Текст книги "Sea Change"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

“Captain Healy,” Jenn said with a big smile. “How nice to see you.”

Jenn was dressed in what she considered weekend leisure 2 1 8

S E A C H A N G E

wear. Yellow running shoes with pale green laces. Green cargo pants with a studded yellow belt. A yellow top, a choker of green beads around her neck and jade earrings.

“Nice to see you, too,” Healy said. “Nice to see you here.”

“I know,” Jenn said.

Jenn crouched on her heels beside the dog. The movement made the cargo pants very smooth along her thighs and butt.

Buck opened his black eyes and made a small movement with his miniscule tail.

“Is that a wag,” Jenn said.

“It is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Buck.”

“May I pat him?” she said.

“Sure,” Healy said. “He only bites kids.”

“Can’t blame him for that, can we?”

“Hell no,” Healy said. “Bite them myself if I wasn’t wor -

ried about my pension.”

2 1 9

46

K elly Cruz sat courtside at the Tennis Club with Mrs. Plum while Mr. Plum played

men’s doubles. Kelly Cruz had an iced tea.

Mrs. Plum was drinking gin and tonic.

“Your husband plays very well,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Yes,” she said. “Doubles.”

“Not a good singles player?” Kelly Cruz said.

“No. I don’t think he could take the stress of one-to-one confrontation. Inferior players used to beat him regularly.

He rarely plays singles anymore.”

“He’s more of a team player,” Kelly Cruz said, to be saying something.

S E A C H A N G E

Mrs. Plum didn’t comment.

“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Kelly Cruz said.

Mrs. Plum drank some gin and tonic. She shrugged.

“It’s not like my days are filled with important matters,”

she said.

Kelly Cruz smiled. She felt very bad for Mrs. Plum.

“Do you know anyone named Kimmy Young?”

“Kimmy Young,” Mrs. Plum said, and took another drink. “Kimmy Young. Yes, of course, she was in school with my twins. She used to come over sometimes. Pajama parties. CDs. Brownies. You know how teenagers are. Her mother was Miss Oklahoma when she was a girl. Married Randy Young, Young Financial Services. He’s done really wonderfully well.”

“Do you know where I might find her?”

“The Youngs moved to Sarasota, I think. They found life in Miami a little fast, I suspect.”

Kelly Cruz glanced around at the sea of tennis whites.

Mrs. Plum noticed.

“They’re somewhat younger than we are,” she said. “I suppose we’ve slowed our pace a bit.”

“Did the girls go to private school?”

“Oh yes.”

“Which one.”

“Vandersea,” Mrs. Plum said. “The Vandersea School.”

“Here in Miami?”

“Yes.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

Kelly Cruz wrote briefly in her notebook. Mrs. Plum flagged down a waiter and got another drink.

“Why are you asking about Kimmy?”

“Her name came up in that same case up north,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Kimmy was a nice girl,” Mrs. Plum said, watching her husband serve. “Smart.”

He had a nice hard serve, but Kelly Cruz noticed Mr.

Plum didn’t follow it in. She didn’t know much about tennis; maybe it was strategy.

“Know anyone named Carlos Coca?” Kelly Cruz said as she wrote.

“Heavens, no,” Mrs. Plum said.

Kelly Cruz nodded, and kept writing. The Plums probably wouldn’t know the Cocas.

“It must be exciting being a, ah, policewoman,” Mrs.

Plum said.

“Not too much excitement,” Kelly Cruz said. “Lots of asking questions and taking notes.”

“But it must give you some satisfaction. Solving crimes.

That must seem important.”

Kelly Cruz put the notebook into her purse beside her gun.

“It does,” she said. “Trouble is, then another crime comes along and you’re slogging along again.”

“This is the most important thing I’ll do today,” Mrs.

Plum said.

Kelly Cruz didn’t say anything.

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S E A C H A N G E

“The money, you know. The money guts you. After a while all you have left to do is look nice, and drink.”

Kelly Cruz stood and put her hand out.

“Thank you very much,” she said.

Mrs. Plum shook her hand and smiled absently and began to look for the waiter.

2 2 3

47

J esse was on the phone with Carlos Coca in Sag Harbor.

“Who’d you say you were?” Coca said.

“Jesse Stone. I’m chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts.”

