Robert Parker: Death in Paradise

There was enough moonlight for Jesse to see the boats waiting at their moorings. Toward the outer harbor a single boat with bow lights cut across the harbor toward the town wharf. Jesse had another sip. Probably the harbor master. It was Friday night. He wasn't scheduled to see Jenn until Wednesday. From the deck Jesse could smell the hint of clams frying at the Gray Gull, two blocks away. The smell was comforting. He thought about Billie Bishop's picture. It was better to think of her in the picture. In the picture she was smiling. Probably doing what she was told to do. Cops see kids like Billie too often. Town pump. Kids so desperate for affection or connection or whatever it was that sex became their handshake. They were joyless encounters as far as he knew. For certain, it was not pleasure that drove girls like Billie to flop for anybody.

His drink was gone. One more. He got up and went to the kitchen and made another one and brought it back to the deck. The scotch made him feel integrated, complete. Not a wild drunk , Jesse thought. Mostly quiet . Mostly the booze enriched him. Jenn wasn't nasty about his drinking. She had too much psychotherapy not to understand the struggle. But she didn't know the feeling that when you were feeling it made it one you wouldn't want to miss. Why would somebody shoot a kid like Billie? She could have been simply wrong place/wrong time. But that theory led him nowhere. Better to think about promiscuity. He took a swallow of scotch and soda. Sex was the only thing he knew about her that could have gotten her killed.

From the parking lot, out of sight of his balcony, Jesse heard a car door slam and the sound of brisk high heels. The front hall door of Jesse's building opened and closed. Jesse took another swallow. Sometimes on Wednesdays when Jenn came, they would have sex. Often they would not. It depended mostly, he guessed, on what was going on in her therapy. He also was pretty sure that if she were having sex with someone else, she wouldn't have sex with him, and vice versa. It was an odd standard, Jesse thought. But it was a standard. He had no such standard. He would sleep with Lilly Summers on a Tuesday and Jenn on a Wednesday and be pleased about both. Though he knew that if his relationship with Jenn hinged on it, he would develop such a standard on the spot. He smiled a little that he was having sex with a school principal. He drank some scotch. He wondered about Marcy Campbell. Maybe it was time to have sex with her again, also. Jesse Stone at stud. And he was going to find the sonovabitch who killed that kid, too. His drink was gone. He looked at the glass for a long moment. He didn't want to give up the sense of wholeness. He took in some air and let it out slowly.

Out loud he said, "Fuck it," his voice intrusive in the pale darkness. Then he stood and went to the kitchen and made another drink.

It took Molly a day on the phone to find the shelters in Boston run by nuns. There were three. Jesse found the right nun on his first try. Her name was Sister Mary John and she ran a shelter in the basement of a church in Jamaica Plain. When Jesse came in, Sister was sitting on the corner of a plywood banquet table with folding metal legs that obviously served as her desk. She was red-haired, wearing a black sweat suit with a white stripe on the sleeves. The only sign of her calling was a small gold cross on a thin gold chain that hung around her neck.

"Are you sure you're a nun?" Jesse said.

"Pretty sure," Sister said.

Jesse smiled.

"You talked with Molly Crane on the phone about a missing girl."

"Yes."

Jesse took out a blowup of Billie, processed from the family picture, and held it out for Sister Mary John to look at. Sister nodded her head slowly.

"When was she here?" Jesse said.

"Beginning of the summer," Sister said.

"She's not here now?"

"No."

"Would you tell me if she were?" Jesse said.

"It would depend on who you were and why you wanted to know."

"You know who I am," Jesse said. "We think Billie was murdered."

Sister's face softened for a moment.

"Think?"

"Know, but can't prove. Condition of the body makes it hard."

Sister nodded.

A young black woman with a ring through one nostril came into the room and saw Jesse and, without changing her pace, turned and left.

"Am I that obvious?" Jesse said.

"A cop is a cop is a cop," Sister said. "My girls have learned to be alert."

"Do you know where Billie went when she left here?"

"I have a phone number. We'd agreed I would only give it to her older sister or somebody named Hooker."

"Did you give it to either?"

"Neither of them asked."

"May I have the phone number?" Jesse said.

Sister looked at him for a time.

"She's dead," Jesse said. "I'm trying to find who killed her."

Sister nodded. She reached under the desk and pulled a yellow plastic milk crate toward her. It was full of file folders. She riffled through them, pulled one out, and took from it a single sheet of paper. She looked at the sheet and copied the number onto a little pad of stickum notes.

"Ever call the number?" Jesse said.

"No."

"When the girls are at the shelter they don't stay here, do they?"

"No. We are what the name implies, a shelter. They come, they go. They know they have a place to sleep if they need it. They know we will feed them."

"How long was Billie here?"

Sister looked at her sheet of paper.

"Two weeks," she said.

"Did she tell you why she was leaving?"

"She said she had a job."

"She say where?"

"No."

"How about the rest of the staff?" Jesse said.

Sister smiled. Jesse liked her smile.

"It's pretty much a one-nun show," she said.

Jenn was doing a stand-up outside a junior high school. It was part of a station promotion campaign designed to prove once again that Channel 3 was an integral part of the community. Jesse parked on the street and walked to the shoot. He stood outside the shot while Jenn did a cute weather quiz and wrapped the segment. She saw him while she was wrapping, and as soon as it was over, she came to Jesse and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Did you know the answers to my weather quiz?" she said.

"Do you?"

"I will when the time comes," she said.

"Does anyone care what the answers are?" Jesse said.

"Not that I know of," Jenn answered.

She turned to the crew.

"This is my starter husband," she said.

The crew smiled. Jesse smiled, too.

"Kerry Roberts with the camera; Dolly Edwards, makeup; and Tracy Mayo, my producer."

They all said hello.

"You guys pack up and take off," Jenn told the crew. "I'll go with Jesse."

"How about you pack up," Dolly said. "And I go with Jesse."

Everybody laughed, and Jenn put her arm through Jesse's and they walked to his car.

"What about that girl?"

"Billie?"

"You sound like she's someone you know."

"Yeah, sometimes you get that way. You spend so much time thinking about a victim that you're surprised when you remember you've never met them."

"So you know who she is now," Jenn said.

"I know. I'm not sure I can prove it yet. But I know it's Billie."

As he drove, Jesse took a manila envelope down from the car visor and took out a picture of Billie.

"It's blown up from a small picture of the family."

"She's cute," Jenn said.

"I guess so."

"Smile looks awfully forced though."

"Everybody's smile looks forced in a posed picture," Jesse said, "except you professionals."

"That would be me," Jenn said. "A big-time professional doing weather quizzes in front of a junior high school."

"Show biz isn't for sissies," Jesse said.