Robert B. Parker's Fool's Paradise E-Book

Mike Lupica

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 361

Beschreibung

When an unknown man is found murdered in Paradise, Jesse Stone will have his hands full finding out who he was - and what he was seeking. When a body is discovered at the lake in Paradise, Police Chief Jesse Stone is surprised to find he recognizes the murder victim - the man had been at the same AA meeting as Jesse the evening before. But otherwise, Jesse has no clue as to the man's identity. He isn't a local, nor does he have ID on him, nor does any neighboring state have a reported missing person matching the man's description. Their single lead is from a taxi company that recalls dropping off the mysterious stranger outside the gate at the mansion of one of the wealthiest families in town... Meanwhile, after Jesse survives a hail of gunfire on his home, he wonders if it could be related to the mysterious murder. When both Molly Crane and Suitcase Simpson also become targets, it's clear someone has an axe to grind against the entire Paradise Police Department.

Leseprobe

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’ –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

For John Fisher, Chief of Police, Carlisle, Mass.

Conents

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ROBERT B. PARKER

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR MIKE LUPICA

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

Acknowledgments

ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1

Jesse Stone opened his eyes even before the alarm on his phone started to chirp, 5:58 a.m. Sunday, Fourth of July weekend, cold sober. Stone cold. Private joke. His drinking never was. Jesse had never been a happy drunk, or a funny one. Just a drunk.

Once he would still have been drunk at this time of the morning, trying to decide whether he was waking up or coming to, and likely scared shitless about what he might have done the night before.

Good times.

Now he set the alarm for six, seven days a week.

Last night had been another early one for him, after the relighting of the marquee above the entrance to the Paradise Cinema. The theater had burned to the ground the year before. But somehow that day the volunteers from the Paradise Fire Department had managed to save the marquee. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, a not-for-profit committee had been formed by Lily Cain, part of the town’s royal and ruling class. It was called Friends of Paradise. No better friend than Lily, who, being Lily, had quickly raised enough money to invade New Hampshire. The Paradise Cinema had been rebuilt in less than a year and had officially reopened last night.

Jesse had looked around the crowd during the ceremony and seen all these happy faces lining Main Street. So many more faces of color than there had been in Paradise when he’d first arrived here. The town wasn’t just more diverse than it had been twenty years ago. He knew it was better because of the diversity, livelier and more welcoming. Even though he knew people of color still scared the money in town, and there was still a boatload of that.

But for this one night, they all stood shoulder to shoulder on Main Street, cheering the reopening of a theater that always looked to Jesse as if it had been a fixture in Paradise almost as long as the ocean. It always amazed Jesse how little it took to make other people happy.

Molly Crane, his deputy and friend, had seen him staring into the crowd before Lily Cain threw the switch to light the marquee.

‘Looking for potential perps?’ she said.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Just trying to figure out why something like this could make this many people feel this good.’

‘Maybe because these people don’t think feeling good is against the law in Paradise, Massachusetts,’ she said.

‘I’m the chief,’ Jesse said. ‘I should know shit like that.’

‘Not about being happy,’ Molly said.

‘I think of myself as a work in progress,’ he said.

She’d sighed and said, ‘So much work.’

Fireworks had lit the sky as soon as the ceremony ended. Most of Paradise had gone out to party after that, in bars, all the way to the beach. Jesse had gone home to bed. Alone. But sober.

Sober, he knew, was why he was still the chief of police. Alone was because he’d arrived at the decision, at least for the time being, that he was about as good at romantic relationships as he had been with scotch.

Molly Crane had always said he was the alonest man she’d ever known.

His phone started chirping again. Incoming call this time.

The display said Suit.

‘Got a body at the lake,’ Suitcase Simpson said.

Jesse had made Suit a detective at the same time he’d officially made Molly his deputy, and had gotten both of them raises, despite the objections of the cheapskates on the Board of Selectmen. When Jesse had first met Luther Simpson, nicknamed Suitcase after an old-time ballplayer, he’d been a former high school football player, a local who’d just drifted into police work, after he’d taken the test, passed it. Molly had been working the desk and acting as a dispatcher. Now Suit had grown into being a terrific cop, even if Jesse still looked at him and saw the big, open-faced kid he’d met originally. Molly had grown into being a first-rate cop herself, in addition to being completely indispensable.

‘Man or woman?’

Jesse sat up.

‘Man.’

