“Maybe. Can you call her and see if she got my mother and father?”
“They’ll be here,” Jesse said.
Peter Perkins and John Maguire had arrived.
“Murphy and Friedman are around back with Suit and Buddy,” Perkins said. “Molly says she can’t raise Martin yet.”
“Okay. Put on the vests and start clearing people out of the adjacent stores. John, take Kate across the street and stay with her.”
Jesse got out of the car. As she walked across the street with Maguire, Kate looked back once at Jesse. He smiled at her.
“They’ll be here,” he said.
DeAngelo came over with a balding red-faced man who seemed out of breath.
“This is Mr. Stevens,” DeAngelo said. “Store manager.”
“Jesse Stone. How many ways out of the store?”
“Three.”
“Where?”
“Back door. Front door. And loading door in the cellar.”
“Where’s the cellar door open?” Jesse said.
“In the back, right near the back entrance but lower.”
“Any private rooms in there?”
“My office, which is up some stairs beside the service counter.”
“Bathroom?”
“Yes, behind the stairs to my office.”
“Everything else is market space?”
“Yes.”
“Any connecting ways between your store and the ones on either side?”
“No.”
“Is there a phone near the service booth?”
“Yes, sir. Inside the counter.”
Jesse handed him a cell phone.
“Dial the number,” Jesse said.
Stevens did, and handed the phone to Jesse. Jesse waited. It rang without result. Jesse counted ten rings, then broke the connection. No need to irritate Snyder.
“There a window in the bathroom?” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Stevens said. “Frosted glass.”
“How about in your office?”
“Yes. But it’s on the second floor, remember.”
A crowd had gathered across the street.
“Peter,” Jesse said. “Get those people out of the line of fire.”
Perkins nodded and started across the street. The air was still. The high summer sound of an insect lingered above him. It was a sound he’d heard all his life. He never knew what made it, exactly. Crickets? Grasshoppers? He dialed the store again. Again he let it ring ten times and broke the connection. He had on a light-blue linen blazer and a gray tee shirt, jeans and sneakers. His gun was on his right hip, under the blazer. He stood silently for a minute, staring at the store and the police cars and the crowd and the cops in their bulletproof vests. For a moment it all looked motionless, like a frozen frame in a movie. He took in some air.
A woman in a flowered yellow dress opened the front door of the market and stepped out and ran. She ducked behind DeAngelo’s cruiser and fell to her knees.
“He wants to talk to Stone,” she said. “He says he wants Stone to come in.”
She was having trouble getting enough air in.
“He said he was going to kill us all,” she said. “He’s drunk. He has a bottle and he keeps drinking.”
Jesse crouched beside her.
“Where is he?” Jesse said.
“He put the gun right in my face,” the woman said.
She was blond, with a lot of dark eye makeup.
“Where is he standing?” Jesse said.
