Robert B. Parker's Fallout E-Book

Mike Lupica

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 395

Beschreibung

When two seemingly unconnected mysterious deaths occur on his watch, police chief Jesse Stone must pull out all the stops to unravel the truth and stop a killer from striking again. The small town of Paradise is devastated when a star high-school baseball player is found dead at the bottom of a bluff just a day after winning the team's biggest game. For Jesse, the loss is doubly difficult - the teen was the nephew of his colleague, Suitcase Simpson, and Jesse had been coaching the young shortstop. As he searches for answers about how the boy died and why, he is stonewalled at every turn, and it seems that someone is determined to keep him from digging further. Jesse suddenly must divide his attention between two cases after the shocking murder of former Paradise police chief, Charlie Farrell. Before his death, Farrell had been looking into a series of scam calls that preyed upon the elderly. But how do these 'ghost calls' connect to his murder? When threats - and gunshots - appear on Jesse's own doorstep, the race to find answers is on. Both old and new enemies come into play, and in the end, Jesse and his team must discover the common factor between the two deaths in order to prevent a third.

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ROBERT 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’ –New York Times

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR MIKE LUPICA

‘Lupica, an award-winning sports columnist, author of 40 books, and longtime friend of the late Parker, nails the Sunny Randall character and the Boston criminal milieu that Parker created’ – Booklist

‘Lupica does justice to the work of MWA Grand Master Robert B. Parker in this splendid continuation of the late author’s Sunny Randall series’ – Publisher’s Weekly

‘Mike Lupica mixes a heavy dose of suspense with a shot of nostalgia, effortlessly delivering a relentless thriller that might just be the best book in the series so far’ – The Real Book Spy

‘Lupica mimics the heroine’s voice, much less distinctive than those of Parker’s other leads, with ease’ – Kirkus Reviews

This book is for Taylor Lupica.

Not only can’t I believe she married me.

All this time later, I still can’t believe she talked to me.

1

Jesse Stone looked out at the baseball game being played at O’Hara Field, a ballgame on an afternoon like this always a beautiful thing, at least to him, his eyes fixed at the moment on the kid playing shortstop.

Jesse felt as if he were looking at himself, back when he was a high school senior, back when he could see a whole lifetime of baseball days like this stretching out in front of him.

This kid was a little taller. Had a little more range. But not more arm. Definitely not more arm.

Nobody ever had more arm than I did.

Jesse felt himself smiling. Because even knowing what he knew about what had happened once he made it as far as Triple-A, the big leagues close enough to touch, knowing how baseball would break his goddamn heart later, he wanted to climb down out of the bleachers and be this kid’s age and change places with him in a heartbeat.

Just for one more afternoon.

Have one more game like this.

‘What did you think about when it was late in a game like this?’ Suitcase Simpson asked.

Suit was on one side of Jesse. Molly Crane was on the other. The kid at short, Jack Carlisle, was Suit’s nephew, his sister Laura’s boy. About to accept a scholarship to go play college ball at Vanderbilt, unless he changed his mind at the last second. Jesse didn’t follow college ball the way he did the majors. But he knew enough to know that Vanderbilt had a big-ass program, and had sent a lot of kids to the big leagues over the years.

‘I wanted the ball hit to me,’ Jesse said.

He heard a snort from Molly.

‘So you could be in control. I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell ya.’ Without turning, Jesse put a finger to his lips.

‘Don’t you shush me, Jesse Stone,’ she said. ‘You act like we’re in church.’

‘Baseball is better than church,’ Jesse said.

Molly, the good Catholic girl, stared up at the sky. ‘Forgive him, Father.’ She smiled. ‘And not just for that.’

Jesse turned to Suit. ‘I feel as if I’ve been sitting next to fans like her at ballgames my whole life.’

‘You wish,’ Molly said.

Suit shook his head. ‘I feel like I’ve got a bad middle seat on a long plane ride.’

The Paradise Pirates were ahead of Marshport, 2−1. League championship game. Bottom of the ninth. Jesse always wanted to laugh when he heard people calling teams ‘bitter’ rivals in sports. Only people on the outside. They had no idea. All they had to do was watch a game like this. Every single one of these kids on this field, both teams, waiting for the ball to be put in play and so much to start happening at once, was exactly where he wanted to be.

Where I always wanted to be.

Wanting the ball to be hit to me.

He had been working with Jack Carlisle a little bit this spring, at Suit’s request. Trying to teach the kid some of the things that Jesse had learned on his own. Not teach him everything he knew. Just some of it. Some of the baseball he still had in him, despite landing on his shoulder that day in Albuquerque, his dreams about making The Show crash-landing right along with him.

His father had always been more interested in being a cop than he was in baseball. Or watching his kid play baseball. Jesse could count on one hand the times the old man had actually shown up for one of his games.

Two outs now. The Marshport center fielder had just struck out swinging.

But the tying run was still at third base.

Go-ahead run at second.

‘Move to your right,’ Jesse said quietly.

As if somehow Jack Carlisle could hear him.

‘He pulled one into the hole his last time out.’

