“Was she close to you?”
“No, I didn’t know her. But I know who did it, and I he did it to challenge me.”
“Are you scared?”
‘.’Yes,“ Jesse said.
”It’s probably why I only have one
“So you’ll be ready?”
‘
“Something like that.”
“Can’t you arrest the man?”
“I can’t prove anything,” Jesse
said.
“Is the man in Wyoming part of this?”
“I don’t know. It’s crazy that a
town like this, where there hasn’t been a killing in fifty years, suddenly has two in a month. It makes you want to think they’re connected.”
“But you don’t see a connection.”
“No. There’s some kind of militia group in town. Not like the National Guard, the other kind, and there’s something funky about them.”
“Do you like the men you work with?”
“I like them, but I don’t know who I can trust.”
“No one.‘?”
“Well, I’m sort of forced to trust one of them. My guess is he’s okay.”
“What about that woman. Weren’t you seeing a
“Abby. She’s mad at me.”
“Have you broken up?”
“I don’t know. The last time I saw her she walked away in a huff.”
“I wouldn’t tell her about this.”
“‘This’ being the stuff
you’re telling me?”
“Yes. She said it meant I didn’t trust
her.”
“Does that mean you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Even though…9,,
“Even though,” Jesse said.
The phone line made phone line noise while both of them remained silent.
“You should come home,” Jenn said after a time.
“I don’t know where home is,
Jenn.”
“Maybe it’s with me.”
“I got too much going on, Jenn. I can’t walk down that road right now.”
“Even if you don’t come home, why not get out of there? I’ve never heard you say you were scared before.”
“I can’t leave it, Jenn. You know when
they hired me, I was drunk? Why would they hire a guy to be police chief who was drank in the interview?”
“I don’t know,” Jenn said.
“Maybe they didn’t know you were drunk.”
“They knew,” Jesse said.
Again the cross-country silence broken by the lowvoltage sound of the circuitry.
“I’m scared, J6sse.”
Jesse didn’t say anything.
“Will you call me soon,” Jenn said.
“Yes.”
“I mean tomorrow, every day, so I’ll know you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
“I still love you, Jesse.”
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
“I do, Jesse. Do you still love me?”
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
After they had hung up he sat looking at the half-empty glass with the ice cubes melting into the whiskey. He picked it up and took a sip, and let it slide down his throat, warm and cool at the same time.
His eyes felt as if they would fill with tears. He didn’t want them to, and he pushed the feeling back down.
Jenn, he thought. Jesus Christ!
couple of oer bumom ds sat fer down e will pmnng at ey wen’t listening, and we’t cl to pay any antion to e li cNef if he chore to sit on · e will wiem.
“You got a cigtte?” Michelle sd.
“You don’t smoke?”
“Yo evt7‘ ’
“No.”
“How com7”
“I w a jk,” Jesse sd. “I thought
it would cut my wind.‘ ’
“m’s weird,” Michelle sd.
Jes sd at e leaves on e co—on, crimson now in pls, d run, d yellow, yellow ting flong · e ges wi gn. It w someng he’d never sn except on cflend, owing up in zona d Cflifomia.
“I live next to your girlfriend,” Michelle said. “Abby Taylor.”
“That so?”
“Yes. Sometimes I see you come home real late with her and go in.”
“Un huh.”
“You have sex with her?”
“Why do you want to know?” Jesse said.
“I don’t, I don’t care. I just
think if you’re going to be telling people what to do you shouldn’t be having sex with ‘people.”
“Why not,” Jesse said.
“Why not?”
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I be chief of police and have sex with people?”
“I don’t care what you do, but
it’s gross to do that and then be telling other people not to.”
“Have I ever told you not to?”
“You think I should?”
“There’s no should to it,” Jesse
said.
“Well, that’s not what most adults
think.”
“I’d be willing to bet,” Jesse
said, “that you don’t know what most adults think.
You know what a few of them think
· and you assume everyone thinks that.“
“Well, do you think it’s okay?”
“Sex? You bet.”
“For me?”
“For anyone,” Jesse said, ‘that
knows what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, and is smart enough not to get pregnant when they don’t want to, or get AIDS, or get a reputation.“
“I’ve had sex,” Michelle said.
Jesse nodded soberly.
“I figured you had,” Jesse said.
“I don’t think it’s such a big
deal.”
“Sometimes it is,” Jesse said.
“Depends, I guess, on who you have sex with and when and how you feel about
Jesse ,paused and smiled.
“Though I gotta tell you,” he said.
“I’ve never not liked it.”
Michelle glanced down at the two ratty-looking boys at the end of the wail and lowered her voice.
“If a guy, you know, shoots off, and you get some on you, can you get pregnant?”
