Fool's Paradise

by Mike Lupica

  Yeah, Jesse always thought, what the world needs.

  More fucking transparency.

  He walked toward the water. The new state medical examiner, Dev Chadha, and Suit were standing over the body. Peter Perkins was there, too. He’d been with Jesse on the PPD as long as Molly and Suit had, and hadn’t even changed after his morning run. He was in a faded Patriots Super Bowl T-shirt and gray sweatpants and New Balance sneakers the color of tangerines, already walking the immediate area. Gabe Weathers was doing the same. Jesse just assumed both Peter and Gabe had heard on the new portable radios that had been issued to everybody in the department. Now they were both taking photographs and video with their phones, trying to get as complete a picture of the scene as possible.

  There were twelve men and women in the Paradise Police Department. A third of them were here now, before seven on a Sunday morning. They all understood why. It never mattered whether it was a big city or a small town. Murder was still the main event.

  The body was still facedown about twenty yards from the water’s edge, the back of his head matted with blood that did not yet appear completely dry. Jesse didn’t know how many bodies there had been for him in his cop life, in L.A. and here. Had never tried to process his personal body count. Just knew there had been too many. The first one had been a shooting victim on a side street near Dodger Stadium. Slumped over the wheel of a car, two bullets to the back of the head. Hector Rodriguez. The shit you remembered. He’d wanted to throw up, too, but knew if he did he would never hear the end of it. Death before dishonor.

  “You call I-and-I yet?” Jesse said to Suit.

  The Identification and Information unit from the State Police, with an office in Marshport now, was attached to the new police lab there.

  Suit grinned.

  “I might have waited until I saw the chief’s vehicle arriving at the crime scene,” Suit said.

  “But they’re on their way?” Jesse said.

  Suit was still grinning. “Well, yeah, now they are.”

  Jesse turned to Dev.

  “How’d you get here so fast?”

  “Don’t sleep,” he said. “Got no life other than this job right now.” Now he grinned. “And this is the first homicide I’ve caught since I got this job.”

  “No ID?” Jesse said to Suit.

  Suit shook his head. He was wearing jeans but had put on a blue PPD windbreaker over a polo shirt. Jesse had never met a cop happier to no longer be in uniform than Luther “Suitcase” Simpson.

  “Nothing in the back pockets of his jeans, or in the general vicinity,” Suit said. “Dev and I were waiting for you to roll him over.”

  “You didn’t have to wait.”

  “You suddenly stop being a control freak overnight?” he said. “I need to tell Gabe and Peter.”

  It was part of the ongoing dynamic between the two of them. Even before the son Jesse didn’t know he had, Cole, had shown up from Los Angeles, he’d treated Suit like a son. But Suit constantly reminded him that he was about to turn forty and didn’t need Jesse to still hold his hand on the job.

  Suit had still waited for Jesse to show up and take full control of the scene. Usually the Staties would take charge of the investigation as soon as they showed up. But both Jesse and Suit knew the rules of engagement were different in Paradise. Jesse had the same standing with Brian Lundquist, the chief homicide investigator with the Massachusetts State Police, that he’d had with Healy, Lundquist’s predecessor, now retired. Neither one of them had ever treated Jesse Stone like just another small-town cop. Mostly because they knew better.

  “The control thing is just one more habit I’m trying to quit,” Jesse said.

  “I’m gonna have to see some evidence of that before I believe it,” Suit said.

  “And don’t do it all at once,” Dev said. “You risk decompression syndrome.”

  “Decompression syndrome?” Jesse said.

  “The bends,” Dev said.

  Jesse knew the drill by now. They all did. They weren’t showing disrespect to the dead by standing over the body and talking some cop smack with one another. Somehow it just made standing over the body easier for them all to handle. Just more rituals of the job. Ones you’d never find in any book.

  “Who found him?” Jesse asked Suit.

  “Woman who lives between the lake and the park,” Suit said. “Christina Sample. I played football with her brother Tommy in high school.”

  Sometimes Jesse thought Suit had played football with every male in Paradise who was around his age.

  “Christina was out early walking her dog,” Suit continued. “She’s pretty upset. She thought it was somebody who might have been sleeping it off after partying too hard last night.”

  Jesse turned to Dev.

  “Lot of blood,” Jesse said.

  “Whoa,” Dev said. “You don’t miss anything.”

  “Fuck off,” Jesse said.

  Dev grinned and saluted. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Molly said one time that Dev was a dead ringer for the actor who starred in Slumdog Millionaire. Jesse had asked her which Clint Eastwood Western that was. But when he’d looked up the actor on the Internet, he’d seen Molly was right. Molly just knew a lot of things, about a lot of topics that didn’t interest Jesse in the slightest.

  “When there’s this much it can take hours to dry completely,” Dev said. “The guys say they can’t see any sign that the body has been moved. So it must have happened here.”

  “How do you shoot somebody here and nobody hears the shot?” Jesse said.

  “My guess?” Dev said. “Happened during the fireworks.”

  Jesse said. “Shell casing?”

  Suit shook his head. “Guy must have grabbed it.”

  “What about the round?” Jesse said.

