Nita’s use of the word you didn’t escape Jesse’s notice. Jesse had given her all he was going to. “I think a lot of things right now. That’s why I have to see what comes of the evidence.”
Nita Thompson shook her head. “Two murders in town in less than a week. It’s a nightmare for all of us.”
Jesse understood that the biggest nightmare was his. Nita and the mayor’s nightmare was about how to spin the news and control the fallout. His was solving the murders and saving his job.
41
Jesse didn’t particularly enjoy using his authority in a threatening way, but there were times he just had to. He hated bullying people. Hated bullies. Hated them as a kid, as a ballplayer — even when they were teammates — and as a cop. As a cop most of all. He had his share of run-ins with them since his arrival in Paradise. It never ended well for the bullies. And so it was with very little enthusiasm that he warned the guys who worked for the ME’s office about not revealing the exact location of where the body had been found.
“Not a word,” he said, giving them both an icy stare. “Not to your wives, not to your kids, not to your friends. No one. You do and you’ll answer to me.”
He’d asked Tamara to reinforce his message. She agreed, but was curious.
“What’s the point, Jesse?”
“Until I know what’s really going on here, I don’t need any other headaches.”
“You know, Jesse, it’s impolite to lie to your friends. What’s the real reason?”
“I don’t like speculating about crimes, especially murders, but my hunch is that the person who killed our vic called it in.”
“Why, and why wait a day?”
“Good questions. The obvious answer is that he wanted us to know. The less obvious reason is why he wanted us to know. Why wait a day? My guess is that he was hoping a jogger or someone walking their dog would stumble across the body. When that didn’t happen, he got impatient.”
“Sounds more like he needed you to find the body more than wanted you to,” she said.
Jesse smiled at her. “Exactly. It’s like he needs the attention of the press. So I want to starve him of the attention as much as we can. Things work best when everyone’s agendas line up. At the moment, I don’t want to deal with the press any more than the mayor does. And if the killer’s trying to screw with my department... good luck with that.”
“What if you’re too successful with robbing him of attention and he kills again?”
Jesse ignored the question. “When will I get the autopsy results?”
“Voilà!” she said, handing him the file. “It’s him, by the way, Curnutt. We printed him and sent the prints to Lundquist and your office. Got an immediate hit.”
“Good. And don’t worry about another body turning up. Curnutt’s wasn’t an impulse or random killing.”
“You look more human than you did this morning, and you smell a lot better.”
He answered without looking up from the file. “Molly gave me a few hours’ cover and I got some sleep and some food in me. Amazing what a shower, shave, and some cologne will do.”
“Okay, Jesse, leave the file and get out of my office. I’ve got work to do.”
“Thanks, Doc,” he said, put the file down on Tamara’s desk, and walked to the door.
“Jesse,” she called after him. “You can’t keep drinking this way. You just can’t.”
“Why not? Afraid my liver will explode?”
“There’s that, too, but no. You can’t keep on like this because it’s selfish and you’re not a selfish man.”
Tamara’s parting words rang in Jesse’s head louder than the hammer that had pounded in it earlier that day. So loud that he could barely pay attention as he sat across the table from Lundquist at Daisy’s. He did have the wherewithal to introduce Lundquist to Daisy when she brought the coffeepot over to their booth. She was her usual diplomatic self. Which is to say it was a good thing Lundquist wasn’t easily offended.
“Lundquist, huh? Norwegian?”
“Swedish.”
“Too bad.” She didn’t elaborate.
Jesse said, “He’s taken over Captain Healy’s job.”
“Healy. I liked Healy. He was a good tipper. Swedes good tippers?”
“Depends,” Lundquist said.
Daisy sneered at him and shook her head. “Wrong answer, son. Wrong answer.”
“She always so charming?” Lundquist asked when she walked away.
Jesse said, “On her good days, yeah. You read the autopsy report?”
“It’s Curnutt.”
Jesse wanted to know, “Anything else in the report catch your eye?”
Lundquist didn’t answer right away. He reached for his coffee mug instead, put in an obscene amount of sugar and a few drops of cream. Halfway to his lips, he put his coffee mug back on the table. “Wait a second. Is this right? There were traces of filter paper and metal fragments in the wounds not from the bullets dug out of the body. Holy sh — crap, the killer used a homemade sound suppressor.”
“Looks that way.”
“What’s that tell you, Brian?”
“It’s evidence of premeditation.”
“What else?”
“He used a homemade suppressor. Tells me he was an amateur.”
“Or not. Maybe he just wants us to think he is.”
Lundquist rubbed his left hand across his cheek. “You think this guy is playing with us?”
Jesse didn’t say anything. He just sat there drinking his coffee.
42
This time, the press conference was held at the police station and Mayor Walker was nowhere in sight. Even Nita Thompson hadn’t gotten closer than a TV screen in her office. If Jesse’s plan to starve the media of information went wrong, it would blow up in his face and his face alone. It would also supply the mayor with the excuse she’d been looking for to make Jesse an issue. Nothing like firing someone to look like a woman of action and to draw attention away from the real issue at hand.
Jesse understood the risks. He knew that Nita Thompson hadn’t gone along with his plan out of the goodness of her heart. He still wasn’t sure she had a heart. No, she had gone along with it because there was only an upside for her client. It was a win-win situation for the mayor, no matter how things turned out. But why had Jesse done it if all the risk was his? That was simple. He’d bought himself and his cops room to maneuver. In the end, what mattered to Jesse wasn’t losing his job or looking good in the press. What mattered was catching the bad guys.
What had become pretty clear to him, even if it wasn’t yet clear to anyone else, was that the ransacking of Maude Cain’s house, her death, and Kirk Kingston Curnutt’s murder were a continuation of the same crime. In spite of Jesse’s own rules about jumping to conclusions, he knew there had to be a connection. The bigger question was: Why murder Curnutt in that spot? Why murder him in Paradise at all? The answer seemed an obvious one: to draw as much attention as possible. For the moment, there was nothing to do on Curnutt’s homicide until some of the forensics results came back.
“Molly, come into my office,” he said after the press had cleared out.
She wasn’t happy. “What is it, Jesse? I’m exhausted.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“Five minutes! I gave you two hours and I’ve been on the clock since... Jeez, I don’t even remember which shift I started on.”
“Think of the overtime pay.”
“Right after I stop thinking about strangling you. You drink and I suffer. How does that work?”
“Believe me, Molly, I suffered. I’m still suffering. I’m probably going to suffer all night if I don’t take a—”
“Woe is you.”
“Molly!”