Stone cold

bang. He falls pretty much straight backward and, unless they weren’t shooting as good as usual, was dead before he was through

falling. He stood over the dead man and looked around the parking lot. There was a maroon Chevrolet Cavalier parked close to the church, and a brown Toyota Camry beside it. All the other vehicles were police and fire vehicles, lights on, flashers flashing. I wonder why cops always do that. I wonder why we don’t shut the damn things off when we get there.

He turned

slowly and looked around the parking lot. Across from him was the exit onto Sea Street. To the right a path led through another small screen of trees to Maple Street. Jesse walked to the exit and looked at Sea Street. To the left took you out of town, heading for Route 1. To the right was downtown and the waterfront. He walked back and through the path to Maple Street. Front lawns, driveways, garrison colonials. To the right, near the end of the street, one of the houses was more brightly lit than the others, with several cars parked out front. Ke

“You know which house is

Ke

“No, I can ask Anthony.”

Jesse shook his head.

“Okay,” he said to Perkins. “You

can close it

up.”

Perkins nodded.

“I’ll talk with those kids,”

Jesse said.

“First cruiser,” Perkins said.

“Where the skateboards

are.”

21

Jesse got into the front seat of the cruiser beside Ed Cox and turned to talk with the boys in back. The boys were about fourteen.

They reeked of self-importance. Too bad about the dead guy, but this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.

“My name’s Jesse Stone,” he said.

“We know who you are.”

“Did you tell your story to the officer?”

Jesse

said.

“Yes.”

“And give him your names and addresses?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, now I want you to tell me.”

“My name’s Richard Owens,” one

of the boys said.

He was short and slim and blond with a slacker haircut and a gold stud in his left earlobe.

“What do they call you?” Jesse said.

“You mean like my nickname?”

Jesse nodded.

“Rick,” the boy said. “Or Ricky

sometimes.”

“You?” Jesse said to the other boy.

He was an olive-ski

“Sidney Lessard,” the boy said.

“They call me

Sid.”

“Okay, Sid,” Jesse said.

“Officer Cox will take you someplace else out of the rain - you can use my car, Eddie.”

“How come we can’t stay

together?” Rick said.

“Police procedure,” Jesse said.

“What procedure?” Rick said.

“See if you both tell the same story.”

“You think we’re lying?” Rick

said.

“No way to know,” Jesse said.

“Yet.”

“For crissake …” Rick said.

“I’ll go,” Sid said.

“We ain’t lying. I’ll just go with

him.”

Cox got out of the driver’s side and opened the back door. Sid

got out and they walked toward Jesse’s car. Jesse reached over and

shut off the blue light.

“What’d you see, Rick?” Jesse

said.

“Me and Sid come over here to skateboard, you know, it’s nice

pavement, and they got that handicap ramp, and they turn the lights on every night.”

“Even in the rain?” Jesse said.

“Yeah, sure, we don’t care about

rain.”

“You got here after the lights were on.”

“‘Course, you can’t board in the

dark.”

“‘Course,” Jesse said.

“Anyway, so we’re boarding, maybe five minutes, and I come down

the ramp and hit a pebble and fall on my ass and the board goes off into the dark. And I go to get it and I see this guy and I yell for Sid and we can tell he’s dead, and -”

“How?”

“How what?” Ricky was slightly a

interruption.

“How’d you know he was dead?”

“I … I don’t know, you can just

tell, you know. Ain’t you

ever seen dead people?”

“I have,” Jesse said.

“And he’s got this pink stain like blood on his front,” Rick

said. “So we run like hell for the church and tell the minister,

and he calls the cops, and you guys show up.”

“You see anything that might be a clue?”

Jesse

said.

“I told you all we seen,” Rick said.

“Aside from the cop cars,” Jesse said.

“There’s a maroon

Chevrolet Cavalier and a brown Toyota Camry in the parking lot now.

Did you see any other cars?”

“Just the Saab,” Rick said.

“Tell me about the Saab.”

“It was a Saab ninety-five sedan, red, with the custom wheel

covers.”

“Where was it?”

“Parked by the driveway over there, when we come by with our

boards.”

“Anyone in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you noticed the car and model and wheels,” Jesse

said.

“Sure, I like cars.”

Jesse smiled. “When did it leave?”

“I don’t know. After we seen the dead guy and run in the church

and told the minister, when we come out again it was gone.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. “Thanks for

your help. If you want to wait

around while I talk with Sid you can sit in my car with Officer Cox.”

“Okay.”

Sid came over and told Jesse essentially the same story. He pumped up his part in it a little, telling Jesse that “we found the

dead guy” but most witnesses aggrandize a little, Jesse knew.

When the boys were gone, Jesse stood in the rain with Peter Perkins while the EMTs bundled the body into the back of the ambulance.

“No flashers,” Jesse said to the EMTs.

“No sirens. There’s no

hurry.”

“You going to talk with his wife?” Perkins said.

“Soon,” Jesse said. “Give her a

little time.”

“Kids tell you anything?”

“There was a red Saab sedan, a ninety-five the kid told me, with

custom wheels, that was parked by the driveway and left after the kids discovered the body.”

“They didn’t get any kind of license number?”

“No one ever gets a license number,” Jesse said.

“I know.”

“But here’s what we’re going to

do,” Jesse said. “You remember

that we got a list of all the license numbers of cars parked around the woman shot in the mall parking lot.”

“Yeah,” Perkins said.

“Sixty-seven cars.”

“We’re going to go through that list and see how many, if any,

were red Saab sedans.”

“Half the yuppies in Massachusetts drive red Saabs,” Perkins

said.

“So right away we cut the suspect list in half.”

“Kid didn’t see who was in the

car,” Perkins

said.

“No.”

“Staties come up with a list of twenty-two gun owners

yet?”

“Not yet,” Jesse said.

“When they do we could cross-reference that with the car

list.”

“We could,” Jesse said.

“I can get on it after I do my shift tomorrow.”

“You can get on it first thing,” Jesse said. “I’ll have somebody

else pull your shift.”

“That’s go

us,” Perkins said. “Suit and Molly

are already off the roster.”

Jesse looked at Perkins silently for a moment, then he said,

“That would not be your worry.”

“No,” Perkins said. “No,

‘course not.”

22

“You think we cut it a little

close?” he

said.

“That’s what makes it work for

us,” she said. “I lose the

feeling if we don’t stay close to the edge.”

“I know,” he said.

They were silent for a moment, holding hands, on the couch, with

a pitcher of martinis.

“As long as we keep control,” he said.

“It was difficult to stop

touching when those kids showed up.”