Robert B. Parker's The Bitterest Pill E-Book

Reed Farrel Coleman

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Jesse Stone Mystery
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 423

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The opioid epidemic has reached Paradise, and Police Chief Jesse Stone must rush to stop the devastation in the latest thriller in Robert B. Parker's New York Times-bestselling series. When a popular high school cheerleader dies of a suspected heroin overdose, it becomes clear that the opioid epidemic has spread even to the idyllic town of Paradise. It will be up to police chief Jesse Stone to unravel the supply chain and unmask the criminals behind it, and the investigation has a clear epicenter: Paradise High School. Home of the town's best and brightest future leaders and its most vulnerable down-and-out teens, it's a rich and bottomless market for dealers out of Boston looking to expand into the suburbs. But when it comes to drugs, the very people Jesse is trying to protect are often those with the most to lose. As he digs deeper into the case, he finds himself battling self-interested administrators, reluctant teachers, distrustful schoolkids, and overprotective parents . . . and at the end of the line are the true bad guys, the ones with a lucrative business they'd kill to protect.

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

In memory of Philip Kerr

Fifty years and a trillion dollars after we declared the war on drugs, drugs are now more prevalent, cheaper, and more potent than ever before. If this is victory, I’d hate to see defeat.

Don Winslow

1

The world had changed. Paradise had changed. Most significantly for Jesse Stone, his life had been turned upside down. He was a man wise enough to know that life comes with only one guarantee – that it would someday end. As a Robbery Homicide detective for the LAPD and as the long-time chief of the Paradise PD he had seen ample proof of that solitary guarantee written in blood, in wrecked bodies, and in grief. It wasn’t that long ago that his fiancée’s murder had given Jesse all the proof he would ever need. He remembered an old Hebrew proverb about how people’s planning for their futures was God’s favorite joke. Still, at an age when most men were steeped in haunting regrets of what could have been and what they might have done, Jesse had been given the most unexpected gift a loner like him could receive. Cole Slayton, Jesse’s son, had arrived in town just as Paradise was shedding its old skin and transforming itself into the place Jesse was currently seeing through the night-darkened windows of his latest Ford Explorer.

This end-of-shift drive through the streets had long been a ritual of his. A way to make sure things were intact and that the citizenry could rest well. Still, Jesse didn’t fool easily, and he was especially keen not to fool himself. He understood that Paradise was a different place than the village he’d come to all those years ago as a man looking for a fresh start. In those days, Boston, less than twenty miles south, seemed a million miles away, a world apart. Nowadays, Paradise, though not yet quite a suburb of Boston, felt much closer than ever before. As the big city’s influence crept north, it brought a new vibe to town that not all the natives of Paradise appreciated. Jesse had mixed feelings about the shift. Although he had long ago settled into the seaside rhythms of the town, Jesse enjoyed the new urban vitality, the pace and diversity Boston’s encroachment brought with it. But as Vinnie Morris had once warned him, as Boston would come toward Paradise, so, too, would come its sins. Vinnie had phrased it less artfully.

Jesse had already seen some evidence of that. Nothing dramatic. No crime wave, per se. Yet there was an increase in urban gang activity in Paradise and the surrounding towns. Graffiti and vandalism had been on the rise, as had auto theft. Drug arrests had also ticked up and the local cops now carried naloxone with them. None of the crime particularly scared Jesse. He didn’t overreact, as the mayor and town selectmen had, nor had he turned a blind eye. He had prepared his cops as best he could. He had joined with the chiefs of the nearby towns and the state police to work out strategies to deal with the changes in the criminal landscape.

At the moment, though, it was Paradise’s recent past and hatred, humanity’s most ancient foible, that occupied Jesse’s thoughts. He was driving by the empty lot where the old meetinghouse once stood. Several months ago, a white supremacist group had come to town with mad dreams of sparking a national race war. They hadn’t achieved their twisted goals but had left a trail of destruction in their wake. One of the casualties was the old meetinghouse, a building that had once been used as a safe haven for runaway slaves along the route of the Underground Railroad. It had been blown to bits by a powerful bomb blast. Jesse shook his head because more than the old building had been lost. Paradise had been shaken to its core. Families had been terrorized, several people were dead, and he’d been forced to fire Alisha, his best young cop. There was a big debate going on about whether to faithfully reconstruct the old place, create some sort of memorial, or let the past go altogether and sell the lot for new construction. Those were decisions above Jesse’s pay grade, and he was glad of it. What concerned Jesse was the notion that the destruction might be an omen of things to come, that the world’s ills, not only Boston’s, were headed for Paradise’s doorstep. He turned the corner, leaving the ghost of the old meetinghouse in his rearview mirror.

These ritual drives through Paradise had once been a prelude to a different and more personal ritual – drinking. Even now, remembering the steps of the ritual, he got a jolt. Throwing off his blue PPD hat and jacket as he entered his house, tossing the mail down on the counter, approaching the bar, twisting the cap off the smooth, rectangular bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, pouring the beautiful amber fluid over ice, the gentle snap and crackle as the room-temperature scotch hit the ice, the clinking of the ice as he swirled the glass, sniffing the perfectly blended grace notes from the charred oak barrel in which it had aged, lifting the glass to toast Ozzie Smith, and then, finally, the first magic sip. He could almost feel it, the warmth at the back of his throat, spreading down to his belly, through his body, and reaching his fingertips. But Jesse hadn’t had a drink in many months because his new nightly ritual involved sharing a room with fellow alcoholics who gave one another the strength they needed to stay sober.

