Robert B Parker - Stone 4 - Stone Cold

by Stone Cold(lit)

  Robert B Parker - Stone 4 - Stone Cold

  FOR JOAN:

  everything started to hum

  1

  After the murder, they made love in front of a video camera. When it was over, her mouth was bruised. He had long scratches across his back. They lay side by side on their backs, gasping for breath.

  "Jesus!" he said, his voice hoarse.

  "Yes," she whispered.

  She moved into the compass of his left arm and rested her head against his chest. They lay silently for a while, not moving, waiting for oxygen.

  "I love you," he said.

  "I love you too," she said.

  He put his face down against the top of her head where it lay on his chest. Her hair smelled of verbena. In time their breathing settled.

  "Let's play the video," she whispered.

  "Let's," he said.

  The camera stood beside the bed on a tripod. He got up, took the tape from it, put it in the VCR, got back into bed, and picked up the remote from the night table. She moved back into the circle of his arm, her head back on his chest.

  "Show time," he said, and clicked the remote.

  They watched.

  "My God," she said. "Look at me."

  "I love how you're looking right into the camera," he said.

  They watched quietly for a little while.

  "Whoa," she said. "What are you doing to me there?"

  "Nothing you don't like," he said.

  When the tape was over he rewound it.

  "You want to watch again?" he said.

  She was drawing tiny circles on his chest with her left forefinger.

  "Yes."

  He started the tape again.

  "You know what I loved," she said. "I loved the range of expression on his face."

  "Yes," he said, "that was great. First it's like, what the hell is this?"

  "And then like, are you serious?"

  "And then, omigod!"

  "That's the best," she said. "The way he looked when he knew we were going to kill him. I've never seen a look like that."

  "Yes," he said. "That was pretty good."

  "I wish we could have made it last longer," she said.

  He shrugged.

  "My bad," she said. "I got so excited. I shot too soon."

  "I've been known to do that," he said.

  "Well, aren't you Mr. Dirty Mouth," she said.

  They both laughed.

  "We'll get better at it," he said.

  She was now rubbing the slow circles on his chest with her full palm, looking at the videotape.

  "Ohhh," she said. "Look at me! Look at me!"

  He laughed softly. She moved her hand down his stomach.

  "What's happening here?" she said.

  He laughed again.

  "Ohh," she said. "Good news."

  She turned her body hard against him and put her face up.

  "Be careful," she murmured. "My mouth is sore."

  They made love again while the image of their previous lovemaking moved unseen on the television screen, and the sounds of that mingled with the sounds they were making now.

  2

  It was just after dawn. Low tide. Several herring gulls hopped on the beach, their heads cocking one way then another, their flat black eyes looking at the corpse. Jesse Stone, with the blue light flashing, pulled into the public beach parking lot at the end of the causeway from Paradise Neck, parked behind the Paradise Police cruiser that was already there, and got out of his car. It was mid November and cold. Jesse closed the snaps on his Paradise Men's Softball League jacket and walked to the beach, where Suitcase Simpson, holding a big Mag flashlight, stood looking down at the body.

  "Guy's been shot, Jesse," he said.

  Jesse stood beside Simpson and looked down at the body.

  "Who found him?"

  "Me. I'm on eleven to seven and I pulled in here to, ah, take a leak, you know, and the headlights picked him up."

  Simpson was a big shapeless red-cheeked kid who'd played tackle in high school. His real name was Luther but everyone called him Suitcase after the ballplayer.

  "Peter Perkins coming?"

  "Anthony's on the night desk," Simpson said. "He told me he'd call him soon as he called you."

  "Okay, gimme the flashlight. Then go pull your cruiser across the entrance to the parking lot and call in. When Molly comes on I want Anthony down here and everybody else she can wrangle. I want the area secured."

  Simpson hesitated, still looking down.

  "It's a murder, isn't it, Jesse?"

  "Probably," Jesse said. "Gimme the light."

  Simpson handed the flashlight to Jesse and went to his cruiser. Jesse squatted on his heels and studied the corpse. It had been a young white man, maybe thirty-five. His mouth was open. There was sand in it. He wore a maroon velour warm-up suit, which was soaking wet. There were two small holes in the wet fabric. One on the left side of the chest. One on the right. Jesse turned the head slightly. There was sand in his ear. Jesse swept the flashlight slowly around the body. He saw nothing but the normal debris of a normal beach: a tangle of seaweed scraps, a piece of salt-bleached driftwood, an empty crab shell.

