Thirty-One Jimmy

THIRTY-ONE

Jimmy

JIMMY THINKS HE brIEFLY saw Edmund McKenzie at the benefit after Jane left, but there were a few hundred people between them and by the time Jimmy made his way across the room, McKenzie—if it really was him—was nowhere in sight.

And is still nowhere to be found.

But if Jimmy is going to find out who jumped him and tied him up at his house, he knows he needs to find McKenzie. And if the guy Jimmy thinks of as Joe Too is working for McKenzie, or with him, why is he?

Loose ends.

They'd always driven him crazy and still do.

Jane is working on filing a motion to get Jacobson's trial date moved up. It's unspoken between them, but Jimmy knows why, of course he knows why. She doesn't want to start something she can't finish. If she had her way the trial would start the day after tomorrow.

But he can't help her with that. Can't find this chump McKenzie, at least for the time being, no matter how many calls he makes. So he tells Jane that until further notice he's going to work the Parsons case like it's theirs. He can't just sit around. It will drive him even crazier than a loose end. Even if Jacobson isn't a suspect, he's connected to more dead women.

What are the odds?

Once you start doing the degrees-of-separation thing, Jacobson is connected, some form or fashion, to all of it. The Gates murders. The Carson murders. Joe Champi. Who's obviously connected to the guy who broke into Jimmy's house with his slugger of a girlfriend.

He counts more than a dozen people dead. Six before they took Jacobson's case and seven since. He used to think the total was even higher, until Jane said she was sure she'd seen Nick Morelli outside the courthouse in Mineola that day, and where the fuck has he disappeared to since?

Truth be told, dead bodies seemed to follow Jacobson all the way back to high school, and his father and that girl.

You really did need a scorecard.

He tried to go back to the beginning with Jacobson and his old man. Now Jimmy tells Jane he's going another way, working back from the most recent murders. The latest mother and daughter. No search engines today. In the morning he drives over to North Haven and starts knocking on doors the way he used to. The fifth door, across Noyac Road from the end of the Parsonses' driveway, police tape still across the gate, is answered by a small, sassy white-haired woman not more than five feet tall who introduces herself as Geraldine Nason.

"Cop, right?"

"Ex."

She nods. "You still look like one."

"I keep trying to wash it off."

"The real cops, not that you weren't a real one, probably have been looking to talk to me. But I've been up the island visiting my daughter and the bum she married. Just got back a couple of hours ago. So, it turns out you beat them to it, you lucky boy."

"Why lucky?"

"Because of my security cameras, that's why."

"You have some?"

"Lots." She winks at him. "Can't be too careful on the mean streets of the Hamptons."

"Would you mind if I take a look at what you've got?"

"Be my guest."

And shows him in.

She says she's got a son who has an audiovisual store over in Bridgehampton. He set up the system for her because she's eighty and lives alone. Geraldine Nason walks him through the first floor of her house, finally taking him into a small room off the kitchen featuring six different screens. She tells him her son has the same setup she has, looking at the same video feeds of her property. He sees something he doesn't like, the cops are there in less than ten minutes.

There's a high view of the street, looking directly across at the Parsonses' house, a low view, angles from both sides of the old woman's house, and from the back, facing south.

"My son says this stuff automatically gets erased every week."

It's all right, Jimmy tells her, the Parsonses were murdered four days ago.

Jimmy works off the laptop in the studio after she gives him the password, the system synced up with the cameras. He starts looking at the video from three days before the murders, focusing on the two cameras facing the Parsonses' house.

It's the night before the murders, and night of, when things get interesting.

The same car cruising the neighborhood both nights.

A blue Bentley.

Jimmy is pretty sure he knows the car. Just to make completely sure, he calls his friend Detective Craig Jackson in the city and asks him to run the plates.

Jackson calls back within five minutes.

The Bentley belongs to Claire Jacobson.

Rob Jacobson's wife.

Hardly any degrees of separation there, Jimmy thinks.

Hardly any at all.