Robert B Parker - Stone 4 - Stone Cold

by Stone Cold(lit)

  "I got a bad little thought," Jesse said.

  "About the two guns?" Healy said. "Each vie shot the same way, in the same spot, either shot kills them?"

  Jesse nodded.

  "Be good if you could speed the process up," Jesse said.

  "Do what I can," Healy said.

  They were silent, looking at each other.

  "You used to play ball," Healy said after a time.

  "Yeah, Albuquerque," Jesse said.

  "I was with Binghamton," Healy said. "Eastern League."

  "You get a sniff at the show?"

  Healy shook his head.

  "Nope. I was a pitcher, Phillies organization, pretty good. Then I went in the Army and came home and got married and had kids..."

  Jesse nodded.

  "And it went away," Healy said. "You?"

  "Shortstop, tore up my shoulder, and that was the end of that."

  "Were you good?" Healy asked.

  "Yes."

  "Too bad," Healy said. "You play anywhere now?"

  "Paradise twi league," Jesse said. "Softball."

  "Better than nothing," Healy said.

  "A lot better," Jesse said.

  19

  Jesse sat with Suitcase Simpson in the front seat of Simpson's pickup parked up the street from Candace Pennington's home on Paradise Neck. The weathered shingle house sat up on a rocky promontory on the outer side of the neck overlooking the open ocean.

  "She walks from here down to the corner of Ocean Ave. to catch the school bus," Jesse said. "Which Molly will be driving."

  "School bus company in on this?" Simpson said.

  "No. They think we're trying to catch a drug pusher."

  "I used to ride the bus to school," Simpson said. "Lot of shit got smoked on that bus."

  "Focus here, Suit," Jesse said. "You'll follow her when she walks to the bus stop, and follow the bus to school and watch her until she's in the building. You go in the building after her and hang around near where she is, and, at the end of the day, reverse the procedure."

  "What did you tell the school?"

  "Same thing, undercover drug investigation."

  "I played football with Marino's older brother," Simpson said. "Half the school knows me. How undercover can it be."

  "Suit," Jesse said. "We're not really looking for druggies. It's a cover. It's good if everyone knows you're a cop, as long as they don't know why you're there."

  "Which is?"

  "To protect Candace Pennington, and, maybe, while we're at it, get something on the three creeps that raped her."

  "But no one knows that," Simpson said.

  "They threatened her if she told on them," Jesse said. "And I promised her that I'd keep it secret."

  "Do I wear my unie?" Simpson said.

  "No, I told the school to pretend you were a new member of the custodial staff."

  "Janitor?"

  "Yep."

  "Do I get one of those work shirts that has my name over the pocket?"

  "Yeah. Do you want Suitcase? Or Luther?"

  "I should never have told you my real name," Simpson said.

  "I'm your chief," Jesse said. "You tell me everything."

  "Yeah, well, my mother comes by and sees me sweeping up, I'm gonna refer her to you."

  Jesse smiled.

  "Kid's alone," Jesse said. "She's been raped. She's afraid it might happen again. She's sixteen years old and afraid, and they've threatened to show her naked pictures to everyone in the high school. She's afraid they'll hurt her. She's afraid of her mother's disapproval, and I don't know where her father stands."

  Simpson nodded.

  "So we're gonna see that she ain't alone."

  Jesse nodded.

  "Suit," he said. "You may make detective someday."

  "We don't have any detective ranks," Simpson said.

  "Well," Jesse said. "If we did."

  "Hell," Simpson said. "I already made janitor."

  20

  Monday through Friday evenings, when Garfield Kennedy got off the commuter train at the Paradise Center Station, he waited for the train to leave, then walked a hundred yards down the tracks and cut through behind the Congregational Church to Maple Street where he lived. This Thursday night was like all the others, except that it was raining, and, as he walked behind the church, a man and a woman approached through the rain and shot him to death without a word.

  When Jesse got there he already knew what he'd find. Squatting on his heels in the rain beside Peter Perkins, he saw the two small bullet holes in the chest, one on each side. The blood had seeped through Kennedy's raincoat and been nearly washed away by the rain, leaving only a light pink stain.

  "Same thing," Jesse said.

  "Name's Kennedy," Peter Perkins said. "He's a lawyer, works in Boston. He lives over there, on Maple. Figure he got off the train, cut through the church parking lot toward his house... and never made it."

  "Family?" Jesse said.

  "Wife, three daughters."

  "They know?"

  "They came over to see what was going on," Perkins said.

  "Christ," Jesse said.

  "It wasn't good," Perkins said.

