Jesse said.
Tony laughed.
“At least we’d be sharing,” he
said.
53
“They were flirting with
me,” Jesse
said.
Dix sat silently back in his chair, one foot on the edge of a desk drawer, resting his chin on his steepled hands. His fingernails gleamed quietly. He always looks like he’s just
scrubbed for surgery, Jesse thought.
“Especially the husband,” Jesse said.
“Tell me about the flirting,” Dix said.
“He kept coming back to the killings. I was trying, sort of
indirectly, to learn a little about them. Whenever I’d ask a question, you know, like, where’d you two meet?
he’d steer us back
to the killings.”
Dix nodded.
“And you’re convinced it’s
them,” Dix said.
“I’ve been a cop nearly all my adult life,” Jesse said. “It’s
them.”
“We often know things,” Dix said.
“Before we can demonstrate
them.”
“I need to demonstrate it,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled.
“Ain’t that a bitch,” he said.
“How come,” Jesse said, “that
sometimes you talk like one of the
guys on the corner, and sometimes you sound like Sigmund Freud?”
“Depends what I’m talking
about,” Dix said.
“Talk about the Lincolns,” Jesse said.
Dix nodded without saying anything, as if to confirm that he’d
expected Jesse to ask. He took in a lot of air and let it out slowly.
“One of the reasons that psychiatry
doesn’t have a better
reputation is that it is asked to do too many things it doesn’t do
well,” he said.
“Like explaining people you’ve never met?”
“Like that,” Dix said. “Or
predicting what they’re going to
do.”
“Not good at that either?”
Dix smiled.
“No worse than anyone else,” he said.
“Well, tell me what you can,” Jesse said.
“I won’t hold you to
it.”
Dix leaned back in his chair.
