The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  “What if Patton doesn’t fall for it?” Spike said.

  “What have we lost?” Sunny said. “We’ve poked a stick into the hive. Something will happen.”

  “Unless the kid isn’t there,” Spike said.

  “Unless that,” Sunny said.

  “This a legitimate place?” Spike said.

  “I would guess partially, but they cut some corners,” Sunny said.

  “How about the good doctor?”

  “Dr. Abraham Patton,” Sunny said. “He has an Ed.D. in educational statistics.”

  “What’s that got to do with running a treatment center?”

  “Not much,” Sunny said. “But it entitles him to call himself Doctor.”

  “Of course, credentials aren’t everything,” Spike said. “I had shrinks with all the right degrees, didn’t help me at all.”

  “You were seeing shrinks?” Sunny said.

  “When I was worried about if I was gay,” Spike said.

  “You are gay,” Sunny said.

  “Gayer than laughter,” Spike said. “But I couldn’t quite figure out how I could be a tough guy. . . .”

  “Which you certainly are,” Sunny said.

  “Got the build for it,” Spike said. “But I had to figure out that being gay didn’t mean I wasn’t tough.”

  “Somebody helped you with that,” Sunny said.

  “One of the shrinks was good.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” Sunny said.

  “That’s true,” Spike said. “I did the work. But I did the work with the others and nothing came of it. . . . They were trying to cure me.”

  “Think how different we’d be,” Sunny said, “if you weren’t gay.”

  “Your loss,” Spike said.

  “I don’t know,” Sunny said. “You’re awful big.”

  “Anyway,” Spike said. “Even if he is very good, and even if they’re legit, he’s not going to want a lot of attention paid.”

  “Because his credentials raise questions?”

  “They do,” Spike said. “And it wouldn’t help business if they came under public discussion.”

  “Wow,” Sunny said. “ ‘Under public discussion.’ Don’t you talk good.”

  “A natural poet,” Spike said.

  “If my girlish calculations are correct,” Sunny said, “it’s considerably shorter from these trees to the road than it is from the front door to the road.”

  “So,” Spike said. “We stay here, and when they appear we dash out before they get her into the car.”

  “And you dazzle them with your rhetoric,” Sunny said.

  “Or something,” Spike said.

  “You have a gun,” Sunny said.

  “Yep.”

  “Think you’ll need it?”

  “Usually don’t,” Spike said.

  37

  IT WAS QUIET in the woods. There was a breeze, which kept the bugs from bothering them.

  “What did that shrink say that worked for you?” Sunny said.

  “Said I couldn’t repress a part of myself and expect all the other parts to work well.”

  “Was he a gay shrink?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know,” Sunny said.

  “I asked him,” Spike said.

  Sunny smiled.

  “That would be you,” she said.

  “How you doing with Silverman?” Spike said.

  “Dr. Silverman,” Sunny said. “I can’t think of her as Silverman.”

  “How you and she doing?”

  “I feel I’m getting someplace.”

  “You know where yet?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll know,” Spike said.

  “I hope so,” Sunny said.

  “She gay?” Spike said.

  “That’s not germane to our therapy,” Sunny said.

  “Jesus,” Spike said. “You got the shrink talk down. You think she might be gay?”

  “If she is,” Sunny said, “she’s the lipstickiest lesbian I’ve ever seen.”

  A little after eight at night, a small gray Honda SUV pulled up in front of the center and parked on the road.

  “Here she comes,” Sunny said.

  “You were right,” Spike said.

  After a moment, Cheryl DeMarco came out the front door with two orderlies in white coats. Each held an arm. She seemed passive. Behind them came a tallish man in a business suit with a stethoscope around his neck. When they were near the Honda, Sunny came out of the trees and stood between them and the car. Spike stood beside her.

  “What’s this?” the tallish man said.

  “We’re taking Cheryl,” Sunny said.

  Cheryl showed little interest.

  “You can’t do that,” the tallish man said.

  “Spike,” Sunny said.

  Spike shuffled his feet into some sort of fighting stance and hit one of the orderlies with a straight left to the nose. The orderly let go of Cheryl’s arm and put his hands up to his face. He was bleeding. In rhythm Spike hit the other orderly with a right cross. The orderly fell down. Sunny took Cheryl’s arm and led her toward Spike’s car. The orderly with the bloody nose took a black leather sap from his hip pocket and tried to hit Spike with it. Spike stepped inside the looping swing and blocked it with both forearms, then hit the orderly on the side of the head with a backswing. The orderly dropped the blackjack as he went down. Spike kicked it away. Spike looked at the tallish man. The tallish man backed away. Both orderlies were now on the ground.

  “See,” Spike said. “We can do that.”

  Spike looked at the tallish man for another moment. On the road behind him the Honda drove away. Spike ignored it. He looked up the road to where Sunny and Cheryl were getting into his car. Then he looked back at the tallish man.

  “Dr. Patton, I presume,” Spike said.

  “Yes,” Patton said. “I’m in charge here.”

  “No,” Spike said. “You ain’t.”

  He reached out and yanked the stethoscope from Patton’s neck.

