Unknown
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Resolution
Appaloosa
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2009 by Robert B. Parker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Robert B., date.
Night and day / Robert B. Parker.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-01600-8
1. Police chiefs—Massachusetts—Fiction. 2. Sex crimes—
Investigation—Fiction. 3. Voyeurism—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.A686N53 2009b 2008054245
813’.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Joan:
Only you beneath the moon
and under the sun.
1
JESSE STONE sat in his office at the Paradise police station, looking at the sign painted on the pebbled-glass window of his office door. From the inside it read FEIHC , or it would have, if the letters hadn’t been backward. He tried pronouncing the word, decided he couldn’t, and stopped thinking about it. On his desk was a glamour head shot of his ex-wife. He looked at it for a time, and decided not to think about that, either.
Molly Crane came from the front desk and opened the door.
“Suit just called in,” she said. “There’s some kind of disturbance at the junior high school and he thinks you and I ought to come down.”
“Girls involved?” Jesse said.
“That’s why he wants me,” Molly said.
“I understand,” Jesse said. “But why does he want me?”
“You’re the chief of police,” Molly said. “Everybody wants you.”
Jesse glanced at Jenn’s picture again.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah.”
Jesse stood, and clipped his gun to his belt.
“Though you sure don’t dress like a chief,” Molly said.
Jesse was wearing a uniform shirt, blue jeans, Nikes, a dark blue Paradise police baseball hat, and a badge that said Chief . He tapped the badge.
“I do where it counts,” he said. “Who’s on the desk?”
“Steve,” Molly said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “You drive. No siren.”
“Oh, damn,” Molly said. “I never get to use the siren.”
“Maybe when you make sergeant,” Jesse said.
There were two Paradise police cruisers parked outside of the junior high school.
“Who’s in the other cruiser,” Jesse said as they got out of the car.
“Eddie Cox,” Molly said. “He and Suit have seven to eleven this week.”
They walked into the school lobby, where a thick mill of parents was being held at bay by two Paradise cops. Most of the parents were mothers, with a scatter of fathers looking oddly out of place. When Jesse came in they all swarmed toward him, many of them speaking to him loudly.
“You’re the chief of police, are you gonna do something?”
“I want that woman arrested!”
“She’s a goddamned child molester!”
“What are you going to do about this?”
“Do you know what she did?”
“Did they tell you what happened here?”
Jesse ignored them.
He said to Molly, “Keep them here.”
Then he pointed at Suit and jerked his head down the hallway.
“What’s up,” Jesse said when they were alone.
Simpson’s real name was Luther. He was a big kid, with blond hair and a round face. He wasn’t as young as he looked, but he was young. He was called Suitcase after the baseball player, Harry “Suitcase” Simpson.
“This is weird,” Suit said.
Jesse waited.
“Mrs. Ingersoll,” Suit said, “the principal. Christ, she was principal when I was here.”
Jesse waited.
“There was some kind of after-school dance yesterday,” Suit said, his voice speeding up a little. “Eighth-grade dance. And before the dance, Mrs. Ingersoll took all the girls into the girls’
locker room and picked up their dresses to see what kind of underwear they had on.”
Jesse stared at Suit for a time without speaking.
Then Jesse said, “Huh?”
“That’s what the girls claim.”
“Why did she do that?” Jesse said.
“Don’t know,” Suit said. “But when the girls got home a lot of them told their mothers, and .
. .” He gestured toward the crowd.
Jesse nodded.
“Where’s Mrs. Ingersoll?” Jesse said.
“In her office.”
“You ask her about this?” Jesse said.
“She called in and said there was a disturbance. So we came down here and found what you see. It was like a damned lynch mob. We sort of wrangled them into the lobby, and Mrs.
Ingersoll went in her office and won’t come out, which is when we called you . . .
and”?Suitcase looked a little uncertain?“because of the, ah, nature of the alleged crime, you know, we thought Molly should come, too.”
Jesse nodded.
“How about the girls?” Jesse said.
“That got, ah, checked?” Suit said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess they’re in class,” Suit said. “I haven’t had time to do a lot of investigating. Me and Eddie had our hands full with the parents.”
Jesse nodded.
“Isn’t this swell,” he said.
Suit shrugged.
Jesse walked down the corridor to the lobby. The crowd of parents was silent now, standing in angry vigil.
“Get them down to the auditorium,” Jesse said to Suit. “Get the names of their daughters and ask the girls to go there, too. You need help, call Steve, tell him to send some.”
“You gonna talk to Mrs. Ingersoll?” Suit said.
“Yep.”
“Then you coming to the auditorium?” Suit said.
“Yep.”
“You know what you’re gonna tell the parents?”
“Not a clue,” Jesse said.
2
JESSE BROUGHT Molly with him when he went into Mrs. Ingersoll’s office.
“Chief Stone,” Mrs. Ingersoll said when he came into her office. “How lovely to see you.
And this is?”
“Officer Crane,” Jesse said.
“How do you do, Officer Crane,” Mrs. Ingersoll said.
Molly nodded.
Mrs. Ingersoll smiled brightly.
“Have you dispersed those foolish people?” she said.
“We’ve asked them to wait in the auditorium,” Jesse said. “And we’ll ask their daughters to join them there.”
“My goodness,” Mrs. Ingersoll said.
“Tell me about this situation,” Jesse said.
Mrs. Ingersoll was sitting behind her big desk. The desktop was immaculately empty.
“Situation? Chief Stone, I fear that it overstates things to call it a situation.”
“Tell me something,” Jesse said.
“I have very little to tell,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “I’m not angry at these parents. They are concerned with their children’s well-being, as am I.”
Jesse waited. Mrs. Ingersoll smiled at him. Jesse waited. Mrs. Ingersoll smiled.
“The girls say you picked up their skirts and checked their underwear.”
Mrs. Ingersoll continued to smile.
“Did you?” Jesse said.
Still smiling, Mrs. Ingersoll leaned forward and folded her hands on her desk.
“I have given twenty years of my life to this school,” she said, “the last five as principal.
Most people don’t like the principal. Being police chief, you may understand. The students think I’m here to discipline them. The teachers think I am here to order them about. Actually, of course, I am here to see to the well-being of the children.”
Jesse nodded slowly. When he spoke his voice showed no sign of impatience.
“Did you look at their underwear, Mrs. Ingersoll?”
“I have done nothing illegal,” she said brightly.
“Actually,” Jesse said, “that’s not your call, Mrs. Ingersoll.”
Her eyes were big and bright. Her smile lingered.
“It’s not?”
“You’ve been accused of an action,” Jesse said pleasantly, “which, depending on the zeal of the prosecutor, the skill of the defense, and the political inclinations of the judge, might or might not be deemed a crime.”
“Oh, Jesse,” she said. “That’s absurd.”
“Did you check their undies, Betsy?” Jesse said.
She continued to smile. Her eyes continued to sparkle. But she didn’t speak.
