“So are you?” Michelle asked.
She was still looking at the ground, and as she talked she pointed her toes in and then back out.
“None of your business,” Jesse said.
“Embarrassed to say?”
“No,” Jesse said. “But you don’t go out with someone and then tell everybody what you did.”
“I’ll bet you talk about it with the other cops.”
“No,” Jesse said.
“That’s weird. You ever been married?”
“Yes.”
“You divorced now?”
“Yes.”
“Is it because you didn’t love each other?”
“No. I think we love each other.”
“So what is it?”
“None of your business,” Jesse said.
“Jeez, another thing you won’t talk about.”
“I don’t talk about you and me, either,” Jesse said.
Michelle was startled.
“We’re not doing nothing,” she said.
Jesse grinned at her.
“That makes it easier,” he said.
Michelle tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. She giggled.
“Jesse, you are really crazy,” she said. “You are really fucking-A crazy.”
“Thank you for noticing,” Jesse said.
And Michelle giggled some more and looked at the harlequin leaf bed beneath her dangling feet.
Chapter 53
Madeline St. Claire, M.D., had her office in a building on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills a block north of Wilshire, on the corner of Brighton Way. Jenn liked the location. It made her feel important to go there twice a week. Jenn loved Dr. St. Claire and hated her. She was so implacable.
“What we are after in here,” Dr. St. Claire had said to her in one of her early visits, “is the truth.”
“So how come you are an authority on truth? Maybe your truth isn’t my truth.”
“We want your truth,” Dr. St. Claire said. “We want you to know why you do what you do.”
“Who’s to decide my truth?”
“You will.”
“So why do I need you?”
“Why do you?” Dr. St. Claire had said and Jenn had felt the stab of panic that she often felt when she realized that something was up to her.
She had gotten past that and now she understood why she needed help with the truth. But the rebellious child angry at the stern teacher never entirely disappeared, and many of the therapy sessions were combative. Sometimes Jenn cried. Dr. St. Claire remained unmoved. She was kind, but she was firm, and nothing Jenn did, no trick from Jenn’s considerable repertoire, could divert her. Under Dr. St. Claire’s steady gaze the strictures of pretense with which Jenn had defended herself for so long began to loosen.
They were talking about Jesse.
“The thing is,” Jenn said, “that I feel so much more than I used to feel when I talk to him. I feel stronger. It’s like, sometimes I imagine the skin of a valley girl lying shriveled on the floor, and a kind of new pink me standing up, a little damp, kind of scared, but genuine. Is that too fanciful?”
Dr. St. Claire made one of her little head movements which managed to encourage Jenn while remaining noncommittal.
“I know I haven’t been here long enough to be what I’m going to be. But when I talk to Jesse I know he’s in trouble, and I know he’s a little scared. Jesse is never scared.”
“Or never shows it,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“He’s really very brave,” Jenn said.
Dr. St. Claire nodded.
“And the funny thing is, when he sounds a little scared, I feel a lot braver. You know. I feel like I could help him.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m glad he’s not so damned perfect, you know? That he can be scared?”
“Perhaps you don’t need to be quite so much less than he,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“What do you mean?”
“You have learned to get what you want by submitting to men. They had power. You, as I believe you said once, knew how to ‘bat your eyes’ when you needed something.”
“And now I don’t?”
“Now you may need to less,” Dr. St. Claire said. “I don’t think you are all the way yet.”
The room was very plain. The walls were beige. The rug was gray with a pink undertone. The only thing to look at other than Dr. St. Claire was her framed diplomas. Her medical degree was from UCLA. There was some kind of psychoanalytic certificate too, and other things behind her that Jenn had never turned around to look at.
“But I am taking care of myself.”
“Yes,” Dr. St. Claire said.
“You mean more than earning my own money.”
“Yes.”
“You mean this too, don’t you.”
“Yes.”
“So I’m starting to take better care of myself, and that means I can take better care of Jesse.”
“Or whoever,” Dr. St. Claire said.
Jenn sat back a little in her chair and thought about that.
“Often,” Dr. St. Claire said, “circumstances of heightened intensity can accelerate things.”
“Like rising to the occasion,” Jenn said.
“Yes,” Dr. St. Claire said. “Very much like that.”
Chapter 54
After work on a Tuesday evening, Jesse bought a large sandwich with everything on it at a shop called the Italian Submarine near the town wharf, and brought it home for supper. He would have two drinks. One before the sandwich and one with it. He was on his first drink when Abby called him.
“I’m ready to forgive you,” Abby said.
“That’s good.”
“I wish you trusted me, but you don’t. Maybe you can’t. But I find that I’m missing you and decided that not seeing you was punishing me as much as you and so I want to see you.”
“Okay.”
“Control yourself,” Abby said. “I hate it when you get giddy with excitement.”
“You want to go with me to the Halloween dance at the Yacht Club?” Jesse said.
“Well, yes,” Abby said. “I mean I want to go with you, but I wish it didn’t have to be to the Yacht Club dance.”
“Sort of part of my job,” Jesse said.
“I know. Chief of police and all that,” Abby said. “Actually I guess I’m supposed to go too, being town counsel.”
“Want to come here first for a drink?” Jesse said.
“Yes. What time?”
“Say seven, we don’t want to get to the ball too early.”
“I guess,” Abby said.
They were quiet for a moment. Jesse sipped his drink. He suspected that Abby was sipping hers.
“How have you been?” Abby said.
“Good.”
“Any progress on who killed that young woman?”
“Some,” Jesse said. “I know who did it, but I need evidence.”
“You know who did it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well who . . . I guess you can’t say, can you? Have you heard from your ex lately?”
“Yeah.”
“She hasn’t let you go, has she,” Abby said.
“I hear from Jenn pretty regularly.”
“Have you let her go, Jesse?”
“No, I don’t suppose I have, altogether.”
“So where does that leave me?”
“Where you’ve always been, Ab. You’re a really wonderful woman. But I am not really finished with my first marriage yet.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t put all your eggs in this basket, Ab.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry it’s that way,” Jesse said.
“Hell,” Abby said, “let’s play it as it lays. The worst we can do is have a hell of a good time for a while.”
“I don’t know how it will turn out, Ab.”
“Me either, but let’s start with the Halloween dance, and a drink beforehand.”
“And maybe we won’t have to stay long,” Jesse said.
“And have the rest of the night to kill,” Abby said.
“We’ll think of something,” Jesse said.
“I already have,” Abby said.
Chapter 55
The morning of the Halloween dance Jesse got a Federal Express envelope from Charlie Buck in the Campbell County, Wyoming, Sheriff’s Department. Inside was a letter and a list of names.
“We have a cooperative witness in custody,” Buck wrote, “who says that Tom Carson was killed by a man sent by a militia group back east. Since Carson was from Massachusetts, we got a list of everybody who flew from Boston to Denver a week on either side of the crime. See if you recognize any names. The witness may be selling us a plea. Or the killer may have flown from New York, or drove out in a 1958 Rambler. But it makes sense to start with Boston–Denver.”