Fool's Paradise

by Mike Lupica

  Sixteen

  Molly was getting ready to leave the office at around six when Jesse called to tell her that the 8:30 flight from West Palm was booked and that he’d made a reservation on the first one out tomorrow morning.

  He’d called earlier to give her Paul Hutton’s full name. Molly told him she would run it through the National Crime Information Center before Jesse got the chance, see if she could find a date of birth and driver’s license if he had one, and even a last-known address before the apartment above the barn on Appaloosa Trail, especially if someone anywhere in the country had reported a Paul Hutton missing.

  She’d had success using NCIC before and knew she might know as early as tomorrow how many hits there’d been on the name, just in Florida alone. She was excited at the prospect. At the chase. Molly knew how good Jesse was at police work, even when it was a grind. But she knew she was good, too, and getting better all the time.

  She was a work in progress, same as her boss.

  “Provided it’s the guy’s real name,” Jesse said.

  “You know you’re getting more cynical as you get older, right?” Molly said.

  He made a snorting noise at his end of the phone.

  “Hardly breaking news.”

  “I’m Catholic,” she said. “We come by it naturally. What’s your excuse?”

  Michael was in the middle of the ocean somewhere. He had asked her before leaving if she was going to mind him being away for as long as he would be. She’d told him that if he didn’t do this race now, he might never. He told her again how much he loved her. She knew she loved him the same way. But still wondered, all this time into their marriage, if they’d both become complacent.

  Another night for Molly in the house alone. She was getting used to cooking for one, the way single women did all the time. But it was different with Molly. She had never been a single woman, not really. She and Michael had started going steady in high school. She’d never had a serious relationship with any other man in her life, even when they had tried seeing other people.

  Maybe that was the problem, if it even was a problem. She was feeling more and more like a single woman lately.

  Sometimes, when she was alone, she worried that she was just like Annie. Maybe she wanted to kick up her heels, whether she could admit that to herself or not.

  Jesse was right: The things you fixated on when you spent too much time alone.

  She defrosted a leftover turkey burger and indulged herself with waffle fries, and put together a small chopped salad with romaine, feta, cucumbers, and a garlic dressing she could buy only online.

  She set the kitchen table for one. Poured herself a glass of Whispering Angel and ate dinner while watching the CBS Evening News on the small TV set on the counter. Norah O’Donnell was the anchor now. Sisterhood, Molly thought, and raised her glass.

  She took a long bath after dinner, in the oversized tub Michael had put in for them himself. She wasn’t ready for bed when she finished, it was too early, so she put on some sweatpants and the University of New Haven T-shirt Emma had gotten her on her official visit there and went downstairs and then out into the backyard to see if there were fireflies tonight, and to look up into the stars. She’d always loved this time of night, darkness having just fallen, as if God had pulled down a shade.

  There were fireflies tonight. As always, the sight of them, the existence of them, made her as happy as she had been chasing them around the yard when she was a little girl.

  But am I?

  Happy?

  She knew that her job, all the new responsibilities that came with being deputy chief, made her happy. Gave her purpose, beyond being a wife and mother, more of a purpose than she’d ever felt in her life. They had a murder investigation now, a mystery to solve. And even though Jesse was the one in charge, she knew her contribution was essential.

  Like she was crewing for him.

  She still couldn’t shake the thought that somehow the two shootings, Paul Hutton and the attempt on Jesse’s life, might somehow be connected. During her lunch break today she had driven over to Jesse’s and walked up and down his street, finally following the path the shooter would have taken to the beach, if he’d been running for the beach.

  Maybe they’d missed something when they’d all walked along the water the next morning, even knowing that the storm had likely washed away footprints or anything else.

  Jesse was the one who always said to rely on yourself with cases like these, trust that you might see something nobody else did.

  But she hadn’t seen anything resembling a clue.

  All she saw now in the night, head tilted back, were the stars.

  Then she was being grabbed from behind, a hand clamped over her mouth, and in a blink she was on the ground and he was on top of her.

  Molly tried to twist loose. But she was on her stomach and she could feel the full weight of him on her, all the air coming out of her at once as she could feel his free hand start to pull down her sweatpants.

  Her gun was in her purse, on the table in the front hall.

  In the empty house.

  She tried to scream and couldn’t. She could barely breathe. She tried to bite his hand but couldn’t get her mouth open.

  I cannot let this happen.

  Not to me.

  I will not let this happen.

  “How do you like it, bitch?” he said into her ear.

  She kept trying to twist away, to get out from under him as she tried to keep her legs pressed together at the same time.

  The sweatpants were at her knees now.

  She could feel him fumbling with his own pants.

  “Bitch,” he said again.

  He took his hand away from her mouth just long enough to punch her hard on the side of her head, dazing her. Then he hit her again, with even more force behind the blow the second time, and Molly thought she might go out.

  But as he’d hit her, Molly managed to get her right hand out from beneath her.

