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.