Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

“Looks like him, but he had no ID on him and the car was stolen. We’ll be certain as soon as we run the prints.”

“So what else do we have, Jesse? I mean, who would kill someone out here, of all places?”

“I’ll tell you that when we have some idea about the evidence.”

“C’mon, Jesse, give me something.”

He thought about that for a second before answering. His instinct was to say nothing. He still didn’t trust Nita as far as he could throw her, but he also knew that having her in his debt for once might not be a bad thing.

“There’s something not right about this.”

She laughed a laugh disconnected from amusement. “Not right! Nothing’s right about this.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’ve done a fair amount of homicide investigations. I’ve been to a lot of murder scenes and this one just feels wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

Again, he hesitated. He didn’t want to say anything that she might be able to turn against him later if his sense was wrong.

“Just this,” he said. “If you were Curnutt, would you come back to Paradise? And it was called in by an anonymous caller, not to nine-one-one, but to the station landline. Someone wanted us to know the body was here and wasn’t waiting for a jogger to find him.”

“You think it was the killer?”

“Maybe.”

“Jeez, Jesse, do you think you have some kind of psycho on your hands?”

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.”