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Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

Page 24

by Reed Farrel Coleman


  Jesse handed the letter back to Tommy. Somebody called up from the boat.

  “Come on, Jesse,” Healy said. “We can take a look now.”

  Healy hadn’t exaggerated. The boat was slaughterhouse bloody. Healy’s forensics guy walked Jesse through it.

  Knife is standing here. Gun is standing in front of Knife, maybe two feet away. Knife lunges. Stabs Gun. Gun fires, wings Knife in shoulder. See the hole in the wall and the blood spatter over my left shoulder? Jesse saw the hole and the spatter. We dug a slug out of there. Wounded, Knife stabs and keeps stabbing Gun. Gun fires again, this time wounding Knife in the abdomen. See the spatter and the hole behind me slightly to my right? Jesse saw the spatter and the hole. We dug a slug out of there also, but it wasn’t in deep in the wall. So now both badly wounded, they collapse to the floor. See those two large pools of blood, there and there? Jesse noted them. Gun drops weapon and crawls up the steps. Knife follows sometime later, weapon still in hand. On deck, both having lost considerable amounts of blood and in shock, they struggle. The deck slick with blood and seawater, they both go overboard. When the boat was found, it was out of gas and indications are the engines had been running. The boat drifted into Shelter Cove under power. The bodies were washed north by the current and came to shore. We recovered the .38 in the cabin and a four-inch Buck hunting knife up top.

  79

  Jesse was about to do something he’d never done before, something that went against his nature to do, but he felt like he had nowhere else to go. There was no one else he could talk to about this situation who would understand. It’d eaten at him the whole ride back down to Paradise from North Swan Harbor. And when he approached the station and saw the mob of press outside, he turned his Explorer around and pulled into the Lobster Claw parking lot. He reached for his phone, pressed CONTACTS, and tapped his index finger to the letter B. He scrolled to the name he wanted and stared at the screen.

  He had tried talking to Healy about it, but Healy didn’t seem to want to understand what he was getting at. The object was to clear cases, so why look for trouble? He couldn’t talk to Ed Barstow, the Swan Harbor police chief, about it. Ed was a good guy, but not much of a cop. He was the chief of a small police force in a town of rich folks. He had no ambition and no desire to make waves in a high-profile case. And this wasn’t the kind of thing he could discuss with Molly or Suit or Peter Perkins. Finally, Jesse tapped the name on the screen and put the phone to his ear.

  “Yeah, hello. What’s up?” said the man who answered the phone on the first ring.

  While not exactly a strange voice, it was no longer a familiar voice to Jesse, because he hadn’t heard it for more than ten years. He recognized it as belonging to the man he’d called, but the voice was older—of course it was—and it was thinner than Jesse remembered it.

  “Javy B.,” Jesse said, finding it difficult to speak.

  “No one calls me that no more. Who is this?”

  “Jesse.”

  “Jesse?”

  “Jesse Stone.”

  There were a few seconds of very uneasy silence.

  “Stone,” said Javier Baez, Jesse’s first partner after he made detective.

  “Javier.”

  “Why you calling?”

  It had been many years since the LAPD had shown Jesse the exit door and many, many more since they had worked together, but the disappointment was thick in Baez’s voice.

  “I needed to talk to someone about a case,” Jesse said.

  “The dead girls and the John Doe?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve been reading about it. Watching the news reports. Sounds like a mess. But what you want from me? I’m just a retired detective with bad kidneys and alimony payments. You’re a big-shot police chief, no?”

  “You were the best detective I ever met, Javy. You taught me the ropes.”

  “You had a chance to be better than me, but you pissed it away. You still a drunk?”

  That hurt Jesse more than he believed it could, but he wasn’t sure which part of what his old partner said hurt worse. The part about Jesse’s potential as a detective or about his alcoholism.

  “I still drink, yeah. Not like I used to, not usually on the job. If that makes me a drunk, then I’m a drunk.”

  “One thing I’ll give you, you’re not a liar. Could never abide my partners lying to me. You called to talk about a case, okay, talk.”

  Jesse ran down the essentials of the case. Described Dragoa’s attempt on Jameson’s life, told him the details about the scene on the boat, the confession letter, about how and where the bodies had washed up.

  “Sounds like you’re about to close some cases,” Baez said, an edge to his voice that Jesse had hoped to hear. An edge that said he was thinking what Jesse was thinking. “It’s all the evidence a detective could ever want and it’s all wrapped up in a nice little package with a pretty red bow. So what’s your problem?”

  Jesse said, “You know what the problem is. There’s too much evidence. You would have been suspicious as all hell, we ever turned up this much evidence. And I didn’t even turn it up. It all landed in my lap. Pretty convenient the two killers turning up dead like that.”

