Текст книги "Stone cold"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

Jesse ordered a club sandwich. The waiter left. Jesse waited.

“First, I now represent only Bo Marino,”

Rita

said.

“Nice,” Jesse said.

Rita wrinkled her nose.

“Everyone is entitled to the best defense he can get,” she

said.

“Which would be you.”

“Yes.”

“Reagan know?”

“I have so notified the Essex County DA.”

“So why tell me?”

Rita smiled.

“Because the Marinos wish to sue you for dereliction of

duty.”

“Is that in the penal code,” Jesse said.

“Not exactly,” Rita said. “But

pretty much everything is in

there if you’re a good enough lawyer. They are also suing Chuck

Pennington for assault.”

“Really?”

“They claim he assaulted them in your presence and you did

nothing to prevent it.”

“It all happened so quickly,” Jesse said.

“I’m sure,” Rita said.

“I can tell already that you’re kind of slow to react.”

“Well,” Jesse said, “the thing

is Bo attacked Chuck, who

responded in self-defense. Then Joe Marino jumped in and Chuck had to defend himself from both of them.”

“And you?”

“Broke it up as soon as I could,” Jesse said. “Restraining the

Marinos was difficult.”

Rita smiled faintly. “I’m sure,”

she said.

The club sandwich was cut into four triangles. Jesse picked up one of the triangles and bit off the point.

“And,” Rita said. “If I were to

talk with the Pennington father

and daughter, I’d probably hear the same story.”

“Sure,” Jesse said.

“Verbatim,” Rita said.

Jesse smiled. “We all saw the same thing,”

Jesse

said.

“And that’s how you’ll all

testify.”

“Absolutely,” Jesse said.

“So it will be your word against theirs.”

“And I’m a distinguished law officer here in Paradise,” Jesse

said. “And Bo is a rapist.”

Rita nodded and ate a crouton and looked out at the harbor, and

across at Paradise Neck, with Stiles Island at the tip, tethered by the new causeway.

“Did you know that Chuck Pennington was a boxer in college?” she

said.

“I did,” Jesse said.

Rita ate another crouton and half a romaine leaf.

“Doesn’t that make Bo seem kind of

foolhardy?” she

said.

“Bo isn’t smart enough to be

foolhardy,” Jesse said. “And, of

course, he didn’t know what Pennington did in college.”

“Be hard to demonstrate that he did,” Rita said.

“Ethically.”

“Ethically?”

“I know, it’s embarrassing, but

…” Rita shrugged. “It will

be difficult to enlist a jury’s sympathy for Bo Marino.”

“Who is, you will note,” Jesse said,

“bigger than Pennington. So

is his father.”

“Noted,” Rita said and finished her wine and waved the empty

glass at the waiter.

They ate in silence for the short time it took the waiter to replace Rita’s glass.

When he was gone, Rita said, “This isn’t a winner for our side.

I’ll persuade my clients to drop it.”

“And if they don’t?”

Rita smiled.

“They’ll drop it,” she said.

Jesse nodded and ate his club sandwich.

“So,” Rita said, “off the

record, what really

happened?”

“Off the record?”

“Between you and me, only,” Rita said.

“Pennington smacked the crap out of Bo Marino and his old man,

and I let him.”

“I’m shocked,” Rita said.

“It’ll be our secret,” Jesse

said.

“Perhaps,” Rita said, “before

we’re through there will be

several more.”

Jesse looked at her and she looked back. There was promise in her eyes, and challenge, and a flash of something so visceral, Jesse thought, that Rita may not have known it was there.

“Wow,” Jesse said.

47

Jesse was on the phone with the state police ballistics lab, talking to a technician named Holton. Suitcase Simpson sat across the desk from him, drinking coffee and reading the Globe.

“No match,” Holton said, “on the

murder bullets and the

Marlin.”

“I didn’t expect any,” Jesse

said.

“Maybe you should wait and send us something that you expect to

match,” Holton said.

“Got to eliminate it,” Jesse said.

“Well, you can eliminate this one,” Holton said. “Far as I can

tell, it’s never been fired.”

Jesse was silent, sitting back in his chair, staring out the window.

“You still there?” Holton said.

