High Profile

It was a one-story stone house with a cedar-shingled roof. The living room occupied the entire front, all glass facing the ocean. There was a big fireplace on the right-hand end wall with a raised hearth. The kitchen was green granite and stainless steel. There were two bedrooms, each with a full bath, and a room with a smaller fireplace, which was probably going to be a den. The house was empty. The flagstone floors gleamed with a new finish. The walls were newly painted. There was no furniture, no rugs, no drapes, no china, no crystal, no toothpaste, no towels, nothing to suggest human life. Like seeing a person naked, Jesse thought.

H I G H P R O F I L E

He stood in the silent living room and stared out past the patio, and across the small silver beach, at the gray Atlantic Ocean. Here along the North Shore, the ocean was cold, Jesse knew, even in the summer. It took fortitude to swim in it. Jesse walked the length of the room. There was no place in the room where you couldn’t see the ocean.

They would have put the dining area here, Jesse thought. Near the kitchen. And in the winter, they would have had a big fire in the fireplace and had drinks from the built-in wet bar, and watched the spray splatter against the thermopane during a storm. This would have been Walton’s office. With the nice bay window looking at the ocean. This would have been the master bedroom, nice skylight. This one would have been the kid’s room. Jesse stood in the room feeling, suddenly, the thwarted reality of the tenweek fetus. He walked into the kitchen. A big range hood over a built-in barbecue. A pantry off the rear wall, with a walk-in re- frigerator. The dream house. Every convenience. The dream must have seemed so close. Reach out and take hold of it. All of it. Wife and child. At long last, love. A walk-in refrigerator!

Jesse went in. The room was maybe eight by eight, with shelves along the three walls. There was nothing stored there. The shelves were empty. The compressor was shut off. The windowless room was warm. There was a thermostat on the wall. It was set to thirty-five. Jesse turned the switch on. Somewhere he could hear the compressor begin to run quietly. Soon he began to feel cold air. He walked around the empty space and saw nothing. He went back to the thermostat and shut it off and left the refrigeration room. 1 6 1

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

He stood for a time in the living room, listening to nothing, feeling the emptiness. Then he went outside and walked down to the beach and looked at the water. It was restless and active on the outer side of the island. There were whitecaps. The tide was high and there wasn’t much beach above the reach of the waves. The way the coastline curved, there were no other houses in sight, and he couldn’t see the road from where he stood.

He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed.

“Molly,” he said. “I’m at Five Stiles Island Road. Send Peter Perkins out here with all his stuff. Tell him he’s going to be looking for blood.”

“Whose blood?” Molly said.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Has it to do with Walton Weeks?” Molly said.

“I don’t know yet.”

“But it might?” Molly said.

“Or it might not,” Jesse send. “Could you see if you can find Peter Perkins.”

“Yessir,” Molly said.

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36

Sunny had supper with Jenn at the Union Street Bar and Grill, in the South End, across from the cathedral. Several people recognized Jenn and pointed her out to companions. When they came out, Sunny saw the stalker lingering across the street, near the sheltered bus stop. Sunny paid him no attention. She patted her left thigh as if in time to music, and gave the valet her ticket. As she got into the car she glanced in her side-view mirror and saw Spike get out of his car, two blocks back on Washington Street. She smiled and when the valet closed the door for Jenn, she put the car in gear and drove away without looking back.

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

“I need to swing by my place,” Sunny said, “before I drop you off.”

Jenn nodded. She sat with her head back against the car seat and her eyes closed.

“What’s your ex-husband like?” Jenn said.

Sunny thought about it.

“Richie’s father and uncle run a mob,” she said.

“They’re gangsters?”

“Yes.”

“How about him?”

“I’m not sure.”