“I don’t take shit,” Bellino said.
“We all take shit,” Jesse said. “And we all like to pretend we don’t.”
“You think I’m pretending?”
“Nobody likes to face up to being a stupid drunk,” Jesse said.
“You calling me stupid?”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Everybody’s stupid when they drink.”
“You little fuck,” Bellino said, and shoved Jesse.
Jesse kneed him in the groin. As Bellino flinched, his head lowered and Jesse took a left handful of his hair and pulled Bellino forward past him and caught Bellino’s wrist with his right hand and turned Bellino’s arm up behind Bellino’s back. He ran Bellino across the small cell and banged him face first up against the cell wall and held him there. Bellino was gasping for air. Jesse held him against the wall another minute while the hot haze of his anger seeped back into him and dissipated. When Jesse let Bellino go, Bellino staggered to the bunk along the other wall of the cell and sank onto it, his breath rasping in and out.
“I want you to be quiet,” Jesse said. “Later this morning someone will take you over to Peabody and you’ll appear before a magistrate and pay a fine and go home… quietly.”
Bellino nodded.
“Everybody’s a jerk sometimes,” Jesse said.
“You hadn’t kicked me in the balls…” Bellino said.
“But I did,” Jesse said. “And might again.”
“Cops ain’t supposed to hit somebody they arrested.”
Jesse smiled at him. “That’s correct,” Jesse said.
He turned and left the cell and locked the door.
Chapter Seven
It was a bright summer morning. Jesse was feeling good. Every day you don’t have a hangover is a good day. He pulled the unmarked Ford off of Summer Street up onto Morton Drive. At the end of the drive, parked on a shoulder near the lake, was a Paradise cruiser. Suitcase Simpson was leaning on it with his arms folded. As Jesse approached, he held up a clear plastic evidence bag.
“Found this about a half mile that way,” Simpson said. “Right near the water. Eddie’s still down there, but I thought you should see this.”
Jesse put out his hand. Simpson gave him the bag. In it was a densely engraved ring with a big blue stone. There was a broken length of gold chain tangled around the ring.
“School ring,” Jesse said.
“That’s my guess,” Simpson said. “I didn’t want to handle it more than I had to so I dropped it right into the bag as soon as I found it.”
“The chain with it?”
“Looped through, just like that,” Simpson said.
Jesse opened the evidence bag and took out the ring.
“What about prints?” Simpson said.
“No chance,” Jesse said. “Look at the surface.”
“Maybe the stone, though.”
Jesse smiled. “I won’t touch the stone.”
Jesse looked at the ring. Engraved around the blue stone were the words SWAMPSCOTT HIGH SCHOOL, 2000. Jesse tried it on. It was too big for him.
“Well, I guess it wasn’t hers,” Simpson said. “If it’s too big for you.”
“That’s what the chain is for,” Jesse said. “Didn’t the girls in your high school do that? Wear the boyfriend’s ring on a chain around their neck?”
“Sometimes,” Simpson said. “So you think it might be hers?”
“Doesn’t do us any good to think it’s not,” Jesse said. “Show me where you found it.”
It was hot, and still. As they walked down through tall grass and short bushes toward the edge of the lake, Jesse could smell the mud where the shore and water met. Ahead, Eddie Cox was moving along the edge of the shore, head down, looking at the ground. The back of his blue uniform shirt was dark with sweat.
“Right over here,” Simpson said.
Cox looked up and turned back and joined them.
“You think it’s something, Jesse?” Cox said.
“Maybe.”
“We found it right here,” Simpson said. “It was snagged on this little bush.”
Jesse squatted on his heels, looking at the bush and the ground around it.
