“Molly’s fine,” Jesse said. “I think she thought he deserved to be shot. Suit? I don’t know. It’s hard to figure sometimes what Suit is thinking.”
“Probably makes it easier that you all killed him,” Sunny said.
“Like a firing squad,” Jesse said.
They sat quietly. No boats moved in the harbor. The gulls were quiet. There was no breeze, just the faintly cool ocean scent that drifted up to them. Jesse got up and made them each another drink. As he finished, the phone rang. He looked at the caller ID.
“I have to take this,” Jesse said. “It won’t be long.”
“I’ll close the French doors,” Sunny said.
“No,” Jesse said. “It’s Jenn. I want you to listen.”
Sunny looked at him but said nothing. Jesse picked up the phone.
“Jesse,” Jenn said. “Oh, thank God you’re there.”
“I’m here,” Jesse said.
“Things are terrible,” Jenn said. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been fired. They are restructuring the whole show. I don’t know what to do.”
“How about your producer friend,” Jesse said.
“He’s the one that fired me,” Jenn said.
“No business like show business,” Jesse said.
“What am I going to do?” Jenn said.
“Another job?” Jesse said. “Another producer? Whichever comes first.”
“Don’t tease me, Jesse. I’m frantic. I need you. I need to come there and be with you.”
“No,” Jesse said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Jesse, please,” Jenn said. “I need this.”
“No,” Jesse said. “No more.”
“No more?”
“It’s done, Jenn,” Jesse said. “We’re done. I won’t do this anymore.”
“Jesse, do you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you, Jenn. I just want you out of my life.”
“Jesse,” Jenn said, “Jesse. I can’t. I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“Your problem, Jenn.”
“Jesse, please, what happened to make you turn on me like this?”
Jesse took in some air. There was a long, complicated answer to that question, and Jesse thought he knew what it was. He looked at Sunny. Sunny was motionless, watching him.
“Stuff happens,” he said, and gently hung up the phone.
He picked up the drinks and walked to the balcony and handed Sunny hers. She took it and smiled at him.
“You understand what went on there?” Jesse said.
“I believe so,” Sunny said.
“What do you think?”
“I think it bodes well,” Sunny said.
She put one hand up, and gently Jesse high-fived her.
• • •
For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit
www.penguin.com/parkerchecklist
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
THE SPENSER NOVELS
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York,
New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East,
Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of
Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2010 by Robert B. Parker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Robert B., date.
Split image/Robert B. Parker.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18538-4
1. Stone, Jesse (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Massachusetts—Fiction. 3. Cults—
Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. 5. Police chiefs—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.A686S
813’.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Joan, of course, and also for Stephen F. O’Loughlin, Jr.
1
MOLLY CRANE STUCK her head into the open doorway of Jesse’s office and said, “Chief Stone, there’s a private detective from Boston here to see you.”
“Show him in,” Jesse said.
“It’s a her,” Molly said.
“Even better,” Jesse said.
Molly smiled and stepped aside, and Sunny Randall came in, carrying a straw shoulder bag and wearing a green sleeveless top with white pants and color-coordinated sneakers.
“Wow,” Jesse said.
“Wow is good,” Sunny said, and sat down.
“And accurate,” Jesse said. “It couldn’t have been easy getting into those pants.”
“For whom?” Sunny said.
Jesse smiled.
“Shall I close the door?” he said.
“No,” Sunny said. “I’m actually here on business.”
“All work and no play,” Jesse said.
“We’ll address that at another time,” Sunny said.
“That’s encouraging,” Jesse said.
“It’s meant to be,” Sunny said. “Do you know of a small religious organization here in Paradise called the Renewal? Or the Bond of the Renewal?”
“I’m the chief of police,” Jesse said. “I know everything.”
“Exactly why I’m here,” Sunny said.
She smiled.
“Tell me about the Renewal,” she said.
“They’re located in a house near the town wharf. Nice house; one of the elders owns it. They all live there in a kind of communal way, run by a guy who calls himself the Patriarch. About forty, with gray hair, which Molly Crane claims is artificial.”
“He dyes it gray?” Sunny said.
“What Molly claims,” Jesse said. “There’s a couple of so-called elders, ’bout your age, I would guess.”
“Hey,” Sunny said.
“I mean they’re not very elder-ish.”
“Okay,” Sunny said.
“Rest of them are mostly kids,” Jesse said. “All of whom, far as I can tell, are old enough to do what they want.”
“What do they do?”
“They preach, they hand out flyers, they go door-to-door, raising money.”
“They got some kind of special belief?”
“They’re in favor of renewal,” Jesse said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Jesse grinned.
“Renewing the original intent of Christianity,” Jesse said. “At least as they understand it. Love, peace, that kind of thing.”
“Wow,” Sunny said. “Subversive.”
“You bet,” Jesse said. “Town hates them, want me to chase them out of town.”
“Which you haven’t done.”
