He was walking up and down in front of them.
“Most of you know Jack was the nephew of one of my officers,” Jesse said. “So this is as personal for us as it is for you.”
One of the kids raised a hand. Jesse recognized him. Kenny Simonds. The starting pitcher in yesterday’s game. His father owned an auto repair shop just over the line from Paradise, in Marshport.
“Why are we here?” Simonds said. “None of us want to talk to you. And my father always says that nobody had to talk to the police if they don’t want to.”
Jesse nodded.
“They don’t,” Jesse said. “But just so you know, Kenny, I am officially treating what happened to Jack as a suspicious death.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Simonds said, his voice full of sarcasm.
“I wasn’t finished,” Jesse said, putting some snap into his voice. “Nobody here has to talk to me. But if you don’t, if you choose not to help me investigate what happened to your friend, I’m going to look at you as hindering my investigation. And get suspicious about that.”
He moved to his right, so he was directly in front of Kenny Simonds.
“Do I have your attention now?” Jesse said.
Simonds nodded. He wasn’t the only one in the bleachers doing that. Jesse reminded himself these were high school kids, some of them or even most of them dealing with the death of a buddy for the first time in their lives.
“Were all of you at the party at Bluff Lookout?” Jesse said.
More nods.
Jesse took a closer look at the faces in front of him, noticed that the team’s first baseman, Scott Ford, was wearing sunglasses.
“Now I already know one of you had some kind of beef with Jack at some point in the proceedings last night,” Jesse said. “Now I need to know who with.”
“Who said there was a beef?” Kenny Simonds said.
“Son,” Jesse said. “I’m the one asking the questions here.”
Jesse waited.
He was good at it.
Better than them.
He walked down to Scott Ford and said, “Lights too bright in here for you, Scott?”
Ford mumbled something.
“I’m sorry, son, I didn’t quite catch that,” Jesse said.
“I said I didn’t want everybody to see I’ve been crying,” Ford said. “Is all.”
“Is all,” Jesse said, nodding.
Then he quickly walked up the aisle and, before the kid could react, took off the glasses. Ford’s left eye was purple, swollen, nearly closed. Maybe he hadn’t known that Jesse knew about a fight before he walked into the gym. Maybe he was afraid to be the only team member not in attendance. He was a kid. Maybe he thought he could get by telling Jesse he’d been crying, as if he’d given up some crucial piece of information.
But here he was, anyway.
Jesse handed Ford back his glasses. Ford put them back on.
“Let’s take a walk,” Jesse said to him.
“What if I don’t want to?” Scott Ford said.
“Then I can call Jack’s uncle and get him over here and you can explain about the fight to him instead of me,” Jesse said. “Your call.”
The kid got up and began walking toward the double doors at the end of the gym. Jesse followed him. Before he was out the doors, he looked back over his shoulder. None of the other players had moved. They were just staring.
Boys to men, Jesse thought, this fast.
He thought: It must already seem to them as if somebody else won the big game.
Six
Jesse and Molly sat with Scott Ford in Jesse’s office. Jesse had asked the kid if he wanted one of his parents present, or both of them. He’d said no, his father would only find a way to make things worse than they already were, if that was even possible.
“I’ll tell them later,” Ford said.
“They know about the fight?” Jesse said.
“I’ll tell them that later, too,” he said. “I slept at Kenny’s house last night. Our pitcher. The one smart-mouthing you in the gym.”
“I know who he is,” Jesse said.
Suit was still at his sister’s house. Thank heaven, Jesse thought, for small favors. Not that he was feeling particularly religious today. This wasn’t the first time he’d fantasized about getting God into an interrogation room and shining a light in His face and asking Him to explain shit like Jack Carlisle ending up dead in the water, and why He generally kept acting so pissed off at the world.
Ford sat on the other side of Jesse’s desk, big hands in his lap. He’d taken off the sunglasses. The purple around his eye seemed to have darkened just since they left the gym, the bruise spreading. Jesse also noticed the swelling in his right hand. The kid looked tired and hungover and sad. And scared being in the office of the chief of police. The only thing he’d said to Jesse on the ride over here was “Are you going to arrest me?”
“Should I?” Jesse said.
“It was just a dumb fight,” Ford had said, “over nothing.”
Then he had started to cry for real.
In the office now, Molly asked if Ford wanted coffee.
“Hot?” he said.
“All we got,” she said.
“No.”
“No, thank you,” Jesse said.
The kid shifted his attention to Jesse.
“What?”
“What you meant to say to Deputy Chief Crane,” Jesse said, “was ‘No, thank you.’ ”
Oh,” Ford said. “No, thank you.”
“What was the fight about?” Jesse said.
“Like I told you,” Ford said, “it was really about nothing.”
“Scott,” Jesse said in a soft, good-cop voice. “Let’s not either one of us fuck around here, okay?”
The kid leaned back and stared at the ceiling with one good eye. His sunglasses were in front of him on Jesse’s desk.
“Why are we even doing this?” Ford said. “I didn’t knock him into the water. We were nowhere near the water when we got into it.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how he ended up in the water,” Jesse said.
“He was my teammate!” Ford said. “He was my friend!”
“You ever have a fistfight with your friend before?” Jesse said.
“We got into it a few times,” Ford said. “My mom calls it dumb young-guy stuff.”
“Not exactly what Chief Stone asked you, Scott,” Molly said.
She always knew when to come in, shift the focus of the person being asked the questions. Like a pitcher changing a batter’s eye angle by moving the ball up and down, in and out.
“Chief Stone asked if you and Jack ever got into a fistfight before,” Molly said.
Ford was staring down at his big ballplayer’s hands again.
“No,” he said. “This was the first time.”
But he hesitated, just slightly, before answering.
“So what was it about?” Jesse said.
“He’d had too much beer and I’d had too much beer and he accused me of something I didn’t do,” Ford said.
“What would that be?” Molly said.
“Messing around with his girlfriend behind his back.”
He gave them a name. Ainsley Walsh. Said he’d never do anything like that, you never did that with a friend. Told them again that it wasn’t anywhere near the water and that he walked back to where the other guys were and Jack had walked off in another direction.
“Toward the water?” Jesse said.
“I didn’t even look,” Ford said. “I just wanted to get some ice. And get away from him.”