Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “What about Suit?”

  “You know the answer.” Jesse’s voice changed.

  “I do, but I think you need to hear yourself say it.”

  “Suit was shot. There.”

  “You sound angry, Jesse.”

  “Do I?”

  “Very. Who are you angry at? At me? At the man who shot Suit?”

  Jesse ignored the question. “I’ve had men killed under my command before.”

  “But you’re not here talking about before or other men. What is it about Suit?”

  Jesse hadn’t answered. He’d sat there in silence for the remainder of the session and he hadn’t gone back to see Dix for weeks. Even now, in the midst of a case where Dix’s insight and perspective would probably have been beneficial, Jesse hadn’t scheduled an appointment. Jesse hadn’t answered Dix that day, not because he didn’t know the answer. He knew the answer. He had known the answer before he ever walked into Dix’s office. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself, let alone say it aloud.

  Jesse looked down at his drink and noticed the ice had completely melted. Before he could move to do something about it, his doorbell rang.

  22

  Tamara Elkin stood on the welcome mat, an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label in her hand.

  “You going to ask me in, Chief, or am I going home to drink this alone?”

  “If you stop calling me Chief, I’ll consider it.”

  This wasn’t the first time a woman had shown up unexpectedly at his door, but he’d never been shocked by their presence. Surprised? Sometimes. Not shocked. This was different.

  “Jesse, may I please come in?” Dr. Elkin said, adding a sarcastic curtsy.

  “Please.”

  As she passed him, he caught a blast of her grassy, sweet perfume. Her curly hair, freed from its bonds, bounced as she walked. The way it moved and framed her face reminded Jesse of a lion’s mane. She placed the bottle at her feet and removed her parka to reveal a low-cut white sweater over tight jeans and black cowboy boots. He was staring at her again, as he had when they first met. She noticed, but just smiled that mischievous smile of hers. A smile, Jesse thought, full of promise and trouble.

  “What should I do with this?” she asked, holding up her coat.

  He took it from her and hung it on a standing coatrack next to his jacket.

  She picked the bottle up from the floor and wiggled it. “And this?”

  “Follow me.”

  Tamara Elkin liked her scotch neat. Jesse decided he’d go with it that way, too, as he hadn’t had much luck with ice before her arrival. They clinked glasses and sipped. Jesse sat down in his leather recliner. The doctor made herself comfortable on the sofa. And she did seem awfully comfortable, stretching herself out, propping herself up on an elbow. She had long legs and a runner’s body, not the kind of build that usually got Jesse’s attention.

  She pointed at the full highball glass on the coffee table. “I see you’ve had a head start.”

  “It’s untouched, but not for lack of trying,” Jesse said. “I got distracted, then you showed up.”

  “If you’d like, I can go.” Her face lost its smile.

  “Don’t. I’m glad you’re here. And speaking of that . . .”

  “I was curious,” she said.

  “About?”

  “You.”

  “What about me?”

  “You don’t get a job like mine and not hear about Jesse Stone. You’ve got quite a rep there, Chief—excuse me, Jesse. Almost from the day I got into the office, you seemed to be a popular topic of conversation. And your popularity seems pretty gender neutral there.” She raised her glass to him. “The guys talk about your ball playing mostly and about you and the ladies.” There was that smile again. “The women talk about your looks and your . . . I don’t quite know how to put it. Your self-containment, maybe? It’s like the cowboy thing down in Texas.”

  “The cowboy thing?”

  “I got my medical degree at the University of Texas and interned in El Paso.”

  “Now the boots make sense,” Jesse said.

  “Texas, as you might’ve heard, is big on mythmaking. The biggest and most enduring myth of all is the cowboy myth. You know, the lone man riding the range. The man who needs nothing more than his horse and what he came into the world with. Maybe he’s nursing a broken heart or he’s out there searching for the right gal.”

  “And is that going to be you, Doc, the right gal?”

  She laughed. It was a deep laugh, deeper than her voice would have suggested.

  “Not likely, Jesse. I don’t think I’ve ever been anybody’s right gal for more than a few months. Usually, I’m the right gal until the sun comes up. See, I’m a lot like you.”

  “Are you?”

  “More than you know.”

  Jesse freshened their glasses. “Really?”

  “Really. I was a world-class distance runner, five and ten thousand meters, mostly. Got me a full ride at Vanderbilt. I might’ve made the Olympic team if I hadn’t tried to run a steeplechase for fun. I came over a hurdle, my foot hit the water pit, and I slipped. Broke my left femur in four places and wrecked my right knee in the process. Good-bye Olympics. Hello recreational jogging and medical school.”

  “Ouch.”

  “How’s that right shoulder, Jesse?”

  “Gives me a lot of trouble on raw nights like this,” he said.

  “Don’t I know it. I’ve got a failed marriage under my belt, too. Great guy, just not great for me. Handsome son of a bitch. He was used to a lot of attention. Guess there wasn’t enough of me to give him all the attention he needed.”

  “Okay, Doc, you’re batting a thousand so far.”

  “Heard you’ve got a weakness for this stuff.” She shook her glass, then took her drink in one gulp.

