High Profile js-6

by Robert B. Parker

“Not close,” Jenn said. “What is he like, Richie? I mean, to be with.”

  “He’s nearly impervious,” Sunny said. “Very contained. Quiet. But there’s something going on in there. Something that you think might explode someday.”

  “At you?”

  “No,” Sunny said. “Not at me.”

  “Sounds a little like Jesse,” Jenn said.

  “Yes,” Sunny said. “He is rather like Jesse.”

  “Jesse is so controlled, but you know that he has some thing very dangerous in there.”

  “Dangerous to you?” Sunny said.

  Jenn opened her eyes and looked at Sunny and smiled.

  “No,” she said. “Not to me.”

  They parked on the street in front of Sunny’s building.

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it?” Sunny said.

  “Exciting?” Jenn said.

  “Yes, having that kind of power.”

  Jenn stared at her. The interior of the car was dimly lit by the street lamps. Sunny couldn’t see Jenn’s face very well.

  “I never quite thought of it that way,” Jenn said after a time. “But yes. To be with someone who is dangerous but would never be dangerous to you . . .”

  “So why are we both divorced?” Sunny said.

  “I don’t know. I wish to God I did know. He’s like the one necessity in my life. He’s all I have for family. I know he loves me. I would trust him with my life.”

  “But?” Sunny said.

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  “But I can’t stay with him. I can’t be faithful to him. When I try I get claustrophobic.”

  “And you don’t know why,” Sunny said.

  “No. Do you?”

  “No,” Sunny said. “We’re working on it.”

  “We?”

  “My shrink and I,” Sunny said.

  “Oh God,” Jenn said. “I spend half my salary on shrinks.”

  “If at first you don’t succeed,” Sunny said.

  They got out of the car and went into Sunny’s building. 1 6 6

  37

  Healy sat in Jesse’s office with his hat on and one foot against the edge of Jesse’s desk.

  “Okay,” Healy said. “You were right. It’s Weeks’s blood and the girl’s.”

  “Carey Longley.”

  “Yes.”

  “So they were killed there,” Jesse said. “Or somewhere, and put in there, and kept cold.”

  “So we have no real idea when they were killed,” Healy said.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Which means everybody’s alibi is essentially meaningless,” Jesse said.

  “Which is probably why they were cold-stored in the first place,” Healy said.

  “Somebody knew what they were doing,” Jesse said.

  “They just kept them cold and didn’t freeze them. The ME

  would have been able to tell that they’d been frozen.”

  “Remember it sounded like Lutz was establishing an alibi sitting in the lobby and such.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “How would he know when we’d decide they died?” Jesse said.

  “He wouldn’t,” Healy said.

  “So I guess he just likes to hang around hotels,” Jesse said.

  “I guess,” Healy said.

  “And I guess we’ll have to reinterview everybody with the new understanding that we don’t know when they died.”

  “Looks like,” Healy said.

  “Might dig them up,” Jesse said.

  “Might. If the Weeks estate would let you.”

  “Or we got a court order,” Jesse said.

  “In New York,” Healy said.

  “Or we could dig her up,” Jesse said.

  “Carey,” Healy said. “Nice idea. I talked to the ME already. Without knowing when they died and how long they were refrigerated . . .”

  Healy shook his head.

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  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Not worth the trouble,” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  Healy tipped his chair back slightly on its hind legs and teetered there, keeping his balance with one foot on Jesse’s desk, rocking slightly.

  “Well,” Jesse said. “Whoever did it knew about the dream house on Stiles Island.”

  “Did they follow them there and kill them?” Healy said.

  “And see the walk-in refrigerator and improvise?”

  “Or did they know about it ahead of time, and kill them there in order to refrigerate them?”

  “No blood anywhere else in the house,” Healy said.

  “None we could find,” Jesse said. “We looked hard.”

  “So either shot in the walk-in cooler,” Healy said, “or shot someplace else and dumped there.”

  “Which would account for the small amount of blood,”

  Jesse said.

  “They could have been shot there, and the killer cleaned up.”

  “And missed the minuscule amounts we picked up with the blue light,” Jesse said.

  “They’d have bled a lot when they were shot,” Healy said.

  “And bled for a while,” Jesse said. “You’d have had to do several clean-ups.”

  “Having, under this theory, just murdered two people,”

  Healy said, “with no certain assurance that nobody heard the shots.”

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  They were both quiet for a time.

  “I like it better that they were shot somewhere else and moved there after they died,” Jesse said.

  “And the blood traces were just a little postmortem seepage.”

  “Yes.”

  Again the two men were quiet.

  Then Healy said, “Yeah. Me too. Which means that whoever did them knew about the house.”

  “Which they bought under her maiden name to keep it a secret.”

  “Which makes Lutz look pretty good for it,” Healy said.

  “It does,” Jesse said. “On the other hand, a lot of money changed hands.”

  “So maybe his lawyer knew,” Healy said.

  “Or his manager,” Jesse said.

  “Or one of the wives.”

  “Swell,” Jesse said. “We’ve got all the suspects we had before.”

