The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9 Read online

  The Jesse Stone Novels 6 – 9

  High Profile

  Stranger in Paradise

  Night and Day

  Split Image

  Robert B Parker

  HIGH PROFILE

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Appaloosa

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs

  (and Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights

  (with John R. Marsh)

  HIGH PROFILE

  ROBERT B. PARKER

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  New York

  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: 978-1-1012-0521-1

  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

  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 web-sites or their content.

  For Joan,whom the eyes of mortals

  have no right to see

  HIGH PROFILE

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  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.

  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.

  “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.

  “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.

  “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.

  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 beagle 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.

  “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.

  “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.

  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.”

  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.”

  “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.

  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.

  “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 some,” 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.