“No match,” Holton said, “on the
murder bullets and the
Marlin.”
“I didn’t expect any,” Jesse
said.
“Maybe you should wait and send us something that you expect to
match,” Holton said.
“Got to eliminate it,” Jesse said.
“Well, you can eliminate this one,” Holton said. “Far as I can
tell, it’s never been fired.”
Jesse was silent, sitting back in his chair, staring out the window.
“You still there?” Holton said.
“Sorry,” Jesse said. “I was just
thinking.”
“You were?” Holton said. “I
wasn’t sure cops did that in the
suburbs.”
“Only as a last resort,” Jesse said and hung up.
“No match?” Simpson said without looking up from the
paper.
“No match,” Jesse said.
“Well, it’s not like you didn’t
call it,” Simpson
said.
“So much for plinking vermin,” Jesse said.
“Vermin?” Simpson said.
“They said they had the rifle to plink vermin at their summer
place.”
“So?”
“So according to the state ballistics guy the gun has probably
never even been fired.”
“Why would they lie about that?” Simpson said.
“To explain why they had the gun.”
“Lotta people own a gun they haven’t fired.”
“Yeah, and they usually have it in the house, for protection.”
“So why wouldn’t they just say
that?”
“Because they are too smart for their own good,” Jesse said.
“They think we would wonder why they’d buy a twenty-two rifle for
protection.”
“A twenty-two will kill you,” Simpson said.
“As well we know,” Jesse said.
“So if they said it was for protection, would we wonder?”
“Maybe,” Jesse said,
“we’re supposed to wonder.”
“Maybe they were just embarrassed at keeping a gun for
protection, and said it was for vermin,” Simpson said.
“They look embarrassed to you?” Jesse said.
“No. You think they got two other guns?”
“Handguns,” Jesse said. “You
wouldn’t use a rifle for the kind
of killing they did.”
“If they did it,” Simpson said.
“I think they did,” Jesse said.
“You always tell me, Jesse, don’t be in a hurry to decide
stuff.”
“I want to know everything about Tony and Brianna,” Jesse said.
“Phone records, credit cards, dates of birth, social security numbers, previous residences, when they were married, where they lived before this, where the country home is where they are not plinking vermin, do they have relatives, who are their friends, what do the neighbors know about them, where he practiced medicine, where they went to school.”
“You want me to pick the gun up first and return it?
Or you want
me to start digging into the Lincolns.”
“I’ll take care of the rifle,”
Jesse said. “You start
digging.”
Simpson nodded.
“Can I finish reading Arlo andjanis?”
Simpson
said.
“No.”
48
The resident cars at Seascape were parked behind the building at
the end of a winding drive, in a blacktop parking lot with a card-activated one-armed gate at the entrance. Jesse was driving his own car, and he parked it across from Seascape on a side street perpendicular to the point where the drive wound into Atlantic Avenue. He had far too many things under way, he knew, to be doing hopeful surveillance. But Jesse was the only cop on the force who was good at it. Any of the Paradise cops could do an open tail, Jesse knew. But he didn’t want the Lincolns to know they were being
tailed, and getting spooky on him. He was the only one he trusted to do an undiscovered tail. He couldn’t cover them all the time.
During the day he was too busy, but the nights were quieter, and half a tail is better than none, he thought, so each
night after work he drove over here and parked and waited.
He knew it was them. He couldn’t prove it, not even enough to
get a search warrant, but he’d been a cop nearly half his life, and
he knew. He had the advantage on them for the moment. They didn’t
know that he knew. They thought he was just the local bumpkin chief of a small department, and they felt superior to him. He knew that as surely as he knew they were guilty. And that too gave him an advantage. He’d watched their body language and listened to them
talk and heard the undertones in their voices. He was nothing. He couldn’t possibly catch them. Jesse had no intention of changing
their minds.
“I love arrogance,” Jesse said aloud in the dark interior of his
silent car.
At ten minutes past seven he saw the red Saab pull out of the drive and head east on Atlantic Avenue. He slid into gear and pulled out a considerable distance behind them. After a while he pulled up closer, and where Atlantic had a long stretch with only one cross street, which was one way into the avenue, he turned off and went around the block and rejoined Atlantic just after they passed.
Jesse had already shadowed them three nights that week. Once they had eaten pizza, at a place in the village. Once they had food shopped at the Paradise Mall. Once they had gone to a movie. Each time it got more boring, and each time Jesse tailed them as if it would lead to their arrest.
He let himself drop two cars back of the Saab as they went through the village and over the hill toward downtown. The other cars peeled off and when they turned east near the town wharf, Jesse was directly behind them. They drove for a little while with the harbor on their right, until the Saab pulled into the parking lot at Jesse’s apartment.