At first he had driven to meetings down in Boston at an old Episcopal church. That’s where he’d met Bill, his sponsor. But making that trek several times a week had become unwieldy and impractical. Besides, Jesse’s drinking hadn’t ever been much of a secret to begin with. The only people in Paradise who didn’t know about Jesse’s struggles with the bottle were transplants from Boston and children under ten years of age. So he’d recently begun attending AA meetings in and around Paradise. He was headed to a meeting in Salem when the phone rang. The Explorer’s display showed the call was from the Paradise Police Department. He pressed the button on the steering wheel.

‘What?’

It was Molly working the desk. ‘There’s trouble, Jesse.’

‘There’s always trouble. What kind?’

‘The worst kind.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Patricia Mackey just found her daughter… unresponsive. She’s dead, Jesse.’

‘Jeez, no.’ Jesse pulled over. ‘Where? How?’

‘In her bedroom. And, Jesse…’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Suit’s there now. He found drug paraphernalia.’

‘On my way.’

Jesse had been a cop for too long to think anything connected with drugs was an anomaly. And suddenly Vinnie Morris’s warning rang loud as cathedral chimes in Jesse’s ears.

2

A thousand things went through Jesse’s mind as he pulled up to the Mackey place, and not a single damn one of them was any good. He didn’t need to be a parent to know that a mother and father should never have to put a kid in the ground before them. Not ever, not for any reason. Drugs, disease, a careless accident, what did that matter? And now that Jesse was a father, Heather Mackey’s death cut even deeper than it had during all the previous cases he had worked involving the death of a child. He hadn’t been there to watch Cole grow up, hadn’t known the boy existed until a few months ago, but that was beside the point. The bond he felt couldn’t have been stronger had he been in the delivery room to hear Cole cry or to watch him open his eyes for the first time.

Suit Simpson greeted Jesse at the curb.

‘Hey, Jesse. Molly told me you were on your way.’

‘I see the ME’s men are here.’ Jesse pointed at the van. ‘ME inside?’

Suit nodded. ‘Peter, too. He’s working the scene.’

‘Did you use the naloxone?’

Suit shook his head. ‘Too late. She was already gone. Such a waste. She was a pretty girl.’

‘Death doesn’t care about pretty or ugly. Only we do.’

‘I guess.’

‘Is Selectman Mackey home yet?’ Jesse asked.

Suit shook his head. ‘He’s down in Boston, lobbying for highway funds. Mrs Mackey was having trouble getting him on the phone until a few minutes ago.’

‘Talk to me, Suit.’

‘The kid’s in her bed –’ Something caught in Suit’s throat. He might’ve been an ex-football star and a man to have on your side in a fight, but he was a gentle soul. That used to concern Jesse. Not anymore. He had taken a bullet in a gun battle with Mr Peepers, and when the shit hit the fan at the old meetinghouse, Suit had walked back into the building to lead the people inside to safety. He’d done it knowing there was a good chance he would die in the process.

‘It’s okay, Suit.’ Jesse patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see for myself.’

The Mackey house was at the foot of the Bluffs. It was a new-to-look-old Cape Cod-style home with a detached two-car garage and vinyl siding meant to look like overlapping cedar shingles. There was a bluestone path leading up to two granite steps and a welcoming red door. The red door didn’t feel very welcoming just then. Jesse let himself in, Suit trailing behind. The second he entered, he heard Patti Mackey’s robotic, disembodied voice. Jesse stopped to listen.

Sue, yes, it’s about Heather… No, she’s not in some kind of trouble. She’s dead… You heard me right… I’m numb, Sue. I shouldn’t be, but I’m numb. Is something wrong with me?

In Jesse’s experience, Patti’s denial and distance weren’t unusual. She was in a kind of self-protective shock, but it would wear off, and when it did… He had seen that dam break too many times for his liking. Once was too many. And there was no getting used to it. It was difficult to witness, so much so that he had always been glad not to be a parent. Now that layer of insulation had been stripped away. He followed Patti’s voice into the kitchen. Jesse had known the family for a long time and thought he should talk to Patti before going to see to Heather. It was a sad fact of his job that Heather was beyond his help.

Patti was a gray-eyed beauty with fair, freckled skin and long auburn hair. She could have passed as Heather’s much older sister. She was placing the phone back in its cradle when Jesse reached the kitchen. She turned to him – eyes empty, face blank. The moment she saw him the walls came down and she crumbled into Jesse’s arms. The tears came in a rush, soaking Jesse’s uniform shirt. Her body clenched and every part of her shook. But it was the sobbing that haunted him. The shrieks coming out of her were feral, primeval. He knew it was moot to try and say something soothing, so he stroked her hair and waited for the first wave to subside. When it did, Jesse sat her down at the kitchen table and held her hand.

