Robert B. Parker's the Hangman's Sonnet

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Jesse thought about it for a second. He rubbed his right cheek with the back of the folded fingers of his right hand.

  “All the questions have one answer, the same answer.”

  “I can’t wait to hear this. Don’t tell me we’re looking at some twisted serial-killer type or an impulse kill, because the evidence doesn’t support that.”

  “Just the opposite, Brian. I think this was completely calculated. You said it yourself at Daisy’s: The homemade sound suppressor is evidence of premeditation.”

  “But premeditation by who?”

  “I don’t think Curnutt and Bolton picked Maude Cain’s house because they heard some story about jewelry when they were inside together. Someone pointed them at that house.”

  “To steal the jewelry?”

  Jesse said, “If Curnutt turned up dead anywhere else, if that index card wasn’t on the body, or if we didn’t get that anonymous tip, I might accept it.”

  “But if it wasn’t about the jewelry, then what? The Cain woman was broke. She was trying to sell her house so she could live out her last few years. What else could she have had that had any value?”

  “Good questions,” Jesse said. “I don’t know the answers. I know someone wants media attention and Curnutt’s murder here was supposed to help get it.”

  “And if he doesn’t get the attention he wants, what then, Jesse, another body?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You better hope not or I’ll be working that case with the next Paradise chief of police.”

  Jesse knew Lundquist was right and there was nothing more to say for now. It was time to go.

  51

  Hump remembered something one of the guys inside had told him way back when he was doing juvie time. That the bigger the sandbox, the easier it was to lose yourself. Of course that was before Nine-Eleven, before most city-center blocks had cameras everywhere. And if the city didn’t have a camera on every lamppost, then private businesses had them outside their buildings. Even damned taxis had dashboard cameras. Despite that, he knew he was safer far away from New Hampshire and Paradise, safer from the cops and from the guy who had killed King. He supposed he could have easily made it to New York City, the biggest sandbox of them all, but he didn’t know anybody there, didn’t have anybody he could trust or with the right kind of connections.

  But he knew Boston. He’d spent time here as a kid and for a few years between bids. He felt comfortable in Boston and knew all sorts of people in town, people who might give him a room until things cooled down or who could hook him up if and when he decided to fence the dragonfly ring. He’d been inside when that marathon-bombing thing happened, but he knew the town was different now, that there were eyes all over the place that hadn’t been there before. Still, if he had to keep looking over his shoulder, he felt more relaxed doing it in a place he was familiar with, a place full of people who didn’t look anybody in the eye or care about anybody else’s business.

  So far, he felt good about his choice. He hadn’t gotten a second look since getting into town. He’d already found a place to hunker down for a night or two or until he could make contact with someone who could find a better spot for him. Now he had to make a call. He hadn’t wanted to make the call until he was in a safer place. That’s what he told himself. The truth was he didn’t want to make the call because he didn’t want to face the fact that King had fucked him. He guessed he should have figured it out because of the extra two grand King left behind with the note. Knowing that, he should have been happy King got what was coming to him. The thing about it was that it just made him feel more sad and stupid than betrayed.

  He felt pretty stupid to begin with, that he could have let King play him the way he had. The worst part of it was that King had so little respect for Hump that he hadn’t even bothered covering his tracks. King had left intact the notepad where he’d scribbled down the phone number. Hump kept shaking his head whenever he thought about King’s lack of respect for him. Sure, King’d ripped off the sheet with the phone number on it, but didn’t bother with the sheets beneath it. Did he really think I was so dumb I wouldn’t know how to shade in the next sheet on the notepad with the side of the pencil lead? The answer was painfully obvious. He was shaking his head as he walked into Dennis’s, a dreary local bar in Southie.

  Hump knew the place had an old-fashioned phone booth in the back by the bathrooms. What else he knew about Dennis’s was that Mickey Coyle hung out there. They weren’t friends or nothing. Coyle was the kind of person who didn’t need to make friends inside because he was protected by Gino Fish’s money. Coyle was heavily connected and that counted for a lot, especially in the position Hump was in. If he couldn’t squeeze more money out of the guy who’d hired him and King, he was going to have to sell the ring. Mickey Coyle was the type of guy to know people who might take the ring off his hands.

  The back of the bar was beautifully mirrored, the way they used to do it. The bar itself was vintage but beat up, and the stools looked pretty wobbly. There were a few guys at the bar, minding their own business. Dennis’s was the kind of place where people minded their own business and drank shots with tall boys back. There wasn’t a blender, an olive, or an orange slice in sight. Nobody turned or looked directly at Hump. You didn’t look people in the face in Dennis’s. Instead they all rolled their eyes up from their drinks or papers to see what the bar mirror told them about the big guy walking into the place.

  “Phone booth still in the back?” Hump asked the barman.

  “Ain’t moved since I seen it last. Drink?”

  “Harpoon tap. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Hump found the phone booth where he remembered it. It smelled of stale beer and ancient cigarette smoke preserved inside the sticky wall grime like insects trapped inside amber. He pulled quarters out of his pocket, sat down on the rounded ledge of a seat, and closed the booth door. He dropped the coins in the slot and punched in the number. It rang and rang and rang and rang. He put the phone back in its cradle.

