Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

He didn’t like that. She didn’t expect that he would, but she figured she might as well use her newfound strength to tell him the truth. Of course the first thing he did was pick up the bottle and pour himself another drink.

Tamara had walked slowly past him toward the staircase, making certain not to look back. Even as she made her way up to the guest bedroom, she knew that looking back, regretting or not regretting, would be for later.

Later was now, and playing it over in her mind yet again wasn’t going to change a thing. She got off the bed, went into the bathroom, and got dressed. She crept down the stairs as quietly as possible and let herself out. As she drove away at the first glimmer of dawn, she could not help but look back and wonder what might have been.

17

Unlike regular people, cops didn’t even think about it when they walked into a hospital. In fact, cops usually have pleasant associations with them, having to do with nurses. There’s a certain inescapable commonality between their experiences. During his days with the LAPD, Jesse had dated a fair share of nurses and had had a serious relationship with one or two of them. But that wasn’t what he had on his mind as he walked through the doors of Paradise General. He was thinking about the last time he’d been there.

Everyone in the room knew Diana was dead. There was an unmistakable quality to death. Yet as distinct and recognizable as death is to people familiar with it, none of them could have explained it to you. Jesse had given it a lot of thought over the years and the best he could come up with was that there was a vacancy and stillness in death that couldn’t be faked or re-created. Though he knew she was dead, Jesse insisted on Diana being brought to the hospital. Although he knew as well as anyone that Diana was dead, he just couldn’t stand the thought of her being brought directly to the county morgue.

In the corridor now, the odd mix of odors — disinfectant, ammonia, the metallic tang of blood — odors he had once gone nose blind to, were getting to him. He didn’t cry. He didn’t get nauseated. It wasn’t his way. Jesse Stone didn’t turn himself inside out for the world to see. That was, in part, what his drinking was about, about control, at least according to Dix. He and Dix had gone round and round about the subject. Dix always coming back to the same question: Did Jesse use alcohol to help control who he really was, or to free himself from who he wasn’t? As Jesse walked up to the nurses’ station, he noticed his hands were shaking. This time, he couldn’t pretend it was all about alcohol.

“Is Dr. Marx available?” Jesse asked, his hands in his jacket pockets.

The nurse looked up from the computer screen, smiled at Jesse, and asked him to wait while she paged the doctor.

When the short, stocky man with the jaunty walk, dressed in blue scrubs under a white coat, came up to the nurses’ station, Jesse was on the phone, leaving a message for Tamara. As he approached Jesse, the smile disappeared from Dr. Marx’s face. It was Marx who had been in the ER the day Diana was brought in.

“Chief Stone,” Marx said. “I’m so sorry about—”

“No need, Doc. There was nothing you could do. I know that.”

“You’re here about Mr. Walsh.”

“The MassEx guy, yes. Officer Crane tells me he’s pretty banged up.”

“He’s actually quite seriously injured and another blow to his head might have killed him or caused permanent brain trauma. As it is, he’s sustained a serious concussion.”

“But I can talk to him?”

“Briefly and under the condition that you speak softly and try not to get him agitated. Have you ever had a concussion?”

Jesse nodded that he had. His memory of it wasn’t a happy one.

“Then you’ll understand that you must try not to trigger or exacerbate any of his symptoms.”

“Uh-huh.”

Marx ushered him into a quiet, darkened room, the doctor indicating that Jesse should stay by the door. Marx walked over to the bed and whispered to Walsh, but just loudly enough for Jesse to hear.

“Okay, Chief Stone. I’ll leave you to it. Please don’t raise your voice, open the curtains, or—”

“I’ve got it, Doc.”

After Marx left, Jesse sat on a cushioned stool next to the hospital bed.

“Mr. Walsh, I’m Chief Stone of the Paradise PD, but call me Jesse.”

“I’m Rudy,” the MassEx guy said, his voice a rasp, the words slurred. “I’d shake your hand, but.”

Jesse lightly patted Rudy’s shoulder, leaving his hand there. “No need. I have a few questions for you about what happened to you on Saturday.”

He felt Rudy tense. “Saturday? What day is it today?”

Jesse remembered his concussion after he got beaned during a game in A ball. He didn’t actually remember getting hit, but he remembered the confusion, the headaches, the general sense of unease he felt in its wake.

“Relax, Rudy. It’s Monday. Can you recall how you came to be here in the hospital?”

“Some of it, but I’m not sure how much of it really happened and what I’m mixing up.”

“That’s okay. Let me worry about what’s real and what isn’t. Just tell me what you can.”