Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  52

  Jesse was angry to see how few people came to the wake for Ginny and Maxie. It was held at the same funeral home where Mary Kate O’Hara had been laid out. Along with Jesse and Molly, only Al Franzen, Stu Cromwell, Bill Marchand, and an old priest from Sacred Heart had turned out. Jesse could hear the excuses in his head, the stuff about how small towns dealt with their shame and their secrets. But today he wasn’t in the mood for excuses or for rationalizations. There was one person’s absence in particular that bothered him: Alexio Dragoa. He was nowhere in sight. Given Jesse’s suspicions about the fisherman and Dragoa’s confrontation with Maxie at the bar, he was sure Dragoa would turn up. Maybe at the church, Jesse thought, like with Mary Kate.

  Molly elbowed Jesse. “That’s so Maxie.”

  “What is?”

  “Her coffin . . . the lid is open. God, even in death the woman is vain.”

  “Don’t blame her. Check out Franzen. It’s his doing. I’m sure of it.”

  Al Franzen, looking frail and distraught, had moved a chair to within a foot or two of the coffin.

  “He really loved her,” Jesse said. “He fed off her energy. No matter what you thought of Maxie, she was full of life.”

  Molly resisted the urge to argue with him.

  Marchand leaned over to Jesse, said, “Sorry about yesterday. I don’t enjoy playing the heavy.”

  “I figured the warning was coming. Might as well have heard it from you.”

  “You going over to the church?”

  “Uh-huh. You?”

  “Can’t,” Marchand said. “Business. Sometimes that earning your daily bread gets in the way.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Marchand patted Jesse on the shoulder. “Again, sorry about yesterday.”

  About five minutes later, the insurance broker knelt down by both coffins, mouthed silent prayers, crossed himself, and slipped out.

  With all eyes on Marchand, Jesse walked over to the back row, where Stu Cromwell was seated. Cromwell looked in worse shape than Al Franzen. Cromwell was in his sixties, but he was one of those people who, because of their energy, was kind of ageless. But the newspaperman looked every bit his age that morning.

  “Another rough night with Martha?” Jesse said.

  “What? Huh?” Cromwell sounded as if he had been very far away. “Yeah, it’s rough. She’s in so much pain.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “Following up. The missing cabbie is front-page news today, or haven’t you seen the paper?”

  Jesse nodded. “I’ve seen it.”

  “You seem POed, Chief.”

  “There’s no one here.”

  Cromwell said, “After our talks, that surprises you?”

  “Disappoints me.”

  “I’m a newspaperman, so I’m cynical by nature. My view is that if you give anyone ample opportunity, they will disappoint you. The people of Paradise are no better or worse than anywhere else.”

  Jesse was willing to leave it at that, but Cromwell seemed to be in a particularly philosophical mood that morning. And Jesse could smell the alcohol on the newspaperman’s breath.

  “They’re not monsters,” Cromwell said. “I had a writing professor who once told me that everyone is the hero of his or her own story. I’m sure most folks got up this morning and were more concerned about the dramas in their own lives than whether or not they should come to this. Even monsters don’t see a monster reflected in the mirror. I always try to remember that when I do my work.”

  Jesse found that last bit of Stu’s ramblings out of place and out of character, but he let it go.

  He sat back next to Molly. The old priest stood up. He said a few words about the church service and about the burials. Then led the assembled in a prayer. Al Franzen willed himself to lean over the open coffin and to kiss his wife on her cold, lifeless lips. Jesse and Molly headed out to where Molly’s cruiser was parked.

  “I know you wanted the day off,” Jesse said, settling into the cruiser next to Molly. “But you know how short we are.”

  “Forget it, Jesse. My big sister’s taking my mom to the church. And it’s about time I started pulling my weight again.”

  53

  Molly chatted through most of the drive to the church. Jesse didn’t know what got Molly going, whether it was how the planets aligned or if it was that her friend Ginny was finally being laid to rest. Whatever it was, Jesse was glad for the chatter. Though no one who knew Jesse now would have believed it, one of the things he missed about his old job in Robbery-Homicide was the camaraderie with his partners. That job entailed long hours during stakeouts, waiting around the courthouse, hours filled up with chatter.

  It was a holdover from his ball-playing days. Even loners and self-contained men like Jesse Stone missed being part of a team. Anyone who’d been in the military, inside a locker room, or on an endless road-trip bus ride would understand it. You didn’t have to like all the guys on the team or in your unit. Jesse certainly didn’t, but it was an us-against-the-world type of deal. You did battle together and that bred a closeness unlike any other.

  Things were different for him now that he was the boss. And when you’re the boss, the dynamics change. There was no longer talk among equals. He missed talking baseball. He remembered arguing over which was the best East L.A. taqueria or which restaurant served the best barbecue in Koreatown. In the end, it was his last two partners that got him fired. When they went to Cronjager, Jesse’s boss, and told him they wouldn’t ride with Jesse because he was so drunk that they couldn’t trust him to back them up. That still stung. Not because he blamed them. He blamed himself and he guessed he blamed Jenn a little bit, too.

