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  High Profile

  ( Jessie Stone - 6 )

  Robert B Parker

  HIGH

  PROFILE

  t h e s p e n s e r n o v e l s

  God Save the Child

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  School Days

  Cold Service

  t h e j e s s e s t o n e n o v e l s

  Bad Business

  Sea Change

  Back Story

  Stone Cold

  Widow’s Walk

  Death in Paradise

  Potshot

  Trouble in Paradise

  Hugger Mugger

  Night Passage

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  t h e s u n n y r a n da l l n o v e l s

  Small Vices

  Blue Screen

  Chance

  Melancholy Baby

  Thin Air

  Shrink Rap

  Walking Shadow

  Perish Twice

  Paper Doll

  Family Honor

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  a l s o b y r o b e r t b . pa r k e r

  Playmates

  Appaloosa

  Crimson Joy

  Double Play

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Catskill Eagle

  A Year at the Races

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Valediction

  Perchance to Dream

  The Widening Gyre

  Poodle Springs

  Ceremony

  (and Raymond Chandler)

  A Savage Place

  Love and Glory

  Early Autumn

  Wilderness

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  Three Weeks in Spring

  The Judas Goat

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Promised Land

  Training with Weights

  Mortal Stakes

  (with John R. Marsh)

  HIGH

  PROFILE

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  G . P. P U T N A M ’ S S O N S

  N e w Yo r k

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA •

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2007 by Robert B. Parker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parker, Robert B.

  High profile / Robert B. Parker.

  p.

  cm.

  ISBN: 1-4295-2302-6

  Stone, Jesse (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Massachusetts—Fiction. 3. Police chiefs—Fiction. 4. Massachusetts—Fiction. I. Title. PS3566.A686H54

  2007

  2006037328

  813'.54—dc22

  b o o k d e s i g n b y a m a n da d e w e y This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Joan, whom the eyes of mortals

  have no right to see

  HIGH

  PROFILE

  1

  Each spring surprised Jesse. In the years since he’d come to Paradise he never remembered, from year to year, how pretty spring was in the Northeast. He stood now among the opening flowers and the new leaves, looking at a dead man, hanging by his neck from the limb of a tree in the park, on Indian Hill, overlooking the harbor.

  Peter Perkins was taking pictures. Suitcase Simpson was running crime-scene tape and shooing away onlookers. Molly Crane sat in a squad car, talking with a woman in jogging clothes. Molly was writing in her notebook.

  “Doesn’t look like his neck is broken,” Jesse said. R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  Perkins nodded.

  “Hands are free,” Jesse said.

  Perkins nodded.

  “Nothing to jump off of,” Jesse said. “Unless he went up in the tree and jumped from the limb.”

  Perkins nodded.

  “Open his coat,” Peter Perkins said.

  Jesse opened the raincoat. An argyle sweater beneath the coat was dark and stiff with dried blood.

  “There goes the suicide theory,” Jesse said.

  “ME will tell us,” Perkins said, “but my guess is he was dead before he got hung.”

  Jesse walked around the area, looking at the ground. At one point he squatted on his heels and looked at the grass.

  “They had already shot him,” Jesse said. “And dragged him over . . .”

  “Sometimes I forget you grew up out west,” Perkins said. Jesse grinned and walked toward the tree, still looking down.

  “And looped the rope around his neck . . .”

  Jesse looked up at the corpse.

  “Tossed the rope over the tree limb, hauled him up, and tied the rope around the trunk.”

  “Good-sized guy,” Perkins said.

  “About two hundred?” Jesse said.

  Perkins looked appraisingly at the corpse and nodded.

  “Dead weight,” Perkins said.

  “So to speak,” Jesse said.

  2

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Maybe more than one person involved,” Perkins said. Jesse nodded.

  “ID?” Jesse said.

  “None,” Perkins said. “No wallet, nothing.”

  Another Paradise police car pulled up with its blue light revolving, and Arthur Angstrom got out.

  “Anyone minding the store?” Jesse said.

  Angstrom was looking at the hanging corpse.

  “Maguire,” Angstrom said. “Suicide?”

  “I wish,” Jesse said.

  The blue light on Angstrom’s cruiser stayed on.

  “Murder?” Angstrom said.

  “Peter Perkins will fill you in,” Jesse said. “After you shut off your light.”

