“I’m here to cook you
supper,” Jenn said when she
arrived at Jesse’s condo with 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.
“For me at least,” Jenn said. “I
want you in my
life.”
“Are you sure divorcing me is the best way to show that?”
“I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”
“Old habits die hard,” Jesse said.
“It’s more than a habit, Jesse.
There’s some sort of connection
between us that won’t break.”
“Maybe its because I don’t let it
break,” Jesse
said.
“You don’t,” Jenn said.
“But then here I am.”
“Here you are.”
“I could have been a weather girl in Los Angeles, or Pittsburgh
or San Antonio.”
“But here you are,” Jesse said.
“You’re not the only one hanging
on,” Jenn said.
“What the hell is wrong with us?” Jesse said.
Jenn put her glass out. Jesse freshened her drink.
“Probably a lot more than we know,” Jenn said. “But one thing I
do know: we take it seriously.”
“What?”
“Love, marriage, relationship, each other.”
“Which is why we got divorced and started fucking other people,”
Jesse said. “Or vice versa.”
“I deserve the vice versa,” Jenn said.
“But I don’t keep
deserving it every time we talk.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
“I’m sorry. But if we take it so
seriously, why the hell are we in this mess.”
“Because we wouldn’t let it
slide,” Jenn said. “Because you
wouldn’t accept adultery. Because I wouldn’t accept suffocation.”
“I loved you very intensely,” Jesse said.
There was half a drink left in the shaker. Jesse added it to his
glass.
“You loved your fantasy of me very
intensely,” Jenn said, “and
kept trying to squeeze the real me into that fantasy.”
Jesse stared at the crystalline liquid in his glass. Jenn was still. Below them the harbor master’s launch pulled away from the
town pier and began to weave through the stand of masts going somewhere, and knowing where.
“That you talking or the shrink?” Jesse said.
“It’s a conclusion we reached
together,” Jenn
said.
Jesse hated all the circumlocutions of therapy. He sipped the lucid martini.
“Why do you think I’m so
wonderful?” Jenn said.
“Because I love you.”
Jenn was quiet. She smiled slightly as if she knew something Jesse didn’t know. It annoyed him.
“What the fuck is wrong with that?” he said.
“Think about it,” Jenn said.
“Think about shit,” Jesse said.
“Just because you’re getting
shrunk doesn’t mean you have to shrink me.”
“You think I’m wonderful because you love me?”
“Yes.”
They were both quiet. Jesse stared at her defiantly. Jenn looking faintly quizzical.
After a time, Jenn said, “Not the other way around?”
Jesse nodded slowly as if to himself, then got up and mixed a new martini.
9
Jesse’s hangover was relentless on Monday morning.
He sat behind
his desk sipping bottled water and trying to concentrate on Peter Perkins.
“We spent two days going over that guy’s apartment,” Perkins
said. “We didn’t even find anything
embarrassing.”
“And him a stockbroker,” Jesse said.
“So what do you
know?”
Perkins looked down at his notebook.
“Kenneth Eisley, age thirty-seven, divorced, no children. Works
for Hollingsworth and Whitney in Boston. Parents live in Amherst.
They’ve been notified.”
“You do that?”
“Molly,” Peter Perkins said.
“God bless her,” Jesse said.
“Coroner’s through with him,”
Perkins said. “Parents are coming
tomorrow to claim the body. You want to talk to them?”
“You do it,” Jesse said.
“You pulling rank on me?” Perkins said.
“You bet,” Jesse said. “How
about the ex-wife?”
“She lives in Paradise,” Perkins said.
“On Plum Tree Road.
Probably kept the house when they split.”
“Seen her yet?”
“No. Hasn’t returned our calls.”
“I’ll go over,” Jesse said.
“Swell,” Perkins said. “I get to
question the grieving parents,
you talk to the ex-wife, who is probably delighted.”
“Not if she was getting alimony,” Je
sse said.
