Jesse had made a fire.
“How long since you’ve had a
drink,” Marcy said.
“Two weeks.”
“Good for you,” Marcy said.
“I don’t drink anymore,” Jesse
said.
“You’re so sure?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever happened to ‘one day at a
time’?”
“I know what I know,” Jesse said.
“You think you’ll ever drink
again?”
“Not to excess,” Jesse said.
“You’re so sure.”
“I am.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“Stuff changes.”
“How about Jenn,” Marcy said.
“How is she?”
“Don’t know. I haven’t seen her
in a couple of weeks,
either.”
“Will you see her again?”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“So some stuff doesn’t change.”
“Maybe it does,” Jesse said.
“Just not as, what? … not as
simply as yes or no.”
“Relationships are hard,” Marcy said.
“Except ours,” Jesse said.
“We have a great advantage in ours,” Marcy said. “We don’t love
each other.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
They each took a drink. The snow came down very smoothly past the window.
“You got the kids that raped that girl,”
Marcy
said.
“Yes. They copped to a plea. Probation and community service.”
“No jail?”
“No jail,” Jesse said. “Kids.
First offense
…”
Jesse smiled slightly.
“On the other hand,” he said,
“their community service
assignment is me.”
“You rigged that, didn’t you.”
“I did.”
“Well, maybe they will get a taste of justice, at least.”
“Candace won’t,” Jesse said.
“You think she won’t get over
it?”
“I think the other kids won’t let
her.”
“Some of them will be kind,” Marcy said.
“And some of them won’t,” Jesse
said.
“And you can’t protect her.”
“No,” Jesse said. “I
can’t.”
“Well,” Marcy said. “You did
what you could, you closed the
case.”
“You been hanging around with me too long,” Jesse said. “You’re
starting to talk like a cop.”
“Or at least like you,” Marcy said.
“I’m a cop,” Jesse said.
“I know.”
“Sometimes I think that’s all I am,
everything I
am.”
“There are worse things,” Marcy said.
Jesse smiled at her.
“Like serial killing?” Jesse said.
“That would be worse,” Marcy said.
“Are you getting anywhere
with that?”
“Yes and no,” Jesse said. “I
know who they are. I can’t prove
it.”
“Who are they?”
“A couple, live over in the Seascape condos.”
“By Preston Beach,” she said.
“Yep.”
“What are their names.”
“Tony and Brianna Lincoln,” Jesse said.
“My God,” Marcy said. “I think I
showed them a house
once.”
“Recently?”
“No, maybe three years ago. Before they bought their condo.”
“Form any impressions?”
“No, yes, actually, I did. They were a pleasure. You know, you
bring a husband and wife to look at property and they usually are on each other’s case the whole trip. The Lincolns were great, really together. I remember thinking how nice it is to see that.
He’s not scornful of her questions about the house. She doesn’t
smirk at me when he speaks. They acted like people who liked each other and respected each other’s ideas.”
Jesse laughed a little.
“Still do,” he said.
“And you know it’s them?”
“There’s some evidence. They own
twenty-two ammunition. Their
car was parked in the row next to the one where the woman was killed at the Paradise Mall. A car that resembled their car, we didn’t get a number, was parked in the church lot where the guy got
killed coming home from the train. But we have no hard evidence. No ballistics, no prints, no eyewitness - God knows, no motive.”
“And you can’t just arrest them on cop-ly intuition?”
“Doesn’t seem fair, does it,”
Jesse said.
“So what will you do?”
“We’re excavating their past,”
Jesse said, “which seems to have
taken place in Cleveland. We’re trying to keep an eye on them twenty-four/seven.”
“You sound like that’s hard.”
“It is, in a small department in a small town. My guys haven’t
much experience.”
“You do.”
“Yes, I do,” Jesse said. “But I
can’t spend all day and night
keeping them under surveillance. I have to eat, to sleep, to conduct other police business, to fuck you.”
“Yes, fucking me is important.”
“Right now it seems like the only thing I’m any good at,” Jesse
said.
“Pays to specialize,” Marcy said.
“And if you’re fishing for a
compliment, you are very good.”
“Thank you.”
“State police can’t help with the
surveillance?” Marcy
said.
“They’ve taken over the routine night patrols for us,” Jesse
said.
“How about the gun, they must have a gun, if they buy
bullets.”
“We test-fired it,” Jesse said.
“The gun they own didn’t fire
the bullets that killed the victims.”
