Night passage

Jo Jo stared at Hasty with eyes that seemed without pupils, opaque eyes too small for his crude face. As Hasty watched him, between glances at the road, Jo Jo’s color deepened, and a small muscle twitched in his cheek.

“I oughta just throw you off the fucking rocks,” Jo Jo said.

“My men would tear you apart if that happened,” Hasty said. “Don’t threaten me, Jo Jo. I’m not afraid of you.”

“You think I’m bluffing?”

“I think you better think about how to get the money back that you allowed us to be cheated out of,” Hasty said.

At Berkeley Street he turned the car onto Storrow Drive and they headed back to Paradise in utter silence.

Chapter 69

Jesse stood alone in Lou Burke’s small garden apartment. What struck him most was the anonymity of it. No pictures of family. No books. No old baseball gloves with the infield dust ground into the seams. Jesse walked slowly through the three small rooms. No newspapers stacked up. No magazines. A television set with a twenty-six-inch screen glowered at the living/dining area off the kitchenette. A small desk near the entry. Some bills due the end of the month. Two canisters of coffee on the kitchen counter, a Mr. Coffee machine. Some milk and some orange juice in the refrigerator. A couple of pairs of slacks in the closet, a blue suit, a starched fatigue outfit with Freedom’s Horsemen markings. Clean police uniform shirts in the bureau drawer. An alarm clock on the bedside table. No fishing equipment. No hunting gear. No cameras. No binoculars. No rugs on the floor. No curtains on the windows. The shades were all drawn to precisely the middle of the lower window. The bed was tightly made. There was no dust. No plants. No bowling trophies. The floors were polished. In the front hall closet was an upright vacuum cleaner.

Not much of a life, Lou.

Jesse stood in the middle of the living room and listened to the silence. He turned slowly. There was nothing he was forgetting. Nothing he’d overlooked. He wondered if his apartment would look like this to a stranger, empty and lifeless and temporary. He was glad Je

Back at the station Jesse stopped to talk with Molly.

“We got a typewriter around here anywhere?” Jesse said.

“Nope. Got rid of them five years ago when we got the computers.”

“Don’t have one left over in the cellar or the storage closet in the squad room, or anyplace?”

“No. Tom made a deal with a used-typewriter guy, from Ly

Jesse shook his head.

“No, just curious. Lou Burke have any family?”

“None that I know, Jesse. Parents died a while back. Far as I know he never married.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“Not that he ever talked about. Pretty much the department and the town was what he had.”

Jesse didn’t miss the cutting edge in the remark. The department was Lou Burke’s life, and Jesse had taken it from him.

“There was no typewriter in his apartment,” Jesse said.

“I’m sure there wasn’t,” Molly said. “Lou was a wonderful cop but he hated to write anything. I used to do half his reports for him.”

“So where did he type out his suicide note?” Jesse said.

Molly looked up at Jesse and started to speak and stopped and frowned.

“There’s no typewriter at his house,” she said.

“That’s correct,” Jesse said.

“The note wasn’t printed out of a computer.”

“No,” Jesse said.

“Maybe he went to somebody’s house that had a typewriter,” Molly said.

Jesse picked up a pad of blue-lined yellow paper from Molly’s desk. There were fifty pads just like it in the office supply cabinet in the squad room.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to have handwritten the note?” Jesse said.

“That is odd,” Molly said. “Though suicidal people are, you know”—Molly tossed her hands—“crazy.”

Jesse put the notepad back down on Molly’s desk. He didn’t say anything.

“Unless he didn’t write the note,” Molly said. “And whoever did it just assumed that there’d be typewriters in the station. But even if there were, we’d find out pretty quick that they weren’t used for the note.”

“Which means whoever wrote it was stupid,” Jesse said.

“That’s not all it means,” Molly said.

“No,” Jesse said, “it’s not.”

He walked back toward his office. Molly watched him as he went.

“Jesus,” she said softly.

Chapter 70

Jesse parked his car in the curving cobblestone driveway of the Episcopal church rectory. It was a big brick building with a green center entrance door and green shutters. It was a bright morning, and the grass of the rectory lawn was wet with the early morning frost that had melted in the sun. A woman wearing an apron over a flowered dress answered Jesse’s ring.

She said, “Reverend is expecting you, Chief Stone.”

Jesse followed her into the study, where the reverend was at his desk. The room was lined with books, and there was a fire burning in the fireplace. Reverend Cotter was gray-haired and pink-cheeked. He was wearing a brown tweed jacket over his black minister’s front-and-backward collar. He stood and shook Jesse’s hand and gestured him to a chair beside the desk. He waited until the housekeeper had left before he spoke.

“Thank you very much for coming so promptly,” he said.

He had a deep voice, and he was pleased with it.

“Glad to,” Jesse said.

Cotter unlocked the middle drawer of his desk with a small key on his key chain, and tucked the key chain back into his pants pocket. He opened the drawer and took out a five-by-seven manila envelope and placed it on his desk, taking time to center it and to adjust it so that it was neatly square in the middle of his clean desk blotter.

“This is very embarrassing,” he said.

“Whatever it is,” Jesse said, “it won’t be as embarrassing as other stuff I’ve been told.”

Cotter nodded.

“Yes, I’m sure. Indeed I often reassure my own parishioners in the same way when they come for help.”

Jesse nodded and smiled politely. Cotter took in a big breath of air and let it out. Then he handed the envelope to Jesse. It was postmarked the previous day from Paradise. It was addressed to Reverend Cotter, probably with a ballpoint pen, in block printing, no return address. Inside was a Polaroid picture. Jesse took it out, handling it by the edges, and looked at it. It was a picture of Cissy Hathaway, naked and provocative on a bed. There was nothing else in the envelope except a piece of shirt cardboard used to protect the picture. There was nothing in the picture to identify the room.

“Just this?” Jesse said.

“Yes,” Cotter said.

“Any idea why this would be sent to you?”

“No.”

“It came this morning?”

“Yes.”

Jesse sat quietly looking at the picture. He could see no real expression in Cissy’s face, though the harsh light of the Polaroid flashbulb would wash out subtlety.

“Mind if I keep this?” Jesse said.

“Please,” Cotter said. “I certainly don’t want it.”

“Anything else arrives let me know,” Jesse said. “Or if anything occurs to you.”

“Of course,” Cotter said.

Jesse put the picture back in the envelope, and slid the envelope in the side pocket of his jacket.

“What are you going to do?”

“We’ll check it for fingerprints,” Jesse said.

“Are you going to speak to Cissy?”

“Yes,” Jesse said.

“I . . . I am her minister,” Cotter said. “If I can help . . .”