Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  She nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Now’s the time.”

  She smiled without joy. “It would seem to be.”

  The server returned with the scotch and started to ask about a food order. When he saw the scowl on Jesse’s face, the server disappeared.

  “Perfect timing,” she said. She gulped her scotch and took a second to compose herself. “Two years ago, I was working a night rotation and I signed off on an autopsy done by a more junior colleague on a nineteen-year-old female suicide. The deceased had been found unresponsive in the bathroom at a friend’s party in Greenwich Village. It all seemed like a pretty straightforward opioid overdose. There were no signs of violence, no physical trauma. The victim had ready access to the drugs. Grandma had terminal cancer. The girl also apparently had a history of chronic depression. But the family refused to accept our findings.”

  “Parents never want to hear that their kid’s killed herself. Means they failed.”

  “Especially politically connected parents with money.”

  “Lots of those in New York City,” he said.

  “They brought in their own expert and had a second autopsy done.”

  “And?”

  “And their expert found something we missed, some very slight swelling around a tiny puncture wound that he claimed was an injection site. With this one fact, he fabricated a ludicrous scenario involving forced ingestion of pills and a lethal injection. It was absurd.”

  “But.”

  “But the doctor who performed the original autopsy had missed the swelling and I missed that he missed it.”

  “That couldn’t be enough to get you fired,” Jesse said.

  “It could be if you were having an affair with the person who screwed up the autopsy and if a jealous, backstabbing son-of-a-bitch coworker whispered in your boss’s ear.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I didn’t get fired, exactly,” she said. “None of this was leaked to the media, but it was made pretty clear to me that if I pushed back, there would be consequences. So I got pointed to the exit door and got a kick in the ass for a good-bye present. I took a year off and traveled to let things settle out before I began applying for jobs. Not too many takers, though. I guess not many folks believed I just wanted a more quiet life than New York City offered.”

  “Or just maybe there were carefully directed whispers.”

  “Maybe. So you can see why I thought that your questioning my findings about Maxie Connolly’s COD would make me think you knew,” she said, her voice brittle.

  He nodded. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I suppose what happened to Maxie Connolly might’ve been the result of foul play, but I didn’t find any evidence indicating that it was.”

  No one needed to teach Jesse Stone a lesson on following the evidence.

  “Do you really think it was a homicide?” she asked.

  He explained about the missing cell phone and about what they had so conveniently discovered under Wiethop’s bed.

  “It was like it was left there for us to find. It should have been gift wrapped with a bow on it.”

  “Or maybe the guy wasn’t exactly a criminal genius.”

  “He was a con, Doc. I could tell. He reeked of jail time. He might not have been a genius, but he was a criminal and he wasn’t a kid. He’d know not to leave evidence around like that even if he was taking off for good. Without that stuff there, no one would have even cared that he left. Leaving that stuff under his bed was like leaving a sign that said Come and get me.”

  “What’s that expression cops always use? If criminals had half a brain—”

  “We’d be in trouble.” Jesse nodded. “If we had only found the phone or a suicide note by where Maxie went over the Bluffs, I would feel better about it being a suicide.”

  “It was pretty windy the night she died, Jesse. The note might’ve blown out to sea from up there for all you know and the cabbie might’ve taken the cell phone with him when he split.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Look, Jesse . . .” Tamara stared into her empty glass.

  He understood. “Don’t worry about it. No one will hear about what happened in New York from me, not even if my hunch turns out to be right. I don’t throw my friends under the bus.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Can’t afford to,” he said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Don’t have many friends.”

  Tamara Elkin smiled again and let out a big sigh of relief.

  Jesse said, “Can we order now? I’m pretty hungry.”

  She nodded and Jesse waved to the waiter.

  46

  After his rendezvous with Tamara Elkin, Jesse went back to his house and poured himself a few fingers of Johnnie Walker Black. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to drink it. He just turned the glass around and around in his fingers, staring at it. He had struggled with drinking for most of his adult life and had, with Dix’s help, come to a sort of peace about it with himself. It was the same kind of uneasy Zen he’d reached about his shoulder injury: He wasn’t ever going to play shortstop in the major leagues and he was never going to stop drinking. When he finally accepted the reality of his drinking, it ceased filling in every crease and crack in his life. The struggle no longer took up so much of his energy.

  The strange thing is that he could stop the physical act of drinking. Had stopped for weeks at a time. For months at a time. But the thirst, the desire, never left him. So even when he wasn’t drinking, he never stopped wanting to. He played out the rituals of it with club soda and lime. He still came home and discussed his woes with his poster of Ozzie Smith, glass in hand. It was folly and somewhere he knew it. Like many things drinkers do, he told himself he was doing it to prove a point to the world when, in fact, the world didn’t care and it proved very little. As was often the case, it was Dix who’d held the mirror up to Jesse’s version of the emperor’s new clothes.

  One day he got fed up with Dix and told him so.

  “You know I come in here every week and tell you I haven’t had a drink in months and you can’t be bothered to say a word about it.”

