his own sake, he knew he couldn’t afford to act the part of cleaning himself up, and that, for lack of a better expression, he had to let it all hang out. He had been open with the shrinks, with the counselors, and with the groups about destroying his career in L.A. and about his tangled and doomed relationships with women. He’d even gotten some laughs from the others in the group when he explained that he’d got the job as chief of police in Paradise not because he’d been a good detective, not in spite of being a drunk, but because he was one.
Until today, Jesse hadn’t given much thought to his arrival in Paradise almost two decades ago, but the brutal assault on Felicity Wileford couldn’t help but cause him to reflect on those early days. And he had plenty of time for reflection on his drive down to Boston. One of the things he’d been told over and over again while in rehab was that he needed to go to AA meetings every night, that he had to find a sponsor, and to do it sooner rather than later. Dix had made the same point to him when Jesse had called from the road on his way back from rehab.
‘You got through this part, Jesse,’ Dix had said. ‘Good for you.’
That was as close as Dix had ever come to an ‘Attaboy!’ and probably as close as he would ever come, but he didn’t stop there.
‘It might be more of a challenge once you get home in familiar surroundings. And you can’t depend on me for reinforcement. You’ve got to go to meetings and be with other alcoholics. They’re your tribe, Jesse. They’re your people and they’re the ones you need to rely on. You’ve got to find a sponsor.’
It made sense to Jesse and he felt Dix was right, though the thought of standing up in front of a room of drunks and telling his story gave him pause. It was one thing to be in rehab for a few weeks with complete strangers, people he would likely never have contact with again. It was something else to do it close to home, when there was every chance he could run into these folks during the day. Although his alcoholism wasn’t exactly a secret in Paradise, he had, for the most part, limited his public displays of drunkenness, and he had missed work only a few times because of his drinking. Still, he felt he couldn’t risk a meeting in Paradise, Swan Harbor, Salem, or any of the other close-by towns. Dix had anticipated Jesse’s reaction.
‘Your default setting is self-reliance, Jesse. Some people can pull it off by themselves, but it would be a mistake for you. You’ve tried it that way before and it’s never worked. So if you’re worried about the discomfort of a meeting in or around your town, drive down to Boston.’
There were meetings all over Boston, but Jesse had chosen one in the basement of an Episcopal church in Cambridge. He supposed he’d chosen the meeting there because he used to look at the church steeple from Diana’s bedroom window, and just lately he had finally been able to think of her and smile again. Some memories of her were of her and her alone or of their time together, memories free of his grief and guilt over her murder.
He was a few minutes late, but no one did more than give him a cursory glance as he came into the room. To them, he was just another drunk. A guy in his early thirties with a shaved head and a mustacheless beard and wearing a beat-up leather jacket was in the front of the room telling his story. Jesse cringed.
This part of the meetings, the public-confessional stuff, was anathema to him. It was too self-indulgent for his taste. Even when he was in the minors, Jesse hated public displays by other ballplayers meant to draw the crowd’s attention to them. He never flipped his bat after a home run or stood at the plate admiring his handiwork. He hustled around the bases as if trying to beat out a bunt. He tried never to pump his fist or to celebrate or pout in front of others. There were several parts of the twelve steps that cut hard against Jesse’s self-contained nature, though he had begun to compile the list of people to whom he had done wrong and to whom he would have to apologize. It was a long list. Some were his old partners from his time in Robbery Homicide in L.A. Molly, Suit, and Alisha were on the list, too. Sadly, many of the people on the list were in the ground and beyond his apologies.
Jesse found a folding chair in the next-to-last row between an old-timer and a twentyish woman with cropped brown hair, piercings, and tattoos covering most of her pale white skin. The old-timer had a resigned look on his face. Jesse could tell he’d been listening to fellow drunks tell their stories for many years and he didn’t find the current saga of alcohol-fueled misjudgments very engaging or original. Been there. Done that. Bought the T-shirt. The woman, on the other hand, was very focused on the guy at the rostrum. Her right leg was shaking like mad and she was doing this thing with her fingers, rubbing them together as fast as she could so that they made a shushing sound.
