The Hangman's Sonnet

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  King slowed to a stop and turned left onto the road that led into the wooded area of town north of the Bluffs that ran along Sawtooth Creek. From what he could tell downtown, Paradise wasn’t a hive of activity, but it was Times Square compared to the road he was on now. The trees were so thick that the canopy nearly blotted out the moonlight. When he spotted the metal gate for the access road, he stopped and got out of the Subaru. The gate was unlocked, as he was told it would be. He swung it open, got back into the car, drove up the road to the utility shed, and parked.

  As he’d done at the meet at the supermarket, King had come early to make sure this wasn’t a trap, not that he thought his employer capable of such a thing. He’d known guys like him all his life, inside and out of the joint—street-savvy users, tough in their way, but not hard. Setting a trap of the kind where someone winds up dead took more sand than people thought. King hadn’t ever killed a man, though he’d been mad enough at the gas-station attendant to crack his skull. Whether the guy had the stuff to set a trap or not, King did his due diligence.

  Turning the car in a slow circle, using its headlights, he looked for cars hidden in the darkness or for a silhouette that didn’t belong. All he saw were some tiny pairs of glistening eyes, eyes that were there one second and then gone the next.

  Out of the car, he had a look inside the utility shed, a flimsy old wooden structure that held nothing more than a broken rake handle and a million spiderwebs. He looked for tire tracks that didn’t belong to the Subaru. And he listened. It was a waste of time. All he could hear was the faint sound of flowing water and the chittering of insects. About ten minutes later he heard the distinctive sound of tires spitting out rocks on the dirt road and he caught the sweep of headlights coming his way.

  King poked his head back into the car, checked the dashboard clock, and clapped his hands together. “Right on time.”

  But even before the car came to a stop, King felt something wasn’t right. The car wasn’t right. The man who’d hired him wasn’t the four-door-sedan type, and when he saw the stranger get out of the car, King knew there might be trouble. So when King got out of the Subaru, he came out with his nine-millimeter pointed right at the man’s midsection.

  “Relax, tough guy,” the stranger said, raising his empty hands to the sky.

  “Who are you?” King asked.

  “I’m the guy with your money.” And then, as if anticipating King’s next question, he said, “You didn’t think our mutual friend was really going to drive around with nearly a million in cash in his front seat, did you? He strike you as the kind of man to do that?”

  “Let’s see it. And, mister, if you know what’s good for you, reach back into the car slow, very slow.”

  The man did as King demanded and pulled a big leather satchel out of the sedan. He swung it, tossing it so that it landed about ten feet in front of King’s car. “It’s all there, but go ahead and check.”

  King, keeping the nine-millimeter raised, took slow, measured steps toward the bag. “Stay right where you are.”

  “It’s all there.”

  “So you said.”

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” the money man asked. “How do you think the shithead who hired you found you?”

  King waved his gun dismissively. “I got no time for this. Don’t matter to me who you are.”

  Then, finally, with the money tugging him to his knees like a magnet, King lowered his gun and unzipped the satchel. “Hey, what the f—? Newspapers! Goddamned newspapers. You mother—”

  King swung the nine-millimeter back up, but it was already too late. When he looked up from the leather bag, he saw something that confused him into inaction. It looked like an orange oil filter. Then he noticed it was attached to the end of a gun. Just as he made sense of it, there was a flash. He was already dead by the time the soft bark of the shot reached his ears. Good thing he was dead, too. As hard as his head hit the rock in the dirt beneath him, it would have really hurt.

  35

  For the first time in Jesse’s recent memory, Nita Thompson and the mayor seemed pleased to breathe the same air he did. He knew better. It wouldn’t last. In fact, the mayor was trying her darnedest to poke holes in their détente, even as Nita Thompson was working the phones with the Boston media.

  “You’re one-hundred-percent positive these are the men?” Mayor Walker asked, biting her lip in anticipation.

  “No.”

  “No!”

  “These are the names given to me by a confidential informant and Rudy Walsh picked both men out of separate photo arrays. Am I sure these are the men? Yes. Am I a hundred percent sure? No.”

  “I’m going to go in front of cameras and microphones in an hour and I don’t intend to look foolish when I do so, nor do I want to be proved a fool later on.”

  “Prisons are full of innocent men and women. Just ask anyone inside. But there are actually a few who don’t belong there, and that’s not right. No doubt the people who put them in there were sure they were guilty. Maybe they were a hundred percent sure.”

  “Save the sermons for Sunday school, Jesse. Give me an answer.”

  “I’m as sure as I’m going to be until I get a voluntary confession.”

  “This confidential informant. You trust him?”

  “I didn’t say it was a him.”

  “Don’t be obstinate, Jesse.”

  “I trust my source and there was no doubt in Rudy Walsh’s mind. He didn’t hesitate for a second. Went right to both of them.”

  Nita Thompson put down the phone and stepped between the nearly warring parties, finding herself in the unlikely position of peacemaker.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “This is a good day all around. A win for the mayor and for the Paradise PD.”