“He needs to shoot off in you,” Jesse said.
“In… down there?”
“In your vagina,” Jesse said.
“There may be someone who’s gotten pregnant by getting it on her thigh, but it’s not something I’d worry about.”
Michelle was silent, her feet dangling, looking at the ground between her feet.
Jesse looked across the common some more at the fall foliage.
What made the leaves of the hardwoods so bright, he realized, was the undertone of evergreens behind and between them. The turning trees were made more brilliant by the trees that didn’t turn. Must be a philosophic point in there somewhere, Jesse thought. But none occurred.
“So are you?” Michelle asked.
She was still looking at the ground, and as she talked she pointed her toes in and then back out.
“None of your business,” Jesse said.
“Embarrassed to say?”
“No,” Jesse said. “But you
don’t go out with someone and then tell everybody what you did.”
“I’ll bet you talk about it with the other cops.”
“No,” Jesse said.
“That’s weird. You ever been
married?”
“You divorced now?,
“Yes.”
“Is it because you didn’t love each
other?”
“No. I think we love each other.”
?So what is it?“
“None of your business,” Jesse said.
“Jeez, another thing you won’t talk
about.”
“I don’t talk about you and me,
either,” Jesse said.
“We’re not doing nothing,” she
said.
Jesse grinned at her.
“That makes it easier,” he said.
Michelle tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. She giggled.
“Jesse, you are really crazy,” she said.
“You are really fucking-A crazy.”
“Thank you for noticing,‘’ Jesse
said.
And Michelle giggled some more and looked at the harlequin leaf bed beneath her dangling feet.
ing on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills a block north of Wilshire, on the corner of Brighton Way. Jenn liked the location. It made her feel important to go there twice a week. Jenn loved Dr. St.
Claire and hated her. She was so implacable.
“What we are after in here,” Dr. St.
Claire had said to her in one of her early visits, “is the truth.”
“So how come you are an authority on truth? Maybe your truth isn’t my msth.”
“We want your truth,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“We want you to know why you do what you do.”
“Who’s to decide my truth?”
“You will.”
“So why do I need you?”
“Why do you?” Dr. St. Claire had said and Jenn had felt the stab of panic that she often felt when she realized that something was up to her.
She had gotten past that and now she understood why she needed help with the troth. But the rebellious child angry at the stem teacher never entirely disappeared, and many of the therapy sessions were combative. Sometimes Jenn cried. Dr. St. Claire remained unmoved. She was kind, but she was firm, and nothing Jenn did, no trick from Jenn’s considerable repertoire, could divert her. Under Dr.
St.
Claire’s steady gaze the strictures of pretense with which
Jenn had defended herself for so long began to loosen.
They were talking about Jesse.
“The thing is,” lenn said, “that
I feel so much more than I used to feel when I talk to him. I feel stronger. It’s like, sometimes I imagine the skin of a valley girl laying shriveled on the floor, and a kind of new pink me standing up, a little damp, kind of scared, but genuine. Is that too fanciful?”
Dr. St. Claire made one of her little head movements which managed to encourage Jenn while remaining noncommittal..
“I know I haven’t been here long enough to be what I’m going to be. But when I talk to Jesse I know he’s in trouble, and I know he’s a little scared.
Jesse is never scared.”
Or never shows it,“ Dr. St. Claire said.
“He’s really very brave,” Jenn
said.
Dr. St. Claire nodded.
“And the funny thing is, when he sounds a little scared,
I feel a lot braver. You know. I feel like I could help him.“
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m glad
]e’s not so damned perfect, you know? That he can be scared?”
“Perhaps you don’t need to be quite so
much less than he,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“What do you mean?”
“You have learned to get what you want by submitting to men. They had power. You, as I believe you said once, knew how to
‘bat your eyes’ when you needed
something.”
“And‘ now I don’t?”
“Now you may need to less,” Dr. St. Claire said. “I don’t think you are all the way yet.”
The room was very plain. The walls were beige. The rug was gray with a pink undertone. The only thing to look’at other than Dr. St. Claire was her framed diplomas. Her medical degree was from UCLA. There was some kind of psychoanalytic certificate too, and other things behind her that Jenn had never turned around to look at.
“But I am taking care of myself.”
“Yes,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“You mean more than earning my own money.”
‘ ’Yes.‘ ’
“You mean this too, don’t you.”
“Yes.”
“So I’m starting to take better care of myself, and that means I can take better care of Jesse.”
“Or whoever,” Dr. St. Claire said.
Jenn sat back a little in her chair and thought about that.
“Often,” Dr, SL Claire said,
“circumstances of heightened intensity can accelerate things.”
“Like rising to the occasion,” Jenn said.