  Simpson walked back across the parking lot. Behind him the blue light on his patrol car revolved silently.

  "Perkins is on the way," he said. "And Arthur Angstrom. Anthony called Molly. She's coming in early. Anthony'll be down as soon as she gets there."

  Jesse nodded, still looking at the crime scene.

  He said, "What time is it, Suit?"

  "Six-fifteen."

  "And it's dead low tide," Jesse said. "So high was around midnight."

  A siren sounded in the distance.

  "You think he was washed up here?" Simpson said.

  "Body that's been in the ocean and washed up on shore doesn't look like this," Jesse said.

  "More beat up," Simpson said.

  Jesse nodded.

  "He's got some marks on his face," Simpson said.

  "That would probably be the gulls," Jesse said.

  "I coulda lived without knowing that," Simpson said.

  Jesse moved the right arm of the corpse. "Still in rigor," he said.

  "Which means?"

  "Rigor usually passes in twenty-four hours," Jesse said.

  "So he was killed since yesterday morning."

  "More or less. Cold water might change the timing a little."

  A Paradise patrol car pulled in beside Simpson's, adding its blue light to his. Peter Perkins got out and walked toward them. He was carrying a black leather satchel.

  "Anthony says you got a murder?" Perkins said.

  "You're the crime-scene guy," Jesse said. "But there's two bullet holes in his chest."

  "That would be a clue," Perkins said.

  He put the satchel on the sand and squatted beside Jesse to look at the corpse.

  "I figure he was probably shot here, sometime before midnight," Jesse said, "when the tide was still coming in. There's the high water line. The tide reached high about midnight and soaked him, maybe rolled him around a little, and left him here when it receded."

  "If you're right," Perkins said, "it probably washed away pretty much any evidence might be lying around."

  "We'll close the beach," Jesse said, "and go over it."

  "It's November, Jesse," Simpson said. "Nobody uses it anyway."

  "This guy did," Jesse said.

  3

  When he left the beach, Jesse called Marcy Campbell on his cell phone.

  "I'm up early fighting crime," Jesse said. "Got time for breakfast?"

  "It's seven-thirty in the morning," Marcy said. "What if I'd been a
sleep?"

  "You'd be dreaming of me. When's your first appointment."

  "I'm showing a house on Paradise Neck at eleven," Marcy said.

  "I'll come by for you."

  "I'm just out of the shower," Marcy said. "I'm not even dressed."

  "Good," Jesse said. "I'll hurry."

  Sitting across from Jesse in the Indigo Apple Cafe at 8:15, Marcy was completely put together. Her platinum hair was perfectly in place. Her makeup was flawless.

  "You got ready pretty fast," Jesse said.

  "Crime busters float my boat," Marcy said. "What are you doing so early."

  "Found a body on the beach," Jesse said.

  "Town beach?"

  "Yes. He'd been shot twice."

  "My God," Marcy said. "Who was it."

  "Don't know yet," Jesse said. "ME is looking at him now."

  "Do you get help on major crimes like that?"

  "If we need it," Jesse said.

  "Oh dear," Marcy said. "I've stepped on a prickle."

  "We're a pretty good little operation here," Jesse said. "Admittedly we don't have all the resources of a big department. State cops help us out on that."

  "And you don't like it when that happens."

  "I like to run my own show," Jesse said. "When I can."

  The Indigo Apple had a lot of etched glass and blue curtains. For breakfast it specialized in omelets with regional names. Italian omelets with tomato sauce, Mexican omelets with cheese and peppers, Swedish omelets with sour cream and mushrooms. Jesse chose a Mexican omelet. Marcy ordered wheat toast.

  "Speaking of which, how is the drinking?"

  "Good," Jesse said.

  He didn't like to talk about his drinking, even to Marcy.

  "And the love life?" Marcy said.

  "Besides you?"

  "Besides me."

  "Various," Jesse said.

  "Well, doesn't that make me feel special," Marcy said.

  "Oh God, don't you get the vapors on me," Jesse said.

  "No." Marcy smiled. "I won't. We're not lovers. We're pals who fuck."

  "What are pals for," Jesse said.

  "It's why we get along."

  "Because we don't love each other?"

  "It helps," Marcy said. "How's the ex-wife?"

  "Jenn," Jesse said.

  "Jenn."

  Jesse leaned back a little and looked past Marcy through the etched glass front window of the cafe at people going by on the street, starting the day.

  "Jenn," he said again. "Well... she doesn't seem to be in love with that anchorman anymore."

  "Was she ever?"

  "Probably not."

