Trouble in Paradise

"You get her calmed down?"

"No, not really. Peter and I had to pretty well wrestle her down, and I had to cuff her before we could get her under control. Thing is neither Peter nor I recognized her at first. I seen her on TV a couple times after Suitcase told me she was your ex-wife and she was a weather girl."

"Curiosity," Jesse said.

"Absolutely," Molly said.

"But, you know, her hair was mussed and her shirttail was hanging out and one of her high heels was broken off and she didn't look the same. But man can she swear.

She called Mrs. Hopkins stuff I haven't even heard around the station. And I've heard a lot around the station."

"Je

"She tell you she was my wife-ex-wife?"

"Yes. When we got her in the cruiser and were bringing her back. The restaurant is going to bring some sort of charge once their attorney tells them what it is. I think she broke a table and certainly some crockery. I can talk to the owner. I know her. I think she'll back off when she finds out the whole story."

"Mrs. Hopkins pla

"Oh, I imagine," Molly said.

"And she probably won't back off."

Jesse nodded as much to himself as to Molly.

"Be a surprise if she did," he said.

"How is Je

"Scared I think," Molly said.

"But still mad as hell."

"She's sort of a television celebrity," Jesse said.

"The press showed up yet?"

"Not yet."

"She want to see me?" Jesse said.

"Yes."

Jesse took in a long breath.

"Okay, I'll go down and talk to her. Alone."

"Of course," Molly said.

She left the office. Jesse sat for a moment. Then he took a bottle of Irish whisky from his desk, poured some into a paper cup, looked at it for a moment, and then drank it. He crumpled up the paper cup and threw it into the waste basket. He put the bottle back in the desk drawer. Then he stood and walked down the corridor toward the holding cells.

FORTY-SEVEN.

Macklin left the real estate office at 9:35 and walked toward the guard shack at the bridge fifty yards away. Crow walked with him. J. T. McGonigle, who had been there the first time Macklin came to Stiles Island, was on duty again. He was not cut from Captain Billups' pattern.

He was what the captain considered "a civilian employee." While he had on the tan regulation uniform shirt, he wore no hat, and he carried no weapon. If there was trouble, he called the patrol.

Macklin spoke to him as he reached the shack.

"How you doing, Mac?"

McGonigle put his clipboard down. There were no cars coming in either direction.

"Good, Mr. Smith, whaddya need?"

"Just wanted to say good-bye," Macklin said and shot McGonigle in the forehead.

He stepped away as McGonigle started to fall. Crow stepped in and caught McGonigle on his shoulder and picked him up.

Fran, carrying a briefcase and a folding sign, came from the real estate office as soon as he heard the shot. As Crow carried J. T. McGonigle away, Fran, wearing the tan shirt of the dead Michael Deering, placed the sign in the roadway by the gate and slipped into the guard shack.

Fran took a small remote control mechanism that looked like a garage door opener from the briefcase and put it on the counter beside the clipboard. He brought out a cellular phone and put it beside the remote. He took a big stainless steel Ruger.357 Magnum revolver with a walnut handle from the briefcase and laid it beside the phone. Finally, he placed a pair of binoculars beside the Ruger.

Crow reached the real estate office and bent forward and allowed McGonigle's dead body to slide to the ground, where it was concealed by two decorative cedar shrubs behind the building. Then he went back into the real estate office and waited for Macklin.

JD was sitting at the desk, toying with two cellular phones on the desk in front of him, turning them idly, in slow circles.

On the couch Marcy was trying not to look at anything. Nicelooking woman, Crow thought. Macklin came back into the real estate office.

"Okay," Macklin said.

"We got the bridge secured. JD, you ready to kibosh the phones?"

"Five minutes," JD said, "from whenever you say."

"After you do it," Crow said, "what do I hear, I try to use the phone?"

"Busy signal," JD said, "either way. Calling in, calling out. People call, get a busy signal, hang up. Be a while before anyone catches on that something's wrong.

"Every minute we can buy, helps us," Macklin said.

He looked at his watch.

"I got seven minutes before ten. Crow and I are going to start rounding people up at ten-fifteen. I want the phone lines fucked by then."

"Easy," JD said.

"Once you fuck the phone lines, you can cut Marcy loose. But keep her here. She wants her purse, give it to her. I've already checked it. She can go in the lav and lock the door, she wants.

There's no window."

"Be easier to leave her like she is," JD said.

"Then I don't have to watch her."

"We want you to do it our way," Macklin said.

"Don't we, Crow?"

"We do," Crow said and held JD's look until JD looked away.

JD shrugged as if Crow didn't scare him, which Crow did. And both of them knew it.

"Sure thing," JD said.

Macklin picked up one of the cell phones and followed Crow out the door.

FORTY-EIGHT.