The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  Jesse waited. Mrs. Ingersoll smiled at him. Jesse waited. Mrs. Ingersoll smiled.

  “The girls say you picked up their skirts and checked their underwear.”

  Mrs. Ingersoll continued to smile.

  “Did you?” Jesse said.

  Still smiling, Mrs. Ingersoll leaned forward and folded her hands on her desk.

  “I have given twenty years of my life to this school,” she said, “the last five as principal. Most people don’t like the principal. Being police chief, you may understand. The students think I’m here to discipline them. The teachers think I am here to order them about. Actually, of course, I am here to see to the well-being of the children.”

  Jesse nodded slowly. When he spoke his voice showed no sign of impatience.

  “Did you look at their underwear, Mrs. Ingersoll?”

  “I have done nothing illegal,” she said brightly.

  “Actually,” Jesse said, “that’s not your call, Mrs. Ingersoll.”

  Her eyes were big and bright. Her smile lingered.

  “It’s not?”

  “You’ve been accused of an action,” Jesse said pleasantly, “which, depending on the zeal of the prosecutor, the skill of the defense, and the political inclinations of the judge, might or might not be deemed a crime.”

  “Oh, Jesse,” she said. “That’s absurd.”

  “Did you check their undies, Betsy?” Jesse said.

  She continued to smile. Her eyes continued to sparkle. But she didn’t speak.

  “Would you care to come down to the auditorium with me and thrash this out with the kids and their parents?” Jesse said. “Try to keep this from turning into a hairball?”

  She remained cheerfully motionless for a moment. Then she shook her head.

  “Do you know who my husband is, Jesse?” she said.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Well, I’m going to call him now,” she said. “And I’d like you to leave my office, please.”

  Jesse glanced at Molly. Molly’s lips were whistling silently as she stood studying the view from the window behind Mrs. Ingersoll. He looked back at Mrs. Ingersoll.

  Then he said, “Come on, Moll, let’s go talk to the girls.”

  As they left the office, Mrs. Ingersoll picked up the phone and began to dial.

  3

  “I’D LIKE to drag her down to the station and strip-search her,” Molly said. “Give her a little taste.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “That option remains available, Moll,” Jesse said. “But we probably need to talk to the victims first.”

  “I know,” Molly said, “I know. But if it were one of my kids . . .”

  The auditorium was subdued, as if the parents and the children were a little frightened by the circumstance they’d created. It was a small auditorium. Jesse sat on the lip of the stage.

  “I’m Jesse Stone,” he said. “I’m the chief of police. We can do this several ways. I can talk to you all, together, right here. Officer Molly Crane and I can talk to the girls separately, alone, or separately with a parent”―he grinned at the scatter of fathers―“or parents.”

  A hard-faced woman with brittle blond hair and a dark tan sat next to her daughter in the front row. She put up her hand. Jesse nodded at her.

  “What does Ingersoll have to say?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Ingersoll has neither affirmed nor denied anything,” Jesse said. “So I thought I’d ask you.”

  The parents and children sat still in the auditorium. Eddie Cox and Suit leaned against the wall. Molly stood beside Jesse, resting her hips against the stage.

  “Would one of the girls who were, ah, examined, like to tell us about it?” Jesse said.

  The daughter of the brittle blonde looked down and didn’t say anything. Her mother poked her. She continued to look down and shake her head.

  “Me.”

  Jesse saw her, in the middle of the third row, a dark-haired girl, just developing a cheerleader’s body if all went well.

  “What’s your name?” Jesse said.

  She stood up.

  “Bobbie Sorrentino,” she said.

  “Okay, Bobbie,” Jesse said. “Is that your mother with you?”

  “Yeah,” Bobbie said, and nodded at her mother. “Her.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Tell me about it.”

  “I gotta stand?”

  “Nope, stand, sit, up to you.”

  “I’m gonna stand,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “They got this stupid Wednesday-afternoon dance,” Bobbie said. “You know, keep the kids off the street. Teach them manners.”

  She snorted at the thought. Several of the girls giggled.

  “But if you don’t go and everybody else goes, you feel like a dweeb, so we all go.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “And the boys went,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah,” Bobbie said, “sure.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I remember,” he said.

  Bobbie stared at him a moment, as if it had never occurred to her that Jesse had ever been in junior high.

  “You go here?” Bobbie said.

  “No, Arizona,” Jesse said. “But school is pretty much school.”

  Bobbie nodded.

  “So, before the dance,” Bobbie said, “Old Lady Ingersoll lines us up and marches us into the girls’ locker room and starts checking us out.”

  “What did she do,” Jesse said.

  “She picked up my skirt,” Bobbie said, “and looked at my panties.”

  There was a small, uneasy stir in the crowd of kids and parents.

  “She tell you why she did that?” Jesse said.

  “She said”―Bobbie lowered her voice in mimicry―“ ‘Proper attire includes what shows and what doesn’t.’ ”

  “Did she say what would have been improper?” Jesse said.

