it. It would certainly resolve things with Jenn.
He made a third drink.
If the killings weren’t random, they were certainly connected in
a way only the killer or killers understood. Which from Jesse’s
point of view was the same as random. He swallowed some scotch.
I feel sorry for people, he thought, who have never
had this feeling. So far they seemed to have killed only in Paradise. And the killings weren’t random in the sense that the
victims were merely those available at the moment. The woman in the mall parking lot could have been merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the murder at night on the beach, and the one down the dark tracks at the edge of the not yet lighted church parking lot were unlikely to be of the moment. Those victims probably had been preselected. Or the site had been. It was unlikely that the killer/killers were merely hanging around there. Say the killers had preselected the site. How did they know someone would come along for them to shoot? And how did they know that if they hung around in such unlikely places for long, someone might not get suspicious and a cop might not sooner or later show up and say whaddya doing. No, the least unlikely hypothesis was that he/they had preselected the victim and followed the victim to the site.
Elementary, my dear Ozzie. Now that he knew that, what did
he know?
Nothing.
He held the glass up and looked at the light shining through it.
He wondered if Ozzie Smith had been a drinker. Probably not. Hard to do what Ozzie had done with a hangover.
The bastards weren’t going to ruin that girl’s life, though. If
he did no other thing he was going to save Candace Pennington. He wasn’t clear yet how he was going to do that, but as the alcohol
worked its happy way, he knew that he could, and that he would, no matter what else.
Be good to save something.
25
At 8:10 in the morning, Bo Marino sat alone in the back of the school bus with his feet up on the seat next to him, smoking a joint. The smell of weed slowly filled the bus and several kids turned to look and a couple of them giggled. Bo took a deep drag and let it out slowly toward the front of the bus. The driver was a woman. Bo wondered if she even knew what pot was when she smelled it. Bo looked older than he was. He was already shaving regularly.
He had been lifting weights since junior high, and it showed. His neck was short and thick, and his upper body was muscular. He was the tailback in the USC-style offense that Coach Zambello used.
Several small colleges had recruited him, and he was very pleased with himself.
In the rearview mirror, Molly could see Bo smoking. She smelled
the marijuana. Well, well, she thought, Bo Marino
appears to be breaking the law. She called Jesse on her cell phone and spoke softly.
“One of the three young men we’re
interested in is inhaling a
controlled substance in the back of the bus,” Molly said.
Jesse was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “When you get to school, arrest him.
I’ll have
Suit meet the bus.”
“Okeydokey,” Molly said.
“Aren’t you supposed to say something like
‘roger that,’” Jesse
said.
“I like okeydokey,” Molly said, and smiled and shut off the
phone.
The bus pulled into the circular driveway in front of the high school and the kids got off. Bo stayed until last, smoking his joint, and pinched it out when there was no one else on the bus. He dropped the roach in his shirt pocket, swung his feet contemptuously off the seat, and stood.
As he got off the bus, the lady bus driver said,
“Hold it there
for a minute, Bo.”
He stared at her.
“Hold what?” he said.