  Jesse said, “When we bring them in, it’ll be a win.”

  The mayor pointed at Jesse. “And he can’t say he’s a hundred percent sure these are the perpetrators.”

  That displeased Thompson.

  “Look, Stone, the mayor is going to put herself on the line here. So you better be damned sure about your facts.”

  Jesse had reached his politics-tolerance threshold. He had been through this same two-step in L.A. with a few high-profile homicide cases. Ones where there was a lot of public pressure to solve the cases and/or a load of political capital to be gained. The pols and the commissioners were always hot to parade any piece of good news in front of the media but never wanted to risk blowback if the details turned out to be less than rock-solid. He’d been through it on an almost yearly basis here in Paradise. If it wasn’t the mayor, it was a selectman who wanted to reap all the benefit while letting Jesse take all the risk. His job had been threatened so many times, he’d lost count. He stared directly into Nita Thompson’s eyes.

  “No, Nita, you look. You want the mayor to take a lap of honor before we even have these guys in custody and have a chance to question them, that’s on you.”

  Thompson withered under Jesse’s gaze, her upper lip twitching slightly. She didn’t like it, but she knew he was right. The mayor screwed up her face, opened her mouth to say something. Nita Thompson stopped her by speaking first.

  “What do you suggest, Chief?”

  “Let the mayor make a brief statement. Something about her commitment to keeping Paradise safe for its citizens, but noncommittal in terms of the suspects. Then let her turn the announcement about the potential suspects over to Lundquist and me. She gets face time on camera, but it’s the staties and the Paradise PD who’ll take the lumps if I’m wrong.”

  Nita Thompson fiddled with her fingers and her lips as she listened. “I’ll never underestimate you again, Chief,” she said. “You’re better at this game than I imagined.”

  Jesse shook his head in disdain.

  “What’s that about, Jesse?” the mayor wanted to know. “Nita
just gave you a compliment. The polite thing to do is to say ‘Thank you.’”

  “Game? Polite thing to do? This is where people like you, Miss Thompson, and I part ways. You see this as a game, as a lever to boost your career or a club to beat mine down. I played a game for a living for a long time. I know what a game is and I know what police work is. I never get them confused. When you decide how you want the press conference to go, call me.”

  He turned and headed out of the mayor’s office, making sure not to slam the door shut behind him.

  36

  There was a lot more media in the room than Jesse would have believed for an announcement that just as easily could have been put out in a succinct press release, but he realized this was how it was going to be until the mayor ran for whatever office was the next rung on the ambition ladder. The one thing that gave him hope was the clause in the Paradise charter prohibiting a current officeholder in town to run for county, state, or national office without first resigning from their position in Paradise. Not that Jesse thought he’d click his heels on the day Walker resigned and left town with Nita Thompson. Politicians came and went, but one was much like the other. When the crime rate was low, they took the credit. When it ticked up or particularly when there was violence, they came looking for a scapegoat. Chief Scapegoat was Jesse Stone’s unofficial title.

  Mayor Walker raised her hands to shush the crowd. She stood in front of the microphone-laden lectern, Jesse and Lundquist behind her left shoulder. Nita Thompson lurked off to her right.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to make a very brief statement,” she said, “after which I am going to turn the lectern over to Paradise chief of police Jesse Stone and Brian Lundquist from the state police. They will answer all of your questions.”

  As the mayor spoke of keeping Paradise safe for its citizens and visitors, Jesse noticed Nita Thompson studying the crowd, checking out members of the press, taking a head count of who had shown up and who hadn’t. He also imagined she was trying to figure out which members of the press were ready to pounce. Jesse understood that the calculus of digital media and modern politics meant there were no longer any unimportant public appearances. The least noteworthy elected official in the smallest town in the most remote reaches of the nation might turn up in a viral video on YouTube if he or she made a big enough ass of themselves. These days, even the local dog catcher had to seem presidential on-air. It was also why Jesse was happy he didn’t have to run for office and why Nita Thompson had advised the mayor to take Jesse’s advice and let the cops take all the risks. That was a cop’s job, wasn’t it, to take the risks?

  Thompson looked over at Jesse and nodded. Jesse nodded back. It was a familiar if unexpected show of mutual respect. It was what happened on the baseball field when you faced a player you hated but admired for his skill and competitiveness. It had been a long time between those kinds of grudging looks for Jesse. And Jesse wasn’t big on doffing his cap to murderers and thieves. He knew that most career criminals were losers, lazy men and women who lacked impulse control and who sometimes got lucky. Criminal masterminds were for TV and books. The movies, too, probably, but Jesse enjoyed only Westerns.

  He had come across very few exceptions to the lazy-loser profile. There was Crow, of course, Jesse’s dark opposite number: cool, self-contained, supremely competent, and irresistible to women. He grinned, thinking of Crow. It didn’t last, as Jesse thought of the other exception he’d encountered in Paradise. That exception had murdered Diana. The sting of that encounter would stay with Jesse for the rest of his life. In fact, he was so distracted by reliving that awful moment that he didn’t hear the mayor call his name. It was only when he noticed Nita Thompson nodding furiously at him and he felt Lundquist tap him on the shoulder that he came back to the present. But even as he came most of the way back into the moment, all he wanted was a drink. No, not a drink. Lots of drinks.

