"By Preston Beach," she said.
"Yep."
"What are their names."
"Tony and Brianna Lincoln," Jesse said.
"My God," Marcy said. "I think I showed them a house once."
"Recently?"
"No, maybe three years ago. Before they bought their condo."
"Form any impressions?"
"No, yes, actually, I did. They were a pleasure. You know, you bring a husband and wife to look at property and they usually are on each other's case the whole trip. The Lincolns were great, really together. I remember thinking how nice it is to see that. He's not scornful of her questions about the house. She doesn't smirk at me when he speaks. They acted like people who liked each other and respected each other's ideas."
Jesse laughed a little.
"Still do," he said.
"And you know it's them?"
"There's some evidence. They own twenty-two ammunition. Their car was parked in the row next to the one where the woman was killed at the Paradise Mall. A car that resembled their car, we didn't get a number, was parked in the church lot where the guy got killed coming home from the train. But we have no hard evidence. No ballistics, no prints, no eyewitness - God knows, no motive."
"And you can't just arrest them on cop-ly intuition?"
"Doesn't seem fair, does it," Jesse said.
"So what will you do?"
"We're excavating their past," Jesse said, "which seems to have taken place in Cleveland. We're trying to keep an eye on them twenty-four/seven."
"You sound like that's hard."
"It is, in a small department in a small town. My guys haven't much experience."
"You do."
"Yes, I do," Jesse said. "But I can't spend all day and night keeping them under surveillance. I have to eat, to sleep, to conduct other police business, to fuck you."
"Yes, fucking me is important."
"Right now it seems like the only thing I'm any good at," Jesse said.
"Pays to specialize," Marcy said. "And if you're fishing for a compliment, you are very good."
"Thank you."
"State police can't help with the surveillance?" Marcy said.
"They've taken over the routine night patrols for us," Jesse said.
"How about the gun, they must have a gun, if they buy bullets."
"We test-fired it," Jesse said. "The gun they own didn't fire the bullets that killed the victims."
"So all you can do is watch and wait?"
"Maybe something will turn up in Cleveland."
"And if it doesn't?"
"We do have one other small something."
"Really?"
"They came out one night after supper and took pictures of my home."
"You saw them?"
"I tailed them there," Jesse said.
"Well, what on earth..."
"Don't know," Jesse said. "But they seem to have an interest in me and maybe we can encourage them to develop it."
"Interest?" Marcy said "What kind of interest."
"Don't know yet, but we know that they have one."
"Both of them, you think?"
"Two guns," Jesse said.
"So these people have an interest in killing people, and now they seem interested in you?"
"Is it a great country," Jesse said, "or what."
Marcy took a sip of wine and stared at him for a time without swallowing. She took a deep breath in through her nose, and, finally, swallowed her wine.
"You are going to be bait," she said.
"Careful bait," Jesse said.
"My God, how can you be careful bait?"
"Body armor, stay alert," Jesse said.
"Maybe we're not in love," Marcy said. "But you are the dearest friend I've ever had. I would be devastated if you got killed too."
"Good to know someone would," Jesse said. "But I'm pretty good at this."
"Better than they are?"
"Maybe we'll find out," Jesse said.
"If I could talk you out of it, I would," Marcy said. "But I can't."
Jesse nodded. Marcy emptied her wineglass. Jesse took the bottle from the ice bucket and poured her half a glass more.
"So," she said, "my fallback position is let's fuck."
Jesse grinned at her. Her dress had buttons all the way down the front.
"It's important to keep my hand in," he said.
Marcy began to unbutton the dress.
"Or whatever," she said.
55
Suitcase Simpson came into Jesse's office with a thick manila folder.
"I heard back from Cleveland," he said.
Jesse gestured to a chair. Simpson sat down and put the folder in his lap and opened it.
Simpson said, "Anthony Lincoln was in fact a resident in ophthalmology at Case Western Medical Center from 1985 to 1990. He married Brianna Douglass in 1988. Her address at that time was twelve twenty-one Buckeye Road, which is in Shaker Heights. Her occupation was listed as attorney."
"Either of them have a record?"
"No."
"Cleveland cops have unsolved serial-type killings?"
