Robert B. Parker's Debt to Pay (5 page)

J
esse got up early and drove straight from Diana's apartment to the Paradise police station. Molly was at the desk and gave Jesse the once-over.

“Rough night, Jesse?” she said, unsmiling.

Rough nights didn't mean what they used to for him now that he had given up drinking for good. Molly was skeptical, and with good reason. She had gone through dry periods with Jesse before and, in the end, he'd always dive back into the bottle. Jesse wasn't a man to care much about people judging him, but Molly's opinion mattered. It mattered a lot. He also wasn't a man to embarrass easily, but there had been a few times over the years since his arrival in Paradise that he'd embarrassed himself with his drinking. And on those occasions, Molly had saved his ass. She'd covered for him, making excuses and deflecting attention away from him.

“I was in Boston.”

Molly smiled at that. “Diana's good for you.”

“That settles it, then.”

“You're a funny man, Jesse.”

“Anything going on?”

“Not really,” she said, a bit of hesitation in her voice. “Power's been restored all over town. Cable is back up. No one was injured during the flooding, and none of the damage is serious.”

The hesitation in her voice did not go unnoticed, but Jesse was in desperate need of some coffee.

“Okay.”

He turned to go to the coffee machine.

Molly called after him. “How did Alisha do at the desk yesterday?”

“Better watch it, Crane. The rookie handled it like a pro.”

“I'm not worried.” She smiled, but it didn't last. “I read about Gino Fish. What do you think?”

Jesse wasn't in the mood for this discussion again. “I think I need coffee.”

When he got inside his office, he called Healy and asked him to stop by if he had time. Healy agreed, saying he'd be by in an hour and that he had something to run by Jesse anyway. Jesse got a few swallows of coffee down before Molly stuck her head in his office.

“You got a minute, Jesse?”

“If I didn't, would it stop you?”

She laughed. “No.”

He waved for her to come in and sit. She sat across from Jesse but seemed out of sorts. She was rubbing her palms together and squirming in her chair. Molly rarely seemed uncomfortable in her own skin, which is why her obvious distress surprised Jesse.

“What's wrong? Is everything all right at home with—”

“Jenn called me last night.”

“My ex?”

“No, Jennifer Aniston!” she said, the sarcasm thick in her voice. “Of course your ex.”

“Since when are you two close?”

“Since never. We had our issues with each other, but we were never enemies or anything.”

“Then what was the call about?” he asked.

“Don't be dense, Jesse.”

“The wedding.”

“She's hurt that you're not going.”

“I know that, but what are you supposed to do, talk me into going?”

Molly said, “That's about the size of it.”

He shook his head. “She doesn't get it.”

“Get what?”

“That it's just this sort of thing that drove us apart in the first place.”

“I thought it was that she was cheating on you with a smarmy movie producer.”

“There was that, too. Thanks for reminding me, Crane.”

They both laughed at that.

He asked, “Would you want your ex at your wedding?”

“I think it's weird, but I'm not surprised. Jenn always wants your approval or forgiveness.”

“Uh-huh. So what did you say to her?”

“I told her what she already knew. That once you make up your mind, no one is going to change it for you.”

“But she pleaded for you to. She said something like ‘Jesse listens to you.' Right?”

“Verbatim.”

“Consider yourself off the hook. You tried. I didn't listen. Go back to work.”

But Molly didn't move. “Are you going to call her?”

He shook his head. “I already called her and explained. And no, I'm not going to call her again.”

Molly stood, sighed in relief, and left the office. Jesse held his anger until she was gone. Then he picked up his old baseball glove and began pounding the ball into its pocket. Pounding the ball into the glove was a kind of physical mantra for him. It helped him focus his thoughts. What he was trying to figure out was whether he was angrier at Jenn for trying to manipulate him or at himself for still caring. As far as he was concerned, her wedding couldn't happen soon enough.

T
here was something different about Healy. Jesse noticed it the second the state police's chief homicide investigator walked into his office. The obvious thing was that the captain was dressed in a way that Jesse had never seen the man dress before. Healy had always been old-school. More often than not he was done up in the same brown suit, a white shirt, often a less-than-fashionable tie, and ugly cop shoes. Yet the man who stood before him looked like a senior tour golfer straight from a fitting with his clothing sponsor.

