Stone Cold - Parker

Stone Cold - Parker

Stone Cold

By

Robert

B. Parker

FOR JOAN:

everything started to hum

1

After the murder, they made love in front of a video camera.

When it was over, her mouth was bruised. He had long scratches across his back. They lay side by side on their backs, gasping for breath.

“Jesus!” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Yes,” she whispered.

She moved into the compass of his left arm and rested her head against his chest. They lay silently for a while, not moving, waiting for oxygen.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she said.

He put his face down against the top of her head where it lay on

his chest. Her hair smelled of verbena. In time their breathing settled.

“Let’s play the video,” she

whispered.

“Let’s,” he said.

The camera stood beside the bed on a tripod. He got up, took the

tape from it, put it in the VCR, got back into bed, and picked up the remote from the night table. She moved back into the circle of his arm, her head back on his chest.

“Show time,” he said, and clicked the remote.

They watched.

“My God,” she said. “Look at

me.”

“I love how you’re looking right into the camera,” he

said.

They watched quietly for a little while.

“Whoa,” she said. “What are you

doing to me

there?”

“Nothing you don’t like,” he

said.

When the tape was over he rewound it.

“You want to watch again?” he said.

She was drawing tiny circles on his chest with her left forefinger.

“Yes.”

He started the tape again.

“You know what I loved,” she said.

“I loved the range of

expression on his face.”

“Yes,” he said, “that was great.

First it’s like, what the

hell is this?”

“And then like, are you serious?”

“And then, omigod!”

“That’s the best,” she said.

“The way he looked when he knew we

were going to kill him. I’ve never seen a look like that.”

“Yes,” he said. “That was pretty

good.”

“I wish we could have made it last

longer,” she

said.

He shrugged.

“My bad,” she said. “I got so

excited. I shot too

soon.”

“I’ve been known to do that,” he

said.

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Dirty

Mouth,” she said.

They both laughed.

“We’ll get better at it,” he

said.

She was now rubbing the slow circles on his chest with her full

palm, looking at the videotape.

“Ohhh,” she said. “Look at me!

Look at me!”

He laughed softly. She moved her hand down his stomach.

“What’s happening here?” she

said.

He laughed again.

“Ohh,” she said. “Good

news.”

She turned her body hard against him and put her face up.

“Be careful,” she murmured. “My

mouth is sore.”

They made love again while the image of their previous lovemaking moved unseen on the television screen, and the sounds of that mingled with the sounds they were making now.

2

It was just after dawn. Low tide. Several herring gulls hopped on the beach, their heads cocking one way then another, their flat black eyes looking at the corpse. Jesse Stone, with the blue light flashing, pulled into the public beach parking lot at the end of the causeway from Paradise Neck, parked behind the Paradise Police cruiser that was already there, and got out of his car. It was mid November and cold. Jesse closed the snaps on his Paradise Men’s

Softball League jacket and walked to the beach, where Suitcase Simpson, holding a big Mag flashlight, stood looking down at the body.

“Guy’s been shot, Jesse,” he

said.

Jesse stood beside Simpson and looked down at the body.

“Who found him?”

“Me. I’m on eleven to seven and I pulled in here to, ah, take a

leak, you know, and the headlights picked him up.”

Simpson was a big shapeless red-cheeked kid who’d played tackle

in high school. His real name was Luther but everyone called him Suitcase after the ballplayer.

“Peter Perkins coming?”

“Anthony’s on the night desk,”

Simpson said. “He told me he’d

call him soon as he called you.”

“Okay, gimme the flashlight. Then go pull your cruiser across

the entrance to the parking lot and call in. When Molly comes on I want Anthony down here and everybody else she can wrangle. I want the area secured.”

Simpson hesitated, still looking down.

“It’s a murder, isn’t it,

Jesse?”

“Probably,” Jesse said. “Gimme

the light.”

Simpson handed the flashlight to Jesse and went to his cruiser.

Jesse squatted on his heels and studied the corpse. It had been a young white man, maybe thirty-five. His mouth was open. There was sand in it. He wore a maroon velour warm-up suit, which was soaking wet. There were two small holes in the wet fabric. One on the left side of the chest. One on the right. Jesse turned the head slightly. There was sand in his ear. Jesse swept the flashlight slowly around the body. He saw nothing but the normal debris of a normal beach: a tangle of seaweed scraps, a piece of salt-bleached driftwood, an empty crab shell.

Simpson walked back across the parking lot. Behind him the blue

light on his patrol car revolved silently.

“Perkins is on the way,” he said.

“And Arthur Angstrom. Anthony

called Molly. She’s coming in early. Anthony’ll be down as soon as

she gets there.”

Jesse nodded, still looking at the crime scene.

He said, “What time is it, Suit?”

“Six-fifteen.”

“And it’s dead low tide,” Jesse

said. “So high was around

midnight.”

A siren sounded in the distance.

“You think he was washed up here?” Simpson said.

“Body that’s been in the ocean and washed up on shore doesn’t

look like this,” Jesse said.

“More beat up,” Simpson said.

Jesse nodded.

“He’s got some marks on his

face,” Simpson said.

“That would probably be the gulls,” Jesse said.

“I coulda lived without knowing that,”

Simpson

said.

Jesse moved the right arm of the corpse. “Still in rigor,” he

said.

“Which means?”

“Rigor usually passes in twenty-four hours,” Jesse

said.

“So he was killed since yesterday morning.”

“More or less. Cold water might change the timing a little.”

A Paradise patrol car pulled in beside Simpson’s, adding its

blue light to his. Peter Perkins got out and walked toward them. He was carrying a black leather satchel.

“Anthony says you got a murder?” Perkins said.

“You’re the crime-scene guy,”

Jesse said. “But there’s two

bullet holes in his chest.”

“That would be a clue,” Perkins said.

He put the satchel on the sand and squatted beside Jesse to look

at the corpse.

“I figure he was probably shot here, sometime before midnight,”

Jesse said, “when the tide was still coming in.

There’s the high

water line. The tide reached high about midnight and soaked him, maybe rolled him around a little, and left him here when it receded.”

“If you’re right,” Perkins said,

“it probably washed away pretty

much any evidence might be lying around.”

“We’ll close the beach,” Jesse

said, “and go over

it.”

“It’s November, Jesse,” Simpson

said. “Nobody uses it

anyway.”

“This guy did,” Jesse said.

3

When he left the beach, Jesse called Marcy Campbell on his cell

phone.