Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

“He’s terrorizing his ex-wife. He’s frightening his children. When Anthony went up there the youngest two were under the bed. There’s a restraining order in place. He paid no attention to it. It was necessary to get his attention.”
    Abby was silent for a time, frowning, as she thought about his answer. He watched her think. He liked the way the small vertical wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows when she frowned.
    “The selectmen are aware of the provocation,” Abby said. “And they are prepared to go forward from here. But they would like your assurance that something like this will not occur in the future.”
    “It might,” Jesse said.
    “God,” Abby said. “You don’t give a damn inch, do you?”
    Jesse smiled.
    “Since you drew it up,” Jesse said, “you know that my contract here provides recourse to the selectmen if they are dissatisfied with my performance.”
    “So, you’re saying the ball is in their court.”
    “Yes.”
    They looked at each other. Abby held his look, feeling challenged by it. Then she smiled.
    “God, you are so much harder than you look.”
    Jesse smiled again.
    “And what’s my name?”
    “Jesse.”
    They laughed. Abby sat back in her chair and crossed her legs.
    “I mean you look like a history teacher,” she said. “Who might coach tennis on the side.”
    Jesse didn’t say anything. He was looking at her legs.
    “And yet you handled Jo Jo Genest.”
    “Experience is helpful,” Jesse said.
    “Have you had that much experience with people like Genest?”
    “In L.A. I worked South Central,” Jesse said. “People in South Central would keep Jo Jo for a pet.”
    “No one ever confronted him before like that.”
    “Guess it was time,” Jesse said.
    “You won, but don’t misjudge him. He can be very dangerous.”
    “Anybody can be very dangerous, Abby.”
    “I believe he has mob connections.”
    “ ‘Jesse.’ ”
    She smiled.
    “Jesse,” she said.
    “Good. You married?”
    “I don’t see what that has to do with the issue before us,” she said.
    “Me either,” Jesse said.
    “I’m happily divorced,” Abby said. “Five years.”
    “Taylor your own name?”
    “Yes.”
    They were silent again. Outside his office he could hear the sporadic murmur of the dispatcher’s voice. The occasional sound of a door opening and closing. It was a lulling sound, it went with quiet summer nights and green space in the center of a small town. The office itself was very spare. Jesse’s desk was bare except for the phone and a pair of gold-tinted Oakley sunglasses. There was a window behind his chair which looked out at the driveway of the fire station. A green metal file cabinet stood to the right of the window. There was no rug on the floor. No pictures of anyone.
    “Have you ever been married?” Abby said.
    “Yes.”
    “But you’re not married now.”
    “No.”
    “Divorced?”
    “Yes.”
    “Jesse, one of the rules of conversation is that when asked a question you don’t give a one-word answer.”
    Jesse looked at his watch.
    “Okay,” he said. “It’s suppertime, want to have dinner with me?”
    Abby opened her mouth and closed it. She had come in to reprimand this man and he didn’t seem reprimanded.
    “I … I don’t … certainly,” she said. “I’d love to.”

16
     
    Driving toward Gillette on Route 59 north of Bill, Wyoming, Tom Carson felt alien in the rolling landscape. Pronghorn antelope appeared here and there in the hills, grazing in herds, strung out along a stream drinking. Buffalo grazed too in the gently undulant pastures. They weren’t wild herds, he knew. They were ranch buffalo, healthful, destined to be slaughtered and sold in specialty stores. He’d never been anywhere very much until he moved to Wyoming. Lived all his life in Paradise, and his parents too. His mother taught seventh grade at Paradise Junior High. His father ran the Gulf station. The only gas station in the downtown area. He had no military experience. He hadn’t gone to college. He’d joined the cops after working three years for his father. The complete townie, he’d married a girl from his high-school class and lived with her in a house his parents helped him buy, near Hawthorne Park on the hill above the harbor. Along the empty roadway, he saw several mule deer, nervous and gangly as they grazed and looked up. More skittish than the pronghorns, he thought. Always looking over their shoulder. Now he was marooned here, vastly