  Hump’s beer was on a coaster on the bar by a stool far away from the others. He sat down, took a sip, and waved the barman over.

  “What I owe ya?”

  “Three bucks.”

  Hump put a twenty on the bar. When the bartender turned to walk away, Hump stopped him.

  “Mickey Coyle still come in here?”

  “Who?” The bartender was a bloated guy in his thirties with shaggy gray hair and a prison stare.

  “Mickey Coyle. Works for Gino Fish.”

  The bartender gave Hump a strange look and laughed at him.

  “I say something funny?”

  “Not funny, just ignorant.”

  Hump’s skin burned with anger and it took everything he had not to crack the beer glass against the side of the barman’s fat face. Instead, he finished his beer in a sip and said. “You got a pencil?”

  The barman reached over by the register and gave him a pen. “Best I can do.”

  Hump ripped the sheet of notepaper in half. He wrote something down and handed it and the pen to the bartender.

  “When Mickey comes in, give him that. Keep the change.” Hump was moving to the door.

  “Who?” the barman asked again without any heart, because the door was already closing.

  52

  When he left the station for the night, someone was waiting for him by his Explorer. Jesse thought the guy looked vaguely familiar, a face he’d seen in a sea of other faces. But he’d be damned if he could remember which sea and the name that belonged to this guy’s face.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Maybe. Maybe we can help each other, Chief.”

  Then it clicked. Reporter.

  “Boston Globe, right?”

  “Very good. Ed Selko.”

  Selko was a short, desiccated man whose breath smelled of cigarettes
. His breath also smelled of something else, something that Jesse’s breath often smelled of: scotch whiskey. The reporter was fifty going on sixty and had that ruffled, careless look that newspaper people could afford to have. Selko was never going have to stand in front of a camera doing a remote.

  Jesse gave Selko his blank stare and silence to fill up with chatter. When all Selko gave in response was silence of his own, it was clear to Jesse that the newspaperman understood silence in the way a detective understands it. TV and radio reporters didn’t have the luxury of silence. Dead air was their enemy. Not so for newspaper people.

  “Can I buy you a drink, Chief?”

  Jesse snorted. “I’m not that easy, Selko.”

  “Come on, Stone, gimme a break. A drink will grease the skids . . . for me, anyway.”

  “You talk, but you don’t say anything. What do we have to discuss?”

  “A frayed old index card.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Drink first.”

  They sat alone in the banquet room at the Lobster Claw, a second glass of Lagavulin in front of Selko and a beer in Jesse’s hand. Jesse was happy to let Selko get a few single malts in him while he nursed his beer. As much as Jesse loved scotch, single malts didn’t hold much appeal for him, especially the godawful smoky ones like Lagavulin. The nose of the scotch stank like a campfire after a rainstorm.

  “You’ve got expensive taste in scotch,” Jesse said.

  “The other half of my diet is cigarettes, so I can afford it. How’s your pal Johnnie Walker these days?”

  “We’re not talking about me, Selko.”

  The reporter first took a sip, then slugged the rest down. “You know, Chief, when I said we should have a drink, an empty banquet room wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  “Privacy is what I had in mind. You mentioned an index card.”

  “You know, the one you found on Curnutt’s body. The one you didn’t tell the press about,” Selko said, staring at Jesse’s face, looking for any reaction. “You’re good, Stone. You get about as worked up as an Easter Island totem. I’ve always admired that about you. How you don’t give anything away.”

  “You’ll make me blush.” Jesse was getting impatient. “The index card.”

  Selko fished out his cell phone, tapped, scrolled, and turned the screen to Jesse. It was a photo of what looked to be the index card Jesse had pulled out of Curnutt’s pocket.

  “It’s definitely an index card,” Jesse said.

  “Someone faxed that to me this afternoon.”

  Jesse continued to play it close to the vest. “Which proves what, exactly?”

  “I’m not sure. The note that came with it suggested I ask you about it.”

  “Okay, you’ve asked.”

  “It’s curious, Chief, no?”

  “What is?”

  “Your department just found the body of a murdered man in a Paradise nature preserve and the murdered man was a suspect in the murder of Maude Cain.”

  Jesse pointed at the image on the cell. “You can buy an index card like that in any office-supply store in the country.”

  “Let’s stop playing games here, okay, Stone? I’m a drunk, but a good reporter. You know how that is. Remember I mentioned that the person who sent me the note suggested I ask you about the index card?”

  “How could I forget? Let’s see this note.”

  Selko shook his head. “Nope. I’m not showing you mine until you show me yours. But I can tell you this: You found the index card in Curnutt’s left rear pocket.”

  Jesse said, “What do you want?”

  “To do my job. I want a story.”

  “What if I’ve got no story to give you? All you’ve got is an image of an index card and some tale about a note. It would take some mighty impressive hoop jumping to make a story out of that.”

  Selko screwed up his mouth. “The police chief doth protest too much. I was hoping you’d be straight with me, Stone.”

  “You think calling me a liar is going to improve your chances for a story?”

