Robert B. Parker's the Bitterest Pill

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  He remembered that when he came to her house that day, she was dressed in a black satin blouse and stilettos, nothing else. Remembered the feel of the satin. She didn’t waste time getting him upstairs and into her room. And he was grateful that when she moaned she didn’t make it feel like a transaction. Heather hadn’t asked for anything until he was sore and coming out of her shower, mopping his hair with a bath towel. The truth was, he had hated washing the scent of her off him. She was everything he had ever fantasized about her and more. Still, he knew what was coming. He couldn’t bear to hear her ask. Instead, he placed a small vial of pills on her nightstand. When she started to speak, he kissed her.

  “Shhh,” he said, when she tried to speak again. “But I do need the money.”

  That wasn’t a problem.

  As he left, she grabbed his hand. “I wanted to be with you,” she said. “This wasn’t about . . . you know. At least not all of it. We can do it again. I loved the way you tasted and how you felt inside me.”

  He had never gone back to her bedroom. If she hadn’t said that last thing, he might have. But once she said it, there was no pretending. He’d felt dirty about it ever since.

  When the phone rang in his pocket, he realized he was crying and that he would never see her again. He could never let her pretend to like him. He picked up.

  “Kid, are you all right? What is wrong?”

  “I’m good. I just got a cold.”

  “Why do you call?”

  “One of my, um, clients . . . she died last night.”

  There was a long, loud silence on the line. Then, “Who?”

  “A girl from my school.”

  “What were you giving to her?”

  “Talcum powder.”

  “The cheap powder or the expensive?” Arakel asked.

  “The cheap shit.” He lied but didn’t know what else to say. The truth was Heather had asked for the strongest stuff he had. She’d promised to be careful and to dose it out wisely. He was stupid to do as she asked, but when it came to Heather, he could never think straight. Now she was dead. He’d figure something out to cover his ass. Maybe he’d blame it on wrong packaging or say she stole the stronger stuff out of his stash. For now, he was just buying time.

  “Okay, kid. You must remember, the good talcum is only for the very wet. Stay on low profile for a few days. Give people only what is necessary for staying dry. No more than that.”

  “I understand.”

  “Today, get a new phone.”

  The line went dead and he went back to crying.

  Nine

  By one that afternoon, Jesse had spoken to all the teachers on the list except for Heather’s cheerleading coach, Brandy Lawton. He figured he would catch up with her eventually or just put in a call to her. Some of the teachers he did speak to said they had noticed the same things about Heather Mackey that Maryglenn had alluded to, that she had seemed withdrawn and distracted. But others hadn’t noticed any change at all. Oh, not at all, Chief. Heather was still the enthusiastic, intelligent young woman I have always known her to be. They were all very troubled by her death, some so much that they broke down during the conversations. And they all mentioned Heather’s circle of friends: Megan, Darby, and Richie.

  As he rode back to the station, the ringing of his phone interrupted the Terry Jester song coming out of his speakers.

  “Jesse?”

  “Who else you think is answering the phone in my car, Molly?”

  “Jesse, I’m curious. Do you have any of the bats from when you played ball?”

  “I do. Why?”

  “I’d like to borrow one to smack you over the head.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “The ME called. He’s released the body to the family. The tox screen isn’t back, but the state crime lab called him. There was enough of a sample in the hypo to test. COD is cardiac arrest due to an overdose of—”

  “Heroin and fentanyl,” he said.

  “Why do I bother?”

  “Because you love me.”

  She laughed. “No, that isn’t it.”

  “Because if something happens to me, you get to be chief again.”

  “Bingo.”

  “You might want to remember that the next time you’re tempted to smack me over the head with a Louisville Slugger.”

  “Point taken. So, Jesse, how did you know about—”

  “ODs like Heather’s are rampant. The stats are scary bad, Crane.”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  “Now they’re not just stats anymore. Heather was one of ours.”

  Molly tried to talk, but Jesse could tell she was choked up. There’d been a lot of that today, and there promised to be more of it in the days to come.