  “She said anyone wearing a thong should leave now, because they’d be sent home if she saw one,” Bobbie said.

  “Anyone leave?” Jesse said.

  “Couple girls,” Bobbie said.

  “Thongs?” Jesse said. “Or silent protest?”

  His face was perfectly serious. Bobbie grinned at him.

  “Or nothing,” she said.

  Most of the girls giggled.

  “That’d probably be even more improper,” Jesse said.

  Some of the mothers joined in the giggle.

  “Anyone object to the, ah, panty patrol?” he said.

  “I did,” Bobbie said, “and a couple other girls, Carla for one, and Joanie.”

  “And Mrs. Ingersoll said?”

  “She said it was all between us girls, and she was trying to save us from being embarrassed, if somebody saw.”

  Jesse took in a deep breath and let it out.

  He said, “How old are you, Bobbie?”

  “I’ll be fourteen in October.”

  “Thank you,” Jesse said. “Anyone have anything to add? Carla, Joanie?”

  No one said anything.

  “Parents?”

  One of the fathers got to his feet. He was a husky guy, with the look of someone who worked outdoors.

  “Can you arrest her?” the man said.

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Charles Lane,” he said.

  “I’m not sure quite what the charge would be, Mr. Lane,” Jesse said. “Molestation generally requires sexual content. Assault generally includes the intent to injure. There might be something about invasion of privacy, but I don’t know that it would hold.”

  “We are not going to let this go,” he said.

  “No, sir,” Jesse said. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “So what would you do?”

  “I am going to talk to someone from the Essex County DA’s office,” Jesse said.

  “You think we should get a lawyer?” Lane said.

  Jesse grinned.

  “That’s pretty much what I’m doing,” Jesse said.


  4

  JESSE HAD made sangria. He and Jenn sipped some as they sat together on the small balcony off his living room, looking at the harbor. It was early on a Saturday evening. Jenn had brought Chinese food, which was still in the cartons, staying warm on a low temperature in Jesse’s oven.

  “You know,” Jenn said, “I realized the other day that we’ve been divorced longer than we were married.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “And yet, here we are.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  Jesse had made the sangria in a large glass pitcher, with a lot of ice. It sat on the low table between them, the condensation beading on the pitcher and making small tracks down the glass.

  “I can’t imagine life without you in it,” Jenn said.

  “Can’t live with them,” Jesse said. “Can’t live without them.”

  “There are people who are doing worse than we are,” Jenn said.

  It was still daylight, and Jesse could see several people in rowboats scattered around the inner harbor, bottom-fishing for flounder. Jesse drank some sangria.

  “And some doing better,” Jesse said.

  “Yes,” Jenn said, “of course.”

  In one of the rowboats a young boy hooked a fish and hauled it in hand over hand. His father helped him take it off the hook.

  “Is everything all right, Jesse?” Jenn said.

  “It never is, Jenn,” Jesse said.

  He drank some sangria.

  “But it’s not worse than usual?” Jenn said.

  Jesse looked at her and smiled.

  “That might be our motto,” Jesse said. “It’s not worse than usual.”

  Jenn nodded.

  “Are you seeing anyone these days?” she said.

  “Several people.”

  “Anyone special?”

  “They’re all special,” Jesse said.

  “Because they have sex with you?”

  “Exactly,” Jesse said.

  “Am I special?” Jenn said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “Even when we don’t have sex.”

  “Is anyone else special like that?”

  “No.”

  They were quiet for a time, drinking sangria, as the sun went down and the small boats came into the dock, and the lights went on in the boats moored in the harbor, and across the harbor in the houses on Paradise Neck.

  “Maybe we should think about supper,” Jenn said.

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  “We could eat out here,” Jenn said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “You gonna spend the night, Jenn?”

  “If I may,” Jenn said.

  “You may.”

  “I think we should have sex before we eat,” Jenn said. “I do so much better on an empty stomach.”

  “You do well in any condition,” Jesse said.

  “Does it make me especially special?” Jenn said.

  “One of the many things,” Jesse said.

  5

  THE ADA was a tall, athletic-looking woman named Holly Clarkson. Like a lot of assistant prosecutors, she was young, maybe five years out of law school, and earning some experience in the public sector before she sank comfortably into some law firm somewhere as a litigator.

  “You want to arrest the principal of the junior high school?” Holly said. “And charge her with what?”

  Holly always wore oversized round eyeglasses as a kind of signature. Today she was dressed in a beige pantsuit and a black shirt with long collar points.

  “Whatever you can come up with,” Jesse said.

  “And you actually want to put her in jail?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do know that her husband is the managing partner of the biggest law firm in the state,” Holly said.

  “Jay Ingersoll,” Jesse said. “Cone, Oakes, and Baldwin.”

  “Correct,” Holly said. “And she is accused of picking up the skirts of some junior-high girls and checking their underwear.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s idiotic,” Holly said.

  “It is,” Jesse said.

  “I admit,” Holly said, “that it would be fun to see her do a little time, get her attention, so to speak.”

  “It would be,” Jesse said.

