Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  5

  They sat in the study looking at digital pictures on the computer screen.

  “Look at them,” she said. “Aren’t they sweet.”

  “Your photography is improving,” he said.

  “Maybe it would be more fun to do a woman this time,” she said.

  “Variety is the spice of life,” he said.

  “Any of these look interesting?” she said.

  He smiled at her.

  “They all look interesting,” he said.

  “But we need to find the right one,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t want to rush it.”

  “She may not even be in this batch.”

  “Then we’ll do some more research and come back with a new batch.”

  “That will be fun,” she said.

  “It’s all fun,” he said.

  “It is,” she said, “isn’t it. The research, the selection, the planning, the stalking . . .”

  “Every good thing benefits from foreplay,” he said.

  “The longer you wait for the orgasm, the better it is.”

  They looked at the slide show some more, a new picture clicking onto the screen every five seconds.

  “Stop it there,” she said.

  “Her?”

  “You think?” she said.

  “Un-uh.”

  “Too old?”

  “I think we should get someone young and pretty this time.”

  “That feels right to me,” she said.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He clicked on the slide show again and they sat holding hands watching the images of young men, old men, young women, old women, men and women of indeterminate age. All of them white, except for one Asian man in a blue suit.

  “There,” he said and froze the image.

  “Her?” she said.

  “She’s the one,” he said.

  “You think she’s good-looking?”

  “I think she’s great-looking.”

  “She looks kind of horsy to me.”

  “She’s the one,” he said.

  He was very firm about it, and she heard the firmness in his voice. He said it again.

  “She’s the one.”

  “Okay,” his wife said. “You want her, you got her. She does look like she’d be kind of fun.”

  “That’s her house she’s coming out of,” he said. “Rose Avenue if I remember right.”

  His wife looked at the list of locations.

  “Rose Avenue,” she said.

  “Memory like a steel trap,” he said.

  “So tomorrow we put her under surveillance?”

  “We watch her every minute of her day,” he said. “See who she lives with, when she’s alone, where she goes, when. Does she drive? Ride a bike? Jog? Fool around?”

  “The more we know,” she said, “the more certain it’ll be when we do it.”

  “And the better it will feel.”

  He smiled. “During or after?” he said.

  “Both.”

  6

  Carrying a tan briefcase, Jesse stood on the big wraparound porch at 41 Pleasant Street. There were two doors that opened onto the porch in front, and one that provided entry from the driveway side. Jesse rang the bell at 41A, where the name under the bell button said Kenneth Eisley. He waited. Nothing. The name at 41B was Angie Aarons. He rang the bell, and heard footsteps almost at once. A woman opened the door. She was wearing a black leotard top and baggy gray sweatpants. Her blond hair was pinned up. Her feet were bare. There was a faint sheen of sweat on her face.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Ms. Aarons?”

  “Yes.”

  Jesse was wearing jeans and his softball jacket. He held up his badge.

  “Jesse Stone,” he said.

  “Could I see that badge again?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  She studied it for a moment.

  “You’re the chief,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “How come you’re not wearing a chief suit,” she said.

  “Casual Tuesday,” Jesse said.

  “Aren’t you awful young to be chief.”

  “How old is a chief supposed to be?”

  “Older than me,” she said and smiled.

  “I’ll do my best,” Jesse said. “Are you friendly with Kenneth Eisley, next door?”

  “Kenny? Sure, I mean casually. We’d have a drink now and then, sign for each other’s packages, stuff like that.”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  “Not for a couple of days.” She paused. “Omigod, where are my manners,” she said. “Come in, want some coffee? It’s all made.”

  “Coffee would be good,” Jesse said. “Cream and sugar.”

  She stepped back from the door and he went in. The walls were white. The trim was white. The furniture was bleached oak. The living room was to the right, through an archway. There was a big-screen television to the left of the fireplace, and an exercise mat spread on the rug. She brought him coffee in a large colorful mug.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The good china is in the dishwasher.”

  “I’m a cop,” Jesse said. “All I know how to drink from is Styrofoam.”

  On the floor near the exercise mat were several pieces of rubber tubing, and a round metal band with rubber grips. She sat on a big white hassock.

  “Why are you asking about Kenny,” she said.

  “He has a dog?”

  “Goldie,” she said. “He’s a vizsla. You know what they are?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Goldie’s been hanging around outside looking lost for a couple of days,” Jesse said. “The dog officer picked him up, but he can’t locate Kenny.”

  “Last I saw they were going over to the beach together to run.”

  “When was that?” Jesse said.

  “Couple nights ago.”

  Jesse took an eight-by-ten photograph from the briefcase.

