by Mike Lupica
“You know this could be another dead end,” Gabe said.
“Molly says that faith is believing what you can’t see,” Jesse told him.
Gabe told him to beat it, he’d call if he got something, that for now it was just putting one of his favorite fundamentals of police work into play.
“Which one?” Jesse said.
Gabe said, “Throwing shit against the wall and hoping some of it sticks.”
SIXTY-NINE
Crow and Molly were at the hospital. Jesse called Molly’s phone, and asked if Blair had improved. No, Molly said, but she hasn’t gotten any worse, either. The doctors said it was a good thing, at least for now.
“Now you take the win,” Jesse said to her.
He was sitting on his terrace by then, in the late afternoon, listening to the ocean. He still loved doing that, never got tired of doing it, probably never would get tired of it. He’d loved looking at the water and listening to it and walking the beaches when he’d lived in Los Angeles, too. It usually could fill him with a sense of calm.
Just not right now.
Right now he felt like he was underwater.
Maybe he was getting old.
Maybe this was the case he couldn’t solve. Or wouldn’t. Maybe this time he couldn’t get justice for the victims, and somebody was going to get away with murder.
It had happened before. Jesse would probably die himself thinking Bryce Cain, another spoiled rich boy from Paradise, had gotten away with killing his mother and his half-brother a couple years before.
But he was honest enough with himself, most of the time, anyway, to realize that it was about more than the pursuit of justice that drove him. He needed to know. He needed to figure things out. Put the puzzle together. Molly and Suit kept telling him that he’d almost always figured things out in the past. But those cases didn’t matter to him now. Your lifetime batting average in baseball didn’t help you in the season you were playing, when you were looking to get a hit. This case was the one that mattered. Neil mattered. Ben Gage mattered.
Blair Richmond mattered most of all, because she was still here.
And if that land did belong to the tribe, if it was just one more piece of property in America that had been stolen from them, well, that sure seemed as if it ought to matter, too.
Gut instinct told him that Dix was right. The killer, or killers, probably did shoot Neil in the head before they could put their hands on whatever Ben Gage had found. Get rid of him, get rid of both of them, worry about finding the proof later. If somebody else knew something, they would have come forward by now. All Terry Harvey knew was that Neil thought he had something big, and was prepared to show him.
Show and tell.
But if they’d found what they were looking for at Ben Gage’s house, why had they gone after Kate?
Santo and Baldelli?
Or Richie Carr and Darnell Woodson?
And did Ed Barrone have his own thugs working this, even if he said he didn’t, and they’d been good enough that Jesse hadn’t seen them yet?
Jesse tried to remember the Irish word Molly had for this kind of mess, but couldn’t.
He got up. He still needed to move, even if he knew he was probably just going to spin his wheels a little more. He got into the Explorer and drove back over to Ben and Blair’s house, and used the key he had to open the door and go through it himself now the way he’d gone through Neil’s, room by room, and then out into the small backyard. He stood in the middle of the yard and stared at the treehouse Blair had talked about, where they’d gone to dream their dreams.
He climbed the ladder, excited suddenly.
But there was nothing much to see with the exception of a heart carved into the wooden floor, with “Ben” and “Blair” inside, and a date, and this written underneath:
Forever.
He locked up the house and got back into the Explorer, thinking about an Apache expression Crow had given him the other day, about how in this world it is the unseen that have the power.
Do they ever, Jesse thought.
He was halfway back to the station, because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go right now, when Crow called from the hospital.
“She’s awake,” he said.
SEVENTY
Day of the vote.
Mayor Gary Armistead had decided to make the event public, even allowing it to be streamed live from Paradise.gov.
Townspeople who wanted one last chance to weigh in on the merits of the sale, or lack thereof, had been invited to show up and address all of them on the stage: Armistead, the other members of the Board, Lawton, Singer, Barrone, all of whom would be up onstage. They had pulled down the bleachers in the gym at Paradise High, and set up folding chairs that stretched from the stage all the way back to the double doors that opened up into the lobby.
Jesse watched from the back of the gym.
The first order of business had been Billy Singer and Ed Barrone addressing the Board and the townspeople gathered in front of them for the last time, explaining why each man thought he was the best person to develop the land. Why their plan was best for the town. They were both cheered when introduced, with only a smattering of boos.
Singer had gone first. Barrone had finished his brief talk by saying, “I’m from around here. You people know me.”
“Which is why they should be rooting for me,” Singer said into his handheld microphone.
It actually got a laugh.
Now it was the citizens of Paradise being heard, the line of people waiting to speak stretching down the middle aisle. Men and women. Old people and young. Old money and older. Rich and un-rich.
Stepping to the microphone now was Daisy Dyke. She was wearing denim painter’s pants with lots of pockets and an SOB T-shirt. Her hair was streaked with magenta today. When she’d taken her place in the line, she’d turned and winked at Jesse, who’d snapped off a salute in response. She’d then grinned and given him the finger.
