Robert B. Parker's Stone's Throw

by Mike Lupica

  Am I jealous?

  Of Crow hanging out with my boss?

  Not just my boss, but my best friend?

  Jesse was the one always telling her that the best thing was for her to stay away from Crow, like he was trying to keep her out of harm’s way. And Jesse had told her that he’d made it clear to Crow that he wanted him to steer clear of Molly as much as possible.

  Now Jesse had done everything except give Crow a badge. The two of them might be together right now, as far as she knew. Sitting with their feet on Jesse’s desk, chopping things up.

  And I wish I was with them, Molly thought. No way around that. “What is this, high school?” Jesse would say sometimes, often when he was talking about Sunny Randall.

  Now Molly felt like she was the one in high school, and hadn’t been invited to a party, even if it was just a party of two. She knew she could check her phone to see where Jesse was right now. She had done it plenty of times before. But tonight it would make her feel as if she were stalking him.

  Stalking them.

  She was alone in the house. Michael had gotten a message to her, from the boat, that he expected to be back in ten days, but probably not sooner. Michael: her husband, who she loved, and who would never know that she had cheated on him with a criminal and still imagined herself doing it again, at least in her weaker moments. Ones that would often come at this time of night.

  She thought about making herself a drink. That might calm her down. Only she didn’t want to calm down, damn it! She wanted to be angry with them for leaving her out.

  But Molly knew her anger tonight was about more than that, or about them. She had become obsessed with her inability to find Blair Richmond, or to find out what had happened to her.

  Blair Richmond, who was somebody’s daughter.

  She had been working this particular missing-persons case as hard as she’d ever worked one in her life, reaching out to every agency except the Justice League of America. From the start, Molly had been working it as if the girl—she couldn’t think of her in any other way—were still alive. She refused to dwell on the alternative. In her mind Blair was out there somewhere, hiding and scared and alone.

  Molly had called her high school friends. And classmates from the University of Rhode Island she could track down. She had circled back to the other members of Save Our Beach, all of them scared out of their wits themselves, looking for anything they remembered that could provide a lead.

  You know what a good cop you are.

  Be one now.

  Molly knew that she herself couldn’t do anything about saving the land, or the beach, or the town, or bringing back Ben Gage or Neil O’Hara. Making everything the way it was. But she could save this girl.

  Only if she could find her.

  No one had heard from her. There had been no activity on her credit card or bank card. No Venmo transfers to her or from her, at least before today. By now Molly was convinced that Blair’s original cell phone was long gone, discarded or destroyed, by her or somebody else.

  Molly knew how hard it was to go completely off the grid in the modern world. Blair Richmond, if she were still alive, had managed to do just that. It was easy enough for Molly to know why, realize what she was thinking:

  They killed my boyfriend and now they’re coming for me.

  They. Whoever they were. Blair could only think that she had to know whatever it was that had gotten Ben Gage killed. And Mayor Neil O’Hara before that. But especially Ben. They had worked together. They had lived together and been lovers. They had to assume that whatever he knew, she knew.

  Whoever the fuck they were.

  She was in the kitchen about an hour later, making herself a strong cup of Irish tea, when she heard her phone making its marimba noise from where she’d left it in the living room.

  She picked it up and looked at the screen.

  Unknown Caller

  “This is Molly Crane,” she said.

  Nothing.

  “Hello,” she said. “This is Molly.”

  “It’s me,” she heard through a bad connection. “Blair.”

  “Please come get me,” Blair Richmond said. “Before they do.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Before who comes to get you?”

  “. . . who killed Ben.”

  It was a terrible connection.

  Molly said, “Where are you?”

  For a moment Molly felt the air come out of her because she was afraid she had lost her again.

  And maybe for good.

  “. . . past Marshport,” she said. “Almost to the state park in Oxbow. You know where that is? Ben built us a little cabin out here.”

  Molly knew where the park was. She and Michael had often taken the girls there when they were little.

  “. . . our safe place,” Blair said. “. . . we know about.”

  The call started to cut out.

  “. . . never showed up . . .” she said.

  Molly asked for the address. Blair gave it to her. Molly typed it into Waze, which told her it would take forty minutes to get there.

  Blair’s voice was cutting out again.

  “. . . explain when you get here.”

  “I can have the Marshport Police send a car,” Molly said.

  “Just you,” Blair said.

  The call broke off. Molly grabbed her Glock, knowing her Taser and flashlight and radio were in the Cherokee. As she ran to the car, she thought about calling Jesse.

  But he never called her when he was going all cowboy-up, as her Red Sox used to say.

  Two could play that game. Where her house was, she knew she would beat him to Oxbow even if she did call him. She would bring in Blair Richmond, somebody’s daughter, herself. Bring her home. To Molly’s home.

  She’d tell Jesse and his new best buddy about it later.

  FORTY-FIVE

  It took longer than Molly thought it would. Even using Waze, she made a couple wrong turns on the narrow, two-lane roads that took you out to the state park. One time she turned too early, another time too late.

