Fool's Paradise

by Mike Lupica

  “Why not tell you about that one?” he said. “I mean, what are you gonna do—bust me?”

  He pointed the gun at Jesse, then dropped it to his side.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I saw her walking with the bitch cop, who was the one I wanted. Only the bitch got into the car with the doofus and his wife and drove off. But, see, I’d already gotten the urge. Something else that never changed. Getting the urge. So I waited and grabbed the other one. And there I am, grinding away, when I hear a goddamn gunshot sounding way too close. So I’m thinking, Fuck it, I’ll save it for the bitch cop, and take off. Got run right into by some long-haired faggot in a baseball hat and one of those old-fashioned Patriots sweatshirts, running like a bat out of hell from the lake.”

  Good to know, Jesse thought.

  But only if he and Candace got out of here alive.

  It was as if Marino had been waiting for an audience.

  “One goddamn night in high school when shit got a little out of hand,” Bo Marino said. “And I spend the rest of my life paying for it.” He leaned back, closed his eyes, tilted his head back. “My father had always beat the shit out of me. It got worse after that. Until I finally beat the shit out of him and left and never came back.”

  “He did hire the lawyer that kept you out of jail,” Jesse said.

  “Only good thing he ever did for me,” Marino said.

  “Maybe if you’d gone to jail back then,” Jesse said, “you wouldn’t be here now.”

  Marino got up and leaned down when he got to Jesse. This time he swung the gun and hit Jesse in the left knee. Jesse yelled out in pain, but only to distract him, because he could see Candace trying to get her left hand loose now.

  “Now who sounds like a bitch?” Marino said.

  Jesse rubbed his knee with his hands, making sure the cuffs didn’t move.

  “How’d you get them both up here?” Jesse said.

  “You want Candace to tell you how I did it?” Marino said. “Oh, wait, I forgot. I finally got her to lay back and shut the fuck up.” He was pacing now in front of Jesse.

  He went back and sat down on the bed.

  Second and a half, Jesse told himself.

  Two, tops.

  “You really think you can get away with killing us?” Jesse said.

  “And making it look like Kevin finally snapped?” Marino said. “Well, yeah, Chief. I do.”

  He stood again, as if he couldn’t keep himself still, as if he were on fire.

  “I was thinking about making you watch me do her one more time,” he said. “Like for old times’ sake. But now I just think I’ll let you watch me shoot her, make that the last thing you see.”

  He said, “Yeah, I’ll go first with her, just like always.”

  He got up off the bed, turned toward Candace. Away from Jesse. Jesse started to slide the cuffs down off the fat part of his hands. He didn’t try to get himself free from the ropes around his torso, no time for that.

  He saw Marino’s finger going to the trigger.

  Things you never forgot. That were in your cop DNA. You had a second and a half, two tops, from perception to reaction if you could distract someone enough, and had this short a distance to cover. Ten feet. Maybe less.

  Now.

  Jesse rose up, the chair attached to his back, and charged Bo Marino, hitting him from the side, knocking him onto the bed, his momentum landing both of them on Candace Pennington.

  Marino was as slow as Jesse hoped he’d be.

  “Fuck!” Bo Marino shouted.

  He tried to swing the gun at Jesse’s head and missed. Jesse had enough movement in his arms to get his hands up and around Marino’s throat as Candace tried to wriggle free of both of them.

  Marino finally managed to get his gun hand free, rolled away on the bed, and pointed the gun at Jesse.

  But he had gotten too close with it, and Jesse bit him, Marino yowling in pain as the gun fell out of his hand. Marino didn’t try to grab it, reaching for Jesse instead. He got his arms around Jesse’s upper body, still tied to the chair, and shoved Jesse off the bed, putting him on his back.

  Marino looked down, chest heaving, face red, and suddenly seemed to remember that Jesse’s Glock was still stuck in the front of his jeans.

  Jesse was helpless now as he watched Marino smile and pull out the gun, finger on the trigger, raising it in a right hand Jesse could see was bloody from where he’d sunk his teeth into it.

  Reaction time meant nothing to Jesse now. Out of time.

  Marino’s eyes were suddenly calm, even with the low growl, an animal sound, coming out of him.

  “Hey, asshole,” he said, “remember the time you told me nobody could protect everybody? Well, shit on a stick, you were right.”

  There was the sound of the first gunshot then.

  Jesse saw Marino’s gun hand freeze in front of him, then saw his body stiffening and straightening, just as the sound of the second shot filled the ground floor of the cabin.

  Then Candace Pennington, on her side, but right hand steady, was firing again, and again, until she had emptied Bo Marino’s gun into him and he was dead on the floor next to Jesse, everything that had started a long time ago between him and Candace finally over.

  Sixty

  Thing is,” Jesse was saying to Molly and Sunny the next morning at Daisy’s, “Feeney was crazy. Just not as crazy as Bo was.”

  “Too close to call, if you ask me,” Molly said.

  Jesse had spent the night in Manchester after he and Candace Pennington had finished with Captain Pete Ciccone, gotten up at five in the morning, and driven back to Paradise. Andy Pennington had gotten to Vermont at around ten o’clock, announcing that she was turning right around and that she and Candace were going home.

