Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

the money back or else. He’s actually threatening me. Well, first I thought maybe I’d just break his scrawny neck for him, wring it like he was a chicken, you know? But then I think no, be smart, Jo Jo. Don’t get mad. Get even. So I got some of the pictures of his old lady and I sent them out. I sent one to his minister and one to him and one to the president of the Paradise Garden Club that Cissy belonged to. Ought to freak them out. I was going to send a few out every day. Drive Hasty crazy.”
    Jo Jo laughed again. Jesse felt like he’d bathed in dirty water. He shut off the tape recorder.
    “Think about something, Jo Jo,” Jesse said. “When I suspended Lou Burke Hasty was so worried about what Burke might say that he had you kill him.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ve actually arrested you, and you know more than Burke.”
    “You think he’ll try for me?”
    “He’ll have to,” Jesse said. “Or he’s a goner.”
    “How’s he gonna get me in here?” Jo Jo said.
    “My guess is he’ll try to get you out of here, one way or another.”
    “And?”
    “And kill you,” Jesse said. “You know the Horsemen. Do they believe in him?”
    “Yeah. Assholes. They think he’s freakin’ George Washington.”
    Jesse nodded.
    “You think he’ll try to kill me?”
    “I think he’ll try to kill us both,” Jesse said.

76
     
    When Suitcase Simpson pulled up in his own car behind the men in battle dress fatigues gathered around the station, he could see Jesse on the front steps with a shotgun. There were no lights showing at the station, but several men in the crowd had flashlights focused on Jesse. Simpson parked quietly on the street and got out. He was in uniform, wearing a bulletproof vest. He carried a shotgun and his service pistol. He stood silently in the shadows the Horsemen.
    Two steps forward of the other Horsemen, Hasty Hathaway stood very straight in front of Jesse.
    “We’re relieving you of your duties,” he said to Jesse. “And we are coming to take your prisoner.”
    Simpson felt someone move up beside him. It was Abby Taylor. She had on something that looked like a navy pea coat and the collar was high up around her head so that Simpson could barely see her face. Her hands were deep in her pockets. She looked briefly at Simpson and then looked at Jesse on the station steps. Neither of them spoke.
    On the steps Jesse worked the pump on his shotgun and jacked a shell up into the chamber. The sound of the action was very sharp in the quiet night. Jesse was wearing a vest too, Simpson noted.
    “Couple of things, Hasty,” Jesse said.
    His voice wasn’t loud but it carried and the men were very still, nearly trancelike, confronting the stunning thing they were about to do.
    “First,” Jesse said. “Anything happens here and I’ll kill you.”
    As he spoke Jesse raised the shotgun slowly and aimed it directly at Hasty. Before he could stop himself, Hasty took a step back.
    “Second,” Jesse said. “I’m arresting you for the murders of Tom Carson, Tammy Portugal, and Lou Burke.”
    Peter Perkins’s Mazda pickup pulled in beside Simpson’s car, and Perkins and Anthony DeAngelo got out, with shotguns and vests. They looked at Simpson. Silently Simpson gestured that they should spread out behind the Horsemen. Molly Crane arrived on foot. She was wearing sweats and sneakers and her service pistol. Her badge was pinned to the sweatshirt. Simpson pointed her to the left and she nodded and went.
    “You can’t bluff us, Stone,” Hasty said. He felt dreadful about stepping back. His face felt hot. He tried to make his voice cut like Jesse’s had. “We have relieved you of duty. Step aside or … step aside … or be killed.”
    “I hear one round go up into one chamber,” Jesse said, “and I will shoot you dead, Hasty.”
    Hasty didn’t step back this time, but he glanced automatically around at his troops to see that no one put a round up.
    “You are a murderer and a goddamned fraud. What you really want is to kill me, and to kill Jo Jo. What were you going to do, rush the jail and shoot him? Claim it was a stray bullet? Poor Jo Jo. You gotta kill him because he knows. You tell your men how you got conned on the arms deal? Jo Jo knows. You tell them how you were sleeping with Tammy Portugal until she wanted to get serious, then you had Jo Jo kill her? You tell them how you had Tom Carson killed? Jo Jo could tell them.”
    As Jesse talked the other cops drifted in: John