“Sorry,” Jesse said. “I was just

thinking.”

“You were?” Holton said. “I

wasn’t sure cops did that in the

suburbs.”

“Only as a last resort,” Jesse said and hung up.

“No match?” Simpson said without looking up from the

paper.

“No match,” Jesse said.

“Well, it’s not like you didn’t

call it,” Simpson

said.

“So much for plinking vermin,” Jesse said.

“Vermin?” Simpson said.

“They said they had the rifle to plink vermin at their summer

place.”

“So?”

“So according to the state ballistics guy the gun has probably

never even been fired.”

“Why would they lie about that?” Simpson said.

“To explain why they had the gun.”

“Lotta people own a gun they haven’t fired.”

“Yeah, and they usually have it in the house, for protection.”

“So why wouldn’t they just say

that?”

“Because they are too smart for their own good,” Jesse said.

“They think we would wonder why they’d buy a twenty-two rifle for

protection.”

“A twenty-two will kill you,” Simpson said.

“As well we know,” Jesse said.

“So if they said it was for protection, would we wonder?”

“Maybe,” Jesse said,

“we’re supposed to wonder.”

“Maybe they were just embarrassed at keeping a gun for

protection, and said it was for vermin,” Simpson said.

“They look embarrassed to you?” Jesse said.

“No. You think they got two other guns?”

“Handguns,” Jesse said. “You

wouldn’t use a rifle for the kind

of killing they did.”

“If they did it,” Simpson said.

“I think they did,” Jesse said.

“You always tell me, Jesse, don’t be in a hurry to decide

stuff.”

“I want to know everything about Tony and Brianna,” Jesse said.

“Phone records, credit cards, dates of birth, social security numbers, previous residences, when they were married, where they lived before this, where the country home is where they are not plinking vermin, do they have relatives, who are their friends, what do the neighbors know about them, where he practiced medicine, where they went to school.”

“You want me to pick the gun up first and return it?

Or you want

me to start digging into the Lincolns.”

“I’ll take care of the rifle,”

Jesse said. “You start

digging.”

Simpson nodded.

“Can I finish reading Arlo andjanis?”

Simpson

said.

“No.”

48

The resident cars at Seascape were parked behind the building at

the end of a winding drive, in a blacktop parking lot with a card-activated one-armed gate at the entrance. Jesse was driving his own car, and he parked it across from Seascape on a side street perpendicular to the point where the drive wound into Atlantic Avenue. He had far too many things under way, he knew, to be doing hopeful surveillance. But Jesse was the only cop on the force who was good at it. Any of the Paradise cops could do an open tail, Jesse knew. But he didn’t want the Lincolns to know they were being

tailed, and getting spooky on him. He was the only one he trusted to do an undiscovered tail. He couldn’t cover them all the time.

During the day he was too busy, but the nights were quieter, and half a tail is better than none, he thought, so each

night after work he drove over here and parked and waited.

He knew it was them. He couldn’t prove it, not even enough to

get a search warrant, but he’d been a cop nearly half his life, and

he knew. He had the advantage on them for the moment. They didn’t

know that he knew. They thought he was just the local bumpkin chief of a small department, and they felt superior to him. He knew that as surely as he knew they were guilty. And that too gave him an advantage. He’d watched their body language and listened to them

talk and heard the undertones in their voices. He was nothing. He couldn’t possibly catch them. Jesse had no intention of changing

their minds.

“I love arrogance,” Jesse said aloud in the dark interior of his

silent car.

At ten minutes past seven he saw the red Saab pull out of the drive and head east on Atlantic Avenue. He slid into gear and pulled out a considerable distance behind them. After a while he pulled up closer, and where Atlantic had a long stretch with only one cross street, which was one way into the avenue, he turned off and went around the block and rejoined Atlantic just after they passed.

Jesse had already shadowed them three nights that week. Once they had eaten pizza, at a place in the village. Once they had food shopped at the Paradise Mall. Once they had gone to a movie. Each time it got more boring, and each time Jesse tailed them as if it would lead to their arrest.

