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SIXTY-FIVE

Jimmy

JIMMY AND BEN KALINSKY alternate days of driving Jane to Southampton and sitting with her in the hospital, three hours at a time, the chemo drugs this round seeming to knock her down more than they ever have before. It only serves to piss her off more than ever before, since she’s trying to keep working. Still in contact with the two young kids she’s hired for Jacobson’s trial, Estie and Zoe, who are doing their level law-student best to come up with alternative theories about who could have murdered the Carson families. The same game as always on their side of things. My guy didn’t do it but here’s somebody who could have.

These days Jane is feeling so punk she’s even starting to second-guess herself for moving the trial date up, complaining that she’s not going to be ready.

Something else to piss her off.

Jimmy Cunniff would rather wrestle a grizzly than spend a whole lot of time going back and forth on shit like this with cranky Jane.

But he sits there and holds her hand while the drugs are pumped into her. He doesn’t bring a book. He doesn’t make calls or listen to music. He is totally present for her.

“You need to be getting better,” he says.

“When does that happen, doctor?”

Then apologizes almost as quickly as she’s snapped at him.

“You know you don’t ever have to apologize to me.”

Another mistake.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

Jimmy smiles at her and squeezes her hand and says, “Did we get married and I wasn’t informed?”

That gets him a small smile in return. After that she closes her eyes and lets the drugs do their job without further comment. Neither one of them can believe she still has her hair. Minor miracle. But neither one of them talks much about that, for fear of jinxing things with the hair gods.

Jimmy wants to be working today, too. But she needs him here, and so here he is. He can’t find an address for the mysterious Anthony Licata other than the one on Elm Lane. He can’t find Nick Morelli and Dave Wolk. Or Eric Jacobson, who may or may not have tried to off his own mother, even though she won’t admit that or call the cops on him.

He’s got Danny Esposito, his new best friend, looking for any sign of an email presence, or social media presence, or phone records, for Eric Jacobson and Morelli and Wolk. But if they’re in contact with each other by phone, they’re using burners. And have otherwise gone dark online. At the same time, Esposito hasn’t gotten a single credible lead on the murders of Elise Parsons and her daughter, the ones who brought Esposito into Jimmy’s life in the first place.

Jimmy feels like a mouse on one of those spinning wheels. Or a rat in a maze. Either way. Through it all he keeps coming back to some basic questions:

Could Rob Jacobson have killed them all?

And if he didn’t, who did?

Or were Jimmy and Jane looking for one killer and not two?

Jane told him the last thing Bobby Salvatore had said to her at the horse show, playing off her line to him from that old movie.

“Everybody lies, ” Salvatore had told her.

Nobody Jimmy had ever encountered could lie the way Rob Jacobson could. Guy lied like Jeter used to play shortstop.

The nurse finally comes in and unhooks Jane. She’s a lovely Jamaican woman named Christine, and Jimmy has already commissioned her as an angel.

“See you tomorrow, Miss Jane,” Christine says.

“If I’m late,” Jane says, sounding like herself, “start without me.”

But the spunk, that brief spark, is there and gone. Jimmy feels as if she’s a little more wobbly than usual as he walks her to the car. At one point she starts to sag and Jimmy steadies her by putting an arm around her. She lets him keep it there until she’s inside the good-as-new Jetta, Jimmy wishing it were as easy for the doctors to do bodywork on Jane.

When they’re heading east, Jimmy asks if she’ll be okay by herself when they get to the house; he’s got some work he needs to do.

“You’re worried I can’t take care of myself?”

“Maybe not today, Janie.”

At times Jimmy has thought they were doing a piss-poor job of taking care of each other. Or anybody. Including Ben Kalinsky, whom Jimmy knows Jane would never let go of.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and puts her head back and seems to fall asleep.

Jimmy shuts off his Bluetooth, not wanting to wake her if there’s an incoming call. Goddamn, she looks pale. And as tired as he’s ever seen her.

They’re stopped at the light in the middle of Bridgehampton when Jimmy hears his phone buzzing. He’s tossed it in the console. But can clearly see the screen.

Esposito

He’ll call him back after he drops Jane off. They’re almost at the house when she finally opens her eyes.

“You’re awake,” Jimmy says.

“Wasn’t sleeping,” she says. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how I can’t do this anymore.”

“The chemo? This round is almost over, kid.”

She shakes her head so slowly Jimmy imagines it being as heavy as a bowling ball.

“I mean the case,” she says.

“What are you saying?”

“That I’m done.”