“It doesn’t matter,” Ellen Migliore said. “I haven’t left Italy in five years.”

“And you can prove it,” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

“That should cover you,” Jesse said. “Do you have time to give us a statement today?”

“Of course,” she said. “Will there be any kind of memorial service for Walton?”

“Not that I know of,” Jesse said.

“How sad. Shuffled off the stage so quickly, and with so few trumpets.”

“He may not care,” Jesse said.

Ellen nodded.

“I’ll ask Molly Crane to take your statement,” Jesse said.

“Police chiefs don’t take statements?” she said.

“Police chiefs tend to screw up the tape recorder,” Jesse said.

“I’m not so sure,” Ellen said, “that I believe you’ve ever screwed up anything.”

“Maybe a few relationships,” Jesse said.

28

Some people,” Dix said, “find that they are infertile and are saddened but say, in effect, ‘We still have each other,’ and get on with their lives. Some adopt. Some fear infertility as a personal failure and refuse to be tested, or even admit to it. These people usually blame their partner.”

The office walls were bare white. There was a green couch against one wall. Jesse had never been on it. Through the window Jesse could see the treetops tossing a bit in the wind, and the gray clouds being pushed aside by the same wind. There was some blue sky showing.

Dix smiled briefly.

“It is these people,” he said, “whom we see most often.”

“And their partners,” Jesse said.

“Often,” Dix said. “I am not enthusiastic about couples counseling. But in some cases it seems effective. If more intensive therapy seems indicated, I refer one of them.”

“Is there anyone in Boston,” Jesse said, “especially famous for dealing with such issues?”

“Jonah Levy,” Dix said. “He’s a psychiatrist, in practice with a gynecologist named Frances Malloy, who probably knows more about the biology of infertility than anyone in the world, and a urologist named Edward Margolis, who would know more about infertility than anyone in the world if it weren’t for Frances.”

“They’d be widely known?”

“Very.”

“Nationally?”

“Worldwide,” Dix said.

“So it’s plausible that Walton Weeks might come up here to seek his help.”

“It is quite plausible,” Dix said. “Any fertility specialist in the world might well refer a difficult fertility case to Jonah. Particularly a high-profile one.”

“Because?”

“High-profile?”

“Yes.”

“Because Jonah is both very expensive and very discreet. One assumes Walton Weeks could afford him and would want discretion.”

“Do you know them?” Jesse said.

“I know Jonah.”

“If he was treating Weeks, and maybe Carey Longley, would he talk about it? Privileged communication and all?”

“Most doctors are guided by their patients’ best interests,” Dix said. “It would seem that Weeks’s best interest, and Longley’s, if she was a patient as well, would be served by talking about it.”

“Inasmuch as it might help solve their murder,” Jesse said.

“Inasmuch,” Dix said.

“That sounds pretty sensible,” Jesse said.

“Don’t believe that all-shrinks-are-crazy myth,” Dix said.

“Would a man who had unresolved emotional issues about fertility be likely to be a womanizer?” Jesse said.

“Such a man might keep looking for the woman who could conceive for him,” Dix said. “Or he might avoid women because he didn’t want to once again face his own failure.”

“Weeks was a womanizer.”

“Or he enjoyed sex,” Dix said. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

“If his first wife is correct, it was obsessive.”

“If so, maybe it was the fertility issue. Maybe he hated women. Maybe he loved them. Maybe he was trying to recreate the relationship with his mother. Maybe he was asserting his manhood for reasons unrelated to fertility. Maybe he was avenging himself on a wife. Maybe it was an interactive cluster of those things, or things we don’t even imagine.”

“Do I hear you saying we don’t know why Weeks was a womanizer?” Jesse said.

“You do,” Dix said. “Like many shrinks, I do better with one patient at a time with whom I have regularly spent time.”

“How disappointing,” Jesse said.

“Think how I feel,” Dix said.

29

You’re back,” Jesse said when Suitcase Simpson came into his office.

“Been eating a lot of crab cakes,” Suit said.

“They do that in Baltimore. Drink a little National Bo with the crab cakes?”

“Only while off duty,” Suit said.

He saluted with three fingers, like a Boy Scout. Jesse thought Suit seemed very pleased with himself.

“Do anything else?” Jesse said.

“I found Bonnie Faison,” Suit said.

“Really?” Jesse said.

“Yep. Wasn’t easy. But for a man with my crime detection instincts…”

“Was she still at the last address they had for her?” Jesse said.

“Yep. That Baltimore County cop went over with me.”

“Sergeant Franks,” Jesse said.

“Yeah, him,” Suit said. “She’s at the same place. She’s almost forty, got two kids and no husband, lives with her mother.”

“Sounds great,” Jesse said.

“Yeah. I don’t think anyone’s happy about it,” Suit said. “But there they are. Three-bedroom ranch, yard about the size of a pool table. Some sort of inbred dog looks like a hyena.”

“She remember the incident?”

“After a while,” Suit said. “She didn’t want to talk about it, but Franks sort of convinced her she had to or else.”

Jesse nodded.

“Tell you one thing,” Suit said. “I hope she looked better when Weeks was poking her.”

Jesse nodded again.

“Man, she’s so fat, I don’t think you’d know if you were in,” Suit said.

“Maybe she was better at nineteen,” Jesse said.

“I hope so.”

“How’d she meet Weeks?” Jesse said.

“She was hanging out at the mall, and picked him up after a book signing.”

“She the aggressor?” Jesse said.

“Sounds that way. Her mother said she just wanted to fuck a celebrity.”

“Maternal pride,” Jesse said.

“Her mother says she woulda fucked anybody she saw on television, before she got too fat.”

“You’re quoting,” Jesse said.

“Uh-huh,” Suit said. “Mother’s skinny as a lizard. Smoked about two packs of cigarettes while we were there.”

“Bonnie ever see Weeks again?”

“No. He gave her his phone number, but when she called it she found out it was some restaurant in Baltimore.”

“So she never saw him again.”

“Nope,” Suit said, “but they’ll always have the White Marsh Mall.”

He went to the coffeemaker on top of Jesse’s file cabinet and poured some coffee, added sugar and nondairy creamer, and took a sip.

“How old were the kids,” Jesse said.

“Little kids, you know, eight, ten years old, maybe. I don’t know much about kids.”

Suit drank some coffee.

“Anything else?” Jesse said.

“Well, yeah, a little something,” Suit said.

Jesse waited. Suit drank another swallow of coffee.

“On the ride back to the station,” Suit said, “Franks and I were, you know, talking, and I asked him what happened to the arresting officer, you know, the guy busted Weeks. And Franks says he was around for a while, made detective, and then quit. Went into private security. So I say, for nothing, what was his name?”

“Lutz,” Jesse said.

“You knew?”

Jesse smiled.

“No,” Jesse said, “but the way you were ready to wet yourself telling me, who else was it going to be? Rumpelstiltskin?”

“Man, you know how to ruin stuff,” Suit said.

“So you followed up,” Jesse said. “And it’s our Lutz.”

“Yes. Conrad Lutz,” Suit said. “Be some kind of coincidence if it was a different Conrad Lutz.”

“If it came to that, we could fingerprint him,” Jesse said. “He’d be on file.”

“So whaddya make of that, Jesse?”