Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Mackey was a short man with a blotchy red complexion, arms like telephone poles and a neck to match. “So, Chief, what was your man doing around here at the crack of dawn?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Why?”

  “The cops aren’t going to find any drugs or alcohol in his blood, are they?”

  Jesse understood Mackey was doing him a professional courtesy. “I doubt it. He was Boston PD for five years, but still in his probationary period with us.”

  “Just asking, you know, just in case . . .” Mackey said.

  The younger trooper, Kirkpatrick, still in his twenties, stood from the rear of the fire truck and stretched, looking out at the crowd of onlookers. “Fucking parasites.”

  “Comes with the territory, kid,” said the older trooper, Williams. “People look because it’s exciting, but also because they know the body or the guy being pulled out of the wreck could be them. It’s a natural thing. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Kirkpatrick said. “But what about that guy we caught sniffing around the vehicle after we pulled the chief’s man outta there? Nothing natural about that.”

  That got Jesse’s attention. “What guy?”

  “It was nothing,” Williams said. “Some little guy got too curious and carried away.”

  The younger trooper disagreed. “Bullshit! That creepy little bastard was trying to take a souvenir or something. People are sick.”

  “What did he look like?” Jesse said.

  Williams tilted his head at Jesse as if Jesse was speaking a foreign language. “Who, the little guy? What does it matter? He was just some freak.”

  “He was . . . You know, Chief, I don’t know,” said Kirkpatrick. “He was little. He had glasses, I think.”

  “No, he didn’t have glasses,” Williams said. “He had brown hair.”

  Kirkpatrick shook his head. “Gray hair.”

  “What was he wearing?” Jesse said.

  “Forgive us, Chief, but we were a little busy trying to save your guy’s life,” said Williams, frustration in his voice. “We shooed the guy away from the car and that was that.”

  Jesse let it go. “You’re right. Sorry, gentlemen. I better get over to the medical center to check on Gabe. Thanks again. Any of you ever in Paradise, I owe you dinner.”

  He walked away from the fire truck and crossed the road. As he crossed, he held his palm up to stop a car inching past the accident scene. The driver in the white Sentra waited patiently for Jesse to cross. When Jesse got to the shoulder, the Sentra sped on. Jesse waded into the crowd of onlookers to get back to his car. As he walked through them, Jesse studied the gawkers, looking for the little man who may or may not have worn glasses and had either brown or gray hair. It was no use.

  34

  Molly knocked on Jesse’s door and entered. Jesse was staring out the window, slamming a baseball into the pocket of his old Rawlings glove. She winced at the pop the ball made as it hit the leather. She could only imagine how strong Jesse’s arm must have been when he was a player. She thought that her boss had been through a lot as chief in Paradise and she’d been through a lot with him. There had been homicides, too many homicides, some higher-profile ones than Martina Penworth’s. And cops had been hurt on his watch before, but that came with the territory. Two of Paradise’s finest had been killed when the bridge to Stiles Island was blown up during the big heist. But for some reason, it seemed to Molly, things were weighing especially heavily on Jesse today. She guessed she knew Jesse Stone better than most, probably better than his ex-wife—or anyone else, for that matter. Funny thing was, she didn’t feel like she really knew him at all, not really.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Molly said.

  “You’d be overpaying. What’s up?” He folded the glove over the ball and put it on his desk.

  “Just wanted to let you know the update from the hospital.”

  “Good news?” he said.

  “Pretty much. Gabe’s coming out of it. He’s in a lot of pain and he’s still pretty confused.”

  “Concussion, broken pelvis, and a dislocated shoulder will do that to you.”

  “I don’t ever want to find out,” she said.

  “Dislocated shoulder is bad enough.”

  “That what happened to you, Jesse?”

  “The dislocation was the easy part. I got a three-for-one package deal. Dislocated my shoulder, tore my rotator cuff, and broke the tip of my humerus bone off where it inserts into the shoulder.”

