The Bitterest Pill

by Reed Farrel Coleman

“Same answer. Just know he’s got my blessing to not be here. So don’t go giving him a hard time about that. You may not have raised up that man, but he has a lot of your qualities . . . for better or worse.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  That got Daisy to smile in spite of herself.

  “All right, Jesse, how many coffees and what would you like to eat?”

  * * *

  —

  MOLLY WAS AT THE DESK when Jesse came into the station. He put a large coffee and an egg sandwich down in front of her. Then he did something he rarely did. He pulled a chair over, put his own breakfast down at the desk, and ate with her.

  “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

  “I wanted to talk.”

  “You don’t need to ply me with food to get me to talk to you. You’re my chief.”

  “And your friend.”

  “And my friend. So this isn’t business?” she said, unwrapping her sandwich and sipping her coffee.

  “What do you do when your kids keep secrets from you?”

  “This isn’t a hypothetical, I take it.”

  He shook his head. “Cole hasn’t been at work for the last few days, with Daisy’s blessing.”

  “Have you asked him about it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you’ve got two choices: ask him or let him tell you when he’s ready.”

  “What if he’s never ready?”

  Molly laughed, almost choking on her food. “Don’t be an ass, Jesse. People have secrets, and don’t you dare bring up Crow.”

  Now it was Jesse’s turn to laugh. “Never.”

  “Liar.”

  “Never again.”

  “Better, but I don’t believe you. Listen, Jesse, as far as it goes with Cole, you can’t force things. He wants to have you be his father.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Sometimes, for such a smart and perceptive man, you can be a real jackass. Cole’s here, isn’t he? He came looking for you. He hasn’t left. For twenty-plus years you were the object of his scorn, resentment, fascination, and yearning. We only ever get one set of biological parents. He’s figuring stuff out. Let him, and let him come to you. Ease off the gas a little bit.”

  Jesse didn’t say anything to that, because it rang so true there was no point.

  “Has your daughter ever mentioned a kid from school named Chris G., Chris Grimm? He’s a junior.”

  Molly stopped chewing. “Why?”

  Jesse explained about seeing the kid outside the funeral home.

  “No, she’s never mentioned him, but I can ask.”

  “Do that, but I’m going over to the high school to ask about him after breakfast.”

  “A lot of kids are going to be absent today because of Heather’s funeral.”

  “I know, but there’s something about this Chris G. kid. Looked guilty, but also like his heart got ripped out. He definitely wasn’t a Heather type of boy.”

  “I don’t know, Jesse. Girls sometimes really like bad boys.” As the words came out of Molly’s mouth, she realized she was putting her foot in it.

  Jesse grinned. “Oh, kind of like you and Crow.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Don’t you worry, Molly Crane. That secret dies with me.”

  Secret . . . There was that word again.

  Sixteen

  Molly was right. She usually was. The high school wasn’t quite a ghost town, but it wasn’t nearly as busy as it had been the other day. Once again he found himself in Principal Wester’s office.

  “It’s a bad day for this, Chief Stone.”

  “There’s never a good day for it.”

  She thought about it for a second and realized he was right. “No, there isn’t, is there? Never a good day to bury a seventeen-year-old girl. So, what is it you think I can help you with?”

  “Chris Grimm.”

  The principal’s face remained neutral. That meant that the kid wasn’t a constant problem or a real troublemaker. The administration always knows the kids at either end of the behavior spectrum—the superstars and the disruptive ones.

  “What about him?”

  “Can I see him?”

  “I have no problem with you talking to the faculty, but I’d prefer you not do interrogations on school grounds,” she said.

  “I just want to talk to the kid. This isn’t an interrogation.”

  “If you say so. Let me get him up to the office. You can use one of our meeting rooms, but I want to be present. We can’t have the school liable.”

  Jesse didn’t object.

  Principal Wester picked up her phone, punched in two numbers. “Freda, please locate a student named Chris Grimm—” She covered the mouthpiece and asked Jesse what grade Grimm was in. “He’s a junior . . . That’s right. Please have him come up to the office.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wester’s phone rang almost immediately. She picked up, made some unreadable sounds, and hung up.

  “Sorry, Chief. Christopher Grimm’s been absent for the last several days.”

  “Can you give me his contact information?”

  Wester frowned but didn’t put up a fight. “I’ll have Freda get that for you. Will there be anything else?”

  “No. Thank you for your help.”

  * * *

  —

  AS JESSE WAS heading out of the building, he bumped shoulders with Brandy Lawton, the head of the girls’ physical education department and coach of the cheerleading squad. Brandy and Jesse were friendly if not exactly friends. They had known each other for many years. Brandy had had Jesse in to give some instruction to the girls’ softball team and to talk about the life of a professional athlete. Brandy was cute, compact, and athletic, with short brown hair, hazel eyes, and a winning smile. Her eyes were red. There was an epidemic of red eyes in Paradise since Heather’s death. She also seemed nervous and distracted. There was a lot of that in town, too. Brandy was usually dressed in a warm-up suit and running shoes. Not that day. Jesse barely recognized her in black slacks, a black jacket, a gray blouse, and gray flats. He smiled at her and then realized why the change in dress.

