High Profile

She’s not that different. Looks good. Wants to look better. Nothingremarkable, except she’s a liar.

Sunny stood for a few moments in the silent living room and looked around. The apartment was new and stylish, and clean and careless and ordinary and still. Sunny spoke aloud, her voice much too real in the empty space.

“God, I’m glad I have Rosie,” her voice said.

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44

Walton Weeks Enterprises had offices in a building near Penn Station. There were several secretaries in a big front space, Walton’s imposing office, now bearing silent witness in the corner, and a somewhat smaller but still substantial office beside it where Jesse sat with Alan Hendricks.

“You nervous?” Jesse said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re about to become Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.

“Does that make you nervous.”

“Well,” Hendricks said. “They are certainly big shoes to fill.”

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

“Of course, you’ve walked some distance in them already,”

Jesse said.

Hendricks’s face looked stiff to Jesse.

“Meaning?” Hendricks said.

“Well, you have done a lot of Walton’s research and writing,” Jesse said. “Have you not?”

“Well, of course, I’ve been with him for some years.”

“And you’re prepared to proceed, alone,” Jesse said.

“If Mrs. Weeks wants me to.”

“Does she?”

“She has suggested as much,” Hendricks said.

He looked humble.

“And you get along,” Jesse said.

“She’s a very fine woman,” Alan said. “I hope I don’t disappoint her.”

“Have you ever?”

“I don’t think so.”

Jesse smiled and didn’t say anything.

“What are you implying,” Hendricks said.

Jesse shrugged.

“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?”

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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.”

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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.