Текст книги "Stone cold"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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not really their condo?”

“They rent it?”

“Yep, from a guy working a two-year consulting project in Saudi

Arabia.”

“He’ll be pleased to hear they took

off,” Jesse

said.

“Unless they paid up front.”

“Would you?” Jesse said.

“When I knew I was going to disappear? No, I don’t think I

would.”

When he was off the phone Jesse swiveled his chair, put his feet

back on the windowsill, and looked at the fire trucks again.

They had a false identity. They must have had it in place,

standing by. That’s why they had been so easy and open about their

history in Cleveland. Maybe the Cleveland identity was assumed too.

If you had time and some smarts you could prepare a full new one, driver’s license, credit cards. Or five full new ones.

Standing on the running board of one of the fire trucks, a news

photographer was taking pictures through the window. Jesse could imagine the caption. Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone ponders

his next move. Jesse kept sitting.

If they had a long-established alternate identification,

then they must have had a long-established plan to kill people.

Maybe Paradise wasn’t the first. People like that didn’t stop very

often. If Paradise wasn’t the first place they‘ d pursued their

passion, it probably wouldn’t be the last. They were unconnected.

They didn’t need to work.

Suitcase Simpson came into the office.

“There were eleven cab fares in the last week,” Suit said, “out

of Paradise. Seven of them went to the airport. Two went to the Northeast Mall. One went to New England Baptist Hospital. One went to Wonderland Dog Track.”

“In the winter?” Jesse said.

“They run all year,” Suit said.

“In this weather it would be easier just to mail them a check,”

Jesse said.

“You California guys are wimps,” Suit said. “Hardy New

Englanders like to be there when they lose it.”

Jesse nodded.

“So they could have cabbed to the airport, picked up the rental,

drove it to the mall.”

“Or one of them could have, and the other one could have picked

him up and driven him home in the Saab.”

“They like to do things together,” Jesse said.

“So you figure they both went for the rental car, and drove it

to the mall in time for the shootout?”

“Yes.”

“What if they rented it the day before,”

Suit said, “and parked

it at the mall?”

“The car would have been parked there overnight. It might have

attracted attention. And they’d have had to take a cab to the mall

on the day of the shooting.”

“Why wouldn’t they have just driven the Saab over and left it

when they swapped cars?”

“Don’t know. Maybe they’re so

yuppied out that they couldn’t

bear to abandon the Saab.”

“Hell, Jesse, they abandoned it anyway, along with their

condo.”

“Yeah, but it was safely parked in the garage. We are not

dealing with entirely rational people here.”

“You think they’re crazy?”

“They’ve killed a bunch of people for no apparent

reason.”

“Good point,” Suit said. “Either

way we’re looking for cab rides

on the day of the shooting.”

Jesse said, “Isn’t there a subway station near the dog

track?”

“Yeah. On the Blue Line. We used to take it into Boston when I

was a kid. Buncha stops: Revere Beach, Orient Heights, the airport, Maverick Square in East Boston.”

Jesse nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Check the cabs

to the airport and to

Wonderland on that day. Talk to the drivers. See if they can describe who they took, and where they picked them up. Get a list of names from all the rental companies at the airport, who they rented a car to that day.”

“That’s going to take some

time,” Suit said.

“It might,” Jesse said. “Or you

might score the first guy you

ask.”

“Not likely,” Suit said.

“Just as likely as last,” Jesse said.

“No,” Suit said. “It never

happens like that.”

Jesse shrugged.

When Suit was gone, Jesse looked at the fire engines some more.

So, where would they go? They were free to go anywhere. They

dearly had plenty of money. Tony’s ocular scanner made that possible. If it were true … Maybe it was … If it were

true, he’d hold a patent on it … If he held a patent on it,

they’d have it at the U.S. Patent Office … which would have a

website.

Jesse stood and opened his office door and yelled,

“Molly.”

When she came in, he said, “Are you as expert on the Internet as

you are at everything else?”

“You sound like my husband,” Molly said,

“when he wants

something.”

“I need crime fighting help,” Jesse said.

“You really don’t want to do this

yourself,” Molly said. “Do

you.”