‘How?’ Jesse said.

‘Looks like a bullet to the back of the head,’ Suit said. ‘Or two. Lot of blood.’

‘ID?’

‘Not yet. But we just got here. I wanted to call you first thing.’

‘You’re a detective,’ Jesse said. ‘It means you’re authorized to start detecting without me.’

‘Just going by the book,’ Suit said. ‘Yours.’

‘Floater?’

‘No, praise Jesus and all of His apostles.’

Suit now knew more about floaters than he’d ever wanted to, things that Jesse had learned a long time ago in Los Angeles, about how bodies in the water first sank and then eventually came back to the surface as the air in them was replaced with gas that inflated them like toy dolls. The longer they had been in the water, especially seawater, the better the chance that fish and crabs and sea lice had been feeding on them, turning them into something you never forgot.

Suit told Jesse exactly where he was at the lake, a part of the closest thing Paradise had to a Central Park, close to town, full of wooded areas, but somehow feeling remote at the same time. It was on the west side of Paradise, next to the field where Jesse still played in the Paradise Men’s Softball League. What he called the Men of Summer. It’s where they’d once found a teenage girl named Elinor Bishop. Jesse had seen more than his share of floaters when he’d worked Robbery Homicide. Suit had never seen one before Elinor Bishop. He still said he’d rather be caught wearing women’s clothing than catch another floater.

He’d admitted later to Jesse that the first chance he got that night, and hoping that nobody else noticed, he went into the woods and nearly puked up a lung.

Jesse told Suit he was on his way, and ended the call. Then he was out of bed, having already decided not to shower, getting into the jeans he’d left hanging over the chair next to his bed, grateful there was no hangover for him to manage. Before the lighting of the marquee, he had been at an AA meeting in Marshport, the next town over from Paradise. At one point the speaker had said having a hangover was like having a second job.

Jesse was still making it. Day at a goddamn time. Still on the job as chief. Maybe that was all the proof he needed that the Higher Power they talked about in AA really was looking out for him. Serving and protecting him.

Jesse felt a different kind of buzz now. One that had never had anything to do with booze. Just cop adrenaline and a dead body making him feel more alive than he had in a while.

He went into the kitchen, poured some coffee into a travel mug, mixed in cream and sugar, and headed out the door. Before he did, he stopped, having caught his reflection in the mirror in his living room.

Toasted himself with the mug as he did.

First of the day, Jesse Stone thought.

2

Jesse drove his new black Ford Explorer through the empty streets of Paradise, the theater marquee looking like some kind of ghost light sitting on top of morning fog. Suit had told him it was time to upgrade, that this year’s Explorer got a better ‘pursuit rating’ than Jesse’s model, that they had beefed-up suspensions and performed better, and that you could get them even more easily prewired than before for police radios and what Suit called ‘all the other fun cop shit.’

Jesse had told him to stop, he was sold, had gone to the Board, and had been issued the Explorer he was driving now. He got them to issue Suit one, too. Molly said she was sticking with her old Cherokee.

She’d just shook her head at the time and said, ‘Boys with their souped-up toys.’

As Jesse got to the lake he saw the flashing blue lights, like a different kind of light show now in the first hour after sunrise. He parked the car, got out, and ducked underneath the yellow crime tape, noticing Suit’s Explorer parked next to the medical examiner’s van and two other patrol cars. No onlookers here yet, no cell phone pictures being taken. Soon, though. Word would get out. It always did. In the old days, before the advent of digital portable radios, there had briefly been an app people in Paradise could download onto their phones that live-streamed the PPD’s police scanners. All in the name of transparency. Jesse had shut it down first chance he got.

Yeah, Jesse always thought, what the world needs.

More fucking transparency.

He walked toward the water. The new state medical examiner, Dev Chadha, and Suit were standing over the body. Peter Perkins was there, too. He’d been with Jesse on the PPD as long as Molly and Suit had, and hadn’t even changed after his morning run. He was in a faded Patriots Super Bowl T-shirt and gray sweatpants and New Balance sneakers the color of tangerines, already walking the immediate area. Gabe Weathers was doing the same. Jesse just assumed both Peter and Gabe had heard on the new portable radios that had been issued to everybody in the department. Now they were both taking photographs and video with their phones, trying to get as complete a picture of the scene as possible.