“Would you care to come down to the auditorium with me and thrash this out with the kids and their parents?” Jesse said. “Try to keep this from turning into a hairball?”
She remained cheerfully motionless for a moment. Then she shook her head.
“Do you know who my husband is, Jesse?” she said.
“I do,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to call him now,” she said. “And I’d like you to leave my office, please.”
Jesse glanced at Molly. Molly’s lips were whistling silently as she stood studying the view from the window behind Mrs. Ingersoll. He looked back at Mrs. Ingersoll.
Then he said, “Come on, Moll, let’s go talk to the girls.”
As they left the office, Mrs. Ingersoll picked up the phone and began to dial.
3
“I’D LIKE to drag her down to the station and strip-search her,” Molly said. “Give her a little taste.”
Jesse smiled.
“That option remains available, Moll,” Jesse said. “But we probably need to talk to the victims first.”
“I know,” Molly said, “I know. But if it were one of my kids . . .”
The auditorium was subdued, as if the parents and the children were a little frightened by the circumstance they’d created. It was a small auditorium. Jesse sat on the lip of the stage.
“I’m Jesse Stone,” he said. “I’m the chief of police. We can do this several ways. I can talk to you all, together, right here. Officer Molly Crane and I can talk to the girls separately, alone, or separately with a parent”?he grinned at the scatter of fathers?“or parents.”
A hard-faced woman with brittle blond hair and a dark tan sat next to her daughter in the front row. She put up her hand. Jesse nodded at her.
“What does Ingersoll have to say?” she asked.
“Mrs. Ingersoll has neither affirmed nor denied anything,” Jesse said. “So I thought I’d ask you.”
The parents and children sat still in the auditorium. Eddie Cox and Suit leaned against the wall. Molly stood beside Jesse, resting her hips against the stage.
“Would one of the girls who were, ah, examined, like to tell us about it?” Jesse said.
The daughter of the brittle blonde looked down and didn’t say anything. Her mother poked her. She continued to look down and shake her head.
“Me.”
Jesse saw her, in the middle of the third row, a dark-haired girl, just developing a cheer-leader’s body if all went well.
“What’s your name?” Jesse said.
She stood up.
“Bobbie Sorrentino,” she said.
“Okay, Bobbie,” Jesse said. “Is that your mother with you?”
“Yeah,” Bobbie said, and nodded at her mother. “Her.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Tell me about it.”
“I gotta stand?”
“Nope, stand, sit, up to you.”
“I’m gonna stand,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“They got this stupid Wednesday-afternoon dance,” Bobbie said. “You know, keep the kids off the street. Teach them manners.”
She snorted at the thought. Several of the girls giggled.
“But if you don’t go and everybody else goes, you feel like a dweeb, so we all go.”
Jesse smiled.
“And the boys went,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” Bobbie said, “sure.”
Jesse nodded.
“I remember,” he said.
Bobbie stared at him a moment, as if it had never occurred to her that Jesse had ever been in junior high.
“You go here?” Bobbie said.
“No, Arizona,” Jesse said. “But school is pretty much school.”
Bobbie nodded.
“So, before the dance,” Bobbie said, “Old Lady Ingersoll lines us up and marches us into the girls’ locker room and starts checking us out.”
“What did she do,” Jesse said.
“She picked up my skirt,” Bobbie said, “and looked at my panties.”
There was a small, uneasy stir in the crowd of kids and parents.
“She tell you why she did that?” Jesse said.
“She said”?Bobbie lowered her voice in mimicry?“ ‘Proper attire includes what shows and what doesn’t.’ ”
“Did she say what would have been improper?” Jesse said.
“She said anyone wearing a thong should leave now, because they’d be sent home if she saw one,” Bobbie said.
“Anyone leave?” Jesse said.
“Couple girls,” Bobbie said.
“Thongs?” Jesse said. “Or silent protest?”
His face was perfectly serious. Bobbie grinned at him.
“Or nothing,” she said.
Most of the girls giggled.
“That’d probably be even more improper,” Jesse said.
Some of the mothers joined in the giggle.
“Anyone object to the, ah, panty patrol?” he said.
“I did,” Bobbie said, “and a couple other girls, Carla for one, and Joanie.”
“And Mrs. Ingersoll said?”
“She said it was all between us girls, and she was trying to save us from being embarrassed, if somebody saw.”
Jesse took in a deep breath and let it out.
He said, “How old are you, Bobbie?”
“I’ll be fourteen in October.”
“Thank you,” Jesse said. “Anyone have anything to add? Carla, Joanie?”
No one said anything.
“Parents?”
One of the fathers got to his feet. He was a husky guy, with the look of someone who worked outdoors.
“Can you arrest her?” the man said.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Charles Lane,” he said.
“I’m not sure quite what the charge would be, Mr. Lane,” Jesse said. “Molestation generally requires sexual content. Assault generally includes the intent to injure. There might be something about invasion of privacy, but I don’t know that it would hold.”
“We are not going to let this go,” he said.
“No, sir,” Jesse said. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“So what would you do?”
“I am going to talk to someone from the Essex County DA’s office,” Jesse said.
“You think we should get a lawyer?” Lane said.
Jesse grinned.
“That’s pretty much what I’m doing,” Jesse said.
4
JESSE HAD made sangria. He and Jenn sipped some as they sat together on the small balcony off his living room, looking at the harbor. It was early on a Saturday evening. Jenn had brought Chinese food, which was still in the cartons, staying warm on a low temperature in Jesse’s oven.
“You know,” Jenn said, “I realized the other day that we’ve been divorced longer than we were married.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“And yet, here we are.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
Jesse had made the sangria in a large glass pitcher, with a lot of ice. It sat on the low table between them, the condensation beading on the pitcher and making small tracks down the glass.
“I can’t imagine life without you in it,” Jenn said.
“Can’t live with them,” Jesse said. “Can’t live without them.”
“There are people who are doing worse than we are,” Jenn said.
It was still daylight, and Jesse could see several people in rowboats scattered around the inner harbor, bottom-fishing for flounder. Jesse drank some sangria.
“And some doing better,” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Jenn said, “of course.”
In one of the rowboats a young boy hooked a fish and hauled it in hand over hand. His father helped him take it off the hook.
“Is everything all right, Jesse?” Jenn said.
“It never is, Jenn,” Jesse said.
He drank some sangria.
“But it’s not worse than usual?” Jenn said.
Jesse looked at her and smiled.
“That might be our motto,” Jesse said. “It’s not worse than usual.”
Jenn nodded.
“Are you seeing anyone these days?” she said.
“Several people.”
“Anyone special?”
“They’re all special,” Jesse said.
“Because they have sex with you?”
“Exactly,” Jesse said.
“Am I special?” Jenn said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Even when we don’t have sex.”
“Is anyone else special like that?”
“No.”