  Angstrom glanced back at the cruiser, and looked at Jesse for a moment as if he were going to argue. Jesse looked back at him, and Angstrom turned and shut off his light.

&
nbsp; “Car keys?” Jesse said.

  “Nope.”

  “So how’d he get here?”

  “Walked?” Perkins said.

  Angstrom joined them.

  “Or came with the killers,” Jesse said.

  “Or met them here,” Perkins said, “and one of them drove his car away after he was hanging.”

  “Or took a cab,” Jesse said.

  “I can check that out,” Angstrom said.

  Jesse looked at his watch.

  3

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Eight thirty,” he said. “Town cab should be open now.”

  “I’ll call them,” Arthur said. “I know the dispatcher.”

  “Arthur, you’re the cops, you don’t have to know the dispatcher.”

  “Sure,” Angstrom said, “of course.”

  He walked to his car. Jesse watched him go.

  “Arthur ain’t never quite got used to being a cop,” Peter Perkins said.

  “Arthur hasn’t gotten fully used to being Arthur,” Jesse said.

  4

  2

  Jesse slid into the backseat of the cruiser, where Molly was talking to the young woman.

  “This is Kate Mahoney,” Molly said. “She found the body.”

  “I’m Jesse Stone,” he said.

  “The police chief,” the woman said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “How are you?”

  The woman nodded. She was holding a middle-aged bea gle in her lap.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  Jesse looked at Molly. Molly nodded. Yes, she was okay. Jesse scratched the beagle behind an ear.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Tell me what you saw,” Jesse said.

  “I just told her,” the woman said.

  She was probably thirty, brown hair tucked up under a baseball cap. Blue sweatpants, white T-shirt, elaborate running shoes. Jesse nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “Police bureaucracy. You were out running?”

  “Yes, I run every morning before I have breakfast.”

  “Good for you,” Jesse said. “You usually run up here?”

  “Yes. I like the hill.”

  “So you came up here this morning as usual . . .” Jesse said.

  “And I saw him. . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Hanging there.”

  Jesse was quiet. The woman shook her head briefly, and opened her eyes.

  “See anybody else?”

  “No, just . . .”

  She made a sort of rolling gesture with her right hand. The beagle watched the movement with his ears pricked slightly.

  “Just the man on the tree?” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know who he is?” Jesse said.

  “No. I didn’t really look. When I saw him, I ran off and called nine-one-one on my cell phone.”

  “And here we are,” Jesse said.

  “I don’t want to look at him,” the woman said.

  6

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “You don’t have to,” Jesse said. “Is there anything else you can tell us that will help us figure out who did this?”

  “ ‘Did this’? It’s not suicide?”

  “No,” Jesse said.

  “You mean somebody murdered him?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “Omigod,” she said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You just discovered the body. You won’t have any trouble.”

  “Will I have to testify?”

  “Not up to me,” Jesse said. “But you don’t have much to testify about that Molly or I couldn’t testify about.”

  “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Jesse said. “I promise.”

  The woman hugged her dog and pressed her face against the top of his head.

  “You’ll both be fine,” Jesse said. “Officer Crane will drive you home.”

  The woman nodded with her cheek pressed against the dog’s head. The dog looked uneasy. Jesse gave her one of his cards.

  “You think of anything,” Jesse said, “or anything bothers you, call me. Or Officer Crane.”

  The woman nodded. Jesse scratched the beagle under the chin and got out of the car.

  7

  3

  Jesse was in the squad room with Molly Crane, Suitcase Simpson, and Peter Perkins. They were drinking coffee.

  “State lab has him,” Peter Perkins said. “They’ll fingerprint the body and run the prints. They haven’t autopsied him yet, but I’ll bet they find he died of gunshot. I didn’t see any exit wounds, so I’m betting they find the slugs in there when they open him up.”

  “Had to have happened last night,” Suitcase said. “I mean, people are in that park all the time. He couldn’t have hung there long without being spotted.”

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  Jesse nodded and glanced at Peter Perkins.

  “I haven’t seen all that many dead bodies,” Perkins said.

  “And very few who were hanged from a tree. But this guy looks like he’s been dead longer than that.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And . . .” Peter Perkins glanced at Molly.

