The Hangman's Sonnet

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Jesse, sit down,” she said, pulling the drink out of his hand.

  He wasn’t sure he liked that, but he sat down on the sofa.

  “There’s always been an ‘us,’ I think, from the day we met, even if that ‘us’ existed only in my own head and heart. Even when Diana was still alive, I thought of the two of us as a pair, not like a couple, exactly . . . I don’t know. I meant it when I said I was never anybody’s Miss Right and I don’t want to be, but I thought that two loners like us, we might be able to be something more than friends and less than . . . that we were good together. This isn’t coming out right.”

  “Say what you’ve got to say.”

  “I used to dream about being with you.”

  “Then why didn’t you—”

  “I don’t know, maybe because I’m a fool.”

  “You’re a lot of things, Doc, but a fool isn’t one of them.”

  “Then because lovers have always been easy to come by for me. I’ve never had trouble getting men in my bed, but I’ve never had a lot of friends. I’ve never had any like you.”

  He laughed. “Not sure how to take that.”

  “As a compliment, you ass.” She shook her head at him. “I guess I’m not willing to risk what we have. Because no matter what you might say, I’d be your rebound girl and that’s how you would think of me. I don’t think I could stand that.”

  “But last night doesn’t have to mean anything more than it was. We can go back to what we were, you showing up at my door and drinking, talking.”

  “You see, Jesse, I don’t think we can go back. I don’t want to.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Last night when you kissed me, I think it kind of woke me up. It made me realize some things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like I’m not willing to let you drink yourself to death anymore. At least, I’m not willing to be part of it anymore. After what happened to Diana, sure, I understood your drinking. Hell, I was over here half the time drinking with you. All of us understood how you felt and we were willing to look the other way. But not me, at least not from now on. If I was willing to give up sleeping with you to save our friendship, I sure am willing to give up drinking with you.”

  “You done?”

  “Almost.”

  “What else?”

  “Just because I passed up my opportunity doesn’t mean I can’t get a little jealous. I heard about that woman who was in your office the morning of Suit’s wedding. I heard she’d make Venus green with envy.”

  “Bella Lawton,” Jesse said, smiling. “How’d you know about her?”

  “I have my sources.” She leaned over and kissed Jesse on the cheek. “I’m heading out now that I’ve had my say. Oh, I almost forgot. It’s definite. Maude Cain died of a myocardial infarction, a heart attack, plain and simple. I can’t say the stress of what they did to her induced it, but it sure didn’t help.”

  25

  After stopping at the donut shop for coffee, Jesse took a detour away from the station and backtracked the few short blocks to Berkshire Street. He had taken a quick look at the reports from Molly, Alisha, and Gabe Weathers after they had spoken to the residents living on Maude Cain’s block. It had netted them very little information. But canvassing, knocking on doors and talking to neighbors, was real police work. More cases got closed with worn soles and bruised knuckles than by DNA or deduction. The thing was, Jesse had learned that it often paid dividends to knock on the same doors more than once. That people weren’t robots, they were imperfect, and sometimes, with a few days for their minds to focus on other matters, they would recall things they had forgotten or give you information they weren’t even aware they had.

  There were dangers in it, too. The human mind is a curious thing and it can conflate events or even create memories to fit scenarios according to what it’s heard or read. It isn’t malicious or intentional, and Jesse accounted for the possibility. One of the ways he protected against it was to catch people off guard. That’s why he was standing on the porch of 20 Berkshire Street at seven a.m., his finger pressed to the doorbell. Unlike Maude Cain’s house, which was directly across the street, 20 Berkshire was well maintained and updated. It was a pumpkin-orange and forest-green farmhouse, Victorian without much of the fussiness of the more elaborate Victorians up on the Bluffs.

  Jesse backed his finger off the bell, knowing that when the door was eventually answered, the person on the other side wouldn’t be very happy. He was right about that.

  “For chrissakes almighty! Who the hell is getting me out of bed at this hour?” An angry woman’s voice cut through the wood-and-glass door as if it were made of tissue paper. “Who is it?”

  “Chief Stone, ma’am, of the Paradise PD.”

  Two locks clicked open and the door pulled back. Standing there in the vestibule was a slender woman in her early sixties with short, slightly disheveled gray/brown hair. She had a thin, handsome face that was probably much more welcoming with a smile on it. She was dressed in a beat-up white robe and had bare feet.

  “What can I do for you, Chief?”

  “I’m here about Maude Cain.”

  Her face went from anger to sadness. “Terrible thing. Terrible.”

  “You’re Mrs. Lynch, is that right?”

  “Sharon Lynch, yes. Come on in, Chief. I’ll make us some coffee.”

  Jesse followed her into the kitchen and sat quietly, listening to Sharon Lynch make small talk as she put on the coffee. He was careful not to speak unless she asked a specific question. He was anxious to hear how she filled the void.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you that I didn’t tell that pretty officer of yours who was here on Sunday. Beautiful black woman. What was her name?”

  “Alisha.”

  “Alisha, right. Like I said, I’m not sure what I can add, Chief. How would you like your coffee?”

