26
Suit came into Jesse’s office and sat down.
“Molly said you wanted me to run down Weeks’s
fingerprints,” he said.
Jesse smiled.
“She’ll be chief someday,” Jesse said.
“What?” Suit said.
Jesse shook his head.
“What have you got?” he said.
Suit took out his notebook.
“Walton Weeks was booked for public indecency in White Marsh, Maryland, in 1987.”
H I G H P R O F I L E
“And fingerprinted at the time,” Jesse said.
“That’s what it says.”
“Who booked him?”
“Baltimore County police.”
“Got a name?” Jesse said.
“No.”
“Phone?”
“Molly just said to find out why he was in the system,” Suit said. “Is this going to delay my promotion to detective?”
“Probably,” Jesse said and leaned forward and pulled the phone to him.
“You going to pursue the investigation yourself?” Suit said.
“I like to keep my hand in,” Jesse said and dialed 411. It took two holds and one second phone call before Jesse was talking to the sergeant in charge of Precinct 9 of the Baltimore County Police Department in White Marsh.
“We busted Walton Weeks,” the sergeant said.
“Nineteen eighty-seven,” Jesse said, “public indecency.”
“For crissake,” the sergeant said, “what’d he do, wave his willy at somebody?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I thought I’d ask you.”
“Oh, oh,” the sergeant said. “A test of our record-keeping.”
“Anything you got,” Jesse said.
“Where’d you say you were from?”
“Paradise, Massachusetts,” Jesse said.
“Outside of Boston, right? Where Weeks got popped.”
“You read the papers,” Jesse said.
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“And watch TV and listen to the radio,” the cop said.
“Good luck to you guys.”
“Thanks.”
There was silence. Jesse could hear the computer keys tapping.
“New system,” the sergeant murmured.
“They’re all new to me,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” the sergeant said, “ain’t that the truth.” More tapping.
“Shit!” the sergeant said. His voice raised. “Alice, will you come over and run this goddamned thing for me.”
Jesse heard a woman’s voice murmur in the background.
“Walton Weeks,” the sergeant said, “public indecency, 1987.”
The woman’s voice murmured again. The computer keys tapped. Jesse waited.
“Come on, come on, come on,” the sergeant said. Jesse knew he was talking to the computer.
“Okay,” the sergeant said. “Here it is. Goddamn. Way to go, Walton.”
“What,” Jesse said.
“Got a couple of complaints at the White Marsh Mall. Officer went out and found Walton bopping some girl in the back of a Mercedes sedan.”
“How old was the girl?”
“Bonnie Faison,” the sergeant said. “Age nineteen.”
“What was the disposition?”
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“We booked them both, and that was the end of it. Case got dismissed pretty quick.”
“Friends in high places,” Jesse said.
“Well,” the sergeant said, “it was a Mickey Mouse charge anyway. Damn arresting officer should have just shooed them away.”
“Once he brought them in . . .”
“We had to book them.”
“You know anything about the girl?” Jesse said.
“All I got is her address in 1987.”
“I’ll take it,” Jesse said.
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27
Molly came into Jesse’s office with a woman. The woman wore a white tunic and black pants. Her black boots had three-inch heels. Her hair was black with a dramatic silver streak in the front. Jesse could sense Molly’s approval in the way she ushered the woman in.
“Ellen Migliore,” Molly said. “Chief Stone.”
Jesse stood. They shook hands. The woman sat down. Molly left the door open and departed.
“The first Mrs. Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.
“Yes,” the woman said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I live in Italy and I only recently heard about Walton.”
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“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Migliore,” Jesse said.
“Ellen, please,” she said. “I have been away from Walton too long for this to be painful. But I was married to him for five years and I liked him.”
Jesse nodded.
“What can I do for you, Ellen?”
“No, Chief, it’s what can I do for you?”
“Jesse,” he said. “That’s why you came here? From Italy?”
“Yes,” she said. “Genoa.”
“Do you have anything specific?” Jesse said.
“No,” she said. “I knew Walton a long time ago. But I knew him well, and I care. Are there funeral arrangements yet?”
Jesse nodded.
“Lorrie?”
“Yes, as soon as the ME released the body. It was a quick and private ceremony.”
“ME?” she said.
“Medical examiner,” Jesse said.
Ellen Migliore nodded and dropped her head for a moment and was silent.
Then she said, “Poor Walton.”
Jesse nodded.
“So alone,” Ellen said.
Jesse nodded.
“He was always so alone,” Ellen said.
“Always?”
“Probably always. Certainly when I knew him.”
“Even when he was with you?” Jesse said.
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“With anyone and everyone,” Ellen said.
“Talk about that,” Jesse said.
He was back in his chair now, perfectly still, one foot propped, hands folded. Rain misted on the window behind him. In the month of May there had been five clear days.
“It was as if he knew a secret,” she said. “A sad secret that only he knew, and it kept him a little separate from everyone. He was somehow distant, even in the most intimate of moments, even with the most intimate of companions.”
“Like you,” Jesse said.
“Like me, like every other woman, like every other person.”
“What was the secret?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know how to ask him. He would have said there was no secret, that he wasn’t distant.”
“Maybe he would have been right,” Jesse said.
“No,” Ellen said. “He was distant. There was a silent space around him.”
“Maybe he was just an interior guy,” Jesse said.
“Like you,” she said.
“Me?”
“Yes. You are very interior, and there is a shield of silence around you, too.”
“But do I have a sad secret?”
“I don’t know you well enough,” Ellen said. “But if I slept with you for five years, I would know.”
Jesse smiled.
“Not the worst idea I ever heard,” Jesse said.
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“I am too old for you,” Ellen said.
“No,” Jesse said. “You’re not.”
Ellen smiled and bowed her head slightly toward Jesse in acknowledgment.
“I always thought it was connected to the womanizing,”
she said.
“Womanizing,” Jesse said.
“Yes. He was compulsive,” she said.
“You think he did it because of his, ah, secret?” Jesse said.
“Or that it was his secret?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What I do know is that no matter how many women he had, his aloneness remained visceral.”
“He was arrested outside Baltimore,” Jesse said. “In 1987, for public indecency.”
Ellen smiled sadly.
“No doubt with a young woman,” she said.
“Yes. In the backseat of a car in the parking lot of a shopping mall.”