57
HANNAH WECHSLER came into Jesse’s office wearing a flowered skirt and a white T-shirt.
She had on big hoop earrings and some sort of low suede boot. Her upscale intellectual uniform, Jesse thought.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Okay,” Jesse said.
Molly stood in the doorway. Hannah looked at her.
“I would prefer that our conversation be private,” she said.
“Okay,” Jesse said.
Molly went back to the desk.
“What was she going to do?” Hannah said. “Listen in?”
“We usually ask her to be present when there’s a woman alone in the office with me,”
Jesse said.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Hannah said.
“Coffee?” Jesse said.
“No.”
Jesse nodded and leaned back a little in his chair. Hannah looked around the office.
Jesse’s gun lay holstered on top of the file cabinet.
“There it is,” Hannah said, “the inevitable gun.”
“Yep,” Jesse said.
“I don’t like the police,” she said.
“I sensed that,” Jesse said.
“The visible representation of a repressive state,” Hannah said.
“Me?” Jesse said.
“All of you,” Hannah said.
Jesse nodded.
“Well,” he said, “thanks for stopping by.”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I . . . my husband has disappeared.”
“Tell me about that,” Jesse said.
“Two days ago, three if you count today,” she said. “I came home from the library. . . .
God, I don’t need this in the middle of my dissertation.”
“Must be a distraction,” Jesse said.
“You have no idea,” she said.
“No,” Jesse said.
“I came home and there was a note on the kitchen table.”
She opened her handbag and took out a piece of white printer paper and handed it to Jesse.
“I’m going away for a while,” it said. “Don’t look for me.”
Jesse put the paper on his desk. She looked at him. He looked back.
“Well?” she said.
“I guess he’s left,” Jesse said.
“Of course he’s left,” she said. “Can you find him?”
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
“What do you mean ‘maybe,’ ” she said.
“Police work is uncertain,” Jesse said. “You have any thoughts?”
“Like what?” she said.
“Where he might have gone?” Jesse said. “Why he went? How long is ‘a while’?”
“No.”
“Have any reason to suspect foul play?”
“No,” Hannah said. “But why would he leave like that?”
“Any trouble in the marriage?” Jesse said.
“No, of course not. We were very happy.”
“Anything about the Free Swingers that might be helpful?”
“Oh, naturally, all you moralistic yahoos, you’d love to blame it on swinging, wouldn’t you?”
Jesse was resting his elbows on the arms of his chair with his fingertips at chin level. He tapped the tips of his fingers together slowly.
“I don’t mean to be too repressive here,” he said. “But you asked me to find your husband.
To do that, I need to ask questions.”
She was silent for a moment.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “we stopped going to swinger parties.”
“When?” Jesse said.
“It’s been several weeks,” she said.
“Do you know exactly?” Jesse said.
“Not now. It’s on my calendar. When I get home I can call you,” she said.
“Do,” Jesse said. “Why did you stop going?”
“My husband said he’d lost interest, that he was bored by it all.”
“And you wouldn’t go without him?” Jesse said.
She looked at him the way she might have studied a caveman.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said.
“Guess not,” Jesse said.
“Going alone is not the point,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“Has he ever left before?”
“Absolutely not.”
“No arguments, nothing to precipitate it?”
“None.”
“Did you argue at all about giving up swinging?”
“I wouldn’t call it an argument,” she said.
“What would you call it?”
“I wanted to continue,” she said. “He wished to stop. We disagreed.”
“Angrily?”
“No, we don’t have an angry relationship,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“He take anything with him?”
“His computer’s gone,” she said.
“He have a car?”
“Yes, a black Chrysler Crossfire,” she said. “You know, with the slanty back?”
“Plate numbers?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Insurance broker would know.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can get it when I go home.”
“Let me know that, too,” Jesse said.
“Plates and the day he stopped swinging,” she said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “And a list of credit cards. He have a checkbook?”
“Yes, I think he took that, too,” she said. “We each have our own separate accounts.”
“We’ll need the name of his bank. Account numbers if you have them.”
“We have such a good marriage,” she said. “Sexually compatible. Both love the academic life, love literature.”
Jesse nodded.
“Well,” he said. “Something happened.”
“Of course it did,” she said. “Seth disappeared.”
“In the last several weeks he has made some major changes in his life. He quit swinging.
He left you. Something caused that.”
“Unless something happened to him,” she said.
“Unless that,” Jesse said.
“What are you going to do.”
“Once we get your input we’ll look for his car, check his credit-card activity, see if he’s cashing checks anywhere or using ATMs, the usual stuff,” Jesse said. “You’ll let us know if you hear from him.”
“Do you think you’ll find him?” she said.
“Probably,” Jesse said. “Of course, if he’s left voluntarily, and broken no laws, we can’t force him to come back.”
“I have to know what happened,” she said.
“Don’t blame you,” Jesse said.
58
“HE DECLINED to go to a swinger party,” Jesse said, “two days after Gloria Fisher chased him out of her house.”
They were in the squad room drinking coffee.
“Must have killed him,” Molly said. “The fearsome Night Hawk.”
“So why wouldn’t he want to do more swinging, not less?” Suit said.
He had brought a box of doughnuts and was eating one. Jesse had already had one, and Molly had broken one in half and eaten half of it. Jesse took the discarded half.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I don’t know why he does what he does.”
“And then a few weeks later he disappears on his wife,” Molly said.
“May be a string of coincidences,” Jesse said.
“But coincidences don’t do us any good,” Suit said. “They don’t give us anyplace to go.”
“Where’d you get that idea?” Jesse said.
“You told me that twenty times,” Suit said.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah.”
“The good news here,” Molly said, “is now we have a legitimate reason to poke around in his affairs more. Access his credit-card records, see who he writes checks to, that sort of thing.”
“I’d like to find a way to look at his computer,” Jesse said. “We find the pictures in there, we got him.”
“Too bad he took it, we’d have had a legitimate reason to look in there, trying to find him,”
Suit said.
“That’s why he took it,” Molly said.
“If we were to find it, before we found him . . .” Jesse said.
“We might get away with it,” Molly said.
“We’ll keep it in mind while we’re looking,” Jesse said.
Jesse examined the contents of the doughnut box and selected another cinnamon-sugar.
“Moll?” he said, and offered the box.