Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  “Or something,” Jesse said.

  “Literally or figuratively,” Marcy said, “you’re a thing.”

  “It’s not about you,” Jesse said.

  “No,” Marcy said. “It is entirely about the rapist and you don’t matter.”

  Jesse nodded slowly. He walked from the window and sat on the couch beside Marcy. They were quiet. Marcy leaned her head against Jesse’s shoulder. He patted her thigh.

  “This isn’t just about the rape,” Marcy said after a while. “Is it.”

  “No.”

  “It’s also about Jenn,” Marcy said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Sometimes I think everything is,” he said.

  17

  Jesse was in the parking lot of the Northeast Mall, talking to Molly on a cell phone.

  “Where is she now,” he said.

  “Just coming out of Macy’s.”

  “She alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone around you recognize?”

  “No. This is the time.”

  “Okay, pick her up and bring her.”

  Molly didn’t actually have a hold on Candace when they came out of the vast shopping sprawl, but she walked close and a little behind, herding her with her right shoulder like a sheepdog.

  “Hop in,” Jesse said, when they reached him.

  “What do you want?” Candace said.

  “We’ll talk about it when you get in,” Jesse said.

  Molly opened the door, Candace got in, Molly closed the door. Through the open window she looked at Jesse. He shook his head.

  “Is that smart?” Molly said.

  “Probably not,” Jesse said. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Molly shrugged and nodded and walked away. Jesse knew she disapproved. Sexual harassment was an easy charge to make against a male cop alone with a woman. Jesse put the car in gear.

  “You want to slump down so nobody sees you,” Jesse said, “I won’t take it personally.”

  Candace sat with her back to the car window.

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk,” Jesse said. “The elaborate stuff is to make sure no one sees you talking to me.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t care. But I was under the impression you did.”

  Jesse pulled out of the parking lot and went north on Route 114.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts up here,” Jesse said. “We’ll have a cup of coffee.”

  “I don’t want to talk with you.”

  “I know,” Jesse said. “But I think you have to.”

  They were quiet while Jesse drove through the take-out window and got two coffees and four cinnamon donuts. Jesse carefully opened the little window in the plastic top of both cups and handed one to Candace. He sat the donuts on the console between them, leaning against the shotgun that stood in its lock rack against the dashboard.

  “Bo Marino,” Jesse said. “Kevin Feeney, Troy Drake.”

  Candace’s shoulders hunched, her head went down. She didn’t say anything.

  “We both know they raped you,” Jesse said.

  Candace hunched herself tighter.

  “And we both know they threatened you about telling.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m the police chief,” Jesse said. “I know everything.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Candace said in a small voice, her eyes riveted on her own lap.

  Jesse ate half a donut and drank some coffee.

  “If you let them,” Jesse said, “they will make your life miserable as long as you live in this town.”

  Candace shook her head.

  “If you tell me about it,” Jesse said, “I can give you your life back.”

  “My mother,” Candace said.

  “I can help you with your mother,” Jesse said.

  Candace kept staring at her lap. Jesse finished his first donut and drank some more coffee. They were both silent. Candace’s hunched shoulders began to shake. She made no sound, but Jesse knew she was crying. He put a hand on her near shoulder.

  “Off the record,” Jesse said. “Just between you and me. No testifying. Nobody knows you told me.”

  Her shoulders continued to shake.

  “Let it out,” Jesse said. “You’re safe here. It’ll never leave the car.”

  “Bo’s the football captain,” Candace said and began to cry outright.

  Jesse took some Kleenex out of the glove compartment and put them on the dashboard in front of her. He patted her shoulder.

  “He’s so strong,” she said.

  Jesse stopped patting and simply rested his hand on her shoulder.

  “You know behind the football field . . . there’s this little like valley . . . where the railroad tracks are? . . . They took me there.”

  She was talking and crying at the same time. Her nose was running. She wiped it with a Kleenex.

  “They force you?”

  “They just . . . told me to come with them . . . and, you know . . . they are . . . so . . . so important . . . you know?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Sure,” he said. “I know.”

  “And . . . they started . . . they started talking . . . dirty and they grabbed me and took my clothes off. . . .”

  She stopped talking for a time and sobbed. Jesse waited, his hand gently on her shoulder. Finally she got enough control to talk.

  “And they did it,” she said.

  “All three?” Jesse said softly.

  “They took turns. . . . Two holding me down, one doing it.”

  Jesse put his head back against the car seat and closed his eyes for a moment and took in a lot of air quietly through his nose and let it out. Candace cried, softly now, her hands folded in her lap, her head down.

  “They took pictures,” she said.

  Jesse nodded slowly, his head still back against the car seat, his eyes still closed.