  “Do I?”

  “That’s what the cops from the surrounding towns talk about, your drinking. They tell me you got hired here because you were a drunk.”

  “They’re right. Long story for some other time.”

  “I’m not judging. I’ve got my issues, too, if you hadn’t figured that out. Got me in some trouble.”

  “That how you wound up as ME of this corner of the world?”

  She nodded. “It’d take some prodigious pretzel logic to explain how coming here from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York is career advancement.”

  “You’ve got my attention,” he said.

  “Long story for some other time.”

  “So why are you here, Doc? In my living room, not in Massachusetts?”

  “Not because I’m the right gal,” she said, “but because I’ve been very alone for a very long time and I could use a friend.”

  She stood up from the couch, walked over to Jesse, bent over and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  Jesse was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar, especially not a liar to himself. He was severely tempted for lots of reasons, not the least of which was the way Tamara Elkin smelled. He liked the way her hair felt against his cheek. Her kiss was also sweet and skillful. He, too, had been alone for months, having seen Diana only once since last spring. But there had been all sorts of temptations he had learned not to give in to.

  He stood up even as she kissed him. He clamped his hands around her thin but well-defined biceps and gently pushed her away.

  “A friend?” he said. “I could use a friend.”

  “How about a friend with perks?”

  He shook his head. “Bad timing.”

  She didn’t wilt or blush or run. Jesse liked that. She’d taken a risk and didn’t shrink when it failed to work out.

  “There’s someone else?” she said.

  He nodded. “There would have to be for me to turn you down. At least, to turn
the perks part down. I’m up for the friend thing if you are.”

  “Could sure use one of those,” she said.

  “Then I’m your man.”

  She leaned over and kissed him again, only this time it was softly on the cheek.

  23

  Jesse rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and rolled out of bed. He threw on some clothes because Tamara Elkin had spent the night in the guest bedroom. She hadn’t wanted to drive home after all the drinking they’d done. Jesse was fine with that and he figured the ME was also testing his resolve on the friendship front. So far, so good. He’d managed to keep to his own bed and she to hers.

  When he knocked at the guest room door there was no answer. Thinking Tamara might still be asleep, Jesse stepped in to wake her up. But there, reflected in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, was Tamara Elkin, nude as the day she was born, her slender, muscular body damp and shining, her curly hair somewhat tamed by water. Without the curls, her hair stretched almost to her mid-back.

  “Whoa! Sorry,” he said, and backed out of the room.

  She followed him out a few seconds later, a towel wrapped around her body.

  “Don’t apologize, Jesse. I didn’t plan it, but I guess I wouldn’t have minded if you closed the bedroom door behind you instead of going back through it.”

  “Like I said, under different circumstances . . .”

  “Right. This woman of yours—”

  “Diana.”

  “Diana must be something special.”

  Jesse winked. “She would have to be.”

  “That’s a lovely thing to say. Give me ten minutes and I’ll come downstairs and cook us some breakfast.”

  She was good to her word. Ten minutes later Tamara Elkin was standing in Jesse’s kitchen. She was dressed, her hair still damp, her face made up, though she didn’t use a whole lot of cosmetics. She didn’t have to and it wouldn’t have suited her, Jesse thought.

  “What do you like for breakfast?” she asked, her head scanning from side to side, studying the layout.

  “Scrambled eggs. Hash browns. Toast. Orange juice. Coffee. A donut, too, if one’s around.”

  “For goodness’ sakes, Jesse Stone, how do you stay in shape eating like that?”

  “You asked me what I like for breakfast, not what I eat. Two different things.”

  Tamara didn’t say anything, but Jesse could tell she was making a mental note. She would be more careful in the future about the questions she asked him and how she asked them.

  “How about some eggs, then? I make a wicked morning-after omelet.”

  Jesse took the bait. “Morning after what?”

  “Morning after a bottle of scotch.”

  He laughed. “Sure.”

  “Thank you, Jesse,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “It’s been lonely for me here. Really lonely.”

  “I’ve been kind of alone my whole life,” he said. “No matter where I’ve been or who I’ve been with.”

  “I can see that, but alone and lonely are different.”

  He nodded.

  Before either one of them could speak again and just as Tamara was reaching into the fridge for the eggs, Jesse’s house phone rang. His cell phone buzzed, too. Tamara Elkin held up her cell to show Jesse she was also getting a call.

  Jesse picked up his cordless house phone and walked into the living room. Tamara picked up her phone.

  “Jesse Stone,” he said.

  “We got trouble, Jesse.” It was Suit.

  “What kind?”

  “Jogger found a woman’s body at the foot of the Bluffs by Paradise Dunes Road.”

  “ID?”

  “She didn’t have any on her, but she’s blond and she’s wearing a full-length fur coat.”

  “Maxie Connolly,” Jesse said in a whisper.

  “You think it’s a suicide?”

  “We don’t even know it’s her yet. Who’s down there with her?”

  “Peter Perkins. I alerted the ME’s office, too.”

  “Good work, Suit. Call Healy and give him the heads-up. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Jesse hung up. Picked up his cell phone and saw that there was a voice mail from Peter Perkins.

