Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

her.
    “Yes, ma’am. I am.”
    The boy straightened and whispered in his mother’s ear.
    “Okay,” Carole said. “I’ll take you.”
    She stood.
    “Excuse us a minute,” she said to Jesse and went out of the kitchen with her son.
    For a drunk, Jesse thought as he sat in the quiet kitchen, I’m pretty tough for a boozer.
    The television blatted in the family room. The kitchen faucet had a slow drip. He wondered if it needed a washer or if she just hadn’t shut it off tightly. Jenn had rarely shut the faucet off tightly. He always had to firm it up when he had walked through the kitchen. She never closed the cabinet doors all the way either. When she had stopped coming home everything had been much more buttoned up.
    Carole came back into the kitchen. She got a Fudgsicle from the refrigerator freezer and removed the wrapper and gave the Fudgsicle to the boy.
    “More coffee?” she said.
    “Sure.”
    Jesse held the cup out and Carole poured from the round glass pot.
    “When does he start school?” Jesse said, nodding at the boy.
    “Kindergarten next year,” Carole said.
    The boy showed no sign that he knew they were talking about him. He sat on his mother’s lap, working on the Fudgsicle.
    “Can you get a job then?” Jesse said.
    Shrug.
    “What did you do before you got married?”
    “High school,” Carole said. “Jo Jo knocked me up senior year. I never graduated.”
    “Maybe you could get some training,” Jesse said.
    “Sure.”
    “What does Jo Jo do for a living?” Jesse asked.
    Carole shrugged. “He does some bodybuilder contests, I know.”
    “Can you make a living doing that?”
    Shrug.
    “What was he doing for a living when he bought this house for cash?”
    “I don’t know,” Carole said.
    Jesse allowed himself to look puzzled.
    “I’m not very smart,” Carole said. “I never learned anything in school. I didn’t even graduate. Taking care of me was his job.”
    Jesse drank some of the coffee. It had gotten stronger sitting in the pot.
    “I think it would be good if you didn’t have to depend on Jo Jo.”
    “Sure,” Carole said. “It’s what my old man is always telling me. From Florida. So who’s going to marry a woman with three small kids and an ex-husband like I got?”
    “Maybe you don’t need a husband to take care of you,” Jesse said.
    “Yeah,” Carole said. “Right.”
    “So as long as you knew him, Jo Jo never had a regular job?”
    “He tended bar once in a while. Worked as a bouncer.”
    “Where?”
    “Club in Peabody. The Eighty-six Club.”
    “He work there much?”
    “No.”
    Jesse stood and brought his coffee cup to the sink.
    “Well, you need me, you know how to get me,” Jesse said.
    “Yes.”
    “Thanks for the coffee.”
    “Sure.”
    Jesse looked for a moment at the little boy, his face dirty with melted Fudgsicle. You don’t have a prayer, Jesse thought. Not a goddamned prayer.

31
     
    Hasty Hathaway picked up a triangle of cinnamon toast and bit off a corner, and chewed and swallowed.
    “I asked you to have coffee with me, Jesse, because I’m concerned about some of the things that have happened in town recently.”
    Hathaway held the now truncated triangle of toast delicately in his right hand and moved it slightly in rhythm to his speech. Jesse waited.
    “I mean, I know they are not serious crimes. But the spray-painting of a police cruiser, and the killing of that police station cat … well, it’s all around town.”
    Jesse had nothing to say to that, so he waited.
    “Obviously someone wishes to embarrass the police department.”
    Jesse continued to wait.
    “Do you agree?” Hathaway said.
    “Yes.”
    “And,” Hathaway said, “I’m afraid they’re succeeding.”
    “ ’Fraid so,” Jesse said.
    “Who might that be?” Hathaway said.
    Jesse leaned back in his seat and turned his coffee cup slowly with both hands.
    “We roust some of the burnout kids in town every day,” Jesse said. “We arrest several drunks a weekend. We referee a domestic dispute about once a week. We stop people for speeding. We tow cars for being illegally parked. We’re in the business of telling people no.”
    “So it could be anyone,” Hathaway said.
    “Could be,” Jesse said.
    “But isn’t it more likely to be one person than another?” Hathaway said. “Don’t you have any suspicions?”
    “Sure,” Jesse said.
    “Perhaps you’d care to share them with me,” Hathaway said. “I am after all the town’s chief