  “I’m going to show you a picture. It’s not gruesome, but it’s a picture of a dead person.”

  “Is it Kenny?”

  “That’s what you’re going to tell me,” Jesse said. “You ready?”

  She nodded. He held the picture out and she looked at it without taking it, then looked away quickly and sat back.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  Jesse waited.

  After a moment, she nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s Kenny.”

  Jesse put the photograph away.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “Somebody shot him,” Jesse said. “On Paradise Beach two nights ago.”

  “My God, why?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Do you know who?” she said.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Goldie,” Angie Aarons said. “He must have been running with Kenny on the beach and was there . . .”

  “Probably,” Jesse said.

  “And then he didn’t know what to do and he came home . . . poor thing.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “Do you have any idea who might want to shoot Kenny?”

  “Jesus, no,” Angie said.

  “What does he do?”

  “Ah, he’s, ah, he’s a, you know, stock guy, some big brokerage in town.”

  “Family?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know him real well. I never saw any family around.”

  “Do you know how long he’s lived here?” Jesse said.

  “No. He was here when I moved in three yea
rs ago.”

  “From where?”

  “From where did I move?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled.

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “No,” Jesse said. “The question was unofficial.”

  “Really?” she said. “I came from L.A.”

  “Me too,” Jesse said.

  7

  Jesse was eating a pastrami sandwich on light rye at his desk, when Molly brought the girl and her mother into his office just after noontime on Thursday.

  “I think you need to talk with these ladies,” Molly said.

  Jesse took a swallow of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. He nodded.

  “Excuse my lunch,” he said.

  “I don’t care about your damned lunch,” the mother said. “My daughter’s been raped.”

  “Moth-er!”

  “You might want to stick around, Molly,” Jesse said.

  Molly nodded and closed the door and leaned on the wall beside it.

  “Tell me about the rape,” Jesse said.

  “I didn’t get raped,” the girl said.

  “Shut up,” the mother said.

  Jesse took a bite of his sandwich and chewed quietly.

  “She came home from school early and tried to slip into the house. Her dress was torn, her hair was a mess, her lip was swollen. You can still see it. She was crying and she wouldn’t tell me why.”

  Jesse nodded. He drank a little more cream soda.

  “I insisted on examining her,” the mother said. “She had no underwear, her thighs are bruised. I said I would take her to the doctor if she didn’t tell me, so she confessed.”

  “That she’d been raped?” Jesse said.

  He was looking at the daughter. The daughter looked frantic to him.

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone do a rape kit?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did you take her to the doctor,” Jesse said.

  “And have it all over town, God no. I had her clean herself up and brought her straight to you.”

  “Clean herself up?”

  “Of course. Who knows what germs were involved. And I’m not bringing her in here looking like a refugee.”

  “Bath?” Jesse said to the daughter. “Shower?”

  The daughter wouldn’t speak.

  “I put her in a hot bath,” her mother said, “scrubbed her myself like she was two years old.”

  Peripherally, Jesse saw Molly raise her eyebrows.

  “What are your names,” Jesse said.

  The mother looked startled, as if Jesse had been impolite.

  “I’m Mrs. Chuck Pennington. This is Candace.”

  Jesse said, “So who raped you, Candy?”

  “Candace,” her mother said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Candace,” he said.

  Candace shook her head.

  “You tell him, young lady. I will not permit anyone to rape my daughter and think they can get away with it.”

  “I won’t tell,” Candace said. “You can’t make me.”

  “No,” Jesse said, “I can’t. But it’s hard to protect you if I don’t know who they are.”

  “You can’t protect me,” Candace said.

  “He threaten you?”

  “They all did.”

  “All,” her mother said, “dear God in Heaven. You tell the chief right now what happened.”

  Candace shook her head. Her face was red. She was teary.

  “If I don’t know who they are,” Jesse said, “I can’t stop them. They might do it again. To another girl. To you.”

  Candace shook her head.

  “Don’t you even want revenge,” Molly said. “If it happened to me I’d want revenge. I’d want them caught.”

  Candace didn’t speak. Her mother slapped her on the back of her head.

  “No hitting,” Jesse said. “Molly, why don’t you take Candace out to the conference room.”

  Molly nodded. Left the wall and put her hand gently under Candace’s left arm and helped her out of the chair and through Jesse’s office door. Jesse got up and went around to the door and closed it and came back to his desk.

  “She’s been traumatized by the rapists,” Jesse said. “She should not be traumatized by her mother.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my daughter.”

  “I don’t know a hell of a lot about daughters,” Jesse said. “But I know something about rapes. She needs to see a doctor. If nothing else he might be able to give her some sedation. Who’s her gynecologist? I can call him for you.”

