Текст книги "Stone cold"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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“Bo Marino,” Jesse said. “Kevin

Feeney, Troy

Drake.”

Candace’s shoulders hunched, her head went down. She didn’t say

anything.

“We both know they raped you,” Jesse said.

Candace hunched herself tighter.

“And we both know they threatened you about telling.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m the police chief,” Jesse

said. “I know

everything.”

“I don’t know what you are talking

about,” Candace said in a

small voice, her eyes riveted on her own lap.

Jesse ate half a donut and drank some coffee.

“If you let them,” Jesse said,

“they will make your life

miserable as long as you live in this town.”

Candace shook her head.

“If you tell me about it,” Jesse said,

“I can give you your life

back.”

“My mother,” Candace said.

“I can help you with your mother,” Jesse said.

Candace kept staring at her lap. Jesse finished his first donut

and drank some more coffee. They were both silent. Candace’s hunched shoulders began to shake. She made no sound, but Jesse knew she was crying. He put a hand on her near shoulder.

“Off the record,” Jesse said.

“Just between you and me. No

testifying. Nobody knows you told me.”

Her shoulders continued to shake.

“Let it out,” Jesse said.

“You’re safe here. It’ll never leave the car.”

“Bo’s the football captain,”

Candace said and began to cry

outright.

Jesse took some Kleenex out of the glove compartment and put them on the dashboard in front of her. He patted her shoulder.

“He’s so strong,” she said.

Jesse stopped patting and simply rested his hand on her shoulder.

“You know behind the football field …

there’s this little

like valley … where the railroad tracks are? …

They

took me there.”

She was talking and crying at the same time. Her nose was running. She wiped it with a Kleenex.

“They force you?”

“They just … told me to come with them

… and, you

know … they are … so … so important

… you

know?”

Jesse nodded.

“Sure,” he said. “I

know.”

“And … they started … they

started talking …

dirty and they grabbed me and took my clothes off

…”

She stopped talking for a time and sobbed. Jesse waited, his hand gently on her shoulder. Finally she got enough control to talk.

“And they did it,” she said.

“All three?” Jesse said softly.

“They took turns … Two holding me down, one doing

it.”

Jesse put his head back against the car seat and closed his eyes

for a moment and took in a lot of air quietly through his nose and let it out. Candace cried, softly now, her hands folded in her lap, her head down.

“They took pictures,” she said.

Jesse nodded slowly, his head still back against the car seat, his eyes still closed.

“And they’ll pass the pictures around the school,” Jesse said.

“If you say anything.”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen the pictures?”

“I saw one,” Candace said.

“Are they in the picture?”

“One of them.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I couldn’t stand to

look.”

“Do you have the picture?”

“I burned it.”

“Too bad,” Jesse said. “Might be

evidence.”

Candace shook her head.

“I didn’t want anybody to see

it.”

“I understand,” Jesse said.

“They threaten you any other

way?”

“They said they’d do it again. You know.

If I told. And Bo said

next time they’d hurt me.”

“Your parents know what happened to you?”

Jesse

said.

“My mother knows I was raped, but not by who.”

“Your father?”

“My mother says we can’t tell

him.”

Candace wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Jesse was still for a

moment, staring straight ahead through the car windshield, drumming his fingers on his thighs.

“Okay,” he said after a time.

“It’s our secret.”

She nodded. Jesse took a card out of his shirt pocket and wrote

his home phone number on the back.

“You can call me anytime,” Jesse said.

“About anything. It’ll be

between you and me until you say otherwise.”

She took the card.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“I’m going to keep you out of

it,” Jesse said. “But I’m going to

find a way, sooner or later, to bust all three of them.”

“You won’t tell,” she said.

“No,” Jesse said. “I

won’t.”

“I’m so scared,” she said.

“I know,” Jesse said. “Just

remember you’re not alone anymore.

We’re in this together.”

She nodded.

“Do you want me to take you home or back to the mall.”

“The mall,” she said.

“I’m meeting my friend there at

three.”

Jesse finished his coffee and a second donut as he drove back to

the mall. When he parked near the entrance she sat for a moment in the car.

