Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  Nothing.

  He held the glass up and looked at the light shining through it. He wondered if Ozzie Smith had been a drinker. Probably not. Hard to do what Ozzie had done with a hangover.

  The bastards weren’t going to ruin that girl’s life, though. If he did no other thing he was going to save Candace Pennington. He wasn’t clear yet how he was going to do that, but as the alcohol worked its happy way, he knew that he could, and that he would, no matter what else.

  Be good to save something.

  25

  At 8:10 in the morning, Bo Marino sat alone in the back of the school bus with his feet up on the seat next to him, smoking a joint. The smell of weed slowly filled the bus and several kids turned to look and a couple of them giggled. Bo took a deep drag and let it out slowly toward the front of the bus. The driver was a woman. Bo wondered if she even knew what pot was when she smelled it. Bo looked older than he was. He was already shaving regularly. He had been lifting weights since junior high, and it showed. His neck was short and thick, and his upper body was muscular. He was the tailback in the USC-style offense that Coach Zambello used. Several small colleges had recruited him, and he was very pleased with himself.

  In the rearview mirror, Molly could see Bo smoking. She smelled the marijuana. Well, well, she thought, Bo Marino appears to be breaking the law. She called Jesse on her cell phone and spoke softly.

  “One of the three young men we’re interested in is inhaling a controlled substance in the back of the bus,” Molly said.

  Jesse was silent for a moment.

  Then he said, “When you get to school, arrest him. I’ll have Suit meet the bus.”

  “Okeydokey,” Molly said.

  “Aren’t you supposed to say something like ‘roger that,’” Jesse said.

  “I like okeydokey,” Molly said, and smiled and shut off the phone.

  The bus pulled into the circular driveway in front of the high school and the kids got off. Bo stayed until last, smoking his joint, and pinched it out when there was no one else on the bus. He dropped the roach in his shirt pocket, swung his feet contemptuously off the seat, and stood.

  As he got off the bus, the lady bus driver said, “Hold it there for a minute, Bo.”

  He stared at her.

  “Hold what?” he said.

  The lady bus driver took a badge out of her purse and showed it to him.

  “I observed you using a controlled substance,” Molly said. “We’d like you to come down to the station.”

  Bo stared at her. Peripherally he saw the janitor that everybody knew was a cop walking toward the bus.

  “A what?”

  “A controlled substance. You were observed smoking a joint on the bus. The snipe is still in your shirt pocket.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” Bo said.

  “We can go in my car,” Molly said. “It’s parked over here.”

  “Fuck you, lady,” Bo said.

  He started to walk past her. Molly stepped in his way.

  “Don’t make me arrest you,” Molly said.

  “You?” Bo said. “Get out of my way or I’ll fuck you.”

  He tried to move past her again, and again Molly blocked him. Bo covered her left breast with his right hand and shoved her out of the way. Molly took a canister from her purse and sprayed him in the face. Bo made a sound that might have been a scream and clasped his hands to his face.

  “Ow,” he said. “Jesus Christ, ow, ow! You fucking blinded me.”

  Molly put the Mace away, took her handcuffs and snapped a cuff on Bo’s left wrist. Suit came around the front of the bus in his janitor’s outfit and pulled Bo’s right hand down, and together they cuffed him.

  Red-eyed, coughing, and head down, Bo was dragged into Jesse’s office and put in a chair.

  “My eyes are killing me,” he said. “I need something for my eyes. The bitch sprayed me for no reason. Gimme something for my eyes. My father’s gonna sue your ass.”

  “Uncuff him,” Jesse said. “And leave him with me.”

  Molly took the cuffs off and put them in her purse. Bo immediately began to rub his eyes.

  “It’ll stop in a while,” Jesse said. “Rubbing them won’t help. We’ll go down and wash them.”

  Molly put a bag on Jesse’s desk.

  “When we arrested him,” Simpson said, “naturally, we patted him down for concealed weapons. Found this in his backpack.”

  Bo stopped coughing just long enough to say, “That’s not mine, the bastards planted that.”

  “Be my guess that there’s enough here,” Molly said, “to support possession with intent.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Jesse said. “Anything else?”

  “No weapon,” Simpson said. “But we didn’t look at everything.”

  Simpson put Bo’s backpack on top of the file cabinet next to the window behind Jesse’s desk.

  “You guys may as well go back to what you were doing,” Jesse said.

  “Cover’s pretty well blown,” Molly said.

  “Stay on it anyway,” Jesse said.

  “I never had any cover to start with,” Simpson said.

  Molly and Simpson went out. Jesse sat quietly looking at Bo.

  “I need something for my eyes,” Bo said between coughs. “I need a doctor.”