  “The funeral,” he said.

  “Will you be there, Jesse?”

  “I will.”

  “It’s terrible.”

  “Can we talk for a minute?”

  She looked at the hallway clock. “Five minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  He followed Lawton into a dark classroom. She flicked on the lights and sat on the edge of the teacher’s desk. Jesse stood.

  “What can I do for you, Jesse?”

  “Tell me about Heather.”

  “She was a great kid. Enthusiastic, dedicated, a good teammate . . .”

  Jesse gave Brandy a hard stare. He was tired of making no progress. “She’s dead, Brandy. She ODed. You don’t start with drugs the way she died. You move up to it. So if you want this not to happen to some other kid in the school, tell me what’s really been going on with Heather.”

  Lawton’s face turned down. “It wasn’t like she became a different person, Jesse, but she hadn’t been as into it as she used to be. She missed a few practices, made some slip-ups in the routines, and, frankly, was in danger of losing her spot.”

  “Did you talk to her about it?”

  “Of course. She seemed to understand and promised to do better, but she was also distracted. Look, Jesse, I was a seventeen-year-old girl once, too. Things can get confusing when you start growing into your body and you notice boys, and you’re thinking about college, and your parents get on your nerves.”

  “Were her parents getting on her nerves?”

  “Something was, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I was her coach, not her confessor.”

  “Relax,
Brandy, I’m not accusing you of anything. This is helpful. Can you remember when Heather’s attitude changed?”

  Lawton didn’t answer immediately. “I guess it was a gradual thing. I didn’t notice anything different until late last spring. I thought that she’d straighten out after the summer.”

  “Were there any incidents with Heather last year? Something that might have signaled a change?”

  She shrugged. “The only thing I can remember with Heather was an injury. She hurt her back during a routine at the Holiday Show in December. She slipped going into a jump and missed the landing, but she finished the routine. I got a note from her doctor the following week, saying that Heather would be out of action for at least a month. By March, she was back at it.” Brandy looked at her watch. “Sorry, Jesse, I’ve got to move. I still have classes.”

  “Just one more thing. Did you ever see Heather with Chris G.?”

  Unlike Principal Wester, Brandy Lawton made a decidedly un-neutral face at the mention of that name.

  “I’d see him with Heather after practice occasionally.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “I didn’t know him, but he looked like one of those kids who’d come to school with an AR-15 one day.”

  “Did you talk to anyone about that?”

  She laughed a laugh that had nothing to do with joy. “Half the boys in school look that way.”

  “But what was it about him in particular?”

  “I guess I just didn’t like him with Heather.”

  Old story, Jesse thought, good girls and bad boys. “Thanks, Brandy.”

  Jesse watched Lawton leave. He stayed behind to consider what Brandy had said. On the surface, she hadn’t said a lot, but Jesse knew by instinct alone she had given him his first real opening.

  Seventeen

  Jesse Stone had been to funerals, burials, and memorials of every description, but he had never hardened to them. Even at the funerals of vicious gangbangers, he had an open heart for their families. Regardless, he had to remain stoic to do his job. More often than not, he would hang back, off to one side or another, far away from the altar or the podium. He was there to observe, to see if anyone in attendance showed his hand. At Heather’s funeral, he wasn’t looking for suspects. This still wasn’t a murder case and it probably wasn’t ever going to be one, though he was keeping an eye out for Chris Grimm.

  The service was held at the same church Suit and Elena had been married in, and Ross Weber, the man who’d married them, conducted the service. It was strange, Jesse thought, that grief and sorrow almost had a particular smell. The sweet notes in the air came from the huge number of floral arrangements arrayed on either side of the cherrywood coffin. There were roses—red, pink, yellow, and white—hundreds of them. There was the herbal and choking alcohol infusion from perfumes and colognes. It took the young years to figure out the right amount of the stuff to wear. The old had lost their senses of smell and wore too much to cover the odor of creeping decay. And there was the stink of stress sweat. None of the other odors could ever quite take the edge off that smell.

  The church was full. Heather had been an only child, but both sets of grandparents were in attendance. There were lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends. Blank-faced, all. Jesse recognized many of the teachers he’d spoken with and some that he had not. Principal Wester and Freda were there, as were Maryglenn and Brandy Lawton. Three kids in the third pew from the front—two girls and a boy—were distraught, sobbing, rocking, clutching and clinging to one another. Jesse guessed those were Heather’s closest friends: Megan, Darby, and Rich. He would catch them later, at the cemetery. That’s when they would be most vulnerable to his questions.

  There was no sign of Chris G. inside the church, and Jesse hadn’t seen him outside, either. Just in case, he’d stationed Suit in plainclothes in his pickup truck out front. Jesse had already stopped by the Grimms’ house. No one was home. At least, no one had answered the door. He’d also left a message on the phone machine. He hoped he wasn’t chasing his own tail around with this kid. His cop instincts were usually spot-on, but he wasn’t infallible. Jesse knew that believing you were was the biggest mistake of all.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WERE ABOUT half as many people and twice as many tears at the graveside. When that casket gets lowered into the dirt, there’s no more pretending that it just isn’t real or that it’s all some kind of crazy, sick joke. It’s as real as it’s ever going to get. One of Heather’s grandmothers fainted, and Selectman Mackey fell to his knees as the first shovel of dirt rang against the cherrywood.

