“Somebody else?”
“No. It was more that we hoped for someone else. Or something else. Our marriage just wasn’t enough.”
“How about number two?” Jesse said.
“The sonovabitch,” Lilly said, and pretended to spit.
“Another woman?”
“Another dozen,” Lilly said.
“Animosity,” Jesse said.
“A lot,” Lilly said.
“How long have you been single?” Jesse said.
“Five years.”
“You mind living alone?”
“Yes.”
They were quiet again.
“You?” Lilly said.
“No,” Jesse said. “I don’t mind living alone… I mind being alone. And I mind Jenn not being alone.”
“You’re pretty hooked into Jenn,” Lilly said.
“I am.”
“How long have you been divorced?”
“Four years.”
“I’m not sure that’s very good for you,” Lilly said.
“Probably not,” Jesse said.
“Have you ever seen a shrink?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should. It helps.”
“Maybe I should,” Jesse said.
“But?”
“My father was a cop,” Jesse said. “My whole life I been playing ball, or I been a cop.”
“So?”
“Seeing a psychiatrist is not something cops and ballplayers are supposed to do.”
“What are they supposed to do?”
Jesse paused, thinking about it.
“They’re supposed to hang in.”
“Forever?”
“As needed,” Jesse said.
Lilly looked at him thoughtfully. “Wow,” she said. “You need a shrink worse than I thought.”
“Jenn says so, too.”
“She seeing one?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Lilly said. “You’ll go when you’re ready.”
Jesse didn’t say anything. Maybe he would. But if he did, it would start with the provision that he wasn’t going to stop loving Jenn. The champagne was gone so quickly. You have to concentrate every minute, Jesse thought.
“I have made us a lovely supper,” Lilly said.
“I could use one,” Jesse said.
“But if we eat it first,” Lilly said, “we’ll both be thinking about afterwards and how that’s going to go, and won’t be able to enjoy the dinner as we should.”
“That is a problem,” Jesse said.
“So I think we should have the afterwards first. Then we’d be free to concentrate on the lovely supper.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
Lilly put down her champagne glass and stood.
“Follow me,” she said, and walked past the kitchen counter toward her bedroom.
He felt the familiar smooth curve as he ran his hand up her thigh. The familiar soft slope of her belly. He had done this often. This time, like each time, it was brand-new. He could hear her breathing, felt the pressure of her hips, she was skillful and fully engaged. The part of him that was not making love smiled. Didn’t matter if she was skillful. His father used to say, The worst piece of ass I ever had was excellent. There was always that part. The one that wasn’t engaged, whether it was lovemaking or fighting. There was always the amused, nonjudgmental other observing it. He wondered if she had an other.
Finally, dressed and relaxed, they sat at her glass-top dining table and ate in silence in the gently moving light of the candles Lilly had lighted. There was a bottle of white wine at hand in an ice bucket.
“That’s your real hair color,” he said.
“My hair turned silver when I was twenty-six,” Lilly said.
She poured some white wine into Jesse’s glass. It’s all right. I’m nowhere near drunk. He drank some. Nice wine. He ate some of the supper she had served them.
“What am I eating?” Jesse said.
“Lobster meat in a light cream sauce,” Lilly said. “With sherry, pearl onions and mushrooms and different-colored sweet peppers, over basmati rice.”
“You can cook.”
Lilly smiled at him.
“Second best thing I do,” she said.
Jesse nodded several times and drank some wine.
Chapter Nineteen
Jesse was pretty sure that things would go better with Hooker Royce if his parents weren’t around when they talked. He found Hooker at the high school, on the football field, running sprints. He had on expensive athletic shoes, a stopwatch on his wrist and a pair of gray cotton sweatpants that had been cut off to mid thigh. Jesse stood quietly watching Hooker as he did forty-yard sprints, timing each one. He was a muscular, in-shape, middle-sized kid, a little bigger than Jesse, with an even tan and a blond crew cut. When Hooker paused to rest, Jesse spoke to him.
“My name’s Jesse Stone. I’m with the police in Paradise.”
“Is it about Billie?”
“It is.”
“I don’t know where she is. I already told the lady from your department that called me.”
Jesse nodded. They began to walk around the quarter-mile track that circled the field.
“When’s football start at Yale?” Jesse said.
“I’m supposed to show up day after Labor Day.”
“You a running back?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“What’d you run out of in high school?” Jesse said.
“Deep back in the I. You play?”
“High school,” Jesse said. “You plan to show up in shape.”
“Be dumb not to,” Hooker said.
“You were a Globe all-scholastic in three sports,” Jesse said.
Hooker nodded.
“And an honor student.”
Hooker nodded again.
“Full boat to Yale?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a nice-looking kid,” Jesse said.
“Thank you.”
“Probably don’t have much trouble getting a date,” Jesse said.
Hooker grinned. “When I have time,” he said.
“So how come Billie?” Jesse said.
“Whaddya mean?”
“Billie doesn’t seem like she’d be your girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend? She wasn’t my girlfriend.”