Still talking to himself. But tricking himself into believing he was talking to the kid at short.

‘What?’ Suit asked.

‘Nothing,’ was Jesse’s reply.

The Marshport batter stepped out of the box, buying himself some time. Maybe about to win the game, and the championship, for his team with a hit, or end his season with an out.

Across the field Jesse saw Nellie Shofner, from the Town Crier, taking notes. She still hadn’t moved on to a bigger paper, though she clearly had the talent, and the work ethic. Jesse knew she was working on a feature about Jack Carlisle, one the Crier was going to run as soon as he signed his letter of intent with Vandy.

Nellie saw Jesse looking over at her and waved.

‘Oh, look,’ Molly said. ‘It’s Gidget.’

Jesse ignored his deputy chief and leaned forward, the pitcher ready to pitch and the batter ready to hit now.

Hit it to short.

He’s not afraid, the way I never was.

It happened then, exactly the way Jesse had pictured it, or maybe willed it, the kid with the bat hitting a sharp grounder to Jack’s right. Crack of the bat unmistakable on a ball you’d just caught clean.

But the damned ball looking like a base hit, for sure.

Except.

Except Jack Carlisle had moved over, the way Jesse wanted him to. Jesse had seen him do it right before the pitch, the kid reading the ball perfectly as it came off the bat. So the ball was headed into left field. But then wasn’t. There was Jack Carlisle half sliding, half diving to his right, backhanding the ball. Knowing in the moment he had no chance at the kid who’d hit the ball, and was flying down the first base line behind him.

You either knew what to do next or you didn’t.

Jack knew.

From his knees, he sidearmed the ball to his third baseman. Snap throw, right on the bag, something on it. I could make that throw. The Paradise third baseman, Finn Baker, put the tag on the runner, the runner clearly out. But if the runner heading home crossed the plate before the tag was applied at third, game was tied.

He didn’t.

Game over.

Home team had won the title.

After the celebration in the middle of the field, and then the trophy presentation, Jesse stood with Jack Carlisle near second base. Suit was there, too. And Molly. Jesse knew, though, from experience, the kid really didn’t want to be with them. He wanted to go be with his teammates. This was part of it, Jesse remembered, that feeling you had in the first few minutes after you won the big game, and you never got those first few minutes back.

‘Party tonight,’ Jack told Jesse. ‘Over at the Bluff.’

Jesse grinned. ‘Better not be adult beverages involved.’

The kid grinned back. A younger version of Suit. Family resemblance impossible not to see. Jesse thought Jack Carlisle looked more like Suit than he did his own mother.

‘Can’t speak for the boys,’ Jack said. ‘But I’m not gonna blow everything by getting drunk and stupid.’

Then he ran across the field to where the Paradise Pirates were already posing for pictures.

‘There were guys I played with in high school who could have taught a master class in drunk and stupid,’ Jesse said to Suit and Molly.

‘Boy, those were the days, my friend,’ Molly said.

‘We thought they’d never end,’ Jesse said.

It was right before Jesse felt as if somebody had dropped a bomb on Paradise, Mass.

Two, actually.

2

Spike was at the Gray Gull, which he had owned for a few years now.

He was Sunny Randall’s best friend but had become Jesse’s friend, too. Spike also owned Spike’s, on Marshall Street in Boston. He had just been spending more time in Paradise lately, primarily because his current boyfriend had a weekend place on the water.

Sunny liked to call Spike a gay superhero. Jesse had asked her one time, just in the interest of proper record-keeping, what kind of superhero she considered him.

‘An inner-directed one,’ Sunny had said.

‘Anything else?’ Jesse had said.

‘Hunky one,’ she’d said.

Back when she still considered him as such, sometimes quite enthusiastically.

‘I know you want to ask me how she’s doing,’ Spike said to Jesse when he arrived at the Gull.

Both of them knowing who ‘she’ was.

‘I’m fighting it,’ Jesse said. ‘The way I do my urge to drink.’

‘How about if I tell you anyway?’ Spike said.

‘How about I pop into the kitchen and look for possible health code violations?’ Jesse said. ‘Or we could stop talking about Ms Randall and you could show me to my table.’

‘Right this way, Chief Stone!’ Spike said.

Charlie Farrell, who’d retired as police chief in Paradise long before Jesse had arrived from Los Angeles, was already seated at his favorite corner table, a martini in front of him. White hair, worn long, but he was able to carry off the longish hair, even at his age. Good tan. Bright red V-neck sweater. Charlie was partial to red. Said his late wife used to tell him the color ‘popped’ when he wore it. Red golf shirt underneath it. Charlie didn’t look his age, which Jesse knew to be right around eighty. It was his hands that gave him away. They always did. His hands looked older than the town lighthouse. Or the ocean beyond it.

He grinned and put his right hand out to Jesse. Jesse shook it, but lightly, knowing by now Charlie’s hands were about as sturdy as leaves.

‘Chief,’ Charlie said.

‘Chief,’ Jesse said.

‘I’d get up,’ Charlie said to Jesse, ‘but it would take too long.’

