The Hangman's Sonnet

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “I’ll tell you that when we have some idea about the evidence.”

  “C’mon, Jesse, give me something.”

  He thought about that for a second before answering. His instinct was to say nothing. He still didn’t trust Nita as far as he could throw her, but he also knew that having her in his debt for once might not be a bad thing.

  “There’s something not right about this.”

  She laughed a laugh disconnected from amusement. “Not right! Nothing’s right about this.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’ve done a fair amount of homicide investigations. I’ve been to a lot of murder scenes and this one just feels wrong.”

  “Wrong how?”

  Again, he hesitated. He didn’t want to say anything that she might be able to turn against him later if his sense was wrong.

  “Just this,” he said. “If you were Curnutt, would you come back to Paradise? And it was called in by an anonymous caller, not to nine-one-one, but to the station landline. Someone wanted us to know the body was here and wasn’t waiting for a jogger to find him.”

  “You think it was the killer?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jeez, Jesse, do you think you have some kind of psycho on your hands?”

  Nita’s use of the word you didn’t escape Jesse’s notice. Jesse had given her all he was going to. “I think a lot of things right now. That’s why I have to see what comes of the evidence.”

  Nita Thompson shook her head. “Two murders in town in less than a week. It’s a nightmare for all of us.”

  Jesse understood that the biggest nightmare was his. Nita and the mayor’s nightmare was about how to spin the news and control the fallout. His was solving the murders and saving his job.

  41

  Jesse didn’t particularly enjoy using his authority in a threatening way, but there were times he just had to. He hated bullying people. Hated bullies. Hated them as a kid, as a ballplayer—even when they were teammates—and as a cop. As a cop most of all. He had his share of run-ins with them since his arrival in Paradise. It never ended well for the bullies. And so it was with very little enthusiasm that he warned the guys who worked for the ME’s office about not revealing the exact location of where the body had been found.

  “Not a word,” he said, giving them both an icy stare. “Not to your wives, not to your kids, not to your friends. No one. You do and you’ll answer to me.”

  He’d asked Tamara to reinforce his message. She agreed, but was curious.

  “What’s the point, Jesse?”

  “Until I know what’s really going on here, I don’t need any other headaches.”

  “You know, Jesse, it’s impolite to lie to your friends. What’s the real reason?”

  “I don’t like speculating about crimes, especially murders, but my hunch is that the person who killed our vic called it in.”

  “Why, and why wait a day?”

  “Good questions. The obvious answer is that he wanted us to know. The less obvious reason is why he wanted us to know. Why wait a day? My guess is that he was hoping a jogger or someone walking their dog would stumble across the body. When that didn’t happen, he got impatient.”

  “Sounds more like he needed you to find the body more than wanted you to,” she said.

  Jesse smiled at her. “Exactly. It’s like he needs the attention of the press. So I want to starve him of the attention as much as we can. Things work best when everyone’s agendas line up. At the moment, I don’t want to deal with the press any more than the mayor does. And if the killer’s trying to screw with my department . . . good luck with that.”

  “What if you’re too successful with robbing him of attention and he kills again?”

  Jesse ignored the question. “When will I get the autopsy results?”

  “Voilà!” she said, handing him the file. “It’s him, by the way, Curnutt. We printed him and sent the prints to Lundquist and your office. Got an immediate hit.”

  “Good. And don’t worry about another body turning up. Curnutt’s wasn’t an impulse or random killing.”

  “You look more human than you did this morning, and you smell a lot better.”

  He answered without looking up from the file. “Molly gave me a few hours’ cover and I got some sleep and some food in me. Amazing what a shower, shave, and some cologne will do.”

  “Okay, Jesse, leave the file and get out of my office. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” he said, put the file down on Tamara’s desk, and walked to the door.

  “Jesse,” she called after him. “You can’t keep drinking this way. You just can’t.”

  “Why not? Afraid my liver will explode?”

  “There’s that, too, but no. You can’t keep on like this because it’s selfish and you’re not a selfish man.”

  —

  TAMARA’S PARTING WORDS rang in Jesse’s head louder than the hammer that had pounded in it earlier that day. So loud that he could barely pay attention as he sat across the table from Lundquist at Daisy’s. He did have the wherewithal to introduce Lundquist to Daisy when she brought the coffeepot over to their booth. She was her usual diplomatic self. Which is to say it was a good thing Lundquist wasn’t easily offended.

  “Lundquist, huh? Norwegian?”

  “Swedish.”

  “Too bad.” She didn’t elaborate.

  Jesse said, “He’s taken over Captain Healy’s job.”

  “Healy. I liked Healy. He was a good tipper. Swedes good tippers?”

  “Depends,” Lundquist said.

  Daisy sneered at him and shook her head. “Wrong answer, son. Wrong answer.”

  “She always so charming?” Lundquist asked when she walked away.

  Jesse said, “On her good days, yeah. You read the autopsy report?”

  “It’s Curnutt.”

  Jesse wanted to know, “Anything else in the report catch your eye?”

