Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

other things behind her that Jenn had never turned around to look at.
    “But I am taking care of myself.”
    “Yes,” Dr. St. Claire said.
    “You mean more than earning my own money.”
    “Yes.”
    “You mean this too, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “So I’m starting to take better care of myself, and that means I can take better care of Jesse.”
    “Or whoever,” Dr. St. Claire said.
    Jenn sat back a little in her chair and thought about that.
    “Often,” Dr. St. Claire said, “circumstances of heightened intensity can accelerate things.”
    “Like rising to the occasion,” Jenn said.
    “Yes,” Dr. St. Claire said. “Very much like that.”

54
     
    After work on a Tuesday evening, Jesse bought a large sandwich with everything on it at a shop called the Italian Submarine near the town wharf, and brought it home for supper. He would have two drinks. One before the sandwich and one with it. He was on his first drink when Abby called him.
    “I’m ready to forgive you,” Abby said.
    “That’s good.”
    “I wish you trusted me, but you don’t. Maybe you can’t. But I find that I’m missing you and decided that not seeing you was punishing me as much as you and so I want to see you.”
    “Okay.”
    “Control yourself,” Abby said. “I hate it when you get giddy with excitement.”
    “You want to go with me to the Halloween dance at the Yacht Club?” Jesse said.
    “Well, yes,” Abby said. “I mean I want to go with you, but I wish it didn’t have to be to the Yacht Club dance.”
    “Sort of part of my job,” Jesse said.
    “I know. Chief of police and all that,” Abby said. “Actually I guess I’m supposed to go too, being town counsel.”
    “Want to come here first for a drink?” Jesse said.
    “Yes. What time?”
    “Say seven, we don’t want to get to the ball too early.”
    “I guess,” Abby said.
    They were quiet for a moment. Jesse sipped his drink. He suspected that Abby was sipping hers.
    “How have you been?” Abby said.
    “Good.”
    “Any progress on who killed that young woman?”
    “Some,” Jesse said. “I know who did it, but I need evidence.”
    “You know who did it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well who … I guess you can’t say, can you? Have you heard from your ex lately?”
    “Yeah.”
    “She hasn’t let you go, has she?” Abby said.
    “I hear from Jenn pretty regularly.”
    “Have you let her go, Jesse?”
    “No, I don’t suppose I have, altogether.”
    “So where does that leave me?”
    “Where you’ve always been, Ab. You’re a really wonderful woman. But I am not really finished with my first marriage yet.”
    “I know.”
    “You shouldn’t put all your eggs in this basket, Ab.”
    “I know.”
    “I’m sorry it’s that way,” Jesse said.
    “Hell,” Abby said, “let’s play it as it lays. The worst we can do is have a hell of a good time for a while.”
    “I don’t know how it will turn out, Ab.”
    “Me either, but let’s start with the Halloween dance, and a drink beforehand.”
    “And maybe we won’t have to stay long,” Jesse said.
    “And have the rest of the night to kill,” Abby said.
    “We’ll think of something,” Jesse said.
    “I already have,” Abby said.

55
     
    The morning of the Halloween dance Jesse got a Federal Express envelope from Charlie Buck in the Campbell County, Wyoming, Sheriff’s Department. Inside was a letter and a list of names.
    “We have a cooperative witness in custody,” Buck wrote, “who says that Tom Carson was killed by a man sent by a militia group back east. Since Carson was from Massachusetts, we got a list of everybody who flew from Boston to Denver a week on either side of the crime. See if you recognize any names. The witness may be selling us a plea. Or the killer may have flown from New York, or drove out in a 1958 Rambler. But it makes sense to start with Boston-Denver.”
    There followed a list of names, three columns, eighteen pages. On the twelfth page was Lou Burke’s name. Jesse stared at it for a long time, then he reorganized the list and put it in a manila folder along with Buck’s letter and locked the folder in the file cabinet in his office. He took Lou Burke’s personnel file out and brought it back to his desk and looked at it. Lou had been a twenty-year man in the Navy, before he retired and joined the police. Jesse ran his eyes down the list of Lou’s military occupation specialties until he found the one he remembered.

     
    1970–1972 Underwater