  “What is it you gringos say? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever the hell that means.”

  “Don’t give me that poor dumb Mexican bullshit, Javy.”

  “And don’t be calling me Javy. You lost that right when you disgraced the shield. You put your partners at risk. You didn’t learn that from me. You called me for a favor. I owe you that much, but nothing more. We clear on that?”

  “Clear.”

  “Why not wait for the forensics?” Baez asked.

  “Because I bet they’re going to come back consistent with what I told you.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe because they’re right.”

  “Here’s something I did learn from you. Forensics and statistics don’t lie, but they can be massaged and manipulated.”

  “Work the case. Go find the masseuse.”

  “Be nice if I had an idea where to look.”

  “Right now you’re three thousand miles off the mark. Whatever you’re looking for isn’t in L.A.”

  “You always were a comedian, Javy—Javier.”

  “You know where to look, Stone. I taught you that on day one. Look right in front of you.”

  “Thanks, Javier.”

  “Stone.”

  “What?”

  “Watch yourself out there.”

  Javier Baez clicked off. And once again Jesse found himself staring at his cell phone. He hadn’t even noticed that it was snowing. He drove out of the parking lot and headed for the hospital.

  80

  Jameson had been moved out of ICU and was in a private room on the second floor. Jesse got the room number easily enough. He didn’t bother getting the doctor’s permission. When Jesse knocked and walked into the room, Jameson was in bed, his head turned to the right, eyes transfixed by the big, lazy snowflakes falling outside the window.

  “Haven’t seen snowfall since Afghanistan,” Jameson said, not turning to look at Jesse. “I’ve seen snow. Seen a lot of it up in the mountains and a lot of snow on my way here, but none of it falling.”

  “That where you got wounded, Afghanistan?”

  “Yes, sir. IED exploded right under our vehicle. Blew Bobby G’s legs clean off. I was the lucky one. Only sometimes I guess I don’t feel so lucky, sir.”

  Jesse walked to the bed and pulled up a chair. He didn’t want to loom over Jameson. Jameson turned finally to look at his visitor.

  Jesse offered his hand. “I’m Jesse Stone, the police chief. I’d like it if you could call me Jesse.”

  Jameson reached across his body and shook Jesse’s hand. “Corporal Drew Allen Jameson, sir.”

  Jesse di
dn’t correct him. “How you feeling, Corporal?”

  “Headache that won’t quit, but otherwise intact, sir. How is that fella that drove me here? I don’t recall what happened but the doctor told me he saved my life. Will you thank him for me, sir?”

  “Officer Simpson is fine. Just a little banged up. And you can thank him in person in a day or two.”

  Jameson had already moved on. “Is this really Warren Z’s hometown?”

  “It is. Paradise, Mass.”

  “Warren was real torn up about this place. Said he left his heart and soul here. Said he wanted to come back to get a piece of both of them back if he could.”

  “Do you know what he meant by that, Drew?”

  “Been a long time since someone called me by my first name, sir.” Jameson turned back to watch the snowflakes. “Warren said he wanted to come home to see Molly again, not to talk to her or nothing like that. He just wanted to see her again. He left her picture with me for safekeeping. I could understand why he would want to come back to see her. Warren used to talk about her all the time. Said she was pretty, but that wasn’t it. She was special. She was his heart.”

  “Yes, she is special,” Jesse said involuntarily. “What about his soul?”

  “Said that he lost it at nineteen and didn’t find it again till God found him in the desert.”

  Jesse didn’t want to push Jameson, so he just let him talk.

  “We met back in Arizona, Warren and me. We was both working for an adobe brick and clay tile company outside of Tucson. You know what adobe is, sir?”

  “I grew up in Tucson.”

  Jameson smiled at hearing that.

  “It’s hard work out in the sun for not much money. Warren and me, though, we liked it. We weren’t neither of us much for other people’s company, but we had things that held us together.”

  “Like heroin?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jameson said in a whisper. “That and pain. That’s what the two-headed rattler is for on our tats, sir, our two demons: drugs and pain. But when God found Warren and when Warren helped me find God, we fought those demons off together. That’s what the cross is for, for Our Savior’s grace. Warren drew the design out on a piece of paper and we went down to this Mexican gal in Nogales and she did them up perfectly on Warren and me. Cost us each three days’ pay, but we didn’t care.”

  “You said Warren came back to reclaim a part of his soul. How was he going to do that?”

  “By introducing his friend to Our Savior and by confession of their sins.”

  “Did Warren say who that friend was or why his friend needed saving?”