“Yes,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“Very much like that.”
sandwich with everything on it at a shop called the Italian Submarine near the town wharf, and brought it home for supper. He would have two drinks. One before the sandwich and one with it. He was on his first drink when Abby called him.
“I’m ready to forgive you,” Abby
said.
“That’s good.”
“I wish you trusted me, but you don’t.
Maybe you can’t.
But I find that I’m missing you and decided that not seeing you was punishing me as much as you and so I want to see you.“
“Olaiy.”
“Control yourself,” Abby said.
“I hate it when you get giddy with excitement.”
“You want tO go with me to the Halloween dance at the Yacht Club?” Jesse said.
“Well, yes,” Abby said. “I mean
I want to go with you, but I wish it didn’t have to be to the Yacht Club dance.”
“Sort of part of my job,” Jesse said.
“I know. Chief of police and all that,”
Abby said. “Actually I guess I’m supposed to go too, being town counsel.”
“Want to come here first for a drink?”
Jesse said.
“Yes. What time?”
“Say seven, we don’t want to get to the bail too early.”
“I guess,” Abby said.
They were quiet for a moment. Jesse sipped his drink.
He suspected that Abby was sipping hers.
“How have you been?” Abby said.
“Any progress on who killed that young
woman?”
“Some,” Jesse said. “I know who
did it, but I need evidence.‘ ’
“You know who did it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well who… I guess you can’t
say, can you? Have you heard from your ex lately?”
“She hasn:! let you go, has she,” Abby
said.
“I hear from Jenn pretty regularly.”
“Have you let her go, Jesse?”
“No, I don’t suppose I have,
altogether.”
“So where does that leave me?”
“Where you’ve always been, Ab.
You’re a really wonderful woman. But I am not really finished with my first marriage yet.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t put all your eggs in this basket, Ab.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry it’s that
way,” Jesse said.
“Hell,” Abby said,
“let’s play it as it lays. The worst we can do is have a hell of a good time for a while.”
“I don’t know how it will turn out,
Ab.”
“Me either, but let’s start with the
Halloween dance, and a drink beforehand.”
“And maybe we won’t have to stay
long,” Jesse said.
“And have the rest of the night to kill,”
Abby said.
“We’ll think of something,”
Jesse said.
“I already have,” Abby said.
eral Express envelope from Charlie Buck in the campbell County, Wyoming, Sheriff’s Department. Inside was a letter and a list of names.
“We have .a cooperative
witness in
custody,” Buck wrote, “who says that Torn Carson was killed by a man sent by a militia group back east. Since Carson was from Massachusetts, we got a list of everybody who flew from Boston to Denver a week on either side of the crime. See if you recognize any names. The witness may be selling us a plea. Or the killer may have flown from New York, or drove out in a 1958 Rambler. But it makes sense to start with BostonDenver.”
There followed a list of names, three columns, eighteen pages.
On the twelfth page was Lou Burke’s name. Jesse stared at it for a long time, then he reorganized the list and put it in a manila folder along with Buck’s letter and locked the folder in the file cabinet in his office. He took Lou Burke’s personnel file out and brought it back to his desk and looked at it. L°u had been a twenty-year man in the Navy, before he retired and joined the police. Jesse ran his eyes down the list of Lou’s military occupation specialties until he found the one he remembered.
1970-1972 Underwater demolition specialist Jesse’s fingers tapped softly on the desk as he read the personnel sheet.
1970-1972 Underwater demolition specialist Holding the file in his lap, he swiveled his chair so he
‘could stare out the window, past the driveway where the fire tracks parked, and look at the full swat of the Massachusetts fall. Jesse was never one for nature’s grandeur, and he wouldn’t get in a bus and ride very far to look at the leaves either. But since it was there it was nice to look at.
Nothing like it in L.A. He watched the bright leaves for quite a while holding Lou Burke’s personnel file facedown in his lap.
He was still sitting when Molly Crane came in from the dispatch desk, and stood in the doorway, leaning on the jamb. She often did that, didn’t really come in, didn’t really stay out, just lingered in the doorway to talk.
“You thinking?” she said. “Or
daydreaming.”
“Looking at the leaves,” Jesse said.
“I’m on break,” Molly said,
Jesse nodded.
“You going to that dance at the Yacht
Club?” Molly said.
“Yeah. You?”
Molly laughed.
“Are you kidding? The police department dispatcher?”
“You’re a full-time police officer
too,” Jesse said.
“Yeah that’ll make a difference. See how many other guys from the force are there.”
“You ever been?”
“I never even been inside the Yacht Club, except once when some lady got drunk and stasxl to strip right in front of all the guests, and I had to go over there and drag her OUt.”
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