High Profile js-6

by Robert B. Parker

  “Sometimes I’ll be at the studio watching her,” Jesse said.

  “You know what I mean,” Molly said.

  “I do.”

  “And we can’t spare anybody, Jesse. Not now, not with the two murders and the goddamned press. Plus, the governor’s office calls every day. And some congressman.”

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  “I know.”

  “And what are you going to do about Sunny Randall?”

  Molly said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jesse,” Molly said. “This is a fucking mess.”

  “Thank you for noticing,” Jesse said.

  “I want to ask you a bad question,” Molly said.

  “Why should today be different,” Jesse said.

  The line was silent for a moment.

  “Do you completely believe her?” Molly said.

  “That is a bad question,” Jesse said.

  “I know.”

  Again the line was silent.

  Then Jesse said, “Maybe not completely.”

  After a time, Molly said, “Will you be there if I need you?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll talk with Lutz,” Molly said. “And call you back.”

  “Talk about phoning it in,” Jesse said.

  He hung up and stood and walked past his picture of Ozzie to the French doors and opened them and went out and stood on the balcony and looked at the harbor and thought. 4 9

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  This is absolutely insane,” Sunny Randall said.

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  “She and I can’t be together,” Jenn said.

  “Of course not,” Jesse said.

  He was sitting on a stool at the bar in his living room in front of his picture of Ozzie Smith. Jenn sat in a chair to his left, near the bedroom corridor. Sunny sat in a chair to his right. We’re even sitting in a triangle, Jesse thought. The phone rang. He picked it up and looked at the display. It was Molly. He answered.

  “Jesse, there’s a guy here from the governor’s office,” Molly said. “Looking for you.”

  H I G H P R O F I L E

  “Tell him I’m not available now.”

  “He won’t like that,” Molly said.

  “I can’t worry, right now,” Jesse said, “about what people like.”

  “I’ll try to handle it,” Molly said.

  “Thanks, Moll.”

  “But I’m not the chief of police,” Molly said.

  “Do what you can,” Jesse said. “I’ll be there when I can be there.”

  He hung up and looked at the two women. Neither of them said anything. It was late morning, and the sun coming through the French doors made a long, bright parallelogram on the living-room floor. Jesse picked up an empty highball glass from the bar. It was made of thick glass and had a nice heft to it.

  “I need a drink,” Jesse said.

  Neither woman spoke.

  “Probably needed too many drinks in my life,” Jesse said. The women stayed quiet. Jesse smiled without happiness. He turned the empty glass slowly in both hands.

  “Booze aside,” he said, “there are, as far as I can tell, three things in life that matter to me. Jenn, Sunny, and being a cop. Things have not gone well with us, Jenn. But because I can’t quite let you go, things aren’t going as well as they should with you, Sunny.”

  “In fairness,” Sunny said, “there is, of course, Richie.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “In fairness,” Jenn said. “There are a lot of things.”

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  “Both of you,” Jesse said, “matter more to me than anything, except my job, and I seem unable to do my job if I don’t ask you to do something that is probably unfair to both of you.”

  “Which would make you, in some sense, oh-for-three,”

  Sunny said.

  “Yes, I cannot allow Jenn to be unprotected. I cannot allow her rapist to walk around free and easy. And I cannot protect her or find her rapist and remain a good chief of police.”

  “Which was what saved you when you came east from L.A.,” Jenn said. “Alone.”

  “It’s what I have,” Jesse said.

  “In some odd way,” Jenn said, “you have both of us.”

  “I know.”

  “Which also means you have neither of us,” Sunny said.

  “I know.”

  The sun had gotten higher, and the long rectangle of sunlight on the living-room floor had shortened.

  “Do you love him?” Sunny said to Jenn.

  Jenn shook her head.

  “I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. “I do know that I cannot imagine a life without Jesse in it.”

  “To protect you?” Sunny said.

  Jenn nodded.

  “I know it looks like that,” she said. “And I probably deserve that it does. But it’s always that way. With him. 5 2

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  Without him. With someone else. I cannot imagine a life without him in it.”

  “I understand that,” Sunny said.

  “Can you protect me?” Jenn said.

  “You mean am I any good?” Sunny said.

  “You’re a woman.”

  “Who better?”

  Jenn looked at Jesse.

  “She can protect you,” he said. “And she can find your rapist.”

  Jenn looked back at Sunny.

  “Would you?”

  “Rape is something men can understand,” Sunny said.

  “But women not only understand it, they feel it in their viscera. In terms of what happened to you, Jesse will never know what we know right now.”

  “Yes,” Jenn said.

  “Right now the most important thing in the room is what happened to you,” Sunny said. “I will protect you until the sonovabitch is in jail or dead. Either one.”

  “Do you have a gun?” Jenn said.

  Sunny opened her purse and took out a short revolver.