He let himself drop two cars back of the Saab as they went through the village and over the hill toward downtown. The other cars peeled off and when they turned east near the town wharf, Jesse was directly behind them. They drove for a little while with the harbor on their right, until the Saab pulled into the parking lot at Jesse’s apartment.

Jesse drove on by and parked around the bend. He walked down behind the condominiums, and stood at the corner of the building next to his, in the shadows, and watched. The Saab was quiet. The lights were out. The motor had been turned off. The parking lot was lit with mercury lamps, which deepened the shadow in which Jesse stood. The moon was bright. The passenger-side window of the Saab slid down. In the passenger seat, Brianna held something up and pointed an object at Jesse’s apartment. On the other side of his

condo the harbor waters moving made a pleasant sound. The object was a camera and Jesse realized that she was taking pictures of his home.

After ten minutes the window rolled back up. The Saab remained.

Nothing moved. Nothing happened. After half an hour the Saab engine turned over. The lights went on. And the Saab pulled out of the lot. Jesse made no attempt to follow. Instead he drove back to Seascape, taking his time, and checked the parking lot. The Saab was there. Jesse looked at the clock on his dashboard. 9:40. All of him was tired. His legs felt heavy. His shoulders were hunched. His eyes kept closing on him.

“You can only do what you can do,” Jesse said aloud, and turned

the car and went home.

49

Jesse was in the Essex County Court in Salem, sitting in a conference room with Martin Reagan, the ADA on the case, Rita Fiore, and lawyers for Feeney and Drake. Feeney’s lawyer was a

husky dark-eyed woman named Emily Frank, and Drake was represented by a loud-voiced man with a full white beard named Richard DeLuca.

“We don’t have to consult you,

Jesse,” Reagan said. “But we

thought your input might be useful in arriving at a plea bargain.”

Jesse nodded. Rita smiled at him. Jesse could feel the smile in

his stomach.

“None of these boys is a hardened

criminal,” Rita said. “All of

them are under eighteen. We’re thinking of no jail time.”

“They need jail time,” Jesse said.

“We were thinking probation, counseling, and community service,”

Rita said.

Jesse shook his head.

“They need jail time,” he said.

“Doesn’t have to be long, and it

doesn’t have to be hard time. It can be in a juvenile facility. But

they gang-raped a sixteen-year-old-girl and photographed her naked and threatened her and harassed her.”

“Hell, Chief, weren’t you ever a teenage boy? They’re hormones

with feet.”

“I was,” Jesse said. “And my

hormones were jumping through my

skin like everybody else’s. But I never raped anyone, did you?”

“We’re not condoning what they

did,” Emily Frank said. “Richard

was just suggesting that their youth made them less able to control themselves.”

“You think they didn’t know it was

wrong?” Jesse

said.

The lawyers were quiet.

“You think they couldn’t control

themselves?”

“Well,” Rita said. “They

didn’t.”

“No they didn’t,” Jesse said.

Rita met his eyes, and again he could feel it.

“But what purpose is served by locking these children up?” Emily

Frank said.

“You know that scale of justice, outside. What they did to

Candace Pennington will tip it pretty far down, and it will take a lot more than probation and community service to balance it out.”

“Well,” Reagan said. “What would

you recommend.”

“I recommend that I take each one into a spare cell and beat the

crap out of him and send him home.”

“You can’t do that,” Emily Frank

said.

“I know,” Jesse said.

“It’s too simple.”

“It’s barbaric,” Emily Frank

said.

Rita looked mildly amused.

“And illegal,” Emily Frank said.

“I know.”

“What would they learn about right and wrong from that?”

“Nothing,” Jesse said. “But

they’d know what hurts and what

doesn’t.”

“Thanks for your input, Jesse,” Reagan said. “We’ll go it alone

from here.”

Jesse nodded and stood up. He felt Rita watching him.

“I think you should know,” Emily Frank said, “that I for one

haven’t found this meeting useful.”

“I never thought it would be,” Jesse said, and walked out of the

room.

Rita followed him.

“This will take all day,” she said

“Are you free for

dinner?”

“Sure,” Jesse said.

“I’ll pick something up and come to your place.”

“Really,” Jesse said.

“About seven,” Rita said.

“Seven,” Jesse said.

