“No. You know that’s not what I
meant.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “Thank
you.”
They looked quietly at the foreboding whitecaps.
“I don’t feel good about breaking up with you the way I did,”
Abby said.
“You needed to break up with me,” Jesse said. “I am not really
available to anyone until I resolve all this with Jenn.”
“I know, but my timing wasn’t good. You were in trouble and I
…” Abby made a fluttery motion with her hand.
“It’s okay, Abby.”
She turned toward him and put her face up.
“It wasn’t okay,” she said and
kissed him hard with her mouth
open.
From a great distance, his ironic nonparticipant self smiled and
thought whoops! He kissed her back.
In bed she was urgent, and when the urgency had passed for both
of them, they lay side by side on their backs.
“Now it’s okay,” Abby said
softly.
“A proper good-bye?” Jesse said.
“I suppose so.”
“You’re still living with that
guy?” Jesse said.
“Yes … he’s out of town
tonight. Chicago.”
“You thinking of marrying him?”
“Yes.”
“You love him?”
“Oh God, Jesse, you’re such a fucking romantic.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Jesse
said.
“He’s a nice guy.”
“You’re marrying him because
he’s a nice guy?”
“I’m marrying him because my clock is ticking fast, and he’s the
nicest guy I have found who wants to marry me.”
“You’re a practical person,”
Jesse said.
The overhead light was on in the bedroom, and as Jesse looked at
her naked body, he could see still a faint trace of sweat between her breasts.
“Most women are,” Abby said. “I
always get a laugh out of the
popular mythology about romantic women and practical men.”
Jesse nodded.
“It is sort of laughable,” he said.
“Would it bother him if he
knew?”
“Of course. But he’s no virgin and neither am I and we both know
it.”
“Do you feel like you’re cheating on him?”
“Yes, I guess so, a little.”
“But …”
“But you and I needed to be put to rest.”
“And this was it?”
Abby rolled onto her side and pressed her face against Jesse’s
chest.
“Yes,” she said. “This was
it.”
Jesse smiled and laughed softly.
“What?” Abby said.
“I’m the other guy,” Jesse said.
“The one I want to kill when
Jenn is with him.”
“Irony,” Abby said.
“You’ve always been a real bear for
irony.”
When she was dressed and her makeup was fixed and her hair was in order, Jesse offered to walk her to her car.
“I’m right in front of the Gray
Gull,” Abby said, “and besides,
it seems righter, somehow, if I kiss you good-bye here and go out the door.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
They kissed, and when they were through, Abby turned and went out the front door without a word.
There were only a few cars in the parking lot. Abby was grateful
to get into her car and out of the wind. She started the engine and put it in gear and drove out of the lot. A red Saab sedan pulled out of the lot behind her. Both cars turned down Front Street.
35
She had been shot twice in the chest, as she got out of her car,
in the driveway of her house on North Side Drive, her body turned toward the back of the car, as if she had turned to see what was behind her. Anthony deAngelo had found her on routine patrol. She had fallen with the car door open, and one foot still caught on the edge of the car. Anthony had seen the car with its interior lights on and stopped to take a look.
“It’s Abby Taylor,” deAngelo
said to Jesse when he
arrived.
Jesse nodded. Dead people don’t look much different at
first, he thought. Just like live people except that they
don’t move. He stared down at her face. No, he
thought, it’s more than that. You look at them, there’s
something missing. Her position would have embarrassed her.
He
reached down and moved her leg and smoothed her skirt down. She was still flexible. Peter Perkins arrived with his crime-scene kit.
Suitcase Simpson was setting up lights. The ambulance pulled in.
Anthony was stringing the crime-scene tape.
“She live alone?” Suitcase asked.
“She lived with a guy,” Jesse said.
He was still looking absently down at the body.
“Nobody answering the door,” Simpson said.
“Or the
phone.”
“He’s in Chicago,” Jesse said.
Simpson stared at Jesse and started to speak. Then he didn’t.
One of the techs from the ambulance came over and knelt down beside Abby. He took her pulse automatically, though he knew she was dead.
“Just like the other ones, Jesse,” the tech said. “Two in the
chest.”
“Her purse is still in the car,” Perkins said.
“Cold night,” the tech said.
“Make time of death a little
harder.”
“She died within the last hour,” Jesse said.
The tech looked up as if he were going to ask a question.
Suitcase Simpson put a hand on his shoulder. The tech glanced at him. Simpson shook his head. Perkins began to photograph the crime scene. A few neighbors had straggled out into the cold, coats on over sleep wear, hunched against the cold, staring aimlessly. Jesse was motionless, looking down at the body.
“You know where this guy might be in Chicago,” Simpson
asked.
Jesse shook his head.
“Anthony and I’ll ask a few
neighbors,” Simpson said. “Maybe
they’ll know. Or know where he works and the people at work will
know.”
Jesse nodded.
“Hate to just leave a note for him to call.”
“We won’t leave a note,” Jesse
said. “If you can’t reach him,
leave somebody here until you do.”
“What if it’s a couple days?”
Simpson said.
“Leave somebody here if you can’t reach him,” Jesse
said.
“Okay, Jesse.”
The other cops went about their crime-scene business very quietly. Like people in a sickroom. Jesse continued to look at Abby. After a while the EMTs loaded her onto a gurney and slid her into the back of the ambulance. Jesse watched them silently. The ambulance pulled away. Peter Perkins packed up his crime-scene gear and went to his car. Simpson and deAngelo finished talking to the neighbors.
“They told me he works at the GE in Lynn,”
Simpson said. “I’ll
call them in the morning. Anthony says he’ll stay here.
I’ll get
Eddie to come over in the morning and give him a break.”
“Do that,” Jesse said.
Perkins got into his truck and drove away. DeAngelo settled in behind the wheel in his cruiser in front of the house.
“I gotta get going, Jesse,” Simpson said.
Jesse nodded. Simpson shifted his weight a little.
“You, ah, gonna be all right?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Simpson said.
He walked back toward his cruiser. And stopped and turned back toward Jesse.
“I’m sorry about Abby,” he said.
“Thanks, Suit.”
Simpson got into his cruiser, started it, and drove down North Side Drive. In the rearview mirror he could see that Jesse was still standing where he’d left him.
36
The Paradise selectmen called a special town meeting, which authorized a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers. A telephone hot line was established and the number publicized statewide. The Paradise police were working twelve-hour shifts, and the hot line was manned in the town clerk’s