  “We?” Healy said. “Whaddya mean, ‘we’? I’m just stopping by on my way from work.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Thank you for your support,” he said.

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  38

  They were drinking white wine by the window, at the table in Sunny’s kitchen, in the little bay, when Spike came into the loft with the stalker. From under the table Rosie gave her ferocious gurgling bark. Jenn took in a sudden breath and froze. The stalker was a middle-sized well-dressed man in his middle thirties with a neat beard. He face was rigid, and very pale.

  “Timothy Patrick Lloyd,” Spike said, “according to his driver’s license. Lives in the Prudential Center. His business cards say he’s the CEO of Spot-on Marketing. He’s got six twenties in his wallet.”

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “You’ve met Spike,” Sunny said. “I’m Sunny Randall, and, I assume, you know this young woman.”

  Lloyd’s eyes were busy. He looked at Sunny, shifted to Jenn, looked quickly away, scanned the loft. Rosie came out from under the table and sniffed at his pant leg. He looked down at her and away. Jenn continued to stare at him.

  “He doesn’t have a weapon,” Spike said, and closed the door and leaned on it.

  Sunny said, “So tell us your story, Mr. Lloyd.”

  “I’m here against my will,” Lloyd said.

  His voice was thin and tight. Sunny nodded at the phone on the kitchen counter.

  “Feel free to call the police,” Sunny said. “Nine-one-one would work.”

  Lloyd’s eyes shifted to the phone and back.

  “I just want to leave,” he said.

  “You do know Ms. Stone,�
� Sunny said.

  He didn’t look at Jenn.

  “She’s on Channel Three,” he said.

  “And Jenn, you know Mr. Lloyd,” Sunny said.

  “No,” Jenn said.

  “But you recognize him.”

  “No.”

  “He’s been following you around,” Sunny said, “since I met you.”

  “I don’t think it’s him,” Jenn said.

  “It is,” Sunny said.

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  Sunny looked at Spike.

  “It is,” Spike said.

  “I’ve never followed anyone,” Lloyd said.

  “I don’t know him,” Jenn said.

  “Did he rape you?” Sunny said.

  “Rape?” Lloyd said. “Rape. Jesus Christ, I never raped anybody.”

  “No,” Jenn said. “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t rape you.”

  “No.”

  “What the hell is this?” Lloyd said.

  “I could probably convince him to tell us his side of things,” Spike said.

  “What are you going to do?” Lloyd said.

  “Vee have our vays,” Spike said.

  Sunny saw Lloyd’s fists clenched at his sides. A touching moment of bravado, Sunny thought. Sunny had seen Spike in action. Lloyd had no chance. Sunny shook her head.

  “He didn’t rape you,” Sunny said to Jenn.

  “No,” Jenn said.

  She had looked at no one since Spike brought Lloyd in.

  “Did anyone rape you?” Sunny said.

  “Of course someone raped me,” Jenn said.

  “And someone is stalking you,” Sunny said.

  “Yes. Don’t you believe me?”

  Sunny looked at Spike. He shrugged and stepped away from the door.

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  “You’re free to go, Mr. Lloyd,” Sunny said.

  Lloyd started to speak, looked at Spike, and said nothing. Spike opened the door, and Lloyd went out. Sunny looked down at Rosie, who was sitting by the kitchen counter, looking hopefully upward. Spike closed the door after Lloyd. He went to the counter and opened a cookie jar and gave a dog biscuit to Rosie.

  “Well, don’t you?” Jenn said. “Don’t you believe me?”

  Rosie chewed up her dog biscuit. Sunny reached down to pat her. Then she looked up at Jenn.

  “The question’s too hard for me, at the moment,” Sunny said.

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  39

  Jesse talked with Conrad Lutz in the coffee shop of the Langham Hotel.

  “You’re still around.”

  “Yeah,” Lutz said. “The family wanted me to sort of stay around until there was some sort of closure on the case.”

  “They paying the tab?” Jesse said.

  “They are,” Lutz said.

  “At the Langham.”

  “Well, I’m already here,” Lutz said. “You know?”

  “Nice duty,” Jesse said.

  “Sure.”

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  Lutz stirred some sugar into his coffee.

  “You didn’t mention a prior connection to Weeks,” Jesse said.

  “How prior?” Lutz said.

  “You busted him for public indecency in White Marsh, Maryland, in 1987.”

  Lutz nodded slowly.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you mention it?” Jesse said.

  “I was supposed to be his bodyguard. I wasn’t supposed to be going around telling tales on the poor bastard.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “I was with the Baltimore County police, patrolling the White Marsh Mall. A couple of women came up to me and complained of what was happening in a car in the parking lot. I checked it out and it was Weeks and some kid doing the nasty in his car. I’d have chased them off and let it slide, but the two ladies raised hell and insisted I arrest them for defiling the mall parking lot or something. So I took them in.”

  “How’d he handle it?” Jesse said.

  “He was embarrassed,” Lutz said. “But I think he knew he could fix it. He pointed out that the girl was of age, and then he started asking me about being a cop and did I see much of this and that sort of thing.”

