“Anthony,” Jesse said.

He walked over and looked down at the body.

“ ‘Slut,’ ” he said.

“Yeah. Like the car. Like the cat,” DeAngelo said.

Jesse nodded, still looking at her.

“Clothes?” he said.

DeAngelo shook his head. “I haven’t seen any.”

The town ambulance pulled into the parking lot and behind it Peter Perkins in his own car, a Mazda pickup. Two young Paradise firemen who doubled as EMTs got out and walked almost gingerly toward the crime scene. Peter Perkins got out of his truck. He was in jeans and a tee shirt with his gun strapped on and his badge on his belt. A thirty-five-millimeter camera hung around his neck. He went to the bed of his pickup and got his evidence kit. One of the EMTs knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse.

After a moment he said, “She’s dead, Jesse.”

“Un huh.”

“What do you want us to do, Jesse?”

The EMT was not quite twenty-five. His name was Duke Vincent. Jesse played softball with him in the Paradise town league. Like DeAngelo, Vincent had seen death. But never murder. Vincent’s voice was calm but soft, and Jesse knew he was feeling shaky. Jesse remembered the first time he’d seen it. It was a lot worse than this, a shotgun, close up, he remembered.

“You think her neck’s broken, Dukie?” Jesse said.

Vincent looked at the corpse again. Jesse knew he didn’t like it.

“I guess so,” Vincent said.

“Yeah, me too,” Jesse said. “Probably what killed her. You and Steve stand by with the ambulance for a while. We’ll have the county M.E. look at her, and there’ll be some state investigators along.”

“Why did he write ‘slut’ on her, Jesse?” DeAngelo said.

“Maybe the word means something special to him,” Jesse said.

“So is it the same guy that did the car and Captain Cat?”

“Might be,” Jesse said.

“But wouldn’t he know that it would connect him to the other crimes?”

Jesse smiled to himself at the TV locution his own officer was speaking in the presence of a murdered person. There were so many cop shows. It was hard for real cops not to start talking like them.

“Might want us to see the connection,” Jesse said. “Or it might be someone else who wants us to think there’s a connection.”

Most of the rest of the force had showed up, some in uniform, some dressed for off duty. For all of them it was their first murder and they stood by a little uneasily watching Jesse, except for Peter Perkins, who had stretched his crime-scene tape around the murder scene, and was now taking pictures. The other cops looked as if they envied him having something to do.

“John,” Jesse said. “You and Arthur put up some horses and keep people behind them.”

“There’s nobody around, Jesse.”

“There will be,” Jesse said. “Suitcase, you talk to the bus driver. Get everything she saw, thinks, hopes, dreams, whatever. Let her talk, pay attention. Ed, go in, talk to the principal. We’re going to have to talk with the kids, maybe we can do it class by class, find out if they saw anything. We also may have to search the school.”

“For what?” Burke said.

“Her clothes,” Jesse said. “I’d like to find her clothes.”

“Maybe he killed her someplace else and brought her body here nude,” Burke said.

“We find the clothes, it’ll help us decide that,” Jesse said. “The rest of you spread around and look for her clothes or anything else. Tire tracks, bloodstains. He whacked her around pretty good. But there’s no blood on the pavement.”

“Rain might have washed it,” DeAngelo said.

“Watch where you walk, go in wider and wider circles around the body. Maybe he hit her with something. See if you see anything. Anthony, start knocking on doors, see if anybody lives around here heard anything, or saw a car come into the school parking lot during the night.”

The cops did as they were told. They were happy to be given direction, happy to do something but stand and look at the battered body.

“Dukie,” Jesse said. “You can cover her. And pull the ambulance up so it screens her from the school. Doesn’t do the kids much good to look out at her all morning.”

Behind him in the parking lot, parents had begun to arrive. Already they had heard of a murder at the junior high school. Already they were there to see about their children. Jesse knew he’d have to talk with them. He knew a number of them would want to take their children home. He would like to have kept all the kids here until they had been questioned, but he knew he couldn’t and knew that trying to would accomplish nothing beyond his own aggravation. Other people were gathering too. Not parents. Just people from the town, who, as the word spread, began to gather silently as close to the scene as they could. He saw Hasty Hathaway moving importantly through the gathering crowd with a plastic rain guard over his snap-brimmed hat. Probably wearing rubbers too, Jesse thought. Jo Jo Genest was there, hatless, in a crinkle finish trench coat. Jesse’s glance paused on Jo Jo. Jo Jo returned it and smiled. Jesse’s glance lingered a thoughtful moment and then moved on. He looked for Abby, but didn’t see her. Past the silent crowd Jesse saw the medical examiner’s car arriving, and behind it an unmarked state car. That would be the homicide guy.

Hathaway cleared the crowd and spoke to John DeLong guarding the barriers, and came on past him toward Jesse. I was right, Jesse thought. He’s wearing rubbers.

Chapter 43

Jesse sat in his office at midnight with a state police captain named Healy, sipping single-malt scotch from a water glass. Healy had taken the bottle from his briefcase when he came in and set it on Jesse’s desk. The green-shaded desk lamp was the only light in the room. Outside the rain continued to mist down, too light for a drizzle, too heavy for a fog. The day’s dampness seemed to have incorporated the dampness of the shore and the scent of seawater was strong even though they were a half mile from the harbor. Except for the voices and the occasional creak of a chair when one of them shifted in it, the silence in the office and outside had the kind of weight that existed only in the middle of the night in a small town. Healy was about Jesse’s size but older, and a little thinner. His short hair was gray. He had on a gray suit, and a blue oxford shirt, and a red and blue striped tie. His black shoes were still polished this late in the day.

“You’re the homicide commander,” Jesse said.

“Yeah.”

Healy’s eyes had the flat look that Jesse had seen before. The eyes had seen everything and believed nothing. There was neither compassion nor anger in Healy’s eyes, just a kind of appraising patience that formed no prejudgments and came to conclusions slowly. Occasionally when Jesse had come unexpectedly upon his reflection in a mirror or a darkened window, he had seen that look in his own eyes.

“So how come we draw you?” Jesse said.

Healy shrugged, sipped a small taste of the scotch, held the glass up to the light for a moment, and looked at the color.

“I used to work up here, Essex County DA’s office. I live in Swampscott. So when the squeal came in I thought I’d swing by myself.”

“Chance to get out of the office for a while,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded.

“Don’t like the office,” he said. “But I like the Captain’s pay. Somebody told me you used to work homicide.”

“L.A.,” Jesse said. “Downtown.”

“You know Cronjager out there?”

“Yep.”

“So how’d you end up here?”

“Cronjager fired me. I was drinking on the job. This was the only job I got offered.”

“How you doing now? Tonight excluded.”

“I’m not drinking on the job,” Jesse said.

“It’s a good start,” Healy said. “Heard you used to play ball.”

“People do talk. Yeah, I was a shortstop. Dodger organization. Tore up my shoulder playing at Pueblo.” Jesse shrugged. “Sayonara.”