The talk was of double plays, and games played long ago, and plays at the plate, and sex. Talk of sex and baseball was the best of all possible talk. Jesse sipped a little of the beer. Beer from an ice-filled cooler was the best way for beer to be. From the edge of the lake a voice said, “Jesse, get over here.”
The voice was scared. Carrying a can of Lite beer, Jesse walked to the lakeside. Two men were squatting on their heels at the edge of the water. In front of them, floating facedown, was something that used to be a girl.
Chapter Two
The rest of the Paradise cops didn’t like looking at the body. Jesse had pulled it out, and it lay now on the ground illuminated by the headlights of the Paradise Police cruisers.
“She been in the water a long time?” Suitcase Simpson asked Jesse.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “She’s only wearing one shoe.”
Simpson didn’t look. He didn’t care about how many shoes she had.
“You seen a lot of floaters?”
“When I worked in L.A., there was a lot of ocean-front,” Jesse said. He was squatting on his heels beside the corpse, studying it. He reached over and turned the head a little and studied it some more.
Simpson was trying to look at the body obliquely, so it would only be an impression. He was a big kid, with red cheeks and some baby fat still left. But he wanted to be a cop. He wanted to be like Jesse. And he was trying to force himself to look, the way Jesse did, at the water-ridden thing on the ground.
Behind them, Peter Perkins had strung crime-scene tape, and behind it the Boys of Evening stood silently, looking at the scene, but not the body. There was no talk. As they stood, the town ambulance pulled into the parking lot with its lights flashing, but no siren.
Through his open window the driver shouted to Jesse.
“Whaddya need?”
“Body bag.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
The two EMTs got out of the ambulance without shutting off the flashing lights. They got the litter from the back and lay a body bag on it and wheeled it over. Neither of them liked looking at the corpse.
“Drowned?”
“I don’t think so,” Jesse said.
He moved her sodden hair and pointed with a pencil. “Bullet went in here, I think,” Jesse said.
“A bullet?”
“Yep, went out the other side. No need to look. Let’s roll her in the bag.”
Still trying to look without seeing, Simpson said, “You thinking she was murdered, Jesse?”
“I’m thinking she was shot in the head behind her right ear and the bullet exited high on the left side of her head and blew a pretty sizable piece of her skull off when it did.”
“Maybe she shot herself,” Simpson said.
“And jumped into the lake after,” Jesse said.
“So you’re saying she was murdered and her body dumped?”
“It’s a working theory,” Jesse said.
Chapter Three
Jesse sat in his office with his feet on the desk and talked with the State Police Homicide boss, a captain named Healy.
“The homicide commander personally?” Jesse said.
Healy smiled.
“I told you,” he said, “I live in the neighborhood.”
“You got the pathology report?”
Healy tossed a big manila envelope on Jesse’s desk.
“One shot, behind the right ear, close range. Entrance wound suggests a .38. Slug exited high on the other side, tore out some of her skull. They think they got powder traces. They can’t find any on her hands. But the body’s deteriorated to the point where they aren’t certain. The millimeters and tissue analysis and all, it’s in there.”
“Water in her lungs?”
“No,” Healy said. “She was dead when she went in the water.”
“Could she have shot herself?” Jesse said. “I mean, was it physically possible given the path of the slug?”
“Yeah, she could have. And the amount of time she was in there could have destroyed the traces on her
