by Mike Lupica
“Maybe the only person he trusted completely was Blair,” Jesse said.
They both knew how much they would never know about the last night of Neil O’Hara’s life, the last days of Ben Gage’s. Jesse was going on the assumption, what he thought was a reasonable one, that Ben must have hidden at least one key after discovering that his house had been searched. And run. Until Carr and Woodson had caught up with him. Tying up one more loose end.
“It can only be them,” Jesse said to Crow.
“Turns out that maybe Santo and Baldelli caught a good beating from me for nothing,” Crow said.
“Might make them work harder at being their best selves,” Jesse said.
Billy Singer was back in Vegas by now. Ed Barrone had announced he was putting his casino in Taunton up for sale. Thomas Lawton’s lawyers were trying to get the restraining order thrown out, as a way of somehow bringing the deal back to life, but were being outlawyered by Rita Fiore at every turn, as Jesse knew they would be.
“All those big winners,” Crow said now, “coming up losers in the end. Like they were all in Vegas.”
He had come over tonight to say goodbye, telling Jesse he was leaving in the morning.
“You gonna say goodbye to Molly?” Jesse said.
“Already did.”
“How’d that go?” Jesse said.
“She thanked me for everything I did saving your life and told me she was glad the two of us were on better terms and then told me to never come back,” Crow said.
“Kind of gets you right here,” Jesse said.
He was drinking one of those cold-brew coffees he’d taken a liking to. Crow kept sipping on his flask. Sometimes they would go for a few minutes without either one of them speaking. It made neither one of them jumpy.
Finally Crow said, “Somebody still got away with murder.”
“Two murders,” Jesse said. “And nearly a third.”
“Somebody hired Carr and Woodson,” Crow said. “Bother you you don’t know who did that, either?”
Jesse gave him a sideways look. “What do you think?”
Gabe had called that morning to tell him he was throwing in the towel on Neil O’Hara’s car, as pissed off as he was to be telling Jesse that. But he and Jim Silliman had come up empty, goddamn it all to hell.
“At least none of those bastards got away with murder on the land deal,” Jesse said. “So we’ve got that going for us.”
“Because of a note the kid left in a tree,” Crow said.
“One tree hugger leaving it for another,” Jesse said.
“The kid digging those graves finally dug up something that buried them all,” Crow said.
“Pity,” Jesse said. “Isn’t it?”
“Ben Gage turned out to be a hero in this,” Crow said.
“So did Neil,” Jesse said.
“So did the girl,” Crow said.
“Where you headed next?” Jesse said.
He saw Crow smile.
“Thought I might head down to the Florida Keys and buy myself a little fishing boat,” Crow said. “Try some of that Hemingway shit on for size.”
“Old injun and the sea,” Jesse said.
“Old Kiowa,” Crow said.
“Or Jicarilla.”
Crow stood up. He put out his hand. Jesse shook it.
“Next time,” Crow said.
Jesse smiled again.
“Do we really need one?” Jesse said.
Jesse was still on his terrace, Crow long gone, when he heard the banging on his door. Gabe Weathers was standing there when he opened it, along with a big, bald guy he introduced as Jim Silliman. They were both grinning at him. Gabe had some printouts in his hand.
“Quitters never win,” Gabe said.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Jesse left the Explorer on the road and walked up from there, not wanting to announce that he was here. He noticed a single light on in the gatehouse tonight, but no car parked in its driveway. The big house was fully lit, though.
When Thomas Lawton opened the door, Jesse could see suitcases in the front hall.
“Get lost,” Lawton said to Jesse. “I’ve got nothing to say to you. Like ever again.”
“Maybe you do,” Jesse said.
“Who’s there, Tommy?” Jesse heard.
Kate O’Hara had come walking out of the living room with a glass of wine in her hand.
She stopped when she saw Jesse. Opened her mouth and closed it.
“You two kids going somewhere?” Jesse said. “Have you really thought this through, Kate? He’s not as rich as you thought he was going to be.”
“Whatever,” Lawton said. “The one who’s going right now is you.”
Lawton started to shut the door.
Jesse put an arm out and stopped him.
“Tommy?” he said. “You don’t want to upset me tonight.”
He walked past him and into the living room and left them little choice but to follow him.
“You told me Neil’s world was getting smaller,” Jesse said to Kate.
“What you do want, Jesse?” she said.
“Thinking closure,” Jesse said.
Lawton reached for the phone on the coffee table, started to punch out some numbers.
“I’m calling the mayor,” he said.
Jesse smiled.
“Tommy,” he said, “if you don’t put down that phone I will make you eat it.”