There were twelve men and women in the Paradise Police Department. A third of them were here now, before seven on a Sunday morning. They all understood why. It never mattered whether it was a big city or a small town. Murder was still the main event.

The body was still facedown about twenty yards from the water’s edge, the back of his head matted with blood that did not yet appear completely dry. Jesse didn’t know how many bodies there had been for him in his cop life, in L.A. and here. Had never tried to process his personal body count. Just knew there had been too many. The first one had been a shooting victim on a side street near Dodger Stadium. Slumped over the wheel of a car, two bullets to the back of the head. Hector Rodriguez. The shit you remembered. He’d wanted to throw up, too, but knew if he did he would never hear the end of it. Death before dishonor.

‘You call I-and-I yet?’ Jesse said to Suit.

The Identification and Information unit from the State Police, with an office in Marshport now, was attached to the new police lab there.

Suit grinned.

‘I might have waited until I saw the chief’s vehicle arriving at the crime scene,’ Suit said.

‘But they’re on their way?’ Jesse said.

Suit was still grinning. ‘Well, yeah, now they are.’

Jesse turned to Dev.

‘How’d you get here so fast?’

‘Don’t sleep,’ he said. ‘Got no life other than this job right now.’ He grinned. ‘And this is the first homicide I’ve caught since I got this job.’

‘No ID?’ Jesse said to Suit.

Suit shook his head. He was wearing jeans but had put on a blue PPD windbreaker over a polo shirt. Jesse had never met a cop happier to no longer be in uniform than Luther ‘Suitcase’ Simpson.

‘Nothing in the back pockets of his jeans, or in the general vicinity,’ Suit said. ‘Dev and I were waiting for you to roll him over.’

‘You didn’t have to wait.’

‘You suddenly stop being a control freak overnight?’ he said. ‘I need to tell Gabe and Peter.’

It was part of the ongoing dynamic between the two of them. Even before the son Jesse didn’t know he had, Cole, had shown up from Los Angeles, he’d treated Suit like a son. But Suit constantly reminded him that he was about to turn forty and didn’t need Jesse to still hold his hand on the job.

Suit had still waited for Jesse to show up and take full control of the scene. Usually the Staties would take charge of the investigation as soon as they showed up. But both Jesse and Suit knew the rules of engagement were different in Paradise. Jesse had the same standing with Brian Lundquist, the chief homicide investigator with the Massachusetts State Police, that he’d had with Healy, Lundquist’s predecessor, now retired. Neither one of them had ever treated Jesse Stone like just another small-town cop. Mostly because they knew better.

‘The control thing is just one more habit I’m trying to quit,’ Jesse said.

‘I’m gonna have to see some evidence of that before I believe it,’ Suit said.

‘And don’t do it all at once,’ Dev said. ‘You risk decompression syndrome.’

‘Decompression syndrome?’ Jesse said.

‘The bends,’ Dev said.

Jesse knew the drill by now. They all did. They weren’t showing disrespect to the dead by standing over the body and talking some cop smack with one another. Somehow it just made standing over the body easier for them all to handle. Just more rituals of the job. Ones you’d never find in any book.

‘Who found him?’ Jesse asked Suit.

‘Woman who lives between the lake and the park,’ Suit said. ‘Christina Sample. I played football with her brother Tommy in high school.’

Sometimes Jesse thought Suit had played football with every male in Paradise who was around his age.

‘Christina was out early walking her dog,’ Suit continued. ‘She’s pretty upset. She thought it was somebody who might have been sleeping it off after partying too hard last night.’

Jesse turned to Dev.

‘Lot of blood,’ Jesse said.

‘Whoa,’ Dev said. ‘You don’t miss anything.’

‘Fuck off,’ Jesse said.

Dev grinned and saluted. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

Molly said one time that Dev was a dead ringer for the actor who starred in Slumdog Millionaire. Jesse had asked her which Clint Eastwood Western that was. But when he’d looked up the actor on the Internet, he’d seen Molly was right. Molly just knew a lot of things, about a lot of topics that didn’t interest Jesse in the slightest.

‘When there’s this much it can take hours to dry completely,’ Dev said. ‘The guys say they can’t see any sign that the body has been moved. So it must have happened here.’

‘How do you shoot somebody here and nobody hears the shot?’ Jesse said.

‘My guess?’ Dev said. ‘Happened during the fireworks.’

Jesse said. ‘Shell casing?’

Suit shook his head. ‘Guy must have grabbed it.’