  “And you can shoot?” Jenn said.

  “Quite well,” Sunny said.

  Jenn began to cry. Sunny put the gun away and went and sat on the arm of Jenn’s chair and put her arm around Jenn’s shoulders. Jenn turned a little and pressed her 5 3

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  face against Sunny’s rib cage and cried harder. Sunny patted her.

  “You’re going to be fine,” she said. “We’re going to do just fine together.”

  Jesse felt as if he were intruding. He sat silently on his bar stool and rolled the empty glass in his hands. 5 4

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  Jenn and Sunny left together. Jesse sat at the bar for a time after they left, rolling the empty glass in his hands. The scent of their perfumes remained, commingling in the quiet room. The sun splash on the floor was gone. Jesse put the glass down, took his gun from a drawer and put it on, looked around the silent room for a moment. Inhaled. And went to the station.

  “I got Lutz in the squad room,” Molly said. “Waiting patiently.”

  “Good,” Jesse said.

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  “And I’ve got the jerk from the governor waiting in your office.”

  “Not patiently,” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  Jesse started down the corridor.

  “Where you going?” Molly said.

  “Squad room.”

  Molly stared at him for a moment, and opened her mouth, and shut it and said nothing.

  Jesse opened the door to the squad room.

  “I’m Jesse Stone,” he said.

  Lutz stood. They shook hands. He had a hard handshake.

  “Con Lutz,” he said.

  They sat. Lutz picked up a foam coffee cup from the conference table and drank some.

  “Must be something genetic,” Lutz said. “I’ve never had good coffee in a police station.”

  “You ever on the job?” Jesse said.

  “Ba
ltimore,” Lutz said.

  “Molly show you the pictures?”

  “Yep. It’s Carey Longley.”

  “Tell me about her,” Jesse said.

  “Walton’s assistant. Been with him about a year.”

  “They an item?” Jesse said.

  “You mean did they fool around?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I ain’t here to gossip about Walton,” Lutz said, “or badmouth him, either. I worked for him eight years.”

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  “Bodyguard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where were you this time?” Jesse said.

  Lutz looked into his coffee cup for a moment. He shook his head.

  “They went out without me,” he said.

  “Deliberately?”

  “Yeah. Walton told me to take the night off. He said he and Carey were going out.”

  “That unusual?” Jesse said.

  “Yes, he liked me to stay with him.”

  “They say where they were going?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “She was ten weeks pregnant,” Jesse said. “Weeks was the father.”

  Lutz looked at the surface of his coffee again.

  “Okay,” he said. “That takes it out of the realm of gossip, I guess.”

  “They an item?”

  “Sure. A hot one. She was his girlfriend for a while before he hired her. I figured they were going off for some sort of romantic something, you know?”

  “Anything wrong with the relationship?” Jesse said.

  “Just that he had a wife,” Lutz said. “Carey and Walton seemed fine.”

  “Wife know about Carey?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, she knew he had an assistant. But I don’t think she knew he was fucking her.”

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  “He do this often?” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. Walton liked women. He married three of them. He probably cheated on them all.”

  “What was he doing up here?”

  Lutz shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Carey did all that stuff. I just protected him.”

  “You didn’t know ahead of time?” Jesse said. “How’d you know if there would be security issues?”

  “I wasn’t the Secret Service,” Lutz said. “Hell, Walton wasn’t the president, either. If he was going someplace to give a speech or whatever, Carey would notify the local cops and they’d do what they thought they should do. I was just along to see that no one assaulted him on the sidewalk or whatever.”

  “Which you look like you can do,” Jesse said.

  “Which I can,” Lutz said. “But tell you the truth, I think part of it was that Walton just liked having a bodyguard around. Good for his image.”

  “Ever any trouble.”

  “A few drunks,” Lutz said. “A few protesters.”

  “Sometimes one and the same,” Jesse said.

  Lutz grinned.

  “You got that right,” he said.

  “Any big trouble?”

  “No.”

  “You and he get along?” Jesse said.

  “Sure. Once we both got it that I was a bodyguard, not 5 8

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  somebody who runs errands, or makes coffee, or gets you a dinner reservation.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You have any idea why they ended up dead in my town?”

  Jesse said.

  “No,” Lutz said.

  “Hate mail, death threats, warnings, anything like that?”

  Lutz shook his head. “None that he shared with me.”

  “Who would he share them with?”

  “Carey, maybe. She probably handled his personal mail. His manager would have handled the, you know, publicfigure mail.”

  “You guard him twenty-four-seven?” Jesse said.

  “No. In New York, he lives in a secure building. I’d drive him when he went out, but when he was home I was off duty, so to speak.”

  “When he traveled?” Jesse said.

  “When he traveled I went with him. Stayed next door. But when he was in for the night, I was off.”

  “Know anything useful?” Jesse said.

