'No,' Jesse said, 'she's not.'
'Was she a weather girl in L.A.?' Simpson said.
'No, she was an actress.'
'Well, maybe she's acting like a weather girl.'
'Maybe,' Jesse said.
'Was she on at six or eleven?'
'I saw her at six,' Simpson said.
'I'll take a look tonight,' Jesse said.
'I guess she's not going back to L.A.,' Simpson said.
'Looks that way for now,' Jesse said.
Simpson stood for a moment, as if he wanted to say other things but didn't know how to. Finally he said, 'Well, I figured you'd want to know.'
'I would, thanks, Suit.'
Simpson hesitated another moment and then nodded as if answering yes to a question no one had asked, turned, and went out of the office.
She s using her married name.
Jesse swiveled his chair around and put his feet up on the windowsill and looked out. It has to be Jenn, he thought. It's too big a coincidence. Three thousand miles away from her, he'd gotten his feelings under control. He hadn't stopped loving her, but the fact that he did love her didn't mean he had to be with her, and it didn't mean he couldn't love anybody else. Or at least it hadn't meant that, or he'd thought it hadn't meant that, while she was three thousand miles away in bed with a movie producer. But here... Molly Crane came in from the desk.
'Jesse,' she said, 'the fire this morning down at Fifty-nine Geary Street? Anthony says it looks like it was set, thinks you should have a look.'
Jesse swiveled slowly back around.
'Geary Street,' he said.
'They got the fire pretty well knocked down,' Molly said.
'But Anthony's there and the fire captain.'
Jesse nodded.
'They're waiting on you, Jesse.'
Jesse smiled. Molly was like a third-grade teacher.
'On my way,' he said.
He didn't use the siren. One of his hard rules for the department was no sirens, no flashing lights, unless it was a time-sensitive , emergency.
That end of Geary Street converged with Preston Road to form | a triangle two blocks from the beach. Fifty- nine Geary was at the I apex of the triangle. It was separated from the next house by a vacant lot. Both Geary and Preston were blocked off when Jesse arrived. Pat Sears was rerouting traffic away from the area. Jesse | stopped beside him.
'You want me to get couple more people down here for traffic?' he said.
Pat blew his whistle and vigorously gestured a Buick station wagon to proceed past Jesse's car.
'You bet,' he said to Jesse.
'We need somebody down the other end, and maybe another guy up there.' He nodded toward the traffic trying to inch past the fire captain's car that jutted out into LaSalle Street.
'I'll call Molly,' Jesse said and drove down to the fire scene.
There were half a dozen fire trucks. Both of the Paradise trucks and four from neighboring departments. Jesse parked among them and got out. Arleigh Baker, the fire captain, was standing on the front lawn. Technically, as director of Public Safety, Jesse was the fire chief too. But since Jesse knew little about fighting fires, and Arleigh knew a lot, Arleigh ran the fire department. He was short and fat and looked slightly Napoleonic in his helmet, boots, and raincoat.
'Looking good, Arleigh,' Jesse said.
'I look like a goddamned asshole in this outfit,' Arleigh said.
Jesse smiled, and looked at the still smoking remnant of the house. Its superstructure was still standing. There was a hole in the roof, and all the windows were out. Part of the front wall had burned away. Inside was black with ash and crisscrossed with charred timber.
'Suspicious origin?' Jesse said.
'Take a look,' Arleigh said and started for the front door.
The fire had been at its most intense in the living room, to the right as Jesse entered the front door. Most of the floor was gone, and part of the back wall had burned through to the kitchen behind it. On the left-hand wall, where the fire hadn't bitten, the word FAGGOTS was spray painted in large black letters.
'Watch your step,' Arleigh said.