  “It’ll depend on the caliber,” Dev said. “But from the looks of the entrance wound, it’s probably still inside him.”

  “You said nothing in the back pockets?” Jesse said to Suit.

  “No phone,” Suit said. “No wallet. Weird, unless it was a robbery.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Let’s turn him over.”

  “You don’t think we’ll catch some shit from the CPACs?” Suit said.

  State Police detectives, from Crime Prevention and Control. They were the ones who investigated untimely deaths. Jesse had always wondered about that with homicides. If they weren’t untimely, what the hell were they?

  “It would be me catching the shit,” Jesse said. “But I won’t.”

  With Suit’s help they gently rolled the body over. There was no exit wound to the forehead. So the bullet was still inside him. As Jesse reached down to close the man’s eyes, Suit said, “I don’t know the guy.”

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  Three

  Man, I still can’t believe you met this guy at your AA meeting,” Suit said.

  “Well,” Jesse said. “It wasn’t just mine.”

  “But you’d never met him before?” Suit said.

  “I’d never been to this meeting before,” Jesse said. “I just felt like I needed one last night. There wasn’t one here, so I went on the website and found one in Marshport.”

  Suit looked at him, frowning.

  “So you needed a meeting like you used to need a drink?”

  Jesse grinned. “You’re probably noticing the connection, Detective.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” Suit said.

  “Am not,” Jesse said.

  “You sure?”

  “I am,” Jesse said.

  They were in Jesse’s office back at the station. Dev was with the body at the lab in Marshport. The two CPACs who’d shown up, Crandall and Scoppetta, were still with Peter Perkins and Gabe at the scene.

  Jesse and Suit had stopped to pick up donut
s, even though Suit swore he didn’t eat them anymore. Since he’d married Elena he not only was in the best shape of his life, he bragged constantly about his low cholesterol numbers the way ballplayers bragged about high batting averages.

  Or getting laid.

  “You meet this guy last night in the next town over and the next morning he shows up dead in ours,” Suit said. “What are the odds?”

  “I really didn’t do much more than say hello,” Jesse said. “He wasn’t the main speaker. But at the end they ask if anybody else wants to say something and this guy said his name was Paul, and that he was grateful to be in the room, because he felt as if he needed a meeting as much as he ever had.”

  “That was it?” Suit said.

  “Then he said that he knew part of the process in AA was making amends, but wondered if amends worked both ways. And everybody kicked that around for a few minutes.”

  Suit said, “He explain what he meant by that?”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “And you only got his first name,” Suit said.

  “The way it works, Suit,” Jesse said. “‘Hi, I’m Jesse and I’m an alcoholic.’ Then it’s all the slogans. They’re a bear for slogans. ‘One day at a time.’ ‘Easy does it.’ ‘Friend of Bill.’”

  “Who’s Bill?”

  “One of the guys who started AA.”

  “Didn’t you have a sponsor named Bill?”

  “Coincidence,” Jesse said.

  “I’m not gonna lie, Jesse, it still sounds weird to me,” Suit said. “Hearing you call yourself an alcoholic. It still makes me think of skid-row bums a little bit.”

  “It’s no different than me saying I used to play shortstop, or used to be married to Jenn,” Jesse said.

  “You still miss it?” Suit said. “The drinking?”

  “Other than every day,” Jesse said, “not so much.”

  They each sipped coffee. There was a Cuisinart coffeemaker in the corner, one Jesse hadn’t fired up yet. The machine had been a gift to the PPD from Sunny Randall, back in Jesse’s life now if not his bed. They each had their reasons. But then sometimes Jesse thought sex was more complicated than the tax code.

  “Did the guy know that you were a cop?” Suit said. “At the meeting?”

  Jesse shook his head. “He was Paul, I was Jesse. I didn’t ask for his last name and he didn’t ask for mine. Now I wish I had.”

  “Did he say he was on his way over here?”

  “Nope,” Jesse said. “Sometimes you hang around after a particularly good meeting, but I didn’t want to be late for Lily’s big night. I shook his hand and left.”

  “You think he lives in Paradise?” Suit said.

  “Don’t know that he doesn’t.”

  “But would it make sense for him to go to an AA meeting in Marshport?”

  “Not that far away, and people are always looking for meetings that meet their schedule or their needs.” Jesse shrugged and drank coffee. “I was there.”

  “So either he had his own car,” Suit said. “Or took a car service.”

  “Or hitched a ride with somebody else from the meeting if he didn’t have a car,” Jesse said.

  “Who doesn’t have a car?”

  “Maybe a drunk who lost his license for being a drunk.”

  “You really think he might be from here?” Suit said.

  “This is a small town, Suit,” Jesse said. “You grew up here. I’ve been here a long time. But we don’t know everybody.”

  “Maybe his prints will be in the system.”

  Jesse grinned. “Wish to build a dream on,” he said.

  The phones were quiet. By some minor miracle the four cells near the squad room were empty, even after all the drinking that Jesse knew had to have gone on late into the night. Jesse wasn’t spiking the ball yet, but maybe this was going to be a holiday weekend when the town didn’t turn into Stupidville.