“Wife burn your clothes or did you rob a Golfsmith?” Jesse asked.

“It's my day off. I get those every now and then. Going straight from here to my lesson.”

That comment set off all kinds of alarms in Jesse's head. He asked, “You putting in your papers?”

Healy made a face. “That obvious, huh?”

“A lifer like you starts taking golf lessons and dressing like Tiger Woods, usually means only one thing.”

“I was always more of a Phil Mickelson guy myself.”

“Your retirement. Is that what you wanted to run by me?”

“You first, Jesse. You called me, remember?”

“Okay.” Jesse nodded. “Gino Fish.”

“That again.” Healy grunted. “I knew it. You're not going to let it be.”

“Can't.”

“Bullshit. With all due respect to the recently deceased Mr. Fish, I don't see anyone holding a gun to your head.”

“I really can't let it be. Vinnie Morris is calling in a marker on me.”

Healy raised his eyebrows and gave Jesse a harsh look. “How did a mobbed-up shark like Vinnie Morris come to hold a marker on you?”

“He inherited the marker from Gino Fish,” Jesse said.

“Same question, only substitute Fish for Morris.” Healy sat down across from Jesse where Molly had sat an hour earlier. “And if I'm going to have to listen to this, can I get a drink?”

Jesse shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Drying out for a while?”

“Forever.”

Healy considered saying something and thought better of it. Besides, that wasn't what he wanted to hear about.

“We've been friends a long time now, Stone. I'd like to think I know the man you are, but—”

Jesse held up his palm as if stopping traffic. “Remember that whole mess when Suit got shot?”

Healy nodded. “Mr. Peepers.”

“Exactly. To get a line on Peepers, I made a deal with Gino Fish. If he could put me in touch with Peepers, I would owe him a favor, no questions asked.”

Healy shook his head in disbelief. “How could you do that with a man like Fish? Who knows what he would've asked you to do?”

“A woman I once loved was facing a slow, painful death at Peepers's hand and Fish was the only person I knew who could put me
in a room with Peepers. My blank check to Gino was the only chip I had to bargain with. I'd do it again to save her life.”

“Then I guess it's a good thing we'll never find out what he would've asked for,” Healy said. “You sure you don't have a bottle hiding out in here somewhere?”

“Hundred percent sure.”

“So why'd you want to see me?”

“I need everything there is to see on the Fish case. Everything,” Jesse repeated.

“That the marker Morris is calling in?”

“Uh-huh. I've got some contacts at the BPD, but not like yours.”

“Okay, I'll see what I can do.”

“Now what's this about you putting in your papers?”

“It's time, Jesse,” Healy said, strain in his voice.

“Why is it time?”

“The wife,” Healy said, his voice cracking. “She's sick and I owe it to her and to me.”

Now Jesse understood Healy's needing a drink.

“How sick?”

“Her heart. Could need major surgery. Maybe not. Anyway, it's time.”

Jesse didn't push for more details. He didn't have to. Healy looked at his watch and stood to go.

“The driving range and my instructor await. I'll get you everything I can from Boston PD,” Healy said. “They owe me about a million favors. Shouldn't be any trouble.”

Jesse shook Healy's hand and held on to it a beat or two longer than normal. That said more than Jesse could have expressed in words. Healy nodded and turned quickly away.

E
veryone needs some luck, even assassins. It wasn't luck that had helped him turn the mess of Gino Fish's unexpected bullet to the brain into a neat package of murder-suicide. That was skill, experience, and a chameleon's ability to adapt to its surroundings. He was rather proud of himself for how he'd handled that, in spite of the bother, particularly the little touch of posing the receptionist's body. How sweet. He laughed to himself, though Fish's suicide was yet another reminder of the limits of control. He would have to keep that in mind when the time came to pay his debt to Stone. If a wretched old crook like Gino Fish could surprise him, there was no predicting what a capable adversary like Stone could do.

