Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Three minutes later, Crier, Healy, and Jesse were standing around Jameson’s bed in the ICU.

  Jesse asked for the doctor to show him Jameson’s wounds and the proof of his drug use.

  “I’m sorry, Chief Stone, but I’m afraid I can’t—”

  “Listen, Doc, I’ve got three unsolved homicides that the man in that bed might have the answers to. Can you guarantee me he’s going to wake up?”

  “Guarantee? No.”

  “Then show me what I asked for, please. I don’t have time to run around getting court orders.”

  The doctor took hold of Jameson’s left arm and gently turned it over to expose ugly track-mark scars. “It’s the same on his other arm,” Crier said, pulling up the sleeve of Jameson’s gown to point out the sharp lines of demarcation between the sun-browned skin of his arm below his triceps and the sickly pale skin above it. There were the tattoos: military and prison tats, just as the motel clerk from Diablito had described them to Jesse. Jameson had to be the man who had spoken to Suit over the phone. Then Crier pulled down the blanket that covered Jameson from his waist. The scars on his legs were just as the doctor had described them. They were painful to look at.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Jesse said.

  “You surprise me, Chief.”

  “How so?”

  “You haven’t asked to see the other tattoo. The one on his left side, under his arm,” Crier said. “Pretty creepy. It’s of a cross and a—”

  “Two-headed rattlesnake,” Jesse finished his sentence.

  Crier’s eyes got big. “How could you know that?”

  “Not now, Doc. Where are Jameson’s clothes? I need to see his clothes.”

  70

  Healy left Jesse at the hospital, saying he had to wrap some things up in Framingham and that he would give the state marine unit a call to help motivate them to look for the Dragoa Rainha. Jesse didn’t doubt there were loose ends that needed tying up in Framingham and he appreciated any help Healy could give him tracking down Dragoa. But the real reason Healy left had much more to do with what Jesse found stuffed in Jameson’s jacket pocket than the search for Dragoa. Over the course of his career, Healy had delivered all kinds of horrific news to people. People who’d done nothing to deserve the tragedies that he brought to doorsteps. Even so, hardened as he was, he didn’t want to be anywhere near Paradise that night when it was Jesse’s turn to bring tragedy to someone’s door.

  First Jesse had to drive Suit home. But before he could do that, Bill Marchand showed up at the ER. Maybe he’d judged Marchand too harshly the other day, Jesse thought. No one else from the town government had showed up to check on Suit. In most municipalities, it was tradition for the mayor to pay a visit to the hospital when a cop is hurt on the job. Not in Paradise, apparently, and not when the town had gotten so much bad press. Jesse had to give Marchand credit for coming.

  “How is Suit?” Marchand asked, shaking Jesse’s hand.

  “He’ll live. If the gunshot didn’t kill him, that rusty old pickup wasn’t going to do it.”

  “And the other gentleman?”

  “Jameson,” Jesse said.

  “Who is he, exactly?”

  “He’d come to town to help us identify our John Doe. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance.”

  “What’s his condition?”

  “He’s still unconscious. The doctor thinks the next few hours are critical.”

  “What do you think about what happened, Jesse?”

  “I think what Alexio Dragoa did is a strong indication that he had something to do with the deaths of Ginny Connolly and Mary Kate O’Hara.”

  “But you don’t think he acted alone?”

  “I don’t have any real evidence even he was involved,” Jesse said. “But I think the mayor can exhale and relax a little. We’re close. I just need to find Dragoa.”

  “Good luck, Jesse. Let me know if I can help. If you can give the mayor something soon, I’m pretty sure you’ll keep your job.”

  “You just like winning at softball.”

  Marchand smiled. “There is that. Now I’d like to go talk to Suit for a minute, if I could. I’d like to express my appreciation.”

  Jesse pointed to his left. “Suit’s in there. Tell him to hurry up, that getting hit by a truck is no excuse for making me wait.”

  For a brief second, he considered calling out to Marchand and telling him what he’d found in Jameson’s pockets. He decided against it. When he was this close to finally putting the murders behind him, he thought he’d better make sure of his facts. A misstep at this point by raising expectations too high might lose him the job he thought he had just saved.

  71

  He caught Molly at the station as she was about to leave for home. Jesse was inscrutable by nature. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. His face wasn’t an open book. So for him to look at her the way he was looking at her meant something was wrong, terribly wrong. Molly could feel her heart pounding. Her mouth was cotton, her palms wet. She was light-headed. Her vision blurred at the edges in stark contrast to the painfully sharp image of Jesse’s face.

  “Is it Suit? Did something happen to Suit?”

  “He’s fine, Molly. I just dropped him at home.”

  “My kids! Did something—”

  Jesse grabbed her shoulders and shook her just enough to get her attention. “It’s not like that. Come on into my office.”

  He let go of her arms, but somehow she couldn’t move. She felt glued to the floor. Her legs leaden, numb. When she realized Peter Perkins and the other cops coming on shift were staring at her, and she remembered losing it outside the collapsed building where she had discovered the bodies of her long-missing friends, she talked herself into putting one foot before the other. She wouldn’t let the others see her be weak. She had had to fight that fight to be accepted as an equal for years and wasn’t up to doing battle on that front again.

