“My husband is deceased,” Ms. Snowdon said. “I am a woman alone.”
“The best way to ensure your safety is to give us reason to arrest him.”
“I will not even consider it,” Mrs. Snowdon said. “It was a moment in my life I decline to relive.”
“Has he threatened you?”
“Threatened? He’s here? In Paradise?”
“Yes.”
“My God, why don’t you arrest him?”
Standing by the door, Suitcase smiled without comment.
“If you’d help us,” Molly said.
“I’m not a policeman,” she said. “It’s your job to arrest him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Molly said. “But we’re not allowed to arrest anybody we feel like. At the moment our only hope would be that he could be charged with participating in a capital crime. Otherwise the statute of limitations applies.”
“He has to have killed someone?”
“Someone had to die in a criminal enterprise of which he was a member,” Molly said.
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Snowdon said. “Gobbledygook. A number of people were killed, weren’t they?”
“We have to be able to demonstrate this man’s involvement,” Molly said.
“Well, I’m not going to do your job for you,” Mrs. Snowdon said. “What kind of job is this for a young woman? Why aren’t you making a home for a husband and children?”
“I do that, too,” Molly said.
She and Mrs. Snowdon stared at each other silently. Molly looked at Suit. Suit shrugged.
“I don’t think you need to worry about him,” Molly said. “He doesn’t appear to have any interest in anyone from his last visit.”
Mrs. Snowdon sat rigidly and said nothing. Molly let out some breath and stood.
“Thanks for your time,” she said. “We can find our way out.”
Mrs. Snowdon didn’t speak, and they left her there, sitting in her iron silence.
4.
Jesse took Marcy Campbell to supper at the Gray Gull. It was June. They sat outside on the deck next to the harbor. It was still light and there was still activity in the harbor.
“Things not working well with your ex-wife?” Marcy said.
Marcy had platinum hair and wore skillful makeup. She was older than Jesse but still good-looking, and clearly sexual. Jesse knew that from experience. But he had also known it before he had the experience. Jesse always wondered how he could tell. He never did quite know, only that there were women who were insistently aware of their bodies, and of their sex. And somehow by posture or magic they communicated that awareness as insistently as
