“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?” Dix said.
“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 abou
t 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 together through the snow to the l
ittle roofed pavilion at the edge of the beach. In its shelter they stood together, holding each other’s hand again. There wasn’t much wind and it wasn’t very cold. All around the pavilion the snow fell straight down. The smell of the ocean was strong.
“We love each other, Jesse.”
Jesse nodded.
“I was learning to be without you,” he said.
“We love each other.”
Jesse nodded again. Jenn put her head against his shoulder. The only sound was the movement of the water. He cleared his throat again.
“I met a lot of women I liked,” Jesse said.
Jenn kept her head against his shoulder. The beach was snow-covered except at the margin where the waves rolled in and out, washing the snow.
“What about that?” Jesse said.
Jenn shook her head slowly against his shoulder.
“No other people?” Jesse said.
“Monogamous,” Jenn said softly.
Still holding her hand, Jesse turned toward her. She pressed her face against his neck.
“The magic word,” he said.
“I know.”
“The one condition,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
He continued to hold her hand with his. He put his free arm around her shoulders. Under the sea smell, her perfume was gently determined.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Let’s give it another try.”
Robert B. Parker is the author of more than fifty books. He lived in Boston. Visit the author’s website at www.robertbparker.net.
SEA CHANGE
THE SPENSER NOVELS
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5 Page 85