Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “I have.”

  Harlan clicked the stem of the pipe against his teeth. “And their advice?”

  “Get the kid back first.”

  That got Salter’s attention, and he deigned to look at Bernstein, pointing the pipe at him. “Your friends have a flair for the self-evident and a gift for the obvious. I hope they prove to be more helpful than this as matters progress.”

  Monty was unfazed. “Get Ben back any way you can. Promise them anything. Sign anything you have to. Promise them money or the moon . . . whatever. We have a pretty good idea of who snatched him, right? So we don’t have to draw attention to you by churning up any soil. Once we get Ben back, my friends will handle things.”

  “Once we get my son back safely, I want that girl’s murder avenged. I want it done in a way that sends a clear message to the people who perpetrated these acts. I want people to suffer and I want to watch.”

  “As your attorney, I have to advise against—”

  Harlan Salter interrupted, sticking the tip of his pipe into the lapel of Monty Bernstein’s gray Armani suit. “I want people to suffer and I want to witness their suffering. Do we understand one another, Monty?”

  “Perfectly, Harlan,” he said, wiping a drop of saliva off his lapel.

  “And the police in Paradise, will they be an issue?” Salter returned his gaze outside the Lincoln.

  “The chief’s ex–L.A.P.D. Homicide. He’s no dope. Ben will be their first suspect, but let’s see what they have in terms of evidence. One way or the other, we’ll get around the cops. Just please let me do most of the talking, Harlan.”

  Harlan Salter IV seemed to take his lawyer’s last piece of advice immediately to heart and didn’t say another word all the way to Paradise.

  14

  There were no right words, no magical phrases, and it never got easier. Jesse Stone had just hung up with Martina Penworth’s parents and he needed a drink. Notifying next of kin was the worst part of the job. Notifying parents of a child’s murder was the worst of the worst. And doing it over the phone was the worst way to do it. There was the initial disbelief, the silent denial. Then the gut-wrenching shriek or the breathless repetition: Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God . . . There was often anger, lashing-out, the cursing. Then, whether there was any justification for it or not, inevitable guilt. Guilt at both ends of the phone. It was at times like these that Jesse Stone was most relieved he and Jenn had never had children.

  When Jesse looked up, Captain Healy, Homicide commander from the state police, was standing directly in front of his desk. Healy was dressed pretty much the way he was dressed the first time they’d met, the year Jesse had been hired as chief. He had on a worn gray suit, a blue oxford shirt, a patriotic tie, and polished black shoes. His hair was the same shade as his suit. He was about Jesse’s size, but thinner. He was older and had the flat stare of a man who took it all in and gave nothing away.

  Jesse liked Healy, and that made for a good relationship. Jesse respected Healy’s mettle and abilities as a detective. But they shared something else beyond respect. Healy had been a minor-league ballplayer, a pitcher in the Phillies organization. Vietnam and marriage, not a hard slide at second, had gotten in the way of Healy’s baseball career.

  “A tough one,” Healy said. “You look like crap.”

  “I feel worse than I look. That was the parents. They’re flying in tonight.”

  “It never gets any easier, does it?”

  “Drink?”

  “Sure.”

  Jesse took a bottle of scotch out of his drawer and put two plastic cups on his desk. Sometimes it was scotch in the drawer. Sometimes it was Irish whiskey. Sometimes there was no bottle. He poured a few fingers in each cup, screwed the cap back on the bottle, but didn’t put it away. Healy took one of the cups and sat down across from Stone. Neither man toasted. This was the kind of drink that didn’t call for one. They halfheartedly raised their cups to each other and drank in silence.

  “Suit told me you were down in New York at a reunion of your old team. You were teammates with Vic Prado?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you know he was going to be a star back then?”

  “He was good,” Jesse said, then changed the subject. “You been to the scene? Seen the body?”

  “Both. Pretty girl.”

  “Not anymore.” Jesse poured himself a little more scotch. “You like the Salter kid for it?”

  “I suppose he might have done it, but who kicked in the door? There’s also a broken window on the first floor.”