  “I’m not calling you a liar,” Selko said, sliding a folded sheet of white paper across the table. “He is.”

  Jesse unfolded the paper and read it. When he was done, he stood up and tugged Selko by the arm. “C’mon, we’re going.”

  “Where to?”

  “The station.”

  53

  Ed Selko wasn’t pleased about being “asked” to go down to the station with Jesse, but he hadn’t been foolish enough to bark about it too loudly. Even with two drinks in him, the reporter hadn’t lost sight of the fact that getting a story was the point, nor had he lost sight of the fact that the story would be a better one with Stone on board. At the paper, pure speculation sprinkled with some interesting facts did not a story make. Still, he had his limits.

  “Look, Stone,” Selko said, no longer able to contain his frustration. “I came down here voluntarily. I’ve answered all of your questions, several times, but that’s now officially over. Unless there’s more of a give-and-take between us, I’m calling my paper and you’ll be the story.”

  Jesse had a decision to make. He could just let the reporter walk without saying another word. Selko might be annoyed at that. Might even get his editor to give him a few inches in the next edition detailing the faxed photo, note, and his treatment at the hands of the Paradise PD. Jesse could live with the slings and arrows that came his way. That didn’t worry him. People had written much worse about Jesse than anything Selko might print. No, it was the rest of the story that was the problem. The media was a copycat business. Once Selko intimated that the police had been less than forthcoming about the circumstances surrounding Curnutt’s murder, the town would be crawling with media people looking to one-up Selko.

  “No promises,” Jesse said. “Ask your questions and we’ll see if there’s a deal to be made here.”

  Selko made some noises about how the press, on behalf of the public, had a right to know and that the state had no right to withhold information that was in the public interest. Jesse had heard it all before. It was what media types always said just before making a deal.

  Jesse walked to the other end of his office and opened the door.

  “Listen, Selko, you can walk out of here with no story and your principles intact anytime you want or we can make a deal.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I will give you some details about the Curnutt homicide that you can make a story out of and then when we get close, you get the exclusive.”

  “And in return?”

  Jesse cleared his throat. “Not a word of speculation about the meaning of the signature at the bottom of the note.”

  Selko didn’t jump at the offer. “Come on, Stone. We both know what it means.”

  “Speculation.”

  “Bull! Face it, Stone, the note telling me where the index card was establishes his bona fides that he either killed Curnutt himself or learned about it from the man who did. We now both know what this story is really about, but I can pretend otherwise. Even with the little I’ve got now, I can make a hell of a story out of this. Look, it’s always better to have police cooperation, and I get why you withheld info about the index card, but now that you’ve got that note . . . Either way, I have a story and you have a major media shit storm on your hands.”

  “Don’t you get it, Selko, that’s what the killer wants? You interested in abetting murderers?”

  “I get it, but unless you haven’t noticed, Chief, the business I’m in is dying by the inch. If I don’t use this, my editor will kill me. I lose this job, I’ve got no safety net.”

  “Good point. One day, Selko. Give me one more day before you go to press with the bigger story. I’ll give you enough for tomorrow’s story, details about Curnutt’s murder that no one else has. For now, leave
out any mention of the index card and the signature at the bottom of the note.”

  Selko took out a voice recorder, a pad, and a pen. “What didn’t you share with the press about Curnutt’s murder?”

  “The killer used a homemade sound suppressor. Fragments of it were found in the victim’s wounds. The weapon was a .22-caliber handgun. You can see a video online of the exact type of suppressor and handgun used.”

  “Was the guy who killed Curnutt a pro or an amateur, you know, some guy who watched that video you mentioned?”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Guess.”

  Jesse shook his head. “Speculation is what you do, not what I do.”

  “That’s a start, but you’ll have to do better than that, Stone.”

  Jesse considered disclosing the information about the stolen dragonfly ring, but realized he’d probably lose a shot at finding Hump Bolton if he did. Instead he turned to the photos in the murder book and put it in front of Selko.

  “The killer shot Curnutt at very close range: one to the head and one to the heart.”

  “Contact wounds?”

  “There were powder burns, but they weren’t contact wounds.”

  Selko nodded, smiling. “Okay, Chief, that’ll work for now.”

  Five minutes later, Jesse was driving Selko back to his car. The reporter was talking to him, but Jesse was barely listening. There was something about the fax to Selko that Jesse didn’t like, but he was damned if he could figure out exactly what it was.

  “One day, Stone,” Selko said. “But I don’t see what one day buys you. Either way this thing is going to blow up.”

  “One day,” Jesse repeated, returning to the present. “What does it buy me? Time to prepare for the explosion.”

  54

  Jesse watched Selko drive his dinged and dented old Camry away, the car’s rear bumper held on by duct tape and a prayer. They say people’s dogs are a reflection of their owners. Jesse didn’t know if Selko had a dog, but it seemed to him that the reporter’s car was a pretty accurate reflection of its owner: beat up, ruffled, but persistent. Jesse thought about heading straight home, but that was no longer a viable option. Selko was right, no matter what, this was about to turn into a mess and he had what remained of the night plus twenty-four hours before the crap hit the fan. After that Paradise would become a circus and a zoo all rolled into one.