“And why do I want to talk with you?” Coca said.

“So I won’t get a couple of big mean New York state troopers to come over and yank you out of your swimming pool,” Jesse said.

“I’m not in my pool.”

“Figure of speech,” Jesse said. “Tell me about Corliss and Claudia Plum.”

There was silence. Jesse waited.

S E A C H A N G E

“Dumb and dumber,” Coca said after awhile. “Yeah, they were here.”

“When.”

“Early in the summer. Memorial Day weekend, I think.

Kinda cool. Not good party weather.”

“How long did they stay?”

“Too long,” Coca said. “I kicked them out after about three days.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t fit in,” Coca said.

“How so?”

“They’re fucking crazy, awright? They were drunk by noon. Walked around topless. I got a lot of top-drawer people here. Christ, I got the president of a real estate development company. Big company. International. He’s sitting outside with his wife, having a cocktail before lunch. One of them, who the fuck knows which one, topless, thong bikini bottom, goes and sits in his lap. Takes a drink from his glass. Man!”

“Wasn’t she cold?” Jesse said.

“Who, Missy Hot Bottom? I don’t know. Why?”

“You said it was cool.”

“Well, hell,” Coca said. “I’m not even sure what weekend.

All my weekends are pretty lively. But I’m pretty sure nobody was swimming.”

“So the bikini was for effect.”

“Sure, those two assholes don’t do anything except for effect. For crissake, some of my important guests left because of them.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“And how do you know them?” Jesse said.

“Their sister.”

“Florence?”

“Yeah. Now there was a babe. She was even wilder than the twins, but she had a little class. You know? She never of-fended any of my guests. And she could hold her booze.”

“She brought her sisters to party with you?” Jesse said.

“Not this year, they came on their own, but yeah, they used to come with her. Hell, they were still jailbait when they started coming here. The jailbait twins.”

“They get along?”

“Sure. It was like Florence was showing them the ropes.

Like she was breaking them in.”

“Lot of sex at your parties?” Jesse said.

“Hey,” Coca said. “What about privacy here. I’m entitled to my privacy.”

“I don’t care if your guests had carnal knowledge of a vending machine,” Jesse said. “I’m only interested in my case. Anything you tell me is off the record.”

“Well, sure. There’s usually some sex at a big weekend party, you know? Why wouldn’t there be? I think it’s one reason Flo brought her sisters. Learn their way around, in a safe environment.”

“Safe environment?” Jesse said.

“Yeah. There’s always a good class of people at my parties.

Good place for young girls to, you know, grow up.”

“Even when they were jailbait?” Jesse said.

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S E A C H A N G E

“Not with me,” Coca said. “But yeah. There’s guys like them young. It wasn’t like anyone’s first time.”

“Any idea where anyone might have lost her cherry?”

“Got me,” Coca said. “Flo told me they weren’t virgins.”

“Know where they were headed when you gave them the boot?” Jesse said.

“Nope. They packed up, and my driver took them into the city and dropped them.”

“Where?”

“He said he took them to the Peninsula Hotel.”

“And this would have been the beginning of June?”

“Yeah, sure, first week or so for sure.”

“And you haven’t heard from them since?”

“No. What’s this all about, anyway? What’d they do?”

“Just routine stuff, Mr. Coca, names came up in a case here.”

“Flo involved?”

“Indirectly,” Jesse said.

“Well, Flo had more class, but they’re all crazy. Whole goddamned family was crazy, Flo said.”

“Whole family?”

“Yeah. That’s what she used to say.”

“Any details?”

“No, just that they were all crazy. That the money had ruined them all.”

“You think she was including her parents?” Jesse said.

“She never said. All of them seemed kind of hung up on the old man.”

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“How so?” Jesse said.

“What am I, fucking Dr. Phil? They just talked about him a lot. Daddy this, Daddy that. Like he mattered.”

“Parents do,” Jesse said.

“Yeah. I’ve heard that.”

“Can you think of anything they said about Daddy?”

“You listen to those fucking twins for long, your brain fries,” Coca said. “You know what I’m saying? I worked my fucking ass off not to pay any attention to them. Mostly they fucking giggle.”

“So you can’t remember an example.”

“What’d I just say, for crissake.”

“That you can’t remember an example,” Jesse said.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Coca. I may call back in a few days, see if anything has occurred to you.”