They were quiet for a time, drinking sangria, as the sun went down and the small boats came into the dock, and the lights went on in the boats moored in the harbor, and across the harbor in the houses on Paradise Neck.
“Maybe we should think about supper,” Jenn said.
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“We could eat out here,” Jenn said.
Jesse nodded.
“You gonna spend the night, Jenn?”
“If I may,” Jenn said.
“You may.”
“I think we should have sex before we eat,” Jenn said. “I do so much better on an empty stomach.”
“You do well in any condition,” Jesse said.
“Does it make me especially special?” Jenn said.
“One of the many things,” Jesse said.
5
THE ADA was a tall, athletic-looking woman named Holly Clarkson. Like a lot of assistant prosecutors, she was young, maybe five years out of law school, and earning some experience in the public sector before she sank comfortably into some law firm somewhere as a litigator.
“You want to arrest the principal of the junior high school?” Holly said. “And charge her with what?”
Holly always wore oversized round eyeglasses as a kind of signature. Today she was dressed in a beige pantsuit and a black shirt with long collar points.
“Whatever you can come up with,” Jesse said.
“And you actually want to put her in jail?”
“Yes.”
“You do know that her husband is the managing partner of the biggest law firm in the state,” Holly said.
“Jay Ingersoll,” Jesse said. “Cone, Oakes, and Baldwin.”
“Correct,” Holly said. “And she is accused of picking up the skirts of some junior-high girls and checking their underwear.”
“Yes.”
“That’s idiotic,” Holly said.
“It is,” Jesse said.
“I admit,” Holly said, “that it would be fun to see her do a little time, get her attention, so to speak.”
“It would be,” Jesse said.
“But you can’t arrest somebody because it would be fun,” Holly said.
“I can’t?”
“No,” Holly said. “And if we started prosecuting people for being idiotic . . .”
“Be a hot one for the press and the talk shows,” Jesse said. “Elevate your profile.”
“I’m not that ambitious,” Holly said. “And if I were, the approval of Jay Ingersoll would be more valuable to me than anything the press could give me.”
“You got kids?” Jesse said.
“Not yet,” Holly said. “First I need to get married.”
Jesse nodded.
“Sure,” Holly said. “I know if it were my kids I’d want to strangle the bitch. But to prosecute her for . . . whatever we come up with, and get buried in paper by a platoon of lawyers from Cone, Oakes. You know what they’ve got for resources?”
“More than Essex County?” Jesse said.
“More and better. Not everybody on staff in our office is a legal eagle like me.”
“Anybody in your office got a death wish?” Jesse said.
“No,” Holly said. “And if they did, Howard would fire them before they got a chance to en-act it.”
“The DA doesn’t want to start anything,” I said.
“The DA wants to get reelected next year,” Holly said.
“How about by being tough on crime?”
“When people say that, they mean tough on street crime. And tough on scary black kids with tats. They do not mean tough on annoying school administrators,” Holly said.
“These are thirteen-year-old girls,” Jesse said.
“Oh, please,” Holly said. “I’ve been a thirteen-year-old girl, Jesse. They aren’t adults, but they aren’t innocent babies, either. You know as well as I do that thirteen-year-old girls can be sexually active.”
“And why is that the school’s business,” Jesse said. “What happened to readin’ and writin’?”
“Parents dump it on the schools,” Holly said. “ ‘Where were you when my Melinda was bopping little Timmy behind the back stop?’ ”
“And the panty patrol is supposed to prevent that?”
“Of course it won’t,” Holly said. “But Mrs. Ingersoll is, after all, an educator.”
Jesse nodded.
“I never liked school,” he said. “But in fact this may not be a problem with schools. This may be a problem with Mrs. Ingersoll.”
“It may,” Holly said.
“She shouldn’t get away with it,” Jesse said.
“Shouldn’t?” Holly said. “You and I don’t live in a world of should and shouldn’t, Jesse.”
Jesse grinned at her.
“I know,” he said. “But we should.”
6
MOLLY BROUGHT Missy Clark into Jesse’s office. Missy was wearing running shorts and a cropped T-shirt and cowboy boots. There was dark makeup around her eyes, and a big gold hoop in her right ear. She was thirteen. Jesse gestured her to a chair. Molly lingered in the doorway.
“What can I do for you?” Jesse said.
Missy sat and looked at Jesse, then looked at Molly, and back at Jesse.
“I gotta talk to you alone,” Missy said finally.
Jesse nodded.
“Officer Crane normally stays when there’s a woman alone with me in the office. Prevents misunderstandings.”
“Misunder?? Oh,” Missy said. “No. You’re not like that.”
Jesse smiled.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m not.”
He nodded at Molly and she went away. Missy looked at the open door.
“You may close the door if you’d like,” Jesse said.
Missy got up and looked out into the corridor to see that Molly wasn’t lurking there. Then she closed the door and went back to her chair. Jesse clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
“So,” he said. “What’s up.”
“I saw you at school the other day,” she said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I saw you, too. Second row, at the far end to my right. Wearing a yellow sundress with small blue flowers on it. You didn’t seem to be with your parents.”
“Mrs. Ingersoll won’t let us wear jeans or anything,” Missy said. “How come you noticed me.”
“I’m the chief of police,” Jesse said. “I notice everything.”
“You were nice to us,” Missy said. “You were nice to Bobbie Sorrentino, when she talked.”
“Why shouldn’t I be nice to you?”
“’Cause we’re kids and she’s the principal.”
Jesse nodded.
“You came along to that meeting even though your parents weren’t with you,” Jesse said.
“I didn’t like that she made me pull my dress up,” Missy said.
“Don’t blame you,” Jesse said.
Missy looked around the office. Jesse waited. Missy studied the picture of Jenn that sat on top of the file cabinet to Jesse’s left.
“That your wife?” she said.
“Ex-wife,” Jesse said.
“How come you got divorced?” Missy said.
Jesse smiled at her.
“None of your business,” he said.
Missy nodded.
“She fool around?” Missy said.
“Answer stands,” Jesse said.
“I was just wondering,” Missy said.
Jesse nodded. He smiled at her again.
He said, “The way this usually works, Missy, is the cop asks the questions.”
Missy nodded. Neither of them spoke for a time. Missy looked again at Jenn’s picture.
“Is she that reporter on Channel Three?” Missy said.
Jesse didn’t answer.
“She is. I seen her lots of times,” Missy said.
Jesse waited. Missy looked around the office some more.
“I gotta tell you something,” Missy said.
“Okay.”
“You can’t tell anybody,” Missy said.
“Okay.”
“You can’t tell anybody I even talked to you,” Missy said.
“Okay.”
“You gotta promise,” Missy said.
“Sure,” Jesse said. “I promise.”
“Even if I told you something like a murder or something, would you still not tell?”
Jesse shook his head.
“I’d tell,” he said.
“Well, it’s not a murder.”
“Good,” Jesse said.
“And I trust you,” Missy said.
“Thank you,” Jesse said.