“I need you to find the U.S. Patent Office on the Web and see

who has patented an optical scanning device.”

“Everybody?”

The Lincolns appeared to be in their late forties.

“Everybody in, oh, say, the last twenty-five years.”

“And while I’m doing that,”

Molly said, “you’ll be in here

oiling your baseball glove? Thinking of spring?”

“Hey,” Jesse said,

“I’m the chief of police.”

Molly smiled and saluted.

“Of course you are,” she said.

“I’ll see what I can

find.”

68

Jesse sat with Marcy Campbell in the Indigo Apple drinking coffee.

“Rita Fiore never called me back,” he said.

“Maybe she’s decided she won’t

waste any more time with

you.”

“Even though I’m a sexual

athlete?”

“It sounds like Rita wants, excuse the phrase, a relationship” Marcy said.

“And she’s thinks I’m not a good

candidate?”

“You’re not,” Marcy said.

“I know.”

“And she knows.”

Jesse nodded.

“She wants a husband,” Jesse said.

“Or the equivalent,” Marcy said.

“I think she’s had several of those

already.”

“Give her credit,” Marcy said,

“for fierce

optimism.”

“There are women who need a mate, I guess.”

“People,” Marcy said.

“People?”

“Men and women,”

Marcy said, “who feel incomplete

unless they are mated.”

“You’re not one of them,” Jesse

said.

“No. I like sex and I like companionship, but not at the expense

of my freedom or my self.”

Jesse broke off a small piece of orange cranberry muffin and ate

it. When he had swallowed, he said, “Maybe I’m one of

them.”

“Well,” Marcy said.

“You’re an odd case. You’re like me, except

for Jenn. You like sex and companionship, too. But you won’t commit

to a new relationship just to have it. It’s why we get along so

well, neither of us requires commitment from the other.”

Jesse laughed. “Which produces,” he said,

“a kind of commitment

to each other.”

“I suppose so,” Marcy said. “But

not for the same reasons. I am

true to myself. You are true to Jenn.”

“Which may be a way of being true to myself.”

Marcy nodded.

“Or maybe obsessive.”

“There’s that,” Jesse said.

Marcy sipped her coffee, holding the mug in both hands.

“But goddamnit,” she said,

“I’ll give you credit, you are true

to it, whatever the hell it is.”

“Well, the thing is,” Jesse said.

“I love her.”

“That simple,” Marcy said.

Jesse nodded.

“Is there anything Jenn could do that would make you give her

up?” Marcy said.

“She could tell me that she had no further interest in me,”

Jesse said. “If she told me that I’d move on.”

“Which gives her control,” Marcy said.

“I suppose.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“I don’t care about stuff like

that,” Jesse said. “I love her.

We’re still connected. I’ll play it out.”

Marcy drank some coffee, and looked at Jesse for a while, and shook her head slowly. Jesse watched her.

“You have given over the crucial decision of your life to

someone else,” Marcy said. “And what’s so odd is that it seems to

be evidence of your autonomy.”

“Autonomy,” Jesse said.

“Don’t be cute. You know what it

means.”

“Sort of.”

“You feel strongly. You trust what you feel. And you proceed

with it.”

“True,” Jesse said.

“It’s the same in your work. You know what you know, and you do

what you do and you plow along doing it.”

“Like a mule,” Jesse said.

“Or a jackass.”

Jesse smiled.

“Same thing,” he said. “More or

less.”

“If you ever work it out with Jenn, will we still be pals?”

“Sure,” Jesse said.

“And fuck buddies?”

Jesse breathed slowly in and slowly out. He looked at Marcy for

a moment. Then he smiled slightly and shook his head.

“Probably not,” he said.

69

Suit and Molly sat at the long table in the conference room.

They were drinking coffee from paper cups. A third cup, with the plastic lid still on it, sat at the head of the table. A box of Dunkin‘ Donuts was open on the table. Suit had his notebook open in

front of him. Molly had a computer printout. Jesse came in, examined the box of donuts for a moment, took one, and sat at the head of the table and took the lid off the coffee. He took a bite of the donut.

“Cinnamon,” he said.

“I know you like them,” Molly said.