Rita turned and walked back along the second-floor corridor to the conference room. At the door she turned.

“Probably eat about nine or ten,” she said and grinned and went

in.

50

The town beach was empty, except for a woman in a pink down jacket running a Jack Russell terrier. Jesse stood for a moment under the little pavilion that served, as far as Jesse could tell, no useful purpose. Twenty feet to his left Kenneth Eisley’s body

had rolled about at the tidal margin, until the ocean receded. The first one. Jesse looked out at the rim of the gray ocean, where it merged with the gray sky. It seemed longer ago than it was.

They’d

found him in November, and now it was the start of February. Dog was still with Valenti. Too long. Dog shouldn’t be in a shelter

that long. I got to find someone to take the dog.

Beaches

were cold places in February. Jesse was wearing a turtleneck and a sheepskin jacket. He pulled his watch cap down over his ears, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat. I know who killed you, Kenneth. He stepped off the little pavilion and onto the sand. He was above the high tide line where the mingle of seaweed and flotsam made a ragged line. Ahead of him the Jack Russell raced down at the ocean as it rolled in and barked at it, and dodged back when it got close. He was taunting the ocean. I know who killed the lady in the mall, and the guy in the church parking lot. I know who killed Abby. Jesse trudged along the sand, feeling it shift slightly beneath his feet as he walked.

Now me? He could think of no reasonable explanation for

why they would go out in the evening and take pictures of his home.

The day was not windy, and the ocean’s movement was gently rounded,

with only an occasional crest of the waves. There was something about oceans. The day he left LA he went to Santa Monica and looked at the Pacific. Despite their perpetual movement there was a stillness about oceans. Despite the sound of the waves, there was a great silence. The empty beach and the limitless ocean hinted at the vast secret of things. He’d gotten their attention. They were

reacting to him. It was a start. If I stay with them maybe they’ll make a run at me, and I’ll have them.

He smiled to

himself. Or they’ll have me. He stopped and looked out at

the ocean. High up, a single herring gull circled slowly above the ocean, looking down, hoping for food. Nothing moved on the horizon.

I guess if they get me I won’t care much.

In front of him

the Jack Russell yapped urgently at his owner. She took a ball from her backpack and threw it awkwardly, the way girls throw. The dog raced after it. Caught up with it, pounced on it with his forepaws, bumped it with his nose, grabbed it in his mouth and shook it to death.

Looking at the ocean, Jesse thought about Abby. She hadn’t found

the man of her dreams. She’d hoped that Jesse would make her happy,

but he hadn’t. Nothing much did. She wanted things too hard, she

needed things too much, she had her own private fight with alcohol.

Sometimes her sexuality embarrassed her. The gull had moved inland, looking for landfill or roadkill, or maybe a discarded Moon Pie.

Nothing moved above the ocean now. I wish I could have loved you, Abby. He reached the end of the beach, where the huge sea-smooth rocks loomed up, and beyond them, expensive houses with a view. So long, Ab. He turned and started back along the

beach. The Jack Russell had left too, joining his owner in a silver Audi coupe, just pulling out of the parking lot. The dog had his head out the window, and though it was far away, Jesse could faintly hear him yapping. The cold air was clean off the ocean, and he liked the way it felt as it went into his lungs. I wonder if

they are going to try to kill me. When he got to the aimless little pavilion Jesse paused again and looked out at the ocean again. Nothing alive was in sight. He was alone. He breathed in, and stood listening to the quiet sound of the ocean, and the soft sound of his breathing. I wonder if they will succeed.

51

Jenn was always late. Most of the women Jesse knew were late.

Rita was there at seven. She carried her purse over her shoulder, a small bag that might have been a briefcase over the other shoulder, and in her arms a large paper bag. She handed him the bag when he opened the door.

“I am beautiful and dangerous,” Rita said.

“But I don’t carry

things very well.”

Jesse took the bag and backed away from the door.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said.

“And I you,” she said. “The plea

bargaining was

interminable.”

“Four lawyers in a room,” Jesse said.

Rita put her purse and her shoulder bag on the living room floor

next to the coffee table.

“No wonder they hate lawyers,” Rita said.

“For crissake, I hate

lawyers … except me.”

