Robert B. Parker's Debt to Pay (9 page)

J
esse watched the street camera footage over and over and over again until it felt like his eyes were going to fall out of his head. A few men on the footage were about the correct height for Mr. Peepers, but none of them was right. There was a delivery man who matched Peepers's size perfectly, and if he wasn't African American, Jesse might have felt encouraged. Then there was the bearded little man in a raincoat, but he was far too stout to have been Peepers.

He looked over his left shoulder at the wall clock. Healy would be by in less than an hour, and if Jesse couldn't find Peepers on the surveillance footage, he was screwed. He wasn't so much worried for himself. He had always believed that if your number was up, your number was up, and that worrying about it was a waste of time and energy. The uncertainty of police work fosters a belief in fate. No, he was worried for Suit, Molly, Diana, even Healy. The only one likely to come out better for Healy going public with his suspicions was Jenn. Jesse doubted Peepers would go after her once the drama of the wedding was past. Once she was Mrs. Hale Hunsicker more than she was the former Mrs. Jesse Stone, Peepers would have less incentive.

“Alisha,” he said, sticking his head through the office doorway. “Get Suit in here, pronto. Lights and siren.”

Confused, she stared at her boss. Jesse had a strict rule against using the light bar and siren in town unless it was absolutely necessary. And even then, as she had heard from everybody else on the force, from Molly to Peter Perkins, you better not do it. But she didn't say a word to Jesse and got right on the radio to Suit.

Less than two minutes later, Jesse heard Suit's siren cutting through the late-morning quiet. Thirty seconds after that, Luther “Suitcase” Simpson came rushing into Jesse's office, a semipanicked look on his boyish face. He was breathing heavily. His attempts to slow his breathing were futile.

“What . . . is it . . . Jesse?”

Jesse crooked his finger at Suit. “Come sit in my chair. Healy is going to be here soon and I need your help.”

Suit tried to squelch a smile. He was as unsuccessful at it as he was at slowing his breathing. Suit lived for Jesse's approval. Jesse knew it. Suit knew Jesse knew it. Suit's need for Jesse's approval was what had gotten him shot by Mr. Peepers and what had started this whole mess to begin with. Both men understood as much, but neither talked about it. Jesse supposed he was as responsible as Suit because he had always been on Suit about taking the initiative, about doing for himself, about acting on his cop instincts instead of waiting for orders. And when he finally did what Jesse had urged him to do, it blew up in both of their faces.

Suit sat in Jesse's chair and stared at the frozen image of the entrance to the building that had housed Gino Fish's offices. He showed Suit how to operate the video equipment.

“I can't find him, Suit,” Jesse said. “I know he's in here somewhere, but I didn't get as good a look at him as you did. You got a
clearer view of him when you exchanged gunfire. I only saw a flash of his face and a few bad photos of him.”

“I'm not sure I'd recognize him, Jesse. It all happened so fast, and then when I was hit . . .”

“I'm counting on you.”

“But what if I can't find him? What if he's not there to be found?”

“He's there. You know it and I know it. He has to be there.”

“But what if we can't prove it, Jesse?”

“You know what will happen if Healy goes public and other agencies start hunting for a gunman like Peepers.”

“He'll do what I said the other day. He'll disappear and then he'll come for all of us. He'll come for me and Molly and Diana and you.”

Suit got a sick look on his face.

Jesse nodded. “You and me, Suit. That's who he wants to hurt most of all.”

Suit hung his head, fear welling up inside him. Fear not for himself, but for Elena. It occurred to him that he was vulnerable to Peepers in a way he hadn't been before. “I won't see him coming, will I, Jesse?”

“None of us will.”

“Then I better find him,” Suit said, his voice strained.

Jesse put his hand on Suit's big shoulder. “You will. I have confidence in you.”

As Suit began searching through the surveillance footage, Jesse stepped out of his office and made some coffee for himself. Alisha was handling a lot of radio chatter, everyone calling in to see what the emergency was. Alisha, as she had done the other day during the storm, handled it like a pro.

Jesse needed to see Suit . . . No, he's my boss, he doesn't need to tell me why . . . Molly has the desk next shift . . .

Jesse smiled to himself. Alisha was going to make a hell of a cop. He hoped that small-town policing would be enough to keep her interest and that she could resist the siren's song of big-city police work. Suddenly his mind drifted away from Alisha to thoughts of Diana. He didn't sweat the future very much, but he couldn't help wondering what their future held in store if he stayed chief in Paradise. Diana made no bones about her distaste for small-town life. None of it would matter if they didn't stop Peepers. Several people, including himself, wouldn't have a future if he slipped through Jesse's fingers this time.