“What’re the ones with no hole and

chocolate

frosting?”

“Boston cream,” Molly said.

“Good God,” Jesse said. “What

have you got,

Suit?”

“Okay,” Suit said. He looked at his open notebook.

“First thing. Nobody took a cab to the mall on the day of the

shooting. The two cab rides to the mall were two days earlier and are regulars. Two sisters who live together and go shopping every week.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. “Anyone

picked up at the Lincolns’ condo on

the day of the shooting?”

“No. But the cab company has a log, you know for taxes and shit.

There was a fare went from Paradise to Wonderland on the day of the shooting. I know the cabdriver. Mackie Ward, we played football in high school. Mackie says he picked up a couple who fit our description, down in front of the Chinese restaurant on Atlantic Ave., in the morning on the day of the shooting, and took them to Wonderland.”

“They hail him?”

“No. They called for a cab and asked to be picked up there.”

“Probably a cell phone,” Jesse said.

“Okay. So they take the cab

to Wonderland. They take the train to Logan. Take the bus to one of the terminals. Catch the rental car bus in front of the terminal and go and pick up the rental car.”

“Pretty elaborate,” Molly said.

“They knew if they killed a cop

we’d look for them hard.”

“Too elaborate. It’s what amateurs do.

They would have been much

better off to drive the Saab to the airport, park it at the airport parking garage, pick up the rental car, and drive to the mall. You got anything else?”

“There were two other cab fares to the airport the day of the

shooting,” Suit said. “Both guys, alone.”

“We’ll check everything,” Jesse

said. “But it’ll turn out to be

Wonderland. How’d you make out, Moll?”

Molly finished chewing some donut, and sipped a little coffee.

“Piece of cake,” she said.

“There are thirteen hundred and

twenty-three listings for ocular scanning devices on the Patent Office website.”

“Names?” Jesse said.

“Yes, and cities.”

“Where they live or where they did the invention?”

“Don’t know.”

“Anybody named Lincoln?”

“No.”

“Anybody from Cleveland.”

“Didn’t check by city, yet.”

“Okay.”

Jesse looked at the donuts.

“Boston cream?” he said to Molly.

“You know, like Boston cream pie, except it’s a

donut.”

“And Boston cream pie is a cake, isn’t it?”

“Technically.”

Jesse took a Boston cream donut from the box and put it on a napkin in front of him and looked at it.

“I bet it would be easy to get this all over you,” he

said.

“Easier than you can imagine,” Molly said.

“It may be that only

women can eat them.”

“The neater species,” Jesse said.

“Exactly.”

They were quiet while Jesse took a careful bite of the donut.

He

chewed and swallowed and nodded slowly.

“Good body,” Jesse said, “with a

hint of

insouciance.”

“Insouciance?” Suit said.

“I don’t know what it means

either,” Jesse said. “Suit, you get

hold of Healy. Tell him we need the names of everybody who rented a car the day of the shooting. He’ll have a list.

They’ve already

told me there’s no one named Lincoln.”

“And I’ll see how many ocular scanners are listed from

Cleveland,” Molly said. “It might narrow the cross-referencing.”

“Don’t bother,” Jesse said.

“We’ll have to check every name

against the list of car rentals, anyway. They might not have patented it from Cleveland, or in Cleveland, or whatever the hell one does to get Cleveland mentioned.”

“And when we’re done?” Suit said.

“If we get a match we might have their new identity.”

70

Before he went to work, Jesse drove out to the Neck to see Candace and the dog. It was early March and still wintry with the ugly snow compacting where the plows had spilled it. The sky was overcast. As he drove across the causeway, the ocean, off to his right, was a sullen gray, with a few seabirds wheeling above it.

When he got out of his car at the top of Candace’s long curved

driveway he could smell the approaching snow. It hadn’t taken him

long, when he’d come from Los Angeles, to learn the anticipatory

smell of it. There were cars in the driveway when Jesse arrived, so he parked on the street and walked up. A sign hanging from the knob on the front door read OPEN HOUSE, BROKERS ONLY, PLEASE COME IN.