  “Dickens got paid by the word, Jesse, not me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you don’t pay me to pat you on the back for being a good boy.”

  “An occasional attaboy would be nice.”

  “If I thought it was called for, I’d give it.”

  “And not drinking for nearly a year doesn’t call for it?”

  “Look, Jesse, like I said, I’m not here to pat you on the back and you’re not here to be a good patient. You drinking or not drinking doesn’t change the nature of my job. Other than not actually ingesting alcohol, have you changed?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I never fooled you that talk therapy was going to do much to stop your drinking. If you want to stop, you’ll stop. But if you do, when you do, do it for yourself because it’s what you want, not to prove something to me or Jenn or anyone else. What you’re doing now, it’s like someone proving he can hold his breath for a long time. No matter how long he holds his breath, it doesn’t mean he’s going to actually stop breathing. Eventually, he’s going to take another breath.”

  That night Jesse went home and stopped holding his breath. And when he drank again it was as if he had lost the weight of the baggage he’d been toting around with him since he’d left L.A.

  This was different. He kept staring at the scotch in his glass. It was just as pretty to him as it had always been. He knew that even nondrinkers, or beer and wine drinkers, often wished they liked scotch because it was so damned beautiful. Yet he just didn’t feel like drinking. He kept seeing the look on Tamara’s face and how she gulped down the
scotch when the waiter brought it to the table. She hadn’t said it outright, but she and Jesse were a lot alike. He had been where she was now. He imagined he hadn’t looked too dissimilar from her in the wake of his dismissal from the LAPD. It haunted him still. Maybe, he thought, this was the moment he and Dix had talked about. The moment when he decided for himself that he wanted to stop and would stop drinking. He knew better than to delve too deeply into it, that if it was the moment, he would know it only in retrospect.

  Jesse turned on his TV and tuned it to the news. He realized it was a mistake almost as soon as he had done it, but it was already too late. There on the screen before him was a reporter he recognized from one of the big Boston stations. She was an older, handsome woman with perfectly cut, shoulder-length graying hair and striking blue eyes. She and Jesse had crossed paths a few times in the past and they had a kind of grudging respect for each other. She believed in what presenting the news used to mean and Jesse believed in being a good cop, no matter what. But Jesse realized that as fair as the reporter was and as disinterested in salacious speculation as she might be, there was no good way to spin what was going on in his town. He had three homicides—four, if his hunch was right—on his hands and he wasn’t any closer to solving them than he was the morning they removed the debris of the collapsed building. If anything, he had more questions and was further away.

  The reporter might have had a Cronkite-era ethic, but she also had an eye for the dramatic. She did her report from Trench Alley, the wind whipping the remnants of the crime scene tape so fiercely that it made snapping noises. The overcast skies and Sawtooth Creek as a backdrop only enhanced the drama. As she spoke, old photographs of Ginny and Mary Kate flashed over her shoulder. Basically, she rehashed what was already on the public record. She discussed Maxie Connolly’s “suicide” and the discovery of the body in the tarp. Images of Maxie and of the dead man’s tattoo replaced those of the girls. Although she took no visible delight in it, the reporter reminded her audience that neither the state police nor the Paradise PD had made any progress in solving the crimes nor in identifying the mysterious victim in the blue tarp.

  Then, as a closing shot, the reporter had her cameraman move the focus away from her face. He zoomed in on the floor of the old factory building, specifically at the police barricades surrounding the two holes in the concrete slab where the bodies had been found. Piles of flowers, wreathes, dolls, notes, and crucifixes had been laid around the barriers to create a makeshift memorial to the dead girls. Wisely, the reporter remained silent for several seconds before signing off.

  When Jesse looked back down at the glass in his hand, he noticed it was empty.

  47

  Suit, Molly, Peter Perkins, and Captain Healy were seated around the table in the conference room. Jesse stood by the whiteboard. With the exception of Healy, Jesse had called them all into his office that morning. He’d invited the captain to the meeting the previous evening between drinks in the wake of the news report from Trench Alley. Jesse had a good laugh at himself for thinking that he was on the verge of leaving alcohol behind him. Then he passed out on his couch, woke up at three in the morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep.

  Everyone was finished with their coffee and donuts when Molly asked the question they were all thinking about.

  “What are we doing here, Jesse?”

  “We’re going to shake things up.”

  Molly kept after him. “Shake things up how?”

  “I’ll get to that,” he said. “First I want to talk about what we’re dealing with, one case at a time. Any progress on John Doe? Anybody?”

  Suit raised his hand. “Nothing on this end, Jesse. We haven’t even gotten any calls since that weirdo from Arizona called.”

  “Nothing on our end, either, afraid to say,” Healy said. “John Doe’s prints don’t seem to be on file anywhere and no one’s come forward about that tattoo. If we’re going to get an ID on the vic, we may have to try and wrangle up some funds to do a forensic facial reconstruction.”