“You gave her your class ring,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, but that was…”
They stopped walking. Hooker turned toward Jesse.
“It’s like, I broke up with my regular girlfriend.”
“And Billie was available?”
“Christ,” Hooker said, and smiled. “Billie was always available.”
“And?”
“And, yeah, I needed a date for senior prom, and Paula was going with somebody else.”
“And the pickings were thin.”
“Most of the girls already had dates. And it seemed like a way to stick it to Paula.”
“And get laid in the process,” Jesse said.
Hooker grinned and shrugged.
“So how come the ring?” Jesse said.
“I kind of liked her,” Hooker said. “After I actually took her to the dance. And I felt bad for her. I mean everybody was banging her, but nobody cared anything much about her, you know?”
“Un-huh.”
“And, you know, she wasn’t that bad a kid. Like everybody thought she was stupid, and she wasn’t. She was pretty smart about a lot of stuff.”
“And you fell head over heels in love,” Jesse said.
“What planet you come from?” Hooker said. “Like I said, I felt bad for her. I’m not going out with anybody. So I figure, hell, I’m going to college in a couple of months. I’ll give her the ring, make her feel good, and then I’ll go to college in September and it’s over. I don’t give a shit about the ring.”
“She know that?” Jesse said.
“No, of course not. But it didn’t work out like I thought. Paula and I patche
d it up, and she said if we were going to be together I couldn’t be going out with Billie.”
“Seems fair,” Jesse said. “To Paula.”
“Yeah, and, like, I love Paula. You know? Billie wasn’t so bad. But…”
“When’d you break the news?” Jesse said.
“About a week after graduation,” Hooker said.
“How’d she take it?”
“Funny,” Hooker said. “She was funny about it like she expected it to happen. I told her to keep the ring. Like a memento. I figured I’d give Paula something from Yale.”
They were quiet, sitting together on the bottom row of the empty stands with the summer sun staring down at them.
“What was her life like at home?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know,” Hooker said. “She never said anything about home.”
“And you never went there?”
“Couple times to pick her up. Mrs. Bishop’s real young-looking.”
“Anything else?”
Hooker shrugged.
“Nothing I can think of. I’d just go in, pick up Billie, and we’d leave. Mrs. Bishop seemed nice. I was surprised when they kicked her out.”
“Did you see her after they kicked her out?”
“No.”
“You know where she went?”
“No.”
They were silent again. Jesse liked to leave openings for people to fill.
“I gotta do my sprints,” Hooker said.
“Sure,” Jesse said. “You know anyone with a reason to kill her?”
“No,” Hooker said. “You think it’s her?”
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“Jesus,” Hooker said. “That’s a shame.”
“It is,” Jesse said.
“You think you can catch him?”
“Or her.”
“Him or her,” Hooker said. “You think you’ll catch him?”
“You think you’ll make the Yale football team?” Jesse said.
“Sure. You gotta stay positive. If you think you can’t, you probably won’t.”
Jesse smiled and didn’t say anything.
Hooker saw the smile and paused.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, sure. Well, good luck.”
“You, too,” Jesse said.
Hooker walked back to the field, stood on the forty-yard line, set his stopwatch and sprinted to the end zone.
He probably will make it.
Chapter Twenty
No one groomed the field they played on. The park department mowed it once a week, but that was all. Sometimes somebody on one of the teams would bring down a rake and try to smooth things out a little, but there were too many games, and everyone had jobs, and there was just time to come home and change and get to the park. There wasn’t much time for groundskeeping. The right-hand batter’s box had holes worn in it by an endless series of right-handed hitters digging in. Whatever your natural batting stance, you were forced to set your feet in the holes.
Jesse didn’t like it. When he’d played he’d hit with a slightly open stance. The holes in the batter’s box forced him to close it up. On the other hand the ball was fat, and it came a lot slower than it had in the minor leagues. And why did he care anyway? Jesse smiled to himself. Pride. The fact of having been good carried with it its own responsibility. He was supposed to be the best player in the league. It mattered.
The pitcher wasn’t good. Some of the guys in the league could bring it, and the pitcher’s mound was much closer in softball. But this guy couldn’t throw hard. He was getting by with slow and slower, trying to move the ball around. Each time at bat, the pitcher had worked Jesse high and low. He worked everyone high and low. The first pitch was high. The second pitch was low. With a one-one count, Jesse shifted his hands slightly so he could uppercut the ball. When the pitch arrived, shoulder high, he hit it over the left-fielder’s head. There were no fences. You had to run out the home runs. Jesse could still run. Between short and third he saw the left fielder give up on the ball. Jesse slowed to a jog as he rounded third. He got an assortment of low and high fives when he crossed home plate. Just as if it mattered.
Chapter Twenty-one
He met Emily Bishop in a coffee shop in a small shopping center near the town common. She wore the gray tee shirt she had promised to wear. It was too big for her. PROPERTY OF SWAMPSCOTT ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT was printed across the front. Below the tee shirt were baggy blue jeans held up by wide blue suspenders. Her feet were up on the chair next to her. She was wearing lace-up black boots with thick soles. Her hair was very short. Her face was without makeup. The hint of a good figure showed through the jeans and tee shirt. A pack of Marlboros lay on the table in front of her. She was smoking and drinking coffee. He wondered if Billie looked like her. Jesse stopped at the counter and got a large coffee with cream and sugar and brought it over to the table where Emily was sitting. She’d already decided who he was.