  She tried to slap at him with her free hand, but her blows had nothing behind them.

  It was when her right hand fell back into the grass, near her new rosebushes, that she felt the trowel that she’d forgotten to bring inside after gardening the day before.

  Molly gripped the handle as he pressed her face into the wet grass.

  Now.

  She used what strength she had and stabbed him in the leg with the pointed end of the trowel. Then again. She heard him cry out in pain. He tried to reach for her hand, but as he did Molly rolled out from underneath him, a few feet away, trying to get to her feet.

  He was trying to do the same.

  He was wearing some kind of black windbreaker, a black ski mask.

  They faced each other, Molly whipping the trowel in front of her, wanting to call out so one of her neighbors might hear, but no sound came out of her at first.

  Finally, she screamed.

  “Someone help me!”

  Chest heaving, eyes on her attacker, backing away from him.

  “Someone call nine-one-one!”

  The guy was pulling his jeans up when he heard voices from next door. Then they both saw lights splashing across the backyard next to Molly’s. The Thompsons.

  The guy turned and ran toward the low, white picket fence, nearly going down as he caught his trailing leg jumping over it.

  Molly ran back inside the house, grabbed her gun from the bottom of her purse. As she ran across the yard she saw Jack Thompson coming through the hedges with a baseball bat.

  “Guy tried to rape me,” Molly shouted as she ran past Jack Thompson. “I’m going after him.”

  Then she was over the fence in her bare feet, chasing the bastard even though it was too late, he’d had too much lead time and was gone. Molly kept running anyway, across one yard and then the one next to
it, until she was in the street and could hear the first sirens in the distance.

  Like Jesse had said.

  Stupid courage.

  Seventeen

  Michael told me how to get a message to him if there was an emergency,” Molly said. “But I’m not doing it.”

  “This isn’t an emergency?” Jesse said.

  “It’s over,” she said. “And I’ve got you to protect me.”

  “So you’ll let me?” Jesse said. “Protect you?”

  She smiled.

  “The way you let the rest of us protect you?”

  “It’s different,” Jesse said.

  “Because I’m a woman?” Molly said.

  They were standing in the middle of Molly’s backyard. Jesse had driven straight to her house from the airport. She’d called him the night before, after Suit and Peter had bagged the clothes she was wearing and the trowel and even clipped her fingernails, even though Molly couldn’t remember whether she’d scratched him or not. They were already going over the trace evidence at the state crime lab, looking for DNA.

  Jesse was here because he wanted to hear Molly tell it. He knew she’d taken Suit and Peter through it, from the time the guy had grabbed her. Jesse wanted to hear for himself. His crime scene now. In Molly Crane’s backyard.

  “If Michael found out he’d want to fly back and then go door-to-door looking for this guy,” Molly said. “And then beat him to within an inch of his life.”

  “Why stop there?” Jesse said. “I say go the extra inch.”

  “You know better than anyone that this comes with the job,” she said.

  “Bullshit it does,” Jesse said.

  “I was a decoy that time for the Peeping Tom,” Molly said.

  “Suit and I were outside,” he said. “Guns drawn.”

  “I still did all right for myself,” she said.

  “You were lucky with that trowel.”

  “What’s that line you always use from the old baseball guy about luck?”

  “It’s the residue of design,” Jesse said. “But there was no design in you leaving a garden tool in the dirt so it would be there if you ever needed it.”

  “God looks out for good Catholic girls.”

  “Good?” Jesse said.

  She took in a lot of air and let it out. “First somebody shoots at you,” she said. “Now this. It’s like somebody’s coming for us.”

  He told her to take him through it. She knew him well enough to know why. He always thought he would pick up on something the others had missed. Molly started at the beginning. She even included the part about the fireflies. She told her story in an organized way, not rushing, until she was running after the guy and into the night, knowing she was wasting her time, wondering as she ran what she would do if she caught him.

  “He came to my goddamn house,” Molly said when she finished. “My kids grew up playing in this goddamn yard.”

  “You need to talk to Annie again,” Jesse said. “Or we talk to her together. We need you to compare notes. Get her to tell her story, see if there’s anything she forgot. Or some detail she might remember. Even ask her what happened to the clothes she wore that night.”

  “She said she burned them,” Molly said.

  “Tell her to talk to me.”

  “You’re the one who’s always telling me that people don’t ever have to talk to the police if they don’t want to,” Molly said.

  “Let’s keep that our little secret.”

  “You think it’s the same guy?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t after Annie that night,” Jesse said. “Maybe it was you, until you went home with Suit and Elena.”

  “If he was after me,” Molly said, “do we think he might be the same one who took the shot at you?”

  “Somebody with a grudge against the members of the Paradise Police Department?” Jesse said.

  Molly slowly nodded.

  “It would mean going through anybody and everybody we’ve ever put away,” Jesse said. “And friends. And family.”

  “How far back?”

  “All the way back to when I showed up here and we first started working together,” Jesse said. “I know you remember the day. It was like stardust fell from the sky.”