“That’s cynical,” Peter Perkins
said.
“It is,” Jesse said.
“What’s the ME say?”
“Nothing special. Shot twice in the chest at close range. Two
different guns.”
“Two guns?”
“Yep. Both twenty-twos.”
“Which one killed him?”
“Both.”
“Equally?”
“Either shot would have done it. They both got him in the heart.
You want all the details about what got penetrated and stuff?”
“I’ll read the report. We figure two shooters?”
“Can’t see why one guy would shoot someone with two guns,”
Perkins said.
“Any way to tell which one shot first?”
“Not really. Far as the ME could tell they entered the victim
more or less the same time.”
“Both at close range,” Jesse said.
“Both at close range.”
“Both in the heart,” Jesse said.
Perkins nodded. “Gotta be two people,” he said.
“Or one person who wants us to think he’s two people,” Jesse
said.
Perkins shrugged.
“Pretty elaborate,” Perkins said.
“And it gives us twice as many
murder weapons.”
Jesse drank more spring water. He didn’t say anything.
“We got his phone records,” Perkins said.
“Anthony and Suit are
chasing that down.”
“Debt?” Jesse said.
“Not so far. Got ten grand in his checking account.
Got a mutual
fund worth couple hundred thousand. I’m telling you, we’ve got
nada.”
“Somebody killed him and they had a
reason,” Jesse said. “Talk
to people where he worked?”
“No. I was going to ask you. Should I call, or go in to
Boston.”
“Go in,” Jesse said.
“It’s harder to brush you off.”
“You did a
lot of this in LA,” Perkins said. “You got any ideas.”
“When in doubt,” Jesse said,
“cherchez la ex-wife.”
“Wow,”
Perkins said, “it’s great working with a pro.”
10
She was taking the photographs of Kenneth Eisley down from the big oak-framed corkboard in the office.
“Leave that head shot,” he said.
“Memories?” she said.
“Trophy,” he said.
She smiled, and handed him the pile of discarded pictures.
“Shred these,” she said. “While
I put up the new
pictures.”
He began to feed the discarded photographs through the shredder.
“What is our new friend’s name?”
she said.
“Barbara Carey,” he said.
“Forty-two years old, married, no
children. Her husband’s name is Kevin. She’s a loan officer at the
in-town branch of Pequot. He’s a lawyer in Danvers.”
“They happy?”
“What’s happy?” he said.
“They go out every Saturday night,
usually with friends. They go to brunch a lot of Sundays. The second picture up, they’re coming out of the Four Seasons.
They
don’t fight in public. They both drink, but neither one seems to be
a drunk.”
“They own a dog?” she said.
“No sign,” he said. “I think
they’re too busy being successful
young professionals to get tied down by a dog.”
“That’s good,” she said.
“I still feel worried about Kenny’s
dog.”
She glanced at the remaining photograph of Kenneth Eisley.
“Somebody will find the dog and adopt him,” he
said.
“I hope so,” she said. “Dogs are
nice.”
He fed the last photograph into the shredder.
“Kevin usually leaves the house first in the morning,” he said.
“She leaves about a half hour later, at eight-thirty.”
“That means she’s home alone for half an hour every weekday
morning.”
“Yes, but it’s a neighborhood where
everyone is home looking out
the window,” he said.
“So where will we be able to do it?”
“She does the food shopping,” he said.
“At the Paradise Mall,” she said.
She pinned the last of the pictures onto the corkboard with a small red map tack, then stepped back beside him and the two of them looked at thirty-five photographs of Barbara Carey going about the business of her public life.
“Big parking lot,” he said. “At
the Paradise
Mall.”
11
Molly Crane had a pretty good body, Jesse thought, for a cop with three kids. The gun belt always looked too big for her. She adjusted it as she sat in the chair across from Jesse’s desk.
“I’ve been doing a little off-hours
snooping,” Molly
said.
Jesse waited.
