High Profile

55

Rosa Sanchez stood in front of the big window wall and looked at the view. Suit sat in a green-and-gold brocade chair with his notebook, and Jesse sat at one end of a big green leather couch with Lorrie at the other. She was wearing a short summer dress, white with big red flowers on it, and when she crossed her legs she showed a lot of thigh.

Good thigh.

“Your maiden name was Lorrie Pilarcik,” Jesse said.

“How did you know that?” Lorrie said.

“Advanced investigative techniques,” Jesse said. “And you married Walton Weeks on August twenty-sixth, 1990. In Baltimore.”

Lorrie nodded. Her eyes were open very wide, her lips slightly parted and glossy. She touched her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.

“At the Harbor Court Hotel,” Jesse said.

Lorrie nodded again.

“Yes,” she said. “It was quite lovely.”

Jesse smiled at her and nodded back.

“I’ll bet it was,” Jesse said. “Was it your first marriage?”

Lorrie blinked, her mouth still slightly open, the tip of her tongue moving back and forth on her lower lip.

“I beg your pardon?” Lorrie said.

“Was it your first marriage?” Jesse said.

Again silence and the nervous movement of her tongue. Jesse waited. Detective Sanchez continued to gaze out at the river view. Suit was quietly writing in his notebook.

“Second,” Lorrie said.

“How long before?”

“Before?”

“How long before you married Walton Weeks did you divorce your first husband?”

“Oh God, I don’t remember, a long time.”

“You were granted a divorce,” Jesse said, “in Las Vegas on August fifteenth, 1990, after six weeks of residency.”

“Why are you doing this?” Lorrie said. “Why are you asking me these things and trying to trick me?”

“Trying to give you a chance to be honest,” Jesse said. “What was your first husband’s name?”

Lorrie stood suddenly and stood in front of Jesse with her hands on her hips and leaned slightly toward him.

“Conrad Lutz,” she said. “Okay? Is that what you want to hear? I was married to Conrad Lutz.”

Rosa Sanchez turned from the view and folded her arms and looked at Lorrie. Suit continued to make notes.

“Which is how you met Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.

“So?”

“Tell me about that?” Jesse said.

“There’s nothing to tell. Conrad and I were at the end of our relationship, and Walton and I were just beginning.”

“Did they overlap?”

“It happens,” Lorrie said.

“How did Conrad feel about it.”

Lorrie said, “He knew we were done.”

“So it wasn’t Weeks that broke up the marriage?”

“No.”

“What did?”

“Why do you care?” Lorrie said.

Jesse smiled.

“Advanced investigative technique,” he said. “Just covering all the bases.”

Lorrie nodded.

“So what broke up your first marriage?” Jesse said.

“Boredom, I suppose... and...” Lorrie stopped.

“And?”

“Well, I don’t know how to say it without sounding terrible.”

“We won’t judge you,” Jesse said.

“I... I don’t come from circumstances as elegant as you might think,” Lorrie said. “When I was a young woman, it was exciting to marry a policeman.”

“At any age,” Jesse said.

Across the room, Rosa Sanchez smiled.

“But then he went to work for Walton,” Lorrie said. “And I started to move in a different world. And meet different people. And... it wasn’t so exciting anymore to be married to a policeman.”

“Or a bodyguard.”

“Or a bodyguard,” Lorrie said.

“And Lutz didn’t mind?” Jesse said.

“Well, I suppose, of course, he must have minded,” Lorrie said.

“And do you think he minded when you married Weeks?”

“Well, I guess,” Lorrie said. “I suppose so.”

“But he stayed on as Weeks’s bodyguard.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It was a good job,” Lorrie said.

Jesse nodded.

“Do you think he might have minded enough to kill Weeks and hang him in a public park?” he said.

“Oh my God,” Lorrie said.

Jesse waited. Lorrie’s tongue flicked her lower lip.

“Oh my God,” Lorrie said again.

“Whaddya think?” Jesse said.

“Well, I, my God... of course Conrad had some violence in him. A policeman. A bodyguard. He carried a gun...”

“Maybe?” Jesse said.

“There was a lot of force in Conrad,” Lorrie said. “A lot of passion.”

“So you’re saying he might have done it?”

“I suppose.”

They were quiet.

After a moment Lorrie said, “It could have been Conrad.”

“Any idea why he waited so long?” Jesse said.

Lorrie looked faintly startled.

“So long?” she said.

“You married Weeks in 1990,” Jesse said.

“Conrad could be like that, very patient, very calculating, very cold.”

“But forceful and passionate,” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

“And having been patient and calculating all this time,” Jesse said, “have you any thought as to what might have caused him to act now?”

“I... maybe it was because Walton was going to fire him.”

“You know that?”

“Walton mentioned to me that he was considering it.”

“He say why?” Jesse asked.

“No. Just that he was thinking about it.”

“Once he didn’t have the good job,” Jesse said, “there would be no reason not to kill Weeks.”

“You know,” Lorrie said. “That sort of makes sense.”

“And the girl?”

“Maybe he had to because she saw him do it,” Lorrie said.

“Good thought,” Jesse said. “Have you seen much of him lately?”

“Not really, not since Walton died,” Lorrie said.

Jesse nodded.

“Is there anything else you could tell us about all this?”

“It’s just that I never thought of Conrad,” she said.

“But now that you have?” Jesse said.

“I hate to even think it, but it makes a kind of sense.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “It does.”