‘We need to get you one of those portable ski lifts you’ve got at the house to get you upstairs,’ Jesse said.

‘Bite my Irish ass,’ the old man said.

Charlie and Maisie Farrell had finally gotten tired of the Paradise winters and moved down to Naples, Florida, after he retired. To live happily ever after in the sun. But Maisie Farrell was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two years ago, died last year from complications. Charlie had sold their condominium almost immediately after the funeral and moved back to Paradise. He told Jesse one time that he thought guys his age waiting around to die in Florida seemed like a cliché.

He pointed to his martini glass and did what he always did, no matter how many times they met for dinner, and asked if Jesse minded.

‘Yeah,’ Jesse said. ‘Tonight’s the night I decided to let your drinking finally bother me.’

‘Well, you never know,’ Charlie Farrell said.

‘As long as you drink responsibly,’ Jesse said.

‘I’m eighty-years-old,’ Charlie said. ‘What the hell’s the point in that?’

He drank some of his drink and smacked his lips and put his glass down. He never ate the olives. Said they were more decorative than anything else.

‘I never asked,’ Charlie said. ‘Were you a martini guy in your drinking days?’

‘Scotch,’ Jesse said. ‘Lots and lots of scotch.’

‘You still miss it?’

‘Only when I’m awake,’ Jesse said.

Spike brought Jesse an iced tea without Jesse having ordered it.

‘On the house,’ Spike said.

‘Too small to be a bribe,’ Jesse said.

‘Gotta start somewhere,’ Spike said.

Charlie wanted to know how things were going with the red-haired lawyer.

Rita Fiore.

Jesse smiled. He smiled a lot when Charlie was on the other side of the table. Like he was here with his grandfather.

Or maybe a second father.

‘You know how they say in sports that the legs go first?’ Jesse said. ‘I’m starting to think they go second.’

Charlie Farrell sighed.

‘And the thing you’re talking about that does go first?’ he said. ‘It just keeps going and going. South.’

‘So it doesn’t keep going like the Energizer Bunny,’ Jesse said.

‘A battery, maybe,’ Charlie said. ‘But a dead one.’

‘I’ll bet Miss Emma doesn’t say that,’ Jesse said.

Librarian emeritus in Paradise. In Charlie’s demographic.

‘Despite her advancing years,’ Charlie said, ‘Miss Emma continues to be aspirational, bless her heart.’

Jesse laughed. Sometimes he thought the best part of being in Charlie’s presence was just listening to the old man talk.

They both made small talk over filets and fully loaded baked potatoes. Jesse wanted to know how Charlie’s grandson was doing. Nicholas. In his late twenties, in a wheelchair since his motorcycle spun out of control one night in the rain on the Stiles Island Bridge. Jesse was the first to the scene. The helmet Nicholas was wearing might have saved his life. But couldn’t prevent the damage to the lumbar region of his spinal cord.

‘He loves working at that candy store,’ Charlie said. ‘They got the kid moving up fast in sales.’

It was a lot more than a store. It was the hottest new business in Paradise, Mass., the candy company owned by Hillary More. She had moved here with her teenage son the year before, opened More Chocolate, and it had almost immediately become a sensation, and not just in Paradise. Hillary More had bought the old firehouse at the edge of town, refurbished it, extended it, hired only local people to work for her, making an especially big point of hiring people with disabilities like Nicholas Farrell, who now handled talking to nonprofits using More Chocolate for fundraising. The factory where the chocolate was actually manufactured was up in Nashua, New Hampshire, just over the state line, for tax purposes.

Jesse liked her a lot. He couldn’t see himself having a romantic relationship with her, as much as she kept trying to put that into play, and not just because he knew she was a single parent with a son at the high school. What he did fantasize about was her running for mayor in the next election, an idea she had already floated herself from time to time.

It was a piece of a larger fantasy for Jesse, one that involved shooting his current boss, Mayor Gary Armistead, out of a cannon.

Jesse noticed Charlie had gotten quiet when it was time for him to order dessert.

‘What?’ Jesse said.

‘What what?’ Charlie said.

‘Unspoken thoughts have never been one of your specialties,’ Jesse said. ‘Right up there with bullshit.’

‘I promised myself I wouldn’t bother you with my niggly problems,’ Charlie said.

‘With you, there’s no such thing,’ Jesse said. ‘You’re family, Chief.’

So Charlie told Jesse about the ‘Grandpa call’ he’d gotten the day before. A female voice, young, saying it was Erin. Granddaughter. Nicholas’s sister. Traveling in Europe. Telling him that one of the girls she was traveling with in Europe had been arrested with drugs, and that they both needed a lawyer, which is why Grandpa needed to wire money, like right now. Or, better yet, buy some cash cards and read her the numbers over the phone.

‘Erin’ said she’d call back in the morning.

‘What’s pissing you off so much about that?’ Jesse said. ‘You’re too smart to have gone for it. On top of that, you’re a cop.’