‘What about the round?’ Jesse said.

‘It’ll depend on the caliber,’ Dev said. ‘But from the looks of the entrance wound, it’s probably still inside him.’

‘You said nothing in the back pockets?’ Jesse said to Suit.

‘No phone,’ Suit said. ‘No wallet. Weird, unless it was a robbery.’

‘Okay,’ Jesse said. ‘Let’s turn him over.’

‘You don’t think we’ll catch some shit from the CPACs?’ Suit said.

State Police detectives, from Crime Prevention and Control. They were the ones who investigated untimely deaths. Jesse had always wondered about that with homicides. If they weren’t untimely, what the hell were they?

‘It would be me catching the shit,’ Jesse said. ‘But I won’t.’

With Suit’s help they gently rolled the body over. There was no exit wound to the forehead. So the bullet was still inside him. As Jesse reached down to close the man’s eyes, Suit said, ‘I don’t know the guy.’

‘I do,’ Jesse said.

3

‘Man, I still can’t believe you met this guy at your AA meeting,’ Suit said.

‘Well,’ Jesse said. ‘It wasn’t just mine.’

‘But you’d never met him before?’ Suit said.

‘I’d never been to this meeting before,’ Jesse said. ‘I just felt like I needed one last night. There wasn’t one here, so I went on the website and found one in Marshport.’

Suit looked at him, frowning.

‘So you needed a meeting like you used to need a drink?’

Jesse grinned. ‘You’re probably noticing the connection, Detective.’

‘You’re making fun of me,’ Suit said.

‘Am not,’ Jesse said.

‘You sure?’

‘I am,’ Jesse said.

They were in Jesse’s office back at the station. Dev was with the body at the lab in Marshport. The two CPACs who’d shown up, Crandall and Scoppetta, were still with Peter Perkins and Gabe at the scene.

Jesse and Suit had stopped to pick up donuts, even though Suit swore he didn’t eat them anymore. Since he’d married Elena he not only was in the best shape of his life, he bragged constantly about his low cholesterol numbers the way ball-players bragged about high batting averages.

Or getting laid.

‘You meet this guy last night in the next town over and the next morning he shows up dead in ours,’ Suit said. ‘What are the odds?’

‘I really didn’t do much more than say hello,’ Jesse said. ‘He wasn’t the main speaker. But at the end they ask if anybody else wants to say something and this guy said his name was Paul, and that he was grateful to be in the room, because he felt as if he needed a meeting as much as he ever had.’

‘That was it?’ Suit said.

‘Then he said that he knew part of the process in AA was making amends, but wondered if amends worked both ways. And everybody kicked that around for a few minutes.’

Suit said, ‘He explain what he meant by that?’

Jesse shook his head.

‘And you only got his first name,’ Suit said.

‘The way it works, Suit,’ Jesse said. ‘“Hi, I’m Jesse and I’m an alcoholic.” Then it’s all the slogans. They’re a bear for slogans. “One day at a time.” “Easy does it.” “Friend of Bill.”’

‘Who’s Bill?’

‘One of the guys who started AA.’

‘Didn’t you have a sponsor named Bill?’

‘Coincidence,’ Jesse said.

‘I’m not gonna lie, Jesse, it still sounds weird to me,’ Suit said. ‘Hearing you call yourself an alcoholic. It still makes me think of skid-row bums a little bit.’

‘It’s no different than me saying I used to play shortstop, or used to be married to Jenn,’ Jesse said.

‘You still miss it?’ Suit said. ‘The drinking?’

‘Other than every day,’ Jesse said, ‘not so much.’

They each sipped coffee. There was a Cuisinart coffee-maker in the corner, one Jesse hadn’t fired up yet. The machine had been a gift to the PPD from Sunny Randall, back in Jesse’s life now if not his bed. They each had their reasons. But then sometimes Jesse thought sex was more complicated than the tax code.

‘Did the guy know that you were a cop?’ Suit said. ‘At the meeting?’

Jesse shook his head. ‘He was Paul, I was Jesse. I didn’t ask for his last name and he didn’t ask for mine. Now I wish I had.’

‘Did he say he was on his way over here?’

‘Nope,’ Jesse said. ‘Sometimes you hang around after a particularly good meeting, but I didn’t want to be late for Lily’s big night. I shook his hand and left.’

‘You think he lives in Paradise?’ Suit said.