“Do you think they’ll do it

again?” she said.

“I don’t know. Try not to be alone with them. Call me whenever

you need me.”

She nodded silently.

“Thank you,” she said.

Jesse smiled at her.

“You and me, babe,” he said.

18

Healy came in without knocking and sat down in Jesse’s

office.

“You called?” he said.

Jesse nodded. “Thanks for coming by,” he said.

“Not a sacrifice,” Healy said.

“You know I live up this

way.”

“We had a couple of murders,” Jesse said.

“I heard,” Healy said.

“Sent the slugs over to state forensics and your people tell me

they came from the same guns.”

“Guns?”

“Yeah. Both victims shot twice, one each from two guns.”

Healy frowned. “Two shooters?” he said.

“Or one shooter who wants us to think it was two.”

“Links between the victims?” Healy said.

“We can’t find any,” Jesse said.

“They both live here?”

“Along with twenty thousand other people.”

Healy nodded slowly.

“Well, you know how to do this,” Healy said. “I am not going to

ask you a lot of dumb questions.”

“All we got is four bullets,” Jesse said.

“Twenty-twos.”

“That’ll narrow it down for

you,” Healy said.

“People use a twenty-two because they don’t know one gun from

another and that’s what they could get hold of,”

Jesse

said.

“Or they are good at it,” Healy said.

“And like the twenty-two

because it’s not as noisy and makes less of a mess.”

“And maybe because they like to show off.”

“These people seem like they can shoot?”

“They put both bullets right in the same place,” Jesse said.

“Both victims. Either shot would have killed them.”

“So we gotta look for the guns,” Healy said.

“It’s a start.”

“How many twenty-two-caliber firearms would you guess are out

there in this great land?”

“Let’s assume a couple things,”

Jesse said. “Let’s assume

there’s two shooters. It’s more likely than one shooter, two

guns.”

“Yeah,” Healy said.

“And let’s assume that the shooters are from

Paradise.”

“Because both vies are from Paradise,”

Healy

said.

“No wonder you made captain,” Jesse said.

“So we get a list of everyone in Massachusetts who owns a

twenty-two,” Healy said.

“Or bought twenty-two ammunition.”

“And we cross-reference anyone who lives in Paradise,” Healy

said.

“And then maybe we’ve got some

suspects,” Jesse

said.

“If the shooters bought in Massachusetts,”

Healy said. “And if

the gun store did the paperwork, and if we didn’t lose it in the

computer, and if they live in Paradise.”

“Hell, we’ve got them cornered,”

Jesse said. “Can your people do

the clerical work?”

“Am I the homicide commander?” Healy said.

“Can they do it fast?”

“I am the homicide commander.

I am not

God.”

“I thought they were the same thing,”

Jesse said.

“Think how disappointed I am,” Healy said.

“It’ll be a long

process.”

“How long?”

“Long,” Healy said.

They were silent for a moment.

“I got a bad little thought,” Jesse said.

“About the two guns?” Healy said.

“Each vie shot the same way,

in the same spot, either shot kills them?”

Jesse nodded.

“Be good if you could speed the process up,” Jesse

said.

“Do what I can,” Healy said.

They were silent, looking at each other.

“You used to play ball,” Healy said after a time.

“Yeah, Albuquerque,” Jesse said.

“I was with Binghamton,” Healy said.

“Eastern

League.”

“You get a sniff at the show?”

Healy shook his head.

“Nope. I was a pitcher, Phillies organization, pretty good. Then

I went in the Army and came home and got married and had kids

…”

Jesse nodded.

“And it went away,” Healy said.

“You?”

“Shortstop, tore up my shoulder, and that was the end of

that.”

“Were you good?” Healy asked.

“Yes.”

“Too bad,” Healy said. “You play

anywhere now?”

“Paradise twi league,” Jesse said.

“Softball.”

“Better than nothing,” Healy said.

“A lot better,” Jesse said.

19

Jesse sat with Suitcase Simpson in the front seat of Simpson’s

pickup parked up the street from Candace Pennington’s home on Paradise Neck. The weathered shingle house sat up on a rocky promontory on the outer side of the neck overlooking the open ocean.