‘What pisses me off,’ Charlie said, ‘is thinking about other geezers who do fall for this scam, and lose money they can’t afford to lose. Or give the scammers an account number from their bank and get themselves good and cleaned out. Or buy into the fact that the IRS is coming after them if they don’t come up with some dough, and fast.’

He told Jesse then that Miss Emma had even lost a few thousand dollars to a scammer of her own the year before.

The martini was long gone. Charlie was working on an espresso now. And even though Charlie had gotten sidetracked riffing about the scam and spam calls, they both knew they weren’t leaving until Charlie got his vanilla ice cream.

‘I’d like to have a talk with whatever thief is behind this thing,’ Charlie said.

‘It’s the same as looking to get even with telemarketers,’ Jesse said. ‘But even if you could somehow stop one of them, it would be like whack-a-mole. There’s more of them than there are of us.’

Jesse turned and waved for their waiter.

‘Order your ice cream,’ he said. ‘That always makes you feel better. And let this go.’

‘Something else that’s never been one of my specialties,’ Charlie Farrell said. ‘And not one of yours, either, I might add.’

‘How about this?’ Jesse said. ‘How about we put a tap on your phone? I’ll put Molly on it. Next time they call, if they call, keep them on the line and maybe they’ll slip up.’

‘I just want one face-to-face with these bums,’ Charlie said. ‘Maybe pistol-whip one of them.’

‘Focus on your next face-to-face with Miss Emma,’ Jesse said. ‘And allow your former department to serve and protect that Irish ass of yours.’

Spike came over and took Charlie’s dessert order.

‘Two scoops tonight,’ Charlie said.

‘Good call, Gramps,’ Jesse said.

‘Your ass,’ Charlie Farrell said.

3

Charlie had driven to the Gull in his beloved Jetta. Despite the old man’s protests, Jesse took the keys and drove him home to the small, two-story house on the west side of town that he’d kept even after he and Maisie had moved to Florida.

He had never been able to bring himself to sell it, he told Jesse one time, because there was too much history inside that house, and too much love.

‘Does that make me sound like some kind of sap?’ Charlie had said.

‘Just makes me love you even more,’ Jesse had said.

As they were walking across the Gull’s parking lot, Charlie had said, ‘I can drive after just one glass of vodka.’

‘Not as well as I can after none,’ Jesse had said.

‘I still have seniority on you,’ Charlie Farrell said.

‘So you do,’ Jesse said. ‘But look at me, I’m the one with the keys.’

It was a little over a mile from Jesse’s condo to the Gull. Jesse had walked there because he liked walking more and more, and had been running less and less now that his knees felt as if somebody had taken a baseball bat to them. It was the shoulder injury that had ended his career. But somehow it was his knees, both of them, that had become arthritic over time.

You pay and you pay, Jesse thought.

For something you’d pay anything to have back.

After dropping off Charlie he walked through town, hardly anybody on the streets tonight. The ones who recognized him nodded. Some said hello. Some wanted to talk about the Paradise Pirates beating Marshport.

He walked past the movie theater that Lily Cain had restored after it had burned down. That was before Jesse found out that she was someone other than the Queen Mum of Paradise that everybody had always thought she was, and ended up with a bullet in her head that Jesse was sure her son, Bryce, had put there, but was still unable to prove, to his everlasting regret.

He took a slight detour and then there were the More Chocolate buildings in front of him, upstairs lights in the old firehouse still on. Jesse really did like Hillary More, liked her a lot, actually, if not as much as she seemed to want him to. She was pretty and had a good laugh and could swear like a ballplayer and could hold her liquor.

A skill I never mastered.

But a skill, for some reason, he still found admirable, in men or women.

Jesse kept telling himself that someday, when he was old, he would drink again. But how old? As old as Charlie Farrell? He stared up at the second-floor lights and wondered if Hillary might be up there working late. Hillary. Who continued to make it crystal clear that she was right here if Jesse wanted her.

‘We need to keep church and state separate now that you’ve become a civic leader,’ Jesse said. ‘And especially if you do run for mayor.’

‘What about on weekends?’ Hillary More said.

She reminded him a little bit of his ex-wife, Jenn. Just smarter. By a lot. With a much better sense of humor. Jenn had ultimately turned out to be a bad decision that had taken up too much of his goddamn life. Maybe Hillary was another mistake waiting to happen. But not all of his decisions, or relationships with women, had been bad. Sunny hadn’t been. Things hadn’t even ended bad between them. They’d just ended.

Jesse was through town and passing the house that had once belonged to Mayor Neil O’Hara, someone else who had been shot to death in Jesse’s town, for the crime of getting in the way of a land deal.

Naming of the dead, Jesse thought.

The older you got, the longer you stayed on the job, the more you found yourself doing that. He wondered if Charlie Farrell did the same thing when he was alone and awake in the night. Charlie had told him one time that you developed plenty of scar tissue if you did this kind of work long enough, mostly out of necessity.

Jesse had told himself he was going to take the long walk home after he dropped off Charlie.

But now knew he was not.

So he made a right off Main Street and then another, and walked another half-mile or so, and finally stood in front of the small white cottage with the green shutters and the well-kept front lawn.