  "I'll talk with them," Jesse said.

  The rain was washing over Kennedy's face and soaking his hair.

  "And they won't have any idea why someone killed him," Jesse said. "And I'll ask if they know Kenneth Eisley or Barbara Carey, and they won't. And we'll find no connection among the three of them and the bullets will be from the same guns that killed the other two."

  "You think it's a serial killer, Jesse?"

  "Yeah," Jesse said. "Any fix on when it happened?"

  "I talked with the pastor of the church and he says that the church music director came in to practice on the organ at about four," Perkins said. "And didn't see anything. So, sometime between four and when the call came in at seven-fifteen. Between four and seven-fifteen there were three commuter trains, the last one at six twenty-three."

  "Who found the body," Jesse said.

  "Couple kids skateboarding."

  "In the dark?"

  "The pastor says the parking lot lights are on a timer and they turned on at seven. They never changed the timer for daylight savings."

  "The kids still here?"

  "Yeah. They're in the cruiser with Eddie."

  "Hang on to them."

  Jesse stood up. "Don't move a thing," he said. "Everything just the way it is."

  "Sure thing," Perkins said. "I still got to take my pictures."

  Jesse walked away from the scene, a hundred yards up the railroad tracks to the Paradise Center Station. It was empty and dark. The last train would have been at 6:23. He turned and looked down the tracks. This time of year it would have been dark by six. But if you were used to it, you probably wouldn't have a problem. He started down the tracks. He wasn't used to it, but the light from the church parking lot was helpful. Besides, I'm a natural athlete. There was a pathway through the screen of trees into the back of the church parking lot. He walked through this way, carrying his briefcase. Lot was still dark. He's walking down here, toward Maple Street, and he sees a couple people walking toward him, and he doesn't pay any attention and then they get close and bang. He falls pretty much straight backward and, unless they weren't shooting as good as usual, was dead before he was through falling. He stood over the dead man and looked around the parking lot. There was a maroon Chevrolet Cavalier parked close to the church, and a brown Toyota Camry beside it. All the other vehicles were police and fire vehicles, lights on, flashers flashing. I wonder why cops always do that. I wonder why we don't shut the damn things off when we get there. He turned slowly and looked around the parking lot. Across from him was the exit onto Sea Street. To the right a path led through another small screen of trees to Maple Street. Jesse walked to the exit and looked at Sea Street. To the left took you out of town, heading for Route 1. To the right was downtown and the waterfront. He walked back and through the path to
Maple Street. Front lawns, driveways, garrison colonials. To the right, near the end of the street, one of the houses was more brightly lit than the others, with several cars parked out front. Kennedy's house?

  "You know which house is Kennedy's?" Jesse said.

  "No, I can ask Anthony."

  Jesse shook his head.

  "Okay," he said to Perkins. "You can close it up."

  Perkins nodded.

  "I'll talk with those kids," Jesse said.

  "First cruiser," Perkins said. "Where the skateboards are."

  21

  Jesse got into the front seat of the cruiser beside Ed Cox and turned to talk with the boys in back. The boys were about fourteen. They reeked of self-importance. Too bad about the dead guy, but this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.

  "My name's Jesse Stone," he said.

  "We know who you are."

  "Did you tell your story to the officer?" Jesse said.

  "Yes."

  "And give him your names and addresses?"

  "Sure."

  "Okay, now I want you to tell me."

  "My name's Richard Owens," one of the boys said.

  He was short and slim and blond with a slacker haircut and a gold stud in his left earlobe.

  "What do they call you?" Jesse said.

  "You mean like my nickname?"

  Jesse nodded.

  "Rick," the boy said. "Or Ricky sometimes."

  "You?" Jesse said to the other boy.

  He was an olive-skinned kid, with long black hair that had not fared well in the rain.

  "Sidney Lessard," the boy said. "They call me Sid."

  "Okay, Sid," Jesse said. "Officer Cox will take you someplace else out of the rain - you can use my car, Eddie."

  "How come we can't stay together?" Rick said.

  "Police procedure," Jesse said.

  "What procedure?" Rick said.

  "See if you both tell the same story."

  "You think we're lying?" Rick said.

  "No way to know," Jesse said. "Yet."

  "For crissake..." Rick said.

  "I'll go," Sid said. "We ain't lying. I'll just go with him."

  Cox got out of the driver's side and opened the back door. Sid got out and they walked toward Jesse's car. Jesse reached over and shut off the blue light.

  "What'd you see, Rick?" Jesse said.