“She walks from here down to the corner of Ocean Ave. to catch

the school bus,” Jesse said. “Which Molly will be driving.”

“School bus company in on this?” Simpson said.

“No. They think we’re trying to catch a drug

pusher.”

“I used to ride the bus to school,”

Simpson said. “Lot of shit

got smoked on that bus.”

“Focus here, Suit,” Jesse said.

“You’ll follow her when she

walks to the bus stop, and follow the bus to school and watch her until she’s in the building. You go in the building after her and

hang around near where she is, and, at the end of the day, reverse the procedure.”

“What did you tell the school?”

“Same thing, undercover drug

investigation.”

“I played football with Marino’s older brother,” Simpson said.

“Half the school knows me. How undercover can it be.”

“Suit,” Jesse said.

“We’re not really looking for druggies.

It’s

a cover. It’s good if everyone knows you’re a cop, as long as they

don’t know why you’re there.”

“Which is?”

“To protect Candace Pennington, and, maybe, while we’re at it,

get something on the three creeps that raped her.”

“But no one knows that,” Simpson said.

“They threatened her if she told on them,”

Jesse said. “And I

promised her that I’d keep it secret.”

“Do I wear my unie?” Simpson said.

“No, I told the school to pretend you were a new member of the

custodial staff.”

“Janitor?”

“Yep.”

“Do I get one of those work shirts that has my name over the

pocket?”

“Yeah. Do you want Suitcase?

Or

Luther?”

“I should never have told you my real name,” Simpson

said.

“I’m your chief,” Jesse said.

“You tell me

everything.”

“Yeah, well, my mother comes by and sees me sweeping up, I’m

gonna refer her to you.”

Jesse smiled.

“Kid’s alone,” Jesse said.

“She’s been raped. She’s afraid it

might happen again. She’s sixteen years old and afraid, and they’ve

threatened to show her naked pictures to everyone in the high school. She’s afraid they’ll hurt her.

She’s afraid of her mother’s

disapproval, and I don’t know where her father stands.”

Simpson nodded.

“So we’re gonna see that she

ain’t alone.”

Jesse nodded.

“Suit,” he said. “You may make

detective

someday.”

“We don’t have any detective

ranks,” Simpson

said.

“Well,” Jesse said. “If we

did.”

“Hell,” Simpson said. “I already

made janitor.”

20

Monday through Friday evenings, when Garfield Kennedy got off the commuter train at the Paradise Center Station, he waited for the train to leave, then walked a hundred yards down the tracks and cut through behind the Congregational Church to Maple Street where he lived. This Thursday night was like all the others, except that it was raining, and, as he walked behind the church, a man and a woman approached through the rain and shot him to death without a word.

When Jesse got there he already knew what he’d find.

Squatting

on his heels in the rain beside Peter Perkins, he saw the two small bullet holes in the chest, one on each side. The blood had seeped through Kennedy’s raincoat and been nearly washed away by the rain,

leaving only a light pink stain.

“Same thing,” Jesse said.

“Name’s Kennedy,” Peter Perkins

said. “He’s a lawyer, works in

Boston. He lives over there, on Maple. Figure he got off the train, cut through the church parking lot toward his house … and never made it.”

“Family?” Jesse said.

“Wife, three daughters.”

“They know?”

“They came over to see what was going on,”

Perkins

said.

“Christ,” Jesse said.

“It wasn’t good,” Perkins said.

“I’ll talk with them,” Jesse

said.

The rain was washing over Kennedy’s face and soaking his

hair.

“And they won’t have any idea why someone killed him,” Jesse

said. “And I’ll ask if they know Kenneth Eisley or Barbara Carey,

and they won’t. And we’ll find no connection among the three of

them and the bullets will be from the same guns that killed the other two.”

“You think it’s a serial killer,

Jesse?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “Any fix on

when it

happened?”

“I talked with the pastor of the church and he says that the

church music director came in to practice on the organ at about four,” Perkins said. “And didn’t see anything. So, sometime between

four and when the call came in at seven-fifteen. Between four and seven-fifteen there were three commuter trains, the last one at six twenty-three.”