Knocked on the door.

She opened it, smiling.

‘Evening, Gidget,’ he said to Nellie Shofner.

‘Can’t you get Molly to stop calling me that?’ she said. ‘Because maybe if she does, you will.’

She was actually older than Jesse had thought when she first started working at the Crier, thirty-two now.

She stepped forward quickly and put her arms around him and kissed him. He told himself it would have been less than gentlemanly to not kiss her back.

When they stepped back, Jesse grinned.

‘First I’ve got to get Molly to stop calling me Moondoggie,’ he said.

‘I looked it up,’ Nellie said. ‘That TV show where Sally Field played Gidget came out in 1965.’

‘Original movie’s older than that,’ Jesse said. ‘Sandra Dee was the original Gidget.’

‘Who?’ Nellie said.

‘I basically think Molly is just making a more general cultural reference,’ Jesse said.

‘Should I point out to Molly that calling me Gidget is a way of making her look old?’ Nellie said.

‘Sure,’ Jesse said. ‘Why don’t you call her fat while you’re at it.’

Nellie pulled him inside, shut the door, pushed him up against it, and kissed him far more enthusiastically than she had before.

‘Well, you’re in luck,’ Nellie said. ‘Tomorrow’s not a school day.’

The next morning, Jesse awakened even earlier than he usually did, five-thirty today, dressed quietly, left Nellie sleeping soundly, was having his first cup of coffee at home, best of the day the way the first drink always had been, when he got the call about the first body.

4

They found Jack Carlisle’s body in the rocks and shallow water below Bluff Lookout, the most northern piece of oceanfront property in Paradise. It was a mile up the coast, maybe a little less, from The Throw, the oceanfront property that had gotten five people killed last year, Jesse nearly making it six before an old acquaintance named Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow, had saved him.

A guy jogging with his dog had found the kid’s body. Had his phone with him, called 911. Suit had gotten there first, then Molly. When Jesse arrived, Molly told him that Suit was operating in a functioning state of shock, adding that she had told him it would be better for everybody for him to go home now, before he fell apart in front of everybody.

‘How’d that go?’ Jesse said.

‘He didn’t,’ Molly said. ‘Go, I mean.’

‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s not,’ Molly said.

Jesse looked over. ‘He seems to be holding it together.’

‘For now,’ Molly said.

Jesse had a total of twelve people in his department. He counted ten down on the narrow beach now, and in the water. One kid, one with potential named Jimmy Alonso, was back at the office. Another new guy, Barry Stanton, was out on patrol. Jesse knew why the rest of them were here. This was a death in the family, not just Luther (Suitcase) Simpson’s.

‘The kids had a party last night up on the campground,’ Molly said.

She pointed up at the Bluff. Highest point in Paradise. Jesse’s eyes took him from up there to down here.

Dev Chadha, the medical examiner, was up the beach as the bag with Jack Carlisle’s body inside it was being lifted into the off-road ambulance they sometimes used, one able to make it down the dirt path from the Bluff to the narrow beach. Jesse walked up there now. Suit tried to reach down and help the EMTs. Jesse gently put a hand on Suit’s arm.

‘Let them,’ he said to Suit.

‘I need to help,’ Suit said.

‘Let him go,’ Jesse said, and got between him and the ambulance as the doors closed. Suitcase Simpson. A nickname from an old-time ballplayer. Watching them load the body bag with his ballplaying nephew in it.

‘He looked like he was asleep,’ Suit said, his voice hoarse. Jesse nodded.

‘Dev said there was bruising, other than what the fall did, that made it look like he’d been punched in the face,’ Suit said. ‘Maybe more than once.’

‘If he was,’ Jesse said, ‘we’ll find out who did it.’

They both watched the ambulance slowly grind its way up the dirt road.

‘Somebody had to have done this to him,’ Suit said.

‘Maybe it was an accident,’ Jesse said. ‘Maybe he stumbled and fell somehow.’

‘He said he didn’t drink,’ Suit said.

‘I used to say the same thing when I was his age,’ Jesse said. ‘And so did you.’

Now Suit was the one staring up at the Bluff.

‘Does your sister know?’ Jesse asked.

Suit said, ‘I called her. Soon as I got here and saw it was him.’

‘Where’s her husband these days?’ Jesse said.

‘Who gives a shit?’ Suit said.

‘You need to go be with her,’ Jesse said.

‘I wanted to help,’ Suit said.

‘I know,’ Jesse said.

‘I’m on my way to her now,’ Suit said.

‘You want Molly to go with you?’ Jesse said.

‘I’m a grown-ass man, Jesse,’ Suit said.

Jesse put a hand on his shoulder.

‘No one in this world knows that better than me,’ he said.

Suit took in some ocean air, let it out slowly. Jesse watched as he gathered himself now, imagining him like a boxer getting to one knee after having just gotten tagged and knocked down. Then Suit began walking toward the dirt road. Doing the only thing you could. One foot in front of another.

Jesse and Molly began to follow him as Jesse felt his phone buzzing in the back pocket of his jeans.