“So all you can do is watch and wait?”
“Maybe something will turn up in
Cleveland.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We do have one other small something.”
“Really?”
“They came out one night after supper and took pictures of my
home.”
“You saw them?”
“I tailed them there,” Jesse said.
“Well, what on earth …”
“Don’t know,” Jesse said.
“But they seem to have an interest in me and maybe we can encourage them to develop it.”
“Interest?” Marcy said “What
kind of interest.”
“Don’t know yet, but we know that they have one.”
“Both of them, you think?”
“Two guns,” Jesse said.
“So these people have an interest in killing people, and now
they seem interested in you?”
“Is it a great country,” Jesse said,
“or what.”
Marcy took a sip of wine and stared at him for a time without swallowing. She took a deep breath in through her nose, and, finally, swallowed her wine.
“You are going to be bait,” she said.
“Careful bait,” Jesse said.
“My God, how can you be careful bait?”
“Body armor, stay alert,” Jesse said.
“Maybe we’re not in love,” Marcy
said. “But you are the dearest
friend I’ve ever had. I would be devastated if you got killed too.”
“Good to know someone would,” Jesse said.
“But I’m pretty good
at this.”
“Better than they are?”
“Maybe we’ll find out,” Jesse
said.
“If I could talk you out of it, I would,”
Marcy said. “But I
can’t.”
Jesse nodded. Marcy emptied her wineglass. Jesse took the bottle
from the ice bucket and poured her half a glass more.
“So,” she said, “my fallback
position is let’s
fuck.”
Jesse grinned at her. Her dress had buttons all the way down the
front.
“It’s important to keep my hand
in,” he said.
Marcy began to unbutton the dress.
“Or whatever,” she said.
55
Suitcase Simpson came into Jesse’s office with a thick manila
folder.
“I heard back from Cleveland,” he said.
Jesse gestured to a chair. Simpson sat down and put the folder in his lap and opened it.
Simpson said, “Anthony Lincoln was in fact a resident in
ophthalmology at Case Western Medical Center from 1985 to 1990. He married Brianna Douglass in 1988. Her address at that time was twelve twenty-one Buckeye Road, which is in Shaker Heights. Her occupation was listed as attorney.”
“Either of them have a record?”
“No.”
“Cleveland cops have unsolved serial-type killings?”
“One case, not really a clear-cut serial thing. In 1989, a
cabbie was shot in his car on Euclid Ave., presumably by a passenger, two in the back of the head. In 1990 a seventeen-year-old girl was shot at a bus stop in Parma, which is near Cleveland.”
“I know where Parma is,” Jesse said.
“Two in the chest.”
Jesse nodded.
“Both people were killed with twenty-twos.”
“Same gun?” Jesse said.
“No. Cabbie and the girl were both killed with the same two
guns, one shot each time from each gun.”
“Hello,” Jesse said.
“Then it stopped. Cleveland can’t find any connection between
the cabbie and the girl. Neighborhoods are different. They never found the gun. No clues. Nothing.”
“You got someone you’re talking to at Case Western?”
“Yeah, broad in the administration office.”
“Call her back, find out where Tony
Lincoln’s first
post-residency position was, and when he took it.”
“Roger.”
“And while you’re at it,” Jesse
said, “see if you can find out
where Tony did his undergraduate work.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” Jesse said.
“Jeez,” Simpson said. “No wonder
you’re the chief and I’m just a
patrolman.”
“And get hold of the Ohio Bar
Association,” Jesse said. “Find
out whatever you can about Brianna Douglass Lincoln.”
Simpson wrote himself a note in a little yellow spiral-bound notepad that he took from his shirt pocket.
“When I go out,” he said, “and
the press asks me what’s up, does
this permit me to say we’re following up several leads?”
“It does,” Jesse said. “Call
them promising leads if you
want.”
“Yeah,” Simpson said. “Promising
leads. I like
it.”
After Simpson left, Jesse sat and looked out the window. The TV
trucks were still parked across the street. Anthony deAngelo and Eddie Cox were wasting important man-hours keeping the press at bay, and the traffic moving past the trucks. A young man with longish hair, a microphone, and a trench coat was standing in the snow on the lawn, doing a stand-up in front of the station. It seemed to Jesse that all day someone was doing a stand-up. He wondered how many people in the viewing audience were tired of seeing the front door of the Paradise Police Station.
