Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  “Was it Bo Marino?” he shouted at him.

  “Yes,” Kevin said.

  Simpson paused and looked at Jesse. Jesse made a wait-a-minute gesture.

  “Who else,” his father shouted at him.

  “Troy.”

  “Troy Drake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you’ll sleep at home tonight,” Jesse said.

  33

  Kevin had stopped crying. He was drinking a Coke.

  Jesse said, “Who’s the girl, Kevin?”

  “Candy Pennington,” Kevin said. “You’d have found out anyway.”

  “What happened?” Jesse said.

  Kevin looked at his mother. No one said anything.

  “It was Bo, really,” Kevin said. “Me and Troy just went along.”

  Jesse nodded and waited. Kevin looked around. No one said anything.

  “She was such a freakin’ brownnose,” Kevin said.

  “Kevin!” his mother said.

  He didn’t look at her.

  “Well, she was,” he said. “She was always sucking up to the teachers. Always acting like she was better than anyone else.”

  Jesse waited. Kevin drank his Coke and didn’t say anything more. The room was still.

  “So you thought you’d take her down a peg,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. Exactly. Bo said we should take her out in the woods and pull her pants down.”

  “Oh, Kevin,” his mother said.

  “Embarrass her, you know. Maybe take a picture of her.”

  Mr. Feeney had his head tilted back against his chair. His eyes were closed.

  “My God, Kevin,” Mrs. Feeney said.

  “You’re not helping, Mrs. Feeney,” Jesse said. “Let him tell his story.”

  Mrs. Feeney clenched her hands together and pressed them against her mouth. Kevin wouldn’t look at her.

  “Bo told her a bunch of us were hanging out there, partying, you know. So she goes out there with us and we, you know, did it.”

  “What was ‘it’?” Jesse said.

  Mrs. Feeney made a little moaning sound into her clenched hands.

  “You know, had sex. I mean we wasn’t going to, we was going to just, like, look at her. But then Bo said we’d gone this far and what the hell. And then he got on top of her.”

  “And had sex with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you?”

  “Yeah, I went second.”

  Mrs. Feeney moaned again. She was rocking slowly in her chair. Mr. Feeney neither moved nor opened his eyes.

  “And Troy Drake?” Jesse said.

  “He went after me.”

  “He had sex with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did she feel about this?” Jesse said.

  Kevin shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “How did she act,” Jesse said.

  “She was crying,” Kevin said. “When Bo did it she tried to push him off, but she couldn’t.”

  “Did she say no?”

  “I guess so, she was yelling help and stuff.”

  “And with you?” Jesse said.

  “She just laid there,” Kevin said.

  “Was she still crying?”

  “Yes, but that’s all. It was like she decided to go along with it.”

  “She have any other options?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “Troy did her. Then we held her down while Bo took her picture. Bo told her if she said anything we’d show everybody in school the pictures.”

  Mrs. Feeney continued to moan and rock. Mr. Feeney continued to sit immobile with his head back and his eyes closed.

  “I’m really sorry,” Kevin said. “Mom, I am. I’m sorry.”

  “I tried,” Mrs. Feeney said into her clenched hands. “I tried and tried to teach you to respect women. Didn’t I? Didn’t I drum that into you since you were little. To disrespect one woman is to disrespect us all. In shaming that poor girl, you shamed me.”

  Mr. Feeney opened his eyes, and without lifting it, he turned his head toward his wife.

  “You know, Mira,” he said. “This really is much more about Kevin and that poor girl than it is about you.”

  “Oh God,” Mrs. Feeney said and pressed her hands to her face again and began to cry.

  Jesse reached over and shut off the tape recorder.

  “I’m going to have that transcribed,” Jesse said. “Then I will ask you to sign it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mr. Feeney, you’ll need to sign it too, I think, since Kevin is not of age.”

  Feeney nodded.

  “If he testifies against the other boys,” Mr. Feeney said, “can he get a break?”

  “When you have a lawyer,” Jesse said, “your lawyer and the DA can negotiate that.”

  “Will you put in a word for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s never been in trouble before,” Mrs. Feeney said.

  “And now he is,” Jesse said.

  “But he won’t have to go to jail?”

  “Mrs. Feeney,” Jesse said. “He participated in the gang rape of a sixteen-year-old girl. He’ll have to answer for that.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said and cried harder.

  34

  Jesse’s condo was only a block away from the Gray Gull, and they walked to it after dinner. There was a hard wind off the harbor and Abby put her arm through Jesse’s and pressed against him. Inside the condo Jesse poured them each a Poire Williams and they stood at the glass slider and looked out past his deck at the dark harbor. There was a storm coming up from the southwest and the water was restless.

  Abby turned so that she could look up into Jesse’s face. She had drunk two Rob Roys before dinner, and they had shared a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

  “You look tired, Jesse.”