  “Fentanyl is fifty to a hundred times more powerful than heroin,” Jesse said, giving Molly time to compose herself. “It kills even longtime addicts. Someone like Heather, a new user . . . She had no chance. Any word on the funeral arrangements?”

  “That was the other thing I was calling about,” Molly said, her voice less shaky. “Selectman Mackey’s sister called and said since the body has been released, the viewing would be tomorrow night. Are you going?”

  “We are, if your husband can spare you.”

  “He can spare me. What will I be there for?” Molly asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.

  “People are comfortable around you, Molly. You’re a cop, but you’re also part of the fabric of Paradise.”

  “So are you, Jesse. You even said it before. Heather was one of ours.”

  “That’s how I feel, but it’s not how I’m always perceived.”

  Molly couldn’t argue with that. Small-town people are slow to trust outsiders, and she guessed that no matter how long Jesse had been police chief, no matter how many times he had proved himself and his loyalty, some folks would always see him as an outsider. And with all the downstaters moving in, the locals weren’t exactly in an accepting frame of mind.

  “I hope this is an isolated incident, Jesse.”

  “C’mon, Molly, you’re too good a cop for hoping. You know how this works.”

  “I guess I hope it’s not another high school kid.”

  “If it means anything, I hope so, too. But where did hoping ever get us?”

  “You think we’ve got a drug problem in town?”

  “Every town has a drug problem. What I don’t want is a drug network operating in Paradise.”

  “A drug operation in Paradise?” Molly was skeptical.

  “Heather got the hit somewhere.”

  “But we’re such a small town. What have we got to offer to a drug operation?”

  “Small towns have small police forces, and we’ve got proximity to Boston.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m going to grab some lunch.”

  “At Daisy’s?”

  “Uh-huh. You want something?”

  “How are things with you and Cole?”

  “We’ve kind of settled into . . . I’m not sure. A kind of truce, I think. When I was in the hospital after the old meetinghouse explosion, I thought we had something. But he’s still angry at me, even though he knows the truth of what happened between me and his mom.”

  “Then the problem is his, Jesse, not yours. Tough thing for a parent to not feel responsible for everything and every feeling your children have.”

  “Yeah. When did you get past it?”

  “Never. I don’t think good parents ever do.”

  “So you don’t have all the answers, Molly?”

  “Nope. I just have more of them than you do.”

  Ten

  Daisy’s was busy. That was kind of like saying the sky was blue. Paradise was a great town, but it wasn’t blessed with myriad restaurant
choices. The Gray Gull was okay, but the food was never more than passable. The food at the Lobster Claw was better, though still not Michelin-star material. Both the Gull and the Claw owed the majority of their business to well-run bars, their waterside locations, and a lack of serious competition. There were a few pubs in town, mostly in the Swap, where you could get a good burger, but if you wanted a good breakfast and a great lunch special, you had to go to Daisy’s.

  Since Cole had arrived in town and gotten a job at Daisy’s, the frequency of Jesse’s visits had increased from once or twice a week to three or four times a week. He sometimes still couldn’t believe he had a son, and he so badly wanted it to work out between them that he had made a lot of missteps. Nothing he did worked. He paid either too much attention or not enough. Like he’d explained to Molly, he thought they’d turned a corner when they finally spoke about how Jesse had been involved with Cole’s mother, but that understanding had seemed to evaporate. Some progress had been made, just not enough. The thing of it was, Cole’s existence shook Jesse’s famous self-containment to its core, even more so than marrying Jenn or being with Diana ever had.

  Daisy smirked at Jesse. She’d noticed his seemingly unquenchable hunger for her food.

  “You keep showing up here like this, Jesse Stone, and people will say we’re in love,” she said, pouring him some coffee.

  He smiled. “Would that be so bad?”

  “I’m not your type. Besides, they’ll take my lesbian membership card away.”

  “We can’t have that. Let the kid wait on me.”