  “Don’t hurt me,” Patton said.

  “Fucking fraud,” Spike said.

  He tossed the stethoscope onto the roadway. Then he turned and went toward his SUV, walking sedately. No one attempted to stop him.

  When he got there, Sunny was in the backseat with Cheryl. Cheryl was quiet, looking at nothing. Spike got in and started the car.

  “She’s sedated,” Sunny said.

  Spike looked in the rearview mirror. No one was following. “Where you want to go?” Spike said.

  “My place,” Sunny said.

  Spike headed up the side road toward Route 9.

  “Why not Paradise,” Spike said. “You got some clout with the cops there. Case there’s trouble.”

  “I’m Phil Randall’s daughter,” Sunny said.

  “Ah, yes,” Spike said. “I guess you got some clout in Boston.”

  “Detective,” Cheryl said.

  “Yes,” Sunny said. “Sunny Randall. We talked at the Renewal House.”

  “Mother,” Cheryl said.

  “You want your mother?”

  Cheryl shook her head.

  “Okay,” Sunny said. “We’ll go to my place and you can stay with me until the dope wears off and we can decide what to do.”

  Cheryl looked at Spike.

  “Him?” Cheryl said.

  “Spike,” Sunny said.

  “I’ll stay with you, too,” Spike said.

  38

  JESSE SAT with Suit and Molly in his office.

  “Who’s on the desk?” Jesse said.

  “Eddie Cox,” Molly said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “We have a married woman who fools around, and then one day her husband turns up dead,” he said. “Normally, you’d figure it was the wife.”

  “But . . .” Molly said.

  “But the woman has a history of swapping with her sister,” Jesse said.

  “So you’d think they’d swap husbands,” Suit
said.

  “But if they were swapping husbands,” Jesse said, “then why the motels? Why not walk next door?”

  “Maybe the husbands weren’t enough,” Suit said.

  “Nobody would swap with Knocko Moynihan,” Molly said.

  Both men stared at her.

  “He’s a pig,” Molly said.

  “He was a pig when Roberta married him,” Jesse said.

  “Maybe not,” Molly said.

  “But you’d swap with Reggie?” Suit said.

  “I wouldn’t swap with anybody,” Molly said. “But Reggie’s not a pig like Knocko was.”

  “These are very odd women,” Jesse said.

  “You bet,” Molly said. “But a three-way with Knocko? I don’t know why Roberta married him. But Rebecca didn’t marry him, and I’m betting she wouldn’t have sex with him at gunpoint.”

  “Woman’s intuition,” Suit said.

  “You bet,” Molly said. “Why we make better cops.”

  Jesse got up and walked around the office. He picked up his baseball glove from the top of a cabinet and rubbed his fist in the pocket.

  “Rawlings,” he said.

  “What?” Molly said.

  “It’s a Rawlings glove,” Jesse said.

  “You used it when you played,” Molly said.

  “Yep.”

  They were all silent for a time as Jesse stood with his glove. Then he took it off, and put it back on top of the cabinet, and went back and sat down behind his desk.

  “We got another victim, too,” he said.

  “Ognowski,” Suit said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “You think the Bang Bang Twins . . . were, ah, doing business with Ognowski?”

  “Let’s check with Ms. Intuition,” Jesse said.

  Molly was quiet for a moment.

  Then she said, “Maybe.”

  “That’s all?” Suit said. “ ‘Maybe’?”

  “It would make more sense if they were both practicing their craft with Reggie,” Molly said.

  “Why?”

  “It just would,” she said. “It seems somehow more incestuous.”

  “Incestuous?” Suit said.

  “Twins sharing the same lovers?” Molly said. “There has to be something incestuous going on.”

  “Christ,” Suit said. “Jesse?”

  “Don’t know much about it,” Jesse said. “But I know someone who does.”

  39

  YOU WANT ME to explain repressed incest, once removed,” Dix said. “Among people I’ve never met?”

  “Yuh,” Jesse said.

  “While I’m at it, would you like me to help you with your mental health?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  Dix sat back in his chair and put his feet up.

  “Okay, tell me what you know,” Dix said.

  While Jesse told him, Dix looked steadily at Jesse and never moved. When Jesse was through, Dix remained motionless and silent for what seemed to Jesse a full minute.

  Then he said, “First, I’m sure you understand that this is not psychotherapy.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I am at best an educated consultant in this.”

  “Puts you ahead of me,” Jesse said.

  “You’ve been a cop long enough to know the difference between what you speculate about a suspect you haven’t met and what you learn in an interview.”

  “Tell me what you speculate,” Jesse said.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Dix said. “They are identical twins.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “They were raised together simultaneously in the same environment.”

  “Yes.”

  “The father was a successful philanderer and an associate, at least, of criminals.”

  “Yes.”

  “The mother is rigid and religious.”

  “Yes.”

  “The twins are not close to their mother.”

  “Doesn’t seem so,” Jesse said.

  “But they are close to each other,” Dix said. “They dress alike, act alike. Apparently think alike.”