  “Busy time at the office,” Jesse said.

  “I know,” Abby said. “How many television interviews have you done?”

  “Many.”

  “And you always say it’s an ongoing investigation and you can’t discuss it.”

  “I know.”

  “I suppose they have to keep asking.”

  “It’s sort of news manufacturing,” Jesse said. “They do a stand-up in front of the police station and interview me, and ask me things like, have you caught the killer. And I say no. And they say, this is Tony Baloney live in Paradise, now back to you, Harry.”

  Abby smiled.

  “It’s not quite that bad,” she said.

  “I suppose not,” Jesse said. “Sometimes they just ask if there are any developments.”

  “Are there?”

  “Sure. We know that there were two twenty-two-caliber guns involved.”

  “Two?”

  “Un-huh. And we think he, she, or they drives a Saab sedan. And we speculate that he, she, or they lives in Paradise.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Any connection among the victims?”

  “Not that we can find.”

  “You think the killings are random?”

  “Don’t know. For all we know, he, she, or they had a reason to kill one of the victims, and killed the others just to make us think it was random.”

  “If that were the case,” Abby said, “maybe the killings have stopped.”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “Do you have a guess?”

  “I try not to,” Jesse said.

  “Sure, but you’re not just a cop,” Abby said. “You a
re, after all, also a person.”

  “I’m better at being a cop. And it’s best if cops don’t hope.”

  Abby was quiet for a moment. There was a break in the cloud cover and the moonlight shone briefly on the harbor, where the whitecaps were breaking, and the boats tossed at mooring. She sipped a little of the pear brandy. It was so intense that it seemed to evaporate on her tongue.

  “I’m not so sure,” Abby said after a time, “that you’re a better cop than a person.”

  “Lousy cop too?” Jesse said.

  “No. You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” Jesse said. “Thank you.”

  They looked quietly at the foreboding whitecaps.

  “I don’t feel good about breaking up with you the way I did,” Abby said.

  “You needed to break up with me,” Jesse said. “I am not really available to anyone until I resolve all this with Jenn.”

  “I know, but my timing wasn’t good. You were in trouble and I . . .” Abby made a fluttery motion with her hand.

  “It’s okay, Abby.”

  She turned toward him and put her face up.

  “It wasn’t okay,” she said and kissed him hard with her mouth open.

  From a great distance, his ironic nonparticipant self smiled and thought whoops! He kissed her back.

  In bed she was urgent, and when the urgency had passed for both of them, they lay side by side on their backs.

  “Now it’s okay,” Abby said softly.

  “A proper good-bye?” Jesse said.

  “I suppose so.”

  “You’re still living with that guy?” Jesse said.

  “Yes . . . he’s out of town tonight. Chicago.”

  “You thinking of marrying him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You love him?”

  “Oh God, Jesse, you’re such a fucking romantic.”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Jesse said.

  “He’s a nice guy.”

  “You’re marrying him because he’s a nice guy?”

  “I’m marrying him because my clock is ticking fast, and he’s the nicest guy I have found who wants to marry me.”

  “You’re a practical person,” Jesse said.

  The overhead light was on in the bedroom, and as Jesse looked at her naked body, he could still see a faint trace of sweat between her breasts.

  “Most women are,” Abby said. “I always get a laugh out of the popular mythology about romantic women and practical men.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “It is sort of laughable,” he said. “Would it bother him if he knew?”

  “Of course. But he’s no virgin and neither am I and we both know it.”

  “Do you feel like you’re cheating on him?”

  “Yes, I guess so, a little.”

  “But . . .”

  “But you and I needed to be put to rest.”

  “And this was it?”

  Abby rolled onto her side and pressed her face against Jesse’s chest.

  “Yes,” she said. “This was it.”

  Jesse smiled and laughed softly.

  “What?” Abby said.

  “I’m the other guy,” Jesse said. “The one I want to kill when Jenn is with him.”

  “Irony,” Abby said. “You’ve always been a real bear for irony.”

  When she was dressed and her makeup was fixed and her hair was in order, Jesse offered to walk her to her car.

  “I’m right in front of the Gray Gull,” Abby said, “and besides, it seems righter, somehow, if I kiss you good-bye here and go out the door.”

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  They kissed, and when they were through, Abby turned and went out the front door without a word.

  There were only a few cars in the parking lot. Abby was grateful to get into her car and out of the wind. She started the engine and put it in gear and drove out of the lot. A red Saab sedan pulled out of the lot behind her. Both cars turned down Front Street.

  35

  She had been shot twice in the chest, as she got out of her car, in the driveway of her house on North Side Drive, her body turned toward the back of the car, as if she had turned to see what was behind her. Anthony deAngelo had found her on routine patrol. She had fallen with the car door open, and one foot still caught on the edge of the car. Anthony had seen the car with its interior lights on and stopped to take a look.