“I hope not,” Coca said.

After he had hung up the phone Jesse sat in his office and swiveled his chair aimlessly. Then he swiveled back and picked up the phone and called Kelly Cruz.

2 2 8

48

K elly Cruz sat in the small living room of Kimmy Young’s apartment in Coconut

Grove.

“How’d you find me?” Kimmy said.

“Vandersea alumnae office,” Kelly Cruz said.

“God,” Kimmy said. “They never lose you, do they? CIA ought to use them.”

Kelly Cruz smiled.

“Let me tell you why I’m here,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” Kimmy said.

“My name is Kelly Cruz, I hope you’ll call me Kelly.”

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“I’m Kimmy.”

“Okay,” Kelly Cruz said. “We have that settled.”

Kimmy was blond, of course. Everyone is blond, except Detec -

tive Cruz. She was pretty but overweight, and she had a cheerful manner.

“You know Corliss and Claudia Plum,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I went to school with them.”

“And did you inform them of their sister’s death?”

“Flo?”

“Florence Horvath.”

“She’s dead?” Kimmy said.

“She is.”

“My God!” Kimmy said.

“I’m guessing that you didn’t inform them of Florence’s death.”

“God, no.”

“So how did they hear of it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them in years.”

“Really?”

“Years. Not since I was, like, fifteen.”

“And you are?”

“I’ll be twenty-one in August.”

“And are you in school?”

“I’m going into my senior year at U. Miami.”

“Your family lives in Sarasota?”

“Yes. That’s the last time I saw the Plums. Before we moved.”

“And that was in?”

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“Ah . . . senior year at Vandersea. I was seventeen.”

“So you haven’t seen them since you were seventeen,”

Kelly Cruz said.

“No.”

“But you said fifteen.”

“Well, I didn’t see much of them for a while before then.”

“I understood that you were pretty good friends.”

“Not really.”

“I heard you used to sleep over sometimes. That seems like friends.”

“I only did it a couple of times.”

“When you were fifteen?”

“Yes.”

The room seemed very quiet. Kimmy didn’t look at Kelly Cruz. There was no longer any hint of cheerfulness. She suddenly seemed almost furtive. Kelly Cruz could feel a click inside, as if something had snapped into place, and a connection had been completed.

“What happened when you were fifteen?” Kelly Cruz said.

Kimmy looked at the floor and shook her head slowly.

“Something happened,” Kelly Cruz said.

Kimmy kept shaking her head. Kelly Cruz paid no atten -

tion. She knew she was right.

“Florence Horvath died under suspicious circumstances,”

Kelly Cruz said. “Up in a town outside of Boston. I’m helping out on this end of the investigation.”

Kimmy neither looked up nor stopped the slow movement of her head.

2 3 1

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“Before I came over here, I talked on the phone with the police chief up there. He said that maybe I should be alert for things involving Mr. Plum.”

Kimmy stopped shaking her head. Her shoulders hunched up as if to protect her neck. Kelly Cruz had seen abused children before. She knew at a level she didn’t understand that what happened had to do with sex.

“Did anything happen involving Mr. Plum?”

Kimmy stood and went to the bathroom and closed the door. Kelly Cruz heard the lock turn. She waited. Nothing happened. After a time she went to the bathroom door.

“Kimmy?” she said.

“Go away.”

“Can’t do that, Kimmy.”

“I won’t come out,” Kimmy said.

“Sooner or later you will,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I won’t talk about it.”

“You have to, Kimmy,” Kelly Cruz said. “You want to spend the rest of your life with the door locked?”

Kelly Cruz waited. Kimmy didn’t speak. The door didn’t open.

“Kimmy?” Kelly Cruz said. “Are you all right?”

Silence.

“Kimmy, I have to know you’re all right, and the only way I can know that is if you open the door and talk to me.”

Silence.

“I’m concerned for your welfare,” Kelly Cruz said. “Either 2 3 2

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you come out now, or I kick the door in. I’m a cop, I know how to do that.”

Silence.

Kelly Cruz backed off two steps and drove her heel into the door next to the handle. She could hear the jam tear. The door slammed open and she went in. She didn’t see Kimmy.

She pulled the shower curtain aside. Kimmy was sitting in the tub with her knees up and her face pressed against them.