“What’s this about, Stone?” he said. “You want to rub my face in it one last time? Unless I drop the case against the goddamn Indians, I’ll be in federal court for the rest of my life. And that’s the best-case scenario. I lost. You won. Game over.”
“Not quite yet,” Jesse said.
Then he took the printouts Gabe and Jim Silliman had brought with them out of the side pocket of his windbreaker, the ones they’d handed over to Jesse after they’d finally cracked the code on Neil O’Hara’s navigation system and been able to determine the last several stops the car had made.
The last few stops, time-stamped, were the only ones that had interested Jesse.
The final one had been at Neil’s house on Beach Avenue. The one before that had been at The Throw, which meant the killer or killers had driven him there in his own car.
The one before that had been at the home he had once shared with Kate O’Hara on Stiles Island, still listed as “Home,” as it turned out, in the car’s computer because Neil had never changed it. Or maybe remained hopeful that it could be his home again someday, provided she took him back.
He unfolded the printouts and spread them out on the coffee table, explaining what they were. Lawton looked down at them. Kate O’Hara kept staring at Jesse.
Out of his other pocket, Jesse pulled out the black-and-white photographs that he’d gotten from the guard gate at The Bluffs from the night when Neil O’Hara had been shot to death. One showed Neil behind the wheel of the Chevy Volt at 8:35. A half-hour later there were Richie Carr behind the wheel of Carr’s Highlander, the man Jesse now knew to be Darnell Woodson in the passenger seat next to him.
Kate O’Hara, as beautiful as ever, was still staring at him.
“I wasn’t there,” she said. “I had driven over here to see Thomas after your friend Crow stopped by earlier.”
Jesse knew what he had and what he didn’t have. He was just here hoping one of them would make a mistake. She’d lied to him before.
“No,” he said. “I checked. Your car never came back through the gate that night. Neither did your boyfriend’s. You didn’t leave and you were still there when I came to tell you about Neil.”
“Please stop talking, Kate,” Lawton said.
Jesse ignored him.
“I screwed up here,” he said. “I realize that now. You always look at the husband or wife first.
But this was different. I knew you. So I never thought he could have gone to see you that night. You know what I’m guessing? Neil had good news to share with you that night. Ben Gage had come around earlier to show him at least some of what he’d dug up. As soon as someone from the Peccontac Nation verified what the kid had, the deal was going to be dead in the water. Neil and the kids from SOB were going to stop the sale after all. And who better to share news like that than with his wife?”
“He wanted to have dinner,” Kate said. “I told you that. I turned him down.”
“You know what else I think?” Jesse said, ignoring her. “I think he told you some of it on the phone and told you he’d tell you the rest of it in person, and headed over to Stiles Island. But before he got there, you called Tommy, and told him Neil was about to go public with some very bad shit that would mean that Tommy wasn’t going to get his money after all.”
He smiled.
“You staged the break-in at your house, didn’t you?” he said. “What was the plan, to make yourself look like a victim? Or just get me to look anywhere except at you?”
She was the one looking away now.
“Okay,” Lawton said, “we’re done here. If you had more than this fairy tale, you would have arrested us already.”
Jesse said, “Eventually. We went back over Neil’s car, after we checked out the navigation. And guess what we came up with? DNA belonging to Mr. Woodson that we’d missed.”
Jesse paused.
Fake it till you make it.
“And when I arrest Darnell,” Jesse continued, “which I promise you I will, do either one of you really think he’s going down for this alone?”
“Darnell’s not going down for shit,” Darnell Woodson said, walking into the room, gun pointed at Jesse.
“You know the drill, Chief,” Woodson said. “Hands where I can see ’em,” and then told Thomas Lawton to relieve the chief of his weapon and bring it over to him. Lawton did.
“I saw his car down to the road when I come in to pack up my shit,” Woodson said to Lawton. “I figured nothing good could be happening up here.”
To Jesse, Woodson said, “Man paid up what he owed me, though, even with his finances taking a turn for the worse like they did.” He shrugged. “Least that deal went through.”
“You going to put a cop killing on top of everything else, Darnell?” Jesse said.
“Been reviewing my options fast as I can, Chief, and I got to admit, none of them good,” Woodson said.
He shook his head. Talking to himself.
“I don’t know what my man Chief Stone has got for sure and what he don’t got,” Darnell said, “but either way, I don’t see as how I can take no chances.”
He shook his head.
“Goddamn,” he said, “this was all too good to be true. Even after Richie got hisself shot. Just too goddamn good to be true.”
Talking to himself more than the room.