“There are things that make this town special, leastways I think they do,” she said. “And the things that make it most special are the ones that shouldn’t be for sale. Now I’ve been listening to both sides of this for months, and here’s what I’ve finally decided. The real SOBs in this thing are sitting over there to the side of the stage.”
She pointed at Lawton, Singer, Barrone.
“I listened to Mr. Singer and Mr. Barrone a few minutes ago and, for the life of me, still can’t figure out who the hell they’re talking to,” Daisy said. “Because they are sure not talking to me.”
A lot of the people in the gym cheered. Daisy walked up near the stage, eyeballed Lawton and Singer and Barrone one last time, then walked back to where Jesse was standing.
“You should be mayor,” he said to her.
“No shit, Sherlock,” she said.
There were a couple more speakers. When they finished Gary Armistead said, “Now it’s time to get down to business. First, I and the other members of the Paradise Board of Selectmen will cast our votes, by a show of hands, on whether to approve the sale of the land in question by Thomas Lawton.”
Then he held up two envelopes for everybody in the gym to see.
“When that piece of business is concluded,” he said, “I will open these sealed envelopes, which I promise have not been opened since Mr. Singer and Mr. Barrone submitted them last week, and we will all find out, in real time, who has made the winning bid for Mr. Lawton’s land.”
Armistead smiled directly at the camera to his left.
“Shall we get this party started?” he said.
It was then that the double doors next to Jesse opened and Terry Harvey, carrying a large cardboard box, came walking in, followed by Rita Fiore of Cone, Oakes in all of her sassy, spectacular, red-haired glory. Jesse knew that the older man with them, someone who looked as if he could have been Crow’
s father, or at least an older brother, was Jason Ahanu Thompson, a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer.
“I’m ready for my close-up,” she said to Jesse before she and Terry Harvey and Jason Ahanu Thompson walked up the center aisle toward the stage.
SEVENTY-ONE
Jesse had called Rita after Harvey had informed him about his brief career at Cone, Oakes, telling her that she needed to be at the ready if he could prove that The Throw might very well be the property of the Peccontac Nation.
“No one,” Rita said, “is more at the ready for you than I.”
“I meant going into legal battle,” Jesse said.
“Well, I didn’t,” she said.
She stepped to the microphone now as if she were the one being given an award, maybe as the most impressive woman on the North Shore.
“My name is Rita Fiore, kids,” she said. “As a way of introduction, I am a senior partner at the Boston law firm of Cone, Oakes, which, for those of you not familiar with our work, is about as formidable as a SWAT team.”
She nodded to her left, then to her right. She was wearing a short black dress and high heels. Her hair was even longer than he remembered. Her long legs were, as Jesse remembered, quite formidable themselves.
“Standing next to me,” she continued, “is Mr. Terry Harvey of the Peccontac Tribal Nation, which once settled the land being discussed today. Mr. Thompson here is a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer. And the three of us are here to tell everybody in this gym and everybody who might be watching that no one is selling that land today, or buying it, because I was in court a little over an hour ago to get a temporary restraining order. And the reason I was able to get one is because Mr. Harvey is now in possession of certain precious tribal objects and remains that Mr. Thompson says prove that the land in question has really always belonged to the Peccontac people and not the original robber baron in Mr. Lawton’s family.”
“You have no right!” Mayor Gary Armistead yelled.
Even from this far away, Jesse thought Lawton’s face had quickly turned the color of Rita’s hair. Jesse couldn’t understand what Singer and Barrone were saying, because they kept shouting over each other.
“And who are you, Sparky?” Rita said to Gary Armistead.
“I’m the mayor of this town!” Gary Armistead said.
“Good for you,” Rita said. “So you should know, Mr. Mayor, that the judge’s exact words were that if anybody even thought about touching that land before he rules on a permanent injunction next week, that they might be sitting in a county jail until the Fourth of July.”
Jesse was staring at Lawton and Singer and Barrone, whom he thought might have calcified now that they’d sat back down. Rita had their full attention now. She had everybody’s attention. Generally she got it just by walking into a room.
Terry Harvey reached into the box and handed her a piece of paper, which Rita held up for the crowd to see.
“There are copies of the TRO in the lobby,” she said. “I underlined the place where Judge Thompson said that based on the evidence we submitted to him this morning, the possibility of the plaintiff—Mr. Harvey, in this case—succeeding on the merits of his case are overwhelming.”
“It’s not his land!” Thomas Lawton said from the stage, standing and rousing himself all over again. “It’s mine, goddamn it!”
“Not,” Rita said.
Jesse watched now as a side door up near the stage opened and Crow came walking out carrying a long folding table that he set up in front of Rita and Terry Harvey and Jason Ahanu Thompson, between them and the stage.
Then Crow helped Harvey take things out of the box and lay them gently on top of the table, items that Ben Gage had unearthed at The Throw across the last week of his life.
“What is that junk?” Ed Barrone roared.
