“Maybe you’re inferring?”
Hendricks stared at Jesse.
“I have interviewed half a dozen heads of state,” Hendricks said. “If you think I’m going to be intimidated by some small-town police chief, you are sadly mistaken.”
“Damn,” Jesse said.
“Why are we having this conversation?”
2 0 0
H I G H P R O F I L E
“The time-of-death issue has opened up,” Jesse said. “I suppose you have an alibi for the last six weeks?”
“Six weeks,” Hendricks said. “That’s a joke. I thought you had time of death established.”
“We thought so, too,” Jesse said. “But we didn’t.”
“So you now come here on some sort of fishing expedition, implying something illicit between me and Lorrie Weeks?”
“I don’t recall suggesting that,” Jesse said.
“I know what you’re doing,” Hendricks said. “I’m not some scared teenager you’ve stopped for speeding.”
“I guess not,” Jesse said. “So were you intimate with Mrs. Weeks?”
Hendricks stood suddenly up behind his desk.
“This interview is over,” Hendricks said.
Jesse stood more slowly. He smiled and nodded.
“You were,” he said. “Weren’t you.”
Hendricks said nothing. Jesse turned and left. Stephanie had that one right, Jesse thought as he waited for the elevator. 2 0 1
45
Suit brought a box of donuts and three coffees with him into the squad room. He put the box in the middle of the conference table and gave a cup each to Molly Crane and Jesse.
“I miss anything?” Suit said.
“I was outlining my theory of the crime,” Jesse said.
“Which is?” Suit said.
“That we’re not solving it,” Molly said.
Suit nodded.
“Cox is on the front desk,” Suit said. “He wanted to know how come he didn’t get donuts. I told him because he hadn’t made detective yet.”
H I G H P R O F I L E
“Good, Suit,” Molly said. “Promote unit cohesion.”
Jesse took the plastic cover off his coffee and tossed it onto the conference table. He stood beside the green chalkboard where he had written a list of names in yellow chalk.
“I talked to the divorce lawyer,” Jesse said. “Esther Bergman. She affirms that Weeks wanted a divorce. That he was prepared to make a generous settlement on Lorrie, but that he didn’t want alimony and he would, of course, change his will.”
“Any of this happen?” Molly said.
“No, the lawyer was in process.”
“Lorrie Weeks know?” Suit said.
“The lawyer said she did.”
“Funny no one mentioned this,” Suit said.
“Good old Stephanie,” Jesse said.
“What else did you find out this trip?” Suit said.
“Lorrie was having sex with Hendricks,” Jesse said, “the faithful researcher.”
“How’d you find that out?” Suit said.
“Good old Stephanie,” Molly said. “Jesse employed the three-martini-lunch interrogation.”
“Often effective,” Jesse said.
“Unless the interrogator joins in,” Molly said.
“Stephanie allowed me to know as well that she was occasionally intimate with Walton, and currently with Tom Nolan.”
“Busy group down there in New York,” Molly said.
“Lot of people been not telling us a lot of stuff,” Suit said.
“Like Lutz didn’t mention that he had busted Weeks in Baltimore County.”
2 0 3
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“A hazard of police work,” Jesse said.
“Makes you get sort of distrustful,” Suit said. Molly broke a small piece off a glazed cruller.
“You think?” she said, and put the piece of cruller in her mouth.
“So what we do have is that Mrs. Weeks knows her husband is planning to divorce her. She is intimate with the man who will continue the franchise after her husband’s death.”
“You’re sure Stephanie’s not just being catty?” Molly said.
“Isn’t catty a sexist concept?” Jesse said.
“It is,” Molly said. “You’re sure she’s not?”
“I talked with Hendricks. They were doing something,”
Jesse said.
“But if he divorces her,” Suit says, “then she loses control of the franchise.”
“Which might mean she loses Hendricks,” Molly said.
“Or Hendricks doesn’t get the job when Weeks dies.”
Jesse nodded.
“Or both,” he said.
“Carey and the unborn child get it all?” Molly said.
“I would assume,” Jesse said.
“So there’s some pretty good motive here,” Suit said. Jesse nodded. No one said anything for a moment. Then Molly said, “But?”
“But can you see them doing it?”
“I don’t even know them,” Molly said.
2 0 4
H I G H P R O F I L E
She ate another small piece of cruller. Jesse smiled. Jenn used to eat something in small pieces so it wouldn’t be fattening.
“Bergdorf’s sophisticate, adult Ivy Leaguer,” Jesse said.
“Princeton probably. They could shoot a couple of people maybe. But transport them to a house with a walk-in refrigerator and store them there, then haul them out and hang one up and toss the other in a Dumpster?”
“Don’t seem like people who would be that aware of the effects of ambient temperature on a corpse,” Molly said.
“That’s right,” Jesse said.
“But Lutz would,” Suit said.
“That’s right,” Jesse said.
“But he’s got no motive,” Suit said.
“He has no motive that we know about,” Jesse said.
“They could have hired him to do it,” Molly said.
“And he’d own them for the rest of their lives,” Jesse said.
“Even Bergdorf sophisticates and Princeton grads can be stupid,” Molly said.
Jesse nodded.
“So,” Suit said. “Now we have an actual theory of the crime.”
“Lorrie, with or without the complicity of Hendricks, did it, maybe with help from Lutz.”
“Lot of with or withouts and maybes in there,” Molly said.
“How true,” Jesse said.
“And do we have any hard evidence to support our theory?”
Molly said.
2 0 5
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“You mean like clues?” Jesse said.
Molly nodded.
“No,” Jesse said.
“So what do we do now.”
“We go back into everybody’s history,” Jesse said.
“Everybody?” Suit said.
“Everybody on the chalkboard,” Jesse said.
“And of course we may find out that Lutz is telling the truth.”
“However ineptly,” Jesse said.
“And that Lorrie and Alan are simply adulterers. People cheat on their spouses without killing them, you know.”
Jesse smiled at her. “From experience, Moll?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, when you’re ready . . .” Jesse said.
“You’re on the list, Jesse.”
“How about me,” Suit said. “Am I on the list.”
“Not till you’re old enough,” Molly said.
“For crissake, Moll, I’m almost a detective.”
“So we have a theory, let’s see if we can find something that proves it or disproves it,” Jesse said.
“Wow,” Molly said. “Like the scientific method.”
“Sort of,” Jesse said.
“What’s the scientific method?” Suit said.
“And you wonder why you’re not on the list,” Molly said. She finished her cruller.
“I don’t know why I bother to eat these,” she said. “I might as well apply them directly to my hips.”
2 0 6
46
Sunny sat at the bar with Jesse in the Gray Gull. She put the pictures of Jenn and Timothy Patrick Lloyd on the bar.