‘What happened, Patti?’

But it was too soon. She couldn’t even form words.

‘Officer Simpson,’ Jesse called for Suit.

When Suit stepped into the kitchen, Jesse told him to sit with Patti and to get her anything she needed. As he left the kitchen he leaned over and whispered in Suit’s ear, ‘Just keep her out of the bedroom.’

The ME was to the side of the bed, jotting notes down on a pad. Peter Perkins stopped what he was doing and held up a plastic evidence bag containing a syringe.

‘Found it at the side of the bed.’

Jesse nodded, distracted. He was focused on the dead girl on the bed, dressed in a too-big Red Sox T-shirt. If not for the two other men present and the odors in the air that came with sudden death, Jesse might have been able to fool himself that the girl was simply in a deep sleep. He supposed she was, really, in the deepest of sleeps.

The ME stopped his scribbling and turned to Jesse.

‘She’s been dead about two hours. No obvious signs of foul play. We’ll have to wait for the tox screen,’ he said, ‘but it’s a heroin OD. I’d make book on it.’

Jesse asked, ‘Was she a heavy user?’

‘I don’t think so. No track marks. Only one fresh puncture wound that I can see.’ The ME took the girl’s left arm, turned it up, and pointed to the inner fold of her forearm. ‘See it?’ He didn’t wait for Jesse to answer. ‘I’ll know more when I get her on the table. I’m done with her, if you want to have a look. I’ll send my crew in to bag her.’ He looked back at the girl. ‘A shame.’

3

A shame. Sometimes all it took were a few syllables to sum things up. But those two simple syllables were also woefully inadequate, because while they summed things up, they would also leave a thousand questions in their wake. The questions for Jesse and his department would be the easy ones: When did the girl start using? Who was her supplier? Could they catch him or her? Could they make a case against him or her? The questions for Heather’s parents would be the harder ones: How could we not have known? What didn’t we see? How had we failed her? And some of those questions, maybe all of them, would go forever unanswered. Jesse liked the Mackeys and hoped the questions wouldn’t tear Patti and Steve apart, but Jesse had seen the scenario play out a hundred times before. The parents would need someone to blame and, short on answers or with answers they didn’t like, they tended to blame each other.

If there was anything that experience had taught Jesse about drug cases, it was that they didn’t happen in a vacuum. Where there was one case there would be others. It wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of how many, how severe, and when. The tough thing was that to limit the damage, Jesse was going to have to ask some of those hard questions of the Mackeys, and he was going to have to do it sooner rather than later. Sooner being now.

He found Patti Mackey in the kitchen, Suit standing silent guard over her. Jesse was glad for Suit being on hand. One of Suit Simpson’s remarkable qualities was that in spite of his size, he was almost always a comforting presence. People just felt at ease around him. The same could not be said of Jesse. He supposed he was a little softer around the edges these days, now that he was a father and he was no longer drinking, but there was something about his self-containment that didn’t allow people to feel the kind of comfort around him that they felt around Molly or Suit. He was okay with that. Those qualities helped make him good at his job. Still, there were times, especially times like these, when he wished he had the knack.

Patti was no longer wailing. No, she sat at the kitchen table nearly as still as her daughter had been. Jesse had seen it before; the stages of initial shock play out in only a very few minutes. First the disbelief, then the flood of pain that came with the realization that your child was lost to you forever and that there would never be another unblemished day for the rest of your life, then the momentary self-imposed numbness. It wouldn’t last long. Her zombie-like state certainly wouldn’t survive the ME’s guys toting the body bag down the stairs.

‘Patti,’ Jesse said, ‘I’ve got to ask you some questions.’

‘What?’ Her answer seemed to come from somewhere very far away. Her red-rimmed eyes unblinking. Her expression excruciatingly blank.

Suit made to leave the room, but Jesse waved for him to stay, to sit at the table beside Patti Mackey. When Suit had taken a seat, Jesse began again.

‘Have you noticed anything strange about Heather’s behavior lately?’

Patti blinked, fighting herself. ‘Different? No, not different. She just seemed a little more tired lately. Her stomach was giving her trouble, but she’s a – was a junior and, you know, looking at colleges and taking tests and all. Now, I don’t –’

Jesse knew it was unkind, but he had to keep Patti in the moment and not let her drift into the dark place just yet.

‘Patti, Patti, come on. I need you to focus. So she was a little depressed and tense with all the junior-year stuff. Anything else? Was she keeping new company? Any new boyfriends? Girlfriends?’

But it was no good. Patti still wasn’t ready. The strength she was using to hold it together was blocking her ability to think deeply or to feel anything. And then, when the front door opened and the ME’s men came in, one holding a folded body bag under his arm, Patti exploded out of her chair and charged at them, clawing. ‘No! No! You leave her be. That’s her room. This is her house. You don’t touch her. You don’t touch her!’

By then Suit had caught up to her and was holding her back, clamping his arms around her. She put up a hell of a struggle, and Jesse could see that Suit needed to exert some strength to hold Patti back. Even as Suit held her, Patti screamed and kicked at the air.

‘You leave my daughter be. You leave her be! You’re not going to put her in a plastic bag, not my girl, not my beautiful little girl.’