“Who found the body,” Jesse said.

“Couple kids skateboarding.”

“In the dark?”

“The pastor says the parking lot lights are on a timer and they

turned on at seven. They never changed the timer for daylight savings.”

“The kids still here?”

“Yeah. They’re in the cruiser with

Eddie.”

“Hang on to them.”

Jesse stood up. “Don’t move a

thing,” he said. “Everything just

the way it is.”

“Sure thing,” Perkins said. “I

still got to take my

pictures.”

Jesse walked away from the scene, a hundred yards up the railroad tracks to the Paradise Center Station. It was empty and dark. The last train would have been at 6:23. He turned and looked down the tracks. This time of year it would have been dark by six.

But if you were used to it, you probably wouldn’t have a problem.

He started down the tracks. He wasn’t used to it, but the light

from the church parking lot was helpful. Besides, I’m a natural

athlete. There was a pathway through the screen of trees into

the back of the church parking lot. He walked through this way,

carrying his briefcase. Lot was still dark. He’s walking down here,

toward Maple Street, and he sees a couple people walking toward him, and he doesn’t pay any attention and then they get close and

bang. He falls pretty much straight backward and, unless they weren’t shooting as good as usual, was dead before he was through

falling. He stood over the dead man and looked around the parking lot. There was a maroon Chevrolet Cavalier parked close to the church, and a brown Toyota Camry beside it. All the other vehicles were police and fire vehicles, lights on, flashers flashing. I wonder why cops always do that. I wonder why we don’t shut the damn things off when we get there.

He turned

slowly and looked around the parking lot. Across from him was the exit onto Sea Street. To the right a path led through another small screen of trees to Maple Street. Jesse walked to the exit and looked at Sea Street. To the left took you out of town, heading for Route 1. To the right was downtown and the waterfront. He walked back and through the path to Maple Street. Front lawns, driveways, garrison colonials. To the right, near the end of the street, one of the houses was more brightly lit than the others, with several cars parked out front. Kennedy’s house?

“You know which house is

Kennedy’s?” Jesse said.

“No, I can ask Anthony.”

Jesse shook his head.

“Okay,” he said to Perkins. “You

can close it

up.”

Perkins nodded.

“I’ll talk with those kids,”

Jesse said.

“First cruiser,” Perkins said.

“Where the skateboards

are.”

21

Jesse got into the front seat of the cruiser beside Ed Cox and turned to talk with the boys in back. The boys were about fourteen.

They reeked of self-importance. Too bad about the dead guy, but this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.

“My name’s Jesse Stone,” he said.

“We know who you are.”

“Did you tell your story to the officer?”

Jesse

said.

“Yes.”

“And give him your names and addresses?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, now I want you to tell me.”

“My name’s Richard Owens,” one

of the boys said.

He was short and slim and blond with a slacker haircut and a gold stud in his left earlobe.

“What do they call you?” Jesse said.

“You mean like my nickname?”

Jesse nodded.

“Rick,” the boy said. “Or Ricky

sometimes.”

“You?” Jesse said to the other boy.

He was an olive-skinned kid, with long black hair that had not fared well in the rain.

“Sidney Lessard,” the boy said.

“They call me

Sid.”

“Okay, Sid,” Jesse said.

“Officer Cox will take you someplace else out of the rain – you can use my car, Eddie.”

“How come we can’t stay

together?” Rick said.

“Police procedure,” Jesse said.

“What procedure?” Rick said.

“See if you both tell the same story.”

“You think we’re lying?” Rick

said.

“No way to know,” Jesse said.

“Yet.”

“For crissake …” Rick said.

“I’ll go,” Sid said.

“We ain’t lying. I’ll just go with

him.”

Cox got out of the driver’s side and opened the back door. Sid

got out and they walked toward Jesse’s car. Jesse reached over and

shut off the blue light.

“What’d you see, Rick?” Jesse

said.

“Me and Sid come over here to skateboard, you know, it’s nice

pavement, and they got that handicap ramp, and they turn the lights on every night.”

“Even in the rain?” Jesse said.

“Yeah, sure, we don’t care about

rain.”

