Robert Parker - Death in Paradise

Jesse didn't like it. When he'd played he'd hit with a slightly open stance. The holes in the batter's box forced him to close it up. On the other hand the ball was fat, and it came a lot slower than it had in the minor leagues. And why did he care anyway? Jesse smiled to himself. Pride. The fact of having been good carried with it its own responsibility. He was supposed to be the best player in the league. It mattered.

The pitcher wasn't good. Some of the guys in the league could bring it, and the pitcher's mound was much closer in softball. But this guy couldn't throw hard. He was getting by with slow and slower, trying to move the ball around. Each time at bat, the pitcher had worked Jesse high and low. He worked everyone high and low. The first pitch was high. The second pitch was low. With a one-one count, Jesse shifted his hands slightly so he could uppercut the ball. When the pitch arrived, shoulder high, he hit it over the left-fielder's head. There were no fences. You had to run out the home runs. Jesse could still run. Between short and third he saw the left fielder give up on the ball. Jesse slowed to a jog as he rounded third. He got an assortment of low and high fives when he crossed home plate. Just as if it mattered.

He met Emily Bishop in a coffee shop in a small shopping center near the town common. She wore the gray tee shirt she had promised to wear. It was too big for her. PROPERTY OF SWAMPSCOTT ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT was printed across the front. Below the tee shirt were baggy blue jeans held up by wide blue suspenders. Her feet were up on the chair next to her. She was wearing lace-up black boots with thick soles. Her hair was very short. Her face was without makeup. The hint of a good figure showed through the jeans and tee shirt. A pack of Marlboros lay on the table in front of her. She was smoking and drinking coffee. He wondered if Billie looked like her. Jesse stopped at the counter and got a large coffee with cream and sugar and brought it over to the table where Emily was sitting. She'd already decided who he was.

"I'm Jesse Stone," he said.

"Show me your badge," Emily said.

She had a flat, unpleasant voice. Jesse showed her his badge.

"Christ," she said. "The fucking chief."

"It's nothing," Jesse said.

"So what happened to my sister?" Emily said.

There was no way to soften it. Jesse had long since learned to just say it.

"We think she was shot in the head and dumped in a lake in Paradise."

"You think?"

"Body is hard to identify."

"So why do you think it's my sister?"

Jesse told her. Emily smoked her cigarette and drank some coffee and listened with no expression.

"Billie, Billie," she said when Jesse finished.

Jesse took a sip of his coffee. He waited. Emily dropped her cigarette into the half inch of coffee in the bottom of her cup.

"Christ, didn't they fuck her up," Emily said.

"Parents?"

"Of course, parents. Probably fucked me up, too. Except I got out in time, maybe."

How and why they had fucked up their daughters was interesting, but it didn't lead Jesse anywhere he wanted to go at the moment.

"Do you have a picture of your sister?" Jesse said.

"Not her alone," Emily said. "But I got a picture in the dorm of her and me and Carla."

"I'd like to borrow it," Jesse said. "I promise I'll get it back to you."

Emily nodded.

"When they kicked Billie out," Jesse said, "do you know where she went?"

"Someplace in Boston."

"You know where?"

"No. Some nun runs it."

"A shelter?"

"I guess."

"She get along okay with Hooker?" Jesse said.

"Hooker was nice to her," Emily said.

"Anybody that might have harmed her?"

"Half the guys in the high school were bopping her. Probably some older guys, too."

"Any names?"

"No. I don't know. She thought it made her popular. I didn't want to hear about it."

"Anything else you can tell me that might help?"

Emily lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply and let it out slowly though her nose. There was something practiced about it, Jesse thought, as if it were a trick recently learned.

"I got a letter from her back in my room," she said. "I think she said the nun's name in it."

"Can we get that? When I pick up the picture?"

"Yeah, sure."

They were silent. Jesse watched her smoke. He could see her eyes well up, but she didn't cry.

"You okay?" he said.

"Yeah, sure."

"Can we get the picture and the letter?"

"Yeah, sure."

They left the coffee shop and walked to the campus. Jesse thought how different it would feel to go there and graduate. Old stone, old trees, wide paths, white houses with dark shutters, green grass in spring, new snow glistening in winter. Different from being a desert high school grad with a sore arm.

In Emily's room there were clothes on the floor in a pile. The bed was unmade. On her desk, books and papers were jumbled with no pattern. Amidst the jumble was a framed picture of the Bishop girls. In color, all smiling at the camera.

"How old is the picture?" Jesse said.

"Last summer."

Jesse stared at it while Emily looked in her desk drawer and in a moment came out with a letter. It was postmarked July 3. Emily handed it to him and Jesse took it. She picked up the picture and handed it to Jesse.

"The happy family," Emily said.

Jesse took the picture.

"I hope Carla gets out before they get her, too."

Jesse didn't comment. There wasn't any comment to make.

"They aren't going to get me," Emily said. "I'm outta there. I'm on my own and I'm never going back."

"Your father still pay your tuition?"

"Of course he does. You think he wants to have his daughter drop out of a seven fucking sisters school?"

"Good to be able to count on something," Jesse said.

"Fuck him," Emily said. "He owes it to me. I'll take him for everything he's got if I can."

Quite suddenly she began to cry. Jesse put an arm on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and stepped away from him. He stood quietly in the room without touching her until she stopped crying.

"You got someone to talk to?" Jesse said.

She nodded.

"Shrink?"

She nodded again. Jesse took out a card.

"You think of anything… or you need anything."

He handed her the card. She looked at it as if it meant more than it did.

"You'll do that?" Jesse said.

"Yes."

"Might be good if you called your shrink," Jesse said.

She didn't speak or move. Jesse stood for another moment and then he left.

Jesse stood in the open slider of his condo, looking out over his balcony toward Paradise Neck. Below the balcony the black water of the harbor moved with aimless purpose against the rust-colored rocks. Jesse liked the sound. He would like it even more with a drink. He knew the girl was Billie Bishop. He couldn't exactly prove it yet, but he knew. He knew there was something wrong in the Bishop house. Were the girls being molested? They seemed angry. Especially Emily. He thought about how pleasant it would be to sit on his balcony with a tall scotch and soda and look at the harbor and listen to the gentle sway of the Atlantic Ocean and not think about molestation. He wondered if Emily was a lesbian. As the evening lengthened it grew dark enough for the lights of the big houses on the neck to show across the harbor. He wished Jenn were here. He wished they could sit together and look at the ocean and the far lights.

He got up and walked into his kitchen. He took a glass down from the cupboard, sixteen ounces, the kind you got when you ordered a pint of Guinness. He filled the glass with ice cubes, poured two inches of Dewar's into the glass, and opened a can of club soda and filled the rest of the glass with it. He took a spoon from the drawer and stirred the glass until the colorless soda diluted the amber scotch evenly. He took a sip. Perfect. He brought the glass out onto the balcony and sat down with his feet on the railing. He drank another sip. There was no hurry to get it in. There was a half gallon in there on the kitchen counter. There were twelve cans of soda in the cupboard. The ice maker in the refrigerator was perpetual. He was only going to have a couple. But it was comforting to know that there was enough.