‘Don’t know that he doesn’t.’

‘But would it make sense for him to go to an AA meeting in Marshport?’

‘Not that far away, and people are always looking for meetings that meet their schedule or their needs.’ Jesse shrugged and drank coffee. ‘I was there.’

‘So either he had his own car,’ Suit said, ‘or took a car service.’

‘Or hitched a ride with somebody else from the meeting if he didn’t have a car,’ Jesse said.

‘Who doesn’t have a car?’

‘Maybe a drunk who lost his license for being a drunk.’

‘You really think he might be from here?’ Suit said.

‘This is a small town, Suit,’ Jesse said. ‘You grew up here. I’ve been here a long time. But we don’t know everybody.’

‘Maybe his prints will be in the system.’

Jesse grinned. ‘Wish to build a dream on,’ he said.

The phones were quiet. By some minor miracle the four cells near the squad room were empty, even after all the drinking that Jesse knew had to have gone on late into the night. Jesse wasn’t spiking the ball yet, but maybe this was going to be a holiday weekend when the town didn’t turn into Stupidville.

‘You going back to Marshport?’ Suit said to Jesse.

‘There’s a six o’clock meeting at the same church every night,’ Jesse said. ‘Maybe Paul talked to more people after I left.’

‘And some of them might be back there tonight?’

‘You get a good meeting, you generally stay with it,’ Jesse said.

‘Every day?’

‘Some people go to two a day,’ Jesse said.

‘You’re shitting.’

‘Whatever it takes.’

Suit stood. He said he was going back to the lake to relieve Peter and Gabe, see if there was anything he’d missed, or they had. Said he might go back and interview Christina Sample again. When he got back, he said he’d start checking Uber and Lyft, in addition to taxi companies and other local car services who hadn’t been put out of business by Uber and Lyft, at least not yet.

‘I’m sorry the guy died,’ Suit said. ‘But I still got this feeling, you know? Like it’s game on, or something. You know what I mean?’

‘I do,’ Jesse said.

‘That feeling ever get old?’

‘Not until we’re the ones dead,’ Jesse said.

Jesse was alone in his office after Suit left. Molly had just texted him to let him know she was on her way in, she’d been dealing with something at home. A kid named Jeff Alonso, who’d started out on the cops in Rhode Island, was working the front desk. Jesse reached into one of the bottom drawers of his desk for the old ball he kept there, and the Rawlings glove that was an exact replica of the one he’d worn in the minors. Cole had somehow found it, and had given it to Jesse as a gift. He put the glove on his left hand now, began to pound the ball into the pocket.

Damn damn damn, he thought. It still feels sweet.

He still loved the feel of it all, ball and glove, the seams underneath his fingers. Loved the sound of the ball hitting the pocket. Jesse had always been able to get the ball in the hole or behind second, and throw it hard across the diamond, and accurately. Even when he and Suit played catch with a softball, Suit would talk about the hissing sound he swore the ball made when Jesse threw it. Jesse was always a better fielder than hitter but had always believed he was a good enough hitter to make it to the bigs, until he got hurt.

He returned the glove to his drawer and then leaned back in his chair, fingers laced behind his head, and thought of Paul, sitting in the church basement, full of his own sobriety less than twenty-four hours ago. Now he was on Dev’s table at the new lab in Marshport and it was Jesse’s job to find out how he got there.

He spent so much time thinking about what he couldn’t do, thinking about who he used to be and who he was now. Or what he was. Wondering what he missed more, baseball or drinking. Or all the women in his life that he’d lost. Some had quit him, the way baseball had. He’d quit more. Maybe that was the real question in the end: had he lost more in his life than he had gained?

Amazing how much goddamn time he spent organizing his life around drinking. Every goddamn day.

Fuck it, he thought, and told himself all over again that he needed this job more than he needed a drink.

Think about that.

Jesse knew he’d never be a bear himself on all the AA slogans, or the Twelve Steps. But he knew what the steps were.

Number eight was the one about making amends.

Paul had talked about amends.

4

Jesse was still at his desk when Molly Crane burst into his office as if sparks should have been shooting off her, like a car riding on rims.

‘My friends are dumber than housewives’ shows,’ she said, plopping herself down in one of the chairs across from him.

‘You watch those shows?’ Jesse said.

‘Just enough to know that my friends are wicked dumber than them,’ Molly said.

‘All of them,’ Jesse said, ‘or one in particular?’