They were quiet. Missy seemed to be gathering herself.
“I . . .” She stopped and took a breath and started again.
“You know what swinging is?” she said.
“As in the swinging lifestyle?” Jesse said.
“Yes . . . you know, wife-swapping.”
“I know what that is.”
Missy was silent. Jesse waited.
“My mom and dad do it,” she said.
“Swing?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?” Jesse said.
“They have a swinger party about once a month at our house.”
“And you’ve seen them,” Jesse said.
“Me and my little brother are supposed to stay upstairs.”
“But you peek,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“How old’s your brother?”
“Eight,” Missy said.
“Your parents know you know?”
Missy shook her head. Jesse took in a deep breath.
“How do you feel about it?” Jesse said.
“How would you feel?” she said. She looked as if she might cry.
“Awful,” Jesse said.
Missy nodded.
“And my little brother,” she said. “I mean, he’s doesn’t even exactly know what having sex is.”
“It scare him?” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Missy said. “How did you know that.”
“Remember what I said about being chief of police,” Jesse said.
Missy smiled faintly.
“You know everything?” Missy said.
“Exactly.”
“That’s how you knew we peeked,” Missy said.
“Actually,” Jesse said, “I knew that because that’s what I woulda done.”
Missy nodded.
“Most adults aren’t like you,” Missy said.
“Is that good or bad,” Jesse said.
“Most grown-ups act like they were never a kid, you know?”
“Your parents like that?” Jesse said.
“Yeah. Do this. Do that. Be a lady. Blah, blah, and look at them. Look at what they’re doing.”
“Hard,” Jesse said.
“Can you make them stop?” Missy said.
“As far as I know, there is no law against swinging,” Jesse said.
“But it’s wrong,” Missy said. “You’re not supposed to be like that if you’re married, are you?”
“Probably not,” Jesse said.
“So can’t you tell them to stop it?”
“I can, but I can’t force them,” Jesse said. “And I assume you don’t want them to know you blew the whistle.”
“Oh, Jesus, no.”
“So I’m not sure what I can do,” Jesse said.
“So, okay, the hell with them. If they can live like that, so can I.”
“If you actually want to,” Jesse said, “I suppose you can. But revenge is a lousy reason for having sex.”
Missy was silent again.
Then she said, “I don’t really want to. It seems so icky.”
“Scare you?” Jesse said.
“No . . . yes. I guess so.”
“Why don’t you wait until it doesn’t,” Jesse said.
“But what about my parents? Isn’t there something you can do?”
“I’ll think on it,” Jesse said. “And maybe get some advice, without mentioning any names.”
“Advice from who?”
“Oh, a shrink I know, maybe.”
“I don’t want to see no shrink,” Missy said.
“I’m not asking you to. I see him, and I can ask him for advice.”
“You see a shrink?” Missy said.
“I do,” Jesse said.
“Is it about her?” Missy said, looking at Jenn’s picture. “I bet it’s about her. Is it?”
Again, Jesse smiled at her.
Again, he said, “None of your business.”
7
JAY INGERSOLL came into Daisy Dyke’s at three-ten in the afternoon and spotted Jesse sitting at the counter. He walked over.
“Chief Stone,” he said. “I’m Jay Ingersoll.”
“How do you do,” Jesse said.
Ingersoll was tall and lean, with thick white hair cut short and a dark tan. His dark summer suit fit him well, and he looked to Jesse like a man who probably played a lot of tennis.
“Mind if I join you?” Ingersoll said.
Jesse gestured at the stool next to him. Ingersoll sat. He had small handsome character wrinkles around his eyes, and deep parenthetic grooves at the corners of his mouth.
“Apple pie?” Ingersoll said.
“Um-hm,” Jesse said.
“Looks good,” Ingersoll said.
“Daisy makes a nice pie,” Jesse said.
“Was time, when I was your age,” Ingersoll said, “I could have pie in the middle of the afternoon and still stay in shape.”
“Sometimes I have two pieces,” Jesse said.
The young woman behind the counter came down and Ingersoll ordered black coffee.
When it came, he stirred in two packets of Splenda.
He raised the cup toward Jesse and said, “Cheers.”
Jesse raised his empty fork in response, and Ingersoll sipped some coffee.
“Whoa,” he said. “Hot.”
“Often is,” Jesse said.
Jesse noticed that Ingersoll’s cheeks dimpled when he smiled.
“I’m Betsy Ingersoll’s husband,” he said.
“I know,” Jesse said.
“I just wanted to tell you that I thought you handled that incident at the school like a pro,”
Ingersoll said. “No press. Nothing blown out of proportion.”
Jesse patted his mouth with his napkin.
“I am a pro,” he said.
“I assumed you’ve closed the file on it,” Ingersoll said.
“Um-hm,” Jesse said.
“Um-hm what?” Ingersoll said.
“Um-hm, I hear what you’re saying.”
“And my assumption is correct?”
“No.”
“You haven’t closed the case,” Ingersoll said.
“Not yet,” Jesse said.
“For God’s sake, why not?” Ingersoll said. “There’s no crime here.”
“Haven’t found one yet,” Jesse said. “I figure there’ll be some civil action.”
“And if there is?” Ingersoll said.
“I thought I’d watch,” Jesse said. “See what I could see.”
The lines around Ingersoll’s mouth deepened.
“What the hell are you after, Stone?”
“You representing her?”
“I’m her husband, for crissakes.”
“And her lawyer?” Jesse said.
“Whether or not I personally represent her,” Ingersoll said, “you can be sure my firm will be involved.”
“Rita Fiore?” Jesse said.
“She’s a criminal litigator,” Ingersoll said. “How do you know Rita?”
“I’m the chief of police,” Jesse said. “I get around.”
“You see this as your big chance?” Ingersoll said. “Make a name? Make some money?
What’s this about?”
“I think your wife violated those girls’ rights,” Jesse said.
“Oh, for crissakes, Stone.”
“You asked,” Jesse said.
“Would I have done it?” Ingersoll said. “No, I suppose not. Betsy is probably a little more, ah, authoritarian than I am, I guess. It’s no easy job being a school administrator.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But no harm was done. No one was injured. No crime was committed,” Ingersoll said.
“So you say.”
“I have, of course, talked with Howard Hannigan about this,” Ingersoll said, “and he as-sures me that his office has no interest in pursuing the incident.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Jesse said.
“But you do,” Ingersoll said.
“I’m not ready to clear it,” Jesse said.
Ingersoll was silent for a moment. Then, with his hands folded tightly on the counter, he leaned toward Jesse a little.
“You are a small-town policeman,” Ingersoll said. “You were fired from your last job. I am the managing partner of the biggest law firm in the state. If you continue to be an annoyance, I will bury you.”
“No doubt,” Jesse said.
He laid a five-dollar bill on the counter, and stood and walked out of the restaurant.
8
IT WAS WEDNESDAY night. It was his time. And the Night Hawk was beginning to dress.
