High Profile

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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.

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