  Before they’d left, Candace had hugged Jesse and said, “Thank you for saving me.”

  “This time,” he’d said.

  Now Molly said, “How did Bo manage to grab them both?”

  “He was getting ready to make a move on Feeney, then figure out a way to take him out the way he had Troy Drake,” Jesse said. “He was across the street from Feeney’s office, waiting for him to close up. At which point he can’t believe what a lucky boy he is, because Candace shows up, too. He throws them both in the back of his van, and they were on their way to Vermont.”

  “Why was Candace there in the first place?” Sunny said.

  “She told me it was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Jesse said. “Turned out she was being ironic when she told her wife she was meeting a friend. She knew Feeney was back in town. She just wanted to tell him to his face that she wasn’t a victim, that in her mind she’d won and they’d lost because of their pathetic lives after high school.”

  “How’d Bo get them in the van?” Molly said.

  “He told them that if either one of them made a noise he’d shoot them both,” Jesse said. “Then he had Feeney tie her up with the same rope harness he used on me. When he was done, Marino sat him down and chloroformed him. Did the same to Candace. Took them out the back door, and off they went.”

  “He was able to get chloroform?” Sunny said.

  “Online,” Jesse said. “Like everything else.”

  Jesse ate some toast, drank some of his coffee.

  “When did he kill Feeney?” Molly said.

  “Not long before I showed up,” Jesse said. “After he was finished with Candace and me, the plan was to bring Feeney’s body back inside and put the gun back in his hand. Bo’d knocked Feeney out again when they got to the cabin, held the gun in his hand and shot him in the temple.”

  Sunny said, “Wasn’t he worried about the chloroform showing up in a tox screen of whatever when the bodies were found?”

  “Turns out modern chloroform leaves the system very quickly,” Jesse said. “Guy had moments when he wasn’t as
dumb as he looked.

  Molly looked at her. “He’s the chief.”

  “I know,” Sunny said. “He knows things.”

  “He almost got away with it,” Jesse said. “Good that I left here when I did.”

  “You still should have taken us with you, cowboy,” Molly said. “And I do mean cowboy.”

  “Next time,” he said.

  Molly looked at Sunny again and said, “Still lying.”

  Vinnie Morris was already back in Concord. Michael Crane was still out in the Pacific somewhere. There had been no discussion about Sunny going back to Boston. But they all knew it was going to happen. Maybe as soon as today, or tomorrow.

  For now they were still talking about what had happened the night before in the woods.

  “It took a long time,” Molly said, “but in the end Candace finally got justice.”

  “Bo did all the prep work,” Jesse said. “But she ended up with the gun.”

  Daisy came over and refilled their coffee cups. She was still rocking the purple hair. She nodded at Sunny and said to Jesse, “You two an item again?”

  “I think the two of them like each other better than they like me,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Daisy said and left. She winked at Molly and Sunny and said, “Girl power.”

  Molly said, “How was Candace really, when it was over?”

  “Relieved, I think,” Jesse said. “He’d been threatening all the way up there to rape her again. She told me he would have had to kill her first.”

  “He nearly raped me,” Molly said.

  “You were stronger than him when he was in high school,” Jesse said. “Still are.”

  “I was a part of this, though,” Molly said. “Humiliating him on the bus that day.”

  “We all humiliated him, at least in his mind,” Jesse said. “His father had been doing the same his whole life.”

  “Did I mention you should have taken us with you?” Molly said.

  “You planning on dropping this anytime soon?” Jesse said.

  “Like they said in Thelma and Louise,” Sunny said. “You’re in deep shit with her, Arkansas.”

  “What about you?” Jesse said.

  “I have a more forgiving heart.”

  “Not what you said last night, blondie, when you found out he ditched us,” Molly said.

  Jesse told them then about what Marino had said about running into a long-haired guy in the park, right after he heard the gunshot, and that he was going to ask his friend Bryce Cain about that first chance he got.

  Molly got up to go to the ladies’ room. Just Jesse and Sunny now.

  “My work here is done,” she said.

  “Don’t want to help me solve my murder?”

  “You don’t need me,” she said. “Not sure you ever really did.”

  “I liked having you on the team,” he said.

  “The PPD’s,” she said, “or yours?”

  “Maybe I just wanted an excuse to have you around.”

  “Wanted or needed?”

  “Both,” he said.

  There was a long silence now. At the end of the counter, Jesse could see Molly talking to Daisy.

  “I need to get back,” she said. “Back to my own house, back to my own work.”

  “Girl’s gotta have it,” he said.

  “Or she’s not worth having,” Sunny said. “And you know you’re the exact same way.”

  “How about you leave tomorrow,” he said, “and we have dinner tonight?”

  “I need to head out,” she said. “Got a call from a potential client yesterday. And Rosie misses her daddy.”

  “Richie?”

  Sunny smiled.

  “Spike,” she said.

  Jesse smiled. “You can’t leave when we’re going good.”

  “Let’s see how we both feel when I’m there and you’re here.”

  She leaned across the table and kissed him.