Black jeans, black socks, black sneakers. He put on a white T-shirt, and over it a black windbreaker, which he wore unzipped. He put on a navy-blue baseball cap, and pulled it low over his forehead, and looked at himself in the mirror. His beard covered the lower half of his face, and with the bill of the cap down low over his forehead he would be hard to recognize. He nodded to himself and reset the cap on the back of his head. Then he turned out the lights in his bedroom and went down the stairs and out the back door. He walked past Daisy’s Restaurant, on down toward the water, past the Gray Gull and up Water Street. With no one in sight, he turned suddenly into a narrow alley just past the Paradise Inn. In the alley he zipped up his black windbreaker and pulled his baseball cap down over his forehead, then moved down the alley and into a scraggle of trees behind the inn. Past the trees was the harbor. The Night Hawk stood nearly invisible among the trees and looked into a first-floor bedroom at the back of the inn. The shade was up. The lights were on, but there was no one in the room. I can wait, the Night Hawk thought, and stood just outside the window. Stolid, stoic, silent, and unseen. The strong smell of the harbor drifted past him on the quiet evening air. The trees he stood among were white pine, and they added their pleasant scent to the night. Faintly from the inn came kitchen sounds, a hint of television, some barely audible music. The net effect was to emphasize the quiet. He looked at his watch. I’ll give it forty-five minutes, the Night Hawk thought. He stood perfectly still, wrapping himself in the darkness. It was so still in the darkness that he could hear his own breathing. His breathing felt deep and quiet to him. He felt as if his heart was strong and his senses were keen. As if he could almost taste life in its full range and richness. The bedroom door opened and a woman came in. She was maybe fifty, with red hair and angular black glasses. She’ll do, the Night Hawk thought. He felt the pressure, as if his interior were straining against the containment of his exterior. The woman was wearing tan slacks and a dark green top. She walked to the window and looked out. She was maybe two feet from him. He breathed very softly. She touched her hair, and the Night Hawk realized she wasn’t looking out; she was studying her reflected self in the dark glass.
He held his ground. Then she reached up and pulled the shade. He stayed steady, looking closely to see if the shade fully obscured the window. It didn’t quite, but it allowed only a narrow view of a corner of the room, where a table stood. He watched to be sure. But she didn’t go to the table, and after a while the lights went out. The Night Hawk shrugged and moved back down the alley toward Water Street. Before he stepped out of the alley, he tilted his cap to the back of his head and unzipped the black windbreaker so that the white T-shirt gleamed in the dim light from the streetlamps. He looked at his watch. The night is young, he said to himself, and started up Water Street like a watchman making his rounds.
9
JESSE SAT with Suitcase Simpson in Jesse’s unmarked car parked on an affluent street on the west shore of Paradise, where, on very clear days, from the second floor of certain homes, one could look north and see Cape Ann.
“Three doors up on the right,” Jesse said. “Big garrison colonial with the fieldstone front.”
“Yeah?” Suit said.
“That’s the Clark house.”
“Okay,” Suit said.
“My information is that at regular intervals they gather a number of couples together in that house and swap wives.”
“Here?” Suit said. “In Paradise?”
“Incredible, ain’t it,” Jesse said.
“Unthinkable,” Suit said.
“I have it on good authority,” Jesse said.
“And you want me to go undercover,” Suit said.
“Be more convincing if you had a wife,” Jesse said.
“Well, maybe Molly—”
“Stop it,” Jesse said.
Suit grinned. “So what do we care that they’re banging their brains out in there?” he said.
“Ain’t illegal, is it?”
“Not that I know,” Jesse said.
“So?”
“You know the Clarks?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know, what’re the first names?”
“He’s Chase. She’s Kimberly.”
“Kimberly Magruder?”
“Yes.”
“I went to school with her younger sister, Tammy,” Suit said. “Tammy was pretty hot.”
“And you know that how?” Jesse said.
Suit grinned again. “Hey,” he said. “I was a football hero in high school, remember?”
“I remember you telling me,” Jesse said.
“I cut a pretty wide swath in my letter sweater,” Suit said.
“I’ll bet you did,” Jesse said. “You know Kimberly?”
“Just to say hi.”
“Know anything about her?”
“I know she still looks pretty good,” Suit said.
“Still? For crissakes, Suit,” Jesse said. “She’s not even forty yet.”
“I’d give her a shot,” Suit said.
Jesse nodded.
“Wear your football jersey,” Jesse said. “How about the husband?”
“He played, but before I did,” Suit said. “I think he’s some kind of big-deal advertising guy in Boston now.”
“I want you to find out everything you can about him, and about her, and about their social life.”
“You mean the wife-swapping?” Suit said.
“They probably call it the swinging lifestyle,” Jesse said.
“Course they do,” Suit said. “But why do we care?”
“Their daughter came to me about it.”
“Jesus, the daughter?” Suit said. “How old is she?”
“Thirteen,” Jesse said, “I would guess.”
“And she knows?”
“She knows,” Jesse said. “And so does her eight-year-old brother.”
Suit was quiet, looking down the street at the handsome house behind its smooth green lawn.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s awful, but what can we do about it.”
“Not much,” Jesse said. “Maybe something with children’s services, but I kind of promised the daughter I wouldn’t tell.”
“You told me?”
“You don’t count,” Jesse said.
Suit grinned again.
“That ain’t what Tammy Magruder used to say.”
“For the moment,” Jesse said, “we learn as much as we can. I mean, it’s possible, you know, that the kid made it up.”
“Thirteen?”
Jesse looked at him.
Suit nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I withdraw the question.”
10
“OH, JESSE,” Jenn said on the phone. “I’m so excited. I’ve got an offer in New York.”
“New York,” Jesse said.
“A new show called Early On ,” Jenn said. “I’d do weather, and some lifestyle stories.”
“You gonna take it?”
“Oh, I have to. I mean, it’s a huge jump up for me,” Jenn said. “The show is syndicated, and looks like it’ll go national in a while.”
“So when do you leave?”
“I start on air next Monday,” Jenn said.
“You got a place to live?”
“Well, I’ll stay with a friend,” Jenn said. “Until I find a place.”
“Friend?”
“A guy friend.”
“Anyone I know,” Jesse said.
“I don’t think so. He used to be up here, at Channel Three, and now he’s producing Early On .”
“That how you got the job?”
“Well, they were looking for somebody, and Rick thought of me.”
“I’ll bet he did,” Jesse said.
“Oh, Jesse,” Jenn said. “You’re not going to go all jealous on me, are you?”
“Not me,” Jesse said.
“I mean, you know, you left me,” Jenn said, “when we first broke up.”
“I did,” Jesse said.
“I’ll stay in touch,” she said. “I promise.”
“Okay,” Jesse said.
“I will. I’ll call you. We can e-mail. I don’t want to lose touch with you, Jesse.”
“I’ll be standing by,” Jesse said.