“You got here after the lights were on.”

“‘Course, you can’t board in the

dark.”

“‘Course,” Jesse said.

“Anyway, so we’re boarding, maybe five minutes, and I come down

the ramp and hit a pebble and fall on my ass and the board goes off into the dark. And I go to get it and I see this guy and I yell for Sid and we can tell he’s dead, and -”

“How?”

“How what?” Ricky was slightly annoyed at the

interruption.

“How’d you know he was dead?”

“I … I don’t know, you can just

tell, you know. Ain’t you

ever seen dead people?”

“I have,” Jesse said.

“And he’s got this pink stain like blood on his front,” Rick

said. “So we run like hell for the church and tell the minister,

and he calls the cops, and you guys show up.”

“You see anything that might be a clue?”

Jesse

said.

“I told you all we seen,” Rick said.

“Aside from the cop cars,” Jesse said.

“There’s a maroon

Chevrolet Cavalier and a brown Toyota Camry in the parking lot now.

Did you see any other cars?”

“Just the Saab,” Rick said.

“Tell me about the Saab.”

“It was a Saab ninety-five sedan, red, with the custom wheel

covers.”

“Where was it?”

“Parked by the driveway over there, when we come by with our

boards.”

“Anyone in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you noticed the car and model and wheels,” Jesse

said.

“Sure, I like cars.”

Jesse smiled. “When did it leave?”

“I don’t know. After we seen the dead guy and run in the church

and told the minister, when we come out again it was gone.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. “Thanks for

your help. If you want to wait

around while I talk with Sid you can sit in my car with Officer Cox.”

“Okay.”

Sid came over and told Jesse essentially the same story. He pumped up his part in it a little, telling Jesse that “we found the

dead guy” but most witnesses aggrandize a little, Jesse knew.

When the boys were gone, Jesse stood in the rain with Peter Perkins while the EMTs bundled the body into the back of the ambulance.

“No flashers,” Jesse said to the EMTs.

“No sirens. There’s no

hurry.”

“You going to talk with his wife?” Perkins said.

“Soon,” Jesse said. “Give her a

little time.”

“Kids tell you anything?”

“There was a red Saab sedan, a ninety-five the kid told me, with

custom wheels, that was parked by the driveway and left after the kids discovered the body.”

“They didn’t get any kind of license number?”

“No one ever gets a license number,” Jesse said.

“I know.”

“But here’s what we’re going to

do,” Jesse said. “You remember

that we got a list of all the license numbers of cars parked around the woman shot in the mall parking lot.”

“Yeah,” Perkins said.

“Sixty-seven cars.”

“We’re going to go through that list and see how many, if any,

were red Saab sedans.”

“Half the yuppies in Massachusetts drive red Saabs,” Perkins

said.

“So right away we cut the suspect list in half.”

“Kid didn’t see who was in the

car,” Perkins

said.

“No.”

“Staties come up with a list of twenty-two gun owners

yet?”

“Not yet,” Jesse said.

“When they do we could cross-reference that with the car

list.”

“We could,” Jesse said.

“I can get on it after I do my shift tomorrow.”

“You can get on it first thing,” Jesse said. “I’ll have somebody

else pull your shift.”

“That’s gonna really squeeze

us,” Perkins said. “Suit and Molly

are already off the roster.”

Jesse looked at Perkins silently for a moment, then he said,

“That would not be your worry.”

“No,” Perkins said. “No,

‘course not.”

22

“You think we cut it a little

close?” he

said.

“That’s what makes it work for

us,” she said. “I lose the

feeling if we don’t stay close to the edge.”

“I know,” he said.

They were silent for a moment, holding hands, on the couch, with

a pitcher of martinis.

“As long as we keep control,” he said.

“It was difficult to stop

touching when those kids showed up.”

“But we did it,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I thought about

killing them

too.”

She shook her head emphatically.

“No,” she said. “We’re

not doing random slaughter. That would be like a gang bang, you know? Where’s the love in a gang bang.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m just telling you how I nearly lost control.”

“Of course, I always nearly lose control. But that’s part of it,

to give ourselves to it, to let it possess us entirely, and then, at the very verge of the abyss, assert our will.”

