“What’s your name?” Jesse said to the female trooper.
“Maura Quinlin.”
“Maura, stick around here. Your partner can go.”
“I’ll be in the cruiser,” the male trooper said.
He left.
“Sit,” Jesse said, “please.”
The sisters sat. Molly closed the office door and took a chair behind them. Trooper Quinlin sat beside her.
“Thanks for coming in,” Jesse said.
“It was kind of cool,” Corliss said.
“Riding in the police car and everything,” Claudia said.
Jesse nodded.
“And the state police guy is a real skunk,” Corliss said.
“That like being a real fox?” Jesse said.
“Sure,” Claudia said.
“People your age would probably call him a hunk,” Corliss said.
Jesse nodded, looking at them. Corliss, it seemed to him, was usually the lead speaker. She’d say something and Claudia would follow up. He pointed at Corliss.
“Maura,” he said to the female trooper, “take Corliss into the squad room and sit with her.”
“What?” Corliss said.
“I have some heavy things to discuss,” Jesse said. “With your sister.”
“We always stay together,” Corliss said.
“It won’t be long,” Jesse said. “Maura?”
Trooper Quinlin stood and put a hand under Corliss’s right arm and helped her up.
“We always stay together,” Claudia said.
“Not this time,” Jesse said.
He nodded at Quinlin, who turned Corliss gently and walked her out of the office. Molly got up and closed the door behind them, and sat back down behind Claudia. Jesse looked at Claudia without speaking. Claudia smiled very brightly.
“We’re twins, you know, we don’t like to be separated,” she said.
Jesse continued to look silently at Claudia.
“Did your father sexually molest you?” Jesse said.
Claudia stared at him. “What?”
“Did your father sexually molest you,” Jesse said.
Claudia looked around the room as if Corliss might suddenly appear and answer the question. Jesse waited. Claudia stopped looking around and looked at him and opened her mouth and said nothing. Jesse waited. Claudia looked over her shoulder at Molly. Molly smiled at her but didn’t speak.
“That’s terrible,” Claudia said finally.
“It is,” Jesse said. “Did he molest you together or separately?”
Claudia shook her head.
“Did he molest all three of you together?”
“Three?”
“Florence, you and Corliss.”
“Stop asking me that,” Claudia said.
She began to cry. Jesse sat quietly and watched her. Behind Claudia, Molly sat looking at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. After a time Jesse took a box of Kleenex from a desk drawer and put it in front of Claudia, on the edge of his desk, where she could reach it.
“Let me define what I mean by molest,” Jesse said. “So there won’t be any confusion.”
Claudia took one of the Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes.
“Did he touch you in a sexual way? Did he penetrate you?”
Claudia bent forward double and put her hands over her ears and began to moan. Jesse watched her quietly.
“For God’s sake, Jesse,” Molly said. “Leave the poor child alone.”
“I need answers,” Jesse said.
“Well, there are other ways,” Molly said. “If you don’t stop traumatizing her, I’ll file a report with the selectmen.”
Jesse grunted. He stood without a word and went out of the office. As he closed the door behind him he saw Molly get up and put her arm around Claudia’s shoulder. Jesse smiled to himself. Then he went down into the squad room and closed the door.
Corliss and Maura Quinlin were sitting silently at the table. He sat down across from Corliss.
“Well,” he said, “the truth is out.”
“Excuse me?”
“About your father molesting you,” Jesse said.
“Oh…my…God,” Corliss said.
52
The report to the selectmen line was inspired,” Jesse said to Molly.
“I thought so,” Molly said. “Made me look like really good cop at the same time it made you look like really bad cop.”
“And cowardly,” Jesse said.
Molly smiled faintly.
“You did scoot,” Molly said, “as soon as you heard it.”
They were quiet. Outside Jesse’s window the early evening was starting to darken.
“I need a drink,” Molly said.
Jesse nodded. He reached into the file cabinet where he kept it and brought out the bottle of Bushmill’s. He poured some in a water glass and handed it to Molly.
“What are you going to tell your husband when you come staggering home with booze on your breath.”
“I’ll tell him I had to do some really pukey police work today,” Molly said. “And I’ll try not to stagger.”
Molly drank from the glass and swallowed and put her head back and closed her eyes. She took a long breath. Jesse went to the refrigerator in the squad room and got a Coke and brought it back. Molly was still breathing deeply, with her eyes closed.
“What I hated the most,” Molly said, “was the way they kept calling him Daddy and saying how he loved them.”
“A way to keep it from killing them,” Jesse said. “Thinking it’s just Daddy loving you.”
“How could anyone think that?”
“You think what you have to,” Jesse said.
Molly sipped her whiskey.
“I wonder if Florence still thought her daddy loved her?”
Jesse shrugged.
“And if Daddy loved them so much,” Molly said, “why did they have to bop everybody else they could find?”
“Looking for love?” Jesse said.
“That’s love?”
“The only definition they had,” Jesse said.
Molly sipped some whiskey.
“So,” Molly said, “why wasn’t Daddy enough?”
“Daddy was married,” Jesse said.
“Jesus Christ,” Molly said. “Oedipus?”
