Page 83 of Hard to Kill

“Didn’t think this was your style.”

Jimmy looks out at the water. The waves are still huge.

“Bullet?” Jimmy asks.

Esposito shakes his head. “In the front door, out the back, nowhere to be found. Maybe the ocean swallowed it. No shell casing, either. Small caliber from the looks of the entry wound.”

“You think he was surfing before he got shot?”

Esposito gives a who-knows shake to his head. “Why not? Maybe the surfer dude felt as if he had the best waves out here all to himself. But somebody must have followed him and waited for him to come out of the water, and then got it done.”

Jimmy walks back to where the body was.

“Just the two kids out here after the fact?”

“Still here,” Esposito says, and points to the two of them, sitting on a piece of driftwood, the boy’s arm around the girl.

High school kids. Maybe college. Jimmy has a harder and harder time telling the difference. Esposito tells him that the boy’s name is Jared Willson. The girl is Missy Gomes. Both from Montauk.

Jimmy goes over and introduces himself. They look up at him, seeing him but not seeing him, as if still in a state of mild shock.

“I’m with the cops.”

Technically true.

“All we wanted to do was come look at the waves,” Missy says.

She looks as if she’s been crying and might start up again if Jimmy says the wrong thing.

“Is there anything you can remember, other than what you’ve told the cops already, that might help us figure out who did this?”

They look at each other. “We called 911 right away!” Jared says.

Like he’d earned them a merit badge.

“Nobody else around when you parked your car?”

They look at each other, shake their heads, no.

“Wait,” Missy says. “There was one other thing we maybe forgot to mention, we were both so creeped out when they were asking us questions. Therewasone other car, but it wasn’t in the lot up top. Leaving as we were coming in.”

“You happen to notice what kind of car?”

They both shake their heads again.

“Just that it looked like it had been in some kind of accident,” Jared Willson says.

Jimmy Cunniff’s voice is low enough that he wonders how they can hear it over the sound of the water.

“Did you by any chance get a look at the driver?”

“It was a woman,” the boy says.

SIXTY-EIGHT

I NO LONGER WANT to represent Rob Jacobson. I have to tell him to his face. It’s the right thing to do. So a little before eight o’clock I walk the couple of miles from my house to his rental. I spent hours last night sleeping on the floor next to Rip the dog, so the walk does my stiff back and neck good.

“Are you alone?” I ask Jacobson when he opens his door.

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