Jesse drove on by and parked around the bend. He walked down behind the condominiums, and stood at the corner of the building next to his, in the shadows, and watched. The Saab was quiet. The lights were out. The motor had been turned off. The parking lot was lit with mercury lamps, which deepened the shadow in which Jesse stood. The moon was bright. The passenger-side window of the Saab slid down. In the passenger seat, Brianna held something up and pointed an object at Jesse’s apartment. On the other side of his
condo the harbor waters moving made a pleasant sound. The object was a camera and Jesse realized that she was taking pictures of his home.
After ten minutes the window rolled back up. The Saab remained.
Nothing moved. Nothing happened. After half an hour the Saab engine turned over. The lights went on. And the Saab pulled out of the lot. Jesse made no attempt to follow. Instead he drove back to Seascape, taking his time, and checked the parking lot. The Saab was there. Jesse looked at the clock on his dashboard. 9:40. All of him was tired. His legs felt heavy. His shoulders were hunched. His eyes kept closing on him.
“You can only do what you can do,” Jesse said aloud, and turned
the car and went home.
49
Jesse was in the Essex County Court in Salem, sitting in a conference room with Martin Reagan, the ADA on the case, Rita Fiore, and lawyers for Feeney and Drake. Feeney’s lawyer was a
husky dark-eyed woman named Emily Frank, and Drake was represented by a loud-voiced man with a full white beard named Richard DeLuca.
“We don’t have to consult you,
Jesse,” Reagan said. “But we
thought your input might be useful in arriving at a plea bargain.”
Jesse nodd
ed. Rita smiled at him. Jesse could feel the smile in
his stomach.
“None of these boys is a hardened
criminal,” Rita said. “All of
them are under eighteen. We’re thinking of no jail time.”
“They need jail time,” Jesse said.
“We were thinking probation, counseling, and community service,”
Rita said.
Jesse shook his head.
“They need jail time,” he said.
“Doesn’t have to be long, and it
doesn’t have to be hard time. It can be in a juvenile facility. But
they gang-raped a sixteen-year-old-girl and photographed her naked and threatened her and harassed her.”
“Hell, Chief, weren’t you ever a teenage boy? They’re hormones
with feet.”
“I was,” Jesse said. “And my
hormones were jumping through my
skin like everybody else’s. But I never raped anyone, did you?”
“We’re not condoning what they
did,” Emily Frank said. “Richard
was just suggesting that their youth made them less able to control themselves.”
“You think they didn’t know it was
wrong?” Jesse
said.
The lawyers were quiet.
“You think they couldn’t control
themselves?”
“Well,” Rita said. “They
didn’t.”
“No they didn’t,” Jesse said.
Rita met his eyes, and again he could feel it.
“But what purpose is served by locking these children up?” Emily
Frank said.
“You know that scale of justice, outside. What they did to
Candace Pennington will tip it pretty far down, and it will take a lot more than probation and community service to balance it out.”
“Well,” Reagan said. “What would
you recommend.”
“I recommend that I take each one into a spare cell and beat the
crap out of him and send him home.”
“You can’t do that,” Emily Frank
said.
“I know,” Jesse said.
“It’s too simple.”
“It’s barbaric,” Emily Frank
said.
Rita looked mildly amused.
“And illegal,” Emily Frank said.
“I know.”
“What would they learn about right and wrong from that?”
“Nothing,” Jesse said. “But
they’d know what hurts and what
doesn’t.”
“Thanks for your input, Jesse,” Reagan said. “We’ll go it alone
from here.”
Jesse nodded and stood up. He felt Rita watching him.
“I think you should know,” Emily Frank said, “that I for one
haven’t found this meeting useful.”
“I never thought it would be,” Jesse said, and walked out of the
room.
Rita followed him.
“This will take all day,” she said
“Are you free for
dinner?”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“I’ll pick something up and come to your place.”
“Really,” Jesse said.
“About seven,” Rita said.
“Seven,” Jesse said.
Rita turned and walked back along the second-floor corridor to the conference room. At the door she turned.
“Probably eat about nine or ten,” she said and grinned and went
in.
50
The town beach was empty, except for a woman in a pink down jacket running a Jack Russell terrier. Jesse stood for a moment under the little pavilion that served, as far as Jesse could tell, no useful purpose. Twenty feet to his left Kenneth Eisley’s body
had rolled about at the tidal margin, until the ocean receded. The first one. Jesse looked out at the rim of the gray ocean, where it merged with the gray sky. It seemed longer ago than it was.
They’d
found him in November, and now it was the start of February. Dog was still with Valenti. Too long. Dog shouldn’t be in a shelter
that long. I got to find someone to take the dog.