‘One,’ she said. ‘Annie. Who was nearly raped last night after I left her at the Scupper.’

‘Tell me,’ Jesse said.

The Scupper was in a section of Paradise known as the Swap, and was as close to a dive as any bar in town. Jesse had never had anything against dive bars, he’d always thought they were more real than modern places where the beer list was longer than a police manual. Jesse had just never understood the appeal of this one, even for kids just looking to get a load on. He thought you went to the Scupper only if the Gray Gull was too crowded. Or if you were just too overserved to give a shit.

‘You, Deputy Chief Molly Crane, went to the Scupper?’ Jesse said. ‘And not at gunpoint?’

‘You want to hear about this or not?’ Molly said.

‘You know I do,’ Jesse said. ‘Did the attempted rape happen in the Swap?’

‘In the park,’ she said. ‘You know that little wooded area?’

Jesse told her he did.

‘Guess there were a lot of fireworks last night,’ Jesse said.

‘You mean the body at the lake,’ Molly said.

Jesse nodded.

Molly said, ‘Let me finish telling you mine, then you tell me yours. Okay?’

Molly and Annie had walked down to the Scupper after the fireworks. But it had gotten too loud and too crowded. Molly finally left, and ran into Suit and Elena on the street. They gave her a ride home. Annie wanted to stay. Her husband was out of town, their kids were at camp.

‘Told me she wanted to kick up her heels a little,’ Molly said.

‘She actually said that?’ Jesse said.

‘She’s a tiny bit older than she looks,’ Molly said.

‘She looks like your older sister to me.’

Molly finally managed a smile. ‘How much older?’ she said.

‘When did you find out what happened?’

‘She woke me up a little while ago,’ Molly said. ‘She still sounded half drunk.’

‘Know the feeling,’ Jesse said. ‘She fool around, by the way? When her husband isn’t around and the kids are at camp?’

‘That’s the thing,’ Molly said. ‘Not that I’ve ever known, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t.’

Annie told Molly that she kept drinking like the world was about to end after Molly left her, had some laughs chatting up some young guy who showed her the motorcycle he had parked out front, declined a ride home on it after watching him come back inside and match her drink for drink. She staggered out of there finally. Alone. Can’t remember what time. Streets were still filled with people. A guy started walking with her on the street. Big beard, she remembers that. Told her it was too early to go home, they needed to get to this party. What party? Annie wanted to know. The guy said the one in the park for just the two of them.

‘She still wanted to kick up her heels,’ Jesse said.

‘Or get them all the way up in the air,’ Molly said.

‘Hey, we both know that can happen to the best of them,’ Jesse said, grinning at her.

They both knew what he meant, the one time in her marriage she had been unfaithful to her husband.

‘We’re talking about Annie here,’ Molly said. ‘Focus.’

‘Been meaning to ask,’ Jesse said. ‘You ever hear from your old friend Crow?’

She gave him a look as if she might go outside and key his car.

‘Are you gonna let me tell this or not?’

‘Sorry.’

‘So they end up at the park, just the two of them. On the swings first. Turns out he’s got a flask with him. She drinks. He drinks. They start making out. And then bullshit bullshit bullshit, as you like to say, and he’s pulling her into the trees on the lake side and he’s on top of her. As drunk as she was, and whatever she thought she wanted, she didn’t want that. She tried to scream, but he put a hand over her mouth. At that point, she just thought she’d have to let it happen. He was too big and she was too drunk.’

‘Bullshit bullshit bullshit,’ Jesse said.

‘Exactly.’

‘But you say it didn’t happen.’

‘All of a sudden, they hear a gunshot, she says, and it sounds pretty close,’ Molly said.

‘Not fireworks?’

Molly shook her head. ‘I asked her. She said even she could tell the difference.’

‘So unless somebody else fired a gun last night, it was the gunshot from the lake.’

‘Anyway,’ Molly said, ‘the guy just says, “Fuck it, bitch, I didn’t really want you anyway,” and just leaves her there.’

‘Virtue intact.’

‘Barely,’ Molly said.

‘Would she remember the guy if she saw him again?’

‘She says no. Said he was wearing some kind of trucker-hat pulled down low over his eyes.’

‘You should tell her to come in,’ Jesse said.

‘That’s the thing, she won’t,’ Molly said. ‘I already asked her that, too. She’s embarrassed that she was even in that situation. She doesn’t want Mitch to find out. Said she was telling me as her friend, not a cop.’