  “Wouldn’t never tell me who, sir. Not that I didn’t ask. I did, but Warren said that would be another betrayal and that too many folks had already been betrayed and too much blood spilled.”

  “But he did tell you why?”

  Jameson nodded. “He did. Said this friend had done a terrible thing and confessed it to him one summer when they was drunk. Keeping that confidence had ruined Warren’s life. It was a cross too heavy for him to bear, tore him all up inside. I know how that is, sir, getting all torn up inside and out.”

  “Did he ever get more specific than that?”

  “Said this friend told him that he and two other friends had done murder and—”

  Jesse kept his voice and demeanor calm, but his mind was racing. “Drew, are you sure that this guy told Warren that there were three of them?”

  “I may be half the man I once was, sir, but I recollect that perfectly. This friend had told Warren that it was him and two friends.”

  “There were three of them, but he never used names.”

  “No, sir. No names. Warren always said his sin of omission, that’s what he called it, was his alone to suffer. Warren didn’t talk much, but when he did his words said a lot. He said that sharing details would infect me with the sin and he wouldn’t do that.”

  “Did he ever give you any details of the murders? Maybe who the victims were?”

  “No, sir. Warren said it was for my own protection, but after we talked about it we would always pray on it.”

  “And when you saw the pictures of the tattoo on TV, you came east?”

  “It was the least I could do, sir.”

  Jesse was about to reach out his hand to say good-bye to Jameson, when it struck him that Javier Baez had never been more right. The answer was right in front of him. “You up for getting out of here, Drew?”

  Jameson’s face lit up. “You bet.”

  “Your head ache?”

  “I’ve handled worse, sir. Much worse.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Corporal,” Jesse said, handing Jameson his ratty clothes. “I’ve got some calls to make.”

  81

  An hour later, Jesse was in the library of Sacred Heart Boys Catholic with Tommy Deutsch. Deutsch was the skipper of the varsity baseball team at Sacred Heart Boys and the second baseman on the Paradise PD’s slo-pitch softball team. Tommy was a spry sixty and still had that competitive fire in his belly that was the difference between mediocre players and coaches and great players and coaches. Jesse and Tommy recognized the fire in each other the first time they met at a charity pancake breakfast the year Jesse moved to Paradise.

  “What’s this about, Jesse?” Deutsch asked, turning his key in the library door. “Usually when you want a favor, it’s to take grounders and to test out that bum arm of yours. Never thought we’d meet here.”

  “Got something against books, Skip?”

  “Nothing at all. I’m just curious why you called me out in the snow to open up the library for you.”

  “I’m curious, too.”

  “About?” Deutsch asked, clicking on the lights.

  “Were you around during Coach Feller’s time as the basketball coach?”

  Deutsch frowned. “Our paths crossed during my first few years here. Can’t say as I cared much for the man.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Feller was a Neanderthal. Cruel to his boys, you know. The type of coach who thought Leo Durocher was too soft on his players. But he got results. Won a lot of games without much talent. His teams were always tough and smart. Pressed from the opening tip. Slowed it down when they had the advantage. Pushed the ball up court when they were behind.” Deutsch tilted his head. “What’s this about, Jesse? Deke Feller’s been dead for fourteen or fifteen years.”

  “They keep copies of the yearbooks in here?”

  “Of course they do,” Deutsch said.

  “Where?”

  “Okay, Jesse, I’ve played along up to this point, but if you want me to keep playing, you’ve got to give me a little bit more than this.”

  “That’s fair, Skip.”

  Deutsch walked Jesse to a dark, windowless corner of the library. There was a faint musty odor in this part of the library. “Far as I know, they’re all on these shelves right here. If any are missing, I can’t help you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what is it you think you’re going to find in these yearbooks, Jesse?”

  “Three murderers.”

  Tommy Deutsch blanched. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Just click off the lights and close the door behind you when you leave. It’ll lock itself.”

  “Skip,” Jesse said. “This is between us. Just us.”

  The baseball coach nodded, then left.

  When Deutsch was gone, Jesse counted back twenty-five years, pulled a yearbook off the shelf, and carried it over to the librarian’s desk. The spine was clean, but the top of it was covered in a downy layer of dust. He brushed off the dust and ran his hand across the textured crimson-and-white cover. The spine crackled with age and resisted as he pulled open the cover, and the pages, unwilling to surrender their secrets, stuck stubbornly together. One page at a time, Jesse went through the yearbook, looking at the
photos, reading some of the captions. He recognized some of the names, some of the faces. Even had a laugh or two. So that’s what he looked like when he had hair! Then he came to the page he was looking for, the sports team photos.

 

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