Death In Paradise js-3

by Robert B. Parker

  “There’s a dog in cell number one,” Simpson said when he came in.

  “Got him for soliciting,” Jesse said.

  Simpson hesitated. Jesse said everything in the same sort of serious way, and Simpson was often uncertain if Jesse was kidding. But you couldn’t arrest a dog. He laughed.

  “He got a lawyer?” Simpson said.

  The dog howled.

  “I think he’ll cop a plea,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah,” Simpson said. “He’s already starting to sing.”

  “You want to make some overtime?” Jesse said.

  “Sure.”

  “Go out to the lake where we found the girl, and walk the perimeter. Take Eddie Cox with you. See what you can find.”

  “We looking for anything special?”

  “A clue would be good.”

  “Such as?”

  “Anything that looks like a clue,” Jesse said. “Anything that doesn’t belong. That’s out of place. That might have once belonged to a teenaged girl. Or a murderer. Or Lillian Gish, for that matter. Whatever you see.”

  “Who’s Lillian Whatsis?”

  “Forget Lillian,” Jesse said. “Go look.”

  “It’s a big lake,” Simpson said.

  “Take your time. When in doubt, assume it’s a clue.”

  “I’ll call Eddie,” Simpson said.

  He stood, hitched his gunbelt a little, and walked from the room. A man on a mission. When he was alone, Jesse sat for a moment listening to the dog howl. Then he got up and found a roll of crime scene tape and cut off a length and went down to the cell block. The dog stopped howling the minute he saw Jesse. His tail wagged hesitantly. Jesse opened the door and went in.

  “We can improve your accommodations,” Jesse said to the dog. “You can stay with the chief of police himself.”

  He looped the length of plastic tape around the dog’s neck and led the dog back down the corridor to his office.

  Chapter Five

  The dog was sleeping behind Jesse’s desk.

  When Jenn came into Jesse’s office at twenty minutes past five, the dog raised his head and growled at her. Jenn stopped short.

  “I know you’ve gone out with some dogs since we broke up,” Jenn said, “but right in the office?”

  “His name’s Deputy,” Jesse said.

  “His?”

  “We’re just friends,” Jesse said.

  “Well, can you leave your friend long enough to go to dinner with me?”

  “I feel like I ought to bring him,” Jesse said.

  “For God’s sake,” Jenn said. “Don’t you have a dog officer in this town?”

  “Yeah. Bob Valenti. Part-time guy.”

  “Well, call him up, have him take the dog to the kennel or the pound or whatever you call it.”

  “He howls when I leave him,” Jesse said.

  Jenn squatted in front of the dog. Given how tight Jenn wore her pants, Jesse thought it was no small thing. But she did it easily, though it made her pants pull tighter over the curve of her butt.

  “Does he bite?”

  “I don’t know,” Jesse said. “He’s only been here a couple of hours.”

  Jenn put her hand out. Women, Jesse thought, squat much more gracefully than men.

  “Clench your fist,” Jesse said. “It makes it harder for him to bite your hand.”

  “Jesus,” Jenn said and jerked her hand back.

  The dog kept his head up, looking at her. She made a fist and put it toward the dog’s nose very carefully. The dog sniffed at her fist carefully, and thumped the floor with his tail a couple of times.

  “I think he likes me,” Jenn said.

  “Probably,” Jesse said.

  “If we take him with us, won’t he howl when we leave him in the car?”

  “We could eat in the car,” Jesse said.

  Jenn stared at him.

  Finally she said, “Jesse, haven’t you killed several people?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And yet you can’t leave a stray dog to have dinner with your ex-wife who, I guess, still loves you, and whom I believe you still love, for fear that the dog will be unhappy?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “What would we eat in the car?” Jenn said.

  “Pizza?”

  “Split three ways?” Jenn said.

  “I guess.”

  “And maybe a six-pack?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  “Glad I dressed up,” Jenn said.

  Jesse stood. The dog stood as soon as Jesse did.

  “We’re glad, too,” Jesse said.

