What henhouse had Charlie been talking about?
There was no ballgame tonight. He looked at his channel guide and saw that Unforgiven had started on Turner Classic Movies while he’d been eating, turned it on, stayed with it until the frontier justice when Eastwood caught up with Gene Hackman and put one in his head.
Jesse went to bed after that.
It was right before dawn the next morning, about the time when Jesse was first opening his eyes, when Suit called. Never good at this time of the morning.
Ever.
Kind of call that couldn’t wait.
“Somebody just called in another body from the water over there at Bluff Lookout,” Suit said. “Five minutes ago.”
“ID.”
“Jesse, I called you as soon as we got the call. I’m on my way over there now.”
There was a pause at Suit’s end.
“What else?” Jesse said.
“There’s a wheelchair down there, too,” Suit said.
Thirty-Six
Nicholas Farrell’s voice was thick with sleep when he finally answered his phone.
“Jesse,” he said. “You know what time it is, right?”
“I do.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Now it is.”
He then told Nicholas about a body being discovered not far from where they’d found Jack Carlisle. And about the wheelchair discovered along with it.
“You have an ID yet? The wheelchair community in Paradise isn’t exactly the size of the Junior League.”
“There may already be one as we speak.”
“Can you call me back when you have a name?”
Jesse said he would.
“Somebody in a wheelchair going over the Bluff?” Nicholas said. “Would somebody do something like that?”
“Only in the movies,” Jesse said, thinking about a famous old black-and-white film, he couldn’t remember the name, the crazy bad guy pushing an old woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.
When Jesse got to the Bluff he walked past a couple of his squad cars to the edge and looked down at the water, the wheelchair still in the rocks, looking as small as a kid’s tricycle from up here.
The smaller ME van they’d used for Jack Carlisle was back down there. So were Molly and Suit. Molly turned and looked up and saw Jesse and gave him a small wave. Jesse waved back. He was certain she was Suit’s second call, after Jesse; that was the locked-in drill.
For the second time in a week, which had now become an even shittier week, Jesse made his way down the trail to the narrow strip of beach at the water’s edge. Suit had waited to touch the wheelchair. He was already wearing his blue nitrile gloves. Jesse reached into the side pocket of his windbreaker now and put on his own and the two of them lifted up a wheelchair that looked a lot like Nicholas’s onto the second off-road vehicle down here, this one with a flatbed in back. Then the two of them secured it with rope.
“Evidence,” Jesse said.
Suit smiled, and for a moment he was Suit again, and things were the same as they always were between them.
“Why you’re chief,” Suit said. “Never would have figured that out on my own.”
Jesse walked over to where Molly was standing with Dev Chadha. Molly had her notebook out. Without Jesse asking she said, “Vic’s name is Sam Waterfield.”
“Wallet?”
“Soggy as hell. But still in the pocket of his jeans,” Molly said.
“Phone?”
She shook her head.
“The only Waterfield I ever heard of played for the Rams a thousand years ago,” Jesse said.
“Good to know,” Molly said.
“Nicholas Farrell told me the wheelchair population in our town is small.”
“Just got smaller,” Molly said.
“Tell me about it.”
“So how’d he end up down here?” she said.
“He had help,” Jesse said, “if you want to call it that.”
“And you know this how?”
He pointed up to where he’d been standing a few minutes ago.
“The wheel tracks stopped about ten feet from the edge,” he said.
“Not like he got out of the chair and tossed it and then jumped,” Molly said.
“Not only do I think somebody did this,” Jesse said, “I think somebody wanted to send a message with the chair. But what do I know?”
“Everything?” Molly said, and grinned.
Suit was still talking to Dev Chadha.
“You think there’s any way this is connected to Suit’s nephew?” Molly asked.
Jesse was staring again up at the Bluff.
“A police spokesman,” he told Molly, “said they’re not ruling anything out at this point.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” Molly said.
“You can say that again,” he replied.
Thirty-Seven
I sent everybody home,” Hillary More said to Jesse. “Everybody who works for me, that is.”
He had offered to come to her office. She said she’d prefer to come to his, she didn’t want to be in either of her buildings today. Or anywhere near her own company.
Where Sam Waterfield had worked.
She sat across from Jesse’s desk now. Jesse had called her from the scene to tell her about Sam Waterfield. He had already called Nicholas Farrell, and asked how well he knew Sam Waterfield. He said hardly at all, actually, that Sam was one of the sales and marketing whiz kids. One of the upstairs cool kids, he said.
After Hillary More’s shock had worn off, she asked how she could help. Now here they were, coffee mugs in front of them. Jesse hadn’t told her about the wheel tracks. They’d get to that.
“Tell me about him,” he said.
“Terrific kid,” she said. “Good with people. It didn’t take long for me to move him up to sales and marketing, one of our second-floor hotshots. And strategies, figuring out what worked for other chocolate companies, what didn’t, stuff like that. Some of them sell love. Some sell to young women. He told me our goal had to be checking the most boxes.”
“Background?” Jesse said. “Waterfield’s, I mean.”
She took a deep breath.
“This won’t be the short version,” she said. “There was just this spark to Sam. A foster kid who ended up with a full ride to Northeastern. Then ended up in the chair because of a summer party at the Cape before his senior year, too much beer, jumping off a balcony into a swimming pool. Wrong end. Still graduated with high honors. He was working at the Apple Store on Boylston Street when we started up. He heard we were hiring people with disabilities and applied. He told me when I interviewed him that he only had a question for me: Did I hate to lose as much as he did. I told him he was hired. Then I asked him where he saw himself in five years. He told me he wanted to be running his own company. I asked, ‘How about this one?’ and he said, ‘If you say so.’ ”
Without asking, Hillary got up and walked over and poured herself more coffee. She said that it was too early for her to be drinking what she really wanted to be drinking.
“Never was too early for me,” Jesse said.
“I’ve heard stories,” she said.
“All true,” Jesse said.
“Why would Sam do something like this?” she said.
“Like what?”
“Drive himself off a cliff, basically,” she said.
Jesse drank some of his own coffee. Ballpark coffee today, strong as he could make it. If it bothered Hillary, she hadn’t let on. Or just liked it the way Jesse did. Until she could have something stronger.
“I don’t believe he did it to himself,” Jesse said.
“You’re saying you don’t think he killed himself? I’ve been wondering since you called if I’d missed the signs that he may have had a dark or sad or depressed side to him that nobody knew about.”