  Jesse didn’t say anything for a while. Then he stood.

  “Okay, let’s go wash you off,” he said.

  Rinsed and dried, Bo was still red-eyed and puffy-looking, and he still coughed sporadically.

  “You call my father?” Bo said.

  “We’re working on it,” Jesse said. “Right now we got you on possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, failure to obey a lawful command, threatening a police officer, assaulting a police officer, and being a general major-league fucking jerk.”

  “That bitch can’t get away with spraying me like that,” Bo said.

  Jesse smiled. He didn’t say anything. Bo sat in the chair across the desk staring hard at Jesse.

  “So you gonna arrest me?” he said. “Or what?”

  Jesse didn’t answer him. Bo stood up.

  “Fuck this,” he said. “I’m walking out of here.”

  “Nope,” Jesse said.

  “You think you can stop me?” Bo said.

  Jesse laughed. “Of course I can stop you,” he said. “For crissake a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman hauled you in here in handcuffs.”

  “If you weren’t a cop . . .”

  “But I am a cop,” Jesse said. “Sit down.”

  Jesse’s voice was still pleasant, but there was a sudden undertone in it that made Bo uncomfortable. He didn’t want to sit down. He tried looking hard at Jesse. If Jesse noticed, it didn’t show. Bo sat down. Jesse picked up the backpack and put it on the desk in front of him and dumped it out. He looked at what he had. A notebook, three ballpoint pens, some Kleenex, a packet of condoms, a ruler, a protractor, two packs of spearmint gum, and a white envelope. He opened the envelope and found four prints of Candace Pennington, lying naked on the ground. Bingo! Her face was distorted by crying, someone out of the picture was holding her ankles, and Kevin Feeney was holding her wrists. Feeney was smiling. Jesse looked carefully at each print, then he put them faceup on his desk, facing toward Bo, and smiled at him and waited. Bo didn’t look at the pictures. Jesse let the silence thicken.

  Then he said, “Who’s the young lady?”

  “I don’t know,” Bo said. “I found them pictures.”

  “And the young gentleman?”

  “I told you, I dunno. I found them.”

  “Where?”

  “In the school library, somebody musta dropped them.”

  “The young lady looks li
ke she’s crying,” Jesse said.

  “You know how broads are, sometimes they cry after you fuck them.”

  “Really? And it seems that the young gentleman is restraining her.”

  “I don’t know,” Bo said.

  “You don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that picture.”

  Arthur Angstrom opened Jesse’s door.

  “Kid’s father is here,” he said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “He’s got Abby Taylor with him,” Arthur said.

  “Lawyer to the rescue,” Jesse said. “Send them in.”

  26

  Joe Marino was a large self-made man in an expensive suit that was a little tight for him.

  “What the hell is going on here,” he said when he came into the office.

  “I didn’t do nothing, Dad,” Bo Marino said.

  “Shut up,” his father said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Jesse smiled at Abby Taylor, who had come in with Marino. She was dark-haired and good-looking, wearing a well-fitted suit with a short skirt.

  “Hello, Abby,” Jesse said. “How are you.”

  Abby Taylor said, “I’m fine.”

  “Hey,” Marino said. “I’m talking to you.”

  Jesse said, “You are.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “This your son?” Jesse said.

  “Yes. What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “We’ve arrested him for possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, with resisting a lawful order, assault on a police officer, and maybe possession of obscene photographs.”

  “Photographs?”

  “That’s just a maybe,” Jesse said.

  “Lemme see the photographs,” Marino said.

  “Nope,” Jesse said.

  “I got a right to confront my accuser,” Marino said.

  Jesse took in some air and let it out.

  “Explain it to him, Abby.”

  “Let me see if I can help with this, Mr. Marino.”

  “The bitch sprayed me with Mace,” Bo said.

  “Shut up,” Marino said.

  Jesse smiled at Abby and didn’t say anything.

  “You can release Bo to his father,” Abby said.

  Jesse shook his head. “We’ll hold him overnight and take him over to district court in the morning.”

  “Jesse,” Abby said. “He’s seventeen. He has no previous record. At most, in this instance, he’s guilty of a few minor lapses in decorum.”

  “He’s a tough kid,” Marino said. “He stood up for himself like I always taught him. Nobody pushes me around, I told him. Don’t let nobody push you around, I told him, don’t take crap from nobody.”

  Jesse nodded pleasantly. He was leaning back in his swivel chair, one foot up on the open bottom drawer of his desk, his hands resting motionless on the desktop.

  “You’re looking at a fucking police brutality suit, I’m telling you that right now.”

  Jesse picked up the phone and spoke to Arthur at the front desk.

  “Molly still here? Good. Send her in.”

