“Jesse Stone, philosopher.”
“No, Jesse Stone, former professional baseball player. Everyone I played with was the most talented baseball player in his town. Every one of them had been all-city, all-county, all-state. Not everyone makes it. Why is the kid holding a skull?”
“It’s from Shakespeare, a scene from Hamlet. Do you know it?”
“To be or not to be, but that’s about it. I know that it’s about a kid who can’t make up his mind.”
“Most of the kids are reading that play in their English classes, and Hamlet would have been around their ages. Maybe a little bit older. It’s a play about death, love, treachery, madness, and revenge. A lot about death. Teenagers are kind of obsessed with those things. What are you doing here, Jesse?”
“What I’m doing in your classroom is to ask you to dinner after my meeting tonight. I’d like to clear some things up.”
“I’d like that.”
“What I’m doing in the building is delivering bad news to Principal Wester. Chris Grimm has been murdered.”
Maryglenn bent over, grabbing her midsection as if she’d been kicked in the stomach.
“I can’t give you any details,” he said, “but it will be out soon enough. I better go give her the news.”
Freda was away from her desk, so Jesse walked to Virginia Wester’s door and knocked.
“Damn it, Freda, how many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to knock when I’m in here alone?” Wester shouted.
Jesse opened the door, but Wester was looking down at papers on her desk.
“It’s me, Virginia, not Freda.”
Wester’s face went from annoyed to worried.
“Jesse, I’m sorry.”
“No need.”
“What is it?”
He gave her the details, the few that he had, about Chris Grimm’s murder.
“Oh my God!”
“It was pretty brutal, Virginia. I wanted to tell you myself so that you can inform the faculty and students. Have counselors here if you think you need them.”
“Thank you, Jesse. What’s going on? I know Paradise has had its share of crime. In this world, what place doesn’t? But this, to torture a boy to death, even if he was a drug dealer... I can’t fathom it.”
Jesse said, “Drugs equals money, lots of it. And money can make people justify anything. It starts with legal prescriptions and ends with a dead girl and a murdered boy.” He repeated the line about the war on drugs he’d read in a novel.
“Has the war on drugs really been going on for fifty years?” It was a rhetorical question. When Wester’s eyes refocused on Jesse, she said, “I can see by your expression you have more to say.”
“I have a confidential informant that claims one of your teachers is involved.”
“Involved? Involved in what, the drugs?”
Jesse nodded. “And, by extension, the murder.”
She pounded her fist on the desk. “Who? Who is it? I want to know.”
“I don’t know, Virginia. If I knew, they’d be in handcuffs. But I’ll be back over the next several days to interview them. We can do this the hard way or the—”
“No, Jesse. No court orders. You’ll have my full cooperation, the school board be damned. If they want my hide, they can have it. This has to stop. Now.”
Jesse shook her hand. “Thank you.”
He hadn’t told her exactly what Rich Amitrano had said about the teacher being a woman. For one thing, he wasn’t sure there wasn’t more than one teacher involved. For another, it was always good for the police to have a piece of information that the public wasn’t privy to.
Fifty-six
Molly had gone to Sara York’s house first to get what she knew would be an incredibly uncomfortable situation out of the way. The Yorks lived around the corner from the Cranes. Molly’s older girls had taken turns babysitting for Sara and her little brother and, as she had told Jesse, Sara played on the field hockey team with Molly’s two youngest girls.
“Molly!” Toni, Sara’s mom, said when she opened the door. When she saw Molly’s expression, the enthusiasm drained out of her. “Come in. We’ve been expecting you or Jesse to knock since the day Heather died.”
As Toni made Molly coffee, she explained that Frank had taken Frank Jr. to basketball practice.
Molly asked, “Sara?”
“At counseling.”
After the coffee was served, they sat across the kitchen table from each other. Molly had learned about the power of silence from Jesse and used it. The story Toni eventually told Molly was eerily similar to what Patti Mackey and Moss Carpenter had told Jesse. There had been an injury, doctor visits, continued pain, a new prescription, and addiction. The difference was that Toni, an occupational therapist, wasn’t going to play along or enable her daughter.
“I did my internship on a burn unit, Molly,” Toni said. “As an OT on that unit, I witnessed what pain was like. Burns do terrible damage to more than the skin. They ruin muscles, ligaments, tendons. To get people to be able to grasp and hold things in their hands again or to range their limbs, I had to put them through hell. So when I found pills in Sara’s room, I didn’t believe her lies and we got her help. Remember that soccer camp we told you about last summer? There was no soccer camp.”
Molly reached across the table and held Toni’s hand.
“Sara now goes to group meetings twice a week and for private counseling,” Toni said. “We get her tested every month. Sara says she did some things she’s pretty ashamed of to get those pills.” Silent tears poured out of her eyes as she spoke.
“Did any of those things involve Chris Grimm?”
Toni York’s eyes narrowed with anger. “That son of a bitch. He made Sara—”
Molly squeezed Toni’s hand, hard. “He’s dead.”
“Good.”
“He was tortured to death and shot, left in a shallow grave outside Helton.”
Toni paled but said, “You want me to feel sorry for him?”
“No. That’s not why I’m here. I came to talk to Sara to see if she knew of anyone other than Chris involved in selling drugs at school. We’re not looking to get the kids doing drugs in trouble. That never does any good. We want to get them help and we want the dealing to stop.”
“As far as I know, it was only Chris Grimm, but I’ll have Sara call you when she gets back. I promise.”
Molly got up from the table and hugged Toni.
Things went very differently at the North house. It was difficult enough for Molly to get in the house, let alone to talk directly to Petra. Things got loud and heated in spite of Molly remaining calm. There were threats of lawsuits, complaints about harassment... the usual stuff. Even in a place like Paradise, police frequently heard this kind of rhetoric. People hate the police until they need them.
“Tell Chief Stone we have had quite enough of this,” said Ambrose North, returned from Boston. “Annette told me of Jesse’s unwelcome and unappreciated visit.”
Molly caught sight of Petra listening at the top of the stairs, so she raised her voice loud enough to make certain Petra heard clearly what was going on.
“Mr. North, Jesse’s visit was to inform you that we had recovered your missing watch from the room of a suspected drug dealer. We were curious if you could tell us how your watch might’ve found its way there.”
“Preposterous! How would we know the answer to that?”
“Well, since the news will be out tomorrow, I can tell you that the alleged drug dealer was Petra’s classmate, Chris Grimm. His body was found this morning after—”
That got Ambrose North’s attention. “His body?”
“Yes, he disappeared on the day Heather Mackey was buried. This morning his body was found in a shallow grave outside of Helton. He had been tortured and shot to death.”