Jesse smiled. He took the paper bag to the kitchen and set it on

the counter.

“Shall I unload?” he said.

“Sure. I like domesticity in a man,” Rita said.

Jesse took out a bottle of Riesling, two kinds of cheese, a big

sausage, two loaves of French bread, some red grapes, some green grapes, and four green apples.

“Would you like some of this wine?” Jesse said.

“I brought it in case,” Rita said.

“What I’d actually like, if

you have it, is a very large, very dry martini.”

“Sure,” Jesse said. “Gin or

vodka?”

“You have Ketel One?”

“I do.”

“Yes,” she said.

Jesse made the martini in a silver shaker, plopped two big olives in a wide martini glass, and poured Rita a drink.

“Aren’t you having something?”

she said.

Jesse shook his head.

“I don’t drink,” he said.

“Didn’t you used to,” Rita said.

“I did,” Jesse said. “Now I

don’t.”

He was a little startled at the firmness with which he said it.

“Get something,” Rita said, “a

glass of water, anything. I hate

to drink alone.”

Jesse went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He brought it into the living room and sat opposite Rita, who was on the sofa.

“That a boy,” Rita said. “Get

your vitamins.”

Jesse grinned. “How’d the plea bargaining come out,” he

said.

“Nothing you’d like. They get three

years’ probation, mandatory

counseling, and a hundred and twenty hours each of community service.”

“And Candace gets her life ruined,” Jesse said.

“I’m a lawyer,” Rita said.

“I represent my

client.”

“I know,” Jesse said.

Rita put her feet up on Jesse’s coffee table. She was wearing a

tailored beige suit with a fitted jacket and a short skirt. Jesse admired her legs.

“And,” Rita said, “people

recover from rape.”

“I guess so,” Jesse said. “And

maybe she will. But she doesn’t

think so now.”

Rita stared at him.

“My God,” she said. “You really

care about her.”

“Right now,” Jesse said, “home

alone, maybe in her room

listening to CDs, she cannot imagine going to school tomorrow. She cannot imagine facing all the kids who will know that she was gang-raped and photographed naked. And the three guys who did it will be in the same high school, maybe the same class, certainly the same cafeteria … Think back, when you were sixteen.”

Rita crossed her ankles on the coffee table. She was wearing dark high heels with pointed toes and thin ankle straps. She sipped her martini and stared at her shoes for a moment while she swallowed slowly.

“I represented Marino. My job, since I couldn’t get him off, was

to bargain for the best deal he could get. The other lawyers jumped in with me, and we came up with a package deal. I did a good job.

While I am,” Rita smiled at him, “no longer a little girl, I am a

woman, and as a woman I sympathize with the girl. But I wasn’t

hired to be a woman.”

“A lot of the kids in her school will think she was probably

asking for it, and they’ll think she finked to the cops, and ruined

it for three good guys including their football star.”

Rita took another sip of martini.

“I know,” she said.

They were silent. Rita looked past her martini glass at something very distant. Jesse drank some orange juice.

“I saw the pictures, of course,” Rita said. “Spread-eagled naked

on the ground. Raped, photographed … to them she was just another form of masturbation.”

Jesse was silent.

“A sex toy,” Rita said. “A

thing.”

They were both quiet. Rita finished her martini. Jesse poured the rest of the shaker into her glass. She took two olives from the small bowl on the coffee table and plomped them into her drink.

“The court going to specify the community service?” Jesse

said.

“They’ll leave it to the prosecution. Once they’re sentenced

we’ll get together with Reagan and decide something. Usually the

prosecution consults the schools.”

“You have any input in this?”

“Informally, sure. Besides, Reagan wants to score me.”

“Don’t blame him,” Jesse said.

“Who supervises their

service?”

“The court, in theory. In fact the people they’re assigned to

serve with are supposed to keep track of their hours, and rat them out if they don’t do what they’re supposed to.”

“Which often makes community service a joke,” Jesse

said.

“Often,” Rita said.

“How about they serve their sentence with me?” Jesse

said.

Rita stared at him and began to smile.

“They sweep up,” Jesse said,

“empty trash, run errands, shovel

snow, keep the cruisers clean … like that.”