  “It’s Abby Taylor,” deAngelo said to Jesse when he arrived.

  Jesse nodded. Dead people don’t look much different at first, he thought. Just like live people except that they don’t move. He stared down at her face. No, he thought, it’s more than that. You look at them, there’s something missing. Her position would have embarrassed her. He reached down and moved her leg and smoothed her skirt down. She was still flexible. Peter Perkins arrived with his crime-scene kit. Suitcase Simpson was setting up lights. The ambulance pulled in. Anthony was stringing the crime-scene tape.

  “She live alone?” Suitcase asked.

  “She lived with a guy,” Jesse said.

  He was still looking absently down at the body.

  “Nobody answering the door,” Simpson said. “Or the phone.”

  “He’s in Chicago,” Jesse said.

  Simpson stared at Jesse and started to speak. Then he didn’t. One of the techs from the ambulance came over and knelt down beside Abby. He took her pulse automatically, though he knew she was dead.

  “Just like the other ones, Jesse,” the tech said. “Two in the chest.”

  “Her purse is still in the car,” Perkins said.

  “Cold night,” the tech said. “Make time of death a little harder.”

  “She died within the last hour,” Jesse said.

  The tech looked up as if he were going to ask a question. Suitcase Simpson put a hand on his shoulder. The tech glanced at him. Simpson shook his head. Perkins began to photograph the crime scene. A few neighbors had straggled out into the cold, coats on over sleepwear, hunched against the cold, staring aimlessly. Jesse was motionless, looking down at the body.

  “You know where this guy might be in Chicago,” Simpson asked.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Anthony and I’ll ask a few neighbors,” Simpson said. “Maybe they’ll know. Or know where he works and the people at work will know.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Hate to just leave a note for him to call.”

  “We won’t leave a note,” Jesse said. “If you can’t reach him, leave somebody here until you do.”

  “What if it’s a couple days?” Simpson said.

  “Leave somebody here if you can’t reach him,” Jesse said.

  “Okay, Jesse.”

  The other cops went about their crime-scene business very quietly. Like people in a sickroom. Jesse continued to look at Abby. After a while the EMTs loaded her onto a gurney and slid her into the back of the ambulance. Jesse watched them silently. The ambulance pulled away. Peter Perkins packed up his crime-scene gear and went to his car. Simpson and deAngelo finished talking to the neighbors.

  “They told me he works at the GE in Lynn,” Simpson said. “I’ll call them in the morning. Anthony says he’ll stay here. I’ll get Eddie to come over in the morning and give him a break.”

  “Do that,” Jesse said.

  Perkins got into his truck and drove away. DeAngelo settled in behind the wheel in his cruiser in front of the house.

  “I gotta get going, Jesse,” Simpson said.

  Jesse nodded. Simpson shifted his weight a little.

  “You, ah, gonna be all right?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Simpson said.

&n
bsp; He walked back toward his cruiser. And stopped and turned back toward Jesse.

  “I’m sorry about Abby,” he said.

  “Thanks, Suit.”

  Simpson got into his cruiser, started it, and drove down North Side Drive. In the rearview mirror he could see that Jesse was still standing where he’d left him.

  36

  The Paradise selectmen called a special town meeting, which authorized a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers. A telephone hotline was established and the number publicized statewide. The Paradise police were working twelve-hour shifts, and the hotline was manned in the town clerk’s office by off-duty firemen. A meeting room in the Paradise Town Hall had been converted to a press headquarters. Vans from the Boston television stations were parked in the public works lot behind the town hall, and almost every day a television reporter was doing a live report standing in front of the Paradise Police Station.

  Police in Paradise are pressing their search today for the killer or killers in a series of seemingly random murders that have terrorized this affluent North Shore community. In a news conference earlier today, Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone said the full resources of his department, augmented by the Massachusetts State Police, are being brought to bear on this investigation. But to this point the reign of terror continues. Reporting live in Paradise, this is Katy Morton. Back to you, Larry.

  That’s a tense situation up there, Katy. Now to other news, an heroic Siamese cat today . . .

  Jesse shut off the television. With him in his office was a state police sergeant named Vargas.

  “Jeez,” he said. “Didn’t you want to know about that cat?”

  “I’ve got enough excitement in my life,” Jesse said. “How many people can you give me?”

  “Captain says we’ll continue to help with the investigation, and he wants to know what else you need. How many patrols you got out now?”

  “Five cars, two shifts.”

  “Ten people,” Vargas said. “How many people you got on the force?”

  “Twelve,” Jesse said. “Including me. Molly Crane covers the desk days, and I stay here at night.”

  “You’re swamped,” Vargas said. “I’ll get some of our guys to cover the night patrols. Captain says to tell you that we aren’t taking this thing over. You’re still in charge of it. I’m just liaison.”