  “You going back to Marshport?” Suit said to Jesse.

  “There’s a six o’clock meeting at the same church every night,” Jesse said. “Maybe Paul talked to more people after I left.”

  “And some of them might be back there tonight?”

  “You get a good meeting, you generally stay with it,” Jesse said.

  “Every day?”

  “Some people go to two a day,” Jesse said.

  “You’re shitting.”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  Suit stood. He said he was going back to the lake to relieve Peter and Gabe, see if there was anything he’d missed, or they had. Said he might go back and interview Christina Sample again. When he got back, he said he’d start checking Uber and Lyft, in addition to taxi companies and other local car services who hadn’t been put out of business by Uber and Lyft, at least not yet.

  “I’m sorry the guy died,” Suit said. “But I still got this feeling, you know? Like it’s game on, or something. You know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  “That feeling ever get old?”

  “Not until we’re the ones dead,” Jesse said.

  Jesse was alone in his office after Suit left. Molly had just texted him to let him know she was on her way in, she’d been dealing with something at home. A kid named Jeff Alonso, who’d started out on the cops in Rhode Island, was working the front desk. Jesse reached into one of the bottom drawers of his desk for the old ball he kept there, and the Rawlings glove that was an exact replica of the one he’d worn in the minors. Cole had somehow found it, and had given it to Jesse as a gift. He put the glove on his left hand now, began to pound the ball into the pocket.

  Damn damn damn, he thought. It still feels sweet.

  He still loved the feel of it all, ball and glove, the seams underneath his fingers. Loved the sound of the ball hitting the pocket. Jesse had always been able to get the ball in the hole or behind second, and throw it hard across the diamond, and accurately. Even when he and Suit played catch with a softball, Suit would talk about the hissing sound he swore the ball made when Jesse threw it. Jesse was always a better fielder than hitter but had always believed he was a good enough hitter to make it to the bigs, until he got hurt.

  He returned the glove to his drawer and then leaned back in his chair, fingers laced behind his head, and thought of Paul, sitting in the church basement, full of his own sobriety less than twenty-four hours ago. Now he was on Dev’s table at the new lab in Marshport and it was Jesse’s job to find out how he got there.

  He spent so much time thinking about what he couldn’t do, thinking about who he used to be and who he was now. Or what he was. Wondering what he missed more, baseball or drinking. Or all the women in his life that he’d lost. Some had quit him, the way baseball had. He’d quit more. Maybe that was the real question in the end: Had he lost more in his life than he had gained?

  Amazing how much goddamn time he spent organizing his life around drinking. Every goddamn day.

  Fuck it, he thought, and told himself all over again that he needed this job more than he needed a drink.

  Think about that.

  Jesse knew he’d never be a bear himself on all the AA slogans, or the Twelve Steps. But he knew what the steps were.

  Number eight was the one about making amends.

  Paul had talked about amends.

  Four

  Jesse was still at his desk when Molly Crane burst into his office as if sparks should have been shooting off her, like a car riding on rims.

  “My friends are dumber than housewives shows,” she said, plopping herself down in one of the chairs across from him.

  “You watch those shows?” Jesse said.

  “Just enough to know that my friends are wicked dumber than them,” Molly said.

  “All of them,” Jesse said, “or one in particular?”

  “One,” she said.
“Annie. Who was nearly raped last night after I left her at the Scupper.”

  “Tell me,” Jesse said.

  The Scupper was in a section of Paradise known as the Swap, and was as close to a dive as any bar in town. Jesse had never had anything against dive bars, he’d always thought they were more real than modern places where the beer list was longer than a police manual. Jesse had just never understood the appeal of this one, even for kids just looking to get a load on. He thought you went to the Scupper only if the Gray Gull was too crowded. Or if you were just too overserved to give a shit.

  “You, Deputy Chief Molly Crane, went to the Scupper?” Jesse said. “And not at gunpoint?”

  “You want to hear about this or not?” Molly said.

  “You know I do,” Jesse said. “Did the attempted rape happen in the Swap?”

  “In the park,” she said. “You know that little wooded area?”

  Jesse told her he did.

  “Guess there were a lot of fireworks last night,” Jesse said.

  “You mean the body at the lake,” Molly said.

  Jesse nodded.

  Molly said, “Let me finish telling you mine, then you tell me yours. Okay?”

  Molly and Annie had walked down to the Scupper after the fireworks. But it had gotten too loud and too crowded. Molly finally left, and ran into Suit and Elena on the street. They gave her a ride home. Annie wanted to stay. Her husband was out of town, their kids were at camp.

  “Told me she wanted to kick up her heels a little,” Molly said.

  “She actually said that?” Jesse said.

  “She’s a tiny bit older than she looks,” Molly said.

  “She looks like your older sister to me.”

  Molly finally managed a smile. “How much older?” she said.

  “When did you find out what happened?”

  “She woke me up a little while ago,” Molly said. “She still sounded half drunk.”

  “Know the feeling,” Jesse said. “She fool around, by the way? When her husband isn’t around and the kids are at camp?”

  “That’s the thing,” Molly said. “Not that I’ve ever known, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t.”