custodial staff.”
“Janitor?”
“Yep.”
“Do I get one of those work shirts that has my name over the
pocket?”
“Yeah. Do you want Suitcase?
Or
Luther?”
“I should never have told you my real name,” Simpson
said.
“I’m your chief,” Jesse said.
“You tell me
everything.”
“Yeah, well, my mother comes by and sees me sweeping up, I’m
gonna refer her to you.”
Jesse smiled.
“Kid’s alone,” Jesse said.
“She’s been raped. She’s afraid it
might happen again. She’s sixteen years old and afraid, and they’ve
threatened to show her naked pictures to everyone in the high school. She’s afraid they’ll hurt her.
She’s afraid of her mother’s
disapproval, and I don’t know where her father stands.”
Simpson nodded.
“So we’re gonna see that she
ain’t alone.”
Jesse nodded.
“Suit,” he said. “You may make
detective
someday.”
“We don’t have any detective
ranks,” Simpson
said.
“Well,” Jesse said. “If we
did.”
“Hell,” Simpson said. “I already
made janitor.”
20
Monday through Friday evenings, when Garfield Kennedy got off the commuter train at the Paradise Center Station, he waited for the train to leave, then walked a hundred yards down the tracks and cut through behind the Congregational Church to Maple Street where he lived. This Thursday night was like all the others, except that it was raining, and, as he walked behind the church, a man and a woman approached through the rain and shot him to death without a word.
When Jesse got there he already knew what he’d find.
Squatting
on his heels in the rain beside Peter Perkins, he saw the two small bullet holes in the chest, one on each side. The blood had seeped through Kennedy’s raincoat and been nearly washed away by the rain,
leaving only a light pink stain.
“Same thing,” Jesse said.
“Name’s Kennedy,” Peter Perkins
said. “He’s a lawyer, works in
Boston. He lives over there, on Maple. Figure he got off the train, cut through the church parking lot toward his house … and never made it.”
“Family?” Jesse said.