  Lundquist didn’t answer right away. He reached for his coffee mug instead, put in an obscene amount of sugar and a few drops of cream. Halfway to his lips, he put his coffee mug back on the table. “Wait a second. Is this right? There were traces of filter paper and metal fragments in the wounds not from the bullets dug out of the body. Holy sh—crap, the killer used a homemade sound suppressor.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “What’s that tell you, Brian?”

  “It’s evidence of premeditation.”

  “What else?”

  “He used a homemade suppressor. Tells me he was an amateur.”

  “Or not. Maybe he just wants us to think he is.”

  Lundquist rubbed his left hand across his cheek. “You think this guy is playing with us?”

  Jesse didn’t say anything. He just sat there drinking his coffee.

  42

  This time, the press conference was held at the police station and Mayor Walker was nowhere in sight. Even Nita Thompson hadn’t gotten closer than a TV screen in her office. If Jesse’s plan to starve the media of information went wrong, it would blow up in his face and his face alone. It would also supply the mayor with the excuse she’d been looking for to make Jesse an issue. Nothing like firing someone to look like a woman of action and to draw attention away from the real issue at hand.

  Jesse understood the risks. He knew that Nita Thompson hadn’t gone along with his plan out of the goodness of her heart. He still wasn’t sure she had a heart. No, she had gone along with it because there was only an upside for her client. It was a win-win situation for the mayor, no matter how things turned out. But why had Jesse done it if all the risk was his? That was simple. He’d bought himself and his cops room to maneuver. In the end, what mattered to Jesse wasn’t losing his job or looking good in the press. What mattered was catching the bad guys.

  What had become pretty c
lear to him, even if it wasn’t yet clear to anyone else, was that the ransacking of Maude Cain’s house, her death, and Kirk Kingston Curnutt’s murder were a continuation of the same crime. In spite of Jesse’s own rules about jumping to conclusions, he knew there had to be a connection. The bigger question was: Why murder Curnutt in that spot? Why murder him in Paradise at all? The answer seemed an obvious one: to draw as much attention as possible. For the moment, there was nothing to do on Curnutt’s homicide until some of the forensics results came back.

  “Molly, come into my office,” he said after the press had cleared out.

  She wasn’t happy. “What is it, Jesse? I’m exhausted.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  “Five minutes! I gave you two hours and I’ve been on the clock since . . . Jeez, I don’t even remember which shift I started on.”

  “Think of the overtime pay.”

  “Right after I stop thinking about strangling you. You drink and I suffer. How does that work?”

  “Believe me, Molly, I suffered. I’m still suffering. I’m probably going to suffer all night if I don’t take a—”

  “Woe is you.”

  “Molly!”

  “I’m sorry, Jesse Stone. I love you, but I’m done with risking my ass for you.”

  “Come on, Molly.”

  “It’s not funny anymore. I’ve got two of the girls in college, and my pension, good as it is, wouldn’t cut it.”

  “I’m sorry, Molly. You know what I think of you.”

  “It’s not even me, Jesse. When Suit helps me with you, it’s one thing. Okay, he looks up to you. He would risk anything for you. He has. That was his choice. But you made me put Alisha at risk, and that’s where I draw the line.”

  And there they were again, Tamara Elkin’s words about Jesse’s drinking, his selfishness going round and round in his head.

  He nodded. “It won’t happen again.”

  Molly was skeptical, but she had already said more than she wanted to. She didn’t have any energy left for a fight.

  “All right, I surrender, Jesse. What did you want?”

  “Maude Cain’s house.”

  “What about it?”

  “Remember I asked you to go through it and look for a—”

  “A log book or registration books. Right.”

  “Well?”

  Without a word, Molly stood up from the chair across from Jesse’s desk and left the office. She came back a minute later carrying an evidence bag. Inside the clear plastic was what seemed to be three old-fashioned composition books, the kind with the rigid black-and-white cardboard covers and the black fabric binding. The kind Jesse had used as a kid in school but were no longer very common.

  “In all the excitement, I forgot about it,” Molly said. “I found them in the basement. They’re pretty beat up and they’re more about financial recordkeeping than they are registration books, but there are plenty of names in them.”

  “Recognize any of them?”

  Molly shrugged.

  “All right, get out of here. Come in tomorrow when you want, but once you’re here, you’re going to get all the overtime you can handle . . . for the right reasons.”

  She left without another word. When the door closed behind her, Jesse reached into his drawer for some gloves. But before examining the notebooks, he stood, looked out his window at the water, at Stiles Island. When he turned back around, he reached for his desk phone and dialed Dix’s number.

  43

  He hadn’t seen Dix for months. They had spoken on the phone once or twice since Diana’s murder and Dix had made some noises about the possibility of Jesse coming in to talk about what had gone down. He had offered the sessions free of charge. It wasn’t standard operating procedure, but most cops don’t become psychotherapists. Dix had a unique perspective. He understood the kinds of risks cops and those close to them live with day to day and, for that reason alone, he was willing to waive his fee. But Jesse couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d made an appointment and canceled it a few days before he was to go. That was two months ago. Now here he was again, finally.