“Jesse! Jesse! I think I got him!” It was Suit, barreling down the hallway toward the conference room. “I got him.”

J
esse frowned when he saw the man Suit was pointing to on the screen. It was the little potbellied man with the shaggy beard, wearing a raincoat and hat and seeming to look directly into the camera, then turning away just as quickly.

“Yeah, Suit, he caught my eye, too. He's the right height and he's got the narrow sloped shoulders, but he's too heavy.”

Suit smiled that loose-mouthed smile of his. “Jesse, wait. Look at this.”

The images flashed by on the screen until the time stamp at the bottom right-hand corner indicated twenty-three minutes had passed since the little man appeared on-screen. And there coming out of the building that housed Gino Fish's offices was that same man. But Jesse was unconvinced.

“I've done this already, Suit. Given the time frame set by the ME for times of death, forty-two people enter and leave the building through the front entrance. None of them is a perfect match for Peepers.”

But Suit was still smiling. “You never had to diet to lose weight, did you, Jesse?”

“What are you getting at? Healy's going to be here in a few minutes.”

“C'mon, Jesse, go with me on this, okay?”

“No, I never really had to diet.”

Suit slapped his once sizable belly, smaller now since the shooting. “I've had to diet a few times, like in high school when I wrestled my junior year. And I've been on a few diets since. It ain't easy losing weight.”

“I've heard.”

“Well, this guy in the raincoat, he's got a diet secret that could make him millions,” Suit said. “Watch.”

Suit advanced the footage frame by frame until the man on the screen was no longer obscured by passersby, light poles, or parking meters and they could see his entire body. Jesse felt a jolt as he finally saw what he had missed before. He clapped Suit hard on his shoulder.

“Now I know where that pillow came from.”

“What pillow?”

Jesse said, “Under the receptionist's head, there was a ratty, stained pillow. Vinnie Morris swore up and down to me that Gino Fish would never have anything like that in his office. I guess he was right.”

“So wait a second, Jesse. There's some stuff I don't get. Why would Peepers come to Paradise and risk shooting out tires like he was doing? You would have put it together. It was almost like he was hoping you would.”

“Why? For the same reason he sent me the photo of Jenn: to let me know he could hurt me and how he could hurt me. He's a twisted little man who enjoys killing and inflicting pain. I think he wanted me to know he had decided the time was right for his revenge. It isn't enough for him to just kill.”

“But then he just stopped.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why? And why kill those people and the dog in Salem? They didn't do anything to him.”

“Collateral damage,” Jesse said. “For him it was like swatting flies. They got in his way. Both of us know what happens when you get in his way.”

Unconsciously, Suit rubbed his abdomen above where he was shot. “See, this is where I get confused. If he wanted you to know he was coming for his revenge, then why go back to Salem to return the stolen car?”

“My guess? Things didn't go the way he planned in Boston with Gino Fish, so he had a change of strategy.”

Suit laughed without joy.

“What is it?”

“For a second there, Jesse, I thought you were going to say he had a change of heart. But he'd need a heart in the first place.”

Jesse nodded, the smile on his face as empty as Suit's laughter. That was when there was a knock on the pebbled glass of the office door and Captain Healy stepped in. He was dressed for business in his favorite jacket.

“Well . . .” Healy said, walking toward the desk to peer over Suit's shoulder.

“Suit, get the bottle and a cup out of my drawer for the captain.”

“Why am I drinking, exactly?”

“To celebrate your retirement,” Jesse said. “Time to put in your papers.”

“So you found the little bastard?”

“Not me. Suit. He'll show you when you're ready.”

Suit wasn't smiling now as he put the bottle of Tullamore Dew
and the red plastic cup on Jesse's desk. None of them were smiling, each for his own reasons. But the moment weighed most heavily on Healy. No detective who had the job in his blood the way he did was ever really ready to put in his papers. He'd always figured the job would kill him before he had a chance to walk away from it. Yet here he was, bound by his promise, about to make it official. He supposed today was as good a day as any, and if it helped put an end to Mr. Peepers, he was good with it.

He poured himself a drink, took it in a single swallow, and said, “Show me.”