“They haven’t committed a crime,” Jesse said.
“So, what’s the complaint?”
“They’re not one of us,” Jesse said. “And they’re kind of r atty-looking.”
“They preach on the streets?” Sunny said.
“Yes.”
“That can be annoying,” Sunny said.
“It is,” Jesse said. “It’s annoying as hell, but it’s not illegal.”
“And you’re hung up on the Constitution?” Sunny said.
“Old school,” Jesse said.
“And the town council understands?”
“I don’t believe so,” Jesse said.
“And you care what the town council understands,” Sunny said.
“Not very much,” Jesse said.
They were quiet for a moment. The silence was comfortable.
“You want to know why I’m asking?” Sunny said, after a time.
“Yep.”
“But not enough to ask,” Sunny said.
“I knew you’d tell me.”
2
SUITCASE SIMPSON DROVE the Paradise police car across the causeway to Paradise Neck, with the sun bouncing brightly off the open ocean to his right and the sheltered harbor to his left. He always thought the ocean reflected the sun more brightly than the harbor, but Jesse always laughed at him when he said it, so he didn’t say it anymore. Still thought so, though.
He had the morning shift, seven to two on the east side of town, along the water. Arthur Angstrom was on the west side. It was noon. A Cadillac Escalade was parked at an angle on the roadside, just past the Paradise Neck end of the causeway. Simpson pulled up behind it and got out. The car was empty, and there were no keys in sight. Suit tried the door. It was unlocked. He got in and sat in the driver’s seat. He opened the glove compartment. The car was registered to Petrov Ognowski. He found the button inside the glove compartment and popped the tailgate. Then he got out and took a look.
There was a dead man.
The back of his head was black with dried blood. Suit felt for a pulse in the man’s neck. There was none. And his skin was cold. Suit went back to the cruiser and called it in.
“Molly? Suit. I got a stiff in the back of a Cadillac SUV, out at the Neck end of the causeway.”
“You want an ambulance?” Molly said.
“Pretty sure he’s dead, but no harm,” Suit said. “Where’s Jesse.”
“He’s out of the office,” Molly said. “I’ll send him when I find him.”
“Okay.”
“You know who it is?” Molly said.
“Car’s registered to Petrov Ognowski,” Suit said. “I don’t know if the stiff is him.”
“You haven’t searched him,” Molly said.
“No.”
“Don’t blame you,” Molly said. “Here we all come.”
The first to arrive was Arthur. He pulled his cruiser in behind Suit’s and walked over and looked in the back of the SUV.
“Back of his head’s all fucked up,” Arthur said.
“I figure that’s where he got shot,” Suit said.
“Nice police work, Suit.”
Simpson grinned.
“But there’s no exit wound that I can see.”
“So?”
“Just observing,” Suit said.
Behind them, from the Paradise end of the causeway, there was the sound of a siren.
“You search him?” Arthur said.
“We got people to do that, don’t we?”
“Sure, State ME will inventory everything.”
<
br /> “So why don’t we let him search?” Suit said. “’Less you want to?”
“Search him?”
“Yeah.”
“We can let the ME do it,” Arthur said.
The siren faded as the ambulance pulled up and two EMTs got out. One was a woman. Her name was Annie Lopes.
“Whaddya got?” she said.
“Looks like a murder,” Arthur said.
Suit said, “Unless he shot himself in the head and then climbed into the back and pulled the tailgate shut.”
“That how you found him?” Annie said.
“Yep.”
The two EMTs went and looked at the body. Annie put her hand to his throat and put her hand on his face. She picked up his right arm and let it fall.
“He’s already starting into rigor,” she said.
“So he is dead,” Arthur said.
“Mostly they are,” Annie said, “when they’re in rigor.” The second EMT was a guy named Ralph.
“Find any keys?” Ralph said.
“Nope.”
“How’d you open the back?” Ralph said. “Car was unlocked,” Suit said. “I popped the tailgate.” Annie laughed softly.
“Wow,” she said.
“Cops have their ways,” Suit said.
More sirens sounded across the causeway.
3
ONE MEMBER of the Renewal is a kid named Cheryl DeMarco. She just turned eighteen, and her parents want me to get her out.”
“Whether she wants to get out or not?” Jesse said.
“I explained that if she didn’t want to leave,” Sunny said, “there wasn’t a lot I could do.”
“And?”
“They asked if I knew anybody who could remove her forcibly.”
“Which of course you do,” Jesse said.
“I told them I didn’t,” Sunny said.
“A white lie,” Jesse said.
Sunny smiled.
“True,” she said. “But I thought I’d rather not conspire in a kidnapping.”
“I’ll keep the parents in mind,” Jesse said, “if the kid turns up missing.”
“They didn’t press it,” Sunny said. “They asked if maybe I could find her and talk with her.”
“The Renewal is not exactly secret,” Jesse said. “How come they don’t know where to find her?”
The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9 Page 53