  In Jesse’s car, the dog sat in the backseat. And in the parking lot of Paradise Pizza, the dog rested his head on the back of Jenn’s seat while Jesse and Jenn ate a pizza with green peppers and mushrooms and drank beer from the can.

  “Can I give him my pizza crust?” Jenn said.

  “I think he likes those,” Jesse said.

  Jenn offered a crust to the dog. He ate it and swallowed and waited. Jesse opened a second can of beer. This is the last one. For God’s sake don’t get drunk in front of her.

  “How are you?” Jesse said.

  “I’m fine, Jesse.”

  “I watch you do the weather almost every night.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you actually know what a low-pressure system is?” Jesse said.

  Jenn smiled. She gave the dog another crust.

  “No, but I’m getting very good at pretending I’m pointing at a real weather map.”

  “Behind the scenes,” Jesse said, “show biz just isn’t pretty.”

  “No.”

  “You still dating the anchorman?”

  Jenn smiled. “No. I hate to date people cuter than I am.”

  Jesse sipped a little beer. Easy, he thought. Easy does it. He spoke as casually as he could.

  “So who you dating these days?”

  “You, for one,” Jenn said.

  “And?”

  “Others,” Jenn said.

  “Like who?”

  “Like guys,” Jenn said. “Why do you need to ask? What’s the point?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s just the kind of question that pushes me away,” Jenn said.

  He thought of saying that it was, probably, however distorted, a form of love. But he didn’t. It would only make them argue.

  “It’s the kind of possessive question that drove me away in the first place,” Jenn said.

  “When we were married it was probably more appropriate,” Jesse said.

  Jenn was silent. Then he could see a little of the tension go out of her shoulders.

  “Yes,” she said. “It probably was.”

  His beer was gone. Jesse didn’t even recall drinking it. He felt swollen with sadness and desire. He opened a third can. Jenn patted his right thigh.

  “We’re still here,” Jenn said.

  From the backseat the dog nosed the back of Jenn’s neck, looking for another crust.

  “We are,” Jesse said.

  Chapter Six

  After Jenn left, Jesse drank four scotch and sodas before bed. In the morning, at 7:15, sitting in his office, he felt a little shaky, and a little guilty. He tried coffee, but the coffee didn’t help either one. At ten past nine a woman who introduced herself as Miriam Lowell showed up wearing a lavender warm-up suit and white sneakers. She was also wearing big gold hoop earrings, and rings on four fingers, and a gold necklace with some sort of big medallion on it.

  “I believe you have my dog,” she said.

  The dog was very pleased. He had jumped up and put his forepaws against the owner’s stomach and was lapping her face. Miriam Lowell squinched up her face and took it for a little while. Then she put his collar on him and hooked his leash. The dog capered a little bit. “His name is Baron,” she said.

  “We’ve been calling him Deputy,” Jesse said.

  “Deputy?”

  “Like in Deputy Dawg?” Jesse said. />
  The woman appeared to see no logic in that.

  “He was here all the time?” she said.

  “Since yesterday,” Jesse said. “Last night he stayed with me.”

  “At your home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would think,” she said, “that the police department would have made a more successful attempt to bring him to his rightful home.”

  “He was roaming around on the pike with no license,” Jesse said. “We asked him where he lived, and he refused to answer.”

  “Well,” the woman said. “There’s no need to be snippy.”

  “Maybe a little snippy,” Jesse said.

  He bent over and the dog licked his face. Jesse patted him. The woman hesitated for a moment, then turned and marched out with her dog.

  “No trouble at all,” Jesse said in the empty room. “Glad we could help.”

  Then he smiled to himself and picked up Deputy’s water dish and emptied it in the sink. The coffee tasted bitter. He dumped that in the sink too, and mixed up some Alka-Seltzer and drank it. At least Jenn didn’t know he’d gotten drunk. With her he’d been able to stop without finishing the third beer. He always liked leaving a drink unfinished. It made him feel that he had no drinking problem.