  “But you can’t arrest somebody because it would be fun,” Holly said.

  “I can’t?”

  “No,” Holly said. “And if we started prosecuting people for being idiotic . . .”

  “Be a hot one for the press and the talk shows,” Jesse said. “Elevate your profile.”

  “I’m not that ambitious,” Holly said. “And if I were, the approval of Jay Ingersoll would be more valuable to me than anything the press could give me.”

  “You got kids?” Jesse said.

  “Not yet,” Holly said. “First I need to get married.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Sure,” Holly said. “I know if it were my kids I’d want to strangle the bitch. But to prosecute her for . . . whatever we come up with, and get buried in paper by a platoon of lawyers from Cone, Oakes. You know what they’ve got for resources?”

  “More than Essex County?” Jesse said.

  “More and better. Not everybody on staff in our office is a legal eagle like me.”

  “Anybody in your office got a death wish?” Jesse said.

  “No,” Holly said. “And if they did, Howard would fire them before they got a chance to enact it.”

  “The DA doesn’t want to start anything,” I said.

  “The DA wants to get reelected next year,” Holly said.

  “How about by being tough on crime?”

  “When people say that, they mean tough on street crime. And tough on scary black kids with tats. They do not mean tough on annoying school administrators,” Holly said.

  “These are thirteen-year-old girls,” Jesse said.

  “Oh, please,” Holly said. “I’ve been a thirteen-year-old girl, Jesse. They aren’t adults, but they aren’t innocent babies, either. You know as well as I do that thirteen-year-old girls can be sexually active.”

  “And why is that the school’s business,” Jesse said. “What happened to readin’ and writin’?”

  “Parents dump it on the schools,” Holly said. “ ‘Where were you when my Melinda was bopping little Timmy behind the back stop?’ ”

  “And the panty patrol is supposed to prevent that?”

  “Of course it won’t,” Holly said. “But Mrs. Ingersoll is, after all, an educator.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I never liked school,” he said. “But in fact this may not be a problem with schools. This may be a problem with Mrs. Ingersoll.”

  “It may,” Holly said.

  “She shouldn’t get away with it,” Jesse said.

  “Shouldn’t?” Holly said. “You and I don’t live in a world of should and shouldn’t, Jesse.”

  Jesse grinned at her.

  “I know,” he said. “But we should.”

  6

  MOLLY BROUGHT Missy Clark into Jesse’s office. Missy was wearing running shorts and a cropped T-shirt and cowboy boots. There was dark makeup around her eyes, and a big gold hoop in her right ear. She was thirteen. Jesse gestured her to a chair. Molly lingered in the doorway.

  “What can I do for you?” Jesse said.

  Missy sat and looked at Jesse, then looked at Molly, and back at Jesse.

  “I gotta talk to you alone,” Missy said finally.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Officer Crane normally stays when there’s a woman alone with me in the office. Prevents misunderstandings.”

  “Misunder―? Oh,” Missy said. “No. You’re not like that.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I’m not.”

  He nodded at Molly and she went away. Missy looked at the open door.

  “You may close the door if you’d like,” Jesse said.

  Missy got up and looked out into the corridor to se
e that Molly wasn’t lurking there. Then she closed the door and went back to her chair. Jesse clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.

  “So,” he said. “What’s up.”

  “I saw you at school the other day,” she said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “I saw you, too. Second row, at the far end to my right. Wearing a yellow sundress with small blue flowers on it. You didn’t seem to be with your parents.”

  “Mrs. Ingersoll won’t let us wear jeans or anything,” Missy said. “How come you noticed me.”

  “I’m the chief of police,” Jesse said. “I notice everything.”

  “You were nice to us,” Missy said. “You were nice to Bobbie Sorrentino, when she talked.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be nice to you?”

  “’Cause we’re kids and she’s the principal.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You came along to that meeting even though your parents weren’t with you,” Jesse said.

  “I didn’t like that she made me pull my dress up,” Missy said.

  “Don’t blame you,” Jesse said.

  Missy looked around the office. Jesse waited. Missy studied the picture of Jenn that sat on top of the file cabinet to Jesse’s left.

  “That your wife?” she said.

  “Ex-wife,” Jesse said.

  “How come you got divorced?” Missy said.

  Jesse smiled at her.

  “None of your business,” he said.

  Missy nodded.

  “She fool around?” Missy said.

  “Answer stands,” Jesse said.

  “I was just wondering,” Missy said.

  Jesse nodded. He smiled at her again.

  He said, “The way this usually works, Missy, is the cop asks the questions.”

  Missy nodded. Neither of them spoke for a time. Missy looked again at Jenn’s picture.

  “Is she that reporter on Channel Three?” Missy said.

  Jesse didn’t answer.

  “She is. I seen her lots of times,” Missy said.

  Jesse waited. Missy looked around the office some more.

  “I gotta tell you something,” Missy said.

  “Okay.”

  “You can’t tell anybody,” Missy said.

  “Okay.”

  “You can’t tell anybody I even talked to you,” Missy said.