'You're James Macklin's girlfriend.'
'Was,' Faye said with no inflection in her voice.
'And you saw me one night in the Gray Gull having a drink with Abby Taylor, and because of the way she was acting, you decided she must be my girlfriend.'
Faye had no reaction.
'And when I came to ask you about Macklin and Cromartie, you knew that the thing on Stiles Island was already going down, and you got scared that I'd screw it up, so you went and grabbed Abby to use as a hostage. In case I had Macklin, you figured maybe you could barter my girlfriend for your boyfriend. You were wrong about me and Abby, but that wasn't your fault. You made a reasonable surmise.'
Faye sat motionless, looking at nothing.
'Why'd you do that?' Jesse said.
Faye looked at him sharply. It was the first reaction he'd gotten.
'Why the fuck do you think?' she said.
'I figure it's because you loved him and would do anything you could to save him.'
Faye was silent a long time. But she was looking at Jesse. Her eyes were alive. She began to nod her head slowly.
Finally she said, 'Yes,' her voice full of force.
Jesse leaned back in his swivel chair and rocked gently, balancing the chair with the tips of his toes.
'You got any money?' Jesse said after a time.
Faye didn't answer.
'She had a thousand dollars in her bra when I brought her in,' Molly said.
Jesse nodded. Faye's face was pinched and white as if she were in pain.
'Go get her money,' Jesse said to Molly.
Molly stared at him for a moment and then left the room without closing the door. Neither Faye nor Jesse spoke while she was gone. Molly came back into the room with an envelope and handed it to Faye.
'I'm going to take her for a ride,' Jesse said.
'Alone?' Molly said.
'Yep.'
'A female prisoner, Jesse? You're leaving yourself wide open.'
'It'll be okay,' Jesse said in just that calm way that Molly understood. It meant, I will do this no matter what anybody says.
Molly nodded once in submission and went back to the front desk. Jesse took Faye's arm, and they walked out to Jesse's official car and got in. Faye didn't say a word. She held the envelope that Molly had given her in her lap. She hadn't opened it. She didn't ask where they were going. Jesse went over the Tobin Bridge and turned off in City Square and drove back down past the Navy Yard to Faye's condo. When he got there and parked the car, he turned in the seat and looked at her.
'I know you don't believe it, but maybe you can remember that I said it. You will get over this. In time you will feel better. In time, and I know you don't want to now, you may meet another guy.'
Faye shrugged, looking at the envelope in her lap.
'You're free to go,' Jesse said.
Faye stared at him.
'I killed Jimmy because I had to,' Jesse said.
'I don't have to do anything to you.'
Faye stared at him some more without moving.
'This doesn't wash it clean,' Faye said.
'Nothing will,' Jesse said.
'In time it will be easier.'
Faye still sat in the car, staring.
'Get going. Don't hang around here. Go far away, and I won't look for you.'
Faye opened the car door and got out slowly and walked toward the stairs to her condo. Jesse waited as she went up. She took a key from the mailbox and opened her door. She stopped in the doorway and looked back at Jesse. Then she went in and closed the door, and Jesse backed the car around and drove back to Paradise.
When he walked into the station alone, Molly said, 'Where's the woman?'
'She escaped,' Jesse said and kept walking into his office and sat down at his desk.
Molly followed him in.
'Escaped?' Molly said.
Jesse nodded.
'The biggest collar I ever made,' Molly said.
'You still get credit for the collar. I'm the one lost her.'
'Lost her, bullshit,' Molly said.
'You let her go, you sentimental dumb son of a bitch.'
'Molly, I am your chief.'
'And you are also a sentimental dumb son of a bitch,' Molly said.
Jesse shrugged. Molly came around the desk and bent over and kissed him on the mouth, then straightened and walked out of the office. Jesse got some Kleenex out of the bottom drawer and wiped his mouth.
SIXTY-EIGHT.
