Jesse sat, as he had before, looking through the picture window

at the ocean. The snow continued softly, blurring the view.

Lincoln laughed.

“I feel like I ought to apologize,” he said. “If it had been my

gun, it would have made things so much easier for you.”

Jesse smiled.

“Think how I feel,” Jesse said.

Brianna came back with Jesse’s coffee in a stainless steel mug.

She put a doily down on the end table near him and set the coffee cup on it.

“Thank you.”

She smiled at him warmly. He smiled back.

“You have respect for your tools,” Jesse said. “The gun was

clean.”

“Any tool works best if it’s well

maintained.”

Jesse glanced around the living room.

“This is a great room,” he said.

“Yes,” Brianna said. “We love

it.”

Jesse stood and walked to the window.

“On a cop’s salary,” Jesse said,

“I’ll never get a view like

this.”

Both Tony and Brianna smiled modestly.

“We were lucky, I guess,” Brianna said.

“And Tony is

brilliant.”

“I can see that,” Jesse said.

He turned slowly, looking around the room.

“How big is this place?” he said.

“We have the whole top floor,” Lincoln said.

Brianna smiled.

“Would you like a tour?” she said.

“I sure would,” Jesse said.

“Come on then,” she said.

Tony went with them as she took Jesse through the den with its huge electronic entertainment center, into the luminous kitchen, through the formal dining room, past three large baths, and into the vast bedroom with its canopy bed and another entertainment center. The bed was covered with a thick white silk comforter.

“The workbench,” Tony said, nodding at the bed.

“Wow,” Jesse said. “You must not

have any kids or dogs living

here.”

“Brianna and I decided against children,”

Tony said. “We met in

our late thirties, by which time our lives were simply too full for children.”

Jesse nodded, looking at the big room, taking it in.

“Any family at all?” Jesse said absently.

“No,” Tony said. “We are all the

family each other

has.”

Jesse nodded, obviously dazzled by their wealth and taste, as they walked back to the living room. He sat and picked up his coffee and sipped it.

“Where’d you two meet?” he said,

making

conversation.

“He picked me up in a bar,” Brianna said.

“In Cleveland of all

places.”

“It was an upscale bar,” Tony said with a smile.

“I’ll bet it was,” Jesse said.

“Are you both from

Cleveland?”

“I am,” Brianna said. “Shaker

Heights. Tony was doing his

residency at Case Western.”

“What did you do?” Jesse said.

“I was a lawyer.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Fifteen years. I don’t think

we’ve ever had an

argument.”

“That’s great,” Jesse said.

“Do you have any leads in this serial thing, other than the fact

that the victims were shot with a twenty-two?” Tony said.

“Nothing much,” Jesse said.

He made a rueful little smile.

“That’s why I was pinning my hopes on you,” he

said.

They all laughed.

“Oh well,” Brianna said.

They laughed again.

“Would you like more coffee?” Tony said.

“No, I really should be going,” Jesse said.

“If it had been us,” Tony said,

“why on earth would we want to

do such a thing?”

“Everybody needs a hobby,” Jesse said.

They laughed.

“Seriously though,” Tony said.

“Why would we do something like

that?”

“Both of you?” Jesse said.

Tony shrugged and nodded.

“A shared sickness, I’d guess,”

Jesse said.

Tony laughed.

“At least we’d be sharing,” he

said.

53

“They were flirting with

me,” Jesse

said.

Dix sat silently back in his chair, one foot on the edge of a desk drawer, resting his chin on his steepled hands. His fingernails gleamed quietly. He always looks like he’s just

scrubbed for surgery, Jesse thought.

“Especially the husband,” Jesse said.

“Tell me about the flirting,” Dix said.

“He kept coming back to the killings. I was trying, sort of

indirectly, to learn a little about them. Whenever I’d ask a question, you know, like, where’d you two meet?

he’d steer us back

to the killings.”

Dix nodded.

“And you’re convinced it’s

them,” Dix said.

“I’ve been a cop nearly all my adult life,” Jesse said. “It’s

them.”

“We often know things,” Dix said.

“Before we can demonstrate

them.”

“I need to demonstrate it,” Jesse said.

Dix smiled.

“Ain’t that a bitch,” he said.

“How come,” Jesse said, “that

sometimes you talk like one of the

guys on the corner, and sometimes you sound like Sigmund Freud?”

“Depends what I’m talking

about,” Dix said.

“Talk about the Lincolns,” Jesse said.

Dix nodded without saying anything, as if to confirm that he’d

expected Jesse to ask. He took in a lot of air and let it out slowly.

“One of the reasons that psychiatry

doesn’t have a better

reputation is that it is asked to do too many things it doesn’t do

well,” he said.

“Like explaining people you’ve never met?”

“Like that,” Dix said. “Or

predicting what they’re going to

do.”

“Not good at that either?”

Dix smiled.

“No worse than anyone else,” he said.

“Well, tell me what you can,” Jesse said.

“I won’t hold you to

it.”

Dix leaned back in his chair.

“Well,” he said. “People do not

repetitively and freely do

things that they don’t like to do.”

“Why would they like this?”

“We may never know. They may not know.”

“Speculate,” Jesse said.

“Well, certainly it could give one a feeling of power, and the

more one did it, and the more one got away with it, the more power one would feel.”

“Hell,” Jesse said. “I know it

doesn’t prove they were powerful.

But he was a doctor, and a successful inventor. She was a lawyer.

They appear rich.”

“Power is in the perception,” Dix said.

“You’re saying maybe they didn’t

feel powerful.”

“Maybe not,” Dix said. “Or maybe

they didn’t have a shared

power.”

“His power, her power, not their power?”

Dix shrugged.

“Or,” he said, “perhaps it is a

bonding ritual.”

“Explain,” Jesse said.

“They’re a couple, and this makes their coupleness

special.”

“The family that kills together, stays together?”

“They have a shared secret. They have a shared specialness.

Ordinary couples are leading ordinary lives: food shopping, changing diapers, having sex maybe once or twice a month, because they’re supposed to. These people have found a thing to share that

no one else has.”

“Serial killing?”

“Each has the other’s guilty

secret,” Dix said. “It binds them

together.”

“For crissake, they do this for love?”

“They do this for emotional reasons,” Dix said.

“And love is an emotion.”

“Love, or what they may think is love,”

Dix said.

“What might they think is love?”

“Mutual need, mutual mistrust, that needs to be overcome by

mutual participation in something that ties them together.”

Jesse thought about this. Dix waited.

“Will they keep doing this?” Jesse said.

“No reason for them to stop.”

“Why was he flirting with me about this?”

Jesse

said.

“Maybe the same reason people like to have sex in nearly public