  Molly looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking in tongues.

  “Poetry from Chief Stone?”

  “Sinatra,” he said.

  “So we’ve got to do a read-back on everybody we’ve ever pissed off who’s still aboveground?” Molly said.

  Jesse grinned. “I know,” he said. “We may need to put on more people.”

  They were back inside, in Molly’s kitchen. Jesse told her that they wanted frequent check-ins from her during the day, either with him or Suit or Gabe or Peter. He told her he was going to have her house watched at night, whether she liked it or not. She wanted to know if he was going to do the same with Suit, who’d been working with Jesse as long as she had. Jesse told her yes.

  “Who’s watching you?” Molly said.

  “My Higher Power,” he said. “Even though I’m not a good Catholic girl.”

  Then he kissed the top of her head and said that if it was just the same with her, he wanted to get back to trying to solve a murder.

  “Oh, that,” Molly said.

  “We never close,” Jesse said.

  Eighteen

  Suit had spent a lot of the last couple days on various free credit reporting sites, trying to get a hit on “Paul Hutton” even without a date of birth or Social Security number. If he found anything, maybe they could begin to learn how he spent his money and where he spent it when he wasn’t working with horses.

  “It would have been nice if that barn woman hadn’t been paying him off the books,” Suit said when Jesse was back in the office.

  “She said it was the way he wanted it,” Jesse said. “Said there’s a lot of that going around in the horse business down there.”

  “I thought that was for undocumenteds,” Suit said. “Or illegals. Or whatever.”

  “All sorts of ways to live on the margins,” Jesse said. “Or be anonymous.”

  “And the rich people they work for go along to save a few bucks,” Suit said.

  “Until they get caught,” Jesse said.

  “What’s the country coming to?” Suit said.

  Suit went back to work. Jesse sat behind his desk, happy to be back there. It was the place where he felt in control. As if there was still one place where he was chief of himself.

  * * *

  —

  Jesse had called Marshport Taxi, gotten the name and number of the driver who’d dropped off Paul Hutton at the Cain estate, got in touch with him and asked him to come in.

  “I’m working,” Luis Andujar said.

  “Me, too,” Jesse said.

  Andujar showed up half an hour later, on time. He was short, dark, built like a Jeep, handlebar mustache. And clearly nervous as hell to be anywhere near a police station.

  “I am not comfortable talking to the police,” he said when he sat down across from Jesse.

  “Hardly anybody is,” Jesse said. “Talking to cops frankly wears my ass out a lot of the time.”

  “My wife and my two boys and me, we keep to ourself,” Andujar said. “I drive for Uber when I do not drive for the cab company.”

  Jesse leaned forward and smiled, trying to put him at ease.

  “Where you from, Luis?”

  “Guatemala,” he said.

  “I’m not interested in your immigration status,” Jesse said. “You could say I’m with the government. Just not like that.”

  “We think anybody with a badge is your government.”

  “Here, we preserve and protect,” Jesse said. “We’re big on the protect part. Okay?”

  “Oka
y.”

  “Tell me about that night,” Jesse said.

  Andujar checked his phone, told Jesse he’d picked up Paul Hutton in Marshport about 8:45, outside a Five Guys burger place.

  Jesse asked how Hutton seemed.

  “He seemed like a passenger,” Andujar said.

  “In a hurry to get over there?”

  “No.”

  “When he gave you the address, did you know where you were taking him?”

  “To one of the muy grande houses in your town? Yes.”

  “Muy grande.” Jesse smiled. So did Andujar for the first time.

  “Big-ass in your language,” he said to Jesse.

  “You’d had fares there before?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Did you know who owned the house?”

  Andujar shook his head.

  “Did he say whether he was there to see a man or woman?” Jesse said.

  Andujar frowned, then closed his eyes. Jesse didn’t want him to feel rushed. It was always the same, whether here or in Molly’s backyard. Let them tell it their way.

  “I remember this,” Andujar said. “I was just trying to make conversation, and asked if it was his first trip to Paradise. And he laughed, the man did. He said he wished. And I said, ‘Wish what?’ And he said, ‘That it turned out to be a trip to paradise.’”

  They sat there in silence until Andujar said, “That’s it. I don’t remember anything else. We pulled up to the gate and he paid me and I left him there.”

  “But he never gave you a name.”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t ask him what business he might have in that neighborhood?”

  “He was just a fare on a Saturday night,” Andujar said. “I was happy to have one who was sober. I get the drunk kids later when I’m driving for Uber.”

  “He’s the fare who ended up dead.”

  “Madre de dios,” Andujar said.

  He quickly made the sign of the cross.

  Jesse stood. He stood. Jesse came around the desk and shook his hand and thanked him for coming, walked him out, watched as he got into what looked to be an ancient green Subaru Outback. He didn’t look back. Jesse thought it might be the only time all day that he wasn’t looking over his shoulder.