“Come on, Kimmy,” Kelly Cruz said. “Get up.”

Kimmy didn’t move. Kelly Cruz bent over and put her hands under Kimmy’s arms and tried to lift her.

“Up you go,” Kelly Cruz said.

Kimmy was dead weight.

Kelly Cruz felt her neck. The pulse was okay. She was breathing. No sign that she had tried to hurt herself. She was just inert. Kelly Cruz tried again to lift her and failed.

“Shit,” Kelly Cruz said.

She went to the living room and picked up the phone and called for help.

2 3 3

49

K immy Young never told the Plum girls about Florence Horvath’s death,” Kelly

Cruz said on the phone.

“So how’d they know?” Jesse said.

“I don’t know,” Kelly Cruz said. “But there’s more.”

“Okay.”

“Kimmy and the twins used to be pals, and Kimmy would go and spend the night and listen to records and giggle about boys.”

“Un-huh.”

“When I asked her more about that she freaked out. I had to get the paramedics. We took her to the hospital and the S E A C H A N G E

doctors got her tranqued enough to be calm but not asleep and I talked with her.”

Jesse felt hollow.

“Un-huh,” he said.

“With drugs, she could talk about it. One night while she was there the old man molested them, and tried to include her.”

“Shit,” Jesse said.

“My thought exactly.”

“She give you details?” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

Jesse waited. He could hear Kelly Cruz breathing.

“I hate this,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I don’t like it much, either,” Jesse said.

“They were all lying on a bed in the twins’ bedroom, sideways, across it, you know. Looking at some snapshots, and he came in wearing his bathrobe and closed the door and sat on the bed with them and began to pat Kimmy and his bathrobe fell open and exposed him and Kimmy was like, paralyzed.”

“How old?” Jesse said.

“Fifteen,” Kelly Cruz said. “And he said he always kissed his girls good night and because she was a guest he’d kiss her, and he kissed the daughters and then her, with his tongue. And she started to cry and he put his hand under her skirt and she said no and clamped her legs and started to cry and he said maybe he could show her how easy it was, and he proceeded with the twins.”

“Touching?” Jesse said.

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“Fucking,” Kelly Cruz said. “She wanted to run, she said, but she lived across town and she couldn’t get home without a ride. And the twins were telling her not to be a baby and . . .”

“He did it,” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

“In front of his daughters,” Jesse said.

“And when he got his rocks off, he got up and thanked her politely and left the room. She ran in and took a shower and got dressed, and called her father and he came and got her.

She told him that she’d had a fight with the twins.”

“How did the twins react to all of this?” Jesse said.

“Kimmy says that’s part of what made it so awful. They seemed to take it in stride—so he banged you. He bangs us, too.”

“She ever tell anyone?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“She know if he molested Florence?” Jesse said.

“She doesn’t know.”

“But it’s likely.”

“Very,” Kelly Cruz said.

“What happens to her now?”

“She’ll spend the night,” Kelly Cruz said. “Talk to a shrink tomorrow afternoon, and they’ll decide.”

“Notify her parents?”

“She doesn’t want them to know.”

“Maybe they should know anyway.”

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“This part of the case is mine, Jesse,” Kelly Cruz said.

“And you are going to honor her wishes.”

“I am.”

Jesse was silent.

“I’ll stay on it, and I’ll keep you informed,” Kelly Cruz said. “But I’m going to protect this kid as much as I can.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Jesse said.

“Thanks.”

Again they were both quiet.

“There’s something wrong with that man,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Mr. Plum?”

“Yes. You haven’t seen him. He’s disconnected. You think maybe it’s Alzheimer’s or something, but he socializes. He plays tennis. He’s not suffering dementia that I can see.

Drinks a ton. They both do.”

“Mr. and Mrs.?”

“Yes.”

“You think she knows?”

“Yes.”

“But doesn’t know what to do?”

“That’s my guess,” Kelly Cruz said. “She said to me the other day that they had been gutted by wealth. Her phrase, gutted. ”

“Money doesn’t ruin people,” Jesse said. “They ruin themselves. Money just helps them to spread the ruination around.”

“I never had money,” Kelly Cruz said.

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“Me either, but I’ve seen it in action.”

The soundless energy of the open phone line lingered be -

tween them as they sat silently for a long moment.