  “And they’ll pass the pictures around the school,” Jesse said. “If you say anything.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen the pictures?”

  “I saw one,” Candace said.

  “Are they in the picture?”

  “One of them.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I couldn’t stand to look.”

  “Do you have the picture?”

  “I burned it.”

  “Too bad,” Jesse said. “Might be evidence.”

  Candace shook her head.

  “I didn’t want anybody to see it.”

  “I understand,” Jesse said. “They threaten you any other way?”

  “They said they’d do it again. You know. If I told. And Bo said next time they’d hurt me.”

  “Your parents know what happened to you?” Jesse said.

  “My mother knows I was raped, but not by who.”

  “Your father?”

  “My mother says we can’t tell him.”

  Candace wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Jesse was still for a moment, staring straight ahead through the car windshield, drumming his fingers on his thighs.

  “Okay,” he said after a time. “It’s our secret.”

  She nodded. Jesse took a card out of his shirt pocket and wrote his home phone number on the back.

  “You can call me anytime,” Jesse said. “About anything. It’ll be between you and me until you say otherwise.”

  She took the card.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “I’m going to kee
p you out of it,” Jesse said. “But I’m going to find a way, sooner or later, to bust all three of them.”

  “You won’t tell,” she said.

  “No,” Jesse said. “I won’t.”

  “I’m so scared,” she said.

  “I know,” Jesse said. “Just remember you’re not alone anymore. We’re in this together.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you want me to take you home or back to the mall.”

  “The mall,” she said. “I’m meeting my friend there at three.”

  Jesse finished his coffee and a second donut as he drove back to the mall. When he parked near the entrance she sat for a moment in the car.

  “Do you think they’ll do it again?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Try not to be alone with them. Call me whenever you need me.”

  She nodded silently.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Jesse smiled at her.

  “You and me, babe,” he said.

  18

  Healy came in without knocking and sat down in Jesse’s office.

  “You called?” he said.

  Jesse nodded. “Thanks for coming by,” he said.

  “Not a sacrifice,” Healy said. “You know I live up this way.”

  “We had a couple of murders,” Jesse said.

  “I heard,” Healy said.

  “Sent the slugs over to state forensics and your people tell me they came from the same guns.”

  “Guns?”

  “Yeah. Both victims shot twice, one each from two guns.”

  Healy frowned. “Two shooters?” he said.

  “Or one shooter who wants us to think it was two.”

  “Links between the victims?” Healy said.

  “We can’t find any,” Jesse said.

  “They both live here?”

  “Along with twenty thousand other people.”

  Healy nodded slowly.

  “Well, you know how to do this,” Healy said. “I am not going to ask you a lot of dumb questions.”

  “All we got is four bullets,” Jesse said. “Twenty-twos.”

  “That’ll narrow it down for you,” Healy said.

  “People use a twenty-two because they don’t know one gun from another and that’s what they could get hold of,” Jesse said.

  “Or they are good at it,” Healy said. “And like the twenty-two because it’s not as noisy and makes less of a mess.”

  “And maybe because they like to show off.”

  “These people seem like they can shoot?”

  “They put both bullets right in the same place,” Jesse said. “Both victims. Either shot would have killed them.”

  “So we gotta look for the guns,” Healy said.

  “It’s a start.”

  “How many twenty-two-caliber firearms would you guess are out there in this great land?”

  “Let’s assume a couple things,” Jesse said. “Let’s assume there’s two shooters. It’s more likely than one shooter, two guns.”

  “Yeah,” Healy said.

  “And let’s assume that the shooters are from Paradise.”

  “Because both vics are from Paradise,” Healy said.

  “No wonder you made captain,” Jesse said.

  “So we get a list of everyone in Massachusetts who owns a twenty-two,” Healy said.

  “Or bought twenty-two ammunition.”

  “And we cross-reference anyone who lives in Paradise,” Healy said.

  “And then maybe we’ve got some suspects,” Jesse said.

  “If the shooters bought in Massachusetts,” Healy said. “And if the gun store did the paperwork, and if we didn’t lose it in the computer, and if they live in Paradise.”

  “Hell, we’ve got them cornered,” Jesse said. “Can your people do the clerical work?”

  “Am I the homicide commander?” Healy said.

  “Can they do it fast?”

  “I am the homicide commander. I am not God.”

  “I thought they were the same thing,” Jesse said.

  “Think how disappointed I am,” Healy said. “It’ll be a long process.”

  “How long?”

  “Long,” Healy said.

  They were silent for a moment.

  “I got a bad little thought,” Jesse said.

  “About the two guns?” Healy said. “Each vic shot the same way, in the same spot, either shot kills them?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Be good if you could speed the process up,” Jesse said.