Nellie

‘I’m sorry about Suit’s nephew,’ she said.

She already knew. Of course she did. She was Nellie.

Before Jesse could respond she added, ‘There was a fight at the party.’

Jesse stopped to let Molly go ahead.

‘Why are you giving that up?’ he said.

‘Because it’s Suit’s nephew,’ she said.

5

The day Jesse’s father died in the line of duty for the LAPD, died in the crossfire of a gang shootout in South Central, Jesse had done the only thing he knew how to do, when he was the young cop dealing with a death in the family.

He went back to work.

One way or another, there or here, drunk or sober or somewhere in between, it always came back to that for him. Only mechanism that worked for him. Like he had his own ideas about grief counseling.

Nellie still didn’t have all the details on the party. Still didn’t have the name of the other kid in the fight with Jack Carlisle; none of the other players would give it up, at least not yet.

‘It’s almost like there’s some kind of code,’ she’d said to Jesse on the phone.

‘Not almost,’ he said. ‘There is a code.’

A fight didn’t necessarily explain why Jack Carlisle had ended up in the water. But it was something. A start. One foot in front of the other.

Jesse was at Paradise High School a few minutes after the bell at nine o’clock. Jesse knew real grief counselors would be onsite before the morning was out, breaking off kids into small groups, or even working one-on-one with the ones most upset. Jesse knew the drill. There had been a suicide at the start of the school year, the girl who was vice president of the student council.

By now, Jesse was certain, the whole school knew what had happened to the star shortstop of the high school baseball team. The world of social media. Such a joy.

The principal, David Altman, told Jesse he’d need a few minutes to get the baseball team to the gym, as Jesse had requested.

Jesse was in Altman’s office with him. Being there made Jesse remember all the times in high school he’d been in the principal’s office. Never voluntarily.

Always with cause.

‘I’ll meet you there,’ Jesse told him. ‘The gym.’

‘I’m frankly not sure how the parents are going to feel about their children being questioned by the chief of police,’ Altman said. ‘As if the boys are suspects or something.’

‘If they object,’ Jesse said, ‘have them call me and I’ll explain this one crucial thing to them.’

‘What thing?’

‘That I don’t give a flying fuck about their feelings,’ Jesse said.

Altman was short, bald, slightly overweight, favored the kind of bow tie he was wearing this morning. His face now turned the color of a cherry blossom at Jesse’s word choice, which didn’t surprise him, since he’d always considered the principal of the high school an officious little prig.

‘I certainly hope you won’t use language like that in front of the student athletes,’ Altman said.

‘Only if one of them fucking annoys me,’ Jesse said.

Fifteen minutes later the members of the Paradise High baseball team were facing Jesse from where they all sat in the bleachers.

Jesse told Altman he could leave.

‘This is my school, Chief Stone,’ Altman said.

‘It’s your school about as much as this is my town,’ Jesse said. ‘I need the boys to be able to speak freely.’

‘They can do that in front of me,’ Altman said.

‘No, they can’t,’ Jesse said. ‘We can do this here, or I can load up the team bus and take them all to the station and you can speak freely to their parents about that.’

Altman stood his ground, but not for long, then turned and walked out of the gym as if he had important school business waiting for him somewhere else in the building.

Jesse stared up into the faces of kids he had watched win the big game the day before.

‘Listen, I knew Jack Carlisle,’ Jesse said. ‘And some of you might know that. I worked with him some on playing shortstop. Won’t wear you out with a trip down memory lane, but I made it as high as Triple-A when I was young. Dodgers chain. I just wasn’t as good as Jack was going to be.’

He was walking up and down in front of them.

‘Most of you know Jack was the nephew of one of my officers,’ Jesse said. ‘So this is as personal for us as it is for you.’

One of the kids raised a hand. Jesse recognized him. Kenny Simonds. The starting pitcher in yesterday’s game. His father owned an auto repair shop just over the line from Paradise, in Marshport.

‘Why are we here?’ Simonds said. ‘None of us want to talk to you. And my father always says that nobody has to talk to the police if they don’t want to.’

Jesse nodded.

‘They don’t,’ Jesse said. ‘But just so you know, Kenny, I am officially treating what happened to Jack as a suspicious death.’

‘Thanks for the heads-up,’ Simonds said, his voice full of sarcasm.

‘I wasn’t finished,’ Jesse said, putting some snap into his voice. ‘Nobody here has to talk to me. But if you don’t, if you choose not to help me investigate what happened to your friend, I’m going to look at you as hindering my investigation. And get suspicious about that.’

He moved to his right, so he was directly in front of Kenny Simonds.

‘Do I have your attention now?’ Jesse said.

Simonds nodded. He wasn’t the only one in the bleachers doing that. Jesse reminded himself these were high school kids, some of them or even most of them dealing with the death of a buddy for the first time in their lives.

‘Were all of you at the party at Bluff Lookout?’ Jesse said. More nods.

Jesse took a closer look at the faces in front of him, noticed that the team’s first baseman, Scott Ford, was wearing sunglasses.