“You can call me on my cell,” Jenn said. “If you need to.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“Well, I gotta get organized. Monday is coming quick.”
“Yep.”
“Wish me luck, Jesse?”
“Always,” Jesse said.
They hung up. Jesse sat back a little in his chair and stared at nothing in the empty room.
They weren’t married anymore. She had a right to go where she wanted and to fuck who she wanted. His throat felt tight, and it was difficult to swallow. He stood and made himself a drink.
Tall glass. Lot of ice. Couple of ounces of scotch. Fill with soda. He stood for a moment, stirring the drink with his forefinger. Behind the bar was a big picture of Ozzie Smith. Ozzie was in midair, parallel with the ground, stretched out as far as he could stretch, catching a line drive. Jesse nodded at the picture.
“Wizard,” he said.
His voice sounded intrusive in the silent room. He took a drink of scotch.
“Best that ever played,” Jesse said.
He drank some more scotch. He looked at the big bottle of scotch on the bar—1.75 liters.
It was nearly full.
“I wouldn’t have been that good,” Jesse said. “But I’d have made the show. If I didn’t get hurt, I’d have made the show.”
He turned, carrying his glass, and walked across the living room. He stood and looked out the French doors at the harbor and began to drink his scotch.
11
IT WAS becoming harder for the Night Hawk to wait for Wednesday night. He hadn’t actually seen nakedness yet, but he’d seen women moving about in their bedrooms, unaware of being watched. If he kept his pace, sooner or later, he would see. Tonight he was in position to watch Lindsey Monahan through her bedroom window. There was a field behind her house, which you could reach by walking down the railroad tracks behind it. He lay flat in a low part of the field, behind a small outcropping of rock, with his binoculars. The light was on in her bedroom. But the room was empty. The Night Hawk was patient. Bagging the quarry was only the end part of a process. Like any hunt, the process was part of the pleasure. After an hour or so, Lindsey came into her bedroom. She took off her blouse, and her slacks. Her undergarments were red and frilly. Lindsey is hotter than she seems, the Night Hawk thought. She went into the bathroom and stayed there, out of sight for maybe ten minutes. When she came out of the bathroom she had a towel wrapped like a turban around her head, and was wearing a white terry-cloth robe that looked too big for her. All spanking clean, the Night Hawk said to himself. She came to the bed and sat, facing the window. The robe fell away a little over her knees, as the Night Hawk focused through his binoculars. He could feel his heart beat. She leaned sideways and turned off the light. Damn . The Night Hawk lay in position for a time, his binoculars ready. But the light didn’t go on again. When he was sure it wouldn’t, the Night Hawk stood and checked his watch, and walked back to the railroad tracks. She sleeps naked, he thought. He looked at his watch. Late. Too late to go to one of his other spots. He’d spent all evening on Lindsey and gotten to see her in her fancy underwear. That was something . . . but it wasn’t enough.
12
JESSE HAD slept in his clothes and, despite a long shower, a pint of orange juice, three cups of coffee, and two aspirin, he still had a hangover. He was sipping his fourth cup, at his desk, when Molly Crane stuck her head in.
She said, “Two things, Jesse.”
He nodded.
“We got a Peeping Tom report,” Molly said. “And the DA is going to stop by here after lunch.”
“Anything special about the peeper?” Jesse said.
“Nope. Some guy looking in a window,” Molly said. “Ran off when the woman’s husband yelled at him.”
“Who’s on patrol?” Jesse said.
“John Maguire and Arthur Angstrom,” Molly said.
“Send John,” Jesse said. “Howard Hannigan give a time?”
“I didn’t talk to him,” Molly said. “But his, ah, girl didn’t specify exactly. Just ‘after lunch.’ ”
“Wish I had a girl,” Jesse said.
“You got me,” Molly said.
“You’re a woman,” Jesse said.
“Well, I’m glad you noticed.”
“Crow told me,” Jesse said.
Molly blushed.
“Our secret, Moll,” Jesse said.
“I certainly wish it were just mine,” Molly said.
“Almost the same,” Jesse said.
“I hope so,” Molly said.
She studied Jesse for a moment.
“You’re looking a little peaked today,” she said.
“Drank more than I should have, last night,” Jesse said.
“Alone?” Molly said.
“Yeah.”
“Jenn?” Molly said.
“Yeah.”
Molly took in a big breath of air and let it out slowly.
She said, “Might be time to move on, Jesse.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“If you can,” Molly said.
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“What’s Dix say about it?”
“He seems to think I’m obsessed.”
“You think so?” Molly said.
“Maybe I want to be obsessed.”
“Maybe,” Molly said.
Jesse didn’t say anything else. Molly waited a moment in the heavy silence.
Then she said, “I’ll send John down to talk to the Peeping Tom folks.”
Jesse nodded. Molly stood for another moment, then turned and left the office. Jesse drank some coffee.
13
HOWARD HANNIGAN was thin-faced and dark-haired. He wore big horn-rimmed dark glasses, which he left in place when he came into Jesse’s office.
“Jesse,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Jesse nodded and gestured Hannigan toward a chair.
“What’s going on with Betsy Ingersoll?” Hannigan said.
“Nothing,” Jesse said.
“So why is Jay Ingersoll telling me that you are persecuting his wife?”
“Don’t know,” Jesse said.
“Have you cleared the case?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Hannigan said.
“Because she violated the civil rights of a number of thirteen-year-old girls, and I want there to be consequences for her.”
“Consequences.”
“Yep.”
“So are you telling me,” Hannigan said, “that you are leaving the case active to punish her?”
“Give her something to worry about,” Jesse said. “Make her wish she hadn’t done it.”
“Jay has talked with you?”
“He has,” Jesse said.
“And you know who he is?” Hannigan said.
“I do.”
“I’m up for reelection this fall,” Hannigan said.
“I know,” Jesse said.
“In Jay Ingersoll’s home county,” Hannigan said.
“Yeah,” Jesse said.
“It won’t help me to have Jay mad at me.”
“I can see how that would be,” Jesse said.
“So you’ll lay off his wife?” Hannigan said.
“Nope.”
“You’re willing to endanger my election? Just to annoy some goddamned school principal?”
“Yes, I am,” Jesse said.
“For crissakes, Jesse. You don’t have a prosecutable case.”
“Yet,” Jesse said.
“You mean you’re still trying to get something more on her?”
“Yes, I am,” Jesse said.
“Goddamn it, there’s nothing to get. She embarrassed a few kids.”
Jesse didn’t say anything.
“Even if you came up with something,” Hannigan said, “I wouldn’t prosecute it.”
Jesse didn’t say anything.
“I’ve talked to the selectmen already,” Hannigan said. “You want to get your ass in a crack, this is a good way to do it.”
Jesse nodded.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Stone?” Hannigan said.
“You don’t know, either?” Jesse said.
14
JESSE WAS sitting with John Maguire and Suit in the conference room at the station.