  “Do what I can,” Healy said.

  They were silent, looking at each other.

  “You used to play ball,” Healy said after a time.

  “Yeah, Albuquerque,” Jesse said.

  “I was with Binghamton,” Healy said. “Eastern League.”

  “You get a sniff at the show?”

  Healy shook his head.

  “Nope. I was a pitcher, Phillies organization, pretty good. Then I went in the Army and came home and got married and had kids. . . .”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And it went away,” Healy said. “You?”

  “Shortstop, tore up my shoulder, and that was the end of that.”

  “Were you good?” Healy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad,” Healy said. “You play anywhere now?”

  “Paradise twi league,” Jesse said. “Softball.”

  “Better than nothing,” Healy said.

  “A lot better,” Jesse said.

  19

  Jesse sat with Suitcase Simpson in the front seat of Simpson’s pickup parked up the street from Candace Pennington’s home on Paradise Neck. The weathered shingle house sat up on a rocky promontory on the outer side of the neck overlooking the open ocean.

  “She walks from here down to the corner of Ocean Ave. to catch the school bus,” Jesse said. “Which Molly will be driving.”

  “School bus company in on this?” Simpson said.

  “No. They think we’re trying to catch a drug pusher.”

  “I used to ride the bus to school,” Simpson said. “Lot of shit got smoked on that bus.”

  “Focus here, Suit,” Jesse said. “You’ll follow her when she walks to the bus stop, and follow the bus to school and watch her until she’s in the building. You go in the building after her and hang around near where she is, and, at the end of the day, reverse the procedure.”

  “What did you tell the school?”

  “Same thing, undercover drug investigation.”

  “I played football with Marino’s older brother,” Simpson said. “Half the school knows me. How undercover can it be.”

  “Suit,” Jesse said. “We’re not really looking for druggies. It’s a cover. It’s good if everyone knows you’re a cop, as long as they don’t know why you’re there.”

  “Which is?”

  “To protect Candace Pennington, and, maybe, while we’re at it, get something on the three creeps that raped her.”

  “But no one knows that,” Simpson said.

  “They threatened her if she told on them,” Jesse said. “And I promised her that I’d keep it secret.”

  “Do I wear my unie?” Simpson said.

  “No, I told the school to pretend you were a new member of the custodial staff.”

  “Janitor?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do I get one of those work shirts that has my name over the pocket?”

  “Yeah. Do you want Suitcase? Or Luther?”

  “I should never have told you my real name,” Simpson said.

  “I’m your chief,” Jesse
said. “You tell me everything.”

  “Yeah, well, my mother comes by and sees me sweeping up, I’m gonna refer her to you.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “Kid’s alone,” Jesse said. “She’s been raped. She’s afraid it might happen again. She’s sixteen years old and afraid, and they’ve threatened to show her naked pictures to everyone in the high school. She’s afraid they’ll hurt her. She’s afraid of her mother’s disapproval, and I don’t know where her father stands.”

  Simpson nodded.

  “So we’re gonna see that she ain’t alone.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Suit,” he said. “You may make detective someday.”

  “We don’t have any detective ranks,” Simpson said.

  “Well,” Jesse said. “If we did.”

  “Hell,” Simpson said. “I already made janitor.”

  20

  Monday through Friday evenings, when Garfield Kennedy got off the commuter train at the Paradise Center Station, he waited for the train to leave, then walked a hundred yards down the tracks and cut through behind the Congregational Church to Maple Street where he lived. This Thursday night was like all the others, except that it was raining, and, as he walked behind the church, a man and a woman approached through the rain and shot him to death without a word.

  When Jesse got there he already knew what he’d find. Squatting on his heels in the rain beside Peter Perkins, he saw the two small bullet holes in the chest, one on each side. The blood had seeped through Kennedy’s raincoat and been nearly washed away by the rain, leaving only a light pink stain.

  “Same thing,” Jesse said.

  “Name’s Kennedy,” Peter Perkins said. “He’s a lawyer, works in Boston. He lives over there, on Maple. Figure he got off the train, cut through the church parking lot toward his house . . . and never made it.”

  “Family?” Jesse said.

  “Wife, three daughters.”

  “They know?”

  “They came over to see what was going on,” Perkins said.

  “Christ,” Jesse said.

  “It wasn’t good,” Perkins said.

  “I’ll talk with them,” Jesse said.

  The rain was washing over Kennedy’s face and soaking his hair.

  “And they won’t have any idea why someone killed him,” Jesse said. “And I’ll ask if they know Kenneth Eisley or Barbara Carey, and they won’t. And we’ll find no connection among the three of them and the bullets will be from the same guns that killed the other two.”