But that was exactly what those men were going to do. They were going to place the body of Heather Mackey, cheerleader, popular high school junior, in a liquid-proof bag and pull a zipper up over her cooling, lifeless face. Then they were going to carry her down the stairs and out the front door, place her remains in the back of a van, and drive her to the morgue.

Jesse nodded for Suit to take Patti Mackey into the living room. ‘You keep her there no matter what,’ he said.

Jesse watched the sad procession. The ME first, his men behind him, and Peter Perkins in the rear.

‘Chief,’ the ME said as he passed, head down. ‘I will have the results for you as soon as I can, but the tox screen is going to take a while.’

‘Do what you can, Doc.’

Peter Perkins stopped and stood in front of Jesse.

‘What is it, Peter?’

‘I heard an author interviewed on TV last week. He said we declared the war on drugs fifty years ago. We’ve spent a trillion dollars fighting it, but that drugs were cheaper, more available, and more potent now than ever before. Said that if that was victory, he’d hate to see defeat.’

Jesse didn’t say anything to that. What was there to say?

4

Jesse’s son, Cole, was sitting on the sofa, watching TV and drinking a beer. Cole and Jesse weren’t yet at the hugging, I-love-you-Dad-I-love-you-Son stage. It was unclear if they would ever get there. Still, there were moments when Jesse found himself staring at his son in awe. They didn’t look much alike, though Cole was tall, athletic, and sturdily built. Cole’s looks, as they say in the South, favored his mother. They shared more in terms of personality. Tonight it wasn’t awe in Jesse’s eyes, but fear. Fear, not for himself. It was the kind of fear he only ever experienced over people he cared for.

‘Hey,’ Cole said, not turning away from the screen.

‘Hey, yourself.’

‘It’s kind of late for you to be coming back from a meeting. Did you go down to Boston?’

‘No meeting tonight. Work.’

Cole finally looked away from the screen and at the face of the father he had known for only the last several months. Regardless of the short time, Cole had learned to read Jesse’s grudging expressions. He recognized some of them from the mirror.

‘Something bad, huh?’

‘Seventeen-year-old girl ODed.’

Cole shook his head, sipped his beer. ‘Heroin?’

‘Yeah. What made you say that?’

‘Say what?’

‘Heroin.’

Cole shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Was she a junkie?’

Jesse shook his head. ‘The ME doesn’t think so. Why?’

‘Back home – I mean, before I left L.A. – there was a lot of that. Inexperienced users ODing. The cartels are cutting their shit with –’

‘Fentanyl,’ Jesse said, finishing his son’s sentence.

‘Why do you do that, ask me a question you know the answer to?’ Cole asked, angry.

Angry was Cole’s default setting. He’d shown up in Paradise while Jesse was still in rehab, and everyone who’d crossed paths with him, before or since, couldn’t miss the massive chip on his shoulder. Although Cole had accepted the truth of what had happened between his mother, Celine, and Jesse all those years ago in L.A., he hadn’t been able to shed the resentment and sense of abandonment he’d harbored against his father. Given his struggles with alcohol, Jesse understood how that worked. As Dix said, ‘Recognition is the easy part. Just because you know the truth of things, it’s impossible to snap your fingers and make patterns of behavior disappear. Logic and reason are woeful in the face of deeply ingrained feelings.’

‘Sorry,’ Jesse said. ‘I was thinking aloud.’

‘No problem.’ Cole went back to the TV.

Jesse stared at the beer in his son’s hand. Most nights, it didn’t bother Jesse. He had been sober for months now, and drinking had never been a social activity for him anyway. Oh, he drank socially. Drunks didn’t need much prompting. For Jesse, though, it was his drinking alone that did him in in the end. He had been around a lot of drinkers and lots of drinks since returning from rehab. It was hard at first, but easier all the time. And when sobriety got challenging, he’d just call Bill, his sponsor, and Bill would talk him down. Tonight, though, that beer looked pretty damn appealing.

Cole noticed Jesse staring at the beer.

‘Sorry.’

Before Jesse could stop him, Cole clicked off the TV, went into the kitchen, and poured the beer down the sink. They might not have worked everything out and they still tiptoed around each other, but Cole didn’t want Jesse to go back down the rabbit hole. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from Jesse. He wasn’t sure when he came to town and he wasn’t sure now. At least he had a better idea of what he didn’t want. He hadn’t come all the way across the country to watch alcohol destroy his father the same way cancer had destroyed his mother. Although Cole still lugged that chip around on his shoulder, he was smart enough to know that parent issues were more easily resolved with a living parent than with a dead one.

Cole poured the rest of the six-pack down the sink as well. Jesse said, ‘Thanks.’

‘Whatever. I’m going to bed. Daisy’s got me in early tomorrow doing some prep work in the kitchen.’

‘You going to work there for the rest of your life?’

Cole laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. ‘You got me the job there. You embarrassed?’

‘Never.’

Cole tried not to smile at that, but failed. ‘No, I’m not going to work there the rest of my life. Who knows, maybe I’ll become a cop.’

Jesse knew Cole was trying to get a rise out of him. ‘Uh-huh’ was all Jesse said to that. ‘Good night.’