  “We might just have to, but today’s not going to be the day to ask.” Jesse looked at his watch. “My guess is that Bill Marchand or one of the other selectmen will be in here sometime this morning to deliver a warning to me. Not exactly the time to ask for favors.”

  “A warning about what?” Suit asked.

  Molly gave Suit a cold stare. “About his job.”

  “They wouldn’t fire you, Jesse,” Suit said. “Where would this town be without you?”

  “Thanks, Suit, but I wouldn’t blame them. We’ve got three unsolved homicides and a questionable suicide on our hands. You played ball. You know how it works. When a team is losing, you can’t fire the whole team, so you fire the coach. It makes you look like you’re doing something. If they fire me, it will take the pressure off them for a little while. But we’ll worry about that later. Where are we on the cabdriver?”

  Suit spoke again. “Just like you thought, Jesse, Wiethop’s got a record. Kiting checks, shoplifting, stuff like that. Nothing violent.”

  “No sex offenses?” Perkins asked.

  Suit shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  Jesse said. “You put it all out on the wire?”

  “I did, but he’s not exactly public enemy number one. All we got him for is suspicion of possessing stolen property. If he ditches his car and keeps his head down, it’s not going to be easy to find him.”

  Molly said, “Wait a second. Am I the only one in the room who heard you call Maxie Connolly’s suicide questionable? You think Wiethop killed her?”

  “I’m not sure what I think about what happened to Maxie, but there’s a lot not to like about it.”

  “I agree,” Healy said. “First we can’t find any of her possessions, then most of her stuff turns up under the cabbie’s bed like that.” He snapped his fingers. “No, sir, it feels like amateur hour to me. A guy like this Wiethop fella, he’s done time. He wouldn’t keep her stuff. He’d take her cash and cards and dump the rest in a garbage can or toss it in the ocean. Never mind the panties. Suit says he’s not a perv, so that really doesn’t make sense. It’s like maybe someone wanted your department to find it all there.”

  Jesse took some quiet pride in Healy’s confirmation of everything he’d said to Tamara Elkin the night before.

  Perkins said, “The funerals for the Connolly woman and her daughter are tomorrow, Jesse. Are you going to get a court order to stop the mother’s burial?”

  “No. The forensics report from the state came up with nothing and I spoke to the ME about it this morning. She went over her autopsy results again last night. The cause of death hasn’t changed, and without evidence to the contrary, it still looks like a probable suicide. I can’t go to a judge and ask him to stop the interment because I have a gut feeling. For now, we’re going to keep any doubts about the suicide to ourselves,” Jesse said. “But when it comes to the girls, I’m going to start being very cooperative with the press.”

  Suit made a face. “But we don’t have anything.”

  Jesse smiled. “They don’t know that. As a matter of fact, we now have a prime suspect and a report from the lab that says they might be able to salvage some DNA from the blanket found near the girls’ remains. We also might have some hairs and fibers that aren’t a match to either of the girls. First thing you’re going to do, Suit, is release the girls’ autopsy results, but without the photographs.”

  Suit opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.

  48

  Only Jesse and Healy were left in the conference room, both of them looking at the whiteboard. Jesse hadn’t written on it. Healy wondered if Jesse ever meant to write anything on it and asked about it.

  “So was all of that smoke or just mostly?”

  “Mostly,” Jesse said.

  “I know I’m only the head of the state homicide bureau, but do you think you mi
ght manage to sort out the smoke from the facts for me? I get cranky when smoke gets blown into the wrong places. Gives me a rash. Is there a suspect or isn’t there?”

  “Sort of.”

  “We going to play twenty questions?”

  “Alexio Dragoa. You know the name?” Jesse asked.

  “Sounds Portuguese to these old ears.”

  “Uh-huh. Fishing family. Father died a few years ago and the son’s taken over the trade. Both of them ornery SOBs. The son’s not quite as bad as the father, but bad enough. Good-looking bastard. Likes to drink and gets into the occasional bar fight.”

  “Yeah, well, fishermen are a tough breed. Not the kind of guys you want dating your only daughter. What about this Alexio?”

  “A little while before Maxie Connolly went over the Bluffs, I got him on hotel security video having a confrontation with her in the bar.”

  Healy raised his eyebrows. “Confrontation?”

  “He says he was drunk and horny and he used to have a thing for her when he was a kid. When she tried to blow him off, he says he had a sudden attack of conscience and apologized to her and gave his sympathies about Ginny.”

  “Wait a second here, Jesse. Maxie Connolly left this town, what, twenty-four, twenty-five years ago? She had to be sixty if not older when she went off the bluff. How old is the fisherman?”

  “Few years older than Molly.”

  “The fisherman must’ve been carrying that old crush around a long time.”

  Jesse shrugged.

  Healy asked, “So you’ve spoken to him?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You think he killed Maxie?”

  “No, he has an alibi that totally checks out. Airtight.”

  “You think the cabbie did it?”

  Jesse shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  Healy was confused. “You don’t think the cabbie killed her. You know Dragoa didn’t kill her, but you don’t think she killed herself.”