High Profile

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.”

H I G H P R O F I L E

“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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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“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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H I G H P R O F I L E

“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.”

“He liked young women,” Ellen said.

“How young did he like them?” Jesse said.

“Sometimes maybe too young,” Ellen said. “I don’t know. If that’s the only time he was caught, he’s very lucky.”

“Girl was Bonnie Faison, she was nineteen,” Jesse said.

“Mean anything to you?”

“No. But I wasn’t with him by then. He was Stephanie’s problem in 1987.”

“Did he fool around when he was with you.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Jesse,” she said. “He could no more not fool around than he could not breathe. I don’t think it was really a choice for him.”

“So you assume he fooled around when he was with Stephanie?”

“Of course.”

“And Lorrie?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know Carey Longley?” Jesse said.

“The woman who died with him?”

“Yes.”

“No, but I can describe her. Quite young. Quite pretty. Quite amazed to be with a man like Walton.”

“She was young and pretty,” Jesse said.

“I’ve known a hundred of her,” Ellen said.

“She was also ten weeks pregnant,” Jesse said.

Ellen sat silently for a moment.

“With Walton’s child?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Ellen said, “my God.”

Jesse waited. As he watched, Ellen Migliore teared up.

“How awful,” she said. “To come so close, to finally come so close . . .”

“He wanted children?”

“Terribly,” she said. “At least during our time.”

“And you never had any.”

“No,” she said.

“Do you know why?”

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H I G H P R O F I L E

“No,” she said. “We never sought medical advice. I guess we were each more comfortable assuming the other one was at fault.”

“Have you had any since?”

“Three,” she said.