“Anyone minding the store?” Jesse said.
Angstrom was looking at the hanging corpse.
“Maguire,” Angstrom said. “Suicide?”
“I wish,” Jesse said.
The blue light on Angstrom’s cruiser stayed on.
“Murder?” Angstrom said.
“Peter Perkins will fill you in,” Jesse said. “After you shut off your light.”
Angstrom glanced back at the cruiser, and looked at Jesse for a moment as if he were going to argue. Jesse looked back at him, and Angstrom turned and shut off his light.
“Car keys?” Jesse said.
“Nope.”
“So how’d he get here?”
“Walked?” Perkins said.
Angstrom joined them.
“Or came with the killers,” Jesse said.
“Or met them here,” Perkins said, “and one of them drove his car away after he was hanging.”
“Or took a cab,” Jesse said.
“I can check that out,” Angstrom said.
Jesse looked at his watch.
3
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Eight thirty,” he said. “Town cab should be open now.”
“I’ll call them,” Arthur said. “I know the dispatcher.”
“Arthur, you’re the cops, you don’t have to know the dispatcher.”
“Sure,” Angstrom said, “of course.”
He walked to his car. Jesse watched him go.
“Arthur ain’t never quite got used to being a cop,” Peter Perkins said.
“Arthur hasn’t gotten fully used to being Arthur,” Jesse said.
4
2
Jesse slid into the backseat of the cruiser, where Molly was talking to the young woman.
“This is Kate Mahoney,” Molly said. “She found the body.”
“I’m Jesse Stone,” he said.
“The police chief,” the woman said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “How are you?”
The woman nodded. She was holding a middle-aged bea gle in her lap.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Jesse looked at Molly. Molly nodded. Yes, she was okay. Jesse scratched the beagle behind an ear.
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Tell me what you saw,” Jesse said.
“I just told her,” the woman said.
She was probably thirty, brown hair tucked up under a baseball cap. Blue sweatpants, white T-shirt, elaborate running shoes. Jesse nodded.
“I know,” he said. “Police bureaucracy. You were out running?”
“Yes, I run every morning before I have breakfast.”
“Good for you,” Jesse said. “You usually run up here?”
“Yes. I like the hill.”
“So you came up here this morning as usual . . .” Jesse said.
“And I saw him. . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment.
“Hanging there.”
Jesse was quiet. The woman shook her head briefly, and opened her eyes.
“See anybody else?”
“No, just . . .”
She made a sort of rolling gesture with her right hand. The beagle watched the movement with his ears pricked slightly.
“Just the man on the tree?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“You know who he is?” Jesse said.
“No. I didn’t really look. When I saw him, I ran off and called nine-one-one on my cell phone.”
“And here we are,” Jesse said.
“I don’t want to look at him,” the woman said.
6
H I G H P R O F I L E
“You don’t have to,” Jesse said. “Is there anything else you can tell us that will help us figure out who did this?”
“ ‘Did this’? It’s not suicide?”
“No,” Jesse said.
“You mean somebody murdered him?”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“Omigod,” she said. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“You just discovered the body. You won’t have any trouble.”
“Will I have to testify?”
“Not up to me,” Jesse said. “But you don’t have much to testify about that Molly or I couldn’t testify about.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“You’ll be fine,” Jesse said. “I promise.”
The woman hugged her dog and pressed her face against the top of his head.
“You’ll both be fine,” Jesse said. “Officer Crane will drive you home.”
The woman nodded with her cheek pressed against the dog’s head. The dog looked uneasy. Jesse gave her one of his cards.
“You think of anything,” Jesse said, “or anything bothers you, call me. Or Officer Crane.”
The woman nodded. Jesse scratched the beagle under the chin and got out of the car.
7
3
Jesse was in the squad room with Molly Crane, Suitcase Simpson, and Peter Perkins. They were drinking coffee.
“State lab has him,” Peter Perkins said. “They’ll fingerprint the body and run the prints. They haven’t autopsied him yet, but I’ll bet they find he died of gunshot. I didn’t see any exit wounds, so I’m betting they find the slugs in there when they open him up.”
“Had to have happened last night,” Suitcase said. “I mean, people are in that park all the time. He couldn’t have hung there long without being spotted.”
H I G H P R O F I L E
Jesse nodded and glanced at Peter Perkins.
“I haven’t seen all that many dead bodies,” Perkins said.
“And very few who were hanged from a tree. But this guy looks like he’s been dead longer than that.”
Jesse nodded.
“And . . .” Peter Perkins glanced at Molly.
“And he smells,” Molly said. “I noticed it, too.”
Jesse nodded.
“And there was no blood except on him. He got shot and hanged, he’d have bled out and there’d be blood on the ground,” Suitcase said.
“So,” Jesse said. “He was shot somewhere else and kept awhile before they brought him up to the hill and hanged him.”
“You think it’s more than one?” Molly said.
“A two-hundred-pound corpse is hard for one person to manhandle around and hoist over a limb,” Jesse said.
“But not impossible,” Molly said.
“No,” Jesse said.
They all sat quietly.
“Anyone reported missing?” Jesse said.
“No,” Molly said.
“Anyone else know anything?”
“Nobody I talked with,” Suitcase said.
Molly Crane and Peter Perkins both shook their heads.
“Even if you knew the guy,” Simpson said, “be kind of hard to recognize him now.”
9
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Anyone want to speculate why you’d shoot some guy,”
Jesse said, “hold his body until it started to ripen, and then hang it on a tree?”
“Symbolic,” Molly said. “It must have some sort of symbolic meaning to the perps.”
Jesse waited.
“Obviously they wanted him found,” Suitcase said.
“But why hanging?” Peter Perkins said.
Suitcase shook his head. Jesse looked at Molly. She shook her head.
“Perk,” Jesse said. “Any theories?”
Perkins shook his head.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “It looks like, for now, we wait for the forensics report.”
“Unless something turns up,” Suitcase said.
“Unless that,” Jesse said.
1 0
4
Dix was as shiny as he always was. His white shirt was crisp with starch. His slacks were sharply creased. His shoes were polished. His thick hands were clean. His nails were manicured. He was bald and clean shaven, and his head gleamed. The white walls of his office were bare except for a framed copy of his medical degree and one of his board certification in psychiatry. Jesse sat at one side of the desk, and Dix swiveled his chair to face him. After he swiveled, he was motionless, his hands resting interlaced on his flat stomach.
“I’m making progress on the booze,” Jesse said. Dix waited.