‘Now I already know one of you had some kind of beef with Jack at some point in the proceedings last night,’ Jesse said. ‘Now I need to know who with.’

‘Who said there was a beef?’ Kenny Simonds said.

‘Son,’ Jesse said. ‘I’m the one asking the questions here.’

Jesse waited.

He was good at it.

Better than them.

He walked down to Scott Ford and said, ‘Lights too bright in here for you, Scott?’

Ford mumbled something.

‘I’m sorry, son, I didn’t quite catch that,’ Jesse said.

‘I said I didn’t want everybody to see I’ve been crying,’ Ford said. ‘Is all.’

‘Is all,’ Jesse said, nodding.

Then he quickly walked up the aisle and, before the kid could react, took off the glasses. Ford’s left eye was purple, swollen, nearly closed. Maybe he hadn’t known that Jesse knew about a fight before he walked into the gym. Maybe he was afraid to be the only team member not in attendance. He was a kid. Maybe he thought he could get by telling Jesse he’d been crying, as if he’d given up some crucial piece of information.

But here he was, anyway.

Jesse handed Ford back his glasses. Ford put them back on.

‘Let’s take a walk,’ Jesse said to him.

‘What if I don’t want to?’ Scott Ford said.

‘Then I can call Jack’s uncle and get him over here and you can explain about the fight to him instead of me,’ Jesse said. ‘Your call.’

The kid got up and began walking toward the double doors at the end of the gym. Jesse followed him. Before he was out the doors, he looked back over his shoulder. None of the other players had moved. They were just staring.

Boys to men, Jesse thought, this fast.

He thought: It must already seem to them as if somebody else won the big game.

6

Jesse and Molly sat with Scott Ford in Jesse’s office. Jesse had asked the kid if he wanted one of his parents present, or both of them. He’d said no, his father would only find a way to make things worse than they already were, if that was even possible.

‘I’ll tell them later,’ Ford said.

‘They know about the fight?’ Jesse said.

‘I’ll tell them that later, too,’ he said. ‘I slept at Kenny’s house last night. Our pitcher. The one smart-mouthing you in the gym.’

‘I know who he is,’ Jesse said.

Suit was still at his sister’s house. Thank heaven, Jesse thought, for small favors. Not that he was feeling particularly religious today. This wasn’t the first time he’d fantasized about getting God into an interrogation room and shining a light in His face and asking Him to explain shit like Jack Carlisle ending up dead in the water, and why He generally kept acting so pissed off at the world.

Ford sat on the other side of Jesse’s desk, big hands in his lap.

He’d taken off the sunglasses. The purple around his eye seemed to have darkened just since they left the gym, the bruise spreading. Jesse also noticed the swelling in his right hand. The kid looked tired and hungover and sad. And scared being in the office of the chief of police. The only thing he’d said to Jesse on the ride over here was ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

‘Should I?’ Jesse said.

‘It was just a dumb fight,’ Ford had said, ‘over nothing.’ Then he had started to cry for real.

In the office now, Molly asked if Ford wanted coffee.

‘Hot?’ he said.

‘All we got,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘No, thank you,’ Jesse said.

The kid shifted his attention to Jesse.

‘What?’

‘What you meant to say to Deputy Chief Crane,’ Jesse said, ‘was “No, thank you.”’

Oh,’ Ford said. ‘No, thank you.’

‘What was the fight about?’ Jesse said.

‘Like I told you,’ Ford said, ‘it was really about nothing.’

‘Scott,’ Jesse said in a soft, good-cop voice. ‘Let’s not either one of us fuck around here, okay?’

The kid leaned back and stared at the ceiling with one good eye. His sunglasses were in front of him on Jesse’s desk.

‘Why are we even doing this?’ Ford said. ‘I didn’t knock him into the water. We were nowhere near the water when we got into it.’

‘I’m just trying to figure out how he ended up in the water,’ Jesse said.

‘He was my teammate!’ Ford said. ‘He was my friend!’

‘You ever have a fistfight with your friend before?’ Jesse said.

‘We got into it a few times,’ Ford said. ‘My mom calls it dumb young-guy stuff.’

‘Not exactly what Chief Stone asked you, Scott,’ Molly said.

She always knew when to come in, shift the focus of the person being asked the questions. Like a pitcher changing a batter’s eye angle by moving the ball up and down, in and out.

‘Chief Stone asked if you and Jack ever got into a fistfight before,’ Molly said.

Ford was staring down at his big ballplayer’s hands again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This was the first time.’

But he hesitated, just slightly, before answering. ‘So what was it about?’ Jesse said.

‘He’d had too much beer and I’d had too much beer and he accused me of something I didn’t do,’ Ford said.

‘What would that be?’ Molly said.

‘Messing around with his girlfriend behind his back.’

He gave them a name. Ainsley Walsh. Said he’d never do anything like that, you never did that with a friend. Told them again that it wasn’t anywhere near the water and that he walked back to where the other guys were and Jack had walked off in another direction.

‘Toward the water?’ Jesse said.