  “The storm.” Jesse waved the bottle at Healy. Healy shook his head no. The bottle went back into the drawer.

  Healy gave a skeptical shrug. “Maybe.”

  Jesse said, “I can make a case for it. The kid brings the girl up to his fancy house to impress her. He gets drunk, gets her drunk, but she decides she’s not so impressed by the Salter kid, the booze, or his house. He doesn’t take no for an answer. Forces himself on her. Molly tells me there was blood and tissue under the nails on the vic’s left hand. He goes to wash up, but she locks him out. The kid goes nuts, kicks in the door, and shoots her. Then, realizing what he’s done, he freaks and runs.”

  “And leaves his car, the body, and all the evidence except the murder weapon? I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like it, either, but what’s the alternate theory, Healy?”

  “Abduction. Somebody comes for the kid and the girl’s in the way. Easier to kill her than to tie her up or take her along. Guy didn’t want a witness. She was collateral damage.”

  Jesse Stone got a sick look on his face. “Maybe. Either way, we have to find Ben Salter. I’m heading home to shower and shave before Harlan Salter gets here. You going to stick around?”

  “Tomorrow for the autopsy.”

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  When Healy left, Jesse took out the bottle and had another drink. It didn’t make anything better.

  15

  There was a knock at Vic Prado’s door.

  “Just a second,” he said, pouring out two glasses of the Malbec he’d ordered up.

  He surveyed the room, making sure everything was just so. He wasn’t sure why he was acting like a dumb schoolkid on a first date, but it had been a long time since he had been with another woman. During his playing days, he had had all the women he could handle on the road, and then he’d come home to Kayla. There were no kids. Vic and Kayla knew they were both too selfish to have kids. They were nearly too selfish to have each other.

  Satisfied things were right, Vic moved to the door. He’d given Kayla and Dee permission to go on a shopping spree. Easy to do with Mike Frazetta’s money. Neither woman had seemed thrilled at the prospect. They went just the same. Dee was disappointed because Jesse Stone was gone with the wind. Kayla was just disappointed. The reasons didn’t matter. Disappointment was her natural state of being, her default setting. Even if they came back early, Carlo and Geno would run interference. At least those two assholes served some purpose other than breathing down his neck. He needed only an hour or two with the escort. The girl’s murder had wound him up and there was only one way to relieve that kind of tension. An hour on the hotel treadmill hadn’t done the trick.

  Vic reached out to open the door and he noticed his hand was trembling. He wondered if he was simply out of practice or if it was that he had ordered up a woman who fit Dee’s description. For almost a year now, he had lusted after her. Wouldn’t any man? It wasn’t like she hadn’t encouraged him, flirted with him just out of Kayla’s line of sight. She’d let him kiss her once, let him slip his hand under her tennis skirt, but that was as far as it had got. They’d gone shooting together at the Scottsdale Gun Club, played golf together. Always going for a drink together afterward. Sometimes Kayla would meet them. Mostly not. Maybe it was that Vic had shut her out of his business. Dee had see
med keen to put some of her inheritance in Vic’s hands, but he’d had to say no. That was one of Mike Frazetta’s ground rules. No friends. No family. Only the customers that were already serviced by the management firms, and not all of them, either. Frazetta was a dick, but in this he was smart, and Vic knew it. Though Prado was tempted on more than one occasion to break the rule if he was sure Dee would have let him have her.

  There was a second knock.

  “Okay, baby. I’m here.”

  When he pulled back the door, the person on the other side of the threshold didn’t resemble Dee Harrington. Joe Breen pushed into the room past Prado and slammed the door shut behind him.

  “What the fuck?” Vic said.

  “Ah, lovely of you to pour me some wine, but I don’t favor the stuff.”

  “Get out of here, Joe. I got a—”

  “Nah, sorry to disappoint you, Vic, but the young lady’s been sent on her way. She wasn’t pleased at all. Apparently she had making a bit of cash in mind. And what is it with you? Paying for skirt has no appeal to me. But those in the know say Kayla’s quite the piece of ass. And that friend of hers . . . why have you not laid her down if you want to stray?”

