Sea Change

“Glad to know it’s little,” Jesse said.

“Perky, too,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Even better,” Jesse said. “What do you know.”

“I talked to the vic’s parents,” Kelly Cruz said. “The old man is off in happy land someplace. Booze, denial, Alzheimer’s, I don’t know. But as far as he knows, everything is dandy and let’s have a cocktail.”

“How about the mother?”

“She knows. And she doesn’t know what to do with it, and so she pretends she doesn’t know, and let’s have a cocktail.”

S E A C H A N G E

“She know the twins aren’t in school?”

“Yes,” Kelly Cruz said. “I feel kind of bad for her.”

“She know anything else?”

“She knows that Florence was pals with Thomas Ralston.”

“Son of a gun!” Jesse said.

“And the twins,” Kelly Cruz said, “Corliss and Claudia, were also pals with Thomas Ralston.”

“You got that from the mother too?”

“No. I did some follow-up,” Kelly Cruz said. “I’m trying to make sergeant.”

“Follow-up and a perky little butt,” Jesse said. “You’re a lock.”

“Yeah. Ralston led a pretty lively sex life. You want to hear?”

“I do,” Jesse said.

Kelly Cruz told him everything she’d learned. Jesse listened silently. When she was through he told her what he knew about Harrison Darnell.

“And Darnell’s parked right beside Ralston?” Kelly Cruz said.

“In the same harbor,” Jesse said. “And, I don’t think they call it parked. I think it’s anchored, or moored, maybe.”

“I’ll make a note,” Kelly Cruz said. “So they both knew Florence Horvath. They both have the same, ah, atypical sexual interests. And they were both . . . anchored . . . in Paradise Harbor when Florence washed ashore.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “Does that seem significant to you?”

“I might check it out, I was you,” Kelly Cruz said.

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Thanks,” Jesse said.

“You’re welcome, but there’s one other thing, maybe,”

Kelly Cruz said. “One of the people I talked with down here, a girl, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, mentioned that Florence Horvath seemed a little old for Thomas Ralston.”

“She was thirty-four,” Jesse said.

“No accounting for taste,” Kelly Cruz said. “Maybe he passed her on to Darnell.”

“Darnell seems somewhat able to tolerate age diversity,”

Jesse said.

“I’ll keep snooping around when I’m not busy with my real job,” Kelly Cruz said.

When she hung up Jesse sat silently, looking at nothing.

The scientists had established that all the tapes were recent.

He wondered who the redhead was. He hadn’t seen her on Darnell’s yacht. There were several he hadn’t seen. He had to talk with Katie DeWolfe. And her mother. He couldn’t let it slide. She was fifteen. Her mother had to know, too. Molly hadn’t mentioned a father. Sometimes he thought the fathers were harder. Maybe just because I’m male. He’d have Molly sit in. She knew the mother. When he sat at his desk, Jesse was more comfortable when he took the gun off his hip and laid it on the desktop. He looked at it now, lying there. Be simpler if they would let him just shoot people who deserved it. Who would decide? I would. What if you’re wrong? Ah, there’s the rub.

He stood and went out to the desk.

“Can you arrange for Katie DeWolfe and her parents to come see me?” he said.

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S E A C H A N G E

“Father’s not around,” Molly said. “They’re divorced.”

Jesse nodded.

“I should be the one,” Molly said. “I know Katie, and I know her mother.”

Jesse nodded again.

“You’re going to ask me to sit in, too,” Molly said.

“Aren’t you.”

Jesse continued to nod. Molly stared past him for a moment. Then she breathed in audibly.

“Any special time?” she said.

“Soon as they can,” Jesse said. “But, you know, try to ac-commodate to them. I’ll be available.”

Molly continued to stare at nothing. Jesse could hear her breathing.

“I wish you could do it,” Molly said.

“I can. But I thought it might be more comfortable for them if you did.”

“It will be,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded.

“This is not going to be fun,” Molly said.

“I never promised you fun.”

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34

K atie DeWolfe was scared. Her small face was pinched with it. She walked stiffly and swallowed frequently. Her mother had the

same look. They looked alike. They were both slender, and blond, and had about them a look of furtive sexuality. Jesse could never quite pin down what the look was. But he always knew it when he saw it, and in those instances when he’d had occasion to test it, he had always been right.

Molly brought them both in, introduced everyone, got the DeWolfes seated, facing the desk, and sat herself in a straight chair crowded in to Jesse’s left.

“Do you know what this is about, Katie?” Jesse said.

S E A C H A N G E

Katie shook her head.

“You’re sure?” Jesse said.

“I got no idea,” Katie said.

Jesse nodded and took a breath.

“Okay,” he said. “There’s no easy way to say it. I have a videotape of you having sex with a man named Harrison Darnell.”

“You’re lying,” Katie said. “It’s not me.”

“No, honey,” Jesse said. “It’s you.”

Mrs. DeWolfe said in a strangled voice, “Katie?”

“No way,” Katie said.

“I can play the tape,” Jesse said.

“It’s not me.”

Jesse nodded. He picked up the remote from his desk and aimed it and clicked and the tape began to roll with a closeup of Katie’s face, looking straight up at the camera over a man’s shoulder. Katie dropped her head and closed her eyes. Her mother stared at the tape. The camera pulled back to show the two of them naked and copulating.

“Stop it,” Mrs. DeWolfe said. “For Christ’s sake, stop it.”

Jesse clicked the tape off.

“She’s fifteen,” Mrs. DeWolfe said.

“I know,” Jesse said.

Mrs. DeWolfe looked at Molly.

“Molly, for crissake,” she said, “what am I supposed to do?”

“If Katie cooperates,” Molly said, “we can probably work something out?”

“Cooperates?” Katie said. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“No,” Jesse said. “But he did.”

“I’m not ratting Harrison out,” she said. “No way. No way.”

Mrs. DeWolfe said, “Katie, my God.”

“Oh, like you’re so lily pure. You been oinkin’ a different guy every week since Daddy left.”

“Katie, that’s not true. And if it were, it doesn’t mean you should. I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake.”

“So am I,” Katie said.

She stuck her chest out, so that her small breasts pushed against her cotton tank top.

“You seen the movies.”

Her mother slapped her across the face. Katie slapped back at her and her mother gripped her wrists and they grap-pled there, still seated. Jesse put his head back against the back of his swivel chair and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Molly,” he said.

But Molly was already up and separating the two women.

Jesse opened his eyes.

“Who’s on the desk?” he said.

“Arthur,” Molly said.

Jesse picked up the phone and called the desk.

“Arthur,” he said. “Step into my office for a moment.”

He hung up and the door opened and Arthur Angstrom stood there.

“Take Mrs. DeWolfe out to the front,” Jesse said. “Get her seated and be sure she stays there until I holler.”

“Okay, Jesse.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. DeWolfe said.

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S E A C H A N G E

“You are, ma’am,” Jesse said. “Easy? Or hard?”

She lingered for a minute but Jesse could tell her heart wasn’t in it and she stood.