  Jesse stayed far back, waiting for the crowd to break up. He kept a careful watch on Megan, Darby, and Rich as they walked away from their friend’s grave. As they approached a beat-up Jeep Cherokee, Jesse came over to them.

  “I’m Jesse Stone, and I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

  They looked at him with a mixture of hurt and confusion.

  “You’re the police chief, right?” Rich said, pointing at Jesse’s PPD baseball cap.

  He was a thin, handsome kid with fine, delicate features.

  “Uh-huh. And you’re Rich. Which one of you girls is Megan?”

  A very slight girl with long brown hair and a face reminiscent of Bette Davis said, “I’m Megan.”

  Jesse turned to the other girl. “That would make you Darby.”

  Darby was a striking girl, about five-six, with long red hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a nose ring.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I’m Darby.”

  Jesse didn’t like doing it, but he didn’t waste time on preliminaries or small talk. They were off balance and raw with emotion. That’s what he needed.

  “How long had Heather been using?”

  They didn’t answer. He didn’t expect them to.

  “She’s dead,” he said, pointing behind them at Heather’s grave. “I don’t want to hurt her reputation and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I also don’t want to be at another funeral.”

  “She wasn’t using,” Rich said.

  “C’mon, kid. She didn’t die of old age.”

  Rich shook his head furiously. “That’s not what I meant. It wasn’t that she did it for fun. She hated it, but—”

  Megan, grabbed Rich’s arm. “Shut up, Richie.”

  “No. I have to say this. She would want us to.”

  Darby said, “She would, Meg.”

  Jesse stood there, quiet, letting the friends work it out. Pressure from him would’ve ruined it.

  “It was Oxy,” Rich said. “She never told us too much about it, because she didn’t want us to get in trouble.”

  Jesse asked, “Was this after she hurt herself at the Holiday Show?”

  They all nodded.

  Darby spoke up. “We didn’t really notice until the end of school last year. She was acting a little weird and she was borrowing money all the time. She never used to need to borrow money.”

  Tears rolled down Rich’s cheeks.

  “What is it?” Jesse wanted to know.

  “She stole things from me. My iPad, some jewelry . . . nothing important. I just told my folks I lost stuff.”

  That was when Meg and Darby admitted that Heather had stolen from them as well. There was sad laughter among the tears as they acknowledged what they had kept secret from one another. They had loved Heather so deeply that they let her steal from them.

  “I tried to get her to go for help,” Darby said. “The three of us tried doing one of those stupid intervention things, but she just got mad at us.”

  Jesse asked a few more questions, but it was clear Heather had worked hard to insulate herself and to keep her friends away from the other life she lived. But when they were ready to leave, Jesse mentioned Chris G.

  “Loser,” Megan said.
/>   “A cute loser.” Darby was less harsh.

  Jesse could see that Rich wanted to say something, but not in front of the girls. Jesse gave him a nod—later—when the girls were distracted. Rich got behind the wheel of the Jeep and they were gone. As Jesse turned back to his Explorer, he caught a glimpse of Chris G. running among the tombstones. Jesse took off after him.

  The kid was quick and the grass was slick from a shower that had passed an hour or so before Heather’s burial. Jesse would make up some ground and then fall behind as the kid zigged, then zagged, among headstones, stone benches, and fences. As he chased the kid, Jesse shouted to him that he only wanted to talk. But Chris wasn’t having it. Jesse couldn’t blame the kid, especially if he had stuff to hide. After about a hundred yards, Jesse gave up, bending over at the waist, trying to catch his breath. When he stood straight, Chris G. was gone.

  Eighteen

  Jesse got Molly on the phone, told her about his suspicions, and gave her Chris Grimm’s address.

  “Send somebody to sit on the house.”

  “For how long, Jesse?”

  “At least until morning.”

  “I’ll send Gabe. What if Grimm shows?”

  “There are no grounds for arrest. Officially, there’s no crime, so tell Gabe not to do anything but call me directly. I just want to talk to the kid. He’s already spooked.”

  “Why’s he spooked?”

  “Because I just chased him through the cemetery.”

  “If it was anyone else, I’d think you were trying to be funny.”

  “Nice,” Jesse said.

  Molly shifted focus. “How was it today?”

  “About how you would expect.”

  “Bad?”

  “Never good, putting a kid in the ground.”

  Molly choked up. “No, I guess not. I’ve got to go, Jesse.”

  * * *

  —

  HE THOUGHT ABOUT HEADING home but realized that would be the first place the cops would go looking for him. After Chief Stone had chased him through the graveyard, he no longer doubted that the cops were on to him. Now calling Arakel was a matter of survival. He had to get out of Paradise and find a place to lie low until this thing with Heather blew over. His mom didn’t really give a shit about him anyway, and his stepdad would probably crack open a bottle of champagne at the idea of him splitting for good. He headed for Kennedy Park to make the call.