Robert Parker - Death in Paradise

"You wanted to drink," Dix said.

"Yes."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"Why'd you want to?"

Jesse shrugged. It never occurred to him to ask why he wanted a drink. Wanting a drink was part of existence. It didn't have a why.

"Did you want one at 2:35 that afternoon?"

"I'm not that far gone," Jesse said.

"I'll take that to mean no," Dix said. "So why did you want one at seven o'clock that evening?"

"What difference does it make?" Jesse said.

"None," Dix said, "to me."

They were silent.

"It was, you know, you used to be a drinker," Jesse said. "It was the end of the day and the harbor was quiet, and we were sitting together on the deck, and later we'd have sex. I mean it was all ahead of us."

"The romance of booze," Dix said.

Jesse thought about that. "Miller time," he said.

"Soft light touching on crystal stemware, bright liquid, clean white shirt, shimmering gown, alto sax, here's looking at you, kid."

"You think that makes me drink?"

"No. But it helps make you want to."

"But I didn't give in this time."

"No," Dix said. "You didn't."

"Kind of late," Jesse said.

Dix waited.

"Now I'm saying no," Jesse said. "Now that it's cost me my job and my marriage."

"But you have a new job," Dix said.

"Marriage is gone."

"You think that's your fault?"

"Sure," Jesse said. "She couldn't be expected to stay with a drunk."

"You don't think she should share the blame?"

"Sure," Jesse said. "I know. In every breakup there's fault on both sides, blah, blah."

"But this one was all yours," Dix said.

"Pretty much," Jesse said.

"You don't think the fact that she was sleeping with other men might have contributed?"

Jesse didn't answer.

"Maybe you couldn't be expected to stay with an adulteress."

"What are you saying?"

"If you take the responsibility for it, then it's in your hands."

"If I broke it, maybe I can fix it," Jesse said.

"And if you didn't break it, maybe you can't," Dix said. "And you have to face the scary fact that you can't control how this will work out."

Jesse sat for a long time without speaking.

"So what's this got to do with me not drinking when I wanted to the other night?"

"What we're doing here," Dix said, "is a little like what you did when you were working homicide in L.A. There are incidents, we're not sure of how these incidents connect, but we register them, notice sequence, think about them."

"Maybe because I don't love Lilly, I can spare some energy to control my drinking, instead of controlling myself when I'm with Jenn."

"Maybe," Dix said.

"And maybe I need to think about not drinking so I can stop being a drunk."

"Instead of?"

"Instead of not drinking so I can be with Jenn."

Dix nodded.

"Sometimes we clear a case," Dix said.

"He used the girl to register," Simpson said.

"If it was him."

"Whoever it was," Simpson said.

"Anybody see him?"

"No."

"Where?"

"The Boundary Suites, on Route One."

"The No Tell Motel," Jesse said. "Have Peter Perkins do a crime scene workup on the room."

"It's a motel room," Simpson said. "There'll be a kajillion prints in there."

"See what you can find," Jesse said. "You get a positive ID on the girl?"

"She registered as Elinor Bishop."

"Anybody recognize her picture?"

"No."

"Tell Perkins when he goes up there, use his own car," Jesse said. "No need to make the motel look bad."

"I still think it's a waste of time, Jesse."

"Of course it is," Jesse said, "that's one of the things cops do. We waste a lot of time."

Simpson left the office. Jesse stood and went to the coffeemaker and poured himself another cup. He added a lot of sugar and brought the cup back to his desk. There was a picture of Billie Bishop taped to the corner of his desk calendar. He nodded at it.

"We're getting there," he said.

He drank some coffee while he looked at her picture. The chances of Perkins finding anything they could use in a busy motel room a month after Billie's last visit were nearly nonexistent. Which would leave him with what he had now. He knew some facts. Billie had left Gino Fish's business phone number with the shelter. Alan Garner worked for Gino. Alan Garner pimped young runaways he picked up from the shelter. Billie was a young runaway who had stayed at the shelter. She turned up dead in Paradise. Norman Shaw lived in Paradise. Norman Shaw knew Gino Fish. Put all of that together, give it to a skilled prosecutor, who'll take it to the grand jury, and there will be no chance of an indictment. He could bust Garner and try to turn him, but the chances that Garner would testify against Gino were very slim. And it would send everybody else scurrying underground. If Shaw was in fact being supplied with very young girls, it probably would happen again. We know that , Jesse thought, maybe we can turn him . What about Joni Shaw? Could she be married to a pedophile and not know it? Did pedophiles have active adult sex lives? Joni was a lot younger than Shaw. Was she the first wife? If she wasn't, what had ended the previous marriage?

He got up and walked to the front desk where Molly was reading an issue of Martha Stewart Living .

"You ever read Norman Shaw's books?" Jesse said.

"Sure. I got every one," Molly said. "He's great."

Jesse nodded, but not as if he believed her.

"How many are there?"

"Ten, I think. At least in paperback."

"You got them at home?" he said.

"Sure."

"I'll take the desk," Jesse said. "Go home and get them."

"All ten?"

"Yeah."

Molly stared at him for a moment. But she didn't say anything. Jesse was Jesse. She dog-eared Martha Stewart , put it down, got up, and went.

While she was gone, Jesse took a call about a missing bicycle, and a call reporting a rabid skunk and could someone come over and shoot it. Jesse took down the missing-bicycle information and left it on the desk for Molly. He called John Maguire on the radio and told him to go shoot the skunk.

"Make sure there's no bubble gum wrappers in the shotgun barrel," he said.

"Hey," Maguire said, "I'm a law-enforcement professional."

"Yes you are," Jesse said. "Go enforce that skunk."

Molly came back into the police station with a plastic supermarket bag filled with paperback books. Jesse turned the desk over to her and took the books into his office. His coffee was gone. He poured some more. Added a lot of sugar. The less booze he drank, the more coffee he drank. Jittery was better than drunk. He sat down and pulled one of Shaw's books out of the grocery bag. The title Outcast was embossed in raised gold letters on the front cover. On the back cover was a picture of Norman Shaw. He looked a lot younger in the picture than he had with his forehead resting on his grilled scrod the last time Jesse had seen him. Jesse glanced through the text. The book was 456 pages long. Jesse wasn't sure he had read a total of 456 pages in his life. In the front of the book were three pages of quotes from newspaper reviews, all of them favorable, another page listing Shaw's other books and a dedication page. The dedication in Outcast was "To Joni, who rescued me in time." Jesse looked for a date. The book had been published the year before. Jesse looked through the front matter in the other books. The previous book was dedicated "To Arlene: Toward the sunset-together." The publication dates were four years apart. Three books previous had been dedicated "To Cheryl: Till the End of Time." Jesse read a few pages of Outcast . He didn't like it. He put the books away and finished his coffee and got up and walked across the street to the Paradise Public Library.