With that in mind, he had reconsidered his approach, hoping the chief would miss the bread crumbs he had left behind in Paradise. He would let Stone know he was coming when he was good and ready. And it was to that end he was now in Salem at two-thirty a.m., returning the Yaris to the garage from which he'd taken it. The stolen car, that's where luck had entered into it. On his way out of Boston he'd heard a news story about a cruise ship whose crew and
passengers had been overcome by one of those fast-spreading viruses. The ship had been ordered back to port. The woman who owned the Yaris was on that ship. And if Peepers's calculations were correct, the owner of the Yaris would be home later that morning. No doubt she would report her car stolen shortly thereafter. With his change in strategy, the last thing he needed was a report on the police wire that might remind Jesse Stone of their previous encounter. Better a report of a murder, he thought, than of a widow's stolen car in a nearby town.

He wasn't a superstitious man by nature—no spilled salt over his little sloped shoulders—but when he heard the panting of a dog and human footsteps on the pavement behind him, he wished he hadn't had that thought about murder. If he hadn't already hit the close-door button on the garage keypad, he was certain he could have just stood in the shadows and the dog walker would have passed on by. But lately, nothing was easy. No matter. As the rubber gasket at the bottom of the door kissed the concrete garage slab, he carefully screwed his sound suppressor onto the barrel of his .22. He stood in the shadows, waiting for the inevitable.

“Connie, is that you?” An elderly woman's voice cut through the early-morning air. “I thought you were—”

“No, ma'am,” Peepers said, stepping out of the shadows, one arm behind his back. “I'm Connie's nephew, Paul. Aunt Connie gave me permission to use her car while she was on her cruise. I was just returning it.”

“You a nephew on her late husband's side of the family?”

“Hers.”

The old woman was about twenty feet in front of him. She was a small target, thin and hunched, with a tangle of steel-colored hair on her head. And even at this distance he caught wind of her sickly-
sweet old-lady perfume. The stuff made him gag. Why did they wear that stuff? Why at this hour? The dog was one of those yappy, shaggy, nervous little things that paced around the old lady's feet.

“Odd hour to be returning a car,” the woman said, a skeptical look on her wizened face.

“Odd hour to be walking your dog.”

“Don't get old, son. I can't sleep worth a damn anymore.” She nodded at the dog circling her feet. “And he likes the walk.”

He hoped this would be the end of their conversation and that she would move on. His cab would be here any minute and he couldn't afford their conversation attracting any attention from the neighbors.

“Okay, then, son. Be safe. Come on, Rags,” she said to the dog, tugging his leash.

He breathed a sigh of relief. As the old woman moved on, his cab turned onto the street. Then the old lady stopped in her tracks. She turned back toward him.

“Wait a second,” she said. “Connie was an only child. How—”

The headlights at his back helped illuminate his targets. He raised the .22. It flashed four times in an instant, coughing wisps of acrid smoke. The old lady went down without much of a sound and the dog barely had any distance to fall. When the cab pulled to a stop behind him, he spun and shot directly through the windshield. Fortunately, the driver did not slump forward against the horn, but fell against the door.

He did not believe in God. How could he? He had killed more people than he cared to count, most in far more painful ways than he had just used to dispatch the old woman, the cabdriver, and the dog. He had listened to men and women alike plead and bargain with a deaf God, a God who abandoned them as he tortured them,
killing them inch by excruciating inch. Only once had he been thwarted, and that time it wasn't God who had interceded. No, that time it was Jesse Stone. Still, Peepers was tempted to shake his fist at the sky and curse. Instead, he drove out of Salem in the cab as quickly as he dared.

J
esse had barely settled into his desk chair after lunch when Healy came into his office. This time he was dressed in his familiar brown suit and not done up like a country-club gigolo. Not only was the captain's attire back to normal, but so too was his cop face. Jesse was glad to see this version of his old friend and colleague. He hadn't dwelled on Healy's news about retirement, though seeing him again today in his usual getup made Jesse realize just how much he would miss having Healy around. In spite of the gap in their ages, they had a lot in common. Healy, like Jesse, had been a minor-league baseball player: a pitcher in the Phillies system. Both men were good detectives blessed with the skills for finding killers. Both had a powerful sense of right and wrong. And, until very recently, both were more than fond of blended whiskey. With that in mind, Jesse had made sure to make a special purchase on his way home from work the night before.

