“That’s it?” Simpson said.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “
“That enough for you, Jesse?”
“Kind of has to be. Universe is too big and complicated for me to understand.”
“That’s where faith comes in,” Arthur said.
“If it can,” Jesse said.
“Can for me,” Arthur said.
Jesse nodded.
“Whatever works,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find out who our floater was.”
1 7
4
J esse was leaning on the front desk in Paradise Police Headquarters reading the ME’s report on the floater. Molly was working
the phones. It was only 8:40 in the morning and the phones were quiet.
“You think she came off one of the yachts?” Molly said.
Jesse smiled. Molly always looked too small for the gun belt. In fact there wasn’t all that much that Molly was too small for. She was dark-haired and cute, full of curiosity and absolute resolve.
“Only if they got here before Race Week,” Jesse said. “ME
says she’s been in the water awhile.”
S E A C H A N G E
“Any signs of trauma?”
“Nope, but it’s pretty hard to tell. Crab, ah, markings indicate she was probably on the bottom, which might suggest she was weighted, and decomposition, tidal movement, whatever, pulled her loose and sent her up. Or she could just have been in shallow water.”
“Could be lobster markings,” Molly said.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Jesse said. “Next time I’m ordering dinner at the Gray Gull.”
He heard himself say Gray Gull the way locals did, as if it were one word, with the stress on
“It couldn’t be gulls?” Molly said.
“No.”
“How do they know?”
“They know,” Jesse said. “There’s evidence of blunt trauma on her body, but nothing that couldn’t have come from being rolled against rocks by the surf.”
“Oh. Well if she did come off a yacht, it’s strange no one has reported her missing.”
“No one seems to have reported her missing, yacht or no yacht,” Jesse said.
“We got five missing persons in the Northeast that could be her,” Molly said. “Except none of the dental IDs match.”
Jesse wore blue jeans and sneakers and a short-sleeved white police chief shirt, with the badge pinned to the shirt pocket. He carried the snub-nosed .38 that he’d brought with him from L.A. The issue gun, a nine-millimeter semiauto-1 9
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
matic, she knew, was in the right-hand bottom drawer of his desk. His hair was cut short. He was tanned, and, Molly always noticed this about him, while he wasn’t a particularly big man he seemed very strong, as if his center were muscular.
The phone rang and Molly took it and said, “Yes ma’am.
We’ll have someone check right on it.” She wrote nothing down, and when she hung up she took no further action.
“Mrs. Billups?” Jesse said.
Molly nodded.
“Says there’s a man she doesn’t recognize walking past her house. He looks sinister.”
“How many is that so far this month?”
“Four,” Molly said.
“And this year?”
“Oh God,” Molly said, “infinity.”
“Mrs. Billups hasn’t got much else to occupy her,” Jesse said. “Who’s on patrol?”
“Suit.”
“Have him drive slowly past her house,” Jesse said.
