Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

room.
    Talking to Anthony hadn’t told him anything. He hadn’t thought it would. Asking around probably wouldn’t tell him anything either. They would probably never know who sprayed their car, anyway. Hardly the crime of the century. Still, all the buttons had to be pushed, otherwise what were the buttons there for? Lot of motions to go through in police work, Jesse thought. He picked up Captain Cat from the top of the file cabinet and held him in his arms and scratched him thoughtfully behind the ear.
    “ ‘Slut,’ ” he said to the cat. “What the hell does that mean, Captain?”

20
     
    Abby Taylor had done this before. She seemed calm as she undressed and hung her clothes up in his closet. She was careful when she wiped off her lipstick, and she was relaxed when she came to the bed and he put his arms around her. Then she gave herself to the experience. The lovemaking absorbed her. She was inventive and adroit, but most of all, he noticed even at the highest pitch that she was genuine. She pretended to nothing, and kept nothing in. She liked this. They made love for a long time and finished and lay together on their backs with her head resting in the crook of his arm.
    “Whatever she didn’t like about you,” Abby said, “it couldn’t have been the sex part.”
    Jesse smiled in the darkness. The sex part had been one of many things Jenn didn’t like. He wasn’t sure what all of it was that Jenn had liked or not liked. Right now she appeared to like Elliott Krueger.
    “Some guy said once that war was the extension of politics,” Jesse said.
    “That’s an answer?”
    “Sex is probably the extension of a relationship,” Jesse said.
    “Why can’t it just be sex?” Abby said.
    As she talked she raised her head and leaned it on her elbow; her naked body was damp with the recent effort. She seemed not to notice that she was naked. Jenn, who had always flaunted her tightly clothed body, seemed oddly ill at ease when her clothes were off … at least with him.
    “I don’t know,” Jesse said.
    “Wasn’t that what this was? A good time was had by all?”
    “Yes.”
    “So how does that fit with your theory?”
    “We don’t have a relationship.”
    “That’s cold, Jesse.”
    “I didn’t mean to be,” he said.
    “No, I don’t think you did,” Abby said.
    “I’m just saying we don’t come to bed with any arguments to finish, you know?”
    “So the key to perfect happiness is wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am?”
    “Well, I don’t think I was saying that,” Jesse said.
    “Oh?”
    Jesse was silent for a time. He did not normally spend much time thinking about matters like this, and with her lawyer’s mind she had raced ahead of him.
    “I think Jenn didn’t have sex for the pleasure of the sex,” he said. “I think she did it to start a romance or keep one going or because she was in a marriage and it was like her responsibility to have sex, you know?”
    “Didn’t she like it?” Abby said.
    “I don’t think she disliked it, except maybe at the end, with me. But I don’t think the question of liking or disliking really has much to do with sex for Jenn. It’s like an instrument of policy, if you follow what I’m saying.”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “When we were feeling good, sex was what we did to prevent us from not feeling good. When we were feeling bad, sex was the way we said we were mad.”
    “That’s pretty thoughtful for a guy who recently kicked Jo Jo Genest in the balls.”
    “I know. I’m a little surprised myself.”
    “Still, it would be depressing to think that the longer the relationship, the worse the sex.”
    “Maybe we need to research it,” Jesse said, “develop a relationship and see what happens.”
    “Day at a time,” she said.
    “Easy does it,” he said.
    They both laughed.
    “Both been to meetings, I guess,” Abby said.
    “I had a little trouble acknowledging a higher power,” Jesse said.
    “I don’t know you very well,” Abby said. “But why am I not surprised?”

21
     
    Sitting at the rustic pine conference table, under the glass-cased boat models, in his office at the bank, with the door closed, Hasty Hathaway counted the stacks of small bills that Jo Jo took from the suitcases on the floor beside the table.
    “People don’t realize,” Hathaway said, “how troublesome cash is to deal with.”
    “Yeah, and it’s no picnic lugging it around in suitcases,” Jo Jo said.
    Hathaway nodded, his hands moving expertly among