High Profile

“I know. If Spike had a talk with him, I’m sure he’d stop with the stalking. But, like you, I don’t want to scare him away. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Maybe you could get them in a room together,” Jesse said.

“That’s what Spike and I are talking about.”

“And?” Jesse said.

“I need to know she can do it. That it won’t traumatize her worse than she already has been.”

“If she was traumatized at all,” Jesse said.

“Something happened,” Sunny said. “I may not know her like you do... but something happened.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “I think so, too.”

At the open end of the harbor, a lobster boat plodded in around the outer tip of Stiles Island.

“She asked me to get her a gun,” Jesse said.

“I have several,” Sunny said.

Jesse nodded.

“You can issue her the license.”

Jesse nodded again.

“But,” Sunny said, “you’re not sure she should be walking around with a gun.”

“No,” Jesse said. “I’m not.”

“It should be her call, Jesse.”

“She doesn’t even know how to shoot,” Jesse said.

“I can teach her.”

“You think she should have one?” Jesse said.

“Believe her story for a moment,” Sunny said. “Think about what that might be like. Would you like to face an overpowering enemy with no gun?”

Jesse nodded. The lobster boat had rounded Stiles Island now and was moving stolidly along the shoreline of Paradise Neck.

“And if we don’t believe her story?” Jesse said.

“Something has happened to her,” Sunny said. “She feels she needs a gun.”

“And maybe she needs to be trusted.”

“Skeptically,” Sunny said.

“We think we might want to be together, you and I,” Jesse said.

“And here we are worrying about one of the people who may keep us from being together,” Sunny said.

“It’s hard work,” Jesse said.

“But we need to do it,” Sunny said.

Jesse looked at her. He felt the pull of her. But it was not the same kind of pull Jenn exerted. Nothing was. There was no other feeling like the one Jenn caused. Obsessions are fearsome.

“Okay,” Jesse said. “Give her a gun.”

Sunny smiled.

“I already did,” she said.

31

Healy pushed through the crowd of reporters outside the Paradise police station.

A reporter held out his microphone and said, “Who are you, sir?”

“The Pied Piper,” Healy said. “When I leave, I want you all to follow me out of town.”

He went in through the front door and closed it behind him.

At the desk Molly said, “Hi, Captain.”

“Hello, darling,” Healy said.

“Officer Darling,” Molly said. “Chief Stone is in his office.”

Healy grinned at her and went down the hall. In Jesse’s office he went straight to the file cabinet and got some coffee. Then he sat down and crossed his legs.

“Thought I’d stop by,” Healy said, “on my way to work, see how fame was affecting you.”

“I think I’m opposed to freedom of the press.”

“King Nixon might have agreed,” Healy said.

“Okay,” Jesse said. “It has its place.”

“Just not here,” Healy said.

“Exactly.”

“You know anything I don’t know?” Healy said.

“Probably,” Jesse said. “But not about Walton Weeks.”

“How ’bout Carey Longley?”

“Less,” Jesse said.

“She’s thirty years old, from New Jersey. Her father’s an executive with Curtiss-Wright,” Healy said. “Her mother’s a housewife. Two older brothers, both work at Curtiss-Wright. She was married to and divorced from a guy who works for her father.”

“So how come nobody has contacted me?” Jesse said.

“They all disowned her,” Healy said. “They’re very religious. When she divorced their handpicked husband and went off to work for Walton Weeks, and live sinfully, they all agreed she was no more.”

“They don’t like Walton?” Jesse said.

“They felt him to be an embodiment, I believe the phrase was, of the Antichrist,” Healy said.

“Gee,” Jesse said. “He didn’t seem so bad, watching him on tape.”

“That’s because you’re not as, ah, Christian as they are.”

“Probably not,” Jesse said. “What’s your source?”

“Jersey state cop,” Healy said. “Named Morrissey. Want to talk with him?”

“Maybe,” Jesse said. “She have children?”

“No.”

“Is Longley her maiden name or married name?”

“Married.”

“What was her maiden name?” Jesse said.

“Young, and I think you’re supposed to call it her birth name.”

“Sure,” Jesse said. “Her ex-husband disown her, too?”

“Yep.”

“Everybody — father, mother, brothers, ex-husband.”

“Sinful is sinful,” Healy said.

“I wonder if one of them killed him for embodying the Antichrist, and her for carrying his baby.”

“And they shot them instead of stoning them to death?” Healy said.

“Just a thought,” Jesse said.

“It’s not a bad one,” Healy said. “Except according to Morrissey they all had alibis for the time she died.”

“So does everyone else,” Jesse said.

“Ex-wives?” Healy said.

“Yep. And the researcher and the manager and the lawyer.”

“How about his bodyguard?” Healy said.