Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  Jo Jo laughed again. Jesse felt like he’d bathed in dirty water. He shut off the tape recorder.

  “Think about something, Jo Jo,” Jesse said. “When I suspended Lou Burke, Hasty was so worried about what Burke might say that he had you kill him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve actually arrested you, and you know more than Burke.”

  “You think he’ll try for me?”

  “He’ll have to,” Jesse said. “Or he’s a goner.”

  “How’s he gonna get me in here?” Jo Jo said.

  “My guess is he’ll try to get you out of here, one way or another.”

  “And?”

  “And kill you,” Jesse said. “You know the Horsemen. Do they believe in him?”

  “Yeah. Assholes. They think he’s freakin’ George Washington.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You think he’ll try to kill me?”

  “I think he’ll try to kill us both,” Jesse said.

  Chapter 76

  When Suitcase Simpson pulled up in his own car behind the men in battle dress fatigues gathered around the station, he could see Jesse on the front steps with a shotgun. There were no lights showing at the station, but several men in the crowd had flashlights focused on Jesse. Simpson parked quietly on the street and got out. He was in uniform, wearing a bulletproof vest. He carried a shotgun and his service pistol. He stood silently in the shadows behind the Horsemen.

  Two steps forward of the other Horsemen, Hasty Hathaway stood very straight in front of Jesse.

  “We’re relieving you of your duties,” he said to Jesse. “And we are coming to take your prisoner.”

  Simpson felt someone move up beside him. It was Abby Taylor. She had on something that looked like a navy pea coat and the collar was high up around her head so that Simpson could barely see her face. Her hands were deep in her pockets. She looked briefly at Simpson and then looked at Jesse on the station steps. Neither of them spoke.

  On the steps Jesse worked the pump on his shotgun and jacked a shell up into the chamber. The sound of the action was very sharp in the quiet night. Jesse was wearing a vest too, Simpson noted.

  “Couple of things, Hasty,” Jesse said.

  His voice wasn’t loud but it carried and the men were very still, nearly trancelike, confronting the stunning thing they were about to do.

  “First,” Jesse said. “Anything happens here and I’ll kill you.”

  As he spoke Jesse raised the shotgun slowly and aimed it directly at Hasty. Before he could stop himself, Hasty took a step back.

  “Second,” Jesse said. “I’m arresting you for the murders of Tom Carson, Tammy Portugal, and Lou Burke.”

  Peter Perkins’s Mazda pickup pulled in beside Simpson’s car, and Perkins and Anthony DeAngelo got out, with shotguns and vests. They looked at Simpson. Silently Simpson gestured that they should spread out behind the Horsemen. Molly Crane arrived on foot. She was wearing sweats and sneakers and her service pistol. Her badge was pinned to the sweatshirt. Simpson pointed her to the left and she nodded and went.

  “You can’t bluff us, Stone,” Hasty said. He felt dreadful about stepping back. His face felt hot. He tried to make his voice cut like Jesse’s had. “We have relieved you of duty. Step aside or . . . step aside . . . or be killed.”

  “I hear one round go up into one chamber,” Jesse said, “and I will shoot you dead, Hasty.”

  Hasty didn’t step back this time, but he glanced automatically around at his troops to see that no one put a round up.

  “You are a murderer and a goddamned fraud. What you really want is to kill me, and to kill Jo Jo. What were you going to do, rush the jail and shoot him? Claim it was a stray bullet? Poor Jo Jo. You gotta kill him because he knows. You tell your men how you got conned on the arms deal? Jo Jo knows. You tell them how you were sleeping with Tammy Portugal until she wanted to get serious, then you had Jo Jo kill her? You tell them how you had Tom Carson killed? Jo Jo could tell them.”

  As Jesse talked the other cops drifted in: John Maguire, Arthur Angstrom, Eddie Cox, Billy Pope, Pat Sears.

  “You tell them that when I had some evidence on Lou Burke you had Jo Jo throw him off the top of Indian Hill?”

  Something like an inaudible sigh moved through the Horsemen as Jesse talked. Hasty felt it. He looked at the small dark eye of Jesse’s shotgun only five feet away, and he backed away.

  In the darkness behind the Horsemen Suitcase Simpson spoke softly to Abby, still standing beside him.

  “Go to Peter Perkins’s truck. When you see the lights go on in my car turn them on in the truck.”

  Sheltered among his troops, shielded by other Horsemen from the gaze of Jesse’s shotgun, Hasty said in as much voice as he could command, “Third squad marksmen, prepare to fire.”

  A set of headlights behind them went on, and then a second set and the Horsemen were bathed in light. Then Simpson’s voice, amplified by a bullhorn, came from the darkness behind the light.

  “This is the Paradise Police,” the voice said. “We have you surrounded. Put down your weapons.”

  There was a long frozen silence. The Horsemen nearest Hasty turned and looked at him, waiting. Hasty didn’t know what to do. He had not thought of this. He didn’t know what to do. With the shotgun held in his right hand and pointing straight toward the sky, Jesse walked down the steps of the station and shoved past three Horsemen to stand in front of Hasty. His face was right next to Hasty’s.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Jesse said. “You have the right to an attorney.”