"One case, not really a clear-cut serial thing. In 1989, a cabbie was shot in his car on Euclid Ave., presumably by a passenger, two in the back of the head. In 1990 a seventeen-year-old girl was shot at a bus stop in Parma, which is near Cleveland."
"I know where Parma is," Jesse said.
"Two in the chest."
Jesse nodded.
"Both people were killed with twenty-twos."
"Same gun?" Jesse said.
"No. Cabbie and the girl were both killed with the same two guns, one shot each time from each gun."
"Hello," Jesse said.
"Then it stopped. Cleveland can't find any connection between the cabbie and the girl. Neighborhoods are different. They never found the gun. No clues. Nothing."
"You got someone you're talking to at Case Western?"
"Yeah, broad in the administration office."
"Call her back, find out where Tony Lincoln's first post-residency position was, and when he took it."
"Roger."
"And while you're at it," Jesse said, "see if you can find out where Tony did his undergraduate work."
"Why?"
"Why not?" Jesse said.
"Jeez," Simpson said. "No wonder you're the chief and I'm just a patrolman."
"And get hold of the Ohio Bar Association," Jesse said. "Find out whatever you can about Brianna Douglass Lincoln."
Simpson wrote himself a note in a little yellow spiral-bound notepad that he took from his shirt pocket.
"When I go out," he said, "and the press asks me what's up, does this permit me to say we're following up several leads?"
"It does," Jesse said. "Call them promising leads if you want."
"Yeah," Simpson said. "Promising leads. I like it."
After Simpson left, Jesse sat and looked out the window. The TV trucks were still parked across the street. Anthony deAngelo and Eddie Cox were wasting important man-hours keeping the press at bay, and the traffic moving past the trucks. A young man with longish hair, a microphone, and a trench coat was standing in the snow on the lawn, doing a stand-up in front of the station. It seemed to Jesse that all day someone was doing a stand-up. He wondered how many people in the viewing audience were tired of seeing the front door of the Paradise Police Station.
Across the street a red Saab sedan pulled up and stopped in a space between two television trucks, with the passenger side facing the station house. The window slid silently down. Jesse got a pair of binoculars from a file drawer and focused in on the car. Brianna Lincoln was holding a camera, filming the scene. After several minutes, she put the camera down. The window slid silently up. And the Saab pulled away.
Nothing really incriminating. Half a dozen people had come by since the circus had started, and taken pictures. Jesse rocked slowly against the spring in his swivel chair. Nobody had gone to his house and photographed hi
m, though. Just the Lincolns. Formerly of Cleveland. Why had they taken pictures of where he lived?
The closet in Jesse's office was located so that one had to close the office door to open the closet. Jesse did so, and opened the closet door and took out a Kevlar vest. He hefted it, not so heavy. He slipped it on and fastened the Velcro. He put his jacket on over it and zipped up the front. It looked okay. It should work okay, too. Unless they changed their MO.
56
The three boys stood uneasily in front of Jesse's desk.
"Miss Fiore said we was supposed to come here after school," Bo said.
None of the three was defiant. None of them met Jesse's gaze.
"You understand why you're here," Jesse said.
"Community service," Bo said.
"Which the court requires of you."
They nodded.
"Why?" Jesse said.
" 'Cause of Candace," Kevin Feeney said.
"What about Candace?" Jesse said.
"Oh come on, man, you know."
"Don't call me 'man,'" Jesse said. "All three of you copped to raping her. Is that right?"
Bo said, "Yes, sir."
The other two nodded.
"So you are not some public-spirited high school kids, doing some volunteer chores," Jesse said. "You are three convicted rapists."
They all nodded.
"Just so we're clear," Jesse said.
They all nodded again.
"I regret that you're not doing time," Jesse said. "And if you fuck up here, maybe I can still get you some. You understand?"
Bo Marino said, "Yes, sir."
The other two nodded.
"I have no respect for you," Jesse said.
The three boys didn't say anything. They didn't look at Jesse or each other.
"I think you three are punks."
None of the three had any answer.
"I am going to make your time here as unpleasant as possible," Jesse said.
The three boys looked at the floor. Jesse looked at them for a while without speaking.
"Okay," he said finally, "go see Officer Crane at the front desk. She'll tell you what to do."