  Molly clenched. “Ouch!”

  “Beautifully put, Crane. You should have been a poet. So, is Gabe’s wife fixed up with a room in the hotel across the street from the medical center? Someone watching out for their kids?”

  “It’s all taken care of. She’s got everything she needs, and she knows all she has to do is call if she needs anything else.”

  “Good.”

  “The selectmen are going to turn green when they get the bill,” she said.

  “Green is their best color.”

  “You don’t really care, do you, Jesse?”

  “Not much, no. He was hurt doing his job for this town.”

  “Speaking of that . . . What do you think Gabe was doing in Helton in the first place?”

  “Wrong question, Molly. I know what Gabe was doing there. He was tailing Harlan Salter.”

  “Then what’s the right question?”

  “What was Harlan Salter the Fourth doing in a place like Helton so early in the morning?”

  “Point taken. Helton isn’t the kind of place that fits a pipe-smoking guy who probably wears a three-piece suit to bed. You going to check it out?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t worry, I’ve spoken to the rest of the department. There’ll be one of us or one of our spouses at the hospital twenty-four-seven for Gabe.”

  He said, “Anyone ever tell you you were good?”

  “Everyone.” She winked at him.

  “Bragging again?”

  “It ain’t bragging when you can back it up.”

  “Want to let me be the judge of that?”

  “I’m taken.”

  “I guess you neglected to tell that to Crow?” he said.

  “Old news. The answer is still no.” Molly shook her head. “Besides, you don’t look like you’ve gotten much sleep since the dynamic duo of babes arrived in town.”

  “Long story.”

  “No doubt. But there’s something else going on with you, Jesse. What is it?”

  “The Penworths flew home with their girl last night. It doesn’t feel right to let her go back home without being spoken for,” he said.

  “Is that how you saw it when you worked Robbery Homicide in L.A.?”

  “Not always. It was one thing when two gangstas shot it out and one of them ended up dead, but when some little girl caught a stray bullet in a drive-by, that was something else. I needed to stand up for her, for all of us. This is like that.”

  “I want this guy, Jesse. Do you think we’ll get him?” Molly said.

  “Maybe. If wanting somebody bad enough mattered, we’d get him. But wanting doesn’t usually account for much.”

  “Then I hope we get the bastard.”

  “Hoping is kind of like wanting, but, for what it’s worth, I hope we nail the bastard, too.”

  Molly smiled at Jesse and closed the office door behind her.

  35

  Ben Salter’s voice was gone. He had spent the better part of two days—no, three, or was it four?—screaming his lungs out. He’d lost track of the days. It had been impossible to have a sense of time in the windowless, barely lit little room that defined his universe. It never brightened. It never darkened. There was just the one bulb. The plastic chair. The mattress.
The box of packaged foods. The bottled water. The concrete floor. The concrete walls. The steel door. The five-gallon bucket.

  There had been long hours when he felt he was now beyond fear, whole stretches of time when he thought he might never be afraid again. It was a game of rationalization he played with himself to occupy his time as he waited and waited and waited. If he wanted to kill me, he would have done it already. If he wanted to kill me, why would he have left me with food and water? If . . . If . . . If . . . And then, just as he was sure he was impervious to fear, he would think of Martina. He could almost feel himself inside of her, almost taste the smoky perfume of bourbon on her hot breath as they kissed, almost hear her sigh, feel her muscles contract. Then it all turned to dust and the panic would wash over him so that it nearly choked the air out of his lungs. Martina was dead, and the thought of it made him want to rip his heart out. At first he had tried convincing himself that the guy in the black fatigues was just toying with him, that Ethan Farley or one of the other handymen had found her and that Martina was okay, a little traumatized, for sure, but safe. Maybe back home in California with her parents, on the beach near her house, watching her dad surf. No, that fantasy had vanished the first day. He had cried over it for a long time. But his tears, like his voice, were gone.