The beer might have been down the drain, but the smell of it hung in the air. Jesse filled the kitchen sink up with soap and water, then let it drain out. When that was done, he dialed Bill’s number and talked about why it was better to be sober. As they talked, Jesse kept picturing Heather Mackey’s lifeless body in her bed surrounded by her little-girl stuffed animals.

5

Jesse’s first stop the next morning was at the high school, and his first stop at the school was the office of Principal Virginia Wester. His initial instinct had been to go back to Heather’s family to see if Selectman Mackey had anything to add to whatever little his wife had said the night before. But since the case wasn’t murder, at least not in the way he understood it, or an apparent suicide, Jesse figured to circle back to them in a day or two. Right now they would be caught in the throes of grief and in the midst of doing something no parent ever wants to do, let alone think of. People sometimes plan for their own deaths – buy plots, draw up wills, sign DNRs, choose readings, etc. – but he had never known anyone who planned for the death of a child. No, he would leave the Mackeys alone for the moment.

Freda Bellows had been a fixture at Paradise High School for nearly forty years. In her time as a secretary to the principal, she’d seen five principals come and go. Freda, a thin, jovial woman, loved being around the kids and was the unofficial institutional memory of the school. A few years beyond retirement age, she had been granted special dispensation by the Board of Selectmen, allowing her to stay on until she decided she’d had enough. That was one of the things Jesse liked about small-town life. In L.A. or Boston, exceptions were frowned upon. If you do it for one, you’ll have to do it for all, and you know how much that will cost. In a place like Paradise, exceptions weren’t seen as calamities but as kindnesses. Freda usually had a smile for everyone. Not today. Today she greeted Jesse with red eyes and choked-back sobs.

‘Oh my God, Jesse,’ she said, a mascaraed tear running down her wrinkled cheek. ‘I can’t believe it. Heather was such a wonderful girl. Was it an overdose? They’re saying it was heroin. I can’t believe it. Was it heroin?’

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I can’t talk about it, Freda.’

‘I’m sorry, Jesse. I understand. Would you like to see Principal Wester?’

‘I would.’

‘Go on in.’

Virginia Wester was the new principal at Paradise High. Ten years Jesse’s junior, she was a handsome woman with dark blond hair, worn-penny eyes, and a perpetually stern look on her face. Smiles seemed to come at a premium for her. That was fine with Jesse. He wasn’t exactly a backslapping good-time Charlie himself. They had never exchanged much more than perfunctory hellos at town functions, but that was about to change.

‘Chief Stone,’ Wester said, extending her hand as she came around the desk to greet him. ‘Sad day. Terrible day.’

He shook her hand. ‘Jesse.’

‘Excuse me.’ She was confused.

‘Please call me Jesse.’

She didn’t know what to do with that. Should she smile and make a similar gesture or tell him that such informality made her uncomfortable. She opted for saying ‘Please, sit.’

He sat.

‘Obviously, we’ve heard the news,’ she said. ‘We would like to help any way we can, but unless I know what we’re –’

‘I usually can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, but if it will help you to help me… It looks like a heroin overdose. We don’t have the tox screen back yet, but we’re pretty sure.’

Wester leaned forward, a strained expression on her face. ‘Was it – I mean, did she –’

He understood. ‘It doesn’t appear to be a suicide, no. There was no note, but there isn’t always a note. I suppose one of the reasons I’m here is to find out if I’m misreading the situation. How was she doing in school?’

Wester tapped a key on her keyboard. ‘I thought someone from the police would be here today, so I already had her records for you to look at.’ She turned the screen to face Jesse. ‘As you can see, Heather’s grades had been gradually slumping over the last several marking periods. It began midyear last year and continued. She’d gone from an A-plus student to a B-minus kid, on her way to C.’

‘Did you intercede? Were her parents aware?’

Wester gathered herself, her whole body seeming to clench. ‘Even in a relatively small town, a principal can’t afford to know every student’s progress or –’

Jesse understood her defensiveness. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like an accusation or criticism. I’m just trying to get a picture of Heather. I didn’t want to bother her parents today. I’m sure you understand.’

‘No need to apologize, Chief Stone. I overreacted. Heather’s death, any student’s death, is very upsetting. It has me on edge and causes a ripple effect among the students. Kids think they know how to handle these things, but they don’t. We’ll have grief counselors in, but most of the kids won’t seek their help. As far as Heather goes, I think you would have more luck speaking with her individual teachers. I’ve had Freda print out a list of her teachers from this term and the last term of her sophomore year. She will also supply you with their schedules.’

Jesse stood, shook her hand again, and turned to go.

‘Chief Stone… Jesse.’

He looked back. ‘Yeah.’

‘Anything else I can do…’

‘Of course.’ He shook his head.

As Jesse walked out to speak to Freda and get the things Wester had promised, he reminded himself how he was far more familiar with premature death, in all its forms, than most people would ever be or want to be. Death, even when it’s expected, even when it comes as a relief, shakes people up. The death of someone so young really does a number on people because it reminds them of just how vulnerable and fragile all life is.

