High Profile js-6

by Robert B. Parker

  “Inasmuch as it might help solve their murder,” Jesse said.

  “Inasmuch,” Dix said.

  “That sounds pretty sensible,” Jesse said.

  “Don’t believe that all-shrinks-are-crazy myth,” Dix said.

  “Would a man who had unresolved emotional issues about fertility be likely to be a womanizer?” Jesse said.

  “Such a man might keep looking for the woman who could conceive for him,” Dix said. “Or he might avoid women because he didn’t want to once again face his own failure.”

  “Weeks was a womanizer.”

  “Or he enjoyed sex,” Dix said. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “If his first wife is correct, it was obsessive.”

  “If so, maybe it was the fertility issue. Maybe he hated women. Maybe he loved them. Maybe he was trying to recreate the relationship with his mother. Maybe he was asserting his manhood for reasons unrelated to fertility. Maybe he was avenging himself on a wife. Maybe it was an interactive cluster of those things, or things we don’t even imagine.”

  1 3 0

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Do I hear you saying we don’t know why Weeks was a womanizer?” Jesse said.

  “You do,” Dix said. “Like many shrinks, I do better with one patient at a time with whom I have regularly spent time.”

  “How disappointing,” Jesse said.

  “Think how I feel,” Dix said.

  1 3 1

  29

  You’re back,” Jesse said when Suitcase Simpson came into his office.

  “Been eating a lot of crab cakes,” Suit said.

  “They do that in Baltimore. Drink a little National Bo with the crab cakes?”

  “Only while off duty,” Suit said.

  He saluted with three fingers, like a Boy Scout. Jesse thought Suit seemed very pleased with himself.

  “Do anything else?” Jesse said.

  “I found Bonnie Faison,” Suit said.

  “Really?” Jesse said.

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Yep. Wasn’t easy. But for a man with my crime detection instincts . . .”

  “Was she still at the last address they had for her?” Jesse said.

  “Yep. That Baltimore County cop went over with me.”

  “Sergeant Franks,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah, him,” Suit said. “She’s at the same place. She’s almost forty, got two kids and no husband, lives with her mother.”

  “Sounds great,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. I don’t think anyone’s happy about it,” Suit said.

  “But there they are. Three-bedroom ranch, yard about the size of a pool table. Some sort of inbred dog looks like a hyena.”

  “She remember the incident?”

  “After a while,” Suit said. “She didn’t want to talk about it, but Franks sort of convinced her she had to or else.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Tell you one thing,” Suit said. “I hope she looked better when Weeks was poking her.”

  Jesse nodded again.

  “Man, she’s so fat, I don’t think you’d know if you were in,” Suit said.

  “Maybe she was better at nineteen,” Jesse said.

  “I hope so.”

  “How’d she meet Weeks?” Jesse said.

  “She was hanging out at the mall, and picked him up after a book signing.”

  1 3 3

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “She the aggressor?” Jesse said.

  “Sounds that way. Her mother said she just wanted to fuck a celebrity.”

  “Maternal pride,” Jesse said.

  “Her mother says she woulda fucked anybody she saw on television, before she got too fat.”

  “You’re quoting,” Jesse said.

  “Uh-huh,” Suit said. “Mother’s skinny as a lizard. Smoked about two packs of cigarettes while we were there.”

  “Bonnie ever see Weeks again?”

  “No. He gave her his phone number, but when she called it she found out it was some restaurant in Baltimore.”

  “So she never saw him again.”

  “Nope,” Suit said, “but they’ll always have the White Marsh Mall.”

  He went to the coffeemaker on top of Jesse’s file cabinet and poured some coffee, added sugar and nondairy creamer, and took a sip.

  “How old were the kids,” Jesse said.

  “Little kids, you know, eight, ten years old, maybe. I don’t know much about kids.”

  Suit drank some coffee.

  “Anything else?” Jesse said.

  “Well, yeah, a little something,” Suit said.

  Jesse waited. Suit drank another swallow of coffee.

  “On the ride back to the station,” Suit said, “Franks and I were, you know, talking, and I asked him what happened 1 3 4

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  to the arresting officer, you know, the guy busted Weeks. And Franks says he was around for a while, made detective, and then quit. Went into private security. So I say, for nothing, what was his name?”

  “Lutz,” Jesse said.

  “You knew?”

  Jesse smiled.

  “No,” Jesse said, “but the way you were ready to wet your self telling me, who else was it going to be? Rumpelstiltskin?”

  “Man, you know how to ruin stuff,” Suit said.

  “So you followed up,” Jesse said. “And it’s our Lutz.”

  “Yes. Conrad Lutz,” Suit said. “Be some kind of coincidence if it was a different Conrad Lutz.”

  “If it came to that, we could fingerprint him,” Jesse said.

  “He’d be on file.”

  “So whaddya make of that, Jesse?”

  “Good police work by you, sloppy by me,” Jesse said. “I should have asked when I called them.”

  “Does this mean a salary increase for me?”

