“But we did it,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I thought about

killing them

too.”

She shook her head emphatically.

“No,” she said. “We’re

not doing random slaughter. That would be like a gang bang, you know? Where’s the love in a gang bang.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m just telling you how I nearly lost control.”

“Of course, I always nearly lose control. But that’s part of it,

to give ourselves to it, to let it possess us entirely, and then, at the very verge of the abyss, assert our will.”

He sipped his martini.

“It’s sort of like this,” he

said. “Martinis. You like them so

much you want to drink a dozen, but if you do

…”

“The precise joy of a perfect martini is gone. You might as well

slug gin from the bottle,” she said.

“So we shouldn’t hurry,” he said.

“No, but we can start focusing in on the next one.”

He leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth.

“Let’s go to the videotape,” he

said.

23

The three killings in an affluent suburban town led the local newscasts. The Boston papers gave it front-page coverage. Reporters and camera people hung around outside the police station. Jesse was interviewed twice, to little avail. And his picture was on the front page of the Globe one morning. When he came into the

station on a bright Tuesday morning, Arthur Angstrom was at the desk.

“Manny, Moe, and Larry are waiting for you,” Arthur said. “In

the conference room.”

“Perfect,” Jesse said.

When Jesse went into the conference room the three town selectmen were sitting at one end of the small conference table.

Jesse pushed a pizza box aside and sat in the fourth chair and waited.

Morris Comden cleared his throat. He was the chief selectman.

“Good morning, Jesse.”

“Morris.”

“You’ve been busy,” Comden said.

Jesse nodded. The other selectmen were new to the office.

Jesse

knew that Comden spoke for them.

“We just thought, Jim and Carter and I, that we probably ought

to get up to speed on things.”

Comden had a sharp face and wore bow ties.

Jesse nodded again. Comden smiled and glanced at the other two selectmen.

“I told you he wasn’t a talker,”

Comden said to the other

selectmen.

Carter Hanson had a dark tan, and silver hair combed straight back and carefully gelled in place. He was the CEO of a software company out on Route 128. He decided to take charge.

He looked straight at Jesse and said, “So what’s going

on?”

“Three people have been killed by the same weapons,” Jesse said.

“We can find no connection among them and we don’t have any idea

who did it.”

“We need more than that,” Hanson said.

“We do,” Jesse said.

“Well, let’s hear it,” Hanson

said.

Comden shook his head slightly and Jim Burns, the third selectman, looked uncomfortable. Jesse looked without expression at Hanson for a long moment.

“There’s nothing to hear,” he

said.

“That’s all you know?” Hanson

said.

“Correct.”

“You don’t have any clues?

Nothing?”

“Correct.”

“Well, Jesus Christ,” Hanson said.

Jesse nodded.

“Well,” Hanson said. “What do we

tell the press.”

“I like no comment,”

Jesse said.

Morris Comden had a yellow legal pad in front of him. He looked

down at it.

“Your department is costing a lot of overtime,” he

said.

Jesse nodded.

“Perhaps you could allocate your personnel a little better,”

Comden said.

He spoke more carefully than Hanson.

Jesse didn’t say anything. Burns spoke for the first time.

“Jesus, don’t you talk?” he said.

“Only when I have something to say.”

“Well, maybe you could stop this undercover drug thing you’ve

got going at the high school. We got a damn killer on the loose.”

“Nope.”

“For crissake, who cares if there’s a couple kids smoking dope

in the boys’ room,” Hanson said. “Where are your

priorities.”

“I’m a cop,” Jesse said.

“I been a cop for fifteen, sixteen

years now. I’m good at it. I know how to do it. You don’t.”

“So we just stand aside and let you do what you want?”

“Exactly,” Jesse said.

“Jesse,” Morris Comden said. “I

know how you don’t like being

pushed. But, for God’s sake, you work for us. We have to justify

your budget every year at town meeting. We have the right to know what’s going on.”

“I’ve told you what I know about the killings,” Jesse said. “The

undercover thing at the high school is just that, undercover.”

“You won’t even tell us?”

“No.”

“And you won’t put the personnel working the high school on the

killings.”

“No.”

“Goddamnit,” Hanson said. “We

can fire you.”

“You can,” Jesse said. “But you

can’t tell me what to

do.”

No one said anything for a time. Comden looked down at his yellow pad and drummed the eraser end of a pencil softly on the tabletop.

Finally Comden said, “Well, I think Jim and Carter and I need to

discuss this among ourselves. We’ll let things ride as they are

while we do.”

Jesse nodded and stood up.

“Have a nice day,” he said and left the room.

24

Jesse walked around his apartment. Living room, dining area, bedroom, kitchen, and bath. Through the sliding doors to his balcony he could see the harbor. Over the bar, in the corner of his living room, he could look at his picture of Ozzie Smith. On his bedside table, he could look at his picture of Jenn, in a big hat, holding a glass of wine. He walked around the apartment again.

There wasn’t anything else to look at. He sat on the edge of his

bed for a time looking at Jenn. Then he got up and walked into the living room and stood and looked at the harbor. The apartment was so still he could hear himself breathing. He turned and went to the kitchen and got some ice and soda. He took it to the bar and made himself a tall scotch and soda with a lot of ice and sat at the bar and sipped it. There was nothing like the first one. The feeling of the first one, Jesse sometimes thought, was worth the trouble that ensued. He let the feel of the drink ease through him.

Better.

He wasn’t as alone as he felt, Jesse knew: Marcy, the other

cops, Jenn, sort of. But that was just reasonable. In the center of himself he felt alone. No one knew him. Even Jenn, though Jenn came close. His cops were good small-town cops. But a serial killer? No one else but him was going to catch the serial killer. No one else was going to protect Candace Pennington. No one else was going to fix it with Jenn. What if he couldn’t? His glass was empty.

He

filled it with ice and made another drink. What if the serial killer just kept killing people? He looked at the lucent gold color of his drink, the small bubbles rising through it. It looked like that odd golden ginger ale that his father had liked and no one else could stand. He could feel the pleasure of the scotch easing along the nerve paths. He felt its settled comfort in his stomach.

Maybe he should walk away from it. Maybe I should just say fuck

it and be a drunk, Jesse thought. God knows I’m good at

it. It would certainly resolve things with Jenn.

He made a third drink.

If the killings weren’t random, they were certainly connected in

a way only the killer or killers understood. Which from Jesse’s

point of view was the same as random. He swallowed some scotch.

I feel sorry for people, he thought, who have never

had this feeling. So far they seemed to have killed only in Paradise. And the killings weren’t random in the sense that the