Below the invitation was a small logo with a house in it, and the words “Pell Real Estate.” Jesse went in. A woman sat on a folding

chair at a card table in the hall. She had a pile of brochures on the table in front of her, and a guest book. Jesse could hear voices and movement elsewhere in the house. The sound had the kind of echoed quality that one gets in a house devoid of furniture or rugs.

“Hi,” the woman said, “here for

the open house?”

“I’m here to see Candace

Pennington,” Jesse said.

“You’re not a broker?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, the Penningtons have

moved.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“I don’t really know,” the woman

said. “I’m just supervising the

open house.”

She was a heavy exuberant woman with short hair colored very blond.

“Who would know?”

“Oh, I’m sure the office has their new address,” the woman said.

“You could check with Henry.”

“Henry?”

“Henry Pell. Are you interested in the house?”

In the rooms that Jesse could see, the furniture was gone.

There

were no rugs or drapes. The house was blank, waiting to be re-created.

“No,” Jesse said, “I’m

not.”

As he walked back down the curving drive toward the street, the

snow had begun, a few flakes drifting down. More would follow, he knew. They were saying three to six inches. Weather Girl Jenn would be breaking into the regular programming with weather updates from Storm Center 3. Maybe standing in the parking lot. With her designer wool watch cap pulled down just right over her ears. And the flakes fluttering past. As Jesse drove back across the causeway, the snow came straight in at the windshield. Small flakes, the kind all the old-time townies said meant a heavy snowfall. He wasn’t long enough out of Southern California to argue

the point, though in the time he’d been here he’d seen no

correlation.

He could call Henry Pell and get Candace’s new address. He

wasn’t sure he would. They’d taken her where they needed to take

her. Where she had no history. Where there were no stories about her. No giggles in the hallways. No covert gestures about sex. No fears that a naked picture of her might surface. What did he have to say to her about that? What did anybody?

The snow had begun to accumulate and the roads were becoming slick as Jesse parked in his spot by the police station, and went in. Bo Marino was mopping the floor in the area of the front desk.

Jesse went past him to his office and stopped in the doorway and looked back.

“Where are the other two?” Jesse said.

“Cleaning the cells,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded and continued to look at Marino. Was it possible that a jerk like this kid could grow into a decent man? Would the rape follow him and the other two, the way it was following Candace? Marino realized Jesse was looking at him.

“What?” he said.

Jesse didn’t answer.

“What are you looking at me for?” Marino said.

Jesse didn’t seem to hear him.

You could protect, Jesse thought, and you could serve. But you couldn’t really save.

Marino looked at Molly.

“How come he’s staring at me like

that?” he said.

“Just get the floor clean,” Molly said.

At least keep the floor clean, Jesse thought. He went into his office and closed the door. Better than nothing.

71

Molly and Suit came into Jesse’s office together.

They looked

pleased with themselves.

“The seven hundred and twenty-eighth name on the patent list is

Arlington Lamont,” Molly said. “The patent was filed from San

Mateo, California, wherever that is.”

“Up by San Francisco,” Jesse said. He sat motionless with the

palms of his hands pressed together in front of him, his chin resting on the fingertips.

“And,” Suit said, “on the day of

the murder, Arlington Lamont

rented a Volvo Cross Country Wagon from Hertz at the airport.”

With the palms still pressed, Jesse lowered his hands and pointed his fingers at Suit and dropped his thumbs like the hammer on a gun.

“Bada bing,” he said.

They were all quiet.

“So maybe Lincoln is the phony ID,” Jesse said. “And Lamont is

the real one.”

“Same initials,” Molly said.

“Anthony Lincoln, Arlington

Lamont.”

Jesse nodded.

“Hertz requires driver’s license and credit card,” Jesse

said.

“Mass driver’s license,” Suit

said. “American Express

card.”

“How long?” Jesse said.

“They rented it to him for a week.”

“Returning it where?”

“Toronto airport,” Suit said.

“You think they’re actually going

to return it?”

“Attract less attention than if they dumped it,” Jesse said.

“They don’t expect us to have their name.”

“The credit card number will help us track them,” Molly said.

“You want me to hop on the phone and see what I can do?”

“No,” Jesse said.

“I’ll let Healy do that. They’ve got more resources and more clout than we have.”

