14
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.”
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“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
15
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.
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“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.
“Baltimore,” 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.”