“Manners,” Rita said, as she turned the standup microphone back to Terry Harvey.
“The ones wrapped in leather are human remains that we will prove come from the Peccontac tribe,” Terry Harvey said, almost reverently. “There is also wampum jewelry. A copper arm cuff. Beaded jewelry. A couple of pottery items, as you can plainly see, with grains inside. Thanks to Ms. Fiore, more items are currently being unearthed from what was clearly a burial site for our people.”
Jesse hadn’t noticed Gary Armistead’s gavel before. He was banging it now. And yelling for order, though as far as Jesse could tell, the only one out of order in the moment was him.
People had already begun to file up and inspect the items, Crow standing at a corner of the table with his arms crossed. Jesse had made his way up past the bleachers, and was now standing at the foot of the stage, below Thomas Lawton and Billy Singer and Ed Barrone. He noticed the two envelopes in front of Gary Armistead next to his own microphone, still unopened.
“You did this,” Lawton said when he noticed Jesse standing there.
“No,” Jesse said. “The tree huggers did.”
Then he pointed an imaginary gun at him and Singer and Barrone with his fingers.
“Bang,” Jesse said. “Now you’re all dead.”
SEVENTY-TWO
Blair Richmond had spoken slowly when she was awake, some of the words difficult to understand because of some paralysis on the right side of her face that Dr. Abramson said he hoped would go away eventually.
At one point she looked up at Crow and said, “You’re that Indian man.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I thought you were bad,” she said.
Jesse saw Crow smile.
“But in a good way,” he said.
She knew by now, from Dr. Abramson and the nurses, what had happened to her. They had told her that Molly had likely saved her life. Blair had thanked Molly.
“Our job is to preserve and protect,” Molly said. “I only did the first part.”
“Chief Stone,” Blair said now.
“I’m here,” Jesse said.
Then she had told them as much as she could remember, stopping every few sentences because even that seemed to exhaust her, or couldn’t find the right word. Jesse told her she didn’t have to do this right now. She said she wanted to at least try.
She jumped around. She kept stopping. She would get confused. Almost disoriented. Her timeline was off. She would back up and start over again. She kept saying she knew she was forgetting things. She told them she had planned to walk to her house after she left Jesse’s office that day when she got back from Providence. Sam and Diane Burrows were going to pick her up there.
But she had gotten a call from Ben, telling her not to go back to the house, it wasn’t safe for either one of them, that they’d come for Mr. O’Hara and then come for him. He told her to find a way to meet him at their cabin.
“It was the one he and his dad had built over in Oxbow,” Blair said. “Where you found me. He always called it our safe house.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Until it wasn’t.”
They thought for a moment she’d gone back to sleep.
“I should have called you sooner,” Blair said to Molly.
“You did just fine,” Molly said.
“I don’t know how the man found me,” Blair said.
She was talking to herself now.
“Richie Carr,” Molly said quietly.
Blair once again looked confused.
“He’s the man who shot you,” Molly said. “Before I shot him.”
Blair said, “He wanted to know where Ben had hidden it. I told him I didn’t know what ‘it’ was. He said he’d shoot me if I didn’t tell. I screamed at him that I didn’t know, no matter how many times he asked me.”
She was starting to slur her words more as she went.
“Is he the one who killed Ben?” she said.
“Him or his partner,” Jesse said.
Blair said, “I shouldn’t have been so muc
h like Ben. With the police. I should have called sooner for help.”
“Live and learn,” Jesse said. “Heavy on the living part.”
The nurse came in then, and told them Blair needed sleep. Blair thanked her again for saving her life. They all told her they’d come see her again tomorrow.
“But I’m not finished,” she said.
Then she told them about the wishing tree.
SEVENTY-THREE
As they were leaving, Blair had said she needed to start her story all over again, that she remembered parts that she’d left out. Jesse told her she could do it tomorrow. Or when she was fully up to it. She said she wanted to do it right now.
“In case I forget stuff for good,” she said.
Then she told them that the last time Ben had called her he sounded more frantic than ever, but made sure to tell her that he’d left one last note for her in their wishing tree that would explain everything about what he called buried treasure if something happened to him. She told him to stop talking like that. Yelled at him that this wasn’t some game, it had stopped being a game a long time ago, what treasure?
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“But I was talking to myself by then,” she said. “He was gone.”
When she found out he was dead, she’d hidden in the cabin until she called Molly Crane. Blair kept repeating that she should have called Molly sooner. Molly kept telling her that fear could make even brave people go a little bit crazy.
Jesse had gone over to the house after leaving the hospital, had found the tree with the small slot carved into it, the envelope with the key inside, and a locker number from Safe Storage, located in the Swap. It was there that Ben Gage had stored the artifacts he’d dug up.
“He had to have shown Neil some of what he had,” Jesse said.
“But not told him where he had it stashed?” Crow said.
“Maybe the only person he trusted completely was Blair,” Jesse said.