  She raised her eyebrow at that. “I would, but he’s not here. Took today off. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Tell me? Tell me what?”

  Daisy cleared her throat, made some fidgety movements, and excused herself. “I’ll be back in a minute to get your order.”

  That’s odd, Jesse thought. Daisy was one of the toughest, most forthright, and least tactful people he’d ever known. It wasn’t like her to be so uncomfortable around him or to dance around a subject, any subject. He shrugged. He was hungry and already had enough on his mind, if not on his lunch plate.

  Studying the menu, Jesse became aware of someone standing near his booth, and he began to recite his order. “I’ll have a Cobb salad, no bleu cheese.” He held the menu up.

  But when the menu wasn’t snatched out of his hand, he raised his head and saw it wasn’t Daisy standing there. It was Maryglenn McCombs. He handed her his menu.

  “Twice in one day,” she said. “May I sit?”

  He smiled again, a different smile than the one he’d flashed at Daisy. “Might as well. You’ve already got a menu.”

  She sat across from him. “I suppose I can buy you that meal now.”

  “I love this place, but you’ll have to do better than a Cobb salad at Daisy’s.”

  She smiled. It was a shy, crooked smile. “I don’t eat here very often. What’s good?”

  “Everything.”

  Maryglenn looked around her, worried she might be overheard. “Daisy, the owner, she’s kind of intense.”

  “She sure can be. That’s one way to put it.”

  “Last week when I came in, there was a good-looking young waiter here. Handsome, but sullen.”

  Jesse laughed. “My son, Cole.”

  “You have a son? But I thought—”

  “I’m not married and I didn’t know about Cole until a few months ago. Long story.”

  “Maybe you’ll tell it to me over that dinner.”

  “And what’s your story?”

  Maryglenn’s demeanor changed, the shy smile disappearing from her face as if a mask had been yanked off it. What was beneath the mask was unreadable to Jesse.

  “I’m sorry,” Jesse said. “Did I say something wrong?”

  She deflected. “No, no. I’m just really hungry. Let’s order.” She looked at her cell phone. “I’ve got to get back to school.”

  Daisy came to get Jesse’s order and twisted up her face at the sight of Maryglenn sitting across from him. Her expression was equally unreadable.

  Maryglenn seemed not to notice, keeping her eyes on the menu. “I’ll have the yogurt-and-granola fruit plate. And I’ll have a Diet Coke with lemon.” She handed the menu to Jesse.

  “I’ll have the Cobb salad, no bleu cheese, and coffee.”

  He gave the menu to Daisy and waited for her to give him grief about something or other, but all she did was walk away.

  “I don’t know what’s up with her,” Jesse said.

  Maryglenn ignored that. “Any progress on Heather?”

  “I can’t really talk about current investigations. Sorry.”

  “I understand.”

  Jesse leaned forward. “If you had a kid in class you thought was in some kind of trouble, what would you do?”

  She thought about it before answering. “Depends. I think I would probably speak to the student first. I’d ask what was going on, if there was something they wanted to talk about. We owe the kids at least that much. Then I might speak to the parents. But if it was something I thought was serious, I would definitely be obliged to tell Principal Wester and maybe Jane Phelan, the school psychologist.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Still not going to share?”

  “Not yet.”

  She smiled. “‘Yet.’ You mean there’s hope.”

  He smiled back but didn’t say anything.

  Eleven

  The next day, Arakel waited until Mehdi came into the warehouse in the early afternoon to tell him about the girl’s death. His first instinct had been to call on a secure phone, but there was nothing to be done yet and he had learned from experience that it was always better to tell Mehdi bad news in person. From the outside looking in, they were a strange pairing—an Armenian and an Iranian, a Christian and a Muslim. Still, their boss, a Bulgarian, had somehow known they would work well together. “Money,” Nikola liked to say, “is making for people to coming together, not silly men who make bullshit lies in some stupid skyscraper in New York City. Money is making the UN a joke.”

