“And you think it was more than one
person?” Dix
said.
“Yes. The two guns don’t make any sense to me
otherwise.”
Dix was wearing a blue blazer today, and a white shirt.
Everything about him gleamed. His shaved head, his starched shirt, his thick-soled mahogany shoes. He sat with his hands laced over his flat stomach, rubbing the tips of his thumbs together.
“Jenn called me after Abby was killed,”
Jesse said. “And said
she hoped I was okay.”
Dix waited, moving the tips of his thumbs softly back and forth.
“Then she said she wanted me to give her special access to the
sniper killing, her and a cameraman, inside coverage, follow the whole investigation.”
Dix nodded encouragingly.
“Four people die, and she sees it as a career opportunity.”
“Why would she think you’d allow
that?” Dix said.
Jesse smiled without humor.
“Because she is the, ah, object of my affections,” he
said.
“Object?”
“Just being amusing,” Jesse said.
Dix didn’t say anything. They were quiet. The room shimmered
with stillness. Jesse took in some air. His movements were stiff.
Dix waited. He seemed perfectly comfortable waiting. Jesse’s stiffness loosened.
“She said once,” Jesse’s voice
was hoarse, “that what I really
love is my fantasy of her, and I keep trying to squeeze her into it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it was fucking shrink talk.”
Dix grinned.
“The object of your affection,” Dix said.
“More fucking shrink talk,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled.
“Sure,” he said. “I am, after
all, a fucking
shrink.”
39
There were too many of them for Jesse’s office, so they went to
the conference room in the station. Jesse was there, at the head of the conference table. Beside him sat an Essex County assistant district attorney named Martin Reagan. Molly and Suitcase Simpson stood against the wall. Bo Marino and his parents sat on one side of the table. Troy Drake and his mother sat on the other side. Two lawyers from a big Boston firm representing both families sat at the end of the table opposite Jesse. The lead attorney was a sleek red-haired woman named Rita Fiore. The other lawyer was a small man with a narrow face and a graying Vandyke beard. His name was Barry Feldman.
“Here’s what we got,” Jesse
said. “Or at least all of it I can
remember. There’s so much that Marty may have to remind me.”
Rita smiled.
“So we begin,” she said.
“We have a sworn statement from Kevin Feeney that he and Bo
Marino and Troy Drake raped Candace Pennington and photographed her naked.”
“I understand that he is clearly identifiable in the pictures,”