  Hasty started to back away and Jesse stayed close to him, walking him backward through the Horsemen as he recited the Miranda rights. The battle-dressed Horsemen parted silently as Hasty backed out of the group and into the police perimeter in the darkness beyond the headlights. Behind the headlights Suitcase Simpson stopped him with a hand in his back. Molly came out of the darkness and handed Jesse a pair of handcuffs and Jesse snapped them onto Hasty’s wrists. In the distance, sounding very clearly through the quiet night, came the sound of sirens.

  “That’ll be the state cops,” Simpson said.

  “You call them?” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good thought.”

  The sound of the sirens broke the last resistance among the Horsemen. They began to drop their weapons and move away from the station. As the sirens got louder the Horsemen began to move faster and soon they were running, out of the bright headlights, past the silent policemen who made no attempt to stop them, heading home in the darkness, leaving their rifles and shotguns on the ground where they had stood.

  Chapter 77

  The sky over the harbor was beginning to get light. Jesse felt gray and empty, his mouth dry and bitter, with the flat joyless contumescence of dissipated tension. He was at his desk in his office with Healy, the state police captain.

  “How’d it go down?” Healy said.

  Jesse’s voice was soft and Healy had to lean forward to hear him.

  “Kid named Michelle Merchant. Her father’s a Horseman. She heard the plan and told a woman I know, Abby Taylor.”

  “The town attorney,” Healy said.

  “Sometimes. Abby called the station, but the phones were dead, so she called Suit—Simpson—one of my cops.”

  “Well, now you know whose side your department is on.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Good to know,” Healy said.

  Jesse nodded again, a movement so small that Healy wasn’t sure he’d made it.

  “You talk to Wyoming?” Healy said.

  “Yeah. They want Hathaway for blowing up Tom Carson.”

  “The prosecutors will work it out,” Healy said. “Genest going to stand up when it’s time to testify?
”

  Jesse nodded again. “He knows Hathaway was trying to kill him last night,” Jesse said. “He’ll talk until you don’t want to listen.”

  “What do you want to do about the rest of the mob?” Healy said.

  Jesse didn’t answer for so long that Healy thought maybe Jesse hadn’t heard him. Finally Jesse shrugged slightly.

  “I think most of them are harmless,” he said.

  “You know who most of them are?”

  “I can put together a list of Horsemen. Be harder to prove that any particular one was here last night,” Jesse said.

  “Might be some federal charges,” Healy said. “Armed insurrection?”

  “I’ll let the Feds worry about that,” Jesse said. “Most of these guys are just guilty of being jerks.”

  “Lot of that going around,” Healy said.

  “A lot,” Jesse said. “I’ll settle for lifting their gun permits.”

  “Probably a way to do that,” Healy said. “You know the kid blew the whistle on them?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “Good kid?”

  “Kind of a burnout,” Jesse said.

  “Well, she saved your ass.”

  “I plan to mention that to her,” Jesse said. “Abby Taylor too.”

  The light from the east was whiter now, making the electric lights in Jesse’s office look weak.

  “You should get out of here,” Healy said. “There’s going to be a lot to do later.”

  Jesse nodded and swiveled in his chair and looked out his window. There was a television van with its odd-looking antenna parked next to the police cruisers. Channel Three/Action News was stenciled on the side.

  “And the media is always with us,” he said.

  “I’m getting too old for this all-night shit,” Healy said. “You got a bottle of whiskey somewhere?”

  Jesse took it out of his bottom drawer and put it on the desk in front of Healy.

  “Glass on the windowsill,” Jesse said.

  “Join me?”

  Jesse shook his head. Healy poured about an inch and drank it down. Then he capped the bottle and pushed it back across the desk toward Jesse. Jesse didn’t stir. He was too tired to put it away.

  “How long you been on this job?” Healy said.

  “About six months.”

  “Nice start,” Healy said.

  After Healy left, Jesse sat for a while until he got the strength to get up. He walked past the television crew without speaking, and got in his car and went home. He was so tired it was hard to focus on the road. The sun was up by the time he got home and there was a different tone to the black winter water in the harbor. He parked in his slot and walked heavily up the steps to his condominium. When he opened the door he heard the television. He closed the door quietly behind him and took out his gun and walked softly to the living room. Sitting on the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table watching the early-morning news was his ex-wife.

  “Jesus Christ, Jenn,” Jesse said.

  She stood and smiled at him.

  “You’re okay,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “The janitor let me in,” Jenn said. “I told him I was your wife.”

  “You’re not,” Jesse said. “We’re divorced.”

  “I saw on the news about last night,” Jenn said.

  “It’s over,” Jesse said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was worried about you. I missed you.”

  “Jenn, I don’t know,” Jesse said.

  “You still seeing that other woman?”

  “No.”

  Jenn smiled.

  “I don’t know either, Jesse. But here I am. At least you could hug me.”

  Jesse realized suddenly that he was still holding his gun. He put it back on his hip, and walked very slowly around the coffee table.