“You stay on it,” Jesse said.

“I will,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I thought it couldn’t get worse,” Jesse said.

“And now it has,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Big time,” Jesse said.

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50

Y our problem,” Dix said, “is you’re scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of the relationship. You were burned

pretty badly, and now you are leery.”

“Once burned,” Jesse said.

“What’s your biggest fear in the relationship?”

“I’ll fuck up again, and lose her again.”

Dix smiled.

“And if she fucks up?” he said.

Jesse frowned.

“Molly said almost the same thing,” Jesse said. “For free.”

“What did Molly say?”

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“She said maybe the breakup was Jenn’s fault.”

Dix nodded.

“Was it?” Dix said.

“I guess in any breakup there’s two people at fault.”

“That sounds good,” Dix said. “Do you believe it? Vis-cerally?”

“No. I‘m pretty sure I drove her away.”

Dix nodded and leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Then he looked at Jesse.

“You are co-opting the responsibility,” Dix said. “Bad things happen. If it’s your fault, then you can hope to prevent it in the future by not making the same mistake again. But if it is her fault, wholly, or partly, then you can’t prevent it. You have to depend on her, wholly, or partly, to prevent it.”

Jesse didn’t say anything for a time. Dix waited. Jesse nodded to himself. Dix was right.

“It’s about control,” he said.

“You could think of it that way.”

“And trust.”

“If warranted,” Dix said.

“And the sexualization stuff?” Jesse said. “That would be part of the control thing?”

Dix sighed.

“I think that’s a paper tiger,” Dix said. “I think you’ve clung to it as a way of keeping the responsibility. If you are ever-alert, and don’t sexualize the relationship, then you won’t lose her.”

“So why we been talking about it?”

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“I think you will be able to better integrate her past sexual indiscretions into your life,” Dix said, “if you spend less time thinking about her in exclusively sexual terms. It might bring you some peace. But I doubt that it was the cause of the breakup, or would cause one now. What you describe is mostly a healthy libido.”

“It is?”

“Sure,” Dix said, “and your fears have been exacerbated by the case you’re working on in which control and loveless sexual objectification is rampant.”

“And that’s why the case matters so much.”

“Probably,” Dix said.

“So how do we fix this?”

“You stop being the way you are,” Dix said.

“Like that?”

“Sure, like that. You think this is voodoo? If you’re doing something self-destructive, sooner or later you have to decide to stop.”

“So what the hell do you do?” Jesse said.

“I help get you to where you can stop.”

“And you think I’m there?”

“Hell, yes,” Dix said. “You are a tough guy. You can do what you decide you have to do. You’ll either trust Jenn, or accept that you don’t, and see what that brings.”

Jesse nodded.

“So all you’ve done is get me ready,” he said.

Dix smiled at him.

“Readiness is all,” he said.

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51

T wo uniformed state troopers, one of them female, brought the Plum sisters into

Jesse’s office. Molly followed them in.

“Captain says we should wait for instructions from you,”

the male trooper said.

“What’s your name?” Jesse said to the female trooper.

“Maura Quinlin.”

“Maura, stick around here. Your partner can go.”

“I’ll be in the cruiser,” the male trooper said.

He left.

“Sit,” Jesse said, “please.”

S E A C H A N G E

The sisters sat. Molly closed the office door and took a chair behind them. Trooper Quinlin sat beside her.

“Thanks for coming in,” Jesse said.

“It was kind of cool,” Corliss said.

“Riding in the police car and everything,” Claudia said.

Jesse nodded.

“And the state police guy is a real skunk,” Corliss said.

“That like being a real fox?” Jesse said.

“Sure,” Claudia said.

“People your age would probably call him a hunk,”

Corliss said.

Jesse nodded, looking at them. Corliss, it seemed to him, was usually the lead speaker. She’d say something and Claudia would follow up. He pointed at Corliss.

“Maura,” he said to the female trooper, “take Corliss into the squad room and sit with her.”

“What?” Corliss said.

“I have some heavy things to discuss,” Jesse said. “With your sister.”

“We always stay together,” Corliss said.

“It won’t be long,” Jesse said. “Maura?”

Trooper Quinlin stood and put a hand under Corliss’s right arm and helped her up.

“We always stay together,” Claudia said.

