THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Kickback
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
(by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night
(with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
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
Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud
(by Mike Lupica)
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS
Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Revelation
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse
(by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2019 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Coleman, Reed Farrel, author.
Title: Robert B. Parker’s The bitterest pill / Reed Farrel Coleman.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019. | Series: A Jesse Stone novel; 18
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011107 | ISBN 9780399574979 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399574986 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Stone, Jesse (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Police chiefs—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3553.O47445 R638 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011107
p. cm.
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.
Version_1
IN MEMORY OF PHILIP KERR
Contents
Also by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seve
n
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Chapter Seventy-six
Chapter Seventy-seven
Chapter Seventy-eight
Chapter Seventy-nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-one
Chapter Eighty-two
Chapter Eighty-three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Fifty years and a trillion dollars after we declared the war on drugs, drugs are now more prevalent, cheaper, and more potent than ever before. If this is victory, I’d hate to see defeat.
Don Winslow
One
The world had changed. Paradise had changed. Most significantly for Jesse Stone, his life had been turned upside down. He was a man wise enough to know that life comes with only one guarantee—that it would someday end. As a Robbery Homicide detective for the LAPD and as the longtime chief of the Paradise PD he had seen ample proof of that solitary guarantee written in blood, in wrecked bodies, and in grief. It wasn’t that long ago that his fiancée’s murder had given Jesse all the proof he would ever need. He remembered an old Hebrew proverb about how people’s planning for their futures was God’s favorite joke. Still, at an age when most men were steeped in haunting regrets of what could have been and what they might have done, Jesse had been given the most unexpected gift a loner like him could receive. Cole Slayton, Jesse’s son, had arrived in town just as Paradise was shedding its old skin and transforming itself into the place Jesse was currently seeing through the night-darkened windows of his latest Ford Explorer.
This end-of-shift drive through the streets had long been a ritual of his. A way to make sure things were intact and that the citizenry could rest well. Still, Jesse didn’t fool easily, and he was especially keen not to fool himself. He understood that Paradise was a different place than the village he’d come to all those years ago as a man looking for a fresh start. In those days, Boston, less than twenty miles south, seemed a million miles away, a world apart. Nowadays, Paradise, though not yet quite a suburb of Boston, felt much closer than ever before. As the big city’s influence crept north, it brought a new vibe to town that not all the natives of Paradise appreciated. Jesse had mixed feelings about the shift. Although he had long ago settled into the seaside rhythms of the town, Jesse enjoyed the new urban vitality, the pace and diversity Boston’s encroachment brought with it. But as Vinnie Morris had once warned him, as Boston would come toward Paradise, so, too, would come its sins. Vinnie had phrased it less artfully.
Jesse had already seen some evidence of that. Nothing dramatic. No crime wave, per se. Yet there was an increase in urban gang activity in Paradise and the surrounding towns. Graffiti and vandalism had been on the rise, as had auto theft. Drug arrests had also ticked up and the local cops now carried naloxone with them. None of the crime particularly scared Jesse. He didn’t overreact, as the mayor and town selectmen had, nor had he turned a blind eye. He had prepared his cops as best he could. He had joined with the chiefs of the nearby towns and the state police to work out strategies to deal with the changes in the criminal landscape.
At the moment, though, it was Paradise’s recent past and hatred, humanity’s most ancient foible, that occupied Jesse’s thoughts. He was driving by the empty lot where the old meetinghouse once stood. Several months ago, a white supremacist group had come to town with mad dreams of sparking a national race war. They hadn’t achieved their twisted goals but had left a trail of destruction in their wake. One of the casualties was the old meetinghouse, a building that had once been used as a safe haven for runaway slaves along the route of the Underground Railroad. It had been blown to bits by a powerful bomb blast. Jesse shook his head because more than the old building had been lost. Paradise had been shaken to its core. Families had been terrorized, several people were dead, and he’d been forced to fire Alisha, his best young cop. There was a big debate going on about whether to faithfully reconstruct the old place, create some sort of memorial, or let the past go altogether and sell the lot for new construction. Those were decisions above Jesse’s paygrade, and he was glad of it. What concerned Jesse was the notion that the destruction might be an omen of things to come, that the world’s ills, not only Boston’s, were headed for Paradise’s doorstep. He turned the corner, leaving the ghost of the old meetinghouse in his rearview mirror.
These ritual drives through Paradise had once been a prelude to a different and more personal ritual—drinking. Even now, remembering the steps of the ritual, he got a jolt. Throwing off his blue PPD hat and jacket as he entered his house, tossing the mail down on the counter, approaching the bar, twisting the cap off the smooth, rectangular bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, pouring the beautiful amber fluid over ice, the gentle snap and crackle as the room-temperature scotch hit the ice, the clinking of the ice as he swirled the glass, sniffing the perfectly blended grace notes from the charred oak barrel in which it had aged, lifting the glass to toast Ozzie Smith, and then, finally, the first magic sip. He could almost feel it, the warmth at the back of his throat, spreading down to his belly, through his body, and reaching his fingertips. But Jesse hadn’t had a drink in many months because his new nightly ritual involved sharing a room with fellow alcoholics who gave one another the strength they needed to stay sober.
At first he had driven to meetings down in Boston at an old Episcopal church. That’s where he’d met Bill, his sponsor. But making that trek several times a week had become unwieldly and impractical. Besides, Jesse’s drinking hadn’t ever been much of a secret to begin with. The only people in Paradise who didn’t know about Jesse’s struggles with the bottle were transplants from Boston and children under ten years of age. So he’d recently begun attending AA meetings in and around Paradise. He was headed to a meeting in Salem when the phone rang. The Explorer’s display showed the call was from the Paradise Police Department. He pressed the button on the steering wheel.
“What?”
It was Molly
working the desk. “There’s trouble, Jesse.”
“There’s always trouble. What kind?”
“The worst kind.”
“Tell me.”
“Patricia Mackey just found her daughter . . . unresponsive. She’s dead, Jesse.”
“Jeez, no.” Jesse pulled over. “Where? How?”
“In her bedroom. And, Jesse . . .”
“Uh-huh.”
“Suit’s there now. He found drug paraphernalia.”
“On my way.”
Jesse had been a cop for too long to think anything connected with drugs was an anomaly. And suddenly Vinnie Morris’s warning rang loud as cathedral chimes in Jesse’s ears.
Two
A thousand things went through Jesse’s mind as he pulled up to the Mackey place, and not a single damn one of them was any good. He didn’t need to be a parent to know that a mother and father should never have to put a kid in the ground before them. Not ever, not for any reason. Drugs, disease, a careless accident, what did that matter? And now that Jesse was a father, Heather Mackey’s death cut even deeper than it had during all the previous cases he had worked involving the death of a child. He hadn’t been there to watch Cole grow up, hadn’t known the boy existed until a few months ago, but that was beside the point. The bond he felt couldn’t have been stronger had he been in the delivery room to hear Cole cry or to watch him open his eyes for the first time.
Suit Simpson greeted Jesse at the curb.
“Hey, Jesse. Molly told me you were on your way.”
“I see the ME’s men are here.” Jesse pointed at the van. “ME inside?”
Suit nodded. “Peter, too. He’s working the scene.”
“Did you use the naloxone?”
Suit shook his head. “Too late. She was already gone. Such a waste. She was a pretty girl.”
“Death doesn’t care about pretty or ugly. Only we do.”