High Profile

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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.