  Strange that Joe Breen should have thought the same thing as Vic Prado himself.

  “What are you doing here, Joe?”

  “Message for you, special delivery directly from Boston.”

  “Deliver it.”

  “I don’t care for your tone, Vic. I don’t care for you. Never have. Never have understood what the boss sees in you.”

  “You’re nothing but muscle, Joe. Don’t overthink it or you’ll hurt whatever brains you’ve got.”

  Joe Breen’s nasty, gloating smile turned angry and cold. “Fuck you, Vic. You never could stand that I could always see through your blarney and your charm. Mike is a real person. All you ever was was a nice smile and a baseball glove. I been onto you forever.”

  Now it was Vic’s smile that turned nasty. “The asshole doth protest too much.”

  “Watch your mouth, Vic,” Breen said, but Vic had hit a sore spot. Joe felt naked and utterly exposed. When they were all kids together, Joe had a kind of friend crush on Mike, something more like hero worship than anything else. While it was true that the enforcer had outgrown his boyhood worship of Mike Frazetta, it had morphed, over the years, into a loyal and enduring attachment that Joe Breen was unable and unwilling to break. Joe let his anger go. He dare not show Prado, the preening, egotistical prick, that he’d pushed a button. That was not to say that Breen wouldn’t have wanted to shove his nine-millimeter Beretta into Vic’s mouth and feed him the clip, one round at a time.

  “You’re to finish up your little party here and then head up to Paradise tomorrow with a stop to see Mike in Boston. The boss says your negotiating skills will be needed. Thinks your old pal Mr. Salter won’t be in the mood to talk with anyone else.”

  “Did you really have to kill that girl?”

  That was it. Breen had had it. Before Vic could react, Joe Breen shoved the Beretta into the soft, tanned flesh under Vic’s chin. “You ask me that question again, Prado, boss’s orders be damned, I’ll murder you slow and make your wife watch it. After that, I’ll kill her.”

  But instead of feeling the weakness that came in the wake of fear, Vic Prado felt almost giddy. It seemed Jesse Stone might still be in play as Vic’s way out from under the thumb of Mike Frazetta. He toasted himself with both glasses of Malbec after Breen had gone.

  16

  Jesse Stone didn’t miss the cat for a moment. The fact was that he was too much of a cat himself, too solitary, too self-contained. Men don’t like to think of themselves in terms of cats. Lone wolf was okay, even admirable, but not lone cat. Female. Feline. Could it be that simple? If it was, it was stupid. What creature was more fierce or intimidating than a male lion? Whichever, lone wolf or lone lion, it was beside the point. In the end, it was the lone part that mattered. For all the women he had been with, from Jenn, Abby, Marcy, and Sunny Randall to Dee Harrington, he was alone. A cat in his house wasn’t going to change that. He supposed she’d been as good a cat as any and he was glad that he’d found a place for Mildred where she could be properly appreciated. Fran Marcum, who ran the group home on Scrimshaw Street, said that Mildred had brought a new measure of joy to the residents. Joy—now, there was a word Jesse didn’t usually associate with his gestures.

  The hot shower felt good, and the steam helped drive away the last remnants of the hangover headache. The steam and a few more aspirin. He shaved and spent a long time staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. For some reason he was thinking not about his shoulder but about the long bus rides he’d taken between towns when he was in the minors. He’d hated those trips. Sure, the first few were interesting because the scenery going by out the window was new to you and you were a kid and what did you know about anything? But they got old fast, those long trips. Then he remembered that the only thing that made those damned trips bearable was the company of his teammates. Even the company of miserable pricks like Julio Blanco. He remembered that it was those rides more than all the meetings and practices that bonded them together into a team. He realized that the play in Pueblo had robbed him of much more than a chance at the majors. It had robbed him of a way of life. One day he was part of a team of men and the next day he was alone. He guessed he’d been trying to find another team of men ever since, but mostly he’d just been alone.