“Not this time,” Jesse said.

He nodded at Quinlin, who turned Corliss gently and walked her out of the office. Molly got up and closed the 2 4 3

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door behind them, and sat back down behind Claudia. Jesse looked at Claudia without speaking. Claudia smiled very brightly.

“We’re twins, you know, we don’t like to be separated,”

she said.

Jesse continued to look silently at Claudia.

“Did your father sexually molest you?” Jesse said.

Claudia stared at him. “What?”

“Did your father sexually molest you,” Jesse said.

Claudia looked around the room as if Corliss might suddenly appear and answer the question. Jesse waited. Claudia stopped looking around and looked at him and opened her mouth and said nothing. Jesse waited. Claudia looked over her shoulder at Molly. Molly smiled at her but didn’t speak.

“That’s terrible,” Claudia said finally.

“It is,” Jesse said. “Did he molest you together or separately?”

Claudia shook her head.

“Did he molest all three of you together?”

“Three?”

“Florence, you and Corliss.”

“Stop asking me that,” Claudia said.

She began to cry. Jesse sat quietly and watched her. Behind Claudia, Molly sat looking at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. After a time Jesse took a box of Kleenex from a desk drawer and put it in front of Claudia, on the edge of his desk, where she could reach it.

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“Let me define what I mean by molest,” Jesse said. “So there won’t be any confusion.”

Claudia took one of the Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes.

“Did he touch you in a sexual way? Did he penetrate you?”

Claudia bent forward double and put her hands over her ears and began to moan. Jesse watched her quietly.

“For God’s sake, Jesse,” Molly said. “Leave the poor child alone.”

“I need answers,” Jesse said.

“Well, there are other ways,” Molly said. “If you don’t stop traumatizing her, I’ll file a report with the selectmen.”

Jesse grunted. He stood without a word and went out of the office. As he closed the door behind him he saw Molly get up and put her arm around Claudia’s shoulder. Jesse smiled to himself. Then he went down into the squad room and closed the door.

Corliss and Maura Quinlin were sitting silently at the table. He sat down across from Corliss.

“Well,” he said, “the truth is out.”

“Excuse me?”

“About your father molesting you,” Jesse said.

“Oh . . . my . . . God,” Corliss said.

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52

T he report to the selectmen line was in-spired,” Jesse said to Molly.

“I thought so,” Molly said. “Made me

look like really good cop at the same time it made you look like really bad cop.”

“And cowardly,” Jesse said.

Molly smiled faintly.

“You did scoot,” Molly said, “as soon as you heard it.”

They were quiet. Outside Jesse’s window the early eve -

ning was starting to darken.

“I need a drink,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded. He reached into the file cabinet where he S E A C H A N G E

kept it and brought out the bottle of Bushmill’s. He poured some in a water glass and handed it to Molly.

“What are you going to tell your husband when you come staggering home with booze on your breath.”

“I’ll tell him I had to do some really pukey police work today,” Molly said. “And I’ll try not to stagger.”

Molly drank from the glass and swallowed and put her head back and closed her eyes. She took a long breath. Jesse went to the refrigerator in the squad room and got a Coke and brought it back. Molly was still breathing deeply, with her eyes closed.

“What I hated the most,” Molly said, “was the way they kept calling him Daddy and saying how he loved them.”

“A way to keep it from killing them,” Jesse said. “Thinking it’s just Daddy loving you.”

“How could anyone think that?”

“You think what you have to,” Jesse said.

Molly sipped her whiskey.

“I wonder if Florence still thought her daddy loved her?”

Jesse shrugged.

“And if Daddy loved them so much,” Molly said, “why did they have to bop everybody else they could find?”

“Looking for love?” Jesse said.

“That’s love?”

“The only definition they had,” Jesse said.

Molly sipped some whiskey.

“So,” Molly said, “why wasn’t Daddy enough?”

“Daddy was married,” Jesse said.

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“Jesus Christ,” Molly said. “Oedipus?”

Jesse shrugged.

“I’m just talking,” he said. “I don’t know enough about it.”

“The thought of sex with one of my children . . .” Molly shook her head. “I can’t even think about it. It makes me numb even to try.”

Jesse didn’t speak.

“We had to know,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded slowly. Molly drank again. The glass was empty. Jesse poured her a little more.

