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.