“See,” Woodson said to Lawton and Kate, “what neither of you know, or maybe just think you know, is that this man here will get up on everybody’s shit and never get out. Whether he’s got DNA or he don’t, whether it’s all circumstantial or not, he ain’t quit now. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my fucking shoulder.”
“You got your cuffs with you?” he said to Jesse. Then he smiled. “ ’Course you do, probably never go anywhere without them. Thomas, go get ’em off the man’s belt and cuff him behind his back, if that’s just the same with you. I’m sorry it all come to this, but Chief Stone and me got to take a ride.”
Jesse stepped away from the fireplace as Lawton came around behind him. As he did, Jesse grabbed him, putting Lawton between him and Darnell Woodson, and rushed Lawton across the room, like a linebacker pushing a runner back even after the play was over. Woodson fired anyway, Kate screaming now, as Jesse felt the first bullet go through Thomas Lawton and hit Jesse in his left shoulder, Jesse getting lower before the next bullet snapped Lawton’s head back.
Lawton fell away. Jesse dropped and rolled to his side. Woodson kept firing. Jesse heard another scream from Kate then, saw her fall forward onto the coffee table, scattering the printouts and photographs, before there was one last gunshot from the front hall and Jesse saw that Woodson was down and Crow was standing over him.
SEVENTY-FIVE
They were in her big bed. Still in the big bed. Middle of Saturday afternoon. Had been in it pretty much nonstop since Friday night.
“Why did Darnell shoot her, too?” she said.
“At that point he seemed quite willing to shoot everybody, and with my gun,” Jesse said. “The only people who could tie him to Neil and Ben Gage were in that room.”
“You think you actually could have proved any of it before the shooting started?” she said.
“Some,” Jesse said. “Not all. And probably not nearly enough. But then Darnell walked in and the balloon went up.”
“Lawton wanted his money,” she said. “Kate wanted him.” She smiled. “Ain’t love grand?”
“They both ended up dying over dirt,” Jesse said. “Even if it did turn out to be sacred dirt.”
“The young woman is going to be all right?” she said.
“Gonna be a long rehab,” Jesse said. “She’s still got some paralysis in her face, and with her right arm and leg. Not sure if she makes it all the way back, frankly. But she’s lucky to be alive. The doctors are amazed she’s made it as far back as she already has.”
She gently touched his stitches. “How’s the war wound?” she said.
“Molly’s was worse,” he said.
“Where’s Crow?”
“Probably trying to hook a marlin,” Jesse said.
“It seems to bother you less and less with the passage of time that Crow was a killer once,” she said.
“Look who’s talking, killer,” Jesse said.
“Weird sort of karma that Crow’s Native American, don’t you think?”
Jesse grinned. “Karma or destiny,” he said.
“You think destiny brought us back together?” she said.
“Why not?” Jesse said.
Then he leaned over and got his face close to hers and said, “Were you surprised to see me when I showed up?”
“Quite pleasantly surprised,” Rita Fiore said.
Then she said, “Did you really break up with your girlfriend?”
Jesse grinned. “It always ends up sounding like high school, doesn’t it?”
“Did you break it off with her?”
“We’re not even going to the prom,” Jesse said.
“I’ve got a dress that might fit the occasion.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Want to see it?”
“Later.”
Rita’s new town house was on Joy Street, on Beacon Hill, not terribly far from where Sunny lived. Rita said she’d chosen the house as much for the name of the street as for its location.
“What do you think the tribe will do with the land?” she said.
“They’re unearthing stuff on a daily basis,” Jesse said. “So they’re reviewing their options.” He pulled her closer. “As am I, as it turns out.”
“About time,” Rita said in a husky voice from somewhere underneath all that amazing red hair, and her whole amazing self.
“For what?” Jesse said.
“For me to put a little joy in your life, big boy,” she said.
And she did.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once again, thanks to David and Daniel Parker, for trusting me with the high honor of writing about both Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall.
And to my agent, the great Esther Newberg, the gatekeeper for all of Robert B. Parker’s characters.
These books could never be written without the wisdom and expertise and support of
Capt. John Fisher, the Chief of Police in Carlisle, Mass.
And a special thanks this time to my friend Beau Doherty, who is steeped in Native American history, and Lori Potter, Public Affairs Director for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
Thanks to Tom Harvey, a lawyer who gets everybody’s attention when he walks into court the way Rita Fiore does.
And finally my pals Peter Gethers, Scott Frank, David Koepp: Spitballers supreme.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring Chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010. Mike Lupica is a prominent sports journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction. A longtime friend to Robert B. Parker, he was selected by the Parker estate to continue the Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone series.
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