“What’s up with the Peeping Tommy?” he said to Maguire.
“Nothing much,” Maguire said. “Husband and wife”?he looked at his notes?“name of Richard and Alice North at Forty-one Rose Street, are getting ready for bed, bedroom’s on the ground floor, when she looks out the window and sees some guy hiding in the bushes. Mr.
North opens the window and yells at the guy and the guy scoots.”
“That’s it?”
“All they could tell me.”
“Anything in the way of a description?” Jesse said.
“Nope, just an ordinary-sized guy dressed in dark clothes. They didn’t see his face.”
“He see anything?” Jesse said.
“The peeper?”
“Yes.”
“Not as far as they told me. Why?”
“Just trying to find out whatever I can,” Jesse said. “Sometimes with peepers what they see changes their future behavior.”
“Really?” Maguire said.
Jesse nodded.
“Well,” Maguire said. “They said they were getting ready for bed, but I thought Mrs. North looked a little embarrassed.”
Jesse nodded.
“So maybe there was a little more going on than night-night,” Suit said.
“Maybe,” Maguire said.
“Peepers don’t usually do anything more than peep, do they?” Suit said.
“Not usually,” Jesse said. “But now and then they can escalate. Depends on what they see, sometimes, and how it affects them.”
“I figure it’s just some kid trying to see something he’s never seen,” Maguire said.
“Probably,” Jesse said. “Stay on it, John, and any more calls are yours.”
Jesse looked at Suit.
“How ’bout you?” Jesse said. “You got anything?”
Suit saluted smartly, and grinned.
“Paradise wife-swapping squad,” Suit said. “Reporting.”
“We got a fucking crime wave,” Maguire said.
“It’s called police work,” Jesse said. “People report, we look into it. People complain, we check. You know?”
“Wife-swapping ain’t even illegal,” Maguire said. “Is it?”
“Kid complained,” Jesse said. “Suit?”
“Well, they got a website,” Suit said.
“Course they do,” Jesse said.
Suit grinned.
“Call themselves a club, Paradise Free Swingers,” he said. “They have parties, cookouts, outings. They go on trips. All celebrating the swinging lifestyle.”
“Names?”
“Nope. Pictures of some members and their first names. But I know a couple of them from school.”
“In addition to Kimberly Magruder Clark?” Jesse said.
“Vinnie Basco. He played football with me in high school, wide receiver.”
“Anybody else?”
“His wife,” Suit said. “I think she was Debbie Lupo in high school.”
“I’d love to be in a club like that,” Maguire said.
“Wife-swapping?” Suit said.
“You bet,” Maguire said. “As long as my wife isn’t involved.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Jesse said.
“A shame,” Maguire said.
Jesse grinned.
“Suit, can you talk to any of the people you know?” Jesse said.
“The guys, Clark and Basco,” Suit said. “We were pretty tight, you know, playing football and all.”
“See what you can find out,” Jesse said.
“I don’t even know what we want to find out,” Suit said.
“Gives you plenty of room to maneuver,” Jesse said.
15
THE NIGHT Hawk was tense. Last Wednesday he’d had his first big score. He’d seen her naked, making out with her husband. But they’d seen him and he’d had to run. It was sort of embarrassing to have to run off like that, like some pathetic little Peeping Tom kid. It had violated his autonomy, as the invisible watcher, taken away the power of his anonymity. But it had been sort of exciting as well, a little flirt of jeopardy that had intensified the Night Hawk’s experience. As he dressed, the Night Hawk tasted the experience again, rolling it on the tongue, trying to discern it as if it were an expensive red wine. It is like wine, in some ways, the Night Hawk thought. It’s kind of intoxicating, the search, the possibility, the triumphant moment of total nudity in that woman’s most intimate moment. The Night Hawk wanted more. It’s rather like wine in that, too, the Night Hawk thought as he started down the back stairs. At least for certain kinds of drinkers, drinking makes you want to drink more. . . . I may be that kind of watcher . Maybe there is never enough. As he walked through the darkness in the quiet town he could feel himself swell with importance, and tighten with uncertainty. Would he see her, any her, tonight, as he had last Wednesday? Would she be good-looking? A little plump? A little thin? Would she be younger, or old enough to show some gray? Sometimes women, after they undressed, had a little reddish indentation around their belly, where the elastic top of an undergarment had pressed into their skin.
He never went to the same part of town twice. Tonight he was in the commuter part of town, where they lived in rows of neat, expensive houses on quiet side streets. Halfway down such a street there was a cut-through to the next street, one that kids had probably worn. It was narrow, screened by bushes, and out of reach of the streetlights out front. The Night Hawk glanced around, saw no one, and turned into it. The land rose somewhat halfway along the cut-through, and at the top of the rise, if he stood up among the trees, the Night Hawk could see into the second-floor windows of the houses on Birch Avenue. At that place, the Night Hawk took up his vigil.
16
“I DON’T WANT to talk about myself today,” Jesse said. “I need to talk a little bit about business.”
“Sure,” Dix said.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Why would you lie to me?” Dix said.
“You shrinks ever give a direct answer?” Jesse said.
Dix smiled.
“Yes,” he said.
Jesse nodded. Dix waited. His shaved head was shiny. His white shirt was bright. He seemed freshly showered and gleaming. Which was how he always looked.
“You hear about the school principal who made the girls show her their underwear?”
Jesse said.
“I read a squib on it in the paper,” Dix said. “I noticed it because it was in Paradise.”
“I’m flattered,” Jesse said.
Dix nodded his head once.
“Parents raised hell, we got called in . . .” Jesse shrugged. “What do you think of that?”
“Underwear surveillance?” Dix said.
“Yeah.”
“I think it violated the civil rights of the girls,” Dix said.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, “I do, too.”
Dix waited. His elbows were on his desktop. His thick hands were folded in front of his chin. He was perfectly still.
“I’ve had her in a couple of times,” Jesse said. “Even if I’ve got no case against her, I at least want to make her uncomfortable.”
Dix nodded.
“Her husband always comes with her,” Jesse said. “You know who her husband is?”
“No,” Dix said.
“Managing partner at Cone, Oakes, and Baldwin,” Jesse said.
“Ah,” Dix said.
“Ah is right,” Jesse said. “DA won’t prosecute and, in person, has told me to leave her alone. I’ve been admonished by the town selectmen not to bother her, also the chairman of the school committee.”
“Has he supported the candidacy of these people?” Dix said.
Jesse smiled without humor.
“Oddly enough,” Jesse said, “he has.”
Dix nodded.
“But you can’t let it go,” Dix said.
“What will these kids think, if someone can violate their privacy like that and get away with it.”
“Probably what they already think,” Dix said.
“Even more reason,” Jesse said. “And . . . and, goddamn it, I want to know why she did it.”
“You’ve asked her,” Dix said.
“Every time,” Jesse said. “Sometimes she says she doesn’t want them embarrassed if someone saw them.”