  Arakel could not argue with his logic. He didn’t know all the details of the supply chain, but he knew that people who would normally be blowing themselves up or shooting rockets or firing artillery at one another were all part of the syndicate, and that their little branch in the Boston area was relatively small and unimportant. Unimportant to everyone but Nikola, Mehdi, and himself. This was their market to grow. There was no other option. In this business, one did not file for Chapter Eleven if things went badly or Chapter Seven when things went completely belly-up. There was no protection from the people who carried your note in the drug trade, and certainly no help from the government. Arakel was all too well aware of how quickly a business could go under, and it had left a bitter-almond taste in his mouth. He and his brothers had owned a fine Oriental rug shop. The competition from cheap, machine-made rugs had squeezed them out. Sure, many people still had an eye for fine rugs, but not enough to keep them afloat.

  For the moment, though, the rug shop was the last thing on his mind. No, he was worried about what Mehdi would want to do about the dead girl and the kid. Mehdi was a harder, tougher man than Arakel. He admired him for that and feared him for it, too. Arakel’s wait was at an end when he heard the squeak and squeals from the old motor that raised and lowered the corrugated-steel bay door. Arakel turned and faced out the warehouse office window, but because of the lighting and the angle of the sun, Mehdi was in silhouette. It made him look more sinister than he was.

  “Hello,” Mehdi said, a smile on his face. “Things are good?” But he saw Arakel’s face and knew the answer. His smile vanished and that hardness emerged from beneath it. “What is it?”

  “We have a problem in Paradise,” Arakel answered, trying and failing to keep his voice firm and steady.

  “
It would be too much to hope you are somehow being ironic.”

  “No, I am not being ironic.”

  “Do not make me guess at it, my friend.”

  But they weren’t friends, not really. In fact, it was Mehdi’s business that had hurried along the failure of Arakel’s family’s shop. They were more allies than friends, if that. Arakel knew that Mehdi had brought him into the business for his people skills. Certainly not for his business acumen or his strategic thinking. He was all right with that. He liked people and was good with them. They trusted him and he had the knack for putting them at ease. All businesses, even the drug trade, needed people like him.

  Arakel said, “The kid, I think he screwed up and gave a fentanyl load to a teenage girl.”

  “Dead?” He said it as if he was asking about a bug.

  Arakel nodded. “Do you want to talk with the kid?”

  Mehdi rubbed his cheeks as he thought. “Not yet. It would be a mistake to cause more trouble now. Make sure the kid has enough to maintain his clientele, but tell him not to bring in any new customers, not to either end of the business.”

  “I will make it so.”

  “Yes, you do that, my friend.”

  “I will call.”

  Mehdi turned, walked several steps away toward his office, turned back. “Remember, Arakel, it was you who brought this kid in. He is your responsibility.”

  “I am aware.”

  “Good. It is a good thing you are aware.”

  Mehdi looked long and hard at Arakel before heading into his office. It was not lost on Arakel that Mehdi was not smiling when he’d reminded him of his responsibilities.

  Twelve

  Jesse and Molly came in separate cars. They made sure not to get there too early, or as early as they might have if Heather’s death were a homicide. Instead, they waited until the parking lot at the funeral home was nearly half full. Just inside the viewing room door, they were greeted by Selectman Tom Pluck, a big, burly guy from the Swap. He clapped Jesse on the back, shook Molly’s hand, and, on behalf of the Mackeys, thanked them for being there. Another selectman, R. Jean Gray, nodded hello, the corner of his lips bending up in what passed for a smile. Unlike Tom Pluck, Gray lived on the Bluffs and was descended from one of the founders of Paradise. In his fifties, tall and lean, Gray was all old-school, with the patrician bearing that came with an Exeter, Dartmouth, and Wharton education. Not much ever seemed to disturb Selectman Gray, but he was clearly knocked off his pins by Heather’s death. With a flick of his long right index finger, he indicated that he wanted a private word with Jesse. They strode into a dimly lit and empty viewing room.