Across the street a red Saab sedan pulled up and stopped in a space between two television trucks, with the passenger side facing the station house. The window slid silently down. Jesse got a pair of binoculars from a file drawer and focused in on the car. Brianna Lincoln was holding a camera, filming the scene. After several minutes, she put the camera down. The window slid silently up. And the Saab pulled away.
Nothing really incriminating. Half a dozen people had come
by since the circus had started, and taken pictures. Jesse rocked slowly against the spring in his swivel chair. Nobody had gone to his house and photographed him, though. Just the Lincolns. Formerly of Cleveland. Why had they taken pictures of where he lived?
The closet in Jesse’s office was located so that one had to
close the office door to open the closet. Jesse did so, and opened the closet door and took out a Kevlar vest. He hefted it, not so heavy. He slipped it on and fastened the Velcro. He put his jacket on over it and zipped up the front. It looked okay. It should work okay, too. Unless they changed their MO.
56
The three boys stood uneasily in front of Jesse’s desk.
“Miss Fiore said we was supposed to come here after school,” Bo
said.
None of the three was defiant. None of them met Jesse’s
gaze.
“You understand why you’re
here,” Jesse said.
“Community service,” Bo said.
“Which the court requires of you.”
They nodded.
“Why?” Jesse said.
“ ‘Cause of Candace,” Kevin
Feeney said.
“What about Candace?” Jesse said.
“Oh come on, man, you know.”
“Don’t call me
‘man,’” Jesse said. “All three
of you copped to
raping her. Is that right?”
Bo said, “Yes, sir.”
The other two nodded.
“So you are not some public-spirited high school kids, doing
some volunteer chores,” Jesse said. “You are three convicted
rapists.”
They all nodded.
“Just so we’re clear,” Jesse
said.
“I regret that you’re not doing
time,” Jesse said. “And if you
fuck up here, maybe I can still get you some. You understand?”
Bo Marino said, “Yes, sir.”
The other two nodded.
“I have no respect for you,” Jesse said.
The three boys didn’t say anything. They didn’t look at Jesse or
each other.
“I think you three are punks.”
None of the three had any answer.
“I am going to make your time here as unpleasant as possible,”
Jesse said.
The three boys looked at the floor. Jesse looked at them for a while without speaking.
“Okay,” he said finally, “go see
Officer Crane at the front
desk. She’ll tell you what to do.”
57
Jesse sat drinking coffee with Captain Healy in the front seat of his Ford Explorer, while the fine snow came down steadily in the parking lot behind the courthouse in downtown Salem.
“You have everything you need but
evidence,” Healy
said.
“That’s all that’s
missing,” Jesse said.
“Except motive.
”
“Well, yeah, that too.”
“Gee,” Healy said. “Hot on the
trail.”
“They did it,” Jesse said.
“I believe you,” Healy said.
“But I’m not the one that needs to
believe you.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
He drank some coffee.
“I can’t even get a search
warrant.”
“Judges hate to issue them on cop
intuition,” Healy said. “Want
some surveillance help?”
“No,” Jesse said.
“Might prevent them from killing the next one,” Healy
said.
“I think I’m the next one,”
Jesse said.
Healy looked at him and raised his eyebrows and didn’t say
anything.
“They’ve been taking pictures,”
Jesse said.
“Of what?”
“My home, the station.”
Healy frowned, watching the steam rise from the triangular tear
in the plastic top of his coffee cup.
“They’re interested in you,”
Healy said.
“I’d say so.”
“And they’re serial killers,”
Healy said.
“I’m convinced of it.”
“And they kill people at random, for no obvious reason,” Healy
said.
“They seem to.”
The snowflakes were very small, and with no wind they fell straight down, like white rain.
“You figure you’re being penciled in as their next victim,”
Healy said.
“Yes.”
“And you figure the picture-taking is foreplay?”
“Something like that.”
Healy said, “I can give you a couple of troopers to watch your
back.”
Jesse shook his head.
“This might be an opportunity,” Jesse said.
“They try to kill you and you catch them in the act?”
“Yeah.”
“Serial killers like ritual,” Healy said.
“So they’ll come at
you from the front, and shoot you one time each.”
“Probably at the same time.”
“Simultaneous climax,” Healy said.
“You think you can keep them
from killing you?”
“Yes.”
“You trust them to come at you the same way,” Healy
said.
“People like these people, they’ll do it the
same.”
“Let’s hope so,” Healy said.
“And, if I fuck up,” Jesse said,
“you can avenge
me.”