“You think they’re going to settle in Canada?”

“Maybe, or maybe it’s just a big city with a big airport. Molly,

find out how many airlines fly out of Toronto and call all of them and see if any of them have reservations for Mr. and Mrs. Arlington Lamont.”

“Every airline?” Molly said.

“That’s a lot of time to be on

hold.”

“And keep checking with Hertz,” Jesse said. “To see if the car

got returned anywhere.”

“We could ask them to call us when the car showed up.”

Jesse looked at her without speaking.

“Or not,” Molly said.

“Call them every day,” Jesse said.

“Give you something to do

while you’re on hold with the airlines.”

“If I time it right,” Molly said,

“I can be on hold with both at

the same time.”

“Lucky we have two lines,” Jesse said.

“Suit, you call the San

Mateo cops, see if you can find anything at all about Mr. or Mrs.

Arlington Lamont. If they can’t give you anything try San Francisco.”

“While we’re doing all this

phoning,” Suit said, “what are you

going to do?”

“I have several donuts to eat,” Jesse said.

72

“How’s the

drinking?” Dixsaid.

“I haven’t had a drink in three weeks and four days,” Jesse

said.

Dix smiled. “And there are several minutes every day when you

don’t miss it.”

“Not that many,” Jesse said.

“And you recently escaped death,” Dix said.

“I did. Anthony deAngelo didn’t.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I should have had more cops on the

scene,” Jesse

said.

“Tell me about that,” Dix said.

“I could have had state police support. I chose not to. I wanted

to do it ourselves.”

“Because they had done their crimes in your town?”

“Because they had killed Abby Taylor.”

Dix nodded.

“I took it personally,” Jesse said.

“You’re a person,” Dix said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it is impossible not to take things, at some level,

personally.”

“So what about professional?” Jesse said.

“Things exist simultaneously,” Dix said.

“Meaning I can take it personally and be professional?”

“Meaning you need to be two contradictory things at the same

time.”

Jesse sat quietly.

Then he said, “You know about that.”

“Of course.”

“It’s what you have to deal

with.”

“What do you think all the rigmarole of psychotherapy is

about.”

“You have to care about your patient,”

Jesse said. “But you

can’t let the caring interfere with your treatment.”

Dix made a movement with his head that might have been a nod.

Jesse was quiet again.

“You know the kid that got raped?” he said after a

while.

Dix did the head movement again.

“She’s gone. The family put the house up for sale and moved

away.”

“Do you know why they moved?” Dix said.

“I assume it was too tough on her in school. You know what kids

are like.”

Dix smiled faintly and waited.

“I couldn’t save her,” Jesse

said.

“Why would you think you could? You did what you are able to do.

You caught her rapists and brought them to justice.”

“Yeah. A few months swabbing floors after school in the police

station.”

“That’s the justice that was

available,” Dix said. “You couldn’t

prevent her rape. You can’t prevent her peers from alluding to

it.”

Jesse looked past Dix out the window. It was a fresh bright day,

intensified by the new snow.

“It seems to me that nobody can protect anybody.”

“Risk can be reduced,” Dix said.

“But not eliminated.”

Dix was quiet, waiting. Jesse said nothing, still looking out the window.

“There’s a point,” Dix said

after a while, “where security and

freedom begin to clash.”

At midday the sun was strong enough to melt the snow where it lay on dark surfaces. The tree limbs had begun to drip. Jesse turned his gaze back onto Dix.

“You’re not just talking about police work,” Jesse

said.

Dix tilted his head a little and said nothing. The rigmarole

of psychotherapy.

“People need to live the life they want to live,” Jesse said.

“They can’t live it the way somebody else wants them

to.”

Dix smiled and raised his eyebrows.

“Everybody knows that,” Jesse said.

Dix nodded.

“And few people actually believe it,”

Jesse said.

“There’s often a gap between what we know and what we do,” Dix

said.

“Let me write that down,” Jesse said.

“Psychotherapy is not snake dancing,” Dix said. “Mainly it’s

just trying to close the gap.”

Jesse’s lungs seemed to expand and take in deeper breaths of

air.