  He sent a text of his own to Stu Cromwell, then stepped back into the kitchen.

  “What was the call about?” she asked.

  “Treed cat.”

  She shook her head. “Not a dead blonde at the base of the Bluffs?”

  “My mistake. Yeah, a dead woman.”

  “Any idea who it is?”

  “Pretty good idea.”

  “Want to share.”

  “I think it’s better if I don’t.”

  “Okay, you’re probably right,” she said.

  “Get used to that, Doc.”

  She looked confused. “Used to what?”

  He gave her a half-smile. “To me being right about things.”

  24

  It was Maxie Connolly’s body. Jesse was sure of it from thirty feet away. The second he caught sight of that blond hair, a shade that wasn’t on God’s original color palette, he knew. Even if he hadn’t recognized her hair, he saw that ridiculous mink coat. But there was nothing ridiculous about Maxie Connolly in death. All the brassiness, the come-on, the crudeness, was gone to wherever those things go when the life is sucked out of you. It was evident from the rips, mud, and twigs caught in her coat that she had come to rest at the base of the bluffs after a long, hard tumble.

  Oddly, though, she had come to rest on a long rock, almost as if she were napping. One arm at her side, one bent across her chest. Her legs, separated by only a few inches, were straight ahead of her. Jesse might have been able to accept the illusion of sleep but for two factors impossible to ignore: her head was twisted at an angle that only an owl might achieve and her eyes were open and unseeing. Perhaps because of the cold temperatures or because she hadn’t been dead very long, Maxie Connolly’s blue eyes hadn’t yet taken on the milky, opaque quality of the dead.

  It wasn’t yet eight o’clock and the narrow slit of beach was pretty deserted in winter. Jesse liked it that way. He was glad to see that Peter Perkins had followed Jesse’s long-standing rule against his cops using their sirens or light bars unless they absolutely had to. It was Jesse’s experience that all flashing lights did was slow traffic and attract unwanted attention. The only people there were Tamara Elkins, Peter Perkins, the jogger who’d found the body, and Stu Cromwell. Jesse understood that Maxie’s death was going to complicate his life and the case. Texting Stu Cromwell accomplished two things: It would help Jesse control the details that got out to the public and it showed Cromwell that Jesse was a man of his word.

  Jesse walked over to the ME.

  “Do you know the victim’s ID?” the ME asked, her demeanor completely professional, her mouth once again neutral.

  “Maxie Connolly. Ginny Connolly’s mom.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Uh-huh.” Jesse pointed at Maxie’s body. “What do you think, Doc?”

  “I think she snapped her neck on the way down. My guess, without opening her up, is that C-five or C-six, maybe both, are broken. And although she may look intact, I bet I find a whole host of broken bones and internal damage when . . . you know. Mink coats may cover a multitude of sins, but she took a long, hard fall, Chief.”

  So it was Chief again. He let it go. “Suicide?”

  The ME looked up to the top of the Bluffs, shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make a definitive determination unless I find evidence indicating something else killed her.”

  “Evidence like what?”

  “Bullet wound, stab wound, ligature marks, like that.”

  “Did you find a note on her?”

  “I just go
t here a few minutes ago,” she said. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything on her except her clothes.”

  Jesse shrugged. Then he said, “I have to treat it as a homicide until you tell me different. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll let you get back to work.”

  He walked over to where Stu Cromwell was standing. “Give me a few minutes to talk to my man and to the jogger and I’ll have a statement for you.”

  “Okay.”

  Jesse turned his back on the sea spray. The air was a bit warmer and clearer than it had been the night before, but it was still pretty cold and the icy ocean water didn’t help. He called Peter Perkins over.

  “What’s the deal?”

  “Suit dispatched me after he got the call,” Perkins said. “I checked the body. She was cold, unresponsive. Did the initial forensics, but it’s pretty clear this is where she landed.”

  Paradise had no budget for a dedicated crime scene unit, so a few of Jesse’s cops had been certified by the state to do basic forensics. Jesse didn’t love the setup, but he’d given up trying to convince the powers that be to spend the necessary funds. It had been hard enough to get the county to fund a certified ME. When the situation called for it, as with the remains of the girls and John Doe, Jesse asked Healy’s people to do the forensics. They had the training and the resources to do it properly.

  Jesse asked, “Any sign of a struggle?”

  “None that I could see. The scene was pristine around the body and the only footprints near it were the jogger’s.”

  Jesse turned, tilted his head at the jogger. “What’s his story?”

  “Name’s Rand Smythe. Age forty-seven. Retired. Lives down the beach on Falmouth Circle with his wife.”

  “Retired?”

  “Made it big in the computer software business,” Perkins said. “One of the big companies bought him out. Says he runs this stretch of the beach beneath the Bluffs every day.”

  “What happened?” Jesse asked, eyeing the trim, silver-haired Smythe in his cold-weather running getup and two-hundred-dollar running shoes.

  Perkins pointed behind him. “Smythe says he came around the elbow there where the bluff juts out and the beach narrows at five-fifty-seven.”