‘She still ought to come in,’ Jesse said. ‘I don’t want somebody like the trucker-hat asshole running loose in our town.’

‘I told her I wouldn’t tell,’ Molly said. ‘But I never count you when I say I won’t tell anybody. You, I tell you everything. Even when I wish I wouldn’t. Starting with my night with Crow.’ She shook her head, disgusted. ‘To my everlasting regret.’

‘At least you made your own choices with Crow,’ Jesse said.

‘I’m not blaming the victim here, I’m really not,’ Molly said. ‘But she ought to want the guy caught same as us.’

‘Give her some time,’ Jesse said. ‘Then make another run at her.’

He noticed his coffee cup was empty. He’d forgotten to make more.

‘Want coffee?’ he said.

‘Not if I have to make it.’

‘I forget sometimes you’re deputy chief,’ he said.

Molly grinned. ‘Fuckin’ ay,’ she said.

He walked across the room and filled a paper filter with Dunkin’ coffee and filled the machine with water. While they both waited for the coffee to brew, Molly took a donut out of the box in front of Jesse. She complained constantly about her weight but never put on an extra pound as far as Jesse could tell. It was a Molly thing. By now he thought that her talking about her hips should be the start of a drinking game.

Just not for him.

‘A guy who acts out like that,’ Jesse said. ‘He’ll do it again. Just a matter of time and opportunity. Hate to think we’ve got an ape like that wandering around town.’

‘Along with a murderer,’ Molly said. ‘You know who the vic is yet?’

‘Sort of,’ Jesse said. And told her.

‘Where’s Suit?’ she asked.

‘Back at the lake,’ Jesse said. ‘Probably making calls about car services from there. Peter and Gabe are canvassing the lake houses, all the way around to the other side.’

They talked about Paul not having a phone or wallet on him, and why the killer would have lifted them both.

‘You think it was a robbery gone bad?’ Molly said.

‘I’ll make that one of the first things I ask him when I catch his ass,’ Jesse said.

‘At least Annie made it home from the park,’ Molly said.

‘I’m going to find out what happened to this guy,’ Jesse said.

‘You only talked to him for a couple minutes,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean this has to be personal.’

‘Feels that way.’

‘It always does when it happens in your town,’ Molly said.

‘Yours, too,’ Jesse said.

His cell phone was on the desk in front of him. He heard it buzzing now. Picked it up and saw it was Suit again. The way his day had begun.

‘Got lucky,’ Suit said. ‘Got nothing from Uber or Lyft. But the second cab company I called in Marshport told me one of their drivers picked your guy up a block from the church and drove him over here.’

‘Good work,’ Jesse said.

‘Aw, shucks,’ Suit said.

‘How’d the guy pay?’

‘Cash.’

‘Where’d he get dropped?’ Jesse said.

There was a pause at Suit’s end of the phone and then he said, ‘That’s the interesting part.’

Jesse waited.

‘Lily Cain’s house,’ Suit said.

5

Jesse ordered sandwiches from Daisy’s, which Daisy Dyke herself delivered. When she did, Jesse asked her why she continued to be so good to him.

‘Because you continue to give me hope,’ she said, ‘that not all men should have a bounty on them.’

Everybody in town called her Daisy Dyke. She called herself Daisy Dyke. In the world of political correctness, it made Jesse love her even more. But there were other reasons. She had a heart as big as the ocean, and was tough enough to clean up Afghanistan all by herself. Her short hair was a purple color these days. Jesse told her he liked it. Daisy told him she’d gone with it because one of the women on the U.S. World Cup team had the same color. Jesse told Daisy he didn’t know she liked soccer. She said she didn’t, she just had a thing for the soccer woman with the purple hair and tattoos.

‘You sure you don’t want to go steady?’ Jesse said before she left.

‘Don’t be vulgar,’ she said.

Jesse couldn’t remember the last time that he and Suit and Molly had been in the conference room on a Sunday morning. They were now. Gabe was looking at security footage from the new camera that had been mounted on a front corner of the Paradise Cinema, wanting to see if Paul might have been in the crowd the previous night, before somehow making his way to the lake. Peter Perkins was still knocking on doors at the lake houses closest to where the body had been found.

‘You going to eat your fries?’ Suit said to Molly.