It was Sunday morning. Jesse and Jenf were in Rowley, sitting at the counter of the Agawam diner, eating ham and scrambled eggs and home fries and toast.
'Do you know what happened to the ones that got away?'
'Not exactly. A big power boat washed up on the beach north of Port City couple days ago. There was a dead man in it. Guy , named Fred Costa, had a record.'
'How'd he die?' Jenn said.
The diner was warm with the smell of coffee and bacon. Outside the diner, along old Route One the trees were just beginning to turn.
'Bullet in the head.'
'You think he was involved?'
'Maybe.'
'And the Indian one?'
'Wilson Cromartie,' Jesse said.
'No sign.'
'And all that money?'
'Gone.'
'Still you got three of them,' Jenn said.
'Actually I got one of them,' Jesse said.
'They had already killed two of their own.'
'And you saved the hostages.'
'Sort of,' Jesse said.
'What do you mean sort of?'
Jesse nodded at the thick woman behind the counter, and she poured more coffee into his cup. He added some cream, looked at it as it spiraled slowly into the coffee. He added two spoonfuls of sugar and stirred it, watching the color change. Then he took a sip.
'Well,' he said.
'Marcy Campbell told me that Cromartie let the women go.'
'Really?'
'Yeah. He said he wasn't hiding behind women. If he'd held them and stayed put, I'd have been fucked.'
'You think he was that gallant?'
'Gallant,' Jesse said.
'Nice word. I don't know. Maybe he just wanted all the money.'
'He could still have taken them as hostages to protect himself until he got away.'
'True,' Jesse said.
'On the other hand, he might have figured he could move better traveling lighter.'
'I think he was gallant,' Jenn said.
'If Fred Costa was the guy driving the boat, he gallantly shot him in the back of the head.'
'You don't know that he was.'
'No. Maybe we will. Fred was from Mattapoisett. State Cops are down there asking around, see if we can turn up anything. A connection to Macklin or Cromartie or either of the two dead guys.'
'You've ID'd them? The other two men?'
Jesse smiled. A cop's wife, she fell into the jargon easily, and what sounded natural in the station sounded strange from her lips.
'Yeah, they've both done time. One's from Baltimore. One's from Atlanta.'
'Well, I hope the Indian man gets away,' Jenn said.
'Even though he seems to have abandoned his partner to me and may have shot some guy to death on his boat and who knows who did the two guys on the island?'
'Yes.'
'Because he was gallant about the women hostages?'
'Well, he was.'
Jesse smiled at her.
'Okay,' Jesse said.
'And if I ever catch him, I'll tell him you said so.'
'I hope you don't catch him. Is that Hopkins bitch still after you?'
'Probably,' Jesse said.
'But she's laying low at the moment.'
'Be kind of hard to say you weren't doing your job right, with all the papers in the state calling you a hero.'
'She'll wait,' Jesse said.
'I don't think she'll go away.'
'She can't be happy you let me go.'
'No.'
'You let a woman go too,' Jenn said.
'Molly told me.'
'She's supposed to keep her mouth shut,' Jesse said.
'It's okay to tell me,' Jenn said.
'You're special?'
'I certainly am,' Jenn said.
'You certainly are,' Jesse said.
Jenn was quiet while she sipped some coffee. Jesse ate some eggs.
'How you and short stuff doing?' Jesse said.
'Tony?'
'Yeah. He fall off his cowboy boots yet?'
'Oh, Tony's a news anchor, Jesse.'
'So?'
'So he's frivolous.'
'How about policemen, are they frivolous?'
'No,' Jenn said.
Jesse bit the end off of a triangle of toast.
'So are you being frivolous with Tony these days?'
'I guess that isn't really your business, is it?'
Jesse felt the lump that was always there thicken again inside him.
'No,' he said, 'I guess it isn't.'
Jenn patted his forearm.
'I understand that it's hard not to ask,' she said.
'But sometimes the only way to keep something is to let it go.'
'Divorce isn't letting go