  For however long he’d been there, the only sounds he’d had for company were the sounds of the ocean. He never wanted to hear the sound of waves again. He was sick to death of waves. He was sick to death of the sound of his own internal voice. He was working himself up again into one of the fits of anger that had come over him during his time in captivity. Fits that had possessed him to bruise both of his hands and break a toe pounding at the steel door. Ben had done far more damage to himself than his captor had done to him. Then, as the anger was building up in him, he thought he heard something just beneath the swoosh and roar of the waves. He held his breath and funneled every ounce of energy he had left into his hearing. Wait, he thought, there it was again. A car. He heard tires on the road. He hadn’t heard that sound in days, and hearing it could only mean one thing: They were coming for him.

  Ben Salter did not hesitate. He centered the chair directly beneath the bare bulb. Not high enough. Even if he stood on tippy toes and stretched his arm as far as he could, he wouldn’t be able to reach the bulb. He surveyed the room, though he already knew he had only one option. He took the five-gallon bucket, his ersatz toilet, made sure the lid was closed, and placed it on the seat of the chair. The bucket’s flat round bottom did not conform comfortably to the molded plastic of the chair, but Ben had no choice. He needed a weapon and he had long ago decided that a broken bulb was the best he could do. He climbed up the chair and balanced himself atop the bucket lid. The bucket teetered as he reached. The hot bulb burned the skin of his fingers. “Shit!” he said in a whisper, blowing on his hand. He realized too late that he should have ripped some fabric off the mattress before trying this. Now he didn’t have time for that. He cursed himself for not having gotten the bulb earlier, but he had balked at that idea. The thought of sitting there nude, alone, in total darkness for days or weeks on end wasn’t an option he had been willing to entertain. He took a deep breath and girded himself against the searing pain he knew was coming. He clutched the bulb, unscrewing it even as the smell of his burning skin nauseated him.

  He had the bulb. Unfortunately, the little room was now totally dark and he could not see. As he tried to work his way down off the bucket, it and the chair went sideways. He jumped off, his ankle twisting in a way that it wasn’t designed to twist as it hit the floor. Ben winced and writhed in pain but forced himself not to scream. He crawled to the wall, leaned against it, and worked his way upright. He gently broke the bulb against the wall as if he were cracking an eggshell, careful not to damage the yolk. The glass broke in a few shards, one about three inches long and very sharp. He felt his face work itself into a smile. It was good to smile again, even at the thought of revenge.

  Ben heard footsteps on the floor above him. Footsteps on a creaking staircase. Keys jangled. A key slid into a lock. The lock clicked. A bolt pulled back. Ben held his breath. The door pushed in, a swath of light rushing in with it. The man in black stepped halfway into the room but stopped when the tip of the door hit the toppled chair. He immediately stopped pushing the door. A gloved hand came up, and in it was a familiar black automatic with a sound suppressor at the end of the barrel.

  Ben exploded, screaming and slashing at the hand. The sharp edge of the glass ripped through the glove material and gashed the skin beneath it. The glove soaked through with blood and the gun fell to the floor with a dull clink. Then Ben slashed at the mask, cutting into the gunman’s face.

  “Ya bastard!”

  The now-gunless hand swung out at Ben, but Ben was like a wild man. He slashed at the man’s neck, the shard catching in the flesh of his body between the neck and shoulder. As Ben tugged on the glass to free it, it snapped off in his hand. The remainder of the brittle glass crumbled. Ben reared back and jumped at his captor, but it was no good. That second of hesitation it took for him to rear back was enough time for his captor to regain his wits. The man in black stepped fully into the room and unleashed a vicious elbow to Ben’s nose. Ben’s world went foggy and filled with pain the likes of which he’d never before experienced. Tears and blood came pouring out of him, filling his eyes, nose, and mouth, but before he could even collapse, a hard fist connected square with his jaw. He was down now: disoriented, choking on his blood and mucus. Then he felt something against the skin of his neck and his world went away. In its place, only blackness.