  Jesse heard someone yelling from the holding cells. After it had gone on for a while, Jesse yelled out his office door for Molly Crane. She came into the office.

  “Unhappy prisoner?” Jesse said.

  “Name’s Bellino,” Molly said. “Perkins and DeAngelo arrested him last night up at The Sevens.”

  “Drunk and disorderly?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “He still drunk?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he’s just making a lot of noise to show how dangerous he is. You want to read the arrest report?”

  Jesse nodded. Molly went out and came back with the report. Jesse read it. The yelling from the cell block seemed to intensify.

  When he was through reading the report, Jesse tossed it on his desk, stood, took off his gun, put it in his desk drawer and locked the drawer.

  “You going to talk with him?” Molly said.

  “I am.”

  “He’s a big guy,” Molly said.

  “I hate noise,” Jesse said.

  He walked down the corridor to the holding cells, and stopped in front of the first cell. Inside the cell was a fat, strong-looking man with shoulder-length dark hair.

  “Got a hangover?” Jesse said.

  “I’m going to pull the fucking door off its fucking hinges you don’t let me out of here,” the fat man said.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Jesse unlocked the cell door and walked in and let it click shut behind him.

  “I’m going out,” Bellino said.

  “You have been arrested,” Jesse said. “You’re going to have to make a court appearance.”

  “Fuckers pepper-sprayed me,” Bellino said.

  “Meanwhile,” Jesse said. “I want you to quiet down.”

  “Fuck you,” Bellino said.

  “You want a lawyer yet?” Jesse said.

  “Fuck you,” Bellino said.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Jesse said.

  “I ought to kick your fucking ass,” Bellino said.

  “You got drunk,” Jesse said, “and made an asshole of yourself. And now you’re trying to pretend you didn’t.”

  “Guy gave me shit,” Bellino said.

  “Guy you punched out?” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. I’m supposed to take shit from some asshole don’t even live here? I’m supposed to let some smalltown jerkoff cops blindside me with pepper spray?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t take shit,” Bellino said.

  “We all take shit,” Jesse said. “And we all like to pretend we don’t.”

  “You think I’m pretending?”

  “Nobody likes to face up to being a stupid drunk,” Jesse said.

  “You calling me stupid?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “Everybody’s stupid when they drink.”

  “You little fuck,” Bellino said, and shoved Jesse.

  Jesse kneed him in the groin. As Bellino flinched, his head lowered and Jesse took a left handful of his hair and pulled Bellino forward past him and caught Bellino’s wrist with his right hand and turned Bellino’s arm up behind Bellino’s back. He ran Bellino across the small cell and banged him face first up against the cell wall and held him there. Bellino was gasping for air. Jesse held him against the wall another minute while the hot haze of his anger seeped back into him and dissipated. When Jesse let Bellino go, Bellino staggered to the bunk along the other wall of the cell and sank onto it, his breath rasping in and out.

  “I want you to be quiet,” Jesse said. “Later this morning someone will take you over to Peabody and you’ll appear before a magistrate and pay a fine and go home… quietly.”

  Bellino nodded.

  “Everybody’s a jerk sometimes,” Jesse said.

  “You hadn’t kicked me in the balls…” Bellino said.

  “But I did,” Jesse said. “And might again.”

  “Cops ain’t supposed to hit somebody they arrested.”

  Jesse smiled at him. “That’s correct,” Jesse said.

  He turned and left the cell and locked the door.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a bright summer morning. Jesse was feeling good. Every day you don’t have a hangover is a good day. He pulled the unmarked Ford off of Summer Street up onto Morton Drive. At the end of the drive, parked on a shoulder near the lake, was a Paradise cruiser. Suitcase Simpson was leaning on it with his arms folded. As Jesse approached, he held up a clear plastic evidence bag.

  “Found this about a half mile that way,” Simpson said. “Right near the water. Eddie’s still down there, but I thought you should see this.”

  Jesse put out his hand. Simpson gave him the bag. In it was a densely engraved ring with a big blue stone. There was a broken length of gold chain tangled around the ring.