He sipped his martini.

“It’s sort of like this,” he

said. “Martinis. You like them so

much you want to drink a dozen, but if you do

…”

“The precise joy of a perfect martini is gone. You might as well

slug gin from the bottle,” she said.

“So we shouldn’t hurry,” he said.

“No, but we can start focusing in on the next one.”

He leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth.

“Let’s go to the videotape,” he

said.

23

The three killings in an affluent suburban town led the local newscasts. The Boston papers gave it front-page coverage. Reporters and camera people hung around outside the police station. Jesse was interviewed twice, to little avail. And his picture was on the front page of the Globe one morning. When he came into the

station on a bright Tuesday morning, Arthur Angstrom was at the desk.

“Manny, Moe, and Larry are waiting for you,” Arthur said. “In

the conference room.”

“Perfect,” Jesse said.

When Jesse went into the conference room the three town selectmen were sitting at one end of the small conference table.

Jesse pushed a pizza box aside and sat in the fourth chair and waited.

Morris Comden cleared his throat. He was the chief selectman.

“Good morning, Jesse.”

“Morris.”

“You’ve been busy,” Comden said.

Jesse nodded. The other selectmen were new to the office.

Jesse

knew that Comden spoke for them.

“We just thought, Jim and Carter and I, that we probably ought

to get up to speed on things.”

Comden had a sharp face and wore bow ties.

Jesse nodded again. Comden smiled and glanced at the other two selectmen.

“I told you he wasn’t a talker,”

Comden said to the other

selectmen.

Carter Hanson had a dark tan, and silver hair combed straight back and carefully gelled in place. He was the CEO of a software company out on Route 128. He decided to take charge.

He looked straight at Jesse and said, “So what’s going

on?”

“Three people have been killed by the same weapons,” Jesse said.

“We can find no connection among them and we don’t have any idea

who did it.”

“We need more than that,” Hanson said.

“We do,” Jesse said.

“Well, let’s hear it,” Hanson

said.

Comden shook his head slightly and Jim Burns, the third selectman, looked uncomfortable. Jesse looked without expression at Hanson for a long moment.

“There’s nothing to hear,” he

said.

“That’s all you know?” Hanson

said.

“Correct.”

“You don’t have any clues?

Nothing?”

“Correct.”

“Well, Jesus Christ,” Hanson said.

Jesse nodded.

“Well,” Hanson said. “What do we

tell the press.”

“I like no comment,”

Jesse said.

Morris Comden had a yellow legal pad in front of him. He looked

down at it.

“Your department is costing a lot of overtime,” he

said.

Jesse nodded.

“Perhaps you could allocate your personnel a little better,”

Comden said.

He spoke more carefully than Hanson.

Jesse didn’t say anything. Burns spoke for the first time.

“Jesus, don’t you talk?” he said.

“Only when I have something to say.”

“Well, maybe you could stop this undercover drug thing you’ve

got going at the high school. We got a damn killer on the loose.”

“Nope.”

“For crissake, who cares if there’s a couple kids smoking dope

in the boys’ room,” Hanson said. “Where are your

priorities.”

“I’m a cop,” Jesse said.

“I been a cop for fifteen, sixteen

years now. I’m good at it. I know how to do it. You don’t.”

“So we just stand aside and let you do what you want?”

“Exactly,” Jesse said.

“Jesse,” Morris Comden said. “I

know how you don’t like being

pushed. But, for God’s sake, you work for us. We have to justify

your budget every year at town meeting. We have the right to know what’s going on.”

“I’ve told you what I know about the killings,” Jesse said. “The

undercover thing at the high school is just that, undercover.”

“You won’t even tell us?”

“No.”

“And you won’t put the personnel working the high school on the

killings.”

“No.”

“Goddamnit,” Hanson said. “We

can fire you.”

“You can,” Jesse said. “But you

can’t tell me what to

do.”

No one said anything for a time. Comden looked down at his yellow pad and drummed the eraser end of a pencil softly on the tabletop.

Finally Comden said, “Well, I think Jim and Carter and I need to

discuss this among ourselves. We’ll let things ride as they are

while we do.”

