Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

Maguire, Arthur Angstrom, Eddie Cox, Billy Pope, Pat Sears.
    “You tell them that when I had some evidence on Lou Burke you had Jo Jo throw him off the top of Indian Hill?”
    Something like an inaudible sigh moved through the Horsemen as Jesse talked. Hasty felt it. He looked at the small dark eye of Jesse’s shotgun only five feet away, and he backed away.
    In the darkness behind the Horsemen Suitcase Simpson spoke softly to Abby, still standing beside him.
    “Go to Peter Perkins’s truck. When you see the lights go on in my car turn them on in the truck.”
    Sheltered among his troops, shielded by other Horsemen from the gaze of Jesse’s shotgun, Hasty said in as much voice as he could command, “Third squad marksmen, prepare to fire.”
    A set of headlights behind them went on, and then a second set and the Horsemen were bathed in light. Then Simpson’s voice, amplified by a bullhorn, came from the darkness behind the light.
    “This is the Paradise Police,” the voice said. “We have you surrounded. Put down your weapons.”
    There was a long frozen silence. The Horsemen nearest Hasty turned and looked at him, waiting. Hasty didn’t know what to do. He had not thought of this. He didn’t know what to do. With the shotgun held in his right hand and pointing straight toward the sky, Jesse walked down the steps of the station and shoved past three Horsemen to stand in front of Hasty. His face was right next to Hasty’s.
    “You have the right to remain silent,” Jesse said. “You have the right to an attorney.”
    Hasty started to back away and Jesse stayed close to him, walking him backward through the Horsemen as he recited the Miranda rights. The battle-dressed Horsemen parted silently as Hasty backed out of the group and into the police perimeter in the darkness beyond the headlights. Behind the headlights Suitcase Simpson stopped him with a hand in his back. Molly came out of the darkness and handed Jesse a pair of handcuffs and Jesse snapped them onto Hasty’s wrists. In the distance, sounding very clearly through the quiet night, came the sound of sirens.
    “That’ll be the state cops,” Simpson said.
    “You call them?” Jesse said.
    “Yes.”
    “Good thought.”
    The sound of the sirens broke the last resistance among the Horsemen. They began to drop their weapons and move away from the station. As the sirens got louder the Horsemen began to move faster and soon they were running, out of the bright headlights, past the silent policemen who made no attempt to stop them, heading home in the darkness, leaving their rifles and shotguns on the ground where they had stood.

77
     
    The sky over the harbor was beginning to get light. Jesse felt gray and empty, his mouth dry and bitter, with the flat joyless contumescence of dissipated tension. He was at his desk in his office with Healy, the state police captain.
    “How’d it go down?” Healy said.
    Jesse’s voice was soft and Healy had to lean forward to hear him.
    “Kid named Michelle Merchant. Her father’s a Horseman. She heard the plan and told a woman I know, Abby Taylor.”
    “The town attorney,” Healy said.
    “Sometimes. Abby called the station, but the phones were dead, so she called Suit—Simpson—one of my cops.”
    “Well, now you know whose side your department is on.”
    Jesse nodded.
    “Good to know,” Healy said.
    Jesse nodded again, a movement so small that Healy wasn’t sure he’d made it.
    “You talk to Wyoming?” Healy said.
    “Yeah. They want Hathaway for blowing up Tom Carson.”
    “The prosecutors will work it out,” Healy said. “Genest going to stand up when it’s time to testify?”
    Jesse nodded again. “He knows Hathaway was trying to kill him last night,” Jesse said. “He’ll talk until you don’t want to listen.”
    “What do you want to do about the rest of the mob?” Healy said.
    Jesse didn’t answer for so long that Healy thought maybe Jesse hadn’t heard him. Finally Jesse shrugged slightly.
    “I think most of them are harmless,” he said.
    “You know who most of them are?”
    “I can put together a list of Horsemen. Be harder to prove that any particular one was here last night,” Jesse said.
    “Might be some federal charges,” Healy said. “Armed insurrection?”
    “I’ll let the Feds worry about that,” Jesse said. “Most of these guys are just guilty of being jerks.”
    “Lot of that going around,” Healy said.
    “A lot,” Jesse said. “I’ll settle for