57
Jesse sat drinking coffee with Captain Healy in the front seat of his Ford Explorer, while the fine snow came down steadily in the parking lot behind the courthouse in downtown Salem.
"You have everything you need but evidence," Healy said.
"That's all that's missing," Jesse said.
"Except motive."
"Well, yeah, that too."
"Gee," Healy said. "Hot on the trail."
"They did it," Jesse said.
"I believe you," Healy said. "But I'm not the one that needs to believe you."
"I know," Jesse said.
He drank some coffee.
"I can't even get a search warrant."
"Judges hate to issue them on cop intuition," Healy said. "Want some surveillance help?"
"No," Jesse said.
"Might prevent them from killing the next one," Healy said.
"I think I'm the next one," Jesse said.
Healy looked at him and raised his eyebrows and didn't say anything.
"They've been taking pictures," Jesse said.
"Of what?"
"My home, the station."
Healy frowned, watching the steam rise from the triangular tear in the plastic top of his coffee cup.
"They're interested in you," Healy said.
"I'd say so."
"And they're serial killers," Healy said.
"I'm convinced of it."
"And they kill people at random, for no obvious reason," Healy said.
"They seem to."
The snowflakes were very small, and with no wind they fell straight down, like white rain.
"You figure you're being penciled in as their next victim," Healy said.
"Yes."
"And you figure the picture-taking is foreplay?"
"Something like that."
Healy said, "I can give you a couple of troopers to watch your back."
Jesse shook his head.
"This might be an opportunity," Jesse said.
"They try to kill you and you catch them in the act?"
"Yeah."
"Serial killers like ritual," Healy said. "So they'll come at you from the front, and shoot you one time each."
"Probably at the same time."
"Simultaneous climax," Healy said. "You think you can keep them from killing you?"
"Yes."
"You trust them to come at you the same way," Healy said.
"People like these people, they'll do it the same."
"Let's hope so," Healy said.
"And, if I fuck up," Jesse said, "you can avenge me."
58
It was twenty minutes to midnight when Jenn called and woke Jesse up.
"I just did the eleven-o'clock news," Jenn said. "Did I wake you."
"No," Jesse said. "I was awake."
"Your voice sounds like you were sleeping," Jenn said.
"I'm awake," Jesse said.
"I wanted to apologize," Jenn said.
"Okay."
"You were sleeping."
"And you called to apologize for waking me?"
"No, silly, for the other day, when I wanted you to give me special access."
"Which is more than I get," Jesse said.
"I know," Jenn said. "But what was so bad about it was, here you are with this huge serial killer problem to deal with, and I'm thinking only about what would be best for me."
"What's new," Jesse said.
Jenn was silent for a moment.
"Well," she said. "You are grouchy."
"I am," Jesse said.
"It's okay," Jenn said. "You deserve to be."
"Thanks."
"What I want you to know is that I realize I was thinking only about myself and my career when I asked you to let me in with a camera."
Jesse was silent.
"And I realize that I have often been that way with you."
"I know," Jesse said.
"You're not going to help me with this," Jenn said. "Are you?"
"You're doing fine by yourself," Jesse said.
"I'm going to try to be better," Jenn said.
Jesse waited.
"It's a hard balancing," Jenn said. "If I go too far the other way, I give myself away. I become entirely dependent on someone else to direct my likes and dislikes, what I want to do, what I should do. You know?"
"Yes," Jesse said.
"And after a while I resent it, and the resentment builds, and after a while I explode and go the whole other way. Instead of being all about you, it becomes all about me."
"Be nice if you could find a middle ground," Jesse said.
"Yes," Jenn said.
Jesse was lying on his back in the dark, with the phone hunched in his left shoulder. His handgun was on the night table beside the bed. There was no sound in the apartment.
"Maybe I can," Jenn said.
"We both have changes to make," Jesse said.
"I wonder who we'll be when we've made them," Jenn said.
"Whoever we are," Jesse said, "we won't be worse."
"I can't seem to get you out of my life," Jenn said.
"I know," Jesse said.
"Can you wait?" Jenn said. "Until I get better?"
"I have so far," Jesse said.
"But will you still?"
"I don't know, Jenn. I try not to plan too far ahead."
Robert B Parker - Stone 4 - Stone Cold Page 16
