Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

When he came back through the doors, he stopped next to Bolton’s booth. “Mickey Coyle sent me. You Hump?”

Bolton straightened up in his seat, wincing in pain at the effort, looking at Jesse. There was a strange blankness in the big man’s expression, but Bolton didn’t say anything.

Jesse pushed him. “Look, you got something for me to look at or not?”

Bolton still didn’t say anything. As Jesse waited him out, he saw that below table level, Bolton’s sweatshirt was soaked through with blood. His pants were wet with it, too.

“Sit,” Bolton said finally.

Jesse sat across from him, resting his gun hand on his thigh, making sure the barrel was pointed directly at Bolton’s midsection. “So, Bolton, what you got? Let’s see.”

“Coyle didn’t send you or... maybe he did. He always was a scumbag. You a cop?” Bolton asked. “What you got under the jacket, a .38 or a nine-millimeter?”

Jesse didn’t figure it was worth arguing. “A nine, and it’s pointed right at your gut.”

Bolton laughed, his body twisting in pain. “Find another target, cop. I already got a nice hole in me there.”

“Shot?”

“Stabbed. Son-of-a-bitch tweaker I stayed with last night stuck a kitchen knife in my belly. I think he clipped my liver. I don’t think he got a liver no more, not after what I done to him.”

“I’ve got a doctor outside. You slide out of the booth, let me pat you down, and I’ll get her in here to look at you.”

Bolton ignored him. “You Boston PD?”

“Paradise police chief, Jesse Stone.”

“Chief, huh?” He laughed, his body clenching in pain again. “I’m moving up in the world. Listen, Stone, we didn’t mean to kill the old woman, I swear on my mother. She just... you know.”

“I know. Who hired you?”

Hump shrugged. “King made all of them arrangements.”

“What were you looking for in the house?”

“A key or a piece of paper with numbers on it, stuff like that.”

“Curnutt found it. Did you know he found it?”

“No, he fucked me with that.”

“You think the guy who hired you guys killed King?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Just because it figures don’t make it so.”

“Let me get the doctor in here for you.”

“Nah, I’m done. The only reason I’m even still breathing is because I’ve been tooting on some crank every few minutes.”

Jesse asked, “You still have the ring?”

“In the balled-up socks in my sweatshirt,” Bolton said, his words slurred, his eyes fluttering. “It’s a beautiful thing. You seen it?”

“Uh-huh. Pictures of it.”

“Maybe you should get that doctor in here. I don’t think—”

But before Hump Bolton could finish, he slumped over in the booth and fell onto the floor. Jesse quickly stepped around to Bolton, dragged him away from the booth, and laid him on his back. Jesse patted Bolton down, pulled the gun out of his waistband, and pushed it along the floor behind him.

Jesse held up his shield. “Police. Call nine-one-one and get an ambulance and backup here. You.” He pointed to one of the guys sitting at the bar. “Go outside. There’s a woman doctor out there. Get her in here. Now!”

The guy jumped off his barstool and ran through the door. But by the time Tamara made it inside, it was too late. Hump Bolton was dead. Jesse didn’t need the medical examiner now standing over his shoulder to tell him so. He knew death when he saw it.

77

Tamara had tried her best to get Bolton’s heart started again. When the ambulance got there, the EMTs took over, but it was all wasted effort.

“I’ve got no clue how he was even talking to you, Jesse,” Tamara said between giving statements to the Boston cops. “He was suffering from profound blood loss and that was a nasty wound.” She shook her head. “I usually get them when they’re already dead and their stories are already written. Sometimes I forget how powerful and stubborn the mind can be. It can make the human body ignore the fact that it should have stopped functioning.”

“You should have been a philosopher, Doc.”

Before she could answer, a man who introduced himself as Detective Hanrahan interrupted.

“Chief Stone,” he said. “We need to talk.”

Hanrahan was a few inches shorter and about ten years younger than Jesse, but his blue eyes were weary. They sat down across from each other at a front booth.

“Boston’s not your patch, Chief. What were you doing here?”

“Bolton was a suspect in a homicide and an assault in Paradise. His partner was—”

“Yeah, yeah, I read the papers. Still don’t explain what you were doing here.”

“I got a tip from a CI.”

Hanrahan laughed a sneering laugh. “A confidential informant, huh? This is one of Vinnie Morris’s joints. Nothing happens here without him knowing about it.”

“You’d know better than me.”

“Why didn’t you alert the BPD?”

Jesse answered with a cocktail of lies and the truth. “Because I heard Bolton wanted to give himself up, but that he’d only surrender to me. I was afraid that if I did anything else, it might create a hostage situation.”

Hanrahan liked that answer about as much as he would a cancer diagnosis, but he couldn’t argue with it except to say, “You should have let us know before you went in. You always travel with an ME?”