Stone cold

“Ethically.”

“Ethically?”

“I know, it’s embarrassing, but

…” Rita shrugged. “It will

be difficult to enlist a jury’s sympathy for Bo Marino.”

“Who is, you will note,” Jesse said,

“bigger than Pe

is his father.”

“Noted,” Rita said and finished her wine and waved the empty

glass at the waiter.

They ate in silence for the short time it took the waiter to replace Rita’s glass.

When he was gone, Rita said, “This isn’t a wi

I’ll persuade my clients to drop it.”

“And if they don’t?”

Rita smiled.

“They’ll drop it,” she said.

Jesse nodded and ate his club sandwich.

“So,” Rita said, “off the

record, what really

happened?”

“Off the record?”

“Between you and me, only,” Rita said.

“Pe

and I let him.”

“I’m shocked,” Rita said.

“It’ll be our secret,” Jesse

said.

“Perhaps,” Rita said, “before

we’re through there will be

several more.”

Jesse looked at her and she looked back. There was promise in her eyes, and challenge, and a flash of something so visceral, Jesse thought, that Rita may not have known it was there.

“Wow,” Jesse said.

47

Jesse was on the phone with the state police ballistics lab, talking to a technician named Holton. Suitcase Simpson sat across the desk from him, drinking coffee and reading the Globe.

“No match,” Holton said, “on the

murder bullets and the

Marlin.”

“I didn’t expect any,” Jesse

said.

“Maybe you should wait and send us something that you expect to

match,” Holton said.

“Got to eliminate it,” Jesse said.

“Well, you can eliminate this one,” Holton said. “Far as I can

tell, it’s never been fired.”

Jesse was silent, sitting back in his chair, staring out the window.

“You still there?” Holton said.

“Sorry,” Jesse said. “I was just

thinking.”

“You were?” Holton said. “I

wasn’t sure cops did that in the

suburbs.”

“Only as a last resort,” Jesse said and hung up.

“No match?” Simpson said without looking up from the

paper.

“No match,” Jesse said.

“Well, it’s not like you didn’t

call it,” Simpson

said.

“So much for plinking vermin,” Jesse said.

“Vermin?” Simpson said.

“They said they had the rifle to plink vermin at their summer

place.”

“So?”

“So according to the state ballistics guy the gun has probably

never even been fired.”

“Why would they lie about that?” Simpson said.

“To explain why they had the gun.”

“Lotta people own a gun they haven’t fired.”

“Yeah, and they usually have it in the house, for protection.”

“So why wouldn’t they just say

that?”

“Because they are too smart for their own good,” Jesse said.

“They think we would wonder why they’d buy a twenty-two rifle for

protection.”

“A twenty-two will kill you,” Simpson said.

“As well we know,” Jesse said.

“So if they said it was for protection, would we wonder?”

“Maybe,” Jesse said,

“we’re supposed to wonder.”

“Maybe they were just embarrassed at keeping a gun for

protection, and said it was for vermin,” Simpson said.

“They look embarrassed to you?” Jesse said.

“No. You think they got two other guns?”

“Handguns,” Jesse said. “You

wouldn’t use a rifle for the kind

of killing they did.”

“If they did it,” Simpson said.

“I think they did,” Jesse said.

“You always tell me, Jesse, don’t be in a hurry to decide

stuff.”

“I want to know everything about Tony and Bria

“Phone records, credit cards, dates of birth, social security numbers, previous residences, when they were married, where they lived before this, where the country home is where they are not plinking vermin, do they have relatives, who are their friends, what do the neighbors know about them, where he practiced medicine, where they went to school.”

“You want me to pick the gun up first and return it?

Or you want

me to start digging into the Lincolns.”

“I’ll take care of the rifle,”

Jesse said. “You start

digging.”

Simpson nodded.

“Can I finish reading Arlo andjanis?”

Simpson

said.

“No.”

48

The resident cars at Seascape were parked behind the building at

the end of a winding drive, in a blacktop parking lot with a card-activated one-armed gate at the entrance. Jesse was driving his own car, and he parked it across from Seascape on a side street perpendicular to the point where the drive wound into Atlantic Avenue. He had far too many things under way, he knew, to be doing hopeful surveillance. But Jesse was the only cop on the force who was good at it. Any of the Paradise cops could do an open tail, Jesse knew. But he didn’t want the Lincolns to know they were being

tailed, and getting spooky on him. He was the only one he trusted to do an undiscovered tail. He couldn’t cover them all the time.

During the day he was too busy, but the nights were quieter, and half a tail is better than none, he thought, so each

night after work he drove over here and parked and waited.

He knew it was them. He couldn’t prove it, not even enough to

get a search warrant, but he’d been a cop nearly half his life, and

he knew. He had the advantage on them for the moment. They didn’t

know that he knew. They thought he was just the local bumpkin chief of a small department, and they felt superior to him. He knew that as surely as he knew they were guilty. And that too gave him an advantage. He’d watched their body language and listened to them

talk and heard the undertones in their voices. He was nothing. He couldn’t possibly catch them. Jesse had no intention of changing

their minds.

“I love arrogance,” Jesse said aloud in the dark interior of his

silent car.

At ten minutes past seven he saw the red Saab pull out of the drive and head east on Atlantic Avenue. He slid into gear and pulled out a considerable distance behind them. After a while he pulled up closer, and where Atlantic had a long stretch with only one cross street, which was one way into the avenue, he turned off and went around the block and rejoined Atlantic just after they passed.

Jesse had already shadowed them three nights that week. Once they had eaten pizza, at a place in the village. Once they had food shopped at the Paradise Mall. Once they had gone to a movie. Each time it got more boring, and each time Jesse tailed them as if it would lead to their arrest.

He let himself drop two cars back of the Saab as they went through the village and over the hill toward downtown. The other cars peeled off and when they turned east near the town wharf, Jesse was directly behind them. They drove for a little while with the harbor on their right, until the Saab pulled into the parking lot at Jesse’s apartment.

Jesse drove on by and parked around the bend. He walked down behind the condominiums, and stood at the corner of the building next to his, in the shadows, and watched. The Saab was quiet. The lights were out. The motor had been turned off. The parking lot was lit with mercury lamps, which deepened the shadow in which Jesse stood. The moon was bright. The passenger-side window of the Saab slid down. In the passenger seat, Bria

condo the harbor waters moving made a pleasant sound. The object was a camera and Jesse realized that she was taking pictures of his home.