“I’m sorry... about before, I mean, at the building site, losing it like that. It was unprofessional.”
“That badge and uniform don’t make you immune.”
“It made me look weak.”
“It made you look human.”
“What do we do first?” she asked.
“We wait until the identities are confirmed and CODs are established.”
Molly stood up. “Okay. I better make some copies of these photos and get back on patrol.”
“Not so fast,” he said. “Sit another minute.”
She didn’t sit. “What is it?”
“Unless I’m way off, these missing girls were the biggest unsolved mystery in Paradise’s history.”
“I guess that’s right. It’s also probably the only unsolved mystery in Paradise’s history.” She laughed. It was a nervous, staccato laugh.
“Then why is today the first I’m hearing about them?”
Molly looked everywhere but at Jesse. Her face reddened.
“I can’t answer that, Jesse. I don’t know.”
Jesse got the sense there was something Molly wasn’t saying, but he let it go. Pushing her now wouldn’t do either of them any good.
8
After Molly left, Jesse went out to talk to Suit. But Suit spoke first.
“Molly okay? She’s acting weird.”
Jesse nodded.
“Word’s spreading, Jesse... about the bodies. Stu Cromwell from the paper just called for you.”
“I figure we’ve got about an hour before it goes national. Then the phone’s going to ring off the hook.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“For now, say that there won’t be any comment until we get autopsy results and official IDs on the bodies. I’ll scribble something out that we can release as an official statement. I’ll call over to the mayor’s office to see if we can’t get someone to answer the station house line, so you can do your job. I’ll handle Cromwell.”
“Thanks, Jesse.”
“How old were you when the girls disappeared?”
“I was a kid. I wasn’t even sure what was going on, really. All I can remember about it was how freaked-out my mom and all the other moms on the block were. She made all of us stay close to the house that summer, especially my big sister.”
“Did your mom or dad talk to you guys about what happened?”
Suit laughed. “My folks weren’t great communicators, Jesse. But you know how grandmas talk about bad things? You know, like when they talk about cancer and they whisper it or call it the C word? It was like that. We could always tell when the parents on the block were talking about what happened to those girls because they would whisper or look... I don’t know.”
“Ashamed?”
Suit shrugged his big shoulders. “Like I said, I don’t know.”
“Anybody ever talk about it after that summer?”
“The next summer, I think. Around the Fourth, maybe. But after that, I can’t remember people ever bringing it up. Until this morning I had forgotten about it. I guess there’s some shame in that.”
“You look hard enough at anything,” Jesse said, “and you’ll find some shame in it. You recall anything else about that summer, you come to me with it.”
“You mean don’t talk to Molly about it.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Guess I’m not as dumb as I look,” Suit said, but only half jokingly.
“You keep handing me straight lines like that and I’m going to start calling you Luther. And no, Suit, I never thought you were dumb.”
“Thanks, Jesse.”
“Forget it. Do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
“Call the paper and get Stu Cromwell over here.”
Suit tilted his head, furrowed his brow. “I thought you hated the press.”
“They have their uses,” Jesse said, a smile on his face.
“You going to give him an interview?”
“We’ll let him think that.”
Suit punched the paper’s number into the phone.
9
There was a knock at Jesse’s door. He knew who it was just by the size of the shadow behind the pebbled glass.
“Come on in, Stu,” he said, standing to greet the newspaperman.
Stu Cromwell strode into the office. He was in his sixties, but still an imposing figure. Tall, lean, and fit, he had piercing blue eyes and a mop of white hair. He was a favorite son of Paradise, a local boy who’d made a name for himself on the world stage and come back home to settle down. Unfortunately, the local papers he’d most recently worked for failed as regularly as Hollywood marriages. He’d gotten so fed up with his employers going under that he and his wife had bought out the last failing paper with their own money. Now the Paradise Herald belonged to them.
Jesse waved his arm at the chair across from his desk. “Sit.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cromwell said, shaking Jesse’s hand. “I appreciate the invitation.”
Jesse liked that about Cromwell. He had manners.
“How’s Martha?”
“Not so good. The chemo’s been rough on her and the prognosis isn’t great.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks, Jesse, but I suspect you didn’t call me over here to ask about my wife.”
Jesse shook his head.
“Is it them, Jesse, Mary Kate O’Hara and Ginny Connolly?” Cromwell asked, easing into the chair. As he sat, he flipped open a notepad.
“Officially or off the record?”
Cromwell said, “Let’s start with officially.”
“Until the medical examiner determines their identities, it would be foolish of me to speculate.”
Cromwell laughed. He closed his notepad. “Okay, how about off the record?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe it’s the missing girls.”
“Maybe probably or maybe unlikely?”
“Maybe probably.”
Cromwell rubbed his clean-shaven chin, opened his notepad. “Their remains are skeletal, so why probably?”
“Nice try, Stu.” Jesse clapped his hands together. “If I answered the question in that form, I’d be confirming something that’s not been officially acknowledged.”
“It was worth a shot,” Cromwell said. “But everybody in town knows you found two skeletons in close proximity to the body in the blue tarp. If you’re not going to talk to me about this stuff, why did you call me over here?”
“Did I say I wasn’t going to talk to you?”
Cromwell closed his notepad again. Laughed again. “A little squid pro quo, huh, Jesse? You scratch my octopus and I’ll scratch yours.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who’s going to scratch whose octopus first?” Cromwell asked.
Jesse never had much use for the press. And his attitude toward the media only got worse after his ex, Jenn, a failed actress, had risen from the weather girl at a Boston TV station to a reporter on a syndicated magazine show. Jenn was smart, but she wasn’t the most savvy person about world affairs and politics. The only subject Jenn was an expert on was herself, but it wasn’t only Jenn’s narrow focus that fueled Jesse’s contempt for the press. He had found her colleagues to be a bunch of self-important boobs. Stu Cromwell was neither self-important nor a boob. And it was Jesse’s sense of things that reporters, especially newspaper reporters, always knew more than they would or could say. They were like cops in that way.
“I wasn’t here when the girls went missing,” Jesse said, “so I’m operating in the dark. I could use someone who knew the landscape back then the way you would have known it.”
“What about your cops? Some of them grew up here and have never left.”
“I’ll talk to them. I have talked to some of them already.”