T
he brushed-steel doors parted and she strolled out of the elevator car and into the underground garage. She was prettier than he had given her credit for. Maybe it was that she had exchanged that gray business suit she had worn the other day for a form-fitting black dress and heels. Or was it that she had washed all that silly lacquer out of her highlighted blond hair and let it fall over her bare brown shoulders and spaghetti straps? Her skin was indeed very brown and her legs were so perfectly hairless and smooth that they practically reflected the dull, ambient lighting. A small, silky black bag dangled off her left shoulder, swaying as she moved. The only sounds in the cavernous car park were the muffled whirring of exhaust fans and the echoes of her pointed heels clickety-clacking on the concrete slab. Her calf muscles pulsed as she walked.

This was perfect, he thought, something to keep him occupied while he marked off the days until he paid off the first installment of his debt to Jesse Stone. Frankly, the very thought of spending weeks on end in Dallas with nothing to do except working part-time at three dead-end jobs nearly bored him to tears. Revenge was worth a lot to him, everything, but boredom could be pure hell. He had no
choice, though, because there were so many contingencies to plan for, so many moving parts to attend to.

Having a Plan B wouldn't be sufficient with a man like Stone, especially after how things had gone so wrong back up north. It was, he knew, his own fault. He had let hubris get the better of him. That silliness with the car tires. He shouldn't have done that. He shook his head even as he thought of it. It was a severe miscalculation and had led to the messes in Boston and Salem. But payback was so much sweeter when they knew he was coming for them and they were powerless to stop him. The notion of the condemned waiting for him to pay them a call excited him. Daydreaming of them searching for him under every rock, peeking around every corner, seeing him in every shadow, looking for him everywhere but where they should look, was almost as powerful as the kill itself. Almost.

Now, though, he had to anticipate Stone's moves.
What if he had finally figured out who'd put the bullets in all those tires? What if he had warned his ex? What if the cops knew he was in Dallas? What if . . . What if . . . What if . . .
Uncertainty was usually to his advantage, because it was his victims who suffered from its corrosive effects. When he took a job, he worked hard to figure out the best way to come at his target, how to maximize results and minimize the chances of his capture. Contingencies? He always had contingencies, but because of his own foolishness, he had made his task exponentially more difficult. Yet he found he could not focus on Stone or contingencies. Since getting into town, he had been preoccupied by one thing and one thing only: the discourtesy of the woman at the barbecue restaurant. Dealing with the latter, he reasoned, would help him with the former. It was one of life's great contradictions that distraction could sometimes help you concentrate.

As she approached her red Audi convertible, the sound of her
heels made his heart beat that much faster. He wondered how she would die: easy or hard. He liked it better when they died hard, clinging to, clutching at the tiniest specks of hope or stubbornly clawing to hang on to whatever time they had left, no matter the pain. Pain so intense that not even unconsciousness provided an escape. He smiled that smug smile to himself as he lowered his head below the dashboard. Then the clacking of her heels came to an abrupt halt. He peeked up above the dashboard to see why she had stopped.

There she was, twenty feet in front of her car, cell phone in hand.

“No, Jordan, honey, I'm leaving now,” she said, her voice bouncing off the concrete. “I'll call you back when I get out of the garage and on the road. Okay, see you in a bit.”

He lowered his head back down and listened as her heels got louder and louder. He ran the tips of his fingers along the length of the syringe. In the syringe was his own proprietary little cocktail of drugs. All they ever felt was a pinch, and before they had any idea of what was happening to them they were in another world. Many of his victims had told him that the cocktail induced gloriously vivid dreams. Dreams that were wildly random but often hyper-real. They often begged for him to dose them with those same drugs once he began working on them. Sometimes, when it suited his state of mind, he did as they asked. And he always enjoyed watching the horror on their faces when they came out of it and realized where they were and whom they were with.

Now that she was so close to him, he imagined he could almost smell her perfume. He waited until she had settled into the camel-colored leather seat of her Audi. Then he got out of his car and came up from behind her.

“Hi, there,” he said, friendly as could be.

Startled, she whipped her head around. At first the only thing
that registered on her lovely face was confusion. There was no hint of recognition. Just as he thought she would, she'd forgotten he even existed.

He screwed his face up into a frown. “Oh, you don't remember me.”

Confusion changed quickly to anger. “Listen, ass—”

But she didn't finish the thought, distracted by the sharp pinch in her neck. When she went lax, he pushed her back in her seat to make sure she didn't fall against the horn. He pulled the Honda up in front of her Audi and popped the Civic's rear lid. After folding her neatly into the trunk, he stroked her hair, ran the back of his hand along the smooth, brown skin of her cheek, and slammed the lid shut. Almost immediately, his mind turned to thoughts of Jesse Stone and Jenn.