  “No.”

  “Even if it turns out I’ve cracked the case?” Suit said

  “Puts you right at the top of the list for detective.”

  “Soon as we have detectives,” Suit said.

  “Right after that,” Jesse said.

  Suit shrugged.

  “It means Lutz lied to us,” he said.

  “Or at least left stuff out,” Jesse said.

  1 3 5

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “We maybe should ask him about that?” Suit said.

  “Sooner or later,” Jesse said.

  “First, you want to get all your ducks in a row?”

  “I’d settle for getting them herded into the same area,”

  Jesse said.

  1 3 6

  30

  Jesse stood with Sunny Randall, leaning on the railing at the town wharf, looking down at the dark water. The day was overcast again, and the wind off the water was cooler than it should have been in May. Jesse was very aware that their shoulders touched. On her leash, Rosie sat at Sunny’s feet in her bull-terrier sit, with her rear feet splayed and her tongue out. She too appeared to be interested in the harbor.

  “Where’s Jenn,” Jesse said.

  “Spike’s with her,” Sunny said.

  “They get along?” Jesse said.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Sort of. Jenn seems sort of uneasy with him. But it’s hard not to like Spike.”

  “You getting along?”

  Sunny nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “And no, we haven’t talked about you.”

  “Thought never entered,” Jesse said. “Making any progress on who did it?”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk,” Sunny said. “Right after I started taking care of her, we were eating lunch and I spotted a guy who seemed to be watching us through the window. I pointed him out to Jenn, and she said no, that was not the man.”

  Jesse nodded. Rosie spotted a seagull and stiffened, motionless, looking at it. The seagull went about his business.

  “But the thing is,” Sunny said, “I’ve seen hi
m twice again. The last time I saw him I tried her again and she said no, and didn’t seem to remember that I’d pointed him out before.”

  Jesse stared for a while at the water moving against the stone base of the wharf. Then slowly he raised his eyes and looked across the harbor at the neck. It was still morning, and the strength of the sun out of the east made him squint even through the overcast.

  “Shit,” he said after a time.

  “Yes,” Sunny said.

  Jesse looked up at the overcast, and rolled his neck as if to stretch out a cramp.

  “Well, at least someone’s actually following her,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  1 3 8

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  Rosie held the seagull in her laser-like stare. The seagull had flown up on a pier piling and was staring back at Rosie.

  “You ever notice that Rosie and the seagull have similar eyes?” Jesse said.

  “Beady?”

  “I guess,” Jesse said.

  Sunny smiled.

  “But soulful,” she said.

  “In Rosie’s case,” Jesse said.

  “Exactly.”

  They were quiet. The seagull flew away. Rosie watched it briefly, then turned her blank attention to the harbor, where the gray water was calm and the upright masts of the sailboats were nearly still.

  “This Walton Weeks thing is burying me,” Jesse said.

  “I know. It’s okay. I’ll take care of Jenn.”

  “We need to know if she actually was raped.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t get away from the Weeks thing.”

  “I’ll find out about the rape,” Sunny said.

  “Could the stalker be someone different than the rapist?”

  Jesse said.

  “Seems crazy,” Sunny said.

  “Why would she refuse to ID him if he was the rapist?”

  Sunny was looking at the harbor, too.

  “Don’t know,” she said.

  “Didn’t she tell us the rapist was stalking her?”

  “She told you that,” Sunny said.

  1 3 9

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “And she told me she didn’t know him before the rape.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that she recognized him as the rapist when he was stalking her.”

  “Yes,” Sunny said.

  “Any sign of anyone else stalking her?”

  “No.”

  “You have a plan?” Jesse said.

  “Spike and I have been discussing one,” Sunny said.

  “We want her safe,” Jesse said. “But we want him for the rape, too.”

  “I know. If Spike had a talk with him, I’m sure he’d stop with the stalking. But, like you, I don’t want to scare him away. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe you could get them in a room together,” Jesse said.

  “That’s what Spike and I are talking about.”

  “And?” Jesse said.

  “I need to know she can do it. That it won’t traumatize her worse than she already has been.”

  “If she was traumatized at all,” Jesse said.

  “Something happened,” Sunny said. “I may not know her like you do . . . but something happened.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “I think so, too.”

  At the open end of the harbor, a lobster boat plodded in around the outer tip of Stiles Island.

  “She asked me to get her a gun,” Jesse said.

  1 4 0

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “I have several,” Sunny said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “You can issue her the license.”

  Jesse nodded again.

  “But,” Sunny said, “you’re not sure she should be walking around with a gun.”

  “No,” Jesse said. “I’m not.”

  “It should be her call, Jesse.”

  “She doesn’t even know how to shoot,” Jesse said.

  “I can teach her.”

  “You think she should have one?” Jesse said.

  “Believe her story for a moment,” Sunny said. “Think about what that might be like. Would you like to face an overpowering enemy with no gun?”

