The Bitterest Pill

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “No official ID yet,” he’d said. “But you can alert everyone to stop looking and asking. Until we notify the mother, nobody says a word.”

  “I got it, Jesse. Remember you told me to check for cases like Heather’s?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, I’ve come across several in and around Boston. I made a few calls and found two doctors whose names came up more times than made me comfortable.”

  “Good work, Molly. I’ll have a look when I get back to the station.”

  Jesse decided to finally Google Swingline Sue’s while he killed time waiting for Lundquist to show. He typed it into his phone, hit enter, and it popped right up. The first entry didn’t show anything unusual. It was a bar restaurant in Tipton, a few towns north of Paradise. It had a pretty run-of-the-mill menu: wings, salads, burgers, cheesecake. The place featured live music, karaoke, dancing, and cabaret. Jesse didn’t get the point until the next entry.

  Best LGBT Bar North of Boston

  https://Swinglinesues.com/undergoundreviews321

  Every night is ladies’ night at this Tipton, Massachusetts, club. The 1940s-inspired décor is to die for and the place rocks. Rosie the Riveter, hang on to your hard hat. Whether it’s karaoke, disco with tunes spun by DJ Femmebot, or a campy cabaret experience you’re looking for, this is the venue. It’s mostly a girls’-night-out kind of place, but all are welcome. Cover charge after 11:00.

  Although Jesse wasn’t getting the full picture of what the issue was between Maryglenn and Daisy, he had some idea of where whatever it was between them had its roots. But before he could get too invested in figuring it out, Lundquist rapped his knuckles against the glass of the driver’s-side window. Jesse rolled the window down.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Lundquist said.

  “Let’s.”

  * * *

  —

  IT HAD BEEN JESSE’S EXPERIENCE that people understood what was going on even before a single syllable was uttered. When someone is missing and the police come to your door, there are a limited number of reasons for their presence. Although Jesse could not step outside himself to see the looks on his face and on Lundquist’s, he knew what their expressions must’ve telegraphed to Kathy Walters. And he was right.

  While she didn’t collapse to the front hallway floor in hysterics, she took one look at Lundquist and Jesse and fell against the wall.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she said, hoping to be contradicted.

  No one delivered on her hope.

  “Kathy, this is Captain Brian Lundquist of the state police,” Jesse said. “It’s his case now.”

  “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs. Walters, but we believe your son has been murdered.”

  Kathy Walters gasped and fell to her knees. There were no tears, not yet. Jesse got on his knees beside her. “Captain Lundquist has some important things to say to you. Try to listen.”

  “I know you have questions, Mrs. Walters, but I won’t be able to answer them until the body has been officially identified. Are you up to it, or is there someone else, your husband—”

  She glared at Lundquist. “Never!”

  Jesse put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay, but I have to warn you, he’s in rough shape. Do you have anyone else?”

  She was indignant. “I wasn’t there for him much when he was alive. I’m not going to leave this to nobody else now.”

  Jesse helped stand her up. “Can I call anyone for you? Someone to be here for you when you get back?”

  She shook her head.

  Jesse handed her his card. “Captain Lundquist will take you. He’ll explain everything on the way. If you need anything from me, all of my numbers are there.”

  She took the card, robotically, as if her arm was not a part of her. “Give me a minute, Captain.”

  Kathy Walters zombie-walked down the hall and up the stairs.

  Lundquist stared at Jesse and said, “Never gets easier, does it, Jesse?”

  Jesse nodded. “Hasn’t yet. Doubt it ever will.”

  Fifty-four

  At the stationhouse, Jesse was pounding the ball really hard into his new mitt. Molly could distinguish between his doing it out of habit or his doing it as meditation. When it was loud enough for her to hear through his office door and over any ambient noise in the station, it was meditation. Some men prayed the rosary, some chanted. Jesse pounded the ball. And as was his habit, he would do it while fixing his gaze on Stiles Island. It cleared his mind of clutter and helped him think straight. This routine used to be even more crucial to him when there was an office bottle in his desk drawer and his mind was clouded by alcohol.

  Molly stuck her head into the office. “Jesse, sorry, but Lundquist’s on line one.”

  He didn’t turn to face her. “Thanks.”

  Jesse put the ball in the glove’s pocket and placed them both on his desk. He gave an unhappy look at the glove. He wondered if he would ever get used to it.

  “Brian,” Jesse said, picking up.

  “It’s him, Chris Grimm. The mother positively IDed him.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “About how you would expect. The kid was tough to look at with the dirt washed off him. The damage was more obvious. The mother went to pieces.”

  “She home?”

  “She is. You should maybe have your sector car stop by, maybe keep an eye on her.”

  “Good idea. Anything else?” Jesse asked.

  “One thing. Might mean something. Might not. We found a McDonald’s burger wrapper stuffed into one of his jean pockets.”

  “Receipt?”

  Lundquist said, “No such luck. No receipt.”

  “It’s a place to start, anyway. I know it’s your case, but I’ll have my cops check with the local McDonald’s to see if we can view their in-house security footage.”