6

Fifty-five, balding, and seemingly reticent, Harvey Spiegel had been Heather Mackey’s math teacher. Jesse thought Spiegel wouldn’t be as in tune with his students as Heather’s other instructors, maybe because he was older and a math teacher. But he was the one with the available free period, so Jesse found himself in the teachers’ lounge, which at that hour was pretty busy, with a few late arrivals grabbing coffee and hurrying out to their classrooms. Some, the ones who probably hadn’t yet heard about Heather, gave Jesse curious looks as they left. What’s that all about?

‘What can I do for you, Chief?’

Jesse had a lot of people to talk to and didn’t want to go through the whole ‘Call me Jesse’ routine with everyone. Besides enjoying the informality of first names, Jesse often used the ‘Call me Jesse’ thing to throw people off balance. He had no reason to believe he needed to throw Harvey Spiegel a curve.

‘Heather Mackey,’ Jesse said, leaving it at that.

‘Lovely girl.’ Spiegel wrinkled his nose, reminding Jesse of a rabbit. ‘A shame.’

‘You had her last term for’ – Jesse referred to the papers Freda had given him – ‘calc and this term for trig.’

He did that thing with his nose again, then he leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. ‘I did. Chief, I heard that drugs were involved. Is that the case?’

Jesse nodded.

‘It wasn’t… suicide, was it?’ The word stuck in his throat.

Jesse answered with a question of his own. ‘You’re the second person to ask me that. Why would you say that?’ There was nothing accusatory in Jesse’s tone.

‘Do you have children, Chief?’

‘A son,’ he said, still unused to the sound of his voice uttering those words.

‘Well, then you know. I’ve got two of my own and I’ve worked with teenagers for thirty years now. Some of them look like adults, but I assure you they are not. They lack experience and are often ill-equipped to modulate the strength of their emotions. They’re also feeling things like romantic love and jealousy as they have never felt before, and sometimes they just aren’t able to make sense of what it is they are going through. Sometimes they make stupid choices, very stupid choices, from which there is no return.’

Jesse must have looked dumbfounded, and Spiegel laughed a sad laugh at him.

‘Surprised by a math teacher’s expounding on the emotional lives of teenagers?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’m a guidance counselor as well. I imagine I’ll have more kids coming to see me today than usual. Unfortunately, it’s the ones that don’t come who probably need my help more than the ones who do. The ones who come have a self-awareness of their feelings. The ones who don’t come worry me. But I’m going on. Sorry, Chief.’

‘But about Heather, Mr Spiegel, was there anything specific about her that caused you to mention suicide?’

Spiegel rubbed his chin as he considered the question. ‘Nothing I could put my finger on, no. Her grades were steadily declining.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s not always a sign of anything negative, per se. Maybe she was in love or having trouble at home. Some of these kids are very bright and have been able to navigate their way through school without working at it. That’s less easily done when it comes to subjects like calculus or trigonometry. It wasn’t as if she was in danger of failing.’

‘How about her attendance?’

‘I’d have to check on that, Chief. Is it important?’

‘At this stage, I don’t know what’s important or what isn’t. Let me ask you, Mr Spiegel, are you aware of a drug problem in the school?’

Jesse could see Spiegel was troubled by the question and working hard to formulate an answer.

‘There have always been some problems with drugs,’ the math teacher said. ‘I’m afraid drugs have become another one of the minefields these kids must navigate, along with all the emotional baggage that comes with near-adulthood. It’s been this way since I taught my first year. The drugs change, but their presence has not.’

‘That was a very good, politically correct non-answer,’ Jesse said.

Spiegel did the nose thing again and laughed. ‘I was afraid you were going to ask me to supply the names of specific students. I would be uncomfortable with that. It would ruin any credibility I have with the kids if word got out.’

‘But there are kids with drug problems.’

Although Jesse and he were the only two people left in the lounge, Spiegel looked around him to make sure no one was watching or within earshot. He didn’t answer the question with words but nodded yes.

Jesse didn’t stop there. ‘Heroin?’

Spiegel nodded again, hesitated, then added, ‘Pills, too.’

Jesse thought about pushing some more but decided he might need Spiegel as an ally if the investigation turned anything up. He didn’t want to alienate him by making him any more ill at ease than he already was. Instead he tried a different tack.

‘Do you know who Heather hung out with?’

‘Sorry, Chief. Heather was my student, but she wasn’t assigned to me as her guidance counselor. You’d have to speak to her homeroom teacher and some of the others about that.’

Jesse stood, shook Spiegel’s hand. ‘Thank you. You’ve been helpful.’

‘Have I? I don’t see how.’

Jesse winked. ‘It’s only important for me to know how.’

7

Jesse wasn’t often surprised, but he was when he entered the art room. There was a teacher’s name listed, Clay Mckee. That wasn’t who he found there seated on the desktop, facing the class. The students were busily rendering the colorful bowl of waxed fruit on a table by the classroom window.

‘Maryglenn, what are you doing here?’ Jesse said in a whisper, tapping her lightly on the shoulder.

She lit up at the sight of him. Maryglenn was a local painter who lived in a loft above an old carriage-house-cum warehouse next to Gayle Pembroke’s art gallery. Maryglenn and Jesse had met a few months back during all the trouble with the white supremacist group that had tried to start a revolution in Paradise.