  His time at the station with Molly and his occasional forays into the field with Suit were as close as he came to his days in L.A. So when Molly started talking about being a kid in Paradise, Jesse wasn’t about to stop her.

  “Mary Kate and I were closer than my sisters and me. In a family, there are resentments, you know. My sisters and I competed for things, everything. Everything from my dad’s affection to who got the biggest piece of my mom’s strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. I loved that pie, how it smelled so sweet from the berries, but that when you bit into it it tasted tart, too. That was the best part. My mom doesn’t make it anymore, not since Dad passed. I try to make it for my kids sometimes, but it’s not as good as Mom’s. The competition, it wasn’t like that with Mary Kate. We shared stuff. We didn’t fight over things. We were always on each other’s side.”

  “What about Ginny?”

  Molly looked over at Jesse. “Ginny lived near us, spent a lot of time in our house, but we weren’t nearly as close as me and Mary Kate. I guess because she was around so much, she was competing for some of the same stuff as me and my sisters were.”

  “I can see that.”

  “It didn’t mean I didn’t like Ginny. I did. A lot. It’s just the difference between good friends and best friends. Like that,” Molly said, turning the cruiser onto the road leading up to Sacred Heart Church.

  Jesse nodded.

  “And Ginny was quieter than Mary Kate. I also think I was a little jealous of Ginny. You could see that she was going to be beautiful, even better-looking than Maxie. I think Maxie saw that, too. Probably resented her for it. Mary Kate and I used to talk about how easy it was going to be for Ginny to have all the boys she wanted, but Mary Kate felt sorrier for Ginny than I did. She was protective of Ginny, too. I guess that was because she didn’t live on my block and didn’t have to deal with Ginny and Maxie like my family did.”

  Jesse said, “You and Mary Kate didn’t fight over things until Warren.”

  Molly came to a stop at a light, checking her rearview to make sure the small procession was intact behind her.

  “That’s why it hurt so much, I guess,” she said. “We had always
been able to work things out between us without fighting until then.”

  When the light went green, Molly eased off the brake and drove slowly ahead, the hearse close behind the cruiser.

  “What happened?”

  “I—I, um . . .” Molly faltered for the first time since she’d started talking.

  Jesse let it go. He was glad for the chatter while it lasted and he loved seeing the young Molly make another appearance.

  “You know, Jesse, it was me, not Mary Kate,” Molly said, seeming to have regained her voice.

  “It was you what?”

  “I was the one who tried stealing Warren away from Mary Kate, not the other way around.” Molly’s face reddened. “I gave him the one thing Mary Kate wouldn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “‘Oh’ is right.”

  “I can see how she might not want to talk to you after that,” Jesse said.

  “She never forgave me. How could she?”

  “She would have . . . eventually.”

  “Thanks for saying that, Jesse. But I’ll never know that.”

  “It might not have been right away, but when you both realized that this Warren guy wasn’t going to be either your prince or Mary Kate’s, she would have come back to you.”

  “It wouldn’t have been the same,” Molly said.

  He shrugged. “Whatever happened to Warren?”

  “He got a full ride for basketball at some small school in the Midwest. Butler, maybe, or Davidson. Didn’t matter, because he was gone. He played one year, the year after Mary Kate and Ginny went missing. Then . . . then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “We’re here,” Molly said, pulling onto the grounds of Sacred Heart, the huge church looming at the top of the hill.

  Jesse was happier to see more people had turned out for the church services than had been at the funeral home. Molly’s big sister and her mom were there. Robbie Wilson, the fire chief, and a few of his men showed with their wives. Jesse saw the faces of some men who seemed familiar to him, though he couldn’t place them.

  “From the demolition crew,” Molly said. “The guys who found the bodies. They came to Mary Kate’s service, too.”

  Now Jesse could place their faces and it explained what Robbie Wilson and his men were doing there. Jesse remembered that he, too, sometimes would attend victims’ funerals, and not always to hunt for suspects.

  Molly pointed out some of her old classmates to Jesse as well, but Alexio Dragoa was still nowhere to be found. Jesse considered stepping outside and making a call to see if he could get an update on the fisherman’s whereabouts. With everything that had gone on since yesterday afternoon, Jesse hadn’t bothered to check with Healy to see if he had followed through and arranged for someone to tail Dragoa. He resisted the urge to call. Either there was a man on Dragoa or there wasn’t. Nothing he could do now was going to change that.

  Then suddenly, during a moment of silent prayer, the sound of ringing cell phones echoed through the cavernous stone church. Jesse, Molly, Robbie Wilson, and his men all grabbed for their phones, put them to their ears, and headed for the exit doors, many muttering, “Sorry.” Even before they made it outside, the insistent droning of the town fire alarm filled up the air. Wilson and his men ran for their vehicles. Many in the crowd looked to Jesse for an answer, but Jesse had no answer to give them as he and Molly headed for the cruiser.

  “Suit, what’s going on?” Jesse said as Molly hit the lights and siren.

  “We’ve got two big house fires in progress.”

  “Maybe you have spent too much time at that desk. Last time I checked, Robbie Wilson was fire chief. Why call me and Molly? Dispatch two units for crowd con—”

  “It’s where the fires are, Jesse.”