  36

  Vic Prado lay in bed, his head at an angle so that he could see the mirror on the wall in the alcove near the bathroom. In the mirror, he watched Lorraine Frazetta hook up her black La Perla bra and wriggle into her matching thong. It didn’t seem like she was conscious that he was watching her. He didn’t like that. He wanted her to know he was watching her. He snapped his fingers. And when he snapped them, Lorraine looked up and noticed Vic in the mirror, staring at her. She turned around and smiled at him, her concentration ruined.

  “Get over here,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Get over here.”

  She walked over to the bed.

  “Take those off . . . slowly. Panties first. Then put them on again and face me when you do it.”

  As she clipped her thumbs under the string waistband of the thong, Lorraine felt the heat rise beneath her skin again. Being with Vic, even in a cheap motel room halfway between Boston and Paradise, was everything she hoped it would be.

  Vic smiled back as she bent over, sliding the panties down the smooth, shiny skin of her legs. His smile was for show. His snapping his fingers at her. His making her strip and redress in front of him. It was all a show. Lorraine had certainly been eager and accommodating, but she was a disappointment to him. She was a mature woman now and she kept her body in great shape, but beneath it all she was still just a poor Lowell girl in expensive underthings. She still made love the same way she had in high school. It was all very sweaty and conventional. He guessed it made sense. She had been with only Mike for these many years. Mike, who, for all of his money and power, was just another tough guy with some brains and balls. Mike and Lorraine were a matched set. Vic and Kayla were no such thing, not even close. Vic had had women in every major-league city. All kinds of women: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, older, younger, two at a time, three at a time . . . For all her sexual enthusiasm, Lorraine wouldn’t have made it to the instructional league. She probably fancied herself a real hellion in bed when all she really was was somebody’s wife.

  Disappointed or not, Vic realized he might need Lorraine. He might need every ally he could get. If it came to a choice between him and Mike, and it might, he needed to put on the full-court press.

  When she had done as he asked, she stood once again naked before him. “Time’s a
lmost up and I’ve gotta get back home. Can I finish getting dressed now?”

  Vic snapped out his right arm, grabbed her by her bare waist, and pulled her down onto the bed. He rolled over on top of her. Her damp hair darkening the top sheet. Her breathing was rapid and Vic could see yearning in her eyes. Good, he thought. Perfect.

  “You didn’t say please,” he said into her ear.

  She screwed up her face. “What?”

  “You didn’t say, ‘Can I finish getting dressed now, please.’”

  “Can I finish getting dressed now, please,” she said, nearly breathless.

  “You don’t mean it, do you, Lorraine?”

  “No. I want you again.”

  He rolled off her. “You can finish getting dressed now, but only if you promise we can do this again and soon.”

  She took in big gulps of air and slowly calmed her breathing. “How about tomorrow?” she said, raising herself up on her elbow.

  “We’ll see.”

  Vic made sure to watch her get dressed because he knew she would expect it. As he watched, he could feel himself getting angrier and angrier. Not that Lorraine was unpleasant to look at, although her hair was just a little too black. Not that she wasn’t getting dressed in a way that was, in fact, more stimulating than her actual sexual technique. His anger was only obliquely about Lorraine. No, it was mostly about Joe Breen. The way Vic figured it, if that thug hadn’t killed the girl, he could be well out of it by now. This charade with Lorraine would not have been necessary. Vic would have had his talk with Jesse. Arrangements would have been made and Vic would have been in the warm bosom of witness protection. He had been so careful, skimming just enough money not to get noticed and sending it offshore. He’d done his research and figured he’d have to testify a few times, might get a year or two in federal prison, max. Then he’d make a settlement with Kayla, move to the Dominican Republic, maybe invest in a baseball academy down there. But no, the girl’s murder had complicated everything. He needed to stall for time and to find a way to distance himself from the murder. He’d have a few days once the Salter kid was released. That knowledge eased his anger enough so he could manage a smile for Lorraine.