  "Me and Sid come over here to skateboard, you know, it's nice pavement, and they got that handicap ramp, and they turn the lights on every night."

  "Even in the rain?" Jesse said.

  "Yeah, sure, we don't care about rain."

  "You got here after the lights were on."

  "'Course, you can't board in the dark."

  "'Course," Jesse said.

  "Anyway, so we're boarding, maybe five minutes, and I come down the ramp and hit a pebble and fall on my ass and the board goes off into the dark. And I go to get it and I see this guy and I yell for Sid and we can tell he's dead, and -"

  "How?"

  "How what?" Ricky was slightly annoyed at the interruption.

  "How'd you know he was dead?"

  "I... I don't know, you can just tell, you know. Ain't you ever seen dead people?"

  "I have," Jesse said.

  "And he's got this pink stain like blood on his front," Rick said. "So we run like hell for the church and tell the minister, and he calls the cops, and you guys show up."

  "You see anything that might be a clue?" Jesse said.

  "I told you all we seen," Rick said.

  "Aside from the cop cars," Jesse said. "There's a maroon Chevrolet Cavalier and a brown Toyota Camry in the parking lot now. Did you see any other cars?"

  "Just the Saab," Rick said.

  "Tell me about the Saab."

  "It was a Saab ninety-five sedan, red, with the custom wheel covers."

  "Where was it?"

  "Parked by the driveway over there, when we come by with our boards."

  "Anyone in it?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you noticed the car and model and wheels," Jesse said.

  "Sure, I like cars."

  Jesse smiled. "When did it leave?"

  "I don't know. After we seen the dead guy and run in the church and told the minister, when we come out again it was gone."

  "Okay," Jesse said. "Thanks for your help. If you want to wait around while I talk with Sid you can sit in my car with Officer Cox."

  "Okay."

  Sid came over and told Jesse essentially the same story. He pumped up his part in it a little, telling Jesse that "we found the dead guy" but most witnesses aggrandize a little, Jesse knew.

  When the boys were gone, Jesse stood in the rain with Peter Perkins while the EMTs bundled the body into the back of the ambulance.

  "No flashers," Jesse said to the EMTs. "No sirens. There's no hurry."

  "You going to talk with his wife?" Perkins said.

  "Soon," Jesse said. "Give her a little time."

  "Kids tell you anything?"

  "There was a red Saab sedan, a ninety-five the kid told me, with custom wheels, that was parked by the driveway and left after the kids discovered the body."

  "They didn't get any kind of license number?"

  "No one ever gets a license number," Jesse said.

  "I know."

  "But here's what we're going to do," Jesse said. "You remember that we got a list of all the license numbers of cars parked around the woman shot in the mall parking lot."

  "Yeah," Perkins said. "Sixty-seven cars."

  "We're going to go through that list and see how many, if any, were red Saab sedans."

  "Half the yuppies in Massachusetts drive red Saabs," Perkins said.

  "So right away we cut the suspect list in half."

  "Kid didn't see who was in the car," Perkins said.

  "No."

  "Staties come up with a list of twenty-two gun owners yet?"

  "Not yet," Jesse said.

  "When they do we could cross-reference that with the car list."

  "We could," Jesse said.

  "I can get on it after I do my shift tomorrow."

  "You can get on it first thing," Jesse said. "I'll have somebody else pull your shift."

  "That's gonna really squeeze us," Perkins said. "Suit and Molly are already off the roster."

  Jesse looked at Perkins silently for a moment, then he said, "That would not be your worry."

  "No," Perkins said. "No, 'course not."

  22

  "You think we cut it a little close?" he said.

  "That's what makes it work for us," she said. "I lose the feeling if we don't stay close to the edge."

  "I know," he said.

  They were silent for a moment, holding hands, on the couch, with a pitcher of martinis.

  "As long as we keep control," he said. "It was difficult to stop touching when those kids showed up."

  "But we did it," she said.

  "Yes," he said. "I thought about killing them too."

  She shook her head emphatically.

  "No," she said. "We're not doing random slaughter. That would be like a gang bang, you know? Where's the love in a gang bang."

  "I know," he said. "I'm just telling you how I nearly lost control."

  "Of course, I always nearly lose control. But that's part of it, to give ourselves to it, to let it possess us entirely, and then, at the very verge of the abyss, assert our will."

  He sipped his martini.

  "It's sort of like this," he said. "Martinis. You like them so much you want to drink a dozen, but if you do..."

  "The precise joy of a perfect martini is gone. You might as well slug gin from the bottle," she said.

  "So we shouldn't hurry," he said.