“Into the rape thing.”
“Candace Pennington,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“How you doing?” Jesse said.
“Well,” Molly said, “mostly
I’m just watching. I park outside in my own car, no uniform, and watch her come to school, and go home.
During lunch hour, I hang out in the cafeteria kitchen and watch. I know the food service lady down there, Anne Minnihan.”
“Find out anything?”
“Maybe,” Molly said. “There was
a moment this morning in the
cafeteria. Three boys sort of circled her and they stood and talked for maybe two minutes. They were all big and she was against the wall, and you could barely see her. One of them showed her something. The boys laughed. Then they moved away.”
“How did Candace react.”
“Scared.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. She was terrified, and … something else.”
“Something else?”
“Yes. I can’t quite say what. It was like whatever they’d shown
her was … horrifying.”
“Know the boys?” Jesse said.
“Not by name, yet,” Molly said.
“But I’d recognize all of
them.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “We
don’t want to cause this kid any more pain than she’s already in. You need to ID these three boys without
them knowing it.”
“They were big, one of them was wearing a varsity jacket. I’ll
check the sports team photos in the lobby,” Molly said.
“Out of uniform,” Jesse said.
“Just a suburban mom waiting to
see the guidance counselor.”
“Hey,” Molly said.
“I’m not old enough to have kids in high school.”
“Vanity, vanity,” Jesse said.
“Cops can be vain,” Molly said.
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“You’re thinking especially if
they’re female, aren’t
you?”
Jesse leaned back in his chair and put his hands up.
He said, “I don’t have a sexist bone in my body, cutie
pie.”
“Anyway,” Molly said,
“I’ve lived in this town my whole life.
I’ll get them ID’d.”
“Okay, as long as you keep the kid in mind.”
“Candace?”
“Yes.”
“Hard to investigate a crime without anyone knowing it,” Molly
said. “For crissake, we can’t even talk to the victim.”
Jesse smiled. “Hard, we do at once,” he said. “Impossible takes
a little longer.”
“Oh God,” Molly said, “spare
me.”
Jesse grinned. “Just be careful of
Candace,” he
said.
“You’re very soft-hearted,
Jesse.”
“Sometimes,” he said.
12
Kenneth Eisley’s former wife had resurrected her maiden name,
which was Erickson. She worked as a corporate trainer at a company called Prometheus Plus, which was located in an office park in Woburn, and Jesse talked to her there, sitting in a chair made of silver tubing across from her desk. The desk too was made of silver tubing, with a glass top.
“Do you have any idea why someone might kill your former
husband?” Jesse said.
Christine Erickson laughed briefly and without amusement.
“Other than for being a jerk?” she said.
“Was he enough of a jerk to get himself shot?”
“Not that kind of jerk,” she said.
“He was a harmless
jerk.”
“Such as?” Jesse said.
“He thought it was important, I mean he actually thought it was
seriously important, who won the Super Bowl.”
“Everybody knows it’s the World Series that matters,” Jesse
said.
Christine looked blankly at Jesse for a moment. Jesse smiled.
Her demeanor was calm enough, Jesse noticed, but her movements seemed tight and angular.
“Oh,” she said.
“You’re kidding.”
“More or less,” Jesse said.
“What else was annoying about
him?”
Christine was wearing a dark maroon pantsuit with a white blouse
and short cordovan boots with pointy toes and heels a little too high to be sensible. She was slim and good-looking, with auburn hair and oval wire-rimmed glasses. Behind the glasses, her eyes were greenish.
“He believed the ads on television,” she said without
hesitation.
She’s talked about his faults before, Jesse thought.
“He thinks what matters is looking good, knowing the right
people, driving the right car, owning the right dog … Oh God,
what about Goldie?”
“He’s healthy,” Jesse said.
“Dog officer has
him.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“I was hoping you’d take him,”
Jesse said.
“Me. God no. I can’t. I work twelve hours a day.”
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