‘Keep working,’ she said to the class. ‘Remember, this isn’t about getting it right. It’s about getting it.’ She turned back to Jesse. ‘Let’s take it into the hall.’

Maryglenn, dressed as she always was in a loose-fitting black T-shirt, black jeans, and running shoes, all rainbow-speckled in paint, led him through the door. When the door closed behind them, Maryglenn grabbed Jesse’s right hand. It was the most intimate thing that had ever passed between them.

‘You’re here about the dead girl, Heather,’ she said.

‘I am, but that doesn’t explain –’

‘– what I’m doing here. No, it doesn’t.’ She let go of Jesse’s hand. ‘I’m a certified art teacher and I’ve been subbing for the last year. It’s a way for me to get some partial health benefits and I like working with the kids. There’s never enough funding for the creative parts of education. These days it’s worse than ever. All the money gets poured into math and sciences.’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry, Jesse, I’ll get down off the soapbox now.’

‘No problem. So you’re subbing today.’

‘Actually, I’m not.’ She smiled a crooked, disarming smile at him. ‘The regular art teacher, Mr Mckee, took an unexpected medical leave of absence for the term and I was asked to take his spot.’ She shrugged. ‘I figured, why not? The money is good and I get full benefits and –’

‘– you like working with the kids.’

Her smile was in full force now. There had always been a low spark of attraction between them, though neither was the other’s type. Jesse was usually drawn to beautiful blondes like his ex-wife, Jenn, and his late fiancée, Diana. Women who were always conscious of their appearance. Maryglenn wasn’t like that at all. Besides her paint-splattered black uniform, she had let gray creep into her short-cut brown hair. She didn’t always wear makeup and didn’t spend much time at the gym. But she always seemed so comfortable with who and what she was that Jesse kind of liked it. There was no pretense about her. And for Maryglenn, an artist and onetime social activist, the idea of being attracted to a cop, even one as ruggedly handsome as Jesse, would normally have been an anathema. But there they were, smiling at each other.

‘Did you know her, Heather Mackey?’ Jesse asked, breaking the spell.

‘A little, I guess. She had some talent for line drawing. Would you like to see her work?’

‘Maybe later. What I need to know is did she display any outward signs of depression or… I don’t know.’

‘I do. One thing that art class does is give kids a place to express themselves freely… well, as freely as they can in this setting.’ She nodded at the classroom door. ‘I know it’s unlikely the next Basquiat or Weiwei is sitting in there. I just try to let them let go and express themselves without judging too harshly. They get enough of that in their other classes.’

‘And.’

‘Look, Jesse, I don’t really know these kids like a teacher who had seen them develop over a period of a few years, but, yes, Heather seemed… distracted and a little withdrawn. At least, that’s how she seemed to me. Yet she produced good work, so I’m not sure it means anything.’

‘Did she have any close friends in class?’

Maryglenn thought about it before answering. ‘Megan Alford, Darby Cole, and Rich Amitrano.’

‘Are they in that class now?’

She nodded at the door. ‘Those are sophomores, Jesse. Heather’s class doesn’t meet today, and my guess is they wouldn’t be in class today anyway.’

‘You’re right.’

‘I should get back in there.’

‘Okay,’ Jesse said. ‘Thank you.’

‘I don’t know how much of a help I was.’

‘You were honest.’

She looked perplexed. ‘What does that mean, “I was honest’’?’

‘I was a Robbery Homicide detective in L.A. for ten years. People are hesitant to speak ill of the dead, especially when the dead person is a pretty young girl. People don’t mean to hurt investigations. I know it’s not malicious. Anything but. Still, I can’t tell you how many times we were hindered in getting to what really happened. Sometimes, by the time the truth came out, it was too late. There was this one case I worked, a housewife, a very attractive former actress, rich husband, two kids. Her body was found in a shallow grave in the hills. She’d been raped, her body brutalized. But to hear it from her friends and family, she was a saint. No one is a saint, Maryglenn. After weeks of getting nowhere, her best friend came to us and told us that the victim had been working as a high-end escort two afternoons a week because the whole Suzy Homemaker thing was boring her to distraction. The case is still unsolved. If the friend had told us the truth to begin with, we might have caught the guy. When we asked the friend why she hadn’t come forward sooner, she said she didn’t want a woman she loved to be remembered as a whore.’

Maryglenn nodded in understanding. With her hand on the door, she turned back to Jesse. ‘I’m not very good at this… but can I buy you a drink sometime? I mean, we’ve been dancing around each other for months and I don’t enjoy this kind of dancing very much.’

‘Not a drink. I don’t drink anymore.’ He felt both silly and proud saying it.

That didn’t scare her off. ‘Dinner, then?’

‘I’d like that.’

‘What’s your phone number?’

He smiled. ‘Nine-one-one.’

‘A wiseass, huh?’

He handed her one of his cards with his cell number on it. ‘If you hear anything else about Heather, anything at all, call me about that, too.’

After Maryglenn disappeared behind the classroom door, he stood in the hallway, remembering that long-ago case and how hesitant people were to speak ill of the dead.

