High Profile js-6

by Robert B. Parker

  “So you’re saying he might have done it?”

  “I suppose.”

  They were quiet.

  After a moment Lorrie said, “It could have been Conrad.”

  “Any idea why he waited so long?” Jesse said.

  Lorrie looked faintly startled.

  “So long?” she said.

  “You married Weeks in 1990,” Jesse said.

  “Conrad could be like that, very patient, very calculating, very cold.”

  “But forceful and passionate,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “And having been patient and calculating all this time,”

  Jesse said, “have you any thought as to what might have caused him to act now?”

  “I . . . maybe it was because Walton was going to fire him.”

  “You know that?”

  “Walton mentioned to me that he was considering it.”

  “He say why?” Jesse asked.

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  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “No. Just that he was thinking about it.”

  “Once he didn’t have the good job,” Jesse said, “there would be no reason not to kill Weeks.”

  “You know,” Lorrie said. “That sort of makes sense.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Maybe he had to because she saw him do it,” Lorrie said.

  “Good thought,” Jesse said. “Have you seen much of him lately?”

  “Not really, not since Walton died,” Lorrie said. Jesse nodded.

  “Is there anything else you could tell us about all this?”

  “It’s just that I never thought of Conrad,” she said.

  “But now that you have?” Jesse said.

  “I hate to even think it, but it makes a kind of sense.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “It does.”

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  56

  How come you didn’t tell her how we saw her with Lutz and Hendricks, taking turns?” Suit said as they were drinking coffee with Rosa Sanchez near the station house on West 10th.

  “We can always ask her later,” Jesse said. “I was sort of interested in how far she’d go with Lutz.”

  Suit took the tape recorder from his shoulder bag and put it on the table. He pressed play.

  “It’s just that I never thought of Conrad,” Lorrie said.

  “But now that you have?” Jesse said.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “I hate to even think it,” Lorrie said, “but it makes a kind of sense.”

  Suit pressed stop.

  “Just making sure we got it?” he said.

  “You’re going to play selected portions for this Lutz fella?” Rosa said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  Suit nodded.

  “And we got our pictures,” Suit said.

  “Worth a thousand words,” Jesse said.

  “You think this guy Lutz did your murders?” Rosa said.

  “Maybe.”

  “You think the woman is involved with him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you’re going to use her to try and shake him loose,”

  Rosa said.

  “Yep.”

  “And him to shake her loose?” Rosa said.

  “Yep.”

  “You think they’re the ones?”

  “She’s been lying about absolutely everything since I started talking to her. He has never told me any of what you heard me talk with her about.”

  “We both know it doesn’t mean they did it,” Rosa said.

  “And we both know it doesn’t mean they didn’t,” Jesse said.

  “That’s right,” Rosa said. “It’s grounds for suspicion.”

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  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “She didn’t mention that Weeks was divorcing her,” Suit said.

  “Her husband that’s dead?” Rosa said. “The talk-show guy?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “Was it going to be a good deal for her?” Rosa said.

  “No.”

  “No money?”

  “Not enough,” Jesse said. “That was going to go to the woman who died with him, and their unborn son.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Rosa said. “A motive.”

  “Sounds like one,” Jesse said.

  “But?”

  “But I need to figure out where Lutz is in this,” Jesse said.

  “I doubt that she could have done it alone. And why in hell would he do it for her?”

  “He’s been seeing her,” Suit said.

  “So has Hendricks,” Jesse said.

  “Who’s Hendricks,” Rosa said.

  Jesse told her.

  “He got something going with what’shername Lorrie?”

  Rosa said.

  “So I’m told.”

  “And we got our pictures,” Suit said.

  “Suit did the photography,” Jesse said. “He’s very proud.”

  “A job worth doing . . .” Suit said.

  “You think he’s in?” Rosa said.

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  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Hendricks? Don’t know. Can’t rule him out.”

  Rosa took a card from her purse and gave it to Jesse. “You guys need me again, call. Deputy superintendent says I’m yours when you need me, unless something comes up.”

  “Thanks, Rosa,” Jesse said.

  “It was a pleasure watching you work in the interview, smooth, pleasant, keep her talking, show her a way to look good, and, if she’s guilty, throw the blame someplace else,”

  Rosa said. “You’re pretty good.”

  “Thanks for noticing,” Jesse said.

  “She may have killed her husband and his girlfriend and their unborn child,” Rosa said. “And she might have two male accomplices, and she might be bopping them both.”

  “And she looks like a charity-ball trophy wife,” Jesse said.

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Rosa said.

  “But not forever,” Jesse said.

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  57

  Molly brought Lutz into Jesse’s office. He looks tired, Jesse thought.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Jesse said.

  Lutz nodded and sat down. Molly left.

  “I’m not going to fuck around with this,” Jesse said.

  “I think you’re in a mess.”

  Lutz had no reaction.