  Inside the office they sat on opposite sides of Jesse’s desk. They were quiet together. It was an intimate thing sometimes for two people to be silent together, and this was an intimate moment between them. Jesse broke the silence.

  “We think we’ve finally IDed our blue tarp John Doe.”

  Molly was confused. If Suit was all right and her family was fine and this was just about a body in the morgue, why, she wondered, had Jesse’s expression been so grave? She couldn’t make sense of it.

  Jesse understood her confusion and handed a plastic evidence bag to Molly.

  “We found that in Jameson’s jacket pocket.”

  In the bag was a small, white-bordered, color-faded photo, what used to be called a wallet-size print. It was the type of print you used to get when cameras had film inside them instead of memory cards and folks carried photos in their wallets instead of in their phones. These prints were usually offered as bonuses by photo booths as an incentive to have the developing done by them. Print two or more thirty-six-exposure rolls with us and we’ll throw in small prints for friends and family. As Molly stared at the image of a pretty teenage girl in the arms of a tall, brown-haired boy, Jesse thought back to a time when every strip mall and parking lot in the country had a little photo hut.

  “I don’t understand,” Molly said, her eyes locked on the evidence bag. “I don’t understand.”

  It was clear to Jesse that Molly understood perfectly well, but that she needed his help to let her heart catch up to her head.

  “That’s you in the photo, isn’t it, Molly?”

  She nodded.

  “You were really pretty even back then,” he said.

  She smiled a heartbreaking smile as sad as a June day is long. “Not until that spring.” Her voice was choked and barely a whisper. “I was always so plain until then.”

  “That’s Warren Zebriski holding you.”

  She nodded again and then repe
ated, “I don’t understand.”

  “The guy in the hospital, Jameson, he called the station and spoke to Suit right after we released the description of our John Doe and the photos of his tattoo. But he wouldn’t tell Suit anything. When I called back to talk to him, he had gone. To come here, I guess.”

  “But what’s he got to do with Warren?” she asked.

  “He’s got that same tattoo in the same spot. The two-headed rattlesnake around the horizontal crossbeam. Come on, Molly. I think you can stop pretending now.”

  She nodded. This time, it looked painful.

  “Can you give me a minute alone in here, Jesse?”

  He came around the desk. “Sure,” he said.

  “Please don’t let anyone come in here.”

  “No one will come in here until you tell me. Take all the time you want,” Jesse said. “As long as you need.”

  72

  They sat across the booth from each other at Daisy Dyke’s, Molly barely touching her food. When Daisy noticed that most of the meat loaf and mashed potatoes she had served Molly was still on her plate, she made a face, and not a happy one. Daisy was a character and Paradise’s favorite lesbian crusader, but diplomacy wasn’t one of Daisy’s strengths. In fact, Jesse used to think that if we ever wanted to incite a third world war, Daisy could probably do the trick.

  “Not good enough for you?” Daisy said.

  “It’s fine, Daisy. It’s good.”

  “Look at Jesse’s plate. It’s so damned clean, I don’t think I’ll need to wash it.”

  “Sorry,” Molly said, “I’m not that hungry.”

  Jesse shook his head at Daisy and she got the message.

  “Okay, hon, I’ll wrap that up for you, then. Let me get you two some coffee,” she said, scooping the plate off the table. “Maybe something in the coffee from my private stock?”

  Jesse gave Daisy the thumbs-up. Molly opened her mouth to protest, then closed it.

  “Be right back with those special coffees.”

  Daisy was gone.

  “Molly,” Jesse said, leaning forward, “do you think Warren had anything to do with the homicides?”

  “No, Jesse. No. He was gentle, not only with me. He could never have hurt Mary Kate or Ginny. He told me once that his coach was after him all the time, yelling at him to toughen up, that he was too much of a pussy to make it in college.”

  Jesse didn’t bother protesting that he had heard the same sorts of defenses from friends, families, and lovers of some of the most cruel and cold-blooded killers to walk the earth. He didn’t see the point in arguing with Molly.

  “You mentioned Warren’s coach. Was it Coach Feller?”

  Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, I guess. I didn’t follow basketball. I liked Warren because he was nice and he was handsome.”

  “And because Mary Kate thought so, too.”

  Molly bowed her head and said, “Yes, and because of that.”

  Daisy brought the coffees and, before she left, told them there would be as many refills as they needed. They thanked her and sipped their coffees. The ratio between the scotch and coffee was about fifty/fifty.

  “Okay, Molly, if Warren wasn’t involved in killing the girls, why did he disappear? And why would the real killers feel the need to kill him?”

  “I don’t know, Jesse. All I know is he wouldn’t have hurt Mary Kate or Ginny. He couldn’t have.”

  “Stop thinking with your heart now, Molly. I need you to be a cop. Why couldn’t he—”

  “He didn’t do it!” She was loud enough that some heads turned.

  Jesse pressed her. “But how can you know that?”