Jesse shrugged.
“I’m just talking,” he said. “I don’t know enough about it.”
“The thought of sex with one of my children…” Molly shook her head. “I can’t even think about it. It makes me numb even to try.”
Jesse didn’t speak.
“We had to know,” Molly said.
Jesse nodded slowly. Molly drank again. The glass was empty. Jesse poured her a little more.
“But making them face it,” Molly said. “It was…” She looked for a word. “Nauseating.”
“We made them admit it,” Jesse said. “They’re a long way from facing it.”
“You know the worst part?” Molly said.
She was staring down into her glass, looking at the caramel surface of the whiskey.
“When we brought them back together,” Molly said. “And the fucking truth was sitting here in the room like some kind of ugly fucking toad and we’re all staring at it, and they’re both crying and saying, ‘Don’t tell Daddy. Don’t tell Daddy.’”
Jesse nodded. Molly drank more of her whiskey.
“Daddy, for God’s sake,” Molly said. “Daddy.”
“Daddy already knows,” Jesse said.
“He doesn’t know we know,” Molly said.
“That’s true,” Jesse said.
“Like they’ve been bad little girls, telling on Daddy, tattletales,” Molly said and drank. “Tattletales.”
Jesse didn’t speak. He had nothing to say in the face of Molly’s overpowering maternity. He listened.
“And what about them now?” Molly said. “Back in the hotel after the day they spent with us? What happens to them?”
“They don’t kno
w anything they didn’t know before,” Jesse said.
“So what do they do?”
“My guess?” Jesse said. “Do some coke. Do some booze. Get laid. Giggle some.”
Molly stared at him.
“God.”
Jesse shrugged.
“That’s how they’ve coped until now,” he said.
“Jesse, these are twenty-year-old kids. They’re five years older than my daughter.”
“And they are depraved, stupid, careless, amoral people,” Jesse said.
“They are victims.”
“That may be,” Jesse said. “But sympathizing with them is not my business. My business is catching the person who killed their sister.”
“So why did you have to dig up all this awfulness?” Molly said.
“It was there,” Jesse said. “I needed to know about it.”
Molly held out her glass.
“One more,” she said. “Then I’ll go home and take a bath.”
Molly wasn’t a drinker. She was starting to slur her words. Jesse poured her another drink. She took a sip and looked at him over the glass. Her eyes had a sort of softness about them, the way Jenn’s got if she drank too much.
“You are so nice,” Molly said. “So often. And then…you are such a cynical, hard bastard.”
“Nice guys finish last,” Jesse said.
“Somebody said that.”
“Leo Durocher.”
“You know you don’t believe it.”
“Hell,” Jesse said. “I’ve proved it.”
Molly didn’t say anything else. She sat quietly and finished her third drink. Jesse sipped his Coke.
When Molly’s drink was gone, Jesse said, “Come on, hon, I’ll drive you home.”
“I can drive myself,” she said.
“No,” Jesse said. “You can’t.”
53
Rita Fiore’s office offered a long view of the South Shore.
“Ms. Fiore will be right with you,” the secretary said and left.
Jesse looked at the South Shore for a short while until Rita came in wearing a red suit and sat behind her desk.
“Wow,” she said, “a coat and tie.”
“Trying to fit in,” Jesse said. “You talk to your private eye?”
“I did,” Rita said.
She took a notebook from her middle drawer and opened it and thumbed through some pages.
“He gave me what he had.”
“Didn’t I run into him once?” Jesse said. “Working on something in Paradise?”
“I think so,” Rita said.
“Him and a terrifying black guy.”
“Terrifying is one description,” Rita said. “Toothsome would be another.”
Jesse smiled.
“What did he tell you?” he said.
Rita looked at her notes.
“They wanted to know if he could find a person and track his movements,” Rita paused and studied her notes a moment.
“I hate my handwriting,” she said. “And he said, ‘You want someone followed?’ and they said mostly they wanted to know where someone had been in the last few months. And he said that was possible, who did they have in mind?”
Rita looked up and smiled.
“Then they ran into a snag,” Rita said. “The girls didn’t want to tell him who.”
“Whose movements they wanted him to discover?”
“That’s right.”
She returned to her notes and studied them for a moment.
“He said that it would be difficult to trace someone’s movements if he didn’t know who they were, and, he told me, ‘They acted like they hadn’t thought of that.’ He told me, ‘They kept looking at each other and silently agreeing that they couldn’t give the name.’ So he declined the employment offer…he claims, graciously.”
“They give him any clue where he was supposed to look?” Jesse said.
“Miami and Boston,” she said.
Rita looked at her notes.
“Miami or Boston,” she said, “or travel between.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jesse said.
Rita waited. Jesse didn’t say anything.
“I would guess,” Rita said after a time of silence, “that I have provided you a clue.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
They were quiet again.
Then Rita said, “I would guess that you are not going to share it with me.”
“Also true,” Jesse said.
“Because?”
“Because you are the best criminal defense lawyer in the state,” Jesse said. “And you might end up defending someone I want convicted.”
“Are you suggesting I would take unfair advantage of our, ah, relationship?”