  Jesse nodded. The lobster boat had rounded Stiles Island now and was moving stolidly along the shoreline of Paradise Neck.

  “And if we don’t believe her story?” Jesse said.

  “Something has happened to her,” Sunny said. “She feels she needs a gun.”

  “And maybe she needs to be trusted.”

  “Skeptically,” Sunny said.

  “We think we might want to be together, you and I,”

  Jesse said.

  “And here we are worrying about one of the people who may keep us from being together,” Sunny said.

  “It’s hard work,” Jesse said.

  1 4 1

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “But we need to do it,” Sunny said.

  Jesse looked at her. He felt the pull of her. But it was not the same kind of pull Jenn exerted. Nothing was. There was no other feeling like the one Jenn caused. Obsessions are fearsome.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Give her a gun.”

  Sunny smiled.

  “I already did,” she said.

  1 4 2

  31

  Healy pushed through the crowd of reporters outside the Paradise police station.

  A reporter held out his microphone and said, “Who are you, sir?”

  “The Pied Piper,” Healy said. “When I leave, I want you all to follow me out of town.”

  He went in through the front door and closed it behind him. At the desk Molly said, “Hi, Captain.”

  “Hello, darling,” Healy said.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Officer Darling,” Molly said. “Chief Stone is in his office.”

  Healy grinned at her and went down the hall. In Jesse’s office he went straight to the file cabinet and got some coffee. Then he sat down and crossed his legs.

  “Thought I’d stop by,” Healy said, “on my way to work, see how fame was affecting you.”

  “I think I’m opposed to freedom of the press.”

  “King Nixon might have agreed,” Healy said.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “It has its place.”

  “Just not here,” Healy said.

  “Exactly.”

  “You know anything I don’t know?” Healy said.

  “Probably,” Jesse said. “But not about Walton Weeks.”

  “How ’bout Carey Longley?”

  “Less,” Jesse said.

  “She’s thirty years old, from New Jersey. Her father’s an executive with Curtiss-Wright,” Healy said. “Her mother’s a housewife. Two older brothers, both work at Curtiss-Wright. She was married to and divorced from a guy who works for her father.”

  “So how come nobody has contacted me?” Jesse said.

  “They all disowned her,” Healy said. “They’re very religious. When she divorced their handpicked husband and went off to work for Walton Weeks, and live sinfully, they all agreed she was no more.”

  “They don’t like Walton?” Jesse said.

  “They felt him to be an embodiment, I believe the phrase was, of the Antichrist,” Healy said.

  1 4 4

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Gee,” Jesse said. “He didn’t seem so bad, watching him on tape.”

  “That’s because you’re not as, ah, Christian as they are.”

  “Probably not,” Jesse said. “What’s your source?”

  “Jersey state cop,” Healy said. “Named Morrissey. Want to talk with him?”

  “Maybe,” Jesse said. “She have children?”

  “No.”

  “Is Longley her maiden name or married name?”

  “Married.”

  “What was her maiden name?” Jesse said.

  “Young, and I think you’re supposed to call it her birth name
.”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “Her ex-husband disown her, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “Everybody—father, mother, brothers, ex-husband.”

  “Sinful is sinful,” Healy said.

  “I wonder if one of them killed him for embodying the Antichrist, and her for carrying his baby.”

  “And they shot them instead of stoning them to death?”

  Healy said.

  “Just a thought,” Jesse said.

  “It’s not a bad one,” Healy said. “Except according to Morrissey they all had alibis for the time she died.”

  “So does everyone else,” Jesse said.

  “Ex-wives?” Healy said.

  “Yep. And the researcher and the manager and the lawyer.”

  1 4 5

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “How about his bodyguard?” Healy said.

  “Lutz? The day the ME says they died, the house dick at the hotel says Lutz had breakfast in the dining room, hung in the lobby all morning with a newspaper. He ate lunch in the dining room. Sat in the lobby, chatted up the doorman, used the health club, had a couple drinks in the bar, ordered room service for dinner and a movie and made two phone calls. He never left the hotel.”

  “Sounds like he wanted to be able to prove he was there,”

  Healy said.

  “It does,” Jesse said. “And he was.”

  Healy nodded. Jesse turned the coffee mug slowly in his hands. Healy was neat and quiet in the chair across from him. Tan summer suit, blue shirt, tan tie with diagonal blue stripes, snap-brimmed summer straw hat with a big blue band.

  “Two people murdered,” Jesse said. “One of them famous. And no one appears to care at all.”

  “Except the first wife,” Healy said.

  Jesse nodded and looked out the window at the transmitter trucks parked near the station.

  “And the Fourth Estate,” he said.

  “I don’t think they care about Carey and Walton,” Healy said.

  “No,” Jesse said. “Of course they don’t. They’re just subject matter.”

  Healy nodded.

  1 4 6

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Ellen Migliore,” Jesse said. “Who’s divorced from Walton twenty years or more. She’s the only one.”

  “I wonder why she cares?” Healy said.

  “Something ulterior?” Jesse said.