  “I appreciate the help, Jesse. We’ll do the same with every McDonald’s between your town limits and Helton. They fed the kid, then tortured him to death. Real sports.”

  “I can see it. The kid’s running scared and his handler wants to keep him calm so they can get him out of town to a place they can deal with him.”

  “They dealt with him, all right.” The building anger was evident in Lundquist’s voice. “When I was there with the mother, the ME pulled me off to one side. Said the kid was even worse off than he imagined. They did everything except what you had asked him about. This was just from visual inspection after getting the kid’s clothes off and washing him up. I know the kid was a dealer, but these guys are some coldhearted motherfu—bastards, Jesse. I’m going to enjoy putting them away.”

  “The drug case is still mine, so I better get over to the high school to let the principal know.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” Lundquist rang off.

  * * *

  —

  ON HIS WAY out of the station, Jesse stopped to talk to Molly.

  “The body was positively IDed. Who’s in the Walterses’ patrol sector?”

  “Robbie.”

  “Have him stop over there to check on them, to see if we can help with the arrangements. Also, have someone go over to the McDonald’s and see if we can’t get parking-lot and in-store footage for the day of Heather Mackey’s funeral. If we get it, check for that white van in the parking lot and drive-thru. In the store, look for the kid. You don’t have to waste time going through the whole day. Only from—”

  She interrupted him. “The time stamp on the footage from Kennedy Park forward. You know, I’ve done this once or twice before, Sherlock.”

  “Sorry. So what about these doctors?”

  Molly shoved a pile of papers across the desk. She pointed at names she had in red in several places.

  “These two doctors’ names just kept coming up: Rajiv Laghari and Myron Wexler. Bo
th of them have offices in Roxbury. Not many of the families of the deceased wanted to talk, but a few did. No one had very nice things to say. As far as I could tell from the people at the medical board, there are current ongoing state medical board investigations of both men, but they don’t exactly give out information over the phone and they won’t comment directly on ongoing investigations.”

  “I’ll probably head down there tomorrow.”

  “You going to visit your buddy Vinnie Morris while you’re in town?” Molly asked, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

  Jesse didn’t answer. He knew Molly disapproved of his relationship with the likes of Morris and the late Gino Fish. Jesse thought Molly was a great cop, believed she would have been a star detective in a big-city department if she had chosen that route. But because her beat was Paradise, she never understood how big-city policing often forced a good cop to associate with people on the other side of the law. Jesse knew how it must have looked to Molly. He could only imagine her reaction if she knew the whole truth about what had actually happened between Morris and him in the wake of Diana’s murder.

  “I’m going over to the high school to let Virginia Wester know what’s going on. Heather Mackey’s death was an accident, but not Chris Grimm’s.”

  Molly noted he had changed subjects, but didn’t push.

  “One more thing, Molly. I may need you for a little overtime tonight. It can be after dinner. Are you up for it?”

  “What do you need?”

  “Steve Parkinson, Petra North, Sara York, Lidell Thomas, Carl Bedell, and Bob Mark.”

  Molly’s expression wasn’t a happy one. “We already talked about them.”

  “Time to stop talking about them and time to talk to them. Now it’s murder.”

  “What do you want?”

  “First, everything by the book. Wear civilian clothes, but let them know it’s an official visit. Talk to the kids only in the presence of a parent. Offer the parents the opportunity to call a lawyer, but make it clear that you are there only to gather information and that it will be a casual talk. But if they choose to bring in a lawyer, make certain they understand the interview will be held in the station by me and it will be audio- and videotaped.”

  “What do you want me to ask?”

  “Come on, Sherlock, you’ve done this once or twice. You know what to do.”

  Molly thought about arguing, but Jesse was right. She knew exactly what to do.

  Fifty-five

  The kids were loading onto the buses in front of the school as Jesse drove up. This visit wasn’t meant as showtime for the students, so he parked around the back of the school in the teachers’ lot and went in through the side entrance. On the way up to Principal Wester’s office, he stopped at the art room. He needed to straighten things out with Maryglenn if they were going to salvage whatever it was they had.

  Jesse looked through the door glass. Her back was to him. She seemed to be intently studying an array of line drawings taped to the wall. They were all of the same model—a boy dressed in his football team jacket, a pen or pencil dangling out of his mouth, a human skull in his right hand. Some of them were pretty good, but Jesse knew very little about art. He knocked and entered.

  Maryglenn smiled in spite of herself.

  “Some of them have talent,” she said.

  “Talent only gets you so far. Lots of people have lots of talent.”

  “Jesse Stone, philosopher.”

  “No, Jesse Stone, former professional baseball player. Everyone I played with was the most talented baseball player in his town. Every one of them had been all-city, all-county, all-state. Not everyone makes it. Why is the kid holding a skull?”

  “It’s from Shakespeare, a scene from Hamlet. Do you know it?”

  “To be or not to be, but that’s about it. I know that it’s about a kid who can’t make up his mind.”