  “Here’s what we know. We know you were a cop. We know you once busted Weeks for public indecency, and went on to become his bodyguard. We know you were once married to Lorraine Pilarcik, now known as Lorrie Weeks. We know you R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  and she got a Vegas quickie divorce eleven days before she married Weeks. We know you seemed to have weathered this domestic upheaval and continued in Weeks’s employ. We know you were just with her in New York, and continue to have a relationship with her, which gives the appearance, at least, of intimacy.”

  Lutz didn’t speak. He sat straight in the chair. His arms crossed. His face blank.

  “We know that Carey Longley was pregnant with Weeks’s baby. We know that Weeks, prior to his death, had filed for divorce from Lorrie, which would have meant that all he owned would go to Carey and the unborn child, once the divorce happened.”

  Lutz didn’t move. He looked at Jesse with the dead-eyed cop stare that Jesse himself had mastered so long ago. It was like they issued it with the badge. Even Molly could do it if required.

  “We know you were a cop, so we assume you know how to shoot. We assume you had some knowledge of the degree to which storing a cadaver in a refrigerator would muck up the medical examiner’s conclusions. We know you’re a big, strong guy and could, if you had to, drag a dead body around and string it up on a tree in the park. And, as a former cop, you might have a better idea than some why doing so would confuse the murder investigation.”

  Jesse picked up his coffee cup, saw that it was empty, and stood to pour some more.

  “You
want coffee?” Jesse said to Lutz.

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  H I G H P R O F I L E

  Lutz shook his head. Jesse put sugar in his coffee and some condensed milk and stirred it and brought it back to his desk.

  “Care to discuss any of these issues?” Jesse said. Lutz shook his head.

  “Care to discuss the relationship with Lorrie Pilarcik?”

  Lutz shook his head. Jesse shrugged. He took a tape recorder from his desk drawer, put it on his desk, and punched play. It was the tape Suit had made of the interview with Lorrie in New York.

  “And Lutz didn’t mind?” Jesse’s voice.

  “Well, I suppose, of course, he must have minded.” Lorrie’s voice.

  “And do you think he minded when you married Weeks?”

  “You recognize the voices,” Jesse said.

  Lutz made no answer.

  “Well, I guess.” Lorrie’s voice. “I suppose so.”

  “But he stayed on as Weeks’s bodyguard.”

  “Yes.”

  Lutz was perfectly still as he listened.

  “Do you think he might have minded enough to kill Weeks and hang him in a public park?” Jesse’s voice.

  “Oh my God . . . of course Conrad had some violence in him. A policeman. A bodyguard. He carried a gun. . . . It could have been Conrad.”

  Jesse let the tape roll to the end, and stopped it and hit rewind. Lutz was impassive.

  “She seems to think you murdered Weeks and his girlfriend.”

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  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  Lutz didn’t move.

  “She was nice about it. She hesitated and lowered her eyes and licked her lower lip a lot, you know how she does, with the tip of her tongue. But very demurely and sweetly, pal, she fingered you for the murders.”

  Lutz moved slightly. Jesse couldn’t tell if he was nodding his head or faintly rocking his whole upper body.

  “Want to hear the tape again?” Jesse said.

  Lutz shook his head. Jesse took a couple of eight-by-ten blowups of Hendricks and Lorrie that Suit had taken. He pushed them toward Lutz.

  “You know the afternoons you spent with Lorrie recently in New York? She spent the nights with Alan Hendricks.”

  Lutz made no move toward the photographs, but Jesse knew Lutz could see them from where he sat. He stared blankly toward them. Then without a preamble he stood and turned and walked out of Jesse’s office, and kept going. 2 5 8

  58

  Molly came in with a paper plate, on which there were two apple turnovers.

  “You didn’t want to hold him?” Molly said.

  She put the paper plate in front of Jesse. Absently, Jesse picked up one of the turnovers.

  “I got not one single piece of evidence that he has ever in his life committed a crime of any sort,” Jesse said. He took a bite of the turnover.

  “His ex-wife says he could have done it,” Molly said. Jesse chewed and swallowed.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “Yum, yum,” he said. “But she didn’t say that he did do it. Any defense attorney in America would listen to that tape and see that I led her to it.”

  Jesse ate some more of the turnover.

  “Plus,” Molly said, “if it came to that, he could argue that she did it, and she could insist that he did it, and that would create reasonable doubt.”

  “So, no, I didn’t hold him,” Jesse said. “This is an excellent turnover. You get it at Daisy Dyke’s?”

  “I baked it,” Molly said.

  “Baked it?”

  “Yeah, you know, peeled the apples and made the crust and added the cinnamon and put in the sugar and folded it up and put it in the oven.”

  “You know, turnovers are like donuts. They just seem to be. You don’t think of anyone making them.”

  “I made them,” Molly said.

  “Wow,” Jesse said. “Wife, mother, cop, baker.”

  “Department sex symbol,” Molly said.

  Jesse finished the turnover.

  “Molly, I mean in no way to downgrade that, but you are the only woman in the department.”

  “So unless some of the guys are gay,” Molly said. Jesse nodded.

  “Which I don’t think they are,” Molly said.

  Jesse nodded again.

  “Well, it may be a meaningless distinction,” Molly said,

  “but it is a distinction, and I’m claiming it.”