Jesse nodded and stood up.

“Have a nice day,” he said and left the room.

24

Jesse walked around his apartment. Living room, dining area, bedroom, kitchen, and bath. Through the sliding doors to his balcony he could see the harbor. Over the bar, in the corner of his living room, he could look at his picture of Ozzie Smith. On his bedside table, he could look at his picture of Jenn, in a big hat, holding a glass of wine. He walked around the apartment again.

There wasn’t anything else to look at. He sat on the edge of his

bed for a time looking at Jenn. Then he got up and walked into the living room and stood and looked at the harbor. The apartment was so still he could hear himself breathing. He turned and went to the kitchen and got some ice and soda. He took it to the bar and made himself a tall scotch and soda with a lot of ice and sat at the bar and sipped it. There was nothing like the first one. The feeling of the first one, Jesse sometimes thought, was worth the trouble that ensued. He let the feel of the drink ease through him.

Better.

He wasn’t as alone as he felt, Jesse knew: Marcy, the other

cops, Jenn, sort of. But that was just reasonable. In the center of himself he felt alone. No one knew him. Even Jenn, though Jenn came close. His cops were good small-town cops. But a serial killer? No one else but him was going to catch the serial killer. No one else was going to protect Candace Pennington. No one else was going to fix it with Jenn. What if he couldn’t? His glass was empty.

He

filled it with ice and made another drink. What if the serial killer just kept killing people? He looked at the lucent gold color of his drink, the small bubbles rising through it. It looked like that odd golden ginger ale that his father had liked and no one else could stand. He could feel the pleasure of the scotch easing along the nerve paths. He felt its settled comfort in his stomach.

Maybe he should walk away from it. Maybe I should just say fuck

it and be a drunk, Jesse thought. God knows I’m good at

it. It would certainly resolve things with Jenn.

He made a third drink.

If the killings weren’t random, they were certainly connected in

a way only the killer or killers understood. Which from Jesse’s

point of view was the same as random. He swallowed some scotch.

I feel sorry for people, he thought, who have never

had this feeling. So far they seemed to have killed only in Paradise. And the killings weren’t random in the sense that the

victims were merely those available at the moment. The woman in the mall parking lot could have been merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the murder at night on the beach, and the one down the dark tracks at the edge of the not yet lighted church parking lot were unlikely to be of the moment. Those victims probably had been preselected. Or the site had been. It was unlikely that the killer/killers were merely hanging around there. Say the killers had preselected the site. How did they know someone would come along for them to shoot? And how did they know that if they hung around in such unlikely places for long, someone might not get suspicious and a cop might not sooner or later show up and say whaddya doing. No, the least unlikely hypothesis was that he/they had preselected the victim and followed the victim to the site.

Elementary, my dear Ozzie. Now that he knew that, what did

he know?

Nothing.

He held the glass up and looked at the light shining through it.

He wondered if Ozzie Smith had been a drinker. Probably not. Hard to do what Ozzie had done with a hangover.

The bastards weren’t going to ruin that girl’s life, though. If

he did no other thing he was going to save Candace Pennington. He wasn’t clear yet how he was going to do that, but as the alcohol

worked its happy way, he knew that he could, and that he would, no matter what else.

Be good to save something.

25

At 8:10 in the morning, Bo Marino sat alone in the back of the school bus with his feet up on the seat next to him, smoking a joint. The smell of weed slowly filled the bus and several kids turned to look and a couple of them giggled. Bo took a deep drag and let it out slowly toward the front of the bus. The driver was a woman. Bo wondered if she even knew what pot was when she smelled it. Bo looked older than he was. He was already shaving regularly.

He had been lifting weights since junior high, and it showed. His neck was short and thick, and his upper body was muscular. He was the tailback in the USC-style offense that Coach Zambello used.

Several small colleges had recruited him, and he was very pleased with himself.

In the rearview mirror, Molly could see Bo smoking. She smelled

the marijuana. Well, well, she thought, Bo Marino

appears to be breaking the law. She called Jesse on her cell phone and spoke softly.

“One of the three young men we’re

interested in is inhaling a