  “Most of the kids are reading that play in their English classes, and Hamlet would have been around their ages. Maybe a little bit older. It’s a play about death, love, treachery, madness, and revenge. A lot about death. Teenagers are kind of obsessed with those things. What are you doing here, Jesse?”

  “What I’m doing in your classroom is to ask you to dinner after my meeting tonight. I’d like to clear some things up.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “What I’m doing in the building is delivering bad news to Principal Wester. Chris Grimm has been murdered.”

  Maryglenn bent over, grabbing her midsection as if she’d been kicked in the stomach.

  “I can’t give you any details,” he said, “but it will be out soon enough. I better go give her the news.”

  Freda was away from her desk, so Jesse walked to Virginia Wester’s door and knocked.

  “Damn it, Freda, how many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to knock when I’m in here alone?” Wester shouted.

  Jesse opened the door, but Wester was looking down at papers on her desk.

  “It’s me, Virginia, not Freda.”

  Wester’s face went from annoyed to worried.

  “Jesse, I’m sorry.”

  “No need.”

  “What is it?”

  He gave her the details, the few that he had, about Chris Grimm’s murder.

  “Oh my God!”

  “It was pretty brutal, Virginia. I wanted to tell you myself so that you can inform the faculty and students. Have counselors here if you think you need them.”

  “Thank you, Jesse. What’s going on? I know Paradise has had its share of crime. In this world, what place doesn’t? But this, to torture a boy to death, even if he was a drug dealer . . . I can’t fathom it.”

  Jesse said, “Drugs equals money, lots of it. And money can make people justify anything. It starts with legal prescriptions and ends with a dead girl and a murdered boy.” He repeated the line about the war on drugs he’d read in a novel.

  “Has the war on drugs really been going on for fifty years?” It was a rhetorical question. When Wester’s eyes refocused on Jesse, she said, “I can see by your expression you have more to say.”

  “I have a confidential informant that claims one of your teachers is involved.”

  “Involved? Involved in what, the drugs?”

  Jesse nodded. “And, by extension, the murder.”

  She pounded her fist on the desk. “Who? Who is it? I want to know.”

  “I don’t know, Virginia. If I knew, they’d be in handcuffs. But I’ll be back over the next several days to interview them. We can do this the hard way or the—”

  “No, Jesse. No court orders. You’ll have my full cooperation, the school board be damned. If they want my hide, they can have it. This has to stop. Now.”

  Jesse shook her hand. “Thank you.”

  He hadn’t told her exactly what Rich Amitrano had said about the teacher being a woman. For one thing, he wasn’t sure there wasn’t more than one teacher involved. For another, it was always good for the police to have a piece of information that the public wasn’t privy to.

  Fifty-six

  Molly had gone to Sara York’s house first to get what she knew would be an incredibly uncomfortable situation out of the way. The Yorks lived around the corner from the Cranes. Molly’s older girls had taken turns babysitting for Sara and her little brother and, as she had told Jesse, Sara played on the field hockey team with Molly’s two youngest girls.

  “Molly!” Toni, Sara’s mom, said when she opened the door. When she saw Molly’s expression, the enthusiasm drained out of her. “Come in. We’ve been expecting you or Jesse to knock since the day Heather died.”

  As Toni made Molly coffee, she explained that Frank had taken Frank Jr. to basketball practice.

  Molly asked, “Sara?”

  “At counseling.”

  After the coffee was served, they sat
across the kitchen table from each other. Molly had learned about the power of silence from Jesse and used it. The story Toni eventually told Molly was eerily similar to what Patti Mackey and Moss Carpenter had told Jesse. There had been an injury, doctor visits, continued pain, a new prescription, and addiction. The difference was that Toni, an occupational therapist, wasn’t going to play along or enable her daughter.

  “I did my internship on a burn unit, Molly,” Toni said. “As an OT on that unit, I witnessed what pain was like. Burns do terrible damage to more than the skin. They ruin muscles, ligaments, tendons. To get people to be able to grasp and hold things in their hands again or to range their limbs, I had to put them through hell. So when I found pills in Sara’s room, I didn’t believe her lies and we got her help. Remember that soccer camp we told you about last summer? There was no soccer camp.”

  Molly reached across the table and held Toni’s hand.

  “Sara now goes to group meetings twice a week and for private counseling,” Toni said. “We get her tested every month. Sara says she did some things she’s pretty ashamed of to get those pills.” Silent tears poured out of her eyes as she spoke.

  “Did any of those things involve Chris Grimm?”

  Toni York’s eyes narrowed with anger. “That son of a bitch. He made Sara—”

  Molly squeezed Toni’s hand, hard. “He’s dead.”

  “Good.”

  “He was tortured to death and shot, left in a shallow grave outside Helton.”

  Toni paled but said, “You want me to feel sorry for him?”

  “No. That’s not why I’m here. I came to talk to Sara to see if she knew of anyone other than Chris involved in selling drugs at school. We’re not looking to get the kids doing drugs in trouble. That never does any good. We want to get them help and we want the dealing to stop.”

  “As far as I know, it was only Chris Grimm, but I’ll have Sara call you when she gets back. I promise.”