  Jesse had been able to hold the memories at bay for the last few days, distracted by the case, by the mayor’s machinations, and by whatever was going on between him and Tamara. But now it was back, all of it, the scene playing over in his head even as he stepped up to the microphone. He had fooled himself that he could hold the memories at arm’s length and that as long as he could, he could control his drinking. As he started to speak, he thought he could hear Dix laughing at him.

  When the press conference was over, after Jesse had identified the two suspects and Lundquist had said his part, after they had answered all the questions—mostly the same three questions asked in different ways: How do you know these are the two men? How close are you to arresting them? Are they dangerous?—and the press had left town hall to go file their stories, Jesse took off. But of all people, it was Nita Thompson who tracked him down before he could get into his Explorer.

  “Are you all right?” she asked with what sounded like real concern in her voice.

  He lied. “Uh-huh. Why?”

  “Because for the first time since I’ve met you, you seemed shaken up there. In my few months here with the mayor, I’ve studied you, Jesse Stone.”

  “Like a lab rat?”

  “Hardly. I’m interested to know what makes a man like you tick.”

  “Batteries.”

  “Very funny, Chief.”

  Given where he was headed and what he meant to do when he got there, Jesse wasn’t about to argue with her. But she had his attention.

  “Why the shift in strategy?” he asked. “Tired of playing the bad cop?”

  She didn’t flinch. “I’m not playing the bad cop. I’m doing my job. But this isn’t strategy and I’m not working now.”

  “People who do your job are always on the clock.”

  “Most of the time, that’s true.”

  “What’s different now?”

  “I’m tired of being alone here,” she said, digging a cigarette out of her bag and lighting it. “I could use some company other than the mayor.”

  Jesse had to admit she sounded sincere and that under other circumstances he might have asked her to join him in his plunge down the rabbit hole. In some ways she resembled Abby, another woman who had met a bad end because she was close to Jesse. That realization about Thompson’s resemblance to Abby only increased Jesse’s thirst and his desire to get out of there. He raised his arm and pointed south.

  “What are you doing, Jesse?”

  “Boston’s fifteen miles that way. Easy not to be lonely there.”

  Thompson took in a deep lungful of smoke and let it out slowly, a wry smile on her face.

  “I take it that’s a no,” she said.

  “It’s a not today.”

  She flicked the cigarette down and tamped it out under her shoe. “Fair enough.”

  He nodded and pulled open the Explorer’s door. When he got in, Thompson tapped on the driver’s-side window. Jesse lowered it.

  “You’re wrong about Boston,” she said. “I went to school there. Sometimes it can be the loneliest place on earth.”

  Jesse watched her retreat back toward town hall and thought about how hard most people worked at hiding who and what they really were.

  37

  It was the phone. It sounded far, far away, and when it stopped ringing he wasn’t sure he hadn’t dreamed it. Its ring, real or imagined, roused him just enough to make him aware of the pounding in his head and the intense nausea welling up in him. He thought about trying to get up to get water, to swallow some aspirin, or to just throw up. But he couldn’t move, pinned to the sofa like a bug catcher’s specimen waiting for the jar or to be framed for a spot on the wall next to Ozzie.

  Ozzie. Ozzie had been his only company last night as he slowly drank himself into the state he found himself in now. He forced his eyes open. That hurt almost as much as the pounding in his head, but he had to look at the poster. Jesse liked the sight of the soft-handed, acrobatic shortstop su
spended in midair, liked to imagine how he might’ve handled the same play. He was a different kind of shortstop than the Wizard of Oz. Jesse’s hands weren’t as soft. Nobody’s were. He hadn’t been nearly as acrobatic, and though his range was above average, it couldn’t touch Ozzie’s. But as all the scouts had said of him, Jesse had the most powerful infield arm they had ever seen, better even than Shawon Dunston’s. That meant Jesse could position himself more deeply in the hole and had more time to make the hard plays than other shortstops. He remembered thinking he couldn’t get more deeply in the hole than he already was when he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  This time it wasn’t the phone that roused him, but someone shaking him. Tamara? No, it had been just Ozzie and him last night. Had he misremembered? He went into fight-or-flight mode. For Jesse it wasn’t ever much of a choice. It was always fight. He jumped off the sofa, swinging his left arm in front of him to sweep away the immediate threat and to create space between himself and his attacker. Only the actions that seemed to him to be lightning-fast were, in fact, laughably slow and disjointed. His left arm missed his perceived attacker by a mile and his leap off the couch was more of a stumble and fall over the coffee table. And when he hit the floor, the pain in his head nearly split him in two.

  “Jesse! Jesse! Get up! Get up.” He heard a woman’s voice call to him from the top of the well into which he’d fallen.

  “Jesse. Jesse.” Another woman was at the top of the well, calling to him.