Only the youngest Genest kid was home when Carole let Jesse in. He was in the den with some coloring books and some crayons and some little wooden figures scattered about, watching a home shopping show as if it were a performance of King Lear.
“Want some coffee?” Carole said.
“Sure.”
Jesse followed her through the long formal dining room into the big kitchen, paneled in pine, with shiny copper pots hanging from a rack over the stove. The big window at the back of the room looked out at more land behind the house, planted with flowering shrubs and shielded by white pine trees.
“Nice property,” Jesse said. “How much land you got?”
“Three-quarters of an acre,” Carole said. She put coffee into the gold filter basket of a bright blue coffeemaker and added water and turned it on, and sat down at the kitchen table opposite Jesse. She was a pretty woman, with an empty face and wide eyes which always looked a little startled.
“Been here long?”
“Ten years,” she said.
The kid came from the den carrying a ratty-looking stuffed animal by the ear. It was too dilapidated for Jesse to tell what it had been. The child laid the upper half of himself over his mother’s lap and, holding the stuffed animal tightly, started to suck his thumb. Carole patted his head absently.
“You get it as part of the divorce?”
“Yes. And he’s supposed to pay me alimony every month but he doesn’t.”
“Must be tough to keep the payments up,” Jesse said.
“I got to pay taxes quarterly, but at least there’s no mortgage.”
“No mortgage?”
“No. Jo Jo bought it for cash, when we got married.”
“Cash? Really? When was that.”
“Nineteen eighty-six,” she said. “House cost a hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars. Probably worth five now.”
“I should think so,” Jesse said. “Where’d Jo Jo get the cash?”
Carole shook her head. The coffeemaker had stopped gurgling. She raised the kid from her lap and got up and poured them coffee.
“You take anything?” she said.
“Cream and sugar, please. Two sugars.”
“Skim milk okay?”
“Sure.”
She put the coffee down on the table and sat back down. The kid plopped back in her lap and sucked his thumb some more.
“What did you ask me?” Carole said.
“Where Jo Jo got the cash. Hundred and fifty-five thousand is a lot of money. It was even more in 1986.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“Jo Jo come around since he and I had that talk?” Jesse said.
“No.”
“How are the kids doing?”
Carole shrugged.
“You talk to a shrink at all?”
“How’m I supposed to afford a shrink,” Carole said. “My HMO pays a hundred bucks for counseling. You know how far that goes?”
Jesse nodded.
“How are you getting by, financially?”
Again Carole shrugged. It was a particular kind of shrug. Jesse had seen it often. It was not a gesture of surrender or even of defeat, those were long past. It was a gesture of numbness. It meant no hope.
“You got any family?”
“My mother’s dead,” Carole said. “My father’s in Florida with my stepmother. My father sends me some money.”
“If Jo Jo’s not paying what he’s supposed to you can take him to court.”
“Sure, and pay a lawyer, and have the judge tell Jo Jo to pay and have him not pay, and maybe come around later and beat the shit out of me?”
“I don’t think he’ll do that again,” Jesse said.
“Maybe not if you’re around, he hasn’t bothered me since that time. But how long you going to stay around here?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“How come he’s scared of you anyway?” Carole said. “I mean, look at him. Look at you. How come he doesn’t get you for slapping him around?”
Jesse looked at the little boy, sucking his thumb on his mother’s lap. How much of all this did he hear? Probably all of it. How much did he understand? Probably too much of it. What could Jesse do about that?
“Well,” Jesse said. “I’m a cop, which carries a little weight, and I carry a gun, which may have a lot of weight.”
“Jo Jo’s got a gun. He used to have two or three around here.”
Jesse nodded.
“So what is it,” Carole said.
Jesse looked at the boy again. Nothing to do about that.
“Jo Jo’s a fake,” Jesse said. “Alone at night, when he can’t sleep, sometimes, for a minute he knows it. And he knows that I know it too.”
“A fake?”
“Sure. He’s strong, and he’s cruel. And that’s a dangerous combination. But he isn’t really tough.”
“And you are?”
Jesse smiled at her.
“Yes, ma’am. I am.”
The boy straightened and whispered in his mother’s ear.
“Okay,” Carole said. “I’ll take you.”
She stood.
“Excuse us a minute,” she said to Jesse and went out of the kitchen with her son.
For a drunk, Jesse thought as he sat in the quiet kitchen, I’m pretty tough for a boozer.
The television blatted in the family room. The kitchen faucet had a slow drip. He wondered if it needed a washer or if she just hadn’t shut it off tightly. Jenn had rarely shut the faucet off tightly. He always had to firm it up when he had walked through the kitchen. She never closed the cabinet doors all the way either. When she had stopped coming home everything had been much more buttoned up.