  In a moment Molly opened the door and came in.

  “This is the cop that roughed up your little boy, Mr. Marino.”

  Marino looked at his son and shook his head disgustedly.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Mr. Marino,” Abby Taylor said. “It might go better if you let me talk.”

  “Broads,” Marino said and shook his head again.

  “Thank you, Officer Crane,” Jesse said.

  “You’re welcome, Chief Stone,” Molly said and turned and left the room.

  “Jesse,” Abby said, “are you really going to keep this boy overnight?”

  “I am,” Jesse said.

  He turned his chair a little and looked at Bo.

  “I want you to understand something,” Jesse said. “You deny knowing any of the people in those pictures. We will track them down and find out if that is true. If you are lying to us, you’d be wise to say so now, with your attorney present.”

  “I don’t know them,” Bo said.

  “Okay, we’ll bring him over to district court first thing,” Jesse said, “in case you want to be there.”

  “Can’t you do something about this?” Marino said to Abby.

  “Probably not,” Abby said, looking at her watch. “Especially this late.”

  “This is bullshit,” Marino said. “I’m telling you, make it happen.”

  “Theoretically that’s possible,” Abby said. “But in fact, at this hour, I’m not going to find a judge and argue my case and have him issue a writ, so, I’m sorry, but Bo will have to spend the night.”

  “Dad?”

  “You little shit,” Marino said to Jesse.

  “I’m not little,” Jesse said. “I’m just not as fat as you.”

  Marino gave him a long stare.

  “You didn’t have that badge,” Marino said.

  “Your kid said the same thing,” Jesse said. “Now unless you want to spend the night here too, why don’t you and your attorney go someplace and plan your brutality case.”

  “She won’t be my attorney long,” Marino said. “I’m going to find somebody with a pair of balls.”

  “By which you mean a man,” Abby said.

  “Okay, since you asked, yeah. A man. I never seen a broad you could count on when it was on the line.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “You’re right,” he said to Marino, “she won’t be your attorney long.”

  27

  Marino had left with Abby, and Bo was in the four-cell lockup in the back of the station. It was after six and getting dark when Molly came into Jesse’s office with a pizza and a six-pack of Coors. She put the pizza on the desk. She separated out two cans of beer, set them on the desk next to the pizza, and put the rest in the little refrigerator where Jesse kept spring water.

  “I know you’re married,” Jesse said. “But maybe we could have an affair.”

  “I’ll put you on the list,” Molly said. “You think we’ve got the little prick?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  He picked up a slice and took a bite.

  When he had swallowed, he said, “There’s no real grounds for an obscenity charge. I don’t think the possession with intent will stand up, but we should be able to make the case for assaulting a cop. We know he’s lying about the pictures. And now, we can investigate the rape without anyone thinking that Candace squealed on them.”

  “Won’t that require Candace to testify?”

  “I don’t know. If we flip one of the other kids, there might be a plea bargain and she’d never have to appear.”

  “Why’d you keep the kid overnight?” Molly said.

  Jesse ate a bite of pizza and drank some beer.

  “Because I don’t like him,” Jesse said.

  “How was the father?”

  “The tree doesn’t grow too far from the apple,” Jesse said.

  The pizza was made with green peppers and mushrooms. Jesse’s favorite. He wondered if it was a coincidence, or if Molly knew. He decided that Molly knew. Molly knew a lot.

  “You want me to go get Kevin Feeney?” Molly said.

  Jesse sipped some beer.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. We need to make it look like we didn’t know who he was and it took us a couple days to find out.”

  “I can’t show those pictures around,” Molly said.

  “Get the Feeney part blown up,” Jesse said. “Eliminate Candace.”

  “Okay.”

  “Show them around for a couple days, p
rincipal, guidance, a few teachers and students. When we’re sure the whole school knows we’re looking for Feeney because we found the pictures, then we’ll pick him up. Get Suit to help you. Tell him, now that he’s got a legitimate reason to be there, that he can,” Jesse smiled, “abandon his disguise.”

  “And we don’t mention Candace,” Molly said.

  “No.”

  “Ever?”

  “I told her I’d keep her out of it,” Jesse said.

  “And you keep your word,” Molly said.

  “When I can,” Jesse said.

  “When Bo gets out,” Molly said, “won’t he go right to his buddies and warn them?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “But they’re high school kids living at home. What are they going to do? Flee the jurisdiction?”

  Molly nodded.

  “Might even work for us,” Molly said. “The other two creeps know we’re after them, it’ll make them jumpy.”

  “The jumpier they get,” Jesse said, “the easier to flip.”

  “And you think you can flip them?”

  “My guess?” Jesse said. “All three.”