  “I’ll have it the way you’re having it.”

  That made her smile, as he knew it would. She placed the coffee down on the place mat. “Here ya go.” She sat directly across from him.

  “What was it you said to Alisha? I haven’t had a chance to study the reports.”

  She didn’t like that and made a face. “Ralph, that’s Mr. Lynch, and I were going to go down to Boston to visit our kids, Jeremy and Jill. And—”

  Jesse cut her off. “Where is Ralph now?”

  She liked that even less. “Work. He owns a construction business. He’s an early riser and is out of the house most days before I get up. Like I was saying, we were going down to Boston and were going to get an early start, but one of his men called and he had to go into the office to put out a fire.”

  “Did you or Ralph notice anything out of the ordinary Saturday?”

  “Like we told your officer, we didn’t notice a thing. Maude has kept to herself lately and didn’t come out of the house much these days.”

  “What was Maude like?”

  “Nice woman. A very proud woman and one ahead of her time. She kept her own name. Pity, though.”

  That got Jesse’s attention. “What’s a pity? Her dying?”

  “Of course, but that’s not what I mean, Chief. Their family had more money than the Lord himself, but poor Maude needed to take in boarders for years in order to pay her bills. You’d think the people in the family would have planned better for their own. Charity is a good thing, but at the expense of your own . . . I just don’t see it.”

  “Boarders?”

  “Boarders, yes. Lodgers, you know. But not for the last few years,” Sharon said. “She couldn’t handle it any longer. Still, until about five years ago she was still taking them in . . . mostly in the summer.”

  Jesse thought about questioning her further but decided he could always come back another time. First he wanted to knock on some other doors. Then he wan
ted to have a talk with someone at town hall.

  26

  Jesse had hoped to avoid the mayor completely, but her black Suburban was parked in its official spot. He knew that once he set foot inside the building, word would leak back to her. So now the best he could hope for was to put off seeing her until after he had spoken to Dick Bradshaw, the town code enforcement officer. Bradshaw’s car, with the Paradise town seal painted on its doors, was in its spot, too. He laughed to himself. One for two wasn’t bad. You bat .500 in baseball and they’d build you a separate wing in Cooperstown.

  Jesse rapped his knuckles on the wavy glass panel of the code enforcement office.

  “Come in.”

  Dick Bradshaw was sitting behind an ancient metal desk cluttered with files and papers, a computer monitor off to one side. Bradshaw’s white uniform shirt fit him about as well as Roscoe Niles’s T-shirt had fit him. Dick had put on some poundage since Jesse had moved to Paradise, and his hair, what was left of it, anyway, had turned a wiry steel gray.

  “Jesse!” Bradshaw said, a big smile on his face as he looked up from his coffee and egg sandwich. “Been a long time since we’ve seen you in here.”

  Jesse nodded to his left, toward the mayor’s offices.

  “Yeah, the mayor certainly has no love for you. What did you ever do to her to make her dislike you so much?”

  “I didn’t have to do anything, Dick. I just had to be who I am.”

  “True. You never were much for playing ball by the politicians’ rules, were you?”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Sit down,” Bradshaw said. “Sit, sit.”

  Jesse sat across from Bradshaw, shaking his hand as he did.

  “Want some coffee, Jesse? I can brew us up another pot.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “So what is it I can do for you, or is it the chief of police I’m speaking to?”

  “Don’t sweat it, Dick. This is off the record.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Maude Cain.”

  Bradshaw’s smile vanished. “Awful news. She was a fine lady and this town wouldn’t be what it is without her family.”

  “Sorry I never met her.”

  “But you’re not here for a testimonial, are you? Makes me wonder what you want with the code enforcement officer.”

  “Relax, Dick. It’s that I hear Maude took in boarders. Don’t you need a license from your department to do that, a food-and-health license from the commonwealth, and a safety inspection certificate from the PFD?”

  Bradshaw shrugged his big round shoulders. “What can I tell you, Jesse? She was already doing it when I took over from Hurley and he told me to just let her be, that she and her family had helped make this town and that I was to lay off or it would be trouble for me. And what was the harm, really? We didn’t have much of a tourist industry back in the day. So when people passed through town there was only the hotel or the few unofficial places where people rented out rooms. If there were going to be tax issues, they would be hers and hers alone, not that anyone in Paradise was going to drop a dime on her. There weren’t even any B-and-Bs in town. You wanted to stay in one of those, you had to go to Marblehead.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “You said it was unofficial, Dick, but did you make her keep any sort of records at all? Did she have to report to you in any way?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did she at least have to keep a guestbook or a roster of guests, anything like that?”

  “Sorry, Jesse. No records, no complicity. We couldn’t risk being held accountable. You know how it works.”

  “I do.”

  “So what is it, Jesse? You think the people who did this to Maude had once stayed with her?”

  “Maybe. At this point, I don’t know anything for sure, but it makes sense to look into all possibilities. You never know if some guy who stayed at the house ended up in jail or prison. Guys on the inside talk a lot of garbage, spin all sorts of bull. One says something about the old lady who had a safe in her house or gold bars. Believe me, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Man, I would hate to think that, but it makes sense. Makes you think twice about letting strangers into your house.”