“Jenn,” he said.

Dix looked noncommittal.

73

When Jesse came into the station Molly was making coffee.

“Hertz says the Volvo got turned in at the Toronto airport,” she

said.

“Nice to know we can trust them,” Jesse said.

Molly poured water into the green Mr. Coffee machine.

“And,” Molly said, “nobody who

flies out of Toronto has any

reservations for Arlington Lamont.”

“They could just show up and buy a ticket.”

“Doesn’t seem like their style,”

Molly said. “They reserved the

rental ahead of time. They think they’re safe.”

“Did they rent another car?”

“Not from Hertz,” Molly said.

“Call the other rental companies and check,” Jesse

said.

“Soon as I make us coffee,” Molly said.

She spooned ground coffee into the filter.

“I will also expect the department to pay all medical bills

related to getting concrete information in a human voice from twenty-three airlines,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded.

“Beyond the call of duty,” Jesse said.

“I’m sure we can do

something for you.”

“Suit’s in a car today, seven to three, but he says tell you

that he’s talked with San Mateo and the only thing they could tell

him was that, according to the 1993 telephone directory, Arlington Lamont lived there. And by 1996 he didn’t.”

“Any unsolved homicides?” Jesse said.

“Suit asked them that. They said they’d get back to

him.”

“He talk to San Francisco?”

“Yes. They have nothing.”

“Do me one other favor?” he said.

“Maybe,” Molly said.

“Let me know when the coffee’s

done,” Jesse said.

“Better than that,” Molly said.

“I’ll bring you

some.”

“Thank you,” Jesse said.

“I’m sucking up to you,” Molly

said. “‘Cause you’re the

chief.”

“Good a reason as any,” Jesse said and went into his

office.

He sat at his desk and put his feet up and looked out the window

at the relentless cluster of media. It was about a ten-hour drive to Toronto if you went out the thruway and crossed near Buffalo.

They could have gone up 81 through Watertown, about the same distance. He’d check with customs. But the border was an easy one,

and an attractive couple driving a Volvo wagon wasn’t too likely to

be questioned. There were 2.3 million people in Toronto. It wasn’t

exactly like having them cornered. Jesse tapped the desktop with his fingertips. Molly came in with two cups of coffee.

“Two?” Jesse said.

“One for you,” she said. “One

for Captain Healy.”

Jesse glanced past Molly toward the doorway.

“I saw him parking outside,” Molly said.

“I figured he wasn’t

coming to see me.”

She put one cup down in front of Jesse, and one cup on the edge

of the desk near the guest chair, and went back to the front desk.

In about thirty seconds Healy came in.

Jesse pointed at the second cup.

“Coffee,” he said.

Healy hung his coat on a rack in the corner, sat down, and picked up the coffee.

“You run a hell of a department,” he said.

Jesse nodded. They both sipped some coffee. When he had swallowed and put his cup down, Healy said, “Mr. and Mrs.

Arlington

Lamont reserved a room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto and guaranteed it with their American Express card.”

“They check in?”

“Yep.”

“They there now?” Jesse said.

“Nope,” Healy said.

He grinned.

“Toronto cops went there a half hour ago and picked them up,” he

said.

Jesse had the same feeling he’d had with Dix. His chest

expanded. He pulled in a large amount of clean air. He exhaled slowly through his nose. Then he reached across the desk and put his clenched fist out toward Healy. Healy tapped it with his own.

“I think I’ll go up,” Jesse

said. “See how they’re

doing.”

74

Mr and Mrs. Lamont were being held at Division 52 on the west end of Dundas Street, near the lake. Jesse stood outside an interview room with a sergeant of detectives named Gordon. There was a one-way glass window. Behind it Jesse could see the Lamonts sitting at one side of a table, holding hands. There was a uniformed Toronto policeman with them, leaning on the wall.

“They give you any trouble when you picked them up?” Jesse

said.

“Nope. Peaceful and innocent,” Gordon said. “Officer, there

must be some mistake.”

“They killed five people in my

town,” Jesse

said.

“Lotta pressure on you,” Gordon said.

“One of them was a woman I went out with.”

“Lotta pressure,”

Gordon said.