  “Is this Jeopardy!? Do I need to ask you in the form of a question or are you going to tell me?”

  “Sorry. It’s the dead girls’ houses.”

  “The O’Hara house and—”

  “The Connollys’ old place two doors down from Molly’s mom’s house,” Suit said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “You were right to call. Thanks, Suit.”

  54

  Tess O’Hara stood on the sidewalk, wrapped in two fire department blankets. She just stood there, staring, immobile, her face empty. When Jesse and Molly approached her, all she could say was “Mary Kate’s all gone now. She’s all gone, forever.”

  The sad and sagging house Jesse recalled from the day he and Molly had come to notify Tess that Mary Kate’s remains had been found was totally engulfed in fire, the flames snapping in the breeze in seeming defiance of the endless water spray shot into their midst. The firemen did what they could, but Jesse had been around long enough to know a lost cause when he saw one. All the water and foam in the world wasn’t going to save Tess O’Hara’s house.

  The firemen were trying to contain the blaze so that none of the burning embers could ride the cold winds and spread the fire to the houses on either side, or worse. Pictures, Jesse thought, never did fires justice. For as dramatic as pictures were, they failed to capture the intensity of the heat or the smells. The acrid chemical stench of melting plastic and burning rubber. The choking stink of steam from floor joists and wall studs turned into charcoal and ash.

  Jesse spoke to Stan Dolan, Robbie Wilson’s deputy.

  “What do you think?” Jesse asked.

  “Arson. There was definitely an accelerant used. You could smell it in the air when we arrived on scene. The place went up like that.” Dolan snapped his fingers. “Wouldn’t have happened that fast without a chemical assist. And the garage was involved, too. No reason for a detached garage to be burning like that before the fire could spread. Nope, someone made this happen. The old lady was lucky to get out.”

  Jesse wondered if Tess O’Hara thought she was lucky to get out.

  He asked, “Have you talked to Robbie? What about the other house?”

  “Same deal,” Dolan said. “Went up like the sun.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jesse stood next to Dolan for another minute, watching as the O’Hara house crumpled into a pile of burning sticks and memories. Unlike the building that collapsed on Trench Alley, there was no groan or shudder. It just collapsed, as much from grief and mourning as from fire.

  “What do you think it means, Jesse, these two fires at once?” Molly asked when he got back to the cruiser.

  “It means my plan’s working and that someone’s scared.”

  “Who?”

  Jesse just smiled, sure that he knew the answer. The smile lasted only the time it took to call Healy. According to him, Jesse was wrong.

  “Dragoa’s been working on his boat all day,” Healy said. “My man’s been on him from before five this morning. He’s still with him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Jesse, this is one of my best men. He’s got photos of Dragoa taken every quarter-hour. You want to see them?”

  “Forget it,” Jesse said, watching the firemen roll up their hoses.

  Healy asked what the fuss was and Jesse explained about the fires.

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “No. Tess O’Hara made it out of the house and the family that lives in the old Connolly house wasn’t home.”

  “Could they salvage the houses?”

  “Both are total losses.”

  “Well, you scared somebody into covering all his bases,” Healy said. “Didn’t want you poking around in the girls’ old rooms looking for stray hairs or fibers that might be matches for him.”

  “Problem is I think it’s more than one somebody and the one somebody I thought I had is the wrong one.”

  “We all get it wrong. In baseball you get it right only three times out of ten and you’re the batting champ.”

  “Batting three hundred in h
omicide gets you fired, not the batting title. And I’ve been guessing wrong a lot lately.”

  “Hey, look at it this way, you may be wrong about who, but the misinformation is working and that’s what counts, no? The press stirred the pot for you. You catch the firestarter and maybe we’ll finally have the murderer or murderers.”

  “Maybe. These fires do confirm at least one thing. One of the killers is still here.”

  “Your John Doe turning up where he did told you as much,” Healy said.

  “Now there’s no doubt about it. Coincidence is totally off the board.”

  “About your John Doe, any progress there?”

  “None. We’re not even getting any crazies calling in.”

  Jesse looked back at the pitiful remnants of the O’Hara house and clicked off.

  “You hungry, Crane?”

  “Sure, Jesse.”

  “Daisy’s? We haven’t been there for a while.”

  “Good idea,” Molly said. “You don’t want her to think you don’t like lesbians.”

  “I never met a person less insecure about their sexuality than Daisy. I’m more worried she’ll think I don’t like her food.”

  “Good point.” Molly put the cruiser in gear.

  55

  After he got back from lunch at Daisy’s, Jesse called Suit into his office. As he walked in, the big man seemed to be moving with a little more ease than he had in recent weeks. Jesse wondered if he wasn’t seeing Suit more with his heart than his eyes. He took a long look at Suit’s face. The goofiness and boyish good looks were still there, but some of the joy had been drained out of him. His reddish hair had taken on darker tones and gray threads were showing through. Getting gut-shot will do that to you, Jesse thought. It was more than that, though. Suit wasn’t a man made for light duty. Jesse guessed he’d always known Suit would detest working the desk, and Suit had certainly made no secret of his displeasure.