  Marcy ate some toast and drank some coffee.

  "She's going out with some guy from Harvard," Jesse said.

  "A professor?"

  The waitress stopped by the table and refilled their coffee cups.

  "No, some sort of dean, I think."

  "Climbing the intellectual ladder," Marcy said.

  Jesse shrugged.

  "You've been divorced like five years," Marcy said.

  "Four years and eleven days."

  Marcy stirred her coffee. "I'm older than you are," Marcy said.

  "Which gives you the right to offer me advice," Jesse said.

  "Yes. It's a rule."

  "And you advise me," Jesse said, "to forget about Jenn."

  "I do," Marcy said.

  Jesse cut off a corner of his omelet and ate it and drank some coffee and patted his lips with his napkin.

  "Is there anyone advising you otherwise?" Marcy said.

  "No."

  "If you resolved this thing with Jenn," Marcy said, "maybe you could put the drinking issue away too, and just be a really good police chief."

  "I've never been drunk on the job," Jesse said.

  "You've never been drunk on the job here," Marcy said.

  "Good point," Jesse said softly.

  "It got you fired in LA," Marcy said. "After you broke up with Jenn in LA. And you came here to start over."

  Jesse nodded.

  Marcy said, "So?"

  "So?"

  "So Jenn followed you here and you still struggle with booze," Marcy said. "Maybe there's a connection."

  Jesse ate some more of his omelet.

  "You think anyone in Mexico ever ate an omelet like this?" he said.

  "Are you suggesting I shut up?"

  Jesse smiled at her and drank some coffee from the big white porcelain mug like the ones they had used in diners when he was a kid, in Tucson.

  Jesse shook his head.

  "No," he said. "Your advice is good. It's just not good for me."

  "Because?"

  "I will not give up on Jenn until she gives up on me," Jesse said.

  "Isn't that giving her a license to do whatever she wants to and hang on to you?"

  "Yes," Jesse said. "It is."

  Marcy stared at him.

  "How does it make you feel that she's sleeping with other men?" Marcy said.

  "We're divorced," Jesse said. "She's got every right."

  "Un-huh," Marcy said. "But how does it make you feel?"

  "It makes me want to puke," Jesse said. "It makes me want to kill any man she's with."

  "But you don't."

  "Nope."

  "Because it's against the law?"

  "Because it won't take me where I want to go," Jesse said.

  "I don't mean this in any negative way," Marcy said. "You are maybe the simplest person I ever met."

  "I know what I want," Jesse said.

  "And you keep your eye on the prize," Marcy said.

  "I do," Jesse said.

  4

  BobValenti came into Jesse's office and sat down. He was overweight with a thick black beard, wearing a blue windbreaker across the back of which was written Paradise Animal Control.

  "How you doing, Skipper?" he said.

  Valenti was a part-time dog officer and he thought he was a cop. Jesse found him annoying, but he was a pretty good dog officer. In the fifteen years he'd been a cop, dating back to Los Angeles, South Central, Jesse had never heard a commander called Skipper.

  "We're pretty informal here, Bob," Jesse said. "You can call me Jesse."

  "Sure, Jess, just being respectful."

  "And I appreciate it, Bob," Jesse said. "What's up?"

  "Picked up a dog this morning," Valenti said, "a vizsla - medium-sized Hungarian pointer, reddish gold in color..."

  "I know what a vizsla is," Jesse said.

  "Anyway, neighbors said he's been hanging around outside a house in the neighborhood for a couple days."

  Jesse nodded. Jesse noticed that the sun coming in through the window behind him glinted on some gray hairs in Valenti's beard.

  "Not like it used to be," Valenti said. "Dogs running loose they could be lost for days before anybody notices. Now, with the leash laws, people notice any dog that's loose."

  Jesse said, "Um-hmm."

  "So I go down," Valenti said, "and he's there, hanging around this house on Pleasant Street that's been condo-ed. And he's got that wild look they get. Restless, big eyes, you can tell they're lost."

  Jesse nodded.

  "So I approach him, easy like, but he's skittish as a bastard," Valenti said. "I had a hell of a time corralling him."

  "But you did it," Jesse said, his face blank.

  "Oh sure," Valenti said. "I been doing this job a long time."

  "Dog got any tags?"

  "Yeah. That's the funny thing. He lived there."

  "Where?"

  "The house he was hanging around. Belongs to somebody named Kenneth Eisley at that address. So I ring the bell, and there's no answer. And I notice that the Globe from yesterday and today is there on the porch, like, you know, nobody's home."