  She had been trying to call Blair to give her updates on her progress, without success. Maybe the cell service out here was hit or miss, and she’d been lucky to get through to Molly in the first place. Maybe the phone had died. No point in speculating.

  Just get there.

  She was on Reservoir Road now, badly lit, looking for number 10. No other houses even close to the road. No house lights anywhere that Molly could see. Middle of nowhere, Molly thought. Probably the point.

  She missed the small dirt road, came back. Saw the outline of a cabin maybe a hundred yards up from Reservoir Road. Molly shut off her lights, eased the Cherokee to a stop, got out of the car, quietly closed the door. The only faint light was from the moon, covered by clouds as if shades had been drawn in front of it. But no lights on, which bothered her. She was glad the Bruins hoodie she’d been wearing when Blair called was black.

  Molly had the Glock in her right hand. She had shut off her phone. She stayed low to the grass, moving slowly in a crouch along the tree line. One of Jesse Stone’s rules to live by: Being overly cautious had never gotten anybody killed.

  Molly thought: Maybe I should have called Jesse and Crow.

  She thought: Why hadn’t Blair been waiting out front?

  Why were the lights off?

  Molly talked all the time about her hunches. It was a standing joke with her and Jesse and Suit. But this was more than that now. This was a deep and visceral feeling that something was very wrong here.

  If you’re as scared as you sounded, why are you alone at a darkened house?

  There was still only the light of the moon when Molly saw the muzzle flash through the first-floor window and heard the shot.

  FORTY-SIX

  Molly didn’t think now, did
n’t fall back on procedure, just reacted, yelled “Police!” and fired a warning shot on the run that splintered wood underneath the front-porch railing before she heard a door slam from somewhere behind the house.

  She ran in that direction and saw the shape of a man running away from her, across the small backyard.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Molly yelled.

  The man turned and fired in her direction and Molly heard the bullet hit a tree behind her.

  She returned fire as she came along the side of the house and thought she might have hit him. Hadn’t. Then saw him dropping to the ground suddenly and rolling and coming up into a kneeling position and getting off another shot.

  Molly felt the sudden, searing pain near her left shoulder then.

  She had been hit, and started to go down, but didn’t. Instead she stepped out from the house, two hands on the Glock, aiming low because he was still kneeling, and fired the way she had been taught at all the hours at the range, the bullet hitting him center mass.

  Someday, Jesse had told her once when he went to the range with her, this shit will get real.

  The shooter went down and stayed down, motionless.

  Molly felt faint because of the pain in her upper arm. But she made her way with great caution across the yard. There was only the sound of night birds around her now that the shooting had stopped.

  The man was on his back, the cap with a shamrock on the front turned sideways on his head, some kind of long gun on the ground next to him. Not breathing. Eyes open. Staring up at what there was of a moon.

  Molly knew she might be in shock. But knew she couldn’t afford that right now, that she had to power through, despite the fact that the fingers of her left hand were starting to go numb. She checked the pulse of the man in the shamrock cap to make sure. Saw the spreading wound in the middle of his chest. But no pulse. Nothing. She had shot a man dead. She didn’t bother to close his eyes. She would come back for an ID later. For now she ran back around the house and through the front door, left arm flapping at her side, kept her gun in her hand as she went inside and found Blair Richmond, lying on her back, her head in its own spreading pool of blood, an exit wound over her left eye.

  Molly knelt next to her, feeling as if she were kneeling in prayer, and felt her neck.

  I was too late.

  But somehow Blair Richmond was still alive.

  She took out her phone and prayed this time to God for enough bars, saw that there were, called 911 and said this was Deputy Chief Molly Crane of the Paradise Police Department and that there were gunshot victims at 10 Reservoir Road in Oxbow, one of them still alive but needing an ambulance, and right now.

  Molly didn’t include herself in the number of victims. She didn’t consider herself one. She sat on the floor next to Blair Richmond, afraid to move her. Afraid to look at her. Molly pulled up the sleeve of the black Bruins sweatshirt and saw that despite the fact that the blood had soaked through and made the sleeve wet and sticky, it was just a flesh wound.

  Just a flesh wound.

  Sure.

  Like it happened to her all the time.

  She went into the kitchen and finally turned on a light in the house and found a dish towel and pressed it against the wound and then went back into the living room and sat back down next to Blair and begged her not to die.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  They were at the Emergency Room wing of Marshport General Hospital, recently renovated and expanded. Jesse. Molly. Crow.

  Molly had been examined by one of the ER doctors, stitched and bandaged.

  “Do you two go anywhere without each other?” Molly said now that they were in the waiting room.

  “Been nice if we’d been with you earlier, all things considered,” Jesse said.

  “I learned not calling for backup from the master,” Molly said.

  Another ER doctor, not the one who’d treated Molly, came out now.

  “How is she?” Jesse said.