  “Because I was with him.”

  “What do you mean you were with him?”

  “Do I have to draw you a diagram, Jesse?”

  “It’s like that.”

  “We spent all night together. His folks were away with his little brother. I just got back into my bedroom and into bed in time for my mom to come wake me up to tell me that Tess O’Hara was on the phone in a panic. It went from being the best, most exciting night of my life to the worst.”

  “But something doesn’t fit, Molly.”

  “If he didn’t do it, why would they need to kill him?”

  Jesse said, “There’s only one answer to that.”

  And Molly supplied it. “He knew who killed the girls and kept it to himself all these years.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “But why would he do that?” she asked herself as much as she was asking Jesse. “And why would he come back after all these years?”

  “I think we’ll have those answers if Jameson ever wakes up. But one thing’s for sure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He never forgot you, Molly. He carried that picture of the two of you around with him his whole life. He must have given it to Jameson for safekeeping when he left Arizona to come east.”

  She smiled that sad smile.

  “I have that same picture. It’s buried at the bottom of a box in the attic of my mom’s house. I haven’t looked at those old pictures for a long time. I couldn’t deal with them. You know the weirdest part, Jesse?”

  “What?”

  “Mary Kate took that picture of Warren and me. There’s one just like it that I took that day of Warren and her. That was the day I guess we both realized . . .”

  “Does Warren have any family left in town?” Jesse asked, finishing his coffee. “You mentioned a little brother.”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. Why?” Then it dawned on her. “Oh, for DNA analysis.”

  “Finish your coffee and go home to your family. With Suit out of commission for a few days, I need you back in the station with me.”

  Daisy came by the table, dropped off the bill and the wrapped-up meat loaf, and delivered a warning. “I spotted some vultures out front.”

  Jesse peeked to see a bunch of reporters and camera crews by the front of the eatery.

  “We’ll use that back door,” Jesse said, handing cash to Daisy.

  73

  Molly got clear, but Jesse didn’t make it to the back door. Healy was calling him on his cell phone. Daisy’s wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty, either, and he didn’t want to have a conversation with Healy in public, even if listeners could overhear only one side of it.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said, then locked himself in the men’s room. “You found the boat?”

  “Nope. Sorry, Jesse. No word on the boat yet. I made the call and our people are out there looking for it.”

  “Then what?”

  “The panties.”

  For the last few days, Jesse had been so focused on other things—the funerals, the arson, Millner, Jameson, Dragoa—that he had to remind himself about Maxie Connolly and the missing cabbie.

  “What about the panties?” Jesse asked.

  “Lab found soil traces consistent with the soil from the Bluffs. Also found two DNA hits on them.”

  “Let me guess: Maxie Connolly and Wiethop.”

  Healy laughed. “One out of two. You got Maxie Connolly.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Unknown contributor.”

  “Not Wiethop?”

  “Definitely not Wiethop,” Healy said.

  “Doesn’t make sense. Did the unknown contributor leave semen?”

  “No semen. Skin cells. Lots of ’em. Some gray facial hairs, too.”

  “Gray facial hairs and skin cells,” Jesse said to himself out loud.

  “Wait, it gets even stranger. Wiethop did leave prints and DNA on the other things you guys found in his apartment, but the unknown contributor left nothing on those items. Only on the panties. What do you think?”

  Jesse said, “I think someone’s jerking us around.”

  “Wi
ethop?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. He’s an ex-con cabdriver living over a deli, not a rocket scientist. For now, I’m more focused on Dragoa.”

  “Like I said, Jesse, the marine unit’s out there searching. Between them and the Coast Guard, they’ll find the boat.”

  “Do me a favor, Healy. Fax me the report.”

  “Already done. Jameson still unconscious?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You have that talk with Molly Crane yet?”

  “Just got done.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “About as well as you’d expect,” Jesse said, “but she alibied Zebriski for the entire night of that July fourth. She wouldn’t lie to me about that.”

  “You sure about that, Jesse? You remember being young and in love. Women are kinda peculiar about their first loves.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But why kill this Zebriski guy if he had no part in it? And what was he doing back in Paradise?”

  “Those are two of the million-dollar questions.”

  There was a knock at the bathroom door. “C’mon, man, sometime this week, huh?”

  “Okay, Healy. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  When Jesse stepped out of the men’s room, one of the news crews’ cameramen was on the other side of the door.

  “Sorry about that, Chief. I didn’t know it was you in there.”

  “If you knew it was me, would you have had to go any less?”

  “I guess not. And speaking of that . . .”

  Jesse stepped out of his way.

  74

  Stu Cromwell was in his office, a nearly empty bottle of rye and a pretty tall glass of it on the desk in front of him. Although he had told Jesse to come in, he looked lost in thought and time. Maybe it was Martha. Maybe not. Maybe, Jesse thought, Cromwell was just drunk.

  “Bad time?”

  “The last few years have been a bad time,” Cromwell said, eyes still looking into the middle distance. “Since Al Gore invented the fucking Internet, it’s been a bad time for newspapers. Why should today be an exception?”