Beaches
were cold places in February. Jesse was wearing a turtleneck and a sheepskin jacket. He pulled his watch cap down over his ears, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat. I know who killed you, Kenneth. He stepped off the little pavilion and onto the sand. He was above the high tide line where the mingle of seaweed and flotsam made a ragged line. Ahead of him the Jack Russell raced down at the ocean as it rolled in and barked at it, and dodged back when it got close. He was taunting the ocean. I know who killed the lady in the mall, and the guy in the church parking lot. I know who killed Abby. Jesse trudged along the sand, feeling it shift slightly beneath his feet as he walked.
Now me? He could think of no reasonable explanation for
why they would go out in the evening and take pictures of his home.
The day was not windy, and the ocean’s movement was gently rounded,
with only an occasional crest of the waves. There was something about oceans. The day he left LA he went to Santa Monica and looked at the Pacific. Despite their perpetual movement there was a stillness about oceans. Despite the sound of the waves, there was a great silence. The empty beach and the limitless ocean hinted at the vast secret of things. He’d gotten their attention. They were
reacting to him. It was a start. If I stay with them maybe they’ll make a run at me, and I’ll have them.
He smiled to
himself. Or they’ll have me. He stopped and looked out at
the ocean. High up, a single herring gull circled slowly above the ocean, looking down, hoping for food. Nothing moved on the horizon.
I guess if they get me I won’t care much.
In front of him
the Jack Russell yapped urgently at his owner. She took a ball from her backpack and threw it awkwardly, the way girls throw. The dog raced after it. Caught up with it, pounced on it with his forepaws, bumped it with his nose, grabbed it in his mouth and shook it to death.
Looking at the ocean, Jesse thought about Abby. She hadn’t found
the man of her dreams. She’d hoped that Jesse would make her happy,
but he hadn’t. Nothing much did. She wanted things too hard, she
needed things too much, she had her own private fight with alcohol.
Sometimes her sexuality embarrassed her. The gull had moved inland, looking for landfill or roadkill, or maybe a discarded Moon Pie.
Nothing moved above the ocean now. I wish I could have loved you, Abby. He reached the end of the beach, where the huge sea-smooth rocks loomed up, and beyond them, expensive houses with a view. So long, Ab. He turned and started back along the
beach. The Jack Russell had left too, joining his owner in a silver Audi coupe, just pulling out of the parking lot. The dog had his head out the window, and though it was far away, Jesse could faintly hear him yapping. The cold air was clean off the ocean, and he liked the way it felt as it went into his lungs. I wonder if
they are going to try to kill me. When he got to the aimless little pavilion Jesse paused again and looked out at the ocean again. Nothing alive was in sight. He was alone. He breathed in, and stood listening to the quiet sound of the ocean, and the soft sound of his breathing. I wonder if they will succeed.
51
Jenn was always late. Most of the women Jesse knew were late.
Rita was there at seven. She carried her purse over her shoulder, a small bag that might have been a briefcase over the other shoulder, and in her arms a large paper bag. She handed him the bag when he opened the door.
“I am beautiful and dangerous,” Rita said.
“But I don’t carry
things very well.”
&nbs
p; Jesse took the bag and backed away from the door.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said.
“And I you,” she said. “The plea
bargaining was
interminable.”
“Four lawyers in a room,” Jesse said.
Rita put her purse and her shoulder bag on the living room floor
next to the coffee table.
“No wonder they hate lawyers,” Rita said.
“For crissake, I hate
lawyers … except me.”
Jesse smiled. He took the paper bag to the kitchen and set it on
the counter.
“Shall I unload?” he said.
“Sure. I like domesticity in a man,” Rita said.
Jesse took out a bottle of Riesling, two kinds of cheese, a big
sausage, two loaves of French bread, some red grapes, some green grapes, and four green apples.
“Would you like some of this wine?” Jesse said.
“I brought it in case,” Rita said.
“What I’d actually like, if
you have it, is a very large, very dry martini.”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Gin or
vodka?”
“You have Ketel One?”
“I do.”
“Yes,” she said.
Jesse made the martini in a silver shaker, plopped two big olives in a wide martini glass, and poured Rita a drink.
“Aren’t you having something?”
she said.
Jesse shook his head.
“I don’t drink,” he said.
“Didn’t you used to,” Rita said.
“I did,” Jesse said. “Now I
don’t.”
He was a little startled at the firmness with which he said it.
“Get something,” Rita said, “a
glass of water, anything. I hate
to drink alone.”
Jesse went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He brought it into the living room and sat opposite Rita, who was on the sofa.
“That a boy,” Rita said. “Get
your vitamins.”
Jesse grinned. “How’d the plea bargaining come out,” he
said.
“Nothing you’d like. They get three
years’ probation, mandatory
counseling, and a hundred and twenty hours each of community service.”
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