  “And he smells,” Molly said. “I noticed it, too.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And there was no blood except on him. He got shot and hanged, he’d have bled out and there’d be blood on the ground,” Suitcase said.

  “So,” Jesse said. “He was shot somewhere else and kept awhile before they brought him up to the hill and hanged him.”

  “You think it’s more than one?” Molly said.

  “A two-hundred-pound corpse is hard for one person to manhandle around and hoist over a limb,” Jesse said.

  “But not impossible,” Molly said.

  “No,” Jesse said.

  They all sat quietly.

  “Anyone reported missing?” Jesse said.

  “No,” Molly said.

  “Anyone else know anything?”

  “Nobody I talked with,” Suitcase said.

  Molly Crane and Peter Perkins both shook their heads.

  “Even if you knew the guy,” Simpson said, “be kind of hard to recognize him now.”

  9

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Anyone want to speculate why you’d shoot some guy,”

  Jesse said, “hold his body until it started to ripen, and then hang it on a tree?”

  “Symbolic,” Molly said. “It must have some sort of symbolic meaning to the perps.”

  Jesse waited.

  “Obviously they wanted him found,” Suitcase said.

  “But why hanging?” Peter Perkins said.

  Suitcase shook his head. Jesse looked at Molly. She shook her head.

  “Perk,” Jesse said. “Any theories?”

  Perkins shook his head.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “It looks like, for now, we wait for the forensics report.”

  “Unless something turns up,” Suitcase said.

  “Unless that,” Jesse said.

  1 0

  4

  Dix was as shiny as he always was. His white shirt was crisp with starch. His slacks were sharply creased. His shoes were polished. His thick hands were clean. His nails were manicured. He was bald and clean shaven, and his head gleamed. The white walls of his office were bare except for a framed copy of his medical degree and one of his board certification in psychiatry. Jesse sat at one side of the desk, and Dix swiveled his chair to face him. After he swiveled, he was motionless, his hands resting interlaced on his flat stomach.

  “I’m making progress on the booze,” Jesse said. Dix waited.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “I quit for a while and it seemed to give me more control of it when I went back.”

  “Enough control?” Dix said.

  Jesse thought about it.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “But s
ome,” Dix said.

  “Yes.”

  Dix was still.

  “If I can control it,” Jesse said, “life is better with alcohol. Couple of drinks before dinner. Glass of wine with dinner. Civilized.”

  “And without it?” Dix said.

  “A lot of days with nothing to look forward to,” Jesse said.

  “Behavior can be modified,” Dix said.

  “In terms of drunks,” Jesse said, “I’m not sure that’s politically correct.”

  “It’s not,” Dix said. “But it’s been my experience.”

  “So I’m not fooling myself.”

  “You may or may not be,” Dix said. “It’s possible that you’re not.”

  “Day at a time,” Jesse said.

  Dix smiled.

  “Now,” Jesse said, “to my other problem.”

  Dix waited.

  “I’ve met a woman,” Jesse said.

  Dix was still.

  “Like the perfect woman,” Jesse said.

  1 2

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  Dix nodded slightly.

  “She’s good-looking, smart, very sexual. Even professionally—she’s a private detective. Used to be a cop.”

  Dix nodded. It seemed to Jesse almost as if he were approving.

  “She’s tough. She can shoot. She’s not afraid. And she’s a painter, too. Oils and watercolors, not houses.”

  “Anyone else in her life?” Dix said.

  “She’s divorced, like me, and she might still be a little hung up on her ex.”

  “Gee,” Dix said.

  Jesse grinned at him.

  “Like me,” Jesse said.

  Dix was quiet. The only window in the small room opened onto a budding tree against a blue sky. They looked almost like trompe l’oeil painting. When he was in this room with Dix, everything seemed remote to Jesse.

  “Which is, of course, the problem.”

  “She can’t let go of her ex-husband?” Dix said.

  “I can’t let go of Jenn,” Jesse said.

  “Because?”

  “Two possibilities,” Jesse said. “I still love her, or I’m pathological.”

  Dix smiled again without speaking.

  “Or both,” Jesse said.

  “The two are not mutually exclusive,” Dix said.

  “But I feel like I love Sunny, too. That’s her name, Sunny Randall.”

  1 3

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “One can have feelings for more than one person,” Dix said.