  “I have the sense that the parents encouraged them in that,” Jesse said. “Mother thought it was God’s will. Father thought it was cute.”

  “In some cases when two people are having sex with the same third party, one can speculate that they are trying in fact to access each other,” Dix said.

  “Through an intermediary,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “You think that’s what’s going on here.”

  “Not exactly,” Dix said. “They might both be trying to access the father through a surrogate.”

  “And married the surrogates that seemed most like Dad?” Jesse said.

  “Maybe,” Dix said.

  “Why together?” Jesse said.

  “They are almost each other,” Dix said. “They may experience life as each other. It may alleviate guilt to be with each other. Perhaps it also cements their each-otherness.”

  “What about Ognowski?”

  “Maybe Molly’s right,” Dix said. “Maybe Knocko was too repellent for one . . . or, for that matter, for both. In any case, it doesn’t change anything. The pathology seems firmly established, and if the usual way didn’t work, it would find another.”

  “But we don’t know if any of this is true,” Jesse said.

  “No,” Dix said. “It’s an educated hypothesis which explains the data we have.”

  “It’s a guess,” Jesse said.

  “Exactly,” Dix said.

  “And even if it’s accurate,” Jesse said, “what good does it do me?”

  “Not my department,” Dix said.

  “Better to know than not to know, I suppose.”

  “Of course, we don’t actually know anything,” Dix said.

  “It’s an educated hypothesis which explains the data we have,” Jesse said.

  “Well said.”

  “But it still doesn’t explain two murders,” Jesse said.

  “No,” Dix said. “It doesn’t. But it might help define the area of speculation.”

  “Man,” Jesse said. “Sometimes you talk just like a shrink.”

  “There’s probably a reason for that,” Dix said.

  “Where do I go from here?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t know,” Dix said.

  “You’re supposed to know.”

  Dix smiled.

  “I never promised you a rose garden,” he said.

  “No one seems to,” Jesse said.

  They were silent for a moment.

  Then Dix said, “We have some time left.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Why was I so taken with them?” he said.

  “The twins,” Dix said.

  “Yeah. I was so envious of them that I went on a bender,” Jesse said.

  “And why was it you were so envious?” Dix said.

  Jesse said, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Dix moved his shoulders in something that might have been a shrug.

  “Everybody wants to be loved,” Jesse said.

  “Love manifests,” Dix said, “in many ways.”

  “Wow,” Jesse said. “That’s a real shrink phrase.”

  “Feeling some anger?” Dix said. “At me?”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “Why do you suppose you’re angry?” Dix said.

  Jesse took in a deep breath and let it out in slow exasperation.

  “Because you’re leading me to face something I don’t want to face,” he said.

  Dix said nothing.

  “They were both so submissive,” Jesse said. “So . . .” He made a circular motion with his hand as he searched for the word.

  “Self-abnegating?” Dix said.

  “Hoo-ha!” Jesse said. “Self-abnegating.”

  “You know what it means,” Dix said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “And you’re right,” he said. “I loved how self-abnegating they were.”


  “So, if they put themselves aside . . . ?” Dix said.

  “Then they totally belonged to the husband,” Jesse said.

  Dix waited. He leaned back a little farther. His elbows were on the arms of his chair. His hands were folded in front of him. He rubbed the balls of his thumbs lightly together.

  “What woman would want that?” Jesse said.

  Dix waited.

  “What man would want a woman to be like that?” Jesse said.

  Dix waited.

  “I don’t like women like that,” Jesse said.

  Dix moved his head slightly. It might have been a nod.

  “A woman like that couldn’t leave me,” Jesse said.

  Dix nodded.

  “Jesus,” Jesse said. “I was asking Jenn to do things she couldn’t do, and shouldn’t.”

  “Probably,” Dix said.

  “And then I blamed her when she cheated.”

  “Tough place for Jenn to be,” Dix said.

  “Why the hell am I like that?” Jesse said.

  Dix looked at his watch.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find out. Maybe we’ll never know. But perhaps you won’t make the same mistake again.”

  Jesse nodded. When he left the office, he felt a little dizzy. And his head felt overused.

  40

  WHAT’S THAT EASEL ?” Cheryl said.

  They were sitting at Sunny’s kitchen counter. Sunny had toasted some English muffins for breakfast, and they were eating the muffins and drinking coffee.

  “I’m painting a picture,” Sunny said.

  “You’re a painter?”

  “Sort of,” Sunny said.

  Cheryl went down and looked at the painting.

  “It’s a dog,” Cheryl said.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it your dog?”

  “It was,” Sunny said. “Her name was Rosie.”

  “She dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Cheryl walked back to the counter.

  “That’s too bad,” she said. “I never had a dog.”

  Sunny nodded.

  “Tell me how you ended up in the Rackley center,” she said.

  “I was walking back toward the Renewal House,” Cheryl said. “And a car stopped ahead of me and a lady got out of the backseat and said could I help her with directions. So I say sure, and the lady yells into the car, ‘Show her the map,’ or something like that. I lean in to look at the map and the lady pushes me in and the guy grabs me and the lady gets in behind me and shuts the door and the car drove away.”