8

When he got off the bus and saw the police chief’s Explorer parked out in front of Paradise High, he decided to ditch school and walked around to the athletic field. He’d heard about Heather but hadn’t expected the cops to already be sniffing around. He knew they would come eventually. Whereelse are the cops going to look?

Under the stands of the stadium, he punched in a number on that week’s new burner phone. New phone every week. Sometimes two a week. That was how it worked. No one picked up on the other end and he didn’t leave a message. That was how that worked, too. In five minutes or so, he’d get a call back.

In the meantime, he lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out the other side of his mouth, and peered through the empty spaces in the aluminum bleachers. One gangly, pimply-faced kid in a paradise high panthers JV track shirt ran a slow lap around the dark red track. As he puffed on his cigarette, watching the kid’s awkward, loping strides, he remembered his own freshman year, sitting in the stands under which he now stood. He recalled those stupid pep rallies. He hated all that school spirit, rah-rah bullshit. But he didn’t hate looking at the cheerleaders and the majorettes. No, sir, he did not. He remembered the first time he ever saw Heather, how he thought she was looking up into the stands right at him, but when she waved, he realized she was waving at the junior sitting directly behind him. He heard the junior lean over to his buddies and call him a dork. As if any girl as hot as Heather Mackey would wave at him. Doofus. Still hurt him to think about it. He crushed the cigarette out beneath his foot.

Heather had always been nice to him, though. She wasn’t stuck up or anything, in spite of being so pretty and popular. He’d always wanted to ask her out but never had the nerve. He knew he wasn’t bad-looking and that he wasn’t anything like his freshman self, the doofus in the stands. The braces were gone, his voice was deep, no longer cracking when he got worked up. He’d grown into his body and a few girls in school had said he had the most beautiful deep blue eyes.

He remembered the first day of school this year, when she came over to him at his locker. She put her hand on his wrist and stared right into his eyes. And he thought, stupidly, Is she looking at me or the guy behind me? But she wasn’t. She couldn’t have been, because the only thing behind him was his open locker door. Then she brushed her hand across his cheek.

‘We can’t talk now,’ Heather had said, ‘but can we meet later, after school? Please.’

His heart was beating so hard, the sound of blood rushing so loudly in his ears, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. And then, when he convinced himself that he had heard her, he could barely speak.

‘Sure.’ It was the best he could manage.

‘Where?’

‘Come to my house,’ she said. ‘My folks won’t be home and we can, you know, talk.’

Even as he was celebrating in his head, fighting the desire to click his heels and scream or to run to tell his friends that he would finally be with the girl he had dreamed about since his first day as a freshman, he knew there was something in her eyes besides wanting him. It was a very different kind of wanting. He knew what it was. Since he’d begun working for Arakel, he’d seen it many times: desperation. With some of the others, he hadn’t even bothered to pretend and had slept with them. He had never forced himself on anyone or made it conditional. He had learned at an earlier age than most what desperation does to people. But with Heather, he wanted to pretend it was something more than that.

He remembered that when he came to her house that day, she was dressed in a black satin blouse and stilettos, nothing else. Remembered the feel of the satin. She didn’t waste time getting him upstairs and into her room. And he was grateful that when she moaned she didn’t make it feel like a transaction. Heather hadn’t asked for anything until he was sore and coming out of her shower, mopping his hair with a bath towel. The truth was, he had hated washing the scent of her off him. She was everything he had ever fantasized about her and more. Still, he knew what was coming. He couldn’t bear to hear her ask. Instead, he placed a small vial of pills on her nightstand. When she started to speak, he kissed her.

‘Shhh,’ he said, when she tried to speak again. ‘But I do need the money.’

That wasn’t a problem.

As he left, she grabbed his hand. ‘I wanted to be with you,’ she said. ‘This wasn’t about… you know. At least not all of it. We can do it again. I loved the way you tasted and how you felt inside me.’

He had never gone back to her bedroom. If she hadn’t said that last thing, he might have. But once she said it, there was no pretending. He’d felt dirty about it ever since.

When the phone rang in his pocket, he realized he was crying and that he would never see her again. He could never let her pretend to like him. He picked up.

‘Kid, are you all right? What is wrong?’

‘I’m good. I just got a cold.’

‘Why do you call?’

‘One of my, um, clients… she died last night.’

There was a long, loud silence on the line. Then, ‘Who?’

‘A girl from my school.’

‘What were you giving to her?’

‘Talcum powder.’

‘The cheap powder or the expensive?’ Arakel asked.

‘The cheap shit.’ He lied but didn’t know what else to say. The truth was Heather had asked for the strongest stuff he had. She’d promised to be careful and to dose it out wisely. He was stupid to do as she asked, but when it came to Heather, he could never think straight. Now she was dead. He’d figure something out to cover his ass. Maybe he’d blame it on wrong packaging or say she stole the stronger stuff out of his stash. For now, he was just buying time.

‘Okay, kid. You must remember, the good talcum is only for the very wet. Stay on low profile for a few days. Give people only what is necessary for staying dry. No more than that.’

‘I understand.’

‘Today, get a new phone.’

The line went dead and he went back to crying.

9

B