Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

fool around?”
    Simpson was in full blush. He started to speak and stopped and shifted a little in his chair.
    “Suit,” Jesse said. “I watched her talk to Jo Jo at the Harvest Fair Saturday. I was asking about her and him.”
    Simpson settled into the chair. His face seemed to cool slightly.
    “Gee, Jesse, I haven’t heard a thing about that.”
    “But I’m missing something. What am I missing, Suit?”
    Simpson shrugged.
    “Come on, Suit. I asked you about Cissy Hathaway and you looked like you just swallowed a squirrel.”
    Simpson smiled. It was a complicated expression, Jesse thought. Uneasy, proud, confidential, evasive. He would not have thought Suitcase could feel that many things at the same time.
    “Suit,” Jesse said, “you been plonking Cissy Hathaway?”
    There was a long pause while Simpson looked around the room as if he were thinking about escape.
    Then Simpson said, “Yes, sir. I have.”

48
     
    Charlie Buck liked cowboy boots. He had never ridden a horse in his life, but he had seven pairs of cowboy boots. He liked the height they gave him. With his feet up on his desk he was admiring a new pair he was wearing for the first time, made from rattlesnake skin. He took a Kleenex from a box in the bottom left drawer of his desk, and rubbed a small stain off the toe of his right boot. It looked like a splash of coffee had dried on there. While he was doing this a uniformed deputy came in.
    “Nice boots,” the deputy said.
    “Rattlesnake.”
    “I could see that. I got a guy downstairs, Charlie, wants to talk with somebody about the guy got blown up on Route Fifty-nine a while back.”
    “That’d be me,” Charlie said.
    He crumpled the Kleenex and put it in the wastebasket under his desk. Then he swung his boots down and stood up.
    “Tell you anything else?” Charlie asked.
    They started down the corridor to the elevator.
    “Nope.”
    “What do you have him for?”
    “Armed robbery. Him and another guy tried to knock over the bank at the shopping center down on South Douglas.”
    “You got him good?”
    “Talk about a bad day,” the deputy said. “Two of our guys walked in on him, going to cash their paychecks.”
    Charlie Buck smiled.
    “So he hasn’t got much room to bargain.”
    “He’s a lot of priors. He’s looking at twenty, easy,” the deputy said.
    They got in the elevator and started down.
    “What’s his name?” Charlie Buck asked.
    “Matthew Ploughman. Says he’s from Denver.”
    “He in the interrogation room?”
    “Not yet. I didn’t know if you’d want to talk with him.”
    “I’ll go in,” Charlie Buck said. “You bring him to me.”
    The interrogation room was small with gray cinder block walls and no windows, and only a one-way observation port in the door. There was a shabby maple table and two chairs. A sign on the wall read “Thank You For Not Smoking.” Charlie went to the far end of the room and leaned on the wall. He waited silently while two deputies brought Ploughman in and left, closing the door behind them.
    Ploughman was short and scrawny with a long beard and a lot of hair. His eyes were small and close together and his nose seemed insufficient compared to the rest of his face. He stood, not sure whether to sit, just inside the closed door.
    “You got a smoke, man?” he said.
    Buck nodded at the sign on the wall.
    “Sit down,” he said.
    Ploughman pulled out one of the chairs and sat, his clasped hands resting on the table edge.
    “What have you got for me?” Buck said.
    “I can help you with that bomb killing on Route Fifty-nine,” Ploughman said.
    “Go ahead,” Buck said.
    “Do I get something back?”
    Buck shrugged.
    “Hey, I ain’t trying for Eagle Scout, you know. I scratch your back, I want you to scratch mine.”
    “Matthew,” Buck said. “You’re looking at twenty years, maybe more. You and I are not negotiating as equals.”
    “Hey, don’t I know it. I’m the one sitting in a holding cell with no cigarettes. But I can help you, and if I do, you could get me a break in court.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Lemme get my lawyer in here, we can work out some sort of deal.”
    Buck shook his head.
    “You give me what you got, I like it, then we talk with your lawyer.”
    “I got a right to an attorney,” Ploughman said.
    “You been arrested, Matthew. You’re not being questioned. You asked to talk with me. You want to talk, talk. Otherwise I go back upstairs and finish my coffee.”
    Ploughman was silent,