When Jesse got in the night before, Cole had been sleeping. He was still asleep when Jesse left for work. But the sun and most of Paradise were still sleeping, too. As he drove to the station from his condo, he stared at the brightening skies over the Atlantic.
There was a certain quality of light to the sunsets in L.A. that was like no other. He was not a man capable of the poetry it would have required to do justice to the dusk in L.A. Not even sundown in Tucson could compare. Here in the East, it was sunrise for Jesse. In L.A., sunrise often meant the ground-hugging clouds of the marine layer and a leap of faith that the sun was out there somewhere. Not here. Here the mornings were so beautifully blue that they almost hurt. Jesse, though, enjoyed the dangerous pink dawns — Pink sky at dawn, sailors be warned — even more than the severe blue ones. Today, there was no joy in the pink morning skies for Jesse Stone.
He had emailed the file to Rosen as promised, but there had been no response. Of course there hadn’t been. Jesse had sent it after hours, and it was before hours now. When he got in to work, Suit was at the desk, reading a Boston paper. Jesse noted the headline:
He saw the photos beneath: Millie Lutz’s Corolla, a string of crime scene tape stretched across the front of Precious Pawn and Loan, and the ME’s men with a body bag slung between them at Rajiv Laghari’s condo.
“Reading about the murders?” Jesse said.
“Bad day for BPD.”
“Say anything about the homicides being connected?”
“Wait a second. Where was it? Here.” Suit folded the paper and pointed with his finger. “‘Millie Lutz was ambushed as she was returning home from work. She was a caretaker for once prominent orthopedist Dr. Myron Wexler. When reached for comment, two of Dr. Wexler’s colleagues noted that the doctor had been suffering with severe Alzheimer’s disease for the past several years. Dr. Rajiv Laghari, also an orthopedist, was slain by an as-yet-unidentified man who police speculate had been a patient of the doctor’s. The assailant was in turn slain by an unidentified member of the Boston Police Department. Unnamed sources confirm that both men were under investigation by state regulatory agencies and law enforcement. Spokespersons for both the regulatory agencies and law enforcement refused comment...’ You know something about this, Jesse?”
“Remember I went down to Boston?”
“Yeah.”
“I spoke with Millie Lutz inside Dr. Wexler’s house. That pawn receipt we found in Chris Grimm’s room was from Precious Pawn and Loan, and I sat outside a clinic run by Dr. Laghari. I think we can draw a straight line from Heather Mackey’s OD to Chris Grimm’s murder to Petra North’s OD to these killings and to Cole’s accident.”
Suit sat sharply back in his chair, as if avoiding something thrown at his head. “What?”
“That was no accident. They thought I was driving the Explorer. Everybody is playing for keeps now. Us, too.”
Jesse walked into his office, picked up his new glove, and pounded the ball.
She had come to school early, but not to work on schedules or lesson plans. It was to work on her own survival. She had been planning to do this anyway, but after she crushed up and snorted her wake-up hit, and listened to the news as she dressed, the level of urgency was in the red. She would cry no tears for Rajiv Laghari, the doctor she had been “referred” to. He had been pleasant and accommodating on her first script visit. That had changed on her subsequent trips to his storefront clinic. The extorted sex was sickening and reason enough to detest the man, but it was Laghari who had introduced her to Arakel Sarkassian and turned her into the desperate, manipulative whore looking back at her from her bedroom mirror.
There was a time a million years ago that the high from her morning hit coursing through her veins would have made it all feel all right. That was the amazing power of the drug, the euphoria and untouchability it gave her. She had been a bulletproof goddess in her own heaven. Now there were bullets everywhere, nothing to keep them out, and heaven was barren of goddesses.
She didn’t fool herself that this would be her final act of debasement or treachery, but she had learned not to think too far ahead or to assume there was a bottom to hit or how low it would be. She would do this thing, and when everyone was sure they had who they were looking for, she would vanish. She had done things like this before and didn’t think this would be especially hard to pull off. A careless whisper, a note, and it would be done.
Jesse stopped the pounding. It was no good. He would never get used to this style of glove. He was an old dog who had learned some new tricks, but there were some he didn’t choose to learn. He put the glove down and booted up his computer. He spotted the email from Lundquist that came with an attachment. Jesse clicked open the attachment. It was a series of time- and date-stamped still shots gleaned from Helton CCTV footage. The white van that had shown up on footage from Kennedy Park was prominently featured in these shots from Helton. They showed the van both entering and leaving town. It had also appeared on street cameras. The one shot that got Jesse’s attention was a photo taken by a red-light camera. The license plate was obscured, but the face of the driver was clear. It was a face Jesse recognized, a brutal one. It was the face of the man who had guarded the door at the storefront clinic in Roxbury.
Seventy-six
By the time Jesse emerged from his office, Gabe Weathers had replaced Suit at the desk. Molly was off the desk for the day, as she was going to accompany Jesse to the high school. It was a sad commentary on the state of things, but Jesse made sure to have a female officer with him whenever questioning a female subject or suspect. With Alisha fired, that duty always fell to Molly.
“You ready, Molly?”
She nodded. “The files are in the car.”
“Gabe, anything comes up...”
“I know where to find you, Jesse.”
At first, they made small talk. It didn’t last. Jesse reiterated that the people to be interviewed had the right to refuse or to be accompanied by a union rep or lawyer.
“Just remind them that if they refuse this interview, we’ll do what we did with Petra North. We’ll make it formal and do it in the interview room at the station.”
“I know, Jesse.” Molly then broached the inevitable question. “So, did you discuss it with her?”
Jesse understood who Molly was talking about. “I did.”
“Anything? Did Maryglenn explain herself at all?”
“No.”
Seeing the look on Jesse’s face, Molly dropped it. Even aside from interrogating Maryglenn, neither of them looked forward to this exercise. While there was a chance more than one teacher was involved in the drug supply chain or that their intel was wrong, they both thought either unlikely. And this sort of mass interview was a clunky way to go about it, but until there was more specific information or until they caught a break, it seemed like their only option. When they got to the school, Molly reminded Jesse of something that had almost slipped her mind.
“Chris Grimm’s burial is this afternoon, but we won’t have time.”
“We’ll make time. We need to be there.”
With that, they got out of the car and headed to Principal Wester’s office.
Virginia Wester was no happier about this approach to finding the suspect than Jesse and Molly were, nor any more enthused than she had been when it was proposed.
“Jesse, this is causing real turmoil. The school board is furious, and all the union reps... you can imagine.”
“If another student dies,” he said, “that will be real turmoil.”