  “Is there some kind of medical thing they can find out who did it.”

  “The hot bath tends to wash away evidence,” Jesse said.

  “Well then, I won’t take her. The doctor may not tell, but someone will. The nurse, the receptionist. The doctor’s husband. I am not going to have her the subject of a lot of filthy talk all over town.”

  Jesse finished his pastrami sandwich and drank the last of his cream soda and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. He put the napkin and the empty can and the sandwich wrapper in the wastebasket. He rocked his chair back and rested one foot on the open bottom file drawer in his desk, and tapped his fingers gently on the flat of his stomach, and looked thoughtfully at Mrs. Pennington.

  “Why don’t I talk to her alone,” he said.

  “You think she’ll tell you things she won’t tell her own mother?”

  “Sometimes people do,” Jesse said.

  Mrs. Pennington frowned. She put her palms together and tapped her upper lip with the tips of her fingers. She’s pretty good-looking, Jesse thought. A little too blond, a little too tan, a little too carefully done, maybe, teeth a little too white. Face is kind of mean, but a good body.

  “This entire incident must remain confidential,” Mrs. Pennington said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Can you promise me that?”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “You can’t?”

  “Of course not. We don’t plan to blab about it. But, if there are arrests, indictments, trials, someone will hear about it.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “I cannot bear, cannot bear, the scandal.”

  “Being raped is not scandalous behavior,” Jesse said.

  “You don’t understand.”

  Jesse didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t discuss this any further. I’m taking my daughter home.”

  “Sooner or later you’ll have to deal with this,” Jesse said. “Or she will.”

  “I want my daughter,” she said.

  Jesse stood and went to his office door.

  He yelled, “Molly,” and when she appeared he said, “Bring the girl in.”

  When she saw her daughter, Mrs. Pennington stood.

  “We’ll go home now,” she said.

  Candace’s eyes were red and swollen. A bruise had begun to darken on her cheekbone. She seemed disconnected. Jesse looked at Molly. Molly shook her head.

  “Candace,” Jesse said.

  The girl looked at him vaguely. Her pupils were large. She had no focus.

  “Is there anything you want to say to me?” Jesse said.

  She looked at her mother.

  “We are through here, Candace,” Mrs. Pennington said.

  The girl looked back at Jesse. Their eyes met and held for a moment. Jesse thought he saw for just a moment a stir of personhood in there. Jesse nodded slightly. The girl didn’t say anything. Then her mother took her arm and they walked out of the station.

  8

  “I’m here to cook you supper,” Jenn said when she arrived at Jesse’s condo wit
h a large shopping bag.

  “Cook?” Jesse said.

  “I can cook,” Jenn said.

  “I didn’t know that,” Jesse said.

  “I’ve been taking a course,” Jenn said and set the shopping bag down on the counter in Jesse’s kitchen. “Perhaps you could make us a cocktail?”

  “I could,” Jesse said.

  Jenn took a small green apron out of the shopping bag and tied it on.

  “Serious,” Jesse said.

  “Dress for success,” Jenn said and smiled at him.

  Jesse made them martinis. Jenn put some grilled shrimp and mango chutney on a glass plate. They took the drinks and the hors d’oeuvres to the living room and sat on Jesse’s sofa and looked out the slider over Jesse’s balcony to the harbor beyond.

  “It’s pretty here, Jesse.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s so . . . stark.”

  “Stark?”

  “You know, the walls are white. The tabletops are bare. There’s no pictures.”

  “There’s Ozzie,” Jesse said.

  Jenn looked at the big framed color photograph of Ozzie Smith, in midair, stretched parallel to the ground, catching a baseball.

  “You’ve had that since I’ve known you.”

  “Best shortstop I ever saw,” Jesse said.

  “You might have been that good, if you hadn’t gotten hurt.”

  Jesse smiled and shook his head.

  “I might have made the show,” Jesse said. “But I wouldn’t have been Ozzie.”

  “Anyway,” Jenn said. “One picture of a baseball player is not interior decor.”

  “Picture of you in my bedroom,” Jesse said. “On the table.”

  “What do you do with it if you have a sleepover?”

  “It stays,” Jesse said. “Sleepovers have to know about you.”

  “Is that in your best interest?” Jenn said. “Wouldn’t it discourage sleeping over.”

  “Maybe,” Jesse said.

  “But not entirely,” Jenn said.

  “No,” Jesse said. “Not entirely.”

  They were silent, thinking about it. Jesse got up and made another shaker of martinis.

  “What is it they have to know about me?” Jenn said when he brought the shaker back.

  “That I love you, and, probably, am not going to love them.”

  “Good,” Jenn said.

  “Good for who?” Jesse said.