“Yes,” he said. “That was pretty
good.”
“I wish we could have made it last
longer,” she
said.
He shrugged.
“My bad,” she said. “I got so
excited. I shot too
soon.”
“I’ve been known to do that,” he
said.
“Well, aren’t you Mr. Dirty
Mouth,” she said.
They both laughed.
“We’ll get better at it,” he
said.
She was now rubbing the slow circles on his chest with her full
palm, looking at the videotape.
“Ohhh,” she said. “Look at me!
Look at me!”
He laughed softly. She moved her hand down his stomach.
“What’s happening here?” she
said.
He laughed again.
“Ohh,” she said. “Good
news.”
She turned her body hard against him and put her face up.
“Be careful,” she murmured. “My
mouth is sore.”
They made love again while the image of their previous lovemaking moved unseen on the television screen, and the sounds of that mingled with the sounds they were making now.
2
It was just after dawn. Low tide. Several herring gulls hopped on the beach, their heads cocking one way then another, their flat black eyes looking at the corpse. Jesse Stone, with the blue light flashing, pulled into the public beach parking lot at the end of the causeway from Paradise Neck, parked behind the Paradise Police cruiser that was already there, and got out of his car. It was mid November and cold. Jesse closed the snaps on his Paradise Men’s
Softball League jacket and walked to the beach, where Suitcase Simpson, holding a big Mag flashlight, stood looking down at the body.
“Guy’s been shot, Jesse,” he
said.
Jesse stood beside Simpson and looked down at the body.
“Who found him?”
“Me. I’m on eleven to seven and I pulled in here to, ah, take a
leak, you know, and the headlights picked him up.”
Simpson was a big shapeless red-cheeked kid who’d played tackle
in high school. His real name was Luther but everyone called him Suitcase after the ballplayer.
“Peter Perkins coming?”
“Anthony’s on the night desk,”
Simpson said. “He told me he’d
call him soon as he called you.”
“Okay, gimme the flashlight. Then go pull your cruiser across
the entrance to the parking lot and call in. When Molly comes on I want Anthony down here and everybody else she can wrangle. I want the area secured.”
Simpson hesitated, still looking down.