  “So,” Jesse said, “you can understand why a guestbook would be helpful.”

  “What can I say, Jesse? I don’t know of one. Maybe you should have someone go through the house.”

  “Thanks, Dick. I’ll do that, but thought I’d come here first.”

  “Where you headed now?”

  As he stood, Jesse pointed to Mayor Walker’s office.

  “Once more unto the breach, huh?”

  “Yeah, I might as well get it over with before they come looking for me. And, Dick, keep this conversation strictly between us for now. Anyone asks, make something up.”

  Jesse gave a half-salute to Dick Bradshaw and left, but Nita Thompson, Mayor Walker’s hatchet woman, was there waiting for him.

  27

  Mayor Walker was smiling a predatory smile at Jesse when he walked into her office, and Nita Thompson trailed over his left shoulder. He knew the mayor’s game, what the smile was meant to do, how it was intended to unsettle him. It didn’t. Even if it had, he would never have shown it.

  “Sit, Jesse,” she said, gesturing at the black leather chair in front of her desk. “I have some things to catch up on.”

  He sat. “Thank you. Nice to hear you calling me by my first name again. Does this mean we’re back together?”

  She didn’t respond, turning her head down and making a show of signing some papers while he waited. Some people, he thought, enjoy their power way too much. Jesse had had a commander in L.A. who used to pull the same crap. A real self-important prick. He’d call you into his office and make you sit there while he pretended to be busy. While you waited, he wanted you to look at the walls, at his medals and commendations, at the photos of him with Kareem and Magic, with Jack and Warren Beatty. He wanted you to be impressed by his power. More than that, he wanted you cowed by it. Jesse being Jesse, he never looked. Just kept his eyes straight ahead, staring at Pinkston, turning the tables on his commander, making him uncomfortable.

  “You’re an icy bastard, Stone, you know that?” the commander had once said. “Get the hell out of my office.”

  Jesse took it as high praise.

  So now he sat there in Walker’s office, looking straight ahead at the mayor as she pretended to be busy. If it wasn’t for Diana’s murder, he wouldn’t have even given the mayor’s recent machinations a second thought. He didn’t resent her ambition. He resented her trying to scapegoat him. From day one on the job in Paradise, there had been friction with one politician or another. Usually he bit his tongue and moved on, working with the selectmen or mayors because it was better for the citizens of Paradise if they all worked together. But Jesse would have a hard time forgiving the mayor because of how she had come at him when he was most vulnerable.

  Finally, Mayor Walker looked up from her make-believe work.

  “So, Jesse, you weren’t going to leave the building without stopping by to give me an update on your progress on the Cain murder, were you?”

  “Murder? I wasn’t aware the DA had decided on what charges he would bring.”

  “He hasn’t, but he will. About you leaving the building . . .”

  “No, it was never my intention to leave without stopping in, Madame Mayor. In fact, I was in Dick Bradshaw’s office looking into a potential line of investigation.”

  “Really?” The mayor made a show of tilting her head in curiosity. “I’m listening.”

  “With all due respect, Mayor Walker, I’m uncomfortable sharing details of any investigation at this stage. I am particularly reluctant to do so in front of persons without official standing
.”

  Jesse could see the mayor’s displeasure as plain as day. He felt Nita Thompson’s eyes burning a hole right through him.

  “I take full responsibility for Miss Thompson.”

  “Can I have that in writing? Because we both know that if there’s a leak and the case falls apart, it’s not your door the press will be knocking at.”

  The mayor said, “Chief Stone, you’re being insubordinate.”

  “No, Your Honor, I’m doing my job. We have the names of two potential suspects. Probably aliases or nicknames.”

  “And the reason you were in seeing Bradshaw?”

  “Sorry, Your Honor, I’m not ready to discuss that. I can’t afford for any possible suspects to discover how I might locate them.”

  “You don’t fool me, Stone,” Nita said. “You’re covering your ass.”

  Mayor Walker didn’t like Thompson coming directly at Jesse that way, because it gave him an opening. He stood up and faced the mayor’s political adviser.

  “You ask your boss if that’s what I’m doing, Miss Thompson. From the day I was hired by Hasty Hathaway and his minions who hoped I would screw up and be easy to manipulate, I have never tried to spurn responsibility or hide behind anyone else.” He stepped close to Thompson. “I understand why the mayor doesn’t like me. We’ve had our skirmishes over the years from when she was a selectwoman and during her tenure as mayor. But I don’t get your beef with me.”

  Thompson tried hard to keep her mouth shut, but Jesse had just gotten even deeper under her skin and she couldn’t contain herself.

  “Personally, Chief Stone, I don’t give a damn about you, but you’re a drunk and a cowboy. And I’ve heard the rumors.”

  Jesse’s guts tightened. Sure, he had crossed the line in the name of right more than a few times, but there was one transgression that could get him sent to prison for life: handing Diana’s killer over to Vinnie Morris. He played it cool.