  He made himself some eggs and thought about having one drink before heading back into the station. He decided against it. There was a dead girl who needed his full attention and he knew dealing with the Salter kid’s dad was bound to be difficult. He was going to have to try to finesse his way around declaring Benjamin Salter a suspect. He was going to want the father’s cooperation. It had been Jesse’s experience that poking someone in the eye with a sharp stick wasn’t the best way to gain his trust or to get him to cooperate. There was no denying that calling a man’s son a suspected murderer was a pretty sharp stick.

  Jesse looked at Ozzie Smith in his white, red, and yellow Cardinals uniform. As good a gloveman as Jesse had been, he would have been no match in the hands department for the Wizard of Oz. But Jesse had once possessed what several scouts had called the best infield arm they had ever seen. That rocket arm had allowed Jesse to play deeper than most shortstops. Deeper meant he could cover more ground, meant he had more time to react, meant he could throw runners out on balls deeper in the hole than other shortstops could ever dream of. That was the beauty of baseball: There was more than one way to be great at any position. Sometimes Jesse imagined himself squaring off against Smith, the two of them at high noon on the field at Busch or Dodger Stadium.

  Baseball was a game of subtleties and opposites. At bat, the greatest players failed seventy percent of the time. In the field, if you were anything short of near perfection, you were considered a failure. Homicide investigation could be like that, too, like fielding. You had to be nearly perfect. Martina Penworth’s parents weren’t going to accept anything less, and Jesse was determined that they wouldn’t have to.

  17

  Molly Crane stopped Jesse Stone in his tracks. She nodded at his pebbled-glass office door.

  “Salter and his lawyer are waiting for you inside. I figured it was just easier all around if they waited in there.”

  “How long?”

  “Five, ten minutes, tops,” she said.

  “Thanks for the heads-up. What do you think?”

  “The father is calm. A cold fish, that one. The lawyer is cute.”

  Jesse smiled at Molly.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “You’re a married woman with a houseful of children,” he said.

  “Married, not dead.”

  “But he’s a lawyer.”

  “There’s that strike against him, I’ll admit,” Molly said. “Di
dn’t stop you from being with Abby.”

  “Old news.”

  She shook head. “Men!”

  He looked at the Seth Thomas wall clock behind her. “It’s been a long day. Go home. I need you to pick up the Penworths at Logan in the morning.”

  Molly was a pro, but she got a sad look on her face. “You want me to be with them when they identify the—”

  He put his hand on Molly’s shoulder. “No, I’ll meet you there. That’s my job.”

  “Okay, Jesse. What should I tell them?”

  “As little as possible. Tell them that I’ll fill them in.”

  She took a few steps, stopped, turned around. Her expression now a mixture of anger and pain. “I’ve got girls at home. I don’t like young girls murdered in my hometown, Jesse.”

  “I don’t like it in anybody’s town, but we’re not solving it tonight. See you in the morning at the ME’s.”

  She opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it. Molly turned and walked away. Jesse called after her and she about-faced.

  “What is it, Jesse?”

  “It may not be my hometown, but it’s my home. Remember that.”

  When Jesse walked into his office, he didn’t need a scorecard to distinguish Salter from his lawyer. Salter was a tall, gaunt man. He was clean-shaven and rather plain-faced, with a head full of wispy silver hair to which not much attention had lately been paid. He wore a deceptively expensive navy blue suit—unremarkable, but it fit him like a second skin. All of his accessories—the light blue silk tie and matching pocket square, the custom-made white shirt with French cuffs, the gold cuff links, the black, English-made wing-tip shoes—were just so: understated, but of superb quality. He smelled of too-sweet Clubman aftershave and cherry pipe tobacco. And though he smelled like someone’s dear old grandfather, there was something menacing about him. Maybe it was his piercing gray eyes or high forehead. Maybe it was the way he held his unlit pipe like a switchblade. Or maybe it was simply that he carried himself as if he was always the most important man in the room, no matter the room or the other men in it.