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  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Can I eat the other turnover?” Jesse said.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you make them specifically for me?” Jesse said.

  “No. I made them for my husband and children. But I saved two for you.”

  “Well, you’re right, one takes the distinctions one can get,” Jesse said.

  “Besides, maybe a couple of the guys are secretly gay, and you actually are a department sex symbol.”

  “I’d prefer not to go there,” Jesse said.

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  59

  Jesse rang the bell at the front door of Timothy Lloyd’s condo in the Prudential Center, and held up his badge in front of the peephole. After a minute the door opened.

  “I’m Jesse Stone, the chief of police in Paradise. We need to talk.”

  “Paradise, Mass?”

  “Yes, may I come in?”

  “Yeah, sure, what’s up?” Lloyd said and stepped away from the door. Jesse went in and closed the door behind him. He tucked the badge away in his shirt pocket.

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “I am also Jenn Stone’s former husband,” he said. Lloyd’s face sagged a little, and Jesse hit him hard with a straight left. Lloyd took two steps back and then lunged at Jesse. Jesse hit him with a left hook and then a right hook, and Lloyd stumbled backward and sat on the floor.

  “You can’t come in here and do this,” Lloyd said. It always amazed Jesse what people said in extremis.

  “Of course I can,” Jesse said. “I just did. And I may do it every day unless we have a thoughtful and productive discussion.”

  Lloyd scooted on his butt backward away from Jesse and scrambled to his feet. Jesse could see his eyes shifting, looking for a weapon. Lloyd picked up a brass candleholder from the dining-room table, charged at Jesse, and tried to hit him with it. Jesse deflected Lloyd’s swing with his left forearm, grabbed him by the hair, and ran him forward behind his own momentum into the wall headfirst. Lloyd let go of the candlestick holder and went to his knees and stayed there, trying to get his legs under him. He had more stuff in him than Jesse had expected. Jesse’s business was to get rid of whatever stuff Lloyd had. He kicked him in the stomach and Lloyd yelped and fell flat on the floor and doubled up in pain and a kind of fetal concealment. Jesse walked to a red leather armchair near the front door and sat in it and said nothing. Lloyd stayed doubled up on the floor, groaning softly and occasionally. Something annoying impinged faintly on Jesse’s consciousness. He listened. There was a television on somewhere in 2 6 3

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  the apartment. He couldn’t hear what was being said. But he knew from the sound of it that it was blather. After a time when the only sound in the place was the distant and indistinct blather, Lloyd stopped groaning on the floor.

  “I never did anything to your wife,” he said.

  “You’ve been stalking her.”

  “I never—”

  “I’m not here to debate,” Jesse said.

  He stood and walked over to where Lloyd lay on the ground, took his gun from his hip, and bent over and put the muzzle of the gun against the bridge of Lloyd’s nose.

  “If you stalk her again, or bother her in any way, or have anything at all to do with her, I’ll kill you,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ, Stone.” Lloyd’s voice was up a full octave. Jesse pressed the gun harder against Lloyd’s forehead.

  “You understand that?”

  “Yes, Jesus Christ, yes. I promise I’ll n
ever go near her again. I promise.”

  Jesse stood motionless for a moment, the gun pressed against Lloyd. He could feel the air going in and out of his lungs. He could feel the latissimus dorsi bunch. He could almost feel it. It was as if he were able to project himself ahead into the sudden discharge of energy that came with a gunshot.

  “Please,” Lloyd said. “Please. I won’t ever bother her again.”

  Jesse took in all the air his lungs would hold and let it out slowly, and straightened and put the gun back in its holster. 2 6 4

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Get up,” he said. “Sit in a chair. Tell me your side of it.”

  Lloyd got painfully to his feet. Jesse made no attempt to help him. Half-bent and slow, Lloyd got himself to a big, barrel-backed chair and sank into it. They looked at each other.

  “I don’t want to make you mad,” Lloyd said.

  “Let’s keep it simple,” Jesse said. “You leave Jenn alone, you’ll have no problem with me. You bother her again and I’ll kill you.”

  Lloyd nodded slowly.

  “Can I get a drink?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “You want one?” Lloyd said.

  “No.”

  Lloyd went stiffly to the kitchen, filled a lowball glass with ice, poured a lot of Jack Daniel’s over the ice, and brought it back. He sat and looked at Jesse and took a drink.

  “I, you’re sure you don’t want something.”

  “I’m sure,” Jesse said.

  “I, ah, I liked Jenn a lot,” Lloyd said.

  The normalness of having bourbon on the rocks in his living room made Lloyd a little calmer. Pretty soon, Jesse knew, the whiskey would help as well. . . . Coupla good old boys, Jesse thought, having a Jack on the rocks, talking about broads.

  “And I thought she liked me,” Lloyd said. “But I think now that she just wanted me to get her into modeling, and television commercials, and, you know, help her career.”

  Jesse nodded.

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  “She was using me.”

  “Probably she wanted both,” Jesse said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Probably wanted to be in love with you and wanted you to help her, and she couldn’t separate the two out either.”