Rita smiled at him some more.

“And you would, of course, take your supervisory responsibilities seriously,” she said.

“I would bust their chops,” Jesse said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Rita

said.

She put her martini glass down and stood and stepped around the

coffee table and straddled him where he sat on the leather hassock and sat on his lap facing him. The movement lifted her short skirt almost to her waist. She pressed her mouth against his. After a time she leaned back.

“If I could use your shower,” she said,

“I’d fluff up my body a

little.”

“Down the hall on the right, off my

bedroom.”

Jesse’s voice sounded hoarse to him.

“Conveniently located,” Rita said.

She stood, smoothed her short skirt over her thighs, and walked

to the bathroom.

52

It had begun to snow softly when Jesse pulled into the visitor’s

parking space near the Seascape entrance. The same elegant and careful concierge tried not to stare at the rifle he was carrying as she phoned the Lincolns.

“Penthouse floor,” she said.

“I remember,” Jesse said.

Lincoln was waiting for him again, in the small foyer.

“Oh,” he said, “my

gun.”

Jesse handed it to him. Lincoln smiled.

“It’s not linked to any drive-by shootings or anything?” Lincoln

said.

“None that we could discover,” Jesse said.

“And it wasn’t used

to kill the four people in Paradise.”

“Oh good.”

Brianna Lincoln came into the living room.

“Mr. Stone,” she said. “What a

nice surprise.”

“Jesse was just returning our rifle, Brianna.”

Lincoln smiled again.

“He said it has not been involved in any crime.”

“I’ll put it away,” Brianna

said. “Can I get you coffee, Mr.

Stone?”

“Jesse. Sure, that would be fine.”

“Cream, two sugars?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled.

“Brianna,” she said.

“Ma’am is my mother.”

Jesse sat, as he had before, looking through the picture window

at the ocean. The snow continued softly, blurring the view.

Lincoln laughed.

“I feel like I ought to apologize,” he said. “If it had been my

gun, it would have made things so much easier for you.”

Jesse smiled.

“Think how I feel,” Jesse said.

Brianna came back with Jesse’s coffee in a stainless steel mug.

She put a doily down on the end table near him and set the coffee cup on it.

“Thank you.”

She smiled at him warmly. He smiled back.

“You have respect for your tools,” Jesse said. “The gun was

clean.”

“Any tool works best if it’s well

maintained.”

Jesse glanced around the living room.

“This is a great room,” he said.

“Yes,” Brianna said. “We love

it.”

Jesse stood and walked to the window.

“On a cop’s salary,” Jesse said,

“I’ll never get a view like

this.”

Both Tony and Brianna smiled modestly.

“We were lucky, I guess,” Brianna said.

“And Tony is

brilliant.”

“I can see that,” Jesse said.

He turned slowly, looking around the room.

“How big is this place?” he said.

“We have the whole top floor,” Lincoln said.

Brianna smiled.

“Would you like a tour?” she said.

“I sure would,” Jesse said.

“Come on then,” she said.

Tony went with them as she took Jesse through the den with its huge electronic entertainment center, into the luminous kitchen, through the formal dining room, past three large baths, and into the vast bedroom with its canopy bed and another entertainment center. The bed was covered with a thick white silk comforter.

“The workbench,” Tony said, nodding at the bed.

“Wow,” Jesse said. “You must not

have any kids or dogs living

here.”

“Brianna and I decided against children,”

Tony said. “We met in

our late thirties, by which time our lives were simply too full for children.”

Jesse nodded, looking at the big room, taking it in.

“Any family at all?” Jesse said absently.

“No,” Tony said. “We are all the

family each other

has.”

Jesse nodded, obviously dazzled by their wealth and taste, as they walked back to the living room. He sat and picked up his coffee and sipped it.

“Where’d you two meet?” he said,

making

conversation.

“He picked me up in a bar,” Brianna said.

“In Cleveland of all

places.”

“It was an upscale bar,” Tony said with a smile.

“I’ll bet it was,” Jesse said.

“Are you both from

Cleveland?”

“I am,” Brianna said. “Shaker

Heights. Tony was doing his

residency at Case Western.”