“Yes.”
Rita smiled.
“Well, of course,” she said. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to call Kelly Cruz,” Jesse said.
“Who’s Kelly Cruz?”
“Somebody I’m going to call,” Jesse said.
Jesse stood. Rita stared at him for a moment.
“If I’d known you were like this,” she said, “I’d never have bopped your socks off.”
Jesse grinned at her.
“Yeah,” he said. “You would have.”
And they both began to laugh.
54
Back with the Plums, Kelly Cruz thought, as she sat on the same terrace, looking at the same blue-green water. Mr. and Mrs. Plum were both tanned and immaculate in white. The drink trolley was set up on the terrace. It was late afternoon and the cocktail hour had begun. Probably been in effect for a while, Kelly Cruz thought. She declined alcohol, and accepted a 7-Up.
“Just a few follow-up questions,” Kelly Cruz said when they were all settled. “Have you been traveling at all in the last couple of months?”
“No, we haven’t,” Mr. Plum said pleasantly.
He smiled at Kelly Cruz. His eyes crinkled attractively when he smiled.
“Say, since the end of May?”
“No, we haven’t,” Mr. Plum said, just as pleasantly.
“Mrs. Plum?” Kelly Cruz said.
“No,” she said. “I believe Willis drove up to Tallahassee, around the beginning of June, but I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“No, I didn’t, Mommy,” Mr. Plum said.
“You went up to visit the new store,” Mrs. Plum said.
Mrs. Plum looked at Kelly Cruz.
“Willis loves to get in the car and drive off by himself. He drives all over the country.”
“No,” Mr. Plum was kind but firm, “you’re confused.”
Mrs. Plum looked at her husband. He was serene in his certainty, sipping a gin and tonic today. Pacing himself, Kelly Cruz thought.
“Didn’t you open a new store in Tallahassee? Right after Memorial Day?”
Mr. Plum smiled fondly at his wife.
“Mommy, you’re getting old on me. I didn’t go anywhere in June.”
“You have a car,” Kelly Cruz said.
“My dear,” Mr. Plum said. “Of course we do.”
“Wow,” Kelly Cruz said. “I never think of cars at a place like this. Is there a parking garage?”
“Indeed,” Mr. Plum said. “And valet service all through the day and night.”
He seemed proud.
“I suppose you have assigned spaces?” Kelly Cruz said. “Probably deeded.”
She was aware as she chatted with Mr. Plum that Mrs. Plum was staring at him. Mr. Plum looked at her indulgently.
“Of course,” he said kindly.
He rang a small bell, and the Cuban maid came in and brought the Plums another drink from the trolley. Kelly Cruz nursed her 7-Up. As he sipped his new drink, Mr. Plum seemed to lose interest in Kelly Cruz. Instead he looked thoughtfully out from the patio at Biscayne Bay. Mrs. Plum appeared not to look at anything.
“Well,” Kelly Cruz said. “So, no travel, I guess.”
Mr. Plum seemed not to hear her. Mrs. Plum shrugg
ed and shook her head.
Kelly Cruz put her unfinished soft drink on the coffee table and stood.
“Well, thanks, sorry to bother you,” she said.
Mr. Plum continued to look at the bay. Mrs. Plum reached forward and rang the bell, and the Cuban maid came and showed Kelly Cruz to the door.
Kelly Cruz paused at the door and smiled at the maid, just a couple of palsy Cuban girls taking a moment to chat.
“Mi hermana,” Kelly Cruz said. “You remember when Mr. Plum went up to Tallahassee a couple of months ago?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Mrs. Plum didn’t go with him, did she?” Kelly Cruz said.
“No ma’am.”
“Good,” Kelly Cruz said. “Thanks, Magdalena. The garage on the lower level?”
“Yes ma’am.”
55
Jesse was on the phone with Kelly Cruz.
“He’s so empty and sweet,” she said. “It’s like part of him is missing but he doesn’t mind and there’s no reason you should be upset about it.”
“Except for him being a pedophile.”
“Except for that,” Kelly Cruz said.
“And you think the wife knows,” Jesse said.
“She knows,” Kelly Cruz said. “I can’t promise you that she even knows she knows.”
“But she knows.”
“She knows,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Can you work on her?”
“Some. If I can catch her away from him. They are nearly always together, as far as I can tell.”
“Contentment,” Jesse said. “After years of marriage.”
“Except for him being a pedophile,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Except for that,” Jesse said.
“How about the maid?”
“See no evil, speak no evil.”
“Not even for a sister?”
“She doesn’t care if I’m of pure Cath-tilian heritage,” Kelly Cruz said. “She’s got a good job and she won’t do anything to risk it. I had to trick her to say anything.”
“Any other servants?”
“Houseman and a cook. They are much less forthcoming than the maid.”
“So the servants are a dead end,” Jesse said.
“Complete,” Kelly Cruz said. “However, being a stubborn broad, I check out the parking garage. The attendant doesn’t remember whether Mister took his car out or not at the beginning of June. So I say, Is it there now? And he says it is and shows it to me. Actually I say this all in Spanish.”
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