  Jesse nodded. A waitress came by and freshened their coffee.

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  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Some of it was schmoozing,” Lutz said. “You know, be pals with you, how you see they’re not afraid, and no hard feelings. But in fact he actually seemed interested. Few weeks later he called and asked if we could talk.”

  “What did he want to talk about?”

  “Police work,” Lutz said. “Weeks was going to do a fullhour commentary on his TV show about police work, and wanted to research it. I said okay. By that time the lewdbehavior charge had sort of gone away. So I talked with him. He rode around in the cruiser with me. I liked him. He was a pretty nice guy. You know? He was interested in everything. He wasn’t full of himself. He seemed to get it. He never got in the way. And finally, when he did the commentary, I liked that, too. He was fair. He didn’t whitewash cops. But he didn’t blackball us, either. He knew the score.”

  “He mention being arrested for public lewdness?”

  Lutz grinned and shook his head.

  “He was honest,” Lutz said. “But he wasn’t crazy.”

  “How’d you end up as his bodyguard?” Jesse said.

  “He got some death threats. Never clear who they were from. Weeks said that telling the truth in public was inherently risky.”

  “So he called you?”

  “Yeah. We’d become pretty friendly. We used to talk now and then. Have dinner once in a while. He offered a lot more than Baltimore County was paying. So I went with him.”

  “Any follow-up on the death threats?”

  “Not till now,” Lutz said.

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  “You think this murder is about that?”

  “I don’t know what this murder is about,” Lutz said. Jesse nodded.

  “I talked with the doormen here,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah?”

  “No one remembers seeing Walton and Carey walking up Franklin Street,” Jesse said.

  “Why would they?” Lutz said.

  “Nobody remembers you asking about it, either.”

  “For crissake, Jesse, they talk to a hundred people a day.”

  “Do you remember specifically who you talked with?” Jesse said.

  Lutz shook his head.

  “Not really. White guy,” he said. “Looked Irish. You know, they all look the same in the monkey suit.”

  “Not many Irish doormen around the city,” Jesse said. “If we got them all together, could you pick him out?”

  “Probably not, it was a while ago. I just don’t remember.”

  “But someone did see them that day,” Jesse said.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “And you can’t remember which one it was you talked with.”

  Lutz shook his head.

  “I should, I know, me being a former cop and all. But . . .” He spread his hands. “You know how it is.”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Jesse said.

  Lutz shrugged. Jesse waited. Lutz didn’t say anything else.

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  H I G H P R O F I L E

  After a time, Jesse broke the silence.

  “You know anything about any real estate that Weeks might have been interested in around here?” he said.

  “Real estate?” Lutz said. “Walton? No, I don’t know anything about that.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Why do you ask?” Lutz said.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “You got something breaking in the case?” Lutz said.

  “My ass, mostly,” Jesse said.

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  40

/>   The window in Jesse’s hotel room looked out onto an air shaft on the West Side of New York. Jesse made a drink and looked at the air shaft for a time. Then he went to the phone and called Sunny Randall.

  “How’s your hotel?” she said.

  “A bed, running water,” Jesse said.

  “You’ve always been a minimalist.”

  “I’m on a minimalist budget,” Jesse said.

  “How’s the case?”

  “Lot of information, none of it useful,” Jesse said. “How about yours?”

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Weird,” Sunny said.

  “Good to hear,” Jesse said.

  He sipped his drink.

  “I’m sorry,” Sunny said.

  “I didn’t expect it wouldn’t be,” Jesse said. “How weird is it?”

  “You know my friend Spike.”

  “Yes.”

  “We decided that it was time to put Jenn and the stalker together,” Sunny said. “In a protected environment.”

  “And?”

  “Spike, ah, apprehended him, and brought him to my place.”

  “And?”

  “They swore they didn’t know each other,” Sunny said.

  “He didn’t know her. He wasn’t stalking her. He was an innocent bystander.”

  “Jenn?”

  “She said the same thing. He wasn’t the stalker. He didn’t rape her. She’d never seen him before in her life.”

  Jesse took another drink. He did it carefully so that maybe Sunny wouldn’t hear the ice clink.

  “Any chance that it’s the truth?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t know about the rape,” Sunny said. “But this guy has been stalking her. I spotted him. Spike spotted him. He’d been grabbed by this very large man and brought to a strange place against his will. I offered him a chance to call the police. He didn’t. Plus, he runs a marketing company that 1 8 1

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  does business with Jenn’s TV station. He’s bought a lot of time there.”

  “On-air people wouldn’t have to know the advertisers.”

  “No.”

  “But why would she deny the stalking?” Jesse said.

  “I was going to ask you.”

  Jesse looked at his glass. Still plenty left. He glanced at the dark air shaft outside. At her end of the phone, Sunny was quiet.

  “When I was about as bad as I’ve ever been with drinking,” Jesse said, “I snuck it. I didn’t drink in front of Jenn. She thought I was quitting. But I used to keep a pint of scotch in my car, and have a few pops when I was alone. One day we were going someplace and Jenn opened the glove compartment and there was this half-empty bottle of booze. . . .”