Jesse remembered his own words in describing his John Doe to the press. The tattoo, the intravenous drug use.
“Doc, does Jameson have tan lines?”
Both Crier and Healy looked at Jesse like he had suddenly sprouted antlers.
“That’s a bizarre question,” the doctor said.
“Humor me.”
Dr. Crier shrugged. “As a matter of fact, he does. Pretty intense ones.”
Jesse asked, “Can we see him?”
“He’s unconscious.”
“Then he won’t mind, will he?”
Three minutes later, Crier, Healy, and Jesse were standing around Jameson’s bed in the ICU.
Jesse asked for the doctor to show him Jameson’s wounds and the proof of his drug use.
“I’m sorry, Chief Stone, but I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Listen, Doc, I’ve got three unsolved homicides that the man in that bed might have the answers to. Can you guarantee me he’s going to wake up?”
“Guarantee? No.”
“Then show me what I asked for, please. I don’t have time to run around getting court orders.”
The doctor took hold of Jameson’s left arm and gently turned it over to expose ugly track-mark scars. “It’s the same on his other arm,” Crier said, pulling up the sleeve of Jameson’s gown to point out the sharp lines of demarcation between the sun-browned skin of his arm below his triceps and the sickly pale skin above it. There were the tattoos: military and prison tats, just as the motel clerk from Diablito had described them to Jesse. Jameson had to be the man who had spoken to Suit over the phone. Then Crier pulled down the blanket that covered Jameson from his waist. The scars on his legs were just as the doctor had described them. They were painful to look at.
“Thanks, Doc,” Jesse said.
“You surprise me, Chief.”
“How so?”
“You haven’t asked to see the other tattoo. The one on his left side, under his arm,” Crier said. “Pretty creepy. It’s of a cross and a—”
“Two-headed rattlesnake,” Jesse finished his sentence.
Crier’s eyes got big. “How could you know that?”
“Not now, Doc. Where are Jameson’s clothes? I need to see his clothes.”
70
Healy left Jesse at the hospital, saying he had to wrap some things up in Framingham and that he would give the state marine unit a call to help motivate them to look for the Dragoa Rainha. Jesse didn’t doubt there were loose ends that needed tying up in Framingham and he appreciated any help Healy could give him tracking down Dragoa. But the real reason Healy left had much more to do with what Jesse found stuffed in Jameson’s jacket pocket than the search for Dragoa. Over the course of his career, Healy had delivered all kinds of horrific news to people. People who’d done nothing to deserve the tragedies that he brought to doorsteps. Even so, hardened as he was, he didn’t want to be anywhere near Paradise that night when it was Jesse’s turn to bring tragedy to someone’s door.
First Jesse had to drive Suit home. But before he could do that, Bill Marchand showed up at the ER. Maybe he’d judged Marchand too harshly the other day, Jesse thought. No one else from the town government had showed up to check on Suit. In most municipalities, it was tradition for the mayor to pay a visit to the hospital when a cop is hurt on the job. Not in Paradise, apparently, and not when the town had gotten so much bad press. Jesse had to give Marchand credit for coming.
“How is Suit?” Marchand asked, shaking Jesse’s hand.
“He’ll live. If the gunshot didn’t kill him, that rusty old pickup wasn’t going to do it.”
“And the other gentleman?”
“Jameson,” Jesse said.
“Who is he, exactly?”
“He’d come to town to help us identify our John Doe. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance.”
“What’s his condition?”
“He’s still unconscious. The doctor thinks the next few hours are critical.”
“What do you think about what happened, Jesse?”
“I think what Alexio Dragoa did is a strong indication that he had something to do with the deaths of Ginny Connolly and Mary Kate O’Hara.”
“But you don’t think he acted alone?”
“I don’t have any real evidence even he was involved,” Jesse said. “But I think the mayor can exhale and relax a little. We’re close. I just need to find Dragoa.”
“Good luck, Jesse. Let me know if I can help. If you can give the mayor something soon, I’m pretty sure you’ll keep your job.”
“You just like winning at softball.”
Marchand smiled. “There is that. Now I’d like to go talk to Suit for a minute, if I could. I’d like to express my appreciation.”
Jesse pointed to his left. “Suit’s in there. Tell him to hurry up, that getting hit by a truck is no excuse for making me wait.”
For a brief second, he considered calling out to Marchand and telling him what he’d found in Jameson’s pockets. He decided against it. When he was this close to finally putting the murders behind him, he thought he’d better make sure of his facts. A misstep at this point by raising expectations too high might lose him the job he thought he had just saved.
71
He caught Molly at the station as she was about to leave for home. Jesse was inscrutable by nature. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. His face wasn’t an open book. So for him to look at her the way he was looking at her meant something was wrong, terribly wrong. Molly could feel her heart pounding. Her mouth was cotton, her palms wet. She was light-headed. Her vision blurred at the edges in stark contrast to the painfully sharp image of Jesse’s face.
“Is it Suit? Did something happen to Suit?”
“He’s fine, Molly. I just dropped him at home.”
“My kids! Did something—”
Jesse grabbed her shoulders and shook her just enough to get her attention. “It’s not like that. Come on into my office.”
He let go of her arms, but somehow she couldn’t move. She felt glued to the floor. Her legs leaden, numb. When she realized Peter Perkins and the other cops coming on shift were staring at her, and she remembered losing it outside the collapsed building where she had discovered the bodies of her long-missing friends, she talked herself into putting one foot before the other. She wouldn’t let the others see her be weak. She had had to fight that fight to be accepted as an equal for years and wasn’t up to doing battle on that front again.
Inside the office they sat on opposite sides of Jesse’s desk. They were quiet together. It was an intimate thing sometimes for two people to be silent together, and this was an intimate moment between them. Jesse broke the silence.
“We think we’ve finally IDed our blue tarp John Doe.”
Molly was confused. If Suit was all right and her family was fine and this was just about a body in the morgue, why, she wondered, had Jesse’s expression been so grave? She couldn’t make sense of it.
Jesse understood her confusion and handed a plastic evidence bag to Molly.
“We found that in Jameson’s jacket pocket.”
In the bag was a small, white-bordered, color-faded photo, what used to be called a wallet-size print. It was the type of print you used to get when cameras had film inside them instead of memory cards and folks carried photos in their wallets instead of in their phones. These prints were usually offered as bonuses by photo booths as an incentive to have the developing done by them. Print two or more thirty-six-exposure rolls with us and we’ll throw in small prints for friends and family. As Molly stared at the image of a pretty teenage girl in the arms of a tall, brown-haired boy, Jesse thought back to a time when every strip mall and parking lot in the country had a little photo hut.