  “Guy’s a bodyguard and his clients die,” Lutz said, “it doesn’t make him look good. Besides which, I worked for the guy eight years. So before I came up to see you, I checked a little. Nobody at the front door remembers getting them a cab. Nobody at the concierge desk remembers arranging anything. No car rental, no limo, no dinner reservation, no theater tickets, nothing.”

  “And people would remember,” Jesse said.

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  “Walton was pretty well-known,” Lutz said.

  “Anyone remember them coming out of the hotel?”

  “One doorman said he thought they headed up Franklin Street.” Lutz smiled. “It wasn’t Walton so much. Doorman says he was watching Carey’s ass.”

  “Any people I should talk to about Weeks?” Jesse said.

  “Sure,” Lutz said. “I don’t know everyone, but I can give you a few names to start with.”

  “You think of any Paradise connection?” Jesse said. “For either of them?”

  “Only reason I ever heard of the place,” Lutz said, “was that serial killing thing you had up here a while back.”

  “Either Carey or Walton ever mention the town?”

  “Nope.”

  “You have any theory,” Jesse said, “about why they died, or why they ended up here?”

  “None,” Lutz said.

  “That makes two of us,” Jesse said.

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  Could you join me with the governor’s guy?” Jesse said to Molly as he walked to his office.

  “Always best to have a witness,” Molly said.

  The man in Jesse’s office didn’t stand when they came in. He was maybe fifty. He wore black wingtipped shoes, a dark suit, a red tie, and a white shirt with a collar pin. His sandy hair was newly cut and parted on the left.

  “Richard Kennfield,” he said. “From Governor Forbes. Didn’t she tell you I was waiting?”

  “Officer Crane?” Jesse said. “Yes, she told me.”

  R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

  Jesse sat behind his desk and, pushing the chair back, put one foot on an open bottom drawer.

  “And you chose to keep me sitting here for several hours?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “Do you have an explanation?”

  Jesse nodded. Molly remained standing by the door.

  “I do,” he said.

  Kennfield waited. Jesse was silent.

  “What is it?” Kennfield said after a while.

  “I had police work to do,” Jesse said.

  “And you don’t think police work includes talking to the representative of the chief executive of the state?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you being deliberately obtuse?” Kennfield said.

  “I’m not sure it’s deliberate,” Jesse said. “What can I do for you?”

  Kennfield paused for a moment and weighed his options. Then he shook his head slightly, puffed his cheeks a little, and blew some air out.

  “Walton Weeks was a longtime supporter of Governor Forbes,” Kennfield said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “The governor is very concerned about his murder.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “We would like a full report on the death of Walton Weeks,” Kennfield said. “And the progress of the investigation.”

  “Me too,” Jesse said.

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  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I don’t know any more than you do.”

  “We want progress reports,” Kennfield said. “We want to know every step you’re taking.”

  “I’ve got everybody in the department looking for
the killer or killers. We haven’t found him . . . or her . . . or them.”

  “And we want the state police involved,” Kennfield said. Jesse realized that Kennfield was checking off a mental list.

  “I’ve been in touch with the homicide commander,” Jesse said.

  “We want the full resources of the state brought to bear on this investigation,” Kennfield said. “We want you working hand in glove with Captain Healy.”

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  “Now”—Kennfield checked off another mental point—

  “what is your theory of the case?”

  “Same people that killed Weeks,” Jesse said, “killed Carey Longley.”

  “Carey . . . ?”

  “His assistant.”

  “Oh, yes,” Kennfield said. “Because of the same murder weapon.”

  “Because of that,” Jesse said.

  “And what haven’t you told the press?” Kennfield said.

  “That Carey was ten weeks pregnant with Walton’s kid.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “Yep.”

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  “Is that a holdback?” Kennfield said.

  “No,” Jesse said. “We hold back things that only the killer could know, so if someone knows it, it’s a clue. The killer or killers could have known, or not known, and if they knew could have known or not known that it was Walton Weeks’s child. No point in holding it back. Somebody knows it, it proves nothing.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell the press?” Kennfield said.

  “Saw no good reason to. There’s Weeks’s widow and Carey’s next of kin to think about.”

  “Yes, it’s best kept quiet,” Kennfield said. “Lorrie Weeks is a very close friend of the governor, and she has always been as supportive as Walton was.”

  “I can’t promise you,” Jesse said. “It may become pertinent, and if so, I’ll blab.”

  “That would not endear you to us.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “We want your cooperation in this,” Kennfield said. Jesse nodded.

  “And our cooperation with you can be very helpful.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You don’t seem to care,” Kennfield said.

  “I don’t,” Jesse said.

  “Perhaps we could change that,” Kennfield said.

  He stood and walked to the door. With the door half open, he turned back to Jesse.

  “Is it something personal?” he said. “Do you dislike the governor?”