  “It’s a miracle that she’s still alive,” he said. His nametag read R. ABRAMSON. “Bullet went in through the left side of the back of her head, out where you saw the hole over her eye. A through-and-through. It just happens that way sometimes, for the very fortunate few, and even then maybe ten percent of people who get shot in the head like this survive. Maybe less.”

  “Surgery?” Jesse said.

  “Soon,” Dr. Abramson said.

  “Who?”

  “Me,” Abramson said. He offered a small smile. “I’m very good at this, in case you were wondering. Doing a favor for a friend tonight by filling in for her. We usually wait for an hour once we’ve stabilized a patient. Now we go in and see what the path was and how much damage to the brain there was. If the bullet ricochets around in there, or breaks into fragments, there’s no way she survives. Truth be told, she probably would have been gone by the time she hit the floor.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Molly said.

  Jesse said, “Does she have a chance?”

  “To live?” Abramson said. He paused. “It might depend more on the grace of God than even the best treatment available.”

  “When she does wake up,” Molly said, “is there a chance that she can be herself?”

  “You mean normal?” Dr. Abramson said. He put air quotes around “normal.”

  “Yes,” Molly said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “We might not know for quite some time,” Abramson said. “For now let’s just be thankful that she’s still with us after being shot at close range to the back of the head.”

  He said it was time for him to go to work. When he was gone, Jesse’s phone buzzed. Gabe Weathers calling.

  “Talk to me,” Jesse said.

  He listened for about a minute until Gabe Weathers ended the call. Then Jesse turned back to Molly and Crow.

  “Our shooter is from Boston, an ex-cop named Richie Carr,” he said. “Busted out finally after setting state records for excessive force. Now hiring himself out as a contract goon, one with a pretty impressive sheet in a short amount of time. Gabe talked to somebody in Boston who said that Carr, as much of a badass as he was, was a pretty good detective, especially on what Gabe called cyber-shit. Gabe found his SUV on a dirt road running parallel to Reservoir Road.”

  “Somehow he found out about that cabin,” Molly said.

  “Then got there first,” Jesse said.

  Molly leaned her head back and closed her eyes, and suddenly looked so weak to Jesse he was surprised she didn’t slide out of the chair and end up on the floor. She had shot someone dead tonight, and been shot, and found Blair Richmond after Richie Carr had shot her. For now, Blair Richmond was luckier than Neil O’Hara had been when he’d taken a bullet to the head. Maybe from the same guy, if Jesse had been right about Neil being murdered all along.

  Molly opened her eyes and looked at Jesse and said, “If I had gotten there five minutes earlier I could have saved her.”

  “Or could have gotten a bullet to the head yourself if you’d walked in on them,” Crow said.

  “I never shot anybody before,” she said.

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  “He didn’t give me a choice,” she said.

  “They hardly ever do,” Jesse said.

  “It was too late by the time I heard the shot from inside,” she said.

  “She’s alive, Molls,” Jesse said. “She’d be gone if you didn’t get there when you did. I’ve got Gabe and Suit searching the cabin as we speak.”

  “Crow can drive my car back to Paradise,” Jesse said to Molly. “I’ll drive yours.”

  Jesse gently helped her to her feet, knowing she had been wounded tonight in more ways than one, getting himself on her right so he could put a hand on her right shoulder and slowly lead her toward the revolving doors. There was a moment before they got there when Je
sse felt her start to sag. But Molly righted herself on her own. She said they should go right to the office, there was paperwork that needed to be filed because of an officer-involved shooting. Jesse said it could wait until morning.

  Crow had gotten Molly’s keys out of her bag while the ER doctor was attending to her. Her Cherokee—Jesse couldn’t believe they still called it that in a politically correct world—was waiting for them out front. Crow opened the door on the passenger side. Jesse eased Molly into her seat, and somehow carefully stretched the seatbelt across her and locked it in. Crow went to collect Jesse’s Explorer.

  After Crow brought the Explorer around, he got close to Jesse and said, “People who haven’t done it, they think they know what it’s like. They don’t.”

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  Then Jesse got behind the wheel and he and Molly began the ride back to Paradise. She was quiet for a long time.

  “I never shot anybody,” she said again.

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  When Jesse got home, he called Vinnie in Vegas to tell him what had happened with Molly, wanting to know if he knew who Richie Carr was. Vinnie said he did, it was the bad cops you remembered more than the good ones.

  “You got a regular Wild Bunch thing going in that little town a yours,” Vinnie said. “You ever see The Wild Bunch? That had some serious shooting shit in it.”

  Jesse told him it was a Western, which meant of course he’d seen it.

  “What I’m trying to figure out is why Billy Singer, if it was him, would bring in somebody like Richie Carr if he’s already got Santo and Baldelli on the ground here,” Jesse said.

  “Maybe he thought that after Santo and Baldelli basically got bitch-slapped by Crow, they weren’t getting it done,” Vinnie said. “Or maybe the other guy brought in Carr.”