“Two days in a row,” Jesse said. “But I can see by that look on your face that this is business.”

Healy plopped a file onto Stone's desk. “That's the preliminary
report on Gino Fish. I don't think you're going to like what it has to say.”

“You could have faxed it to me or mailed it.”

Healy shook his head. “Since I had to go over to Salem, I figured it was just as easy to drop it off.”

“Salem? What happened in Salem?”

“Double homicide. Locals wanted some help.”

“You look like you could use a drink. Something else going on?”

“The wife,” Healy said, burying his face in his hands. “It's not great news. They're going to try meds first.”

Jesse pulled a bottle of Tullamore Dew, Healy's favorite Irish whiskey, out of his bottom drawer and put it up on his desk. He placed a single red plastic cup by its side.

He said, “You look like you could use a drink.”

“Even if I didn't, I'd have a drink of that. But I thought you said—”

“I can't have you putting in your papers and remembering me badly.”

He poured a finger of the light amber liquid into the cup and handed it to the captain. Healy held the rim of the cup up to his nose and breathed in.

“Are you sure you don't want to join me, Jesse?”

“I'm sure I won't. I'm not sure I don't want to.”

“
Sláinte
. To your health.”

Jesse raised his empty hand and said, “To your wife.”

“To the old gal.”

Healy raised the cup and sipped. When he lowered the cup, he stared into it as if into an abyss. A tear formed in the corner of his right eye, which he wiped immediately away. He put the cup back down on the desk and Jesse refilled it, putting the bottle back in his
drawer afterward. He waited for Healy to regain his composure and said, “So tell me about Salem.”

Healy looked up. “A woman came home early this morning from a cruise. You know, the cruise that's been all over the papers. The ship where everyone on board got one of them viruses and had to come back to port.”

“Paradise doesn't have a newspaper anymore. Remember?”

“Boston does, and there are these new things called TVs, radios, and computers, you know? Even your damn phone will read you the news.”

“I've been a little preoccupied lately.” He considered explaining about Jenn's wedding, but decided not to.

“Anyway, this woman returns home and sacks out for an hour or two. Wakes up and realizes she doesn't have anything to eat in the house because the cruise was supposed to last for six weeks. When she goes to the detached garage for her car, she notices drag marks in her gravel driveway. She opens the garage door and finds the bodies of an elderly neighbor woman, her dog, and an African American man in his forties she has never seen before. All three with two bullets in them. Turns out the black guy is a cabdriver for a local company who was called to the address at around two-fifteen in the morning.”

“Cab gone?”

Healy nodded.

Jesse asked, “Robbery gone wrong?”

“Don't think so. Nothing missing. No forced entry.”

“Professional hit?”

Healy shook his head. “We're talking an eighty-two-year-old woman and her shih tzu, Rags.”

“The cabdriver, then?”

“No way the killer could have known who'd be picking him up. And it's Salem, Mass, for crissakes! If the killer wanted to rob a cabbie to make some money, he should've gone to Boston. None of it makes any kind of sense. Especially the murder weapon. Looks like a .22. And this guy could shoot. The old lady got one to the head, one in the pump. Driver got two in the head. Forensics guy thinks one of the shots was through the windshield. Glass fragments on the body.” Healy made a pistol of his right thumb and forefinger and shot it. “The second bullet through the back of the head. Contact wound. Guy even got the dog in the noggin. Like I said, it makes no sense.”

“Sometimes things don't.”

Healy stood. “Good point. You might want to remember that when you read through Fish's case file. Now I got to get back to the office.”

“How was the golf lesson?”

“Instructor says I'm a natural.”

“You think he's said that to a new student once or twice before?”

Healy laughed. “Maybe once or twice.”

When Healy left, Jesse flipped open the file on Gino Fish's murder-suicide, but he couldn't concentrate. The murders in Salem were gnawing at him, only he couldn't put his finger on why.