  “See you around, cowboy,” she said.

  He watched her get up from the booth, walk past the counter, hug Molly, and leave.

  Day at a time, he told himself.

  Some of them more interesting than others.

  He was staring out the window when Molly sat back down.

  “Yup,” she said. “You are in deep shit. But not with me.”

  Sixty-One

  Bryce Cain looked at Jesse and said, “You look like you lost a fight.”

  Jesse had noticed the bruise on the left side of his face, from the last time Bo Marino had swung his gun at him, neither one of them knowing at the time that Marino had only a few minutes to live.

  “Yeah,” Jesse said, “but I still won on points.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to say that I should see the other guy?”

  “The other guy’s dead,” Jesse said.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” Jesse said.

  They were at the juice bar at Bryce’s gym, Paradise Fitness. Jesse had asked if he had a gym at home and Bryce said he did, but his trainer was jammed up and couldn’t make a house call today. He made it sound sadder than the end of a dog movie.

  Bryce looked even skinnier in gym clothes, as tight on him as they were on the women Jesse had seen walking around. For the time being, he’d pulled his hair back into one of those man buns. Jesse wondered who’d told him it was a good look.

  “I’m gonna hit the Peloton before I go back to the office,” he said. “So can we make this short?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “I was wondering if you could tell me where you were after the marquee lighting that night?”

  Bryce sipped something green through a straw.

  “You came over here to ask me that?”

  “Humor me. Somebody fitting your general description was seen running from the direction of the lake right after Paul Hutton was shot.”

  “General description?” Bryce said. “You mean ruggedly handsome and ripped?”

  “Long-haired and skinny. Witness said the guy looked like a runner.”

  Not exactly what Bo Marino had said. Close enough.

  “Wait, you’re serious,” Bryce said.

  Jesse waited.

  “Tell me something, Chief,” Bryce said. “Are you going out of your way to piss me off? Because you can’t believe that I’m the only person in Paradise who fits that description.”

  “No, you’re not. But you’re the one whose house the dead guy visited shortly before that.”

  “My parents’ house,” he said.

  “So where were you?”

  “At my own home. Alone on a Saturday night, sadly.”

  “What about your wife and daughter?”

  Bryce drank more of his green drink. It was some kind of smoothie, the color of a pickle.

  “My daughter was at a party,” he said. “My wife and I are taking a break.”

  “Were you at the theater?” Jesse said. “I don’t remember seeing you.”

  But he hadn’t noticed Bo Marino there, either.

  “I was there,” he said. “I knew it was a big deal to Lily. First chance I got, I went home and curled up on the couch with a good scotch.” He grinned at Jesse. “Probably a perfect Saturday night for you once, am I right?”

  “I could have taught a master class,” Jesse said. “So you could have been down by the lake.”

  “Fuck you,” Bryce said. “You think I’m going to sit here and let you treat me like a suspect?”

  “I thought we were just having a nice conversation.”

  “Like hell,” Bryce said. “Let me explain something to you: My old man was the gun guy in the family, not me. They scare the shit out of me. Haven’t handled one since he tried to teach me to shoot one when I was ten.”

&n
bsp; Jesse drank some sparkling water.

  “Going to ask something again,” he said. “Could Hutton have gone to the house that night because he had business with your father?”

  “And I’m going to tell you again,” Bryce said. “If he had, my father would have told me.”

  “I heard the two of you were fighting about money at the end,” Jesse said.

  Bryce said, “Only because he started to act like he really could take it with him.”

  “Is that an answer?”

  “Did I miss a question?” Bryce said.

  He put up his hands, as if in surrender.

  “We’re all being taken care of, handsomely,” he said. “We haven’t officially read the will yet, but I wrote the goddamn thing. Even Karina’s going to get a nice check herself. There. You satisfied?”

  “Almost,” Jesse said. “Karina talked about secrets in your family. Can you think of any Whit died with that might help me out here?”

  Bryce Cain smiled now, showing off a lot of white teeth. But to Jesse, it was as if he were baring them. He remembered a time, a case that took him up into the Hollywood Hills, when he’d come face-to-face with a coyote, who stared Jesse down and bared his teeth before running off. Only then did Jesse take his hand off his gun.

  “You should have asked him that,” Bryce said.

  “What about you?”

  “Secrets?” Bryce said. “A boatload. But none that would help you.”

  He reached behind him for whatever was holding his hair in place, let the hair fall nearly to his shoulders. Reached down into his gym bag and pulled out a baseball cap. Paradise Yacht Club.

  “My Peloton awaits,” he said, and headed back toward the gym, joining the beautiful people trying to make themselves even more beautiful.

  Jesse felt a buzzing from his phone. Took it from the back pocket of his jeans, saw the text from Suit.

  Got something.

  Sixty-Two

  They were in Jesse’s office. Suit had placed a small stack of paper in front of Jesse on his desk. The one on top was what he called the “money hit.”

  “I missed it the first time,” Suit said. “I mean, I saw the one I’ve got circled there. 4Bears. But when I Googled it, it turned out to be a casino in frigging North Dakota. Thought maybe our guy had taken a trip to the great Northwest.”