“But making them face it,” Molly said. “It was . . .” She looked for a word. “Nauseating.”

“We made them admit it,” Jesse said. “They’re a long way from facing it.”

“You know the worst part?” Molly said.

She was staring down into her glass, looking at the cara-mel surface of the whiskey.

“When we brought them back together,” Molly said.

“And the fucking truth was sitting here in the room like some kind of ugly fucking toad and we’re all staring at it, and they’re both crying and saying, ‘Don’t tell Daddy. Don’t tell Daddy.’”

Jesse nodded. Molly drank more of her whiskey.

“Daddy, for God’s sake,” Molly said. “Daddy.”

“Daddy already knows,” Jesse said.

“He doesn’t know we know,” Molly said.

“That’s true,” Jesse said.

2 4 8

S E A C H A N G E

“Like they’ve been bad little girls, telling on Daddy, tattletales,” Molly said and drank. “Tattletales.”

Jesse didn’t speak. He had nothing to say in the face of Molly’s overpowering maternity. He listened.

“And what about them now?” Molly said. “Back in the hotel after the day they spent with us? What happens to them?”

“They don’t know anything they didn’t know before,”

Jesse said.

“So what do they do?”

“My guess?” Jesse said. “Do some coke. Do some booze.

Get laid. Giggle some.”

Molly stared at him.

“God.”

Jesse shrugged.

“That’s how they’ve coped until now,” he said.

“Jesse, these are twenty-year-old kids. They’re five years older than my daughter.”

“And they are depraved, stupid, careless, amoral people,”

Jesse said.

“They are victims.”

“That may be,” Jesse said. “But sympathizing with them is not my business. My business is catching the person who killed their sister.”

“So why did you have to dig up all this awfulness?” Molly said.

“It was there,” Jesse said. “I needed to know about it.”

Molly held out her glass.

2 4 9

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“One more,” she said. “Then I’ll go home and take a bath.”

Molly wasn’t a drinker. She was starting to slur her words.

Jesse poured her another drink. She took a sip and looked at him over the glass. Her eyes had a sort of softness about them, the way Jenn’s got if she drank too much.

“You are so nice,” Molly said. “So often. And then . . . you are such a cynical, hard bastard.”

“Nice guys finish last,” Jesse said.

“Somebody said that.”

“Leo Durocher.”

“You know you don’t believe it.”

“Hell,” Jesse said. “I’ve proved it.”

Molly didn’t say anything else. She sat quietly and finished her third drink. Jesse sipped his Coke.

When Molly’s drink was gone, Jesse said, “Come on, hon, I’ll drive you home.”

“I can drive myself,” she said.

“No,” Jesse said. “You can’t.”

2 5 0

53

R ita Fiore’s office offered a long view of the South Shore.

“Ms. Fiore will be right with you,” the

secretary said and left.

Jesse looked at the South Shore for a short while until Rita came in wearing a red suit and sat behind her desk.

“Wow,” she said, “a coat and tie.”

“Trying to fit in,” Jesse said. “You talk to your private eye?”

“I did,” Rita said.

She took a notebook from her middle drawer and opened it and thumbed through some pages.

“He gave me what he had.”

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Didn’t I run into him once?” Jesse said. “Working on something in Paradise?”

“I think so,” Rita said.

“Him and a terrifying black guy.”

“Terrifying is one description,” Rita said. “Toothsome would be another.”

Jesse smiled.

“What did he tell you?” he said.

Rita looked at her notes.

“They wanted to know if he could find a person and track his movements,” Rita paused and studied her notes a moment.

“I hate my handwriting,” she said. “And he said, ‘You want someone followed?’ and they said mostly they wanted to know where someone had been in the last few months. And he said that was possible, who did they have in mind?”

Rita looked up and smiled.

“Then they ran into a snag,” Rita said. “The girls didn’t want to tell him who.”

“Whose movements they wanted him to discover?”

“That’s right.”

She returned to her notes and studied them for a moment.

“He said that it would be difficult to trace someone’s movements if he didn’t know who they were, and, he told me, ‘They acted like they hadn’t thought of that.’ He told me, ‘They kept looking at each other and silently agree-ing that they couldn’t give the name.’ So he declined the employment offer . . . he claims, graciously.”