  “School ring,” Jesse said.

  “That’s my guess,” Simpson said. “I didn’t want to handle it more than I had to so I dropped it right into the bag as soon as I found it.”

  “The chain with it?”

  “Looped through, just like that,” Simpson said.

  Jesse opened the evidence bag and took out the ring.

  “What about prints?” Simpson said.

  “No chance,” Jesse said. “Look at the surface.”

  “Maybe the stone, though.”

  Jesse smiled. “I won’t touch the stone.”

  Jesse looked at the ring. Engraved around the blue stone were the words SWAMPSCOTT HIGH SCHOOL, 2000. Jesse tried it on. It was too big for him.

  “Well, I guess it wasn’t hers,” Simpson said. “If it’s too big for you.”

  “That’s what the chain is for,” Jesse said. “Didn’t the girls in your high school do that? Wear the boyfriend’s ring on a chain around their neck?”

  “Sometimes,” Simpson said. “So you think it might be hers?”

  “Doesn’t do us any good to think it’s not,” Jesse said. “Show me where you found it.”

  It was hot, and still. As they walked down through tall grass and short bushes toward the edge of the lake, Jesse could smell the mud where the shore and water met. Ahead, Eddie Cox was moving along the edge of the shore, head down, looking at the ground. The back of his blue uniform shirt was dark with sweat.

  “Right over here,” Simpson said.

  Cox looked up and turned back and joined them.

  “You think it’s something, Jesse?” Cox said.

  “Maybe.”

  “We found it right here,” Simpson said. “It was snagged on this little bush.”

  Jesse squatted on his heels, looking at the bush and the ground around it.

  “When did it rain last?” Jesse said.

  “Tuesday,” Simpson said. “I reme
mber, the Sox game got washed out.”

  Jesse kept looking.

  “What are you looking for?” Cox asked.

  “She probably weighed a hundred, hundred and twenty. That’s a lot of dead weight to carry, unless you’re in pretty good shape.”

  “So you figure he dragged her?”

  “He’s probably not too calm while he’s dragging her. When the ring around her neck snagged, he just tugged her loose and kept dragging.”

  Jesse continued to sit on his heels and look around him.

  “There’s a little cul-de-sac up the hill,” Jesse said. “Off Newbury Street. DPW uses it to pile sand for the winter.”

  “Kids go in there to smoke dope,” Simpson said.

  “And make out,” Cox said.

  “Smoke and moke,” Simpson said. He reddened a little, taking pleasure in his wit.

  “The perfect combo,” Jesse said.

  He stood and began to walk up the hill toward the cul-de-sac. Cox and Simpson followed. They wanted to watch Jesse. He’d been a homicide cop. L.A., where there were murders all the time. Main Street bordered the lake at right angles to Morton Drive. By the time he reached the top of the hill he was nearly a mile from his car. He stood in the cul-de-sac and looked back down toward the place where they had found the ring. He was talking aloud as much to himself as to Simpson and Cox.

  “It’s dark, and darker in here. Guy pulls in. She’s probably dead. He’s probably got her in the trunk.”

  As he talked, Jesse walked through the ideas. Maybe in the replay there’d be something to notice.

  “Takes her out of the trunk. Probably can’t pick her up. People see it in the movies all the time. But in fact, a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight is more than most guys can handle. So he drags her out. Might have her wrapped up. Might not. But there should be blood.”

  Jesse squatted again and looked at the gravel surface of the cul-de-sac.

  “It was a big rain,” Simpson said.

  Jesse nodded. Jesse knew how much it had rained Tuesday night. But Simpson was trying to be helpful and Jesse didn’t want to discourage him.

  “So if there was some, it’s been washed away,” Jesse said. He stood and imagined dragging the girl’s body from the trunk and along the ground.

  “Gets her out and arranged, then starts to drag her. Probably by the arms, unless he had rope or something. And he drags her backwards down the hill. It’ll be slow going.” Jesse began to back down the hill.