“I’m Jesse Stone,” he said.
“Show me your badge,” Emily said.
She had a flat, unpleasant voice. Jesse showed her his badge.
“Christ,” she said. “The fucking chief.”
“It’s nothing,” Jesse said.
“So what happened to my sister?” Emily said.
There was no way to soften it. Jesse had long since learned to just say it.
“We think she was shot in the head and dumped in a lake in Paradise.”
“You think?”
“Body is hard to identify.”
“So why do you think it’s my sister?”
Jesse told her. Emily smoked her cigarette and drank some coffee and listened with no expression.
“Billie, Billie,” she said when Jesse finished.
Jesse took a sip of his coffee. He waited. Emily dropped her cigarette into the half inch of coffee in the bottom of her cup.
“Christ, didn’t they fuck her up,” Emily said.
“Parents?”
“Of course, parents. Probably fucked me up, too. Except I got out in time, maybe.”
How and why they had fucked up their daughters was interesting, but it didn’t lead Jesse anywhere he wanted to go at the moment.
“Do you have a picture of your sister?” Jesse said.
“Not her alone,” Emily said. “But I got a picture in the dorm of her and me and Carla.”
“I’d like to borrow it,” Jesse said. “I promise I’ll get it back to you.”
Emily nodded.
“When they kicked Billie out,” Jesse said, “do you know where she went?”
“Someplace in Boston.”
“You know where?”
“No. Some nun runs it.”
“A shelter?”
“I guess.”
“She get along okay with Hooker?” Jesse said.
“Hooker was nice to her,” Emily said.
“Anybody that might have harmed her?”
“Half the guys in the high school were bopping her. Probably some older guys, too.”
“Any names?”
“No. I don’t know. She thought it made her popular. I didn’t want to hear about it.”
“Anything else you can tell me that might help?”
Emily lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply and let it out slowly though her nose. There was something practiced about it, Jesse thought, as if it were a trick recently learned.
“I got a letter from her back in my room,” she said. “I think she said the nun’s name in it.”
“Can we get that? When I pick up the picture?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They were silent. Jesse watched her smoke. He could see her eyes well up, but she didn’t cry.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Can we get the picture and the letter?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They left the coffee shop and walked to the campus. Jesse thought how different it would feel to go there and graduate. Old stone, old trees, wi
de paths, white houses with dark shutters, green grass in spring, new snow glistening in winter. Different from being a desert high school grad with a sore arm.
In Emily’s room there were clothes on the floor in a pile. The bed was unmade. On her desk, books and papers were jumbled with no pattern. Amidst the jumble was a framed picture of the Bishop girls. In color, all smiling at the camera.
“How old is the picture?” Jesse said.
“Last summer.”
Jesse stared at it while Emily looked in her desk drawer and in a moment came out with a letter. It was postmarked July 3. Emily handed it to him and Jesse took it. She picked up the picture and handed it to Jesse.
“The happy family,” Emily said.
Jesse took the picture.
“I hope Carla gets out before they get her, too.”
Jesse didn’t comment. There wasn’t any comment to make.
“They aren’t going to get me,” Emily said. “I’m outta there. I’m on my own and I’m never going back.”
“Your father still pay your tuition?”
“Of course he does. You think he wants to have his daughter drop out of a seven fucking sisters school?”
“Good to be able to count on something,” Jesse said.
“Fuck him,” Emily said. “He owes it to me. I’ll take him for everything he’s got if I can.”
Quite suddenly she began to cry. Jesse put an arm on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and stepped away from him. He stood quietly in the room without touching her until she stopped crying.
“You got someone to talk to?” Jesse said.
She nodded.
“Shrink?”
She nodded again. Jesse took out a card.
“You think of anything… or you need anything.”
He handed her the card. She looked at it as if it meant more than it did.
“You’ll do that?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“Might be good if you called your shrink,” Jesse said.
She didn’t speak or move. Jesse stood for another moment and then he left.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jesse stood in the open slider of his condo, looking out over his balcony toward Paradise Neck. Below the balcony the black water of the harbor moved with aimless purpose against the rust-colored rocks. Jesse liked the sound. He would like it even more with a drink. He knew the girl was Billie Bishop. He couldn’t exactly prove it yet, but he knew. He knew there was something wrong in the Bishop house. Were the girls being molested? They seemed angry. Especially Emily. He thought about how pleasant it would be to sit on his balcony with a tall scotch and soda and look at the harbor and listen to the gentle sway of the Atlantic Ocean and not think about molestation. He wondered if Emily was a lesbian. As the evening lengthened it grew dark enough for the lights of the big houses on the neck to show across the harbor. He wished Jenn were here. He wished they could sit together and look at the ocean and the far lights.
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