‘I thought fried food was the enemy now,’ Molly said.

‘A man still has needs,’ Suit said.

‘Well, try to keep them under control,’ Molly said. ‘All of them.’

Jesse took a bite of his pastrami sandwich, washed it down with coffee. It was the second fresh pot he’d made. Maybe he did have to quit caffeine next.

‘We’ve got the guy at the meeting in Marshport,’ Jesse said. ‘We’ve got Lily’s address. But until we got an ID, we’ve got shit.’

‘It’s still kind of early,’ Molly said.

‘It’s a murder investigation,’ Jesse said. ‘There was an old ballplayer one time who said it gets late early around here. First twenty-four hours are the most important sometimes.’

‘If this guy’s prints aren’t in the system, how do we find out who the hell he is and where he comes from?’ Suit said.

‘There’s different agencies,’ Jesse said, ‘for prints and dental records. One is the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. They started up that Armed Forces DNA Identification thing for soldiers back in the nineties. There’s a few others.’

‘You just know this stuff off the top of your head?’ Suit said.

‘How many times do we have to go over this?’ Jesse said. He ate some pickle. ‘I’m the chief.’

Molly slapped away Suit’s hand as he reached for one of the fries still in her container.

Jesse said, ‘We need to wait a couple days to put his picture out. Always gotta be careful with next-of-kin issues. If there are people looking for Paul and they see it on the Crier website or wherever, they’ll want to shoot me out of a cannon.’

The Paradise Town Crier was somehow still in business even with bigger papers in bigger cities going under all the time. The owner, Sam Brill, was always complaining about the cost of everything as he got ready to cut his staff again. Jesse thought of him as the real town crier.

Most of the bylines in the paper belonged to a kid named Nellie Shofner, who’d almost always gotten things right when it came to covering the PPD. Jesse liked her.

‘I can’t believe our friend Nellie hasn’t called already,’ Molly said.

‘She will soon. And when she does…’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll give her one and tell her you’re unavailable for comment.’ She grinned. ‘Though I always get the feeling that Nellie wishes you were a lot more available to her.’

‘How many times do we have to go over this,’ Jesse said. ‘She’s my son’s age.’

‘Looks at you like she’s all grown up,’ Molly said.

‘Not all available women in Paradise want to jump my bones,’ Jesse said.

‘Those are just the ones who don’t want to wait in line,’ Molly said. ‘They must not know that the line moves.’

Jesse told Molly he was on his way to see Lily Cain.

‘You going to call first?’ Molly said.

‘You’re the one who thinks every woman in town loves me,’ Jesse said. ‘I’ll just give Lily a thrill and surprise her.’

He saw Molly smiling at him.

‘What?’ he said.

‘You’ve got that look,’ she said.

‘What look?’

‘The one that says you might nearly be happy right now.’ She was still smiling. ‘Maybe you don’t need another woman in your life,’ she said. ‘Just a stiff.’

‘Works better with both sometimes,’ Jesse said.

‘Don’t be gross,’ she said, and Jesse told her that Daisy Dyke, even playing in a different league than Molly, had basically told him the same thing today.

6

Lily once joked to Jesse that she’d gotten to the big house on the water the old-fashioned way.

She’d married her way to it.

Jesse thought it had to be more about the money than love, because nothing else made sense. Whit Cain, before his stroke, had looked and acted like every rich asshole the country had produced over the last hundred years, as guys like him kept getting richer, as if somehow assholes like him had become our most predominant natural resource. Jesse had always heard he cheated on Lily, and copiously, at least when he could still get around. Jesse had never spent enough time in their social orbit to know for sure. What he did know was that Whit Cain, before the stroke, had been spending most of his time at his home in Palm Beach, as if he and Lily were leading separate lives. Lily told Jesse once she’d rather spend more time with her gynecologist than more in Palm Beach.

The Cain compound was at the end of Paradise Neck, the harbor to the left and Stiles Island in the distance to the right. The Atlantic Ocean stretched out in front of them, like it was just one more thing in Paradise, that belonged to the Cains.

A carriage house built in the 1930s, the place had grown and grown. Like the family fortune. Sometimes Jesse thought that whoever said money didn’t grow on trees was full of shit.

The legend around Paradise was that Whit Cain’s father had started out in the bootlegging business with Joseph Kennedy, even though the Kennedys denied to this day that their old man had ever been involved in anything illegal, same as the Cains did.