Carole came back into the kitchen. She got a Fudgsicle from the refrigerator freezer and removed the wrapper and gave the Fudgsicle to the boy.
“More coffee?” she said.
“Sure.”
Jesse held the cup out and Carole poured from the round glass pot.
“When does he start school?” Jesse said, nodding at the boy.
“Kindergarten next year,” Carole said.
The boy showed no sign that he knew they were talking about him. He sat on his mother’s lap, working on the Fudgsicle.
“Can you get a job then?” Jesse said.
Shrug.
“What did you do before you got married?”
“High school,” Carole said. “Jo Jo knocked me up senior year. I never graduated.”
“Maybe you could get some training,” Jesse said.
“Sure.”
“What does Jo Jo do for a living?” Jesse asked.
Carole shrugged. “He does some bodybuilder contests, I know.”
“Can you make a living doing that?”
Shrug.
“What was he doing for a living when he bought this house for cash?”
“I don’t know,” Carole said.
Jesse allowed himself to look puzzled.
“I’m not very smart,” Carole said. “I never learned anything in school. I didn’t even graduate. Taking care of me was his job.”
Jesse drank some of the coffee. It had gotten stronger sitting in the pot.
“I think it would be good if you didn’t have to depend on Jo Jo.”
“Sure,” Carole said. “It’s what my old man is always telling me. From Florida. So who’s going to marry a woman with three small kids and an ex-husband like I got?”
“Maybe you don’t need a husband to take care of you,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” Carole said. “Right.”
“So as long as you knew him, Jo Jo never had a regul
ar job?”
“He tended bar once in a while. Worked as a bouncer.”
“Where?”
“Club in Peabody. The Eighty-six Club.”
“He work there much?”
“No.”
Jesse stood and brought his coffee cup to the sink.
“Well, you need me, you know how to get me,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“Sure.”
Jesse looked for a moment at the little boy, his face dirty with melted Fudgsicle. You don’t have a prayer, Jesse thought. Not a goddamned prayer.
Chapter 31
Hasty Hathaway picked up a triangle of cinnamon toast and bit off a corner, and chewed and swallowed.
“I asked you to have coffee with me, Jesse, because I’m concerned about some of the things that have happened in town recently.”
Hathaway held the now truncated triangle of toast delicately in his right hand and moved it slightly in rhythm to his speech. Jesse waited.
“I mean, I know they are not serious crimes. But the spray-painting of a police cruiser, and the killing of that police station cat . . . well, it’s all around town.”
Jesse had nothing to say to that, so he waited.
“Obviously someone wishes to embarrass the police department.”
Jesse continued to wait.
“Do you agree?” Hathaway said.
“Yes.”
“And,” Hathaway said, “I’m afraid they’re succeeding.”
“ ’Fraid so,” Jesse said.
“Who might that be?” Hathaway said.
Jesse leaned back in his seat and turned his coffee cup slowly with both hands.
“We roust some of the burnout kids in town every day,” Jesse said. “We arrest several drunks a weekend. We referee a domestic dispute about once a week. We stop people for speeding. We tow cars for being illegally parked. We’re in the business of telling people no.”
“So it could be anyone,” Hathaway said.
“Could be,” Jesse said.
“But isn’t it more likely to be one person than another?” Hathaway said. “Don’t you have any suspicions?”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“Perhaps you’d care to share them with me,” Hathaway said. “I am after all the town’s chief executive.”
Jesse thought it an odd phrase to describe the selectman’s job, but he didn’t comment.
“I had to guess, I’d guess it might be Jo Jo Genest,” Jesse said.
“Jo Jo?”
“I came down pretty hard on him for harassing his ex-wife a while ago.”
“But you yourself say you deal regularly with domestic disputes.”
“Yes.”
“So it could be any of those people’s man or wife.”
“Feels like Jo Jo to me.”
“That’s pretty weak,” Hathaway said.
“Yes it is,” Jesse said. “If it were strong I’d arrest him.”
“But you’re still suspicious.”
“Jo Jo’s the right kind of guy. He’d need to get even for being embarrassed in front of his ex-wife, and he wouldn’t have the cojones to do it straight on.”
“Cohonees?”
“Balls,” Jesse said.
“You think Jo Jo Genest is afraid?”
Hathaway seemed genuinely amazed.
“Can’t always judge a book . . .” Jesse said.
“No,” Hathaway said. “No. I can’t buy that at all. Jo Jo grew up in this town. If you did something to Jo Jo he might be angry. But if he were angry, God help you. He wouldn’t sneak around killing cats.”