  They shook hands, Dix holding on to Jesse’s hand a little longer than usual. He stared into his eyes a little deeper than normal. Jesse understood that this was Dix’s way of expressing his sorrow beyond the words he had spoken to him over the phone last night. Dix gestured to the chair Jesse had sat in for most of his previous sessions and Jesse took it with little ceremony. They sat there in silence for a few minutes, feeling each other out. This was how it went unless Jesse came in to discuss a case in the guise of coming for a real session. Dix got paid either way.

  “You called me, Jesse,” Dix said, prodding his patient. “That means you’ve got something to talk about.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A case?”

  “No.”

  Another two minutes passed before Jesse broke the silence.

  “You think I’m selfish?”

  “Do you?”

  Jesse smiled at the corners of his mouth, not because Dix was funny, but because he answered Jesse’s question with a question. This was how it went with them, and Jesse found some small comfort in Dix’s predictable responses, even if they often infuriated him.

  “I don’t usually think about it.”

  “But you’re thinking about it now?”

  “Yesterday, Molly and Tamara Elkin—”

  “Tamara Elkin?”

  “The county medical examiner. I’ve mentioned her before . . . I think. Both Molly and Tamara told me I was selfish.”

  “Do their opinions matter?”

  “I’m here.”

  Now it was Dix’s turn to smile. “You pay more per spoken word than any other client I have ever had, and that’s saying something.”

  “They didn’t say I was selfish, not exactly, and it was more than what they said.”

  The light of understanding went on behind Dix’s eyes, but all he said was “Go on.”

  More silence. Then, “They said my drinking was selfish.”

  “You’re drinking heavily again?”

  Jesse made a face that betrayed his feelings, which, for Jesse, was out of the ordinary. Part of his whole self-contained aura was that he didn’t give away what was going on inside him. He supposed he paid a price for that, but it was how he was wired. Even Dix was surprised by it.

  “I know you think some of my questions are obvious ones,” Dix said, “but why don’t you put that expression into words?”

  “If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have made the face.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it for you, Jesse, since we’re already being a little unconventional today. Your expression says to me that the woman you loved and had asked to marry was murdered in front of you and that you blame yourself for it. So only an idiot would ask if you were drinking. That about sum it up?”

  “About.”

  “But see, Jesse, here’s the thing. Not everybody would be drinking heavily again, not even all alcoholics.”

  “Well, they’re not me.”

  “Nobody is. Would anybody want to be?”

  “Getting metaphysical on me now, Dix?”

  But Dix wasn’t having it. “What happened that made these two important women in your life choose yesterday to tell you your drinking was selfish?”

  Jesse explained about how, during the press conference at town hall, the guilt and grief had crept back in, how Nita’s looks and manner had reminded him of Abby, of Abby’s murder. He explained how that started a chain reaction that resulted in him reliving Diana’s death. He talked about how he had guzzled himself into oblivion. He recounted how Molly and Alisha had probably saved his job.

  “Do you think your drinking is selfish?” Dix asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s alw
ays the easy part.”

  Jesse furrowed his brow. “What is?”

  “Recognition.”

  “What’s the hard part?”

  Dix laughed. “Deciding what to do about it.”

  44

  Hump had done what King asked in his note and hadn’t ventured out of the motel room for the last few days. It was easy enough. Flush with his seven grand cash, he’d ordered in Chinese food and pizza, but only from places that had Pepsi bottles or cans. He was pretty sure some chick at a Chinese takeout place had cursed at him after he told her to skip the order if they didn’t sell Pepsi. She kept telling him “Only Coke. Only Coke,” her voice getting louder and louder until she was screaming at him, “Only Coke!”

  Looking in the mirror now, finger-combing his hair after getting out of the shower, he thought that she wouldn’t have screamed at him if he was standing right in front of her. No, she woulda shut her stupid mouth and offered to go next door to the deli and buy him some Pepsi. Woulda paid for it, too. And he had also splurged on some movies. He had watched some of them three times. He liked the one about the guy trapped on Mars. He liked that one a lot. When you’ve been inside, been in solitary, you understand what that’s like. Except that inside, hope runs out before the bad food. He also watched some skin flicks. He didn’t like them as much because they only frustrated him. He had a better chance of getting trapped on Mars than getting to be with any of them girls. Then he looked at the wad of cash on the dresser and realized that even a guy with a face like his could get anything with enough money.

  Hump clicked on the TV, figuring he’d lay low for one more day and then move on. He could go a long way on what was left of his seven grand. Plus he still had some of his release money stashed away. He thought about where he might go. He thought about going someplace hot and dry, someplace where it didn’t rain a lot. He didn’t like rain. Hated it. It was always bleak inside, but there were times the rain darkened the place so, he thought about killing himself or killing someone else just to make the rain in his head go away. He wanted to get as far from the rain as he could get. Tomorrow, he thought, when he left this dump, he’d get himself some maps of the Southwest, buy himself a bus ticket, and just go. But first he had to see about selling the dragonfly ring.