  “Yes,” he said. “I could do that.”

  Praise for

  TROUBLE IN PARADISE

  “Tough and tight . . . [Robert Parker] once again shows how to do it well, and with style.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Tough-guy dialogue . . . sharp social commentary . . . psychological penetration. Fresh . . . interesting . . . Robert B. Parker is loaded for bear this time.” —Boston Globe

  “Parker has injected Trouble in Paradise with yet another blast of the page-turning energy he’s famous for.”—New York Post

  “The dialogue is great, the characters realistic, and the story top-notch.” —Kansas City Star

  “One of Parker’s finer inventions . . . [Parker] has another winner in Jesse Stone. The characters, good and bad, are well developed.” —USA Today

  “You’ve got to like Stone . . . Harks back to Spenser and, before him, Sam Spade.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Parker’s plot is built like a smooth-running Ducati engine. It is paced beautifully . . . Tight storytelling.”—Sunday Star Ledger (Newark)

  “Parker’s new series continues explosively . . . Parker does an excellent job of building tension and weaving several subplots into an explosive finale.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  Praise for Robert B. Parker’s

  New York Times bestselling novel

  NIGHT PASSAGE

  The author of the bestselling Spenser novels introduces a new hero . . . Meet Jesse Stone, who’s left the LAPD in disgrace and found himself the new chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts—a town that’s a lot less idyllic than it sounds . . .

  “Stunning.”—Houston Chronicle

  “Vintage Parker.”—Denver Post

  “A winner.”—Boston Globe

  “Parker’s sentences flow with as much wit, grace, and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist.”—Newsday

  “Superior Parker.”—Boston Globe

  “A genuine page-turner.”—Hartford Courant

  “A fast paced, character-driven tale that practically reads itself.”—The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)

  “Marvelous characters and a wonderful sense of place . . . Jesse seems intended to return. Hope it’s soon.” —Toronto Globe & Mail

  “[A] strong first entry in a projected series . . . [Jesse is] appealingly flawed.”—New York Times Book Review

  “Parker’s debut thriller featuring Jesse Stone will leave you looking forward to the second installment.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Not for nothing is Parker regarded as the reigning champion of the American tough-guy detective novel, heavyweight division. Over a twenty-five-year career, the man has rarely composed a bad sentence or an inert paragraph. His thirtieth novel, which features brand-new protagonist Jesse Stone . . . proves no exception.”—Entertainment Weekly

  “Move over, Spenser. A new hero has moved into your neighborhood. And for that, you can thank your own creator—Robert B. Parker . . . His writing—tough, witty, lean, with a touch of the poet—has never been better.” —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “Moments of real wit and depth.”—The Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer

  “Stone is an intriguing character . . . the dialogue sparkles.” —San Antonio Express-News

  “Exceedingly satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Parker, with his usual great dialogue and story line, has given us another tough hero.”—Sunday Oklahoman

  “An attractive protagonist.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

  “A first-rate, engrossing book.”—Florida Times-Union

  “A new series that’s already off to a good start.” —Orlando Sentinel

  . . . And for Robert Parker’s Spenser novels

  “Parker’s brilliance is in his simple dialogue, and in Spenser. Here is
a character who is fearless, honest, and clever but never preachy. He’s self-deprecating, sometimes sensitive; hard-boiled but never boorish. And he doesn’t take himself too seriously.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

  Small Vices

  Spenser tries to prove the innocence of a murder suspect—but when a man with a .22 puts him in a coma, the hope for justice may die along with the detective . . . “POWERFUL.” —The New York Times Book Review

  Chance

  Spencer heads to Vegas to find the missing husband of a mob princess—but he’s not the only one looking . . . “THE WORLD’S MOST PERFECT PRIVATE EYE . . . the dialogue is as brisk and clever as always.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  Thin Air

  Spenser thought he could help a friend find his missing wife. Until he learned the nasty truth about Lisa St. Claire . . . “FULL OF ACTION, SUSPENSE, AND THRILLS.”—Playboy

  Walking Shadow

  An actor’s murder sends Spenser and Hawk behind the scenes of a shabby waterfront town . . . “FAST-MOVING AND WITTY . . . ONE OF HIS BEST!”—Denver Post

  Paper Doll

  Spenser searches for the killer of a “model wife and mother”—and finds some shocking suprises . . . “IT TAKES ROBERT B. PARKER EXACTLY TWO SENTENCES TO GET THE TENSION CRACKLING.”—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

  Double Deuce

  Spenser and Hawk wage war on a street gang . . . “MR. SPENSER IS AT HIS BEST . . . TENSE . . . SUSPENSEFUL . . . DARKLY POETIC.”—The New York Times

  Pastime

  A boy’s search for his mother forces Spenser to face his own past . . . “EMOTIONALLY TENSE . . . GRIPPING . . . VINTAGE HARD-CORE SPENSER.”—Kirkus Reviews

  Stardust

  Spenser tries to protect a TV star from a would-be assassin . . .“CLASSIC SPENSER . . . BRILLIANT.”—The New York Times Book Review