‘I didn’t even look,’ Ford said. ‘I just wanted to get some ice. And get away from him.’

He looked up. Red eyes. Jesse thought he might cry again.

‘It was the last time I saw him,’ he said.

He slumped into the chair, seeming to collapse inside himself. Jesse could see him starting to shut down. Finally told him he could go, but might circle back later. Asked if Ford wanted a ride back to school. Scott Ford said he’d rather walk.

When the kid got to the door, he remembered he didn’t have his sunglasses, came back for them, put them back on.

‘Sorry about your friend,’ Jesse said.

Scott Ford said, ‘Not as sorry as I am.’

Less than a minute later, Jesse heard the shouting from the squad room.

When he came through the door he saw that Suit had Scott Ford up against a wall.

7

Five minutes later Suit was in the chair Scott Ford had just vacated, trying to get his breathing under control. Clenching and unclenching his own big hands. Molly had closed the door behind her, leaving them alone, letting them be.

‘I heard about the fight between him and Jack,’ Suit said.

‘From whom?’ Jesse asked.

‘My sister,’ Suit said. ‘She called me when I was on my way back here. One of the other moms called her.’

‘And you made a determination that the best way to process that information was to act like every cowboy asshole cop in America?’ Jesse said.

Suit’s face was still red. But then it never took much excitement, of any kind, for that to happen.

‘I’m sorry, Jesse, I really am,’ Suit said. ‘I just lost it when I came in and saw him in those sunglasses. Like he was Joe Cool or something, after what I saw in the water a few hours ago.’

‘“Sorry” hardly ever fixes the lamp,’ Jesse said.

‘It won’t happen again,’ Suit said.

‘Statement of the obvious,’ Jesse said.

‘Please don’t take me off the case,’ Suit said.

Jesse could see the plea in his eyes.

‘He wasn’t just a nephew to me, you know that,’ Suit said. ‘He was more like a son.’

Jesse’s son, Cole, had been accepted into the London Law Program, one approved by the American Bar Association, for second-and third-year students. It was an exclusive program, according to Cole. Its appeal might have had something to do with the English actress he had started dating before he’d applied. He and Jesse were staying in touch, but sometimes only once a month. The kid sounded happy. Leave him alone.

‘You could come over,’ Cole had said a few days ago.

‘I could become an astronaut, too,’ Jesse had told him.

Jesse walked over to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup. He was just buying himself time. Trying to get his own temper under control. He couldn’t let Suit get away with what he’d done, not in front of the whole squad room; it was unprofessional, bullshit behavior from one of his cops. One who felt like a son to Jesse. But he had no desire to make things worse for Suit than they already were, if such a thing was even possible today. Because Jesse was certain that things had never been worse for Suitcase Simpson, his whole life, than they were right now. From the time he’d gone to work for Jesse, Suit had consistently been one of the happiest people Jesse had ever known.

It was the old Mike Tyson line. Amazing how much of life always came back to that. Everybody had a plan until they got hit.

Jesse sat back down with his coffee and drank some. Most of the time he was the only one drinking from his pot. It was like the ballpark coffee he used to drink when he was playing ball, strong enough to fuel a small jet.

‘This might be nothing more than a terrible accident,’ Jesse said. ‘He’s standing there and he’s hot-wired after slugging it out with the Ford kid and at least half drunk. Or more than that. We won’t know that until we get the tox screen back. He’s all spun around on what was supposed to be a fun night for everybody. And maybe the world started to spin around.’

‘I never saw him even take a single beer,’ Suit said.

‘You’re his uncle, Suit,’ Jesse said. ‘You treated him like a golden boy. Matter of fact so did I, every chance I got.’

Jesse shrugged and drank some coffee.

‘We’ll find out how much booze he had in him,’ Jesse said. ‘Dev will do everything he can to speed this one along.’

They sat there in silence. How many times had the two of them sat together in this office, working on a case, or just shooting the shit?

Just never like this.

Charlie talked about scar tissue. Jesse knew how much he’d developed on this job.

But what about Suit?

Molly came in then, quietly closed the door behind her, sat down next to Suit, took one of his hands in hers.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey,’ Suit said.

He turned to face her.

‘I have to ask this,’ Molly said.

Suit waited.

‘Is there any chance he could have jumped?’ she said.

8

Jesse and Molly were standing near the place at Bluff Lookout where Jack Carlisle had likely spent his last moments on earth.

‘Amazing view,’ Molly said.

‘Of infinity, maybe,’ Jesse said.

Suit had started yelling again after Molly had raised the prospect of suicide. This time Jesse sent him home.

‘Don’t talk shit!’ Suit had said to Molly.

‘And don’t you talk to Molly like that,’ Jesse said.

Jesse couldn’t remember another time when Suit had ever done that, spoken to Molly that way.

‘Jesse, you knew him,’ Suit said.

‘Everyone thinks they know a kid suffering from depression until they don’t,’ Jesse said.

‘You’re saying that’s what happened?’ Suit said.

He was shouting again, at both of them then.

‘There is no way he killed himself!’ Suit said.