“Find any weapons?”

“Two twenty-two long target pistols,”

Gordon said. “Unloaded and

disassembled and packed away in their luggage. You been looking for those?”

“I have.”

They stood silently looking through the window at the man and woman holding hands.

“I’ll talk to them alone,” Jesse

said. “Though it’s possible

that the man may assault me and I’ll have to defend myself.”

Gordon was a short thick bald man with enough stomach to make the buttons pull a little on his shirt. He nodded thoughtfully.

“You got a right to defend yourself,” he said.

Jesse nodded. Gordon unlocked the door and went in and nodded his head to the uniform to leave.

“A visitor,” he said to the man and woman.

Jesse came into the interview room. Gordon went out and closed the door behind him. Jesse stood and looked at them.

“Jesse,” the man said.

“We’re so glad to see you,” the

woman said.

Jesse didn’t say anything. He stood motionless on the other side

of the table, looking down at them.

“Jesse,” the man said,

“what’s going on? They didn’t even tell us why they arrested us, just that we were wanted in the States.”

Jesse looked straight down at them and didn’t say anything.

“Wanted for what?” the man said.

“Jesse, what is it?” the woman said.

Jesse gestured with one hand at the man to stand up. When the man was standing Jesse called him closer with his crooked forefinger. The man was compliant. He walked closer. Jesse put up both hands to tell him to stop, then Jesse stepped in closer to him and drove his knee into the man’s groin. The man screamed and staggered backward, bent over, and fell on the floor. He brought his knees to his chest and lay with his hands between his legs and moaned. The woman jumped up and ran around the table toward him and Jesse hit her, a full swing, across the face, with the flat of his open hand. She staggered backward and bumped the wall and slid down and sat hard on the floor, with her face pressed into her hands, and began to cry. Jesse looked at both of them for a moment and then turned and looked at the opaque one-way window and jerked his thumb toward the door. In a moment Gordon came in.

“Lucky to escape with your life,” Gordon said.

“Eh?”

75

It was snowing softly. Jesse had parked his Explorer at the town

beach, and he and Jenn sat in the front seat looking at the ocean through the clear quarter circle made on the windshield by the sweep of the wipers. A hundred yards out the snow and the ocean became indistinct. There was no one else in the parking lot, no one on the beach. Jesse could feel how isolated the car would look from a far distance, alone in the snow at the edge of the sea.

“You all right?” Jenn said.

“Yes.”

“You’d say that even if you

weren’t,” Jenn said.

“I know.”

“This has been an especially difficult time for you.”

“It’s why I get the big bucks,”

Jesse said.

Behind them a plow clattered across the causeway toward Paradise

Neck. When it had passed, the silence was broken only by the sound of the wipers and the low fan sound of the heater.

“Did they tell you why they did it?” Jenn asked.

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“No.”

Jenn put her hand out, and Jesse took it. Holding hands, they looked silently at the snow and the ocean.

“I have not really been happy,” Jenn said,

“since the first time

I cheated on you.”

Jesse didn’t say anything. He looked straight ahead at the snow

and the water.

“You haven’t either,” Jenn said.

Jesse nodded. The snow was falling faster. It was harder to see

the ocean. He could hear Jenn take a deep breath.

“I think we should try again,” she said.

Jesse didn’t look at her. The sentence hung in the silence.

“Why,” he said after a time,

“would it work better this

time?”

“We want it to,” Jenn said.

“We’ve changed. We’re older.

We’ve

had some therapy. We know that no one else will quite do.”

Jesse was silent.

“We could be on a trial basis.” Jenn was talking faster now.

“You know? Like a trial separation, only the reverse.”

Jesse’s throat felt thick. He cleared it.

“How would this work?” Jesse said.

“We wouldn’t have to even live together.

In fact it might work

better if we didn’t. We’d keep doing what we do, and see each other

on weekends, maybe some night during the week, you know, like a date.”

The lady or the tiger, Jesse thought.

“We wouldn’t have to get married again, or at least not right

away, we could see how this worked.”

She held his hand tightly.

“I need to get out of the car,” Jesse said.

Jenn nodded and let go of his hand and they got out. They walked