“What did you do?” Jesse said.

“I was a lawyer.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Fifteen years. I don’t think

we’ve ever had an

argument.”

“That’s great,” Jesse said.

“Do you have any leads in this serial thing, other than the fact

that the victims were shot with a twenty-two?” Tony said.

“Nothing much,” Jesse said.

He made a rueful little smile.

“That’s why I was pinning my hopes on you,” he

said.

They all laughed.

“Oh well,” Brianna said.

They laughed again.

“Would you like more coffee?” Tony said.

“No, I really should be going,” Jesse said.

“If it had been us,” Tony said,

“why on earth would we want to

do such a thing?”

“Everybody needs a hobby,” Jesse said.

They laughed.

“Seriously though,” Tony said.

“Why would we do something like

that?”

“Both of you?” Jesse said.

Tony shrugged and nodded.

“A shared sickness, I’d guess,”

Jesse said.

Tony laughed.

“At least we’d be sharing,” he

said.

53

“They were flirting with

me,” Jesse

said.

Dix sat silently back in his chair, one foot on the edge of a desk drawer, resting his chin on his steepled hands. His fingernails gleamed quietly. He always looks like he’s just

scrubbed for surgery, Jesse thought.

“Especially the husband,” Jesse said.

“Tell me about the flirting,” Dix said.

“He kept coming back to the killings. I was trying, sort of

indirectly, to learn a little about them. Whenever I’d ask a question, you know, like, where’d you two meet?

he’d steer us back

to the killings.”

Dix nodded.

“And you’re convinced it’s

them,” Dix said.

“I’ve been a cop nearly all my adult life,” Jesse said. “It’s

them.”

“We often know things,” Dix said.

“Before we can demonstrate

them.”

“I need to demonstrate it,” Jesse said.

Dix smiled.

“Ain’t that a bitch,” he said.

“How come,” Jesse said, “that

sometimes you talk like one of the

guys on the corner, and sometimes you sound like Sigmund Freud?”

“Depends what I’m talking

about,” Dix said.

“Talk about the Lincolns,” Jesse said.

Dix nodded without saying anything, as if to confirm that he’d

expected Jesse to ask. He took in a lot of air and let it out slowly.

“One of the reasons that psychiatry

doesn’t have a better

reputation is that it is asked to do too many things it doesn’t do

well,” he said.

“Like explaining people you’ve never met?”

“Like that,” Dix said. “Or

predicting what they’re going to

do.”

“Not good at that either?”

Dix smiled.

“No worse than anyone else,” he said.

“Well, tell me what you can,” Jesse said.

“I won’t hold you to

it.”

Dix leaned back in his chair.

“Well,” he said. “People do not

repetitively and freely do

things that they don’t like to do.”

“Why would they like this?”

“We may never know. They may not know.”

“Speculate,” Jesse said.

“Well, certainly it could give one a feeling of power, and the

more one did it, and the more one got away with it, the more power one would feel.”

“Hell,” Jesse said. “I know it

doesn’t prove they were powerful.

But he was a doctor, and a successful inventor. She was a lawyer.

They appear rich.”

“Power is in the perception,” Dix said.

“You’re saying maybe they didn’t

feel powerful.”

“Maybe not,” Dix said. “Or maybe

they didn’t have a shared

power.”

“His power, her power, not their power?”

Dix shrugged.

“Or,” he said, “perhaps it is a

bonding ritual.”

“Explain,” Jesse said.

“They’re a couple, and this makes their coupleness

special.”

“The family that kills together, stays together?”

“They have a shared secret. They have a shared specialness.

Ordinary couples are leading ordinary lives: food shopping, changing diapers, having sex maybe once or twice a month, because they’re supposed to. These people have found a thing to share that

no one else has.”

“Serial killing?”

“Each has the other’s guilty

secret,” Dix said. “It binds them

together.”

“For crissake, they do this for love?”

“They do this for emotional reasons,” Dix said.

“And love is an emotion.”

“Love, or what they may think is love,”

Dix said.

“What might they think is love?”

“Mutual need, mutual mistrust, that needs to be overcome by

mutual participation in something that ties them together.”

Jesse thought about this. Dix waited.