medium successful. He hadn’t made anyone rich, including himself.
But he
hadn’t put anyone in debtors’ prison, either.
He’d stayed about
even with a down market. Maybe he should go in and talk to people himself. Perkins was pretty good, but, like most of the department, he didn’t have much experience with homicide investigations.
In the den Jesse found another television and a big sound system. There was a gumball machine, a model of the original Thunderbird, a big illuminated globe, and some sort of glass slab filled with water through which bubbles rose endlessly. The world according to Sharper Image.
There were no photographs. There were no books. Jesse went to Eisley’s front porch and checked the mailbox. There was a J.
Crew
catalogue. Peter Perkins had the checkbook, bills, credit card receipts kind of evidence. He was perfectly competent to evaluate it. What interested Jesse was the emptiness. Except for the dog cushion. There was no hint that anyone lived there and enjoyed it.
It was monastically neat. If their timeline was right, Eisley had come home from work, put on his sweats, and gone out for a run with the dog. But there were no clothes draped on a chair or across his bed. Whatever he had worn he had carefully hung up, or put in the laundry bag. His shoes were lined up on the shoe rack in his bedroom closet. The refrigerator was nearly empty. The CD player seemed ornamental. Jesse smiled in the dead silent house.
Not even a picture of Ozzie Smith
…
Jesse moved slowly from room to room again. He didn’t open any
drawers or closets. He didn’t pick up any artifacts, he simply
moved slowly through the house. He saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing that would even hint at why someone had wanted to put two bullets into Kenneth Eisley’s chest. The kitchen
wall beside the back door had a doggie door cut into it, that led to a fenced run in the backyard.
Maybe I should get a dog.
Jesse had no yard. What would the dog do all day? He sat for a few more moments, then stood and left the empty condo, and locked the door behind him.
14
When Jesse came back to the station Molly was at the front desk,
talking on the phone. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger, holding the other three fingers straight.
“Does that translate to ‘I’ve
ID’d the three boys’?” Jesse
said.
Molly nodded.
“When you get a break on the desk,” Jesse said, “come see
me.”
Then he went on into the office and closed the door and called Marcy Campbell.
“You free tonight?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Can you come over to my place?”
“I’d be foolish not to,” Marcy
said.
“We can order in,” Jesse said.
“Chinese?” Marcy said. “You know
how erotic I get when I eat
Chinese.”
“Or when you don’t,” Jesse said.
Molly knocked and came into the office and lingered politely by
the door until Jesse hung up. Then she sat in the chair across from him, adjusted her handgun so it didn’t dig into her lower back, and
looked down at her notebook.
“Bo Marino, Kevin Feeney, Troy Drake,” she said.
“The three boys you saw hassle Candace.”
“Yes.”
“Got anything more?”
“Not yet.”