Jesse turned his coffee cup a little more.
“Sure,” he said. “Probably right.”
“And you have no other theories?”
“No.”
“Well, you better get some,” Hathaway said. “There was a story about it in the Standard Times last night.”
Jesse nodded without comment.
“It made the papers, in my view, because you sent the cat remains to the state laboratory, and they talked about it to someone.”
“Could be,” Jesse said.
“Isn’t it a bit preposterous to send the remains of a dead cat to the state whatever-it-is lab?”
“Forensic,” Jesse said.
“I’d prefer that next time you are tempted to seek outside assistance, you consult me first. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Jesse said without meaning it.
“This town does not wish outsiders sharing our problems,” Hathaway said.
“Of course,” Jesse said.
“We handle our own business here. Part of liberty is self-reliance.”
“You bet,” Jesse said.
Hathaway stood and put one of his long-fingered bony hands on Jesse’s shoulder.
“Don’t mean to come down too hard on you, Jesse. But I have a responsibility to this town. Call on me for anything you need . . . and let’s keep our troubles in-house.”
“Gotcha,” Jesse said.
Hathaway patted Jesse’s shoulder briefly and turned and left the restaurant. Jesse sat looking after him, turning his coffee cup slowly on the tabletop. I wonder what Hasty is actually worried about, Jesse thought. He looked at Hathaway’s plate. He had eaten the center of his cinnamon toast and left the crusts. Cinnamon toast, Jesse thought. Jesus Christ!
Chapter 32
The call from Wyoming came at nine o’clock in the morning eastern time. Jesse took it in his office.
“I got Paradise, Massachusetts?” Charlie Buck said.
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“You the chief of police?”
“Yes. Jesse Stone.”
“My name’s Charlie Buck. I’m an investigator for the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department in Gillette, Wyoming.”
“Well, you’re an early riser,” Jesse said. “What is it there, about seven?”
“Seven oh three,” Buck said. “I’m interested in a man might have lived in Paradise at one time, man named Thomas Carson.”
“He was the chief before me,” Jesse said.
Buck grunted.
“Well, he was driving a Dodge truck up along Route 59 north of Bill a while back, when it blew up and him with it. Took us this long to trace what was left.”
“In Wyoming?”
“Yeah, north of Bill, heading toward Gillette.”
“You establish why it blew up?” Jesse said.
“Bomb.”
“So it’s a homicide.”
“You might say so.”
“You have any leads?”
“We was hoping you’d be the lead. If the bomb hadn’t tossed the truck’s serial number couple hundred feet away we wouldn’t even know who he was.”
“Considerable bomb,” Jesse said.
“Considerable,” Buck said. “Figure it was supposed to pulverize everything so we couldn’t I.D. the victim. How long you had the job?”
“Got hired in May,” Jesse said. “Didn’t actually start until June.”
“You know when Carson left?”
“Before May,” Jesse said. “Sometime in the spring, I think. Until I took over, guy named Lou Burke was acting chief.”
“Where were you before you took this job?” Buck said.
“L.A. Homicide.”
Buck grunted again.
“Might be useful,” he said.
“I’ll try,” Jesse said.
“Carson got any next of kin out there?”
“Not that I know of, but I’ll find out, let you know.”
“Wish you would,” Buck said. “Fri
ends, close associates?”
“Let me look into it,” Jesse said. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Sure,” Buck said.
“You know what detonated the bomb?” Jesse said.
“No. Best guess, someone trailed him and beeped it from a distance. Pretty empty stretch of road along where it went off.”
“Makes sense,” Jesse said. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like it if you talked only to me about this.”
Buck grunted.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Jesse said.
“Hell no,” Buck said. “Your town, your department. Who’d you say you worked for in L.A.?”
“Homicide, Captain Cronjager.”
“Un huh. Well, I’ll go ahead and see what I can do at this end. Maybe you can give me a ring in a couple days, tell me what you know.”
“Glad to,” Jesse said.
“If I don’t hear,” Buck said, “I’ll give you a ring.”
“You’ll hear,” Jesse said.
Chapter 33
Jo Jo Genest sat in Gino Fish’s storefront office waiting for Gino, trying to impress Vinnie Morris.
“So I got this suitcase,” Jo Jo said, “with seven hundred large, you know, small bills. Thing weighs a freaking ton, and I’m supposed to take it to a bank in New York City, down around Wall Street someplace. You know New York?”
Morris nodded. He was sitting with his chair tilted back. He had a Walkman clipped to his belt and he was listening to music through the earphones.
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