“Which is why she made them publicly show what they were wearing?” Dix said.
“Uh-huh. I don’t have kids,” Jesse said. “So maybe I don’t know. But my guess would be that the most embarrassed would be some kid wearing white cotton undies that her mother bought in a six-pack at Kmart.”
Dix nodded.
“Last time we talked she said she was trying to keep them from becoming sluts when they got older,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled.
“Would that it were that easy,” he said. “She offer any other explanations?”
“Not really. As I said, her husband is always with her, and he doesn’t let her talk much.”
“Like any good attorney,” Dix said.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, “I know. He always accuses me of harassment and threatens to bring charges.”
“So why have you told me this,” Dix said.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “You got any thoughts?”
“There may be a civil action available to the parents,” Dix said.
“Yeah.”
“But you want more,” Dix said.
“I want to know what she was really doing,” Jesse said. “What do you think?”
Dix leaned back a little in his chair and put one foot against the edge of his desk. His shoes gleamed with polish.
“I agree with you that her avowed reasons are bullshit,” Dix said.
“So what was she doing?”
“Acting out something we know nothing about,” Dix said. “We don’t know what her interior life is. We don’t know what underwear means to her in that life. One reason she did what she did is that she could.”
“You mean power,” Jesse said.
“Yes. And we don’t know where the connection is made between power and sluthood and underwear. Or why it’s made.”
“How do we find out?”
“We could have her come talk to me for a couple of years.”
Jesse grinned.
“Her and her husband,” Jesse said. “Who’d be telling her not to speak.”
“You think he oppresses her in more than a lawyerly way?” Dix said.
“I don’t know. He’s an oppressive kind of guy.”
“If he is, then you could throw that into the mix,” Dix said.
“And then what have I got?” Jesse said.
“A mystery,” Dix said, “wrapped in an enigma.”
“So far,” Jesse said.
17
“GOT TWO more Peeping Tom reports,” John Maguire told Jesse.
Maguire was a fitness guy. He did martial arts. He lifted weights. And he looked it.
“Any pattern?” Jesse said.
“No,” Maguire said. “Not that I can see. One downtown, near the wharf. One up in the west end of town.”
“Maybe he’s making sure there is no pattern,” Jesse said.
“That’s sort of a pattern,” Maguire said.
“Doesn’t help us much,” Jesse said.
“Seems to be getting more active, though,” Maguire said.
“Or people are being more careful,” Jesse said.
“Pretty much everybody in town knows there’s a peeper on the loose,” Maguire said.
“Everybody’s looking out their window.”
“And reporting anybody they see,” Jesse said.
“So some of these may not really be the peeper,” Maguire said.
Jesse shrugged.
“Could even be a copycat,” he said.
“Or several,” Jesse said.
“Hell, we’ve practically got the cuffs on him,” Maguire said.
“Stay with it, Johnny,” Jesse said. “I got nobody to help you.”
“It’ll be luck,” Maguire said. “We’ll spot him by accident someplace. Or he’ll look in the wrong house and somebody’s husband will make a, ah, citizen’s arrest.”
“Be nice,” Jesse said.
“Anyway,” Maguire said. “All the women got to do is pull their shades.”
“So far,” Jesse said.
“I been reading up a little,” Maguire said. “Peepers don’t normally take it further.”
“Not usually,” Jesse said.
“On the Internet it says ‘rarely.’ ”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“You’re saying ‘rarely’ doesn’t mean ‘never’?”
“I got a twelve-man force here, and I’ve got you on this full-time,” Jesse said.
“Because it’s possible,” Maguire said.
“Otherwise, he’s just a nuisance.”
“Yeah,” Maguire said. “I’ll keep on it.”
“You’ve interviewed all the victims,” Jesse said.
“Sure,” Maguire said, “and wrote it up.”
Jesse nodded.
“Interview them again,” he said.
“They’ll say the same thing,” Maguire said.
“Usually people don’t,” Jesse said. “Maybe there’s something they left out, forgot, dis-missed as irrelevant. Their stories are all we’ve got, Johnny. You may as well keep working them.”
“Okay, Jesse.”
“And be polite and friendly,” Jesse said. “We don’t want them to wish they’d never reported it.”
“I am always polite and friendly,” Maguire said.
“I know that,” Jesse said. “Course, there was that guy fell down the stairs while in your custody.”
“Accidents happen,” Maguire said. “Besides, he was beating on his wife and kids.”
Jesse nodded.
“And you would never throw somebody down a flight of stairs,” Jesse said.
“Absolutely not, Chief.”
Jesse nodded.
“That’s what I told the selectmen,” he said.
“Protect and serve,” Maguire said.
“Absolutely,” Jesse said. “I wonder if there are any people who’ve been peeped at and haven’t reported it.”
“Probably,” Maguire said. “There usually are, I guess.”
“See if you can find any,” Jesse said.
“I’m on it,” Maguire said.
“And if you find any,” Jesse said, “try not to throw them down the stairs.”
“God, Jesse,” Maguire said. “You spoil everything.”
Jesse grinned.
“It’s how I got to be chief,” he said.
18
JESSE MET Rita Fiore after work at the bar in the Langham Hotel in Post Office Square. She was wearing a green-and-blue dress with a skirt that ended well above the knees. Her thick, red hair was down to her shoulders. She had on slingback stiletto heels. Jesse stood when she came to the bar.
“Still got the wheels,” he said.
“Thanks for noticing,” Rita said.
She slid onto a bar stool next to him.
“There a dress code at Cone, Oakes?” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Rita said. “Otherwise, I’d dress sort of flamboyantly.”
“If you were more flamboyant,” Jesse said, “you’d get arrested.”
“By you?”
“I’m out of my jurisdiction,” Jesse said.
“Damn,” Rita said.
She ordered a mojito.
“How’s Jenn?” Rita said.
“Gone to New York,” Jesse said.
“Alone?”
“No.”
Rita sipped her mojito, looking at Jesse over the rim of the glass.
“So is that why we’re having a drink?” Rita said.
“You mean, am I looking for backup?” Jesse said.
“Something like that.”
“I asked you to meet me because I like you, and I like to see you, and I need some information from you.”
“In that order?” Rita said.
Jesse smiled and drank a little of the beer he was nursing.
“No particular order,” he said.
Rita nodded.
“I don’t mind being backup,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“We’ll return to that in a little while,” he said. “First, I need to ask you about your managing partner.”
“Jay?” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Why do you want to ask me . . . oh! . . . his wife and the panty inspection.”
“Yep.”
“It happened in Paradise,” Rita said.
“Yep.”
“It’s been very embarrassing for Jay.”
“I’ll bet it has,” Jesse said.
“Are you still pursuing that?” Rita said.
“Sort of,” Jesse said. “Nobody much wants me to.”
“I’ll bet that bothers you a lot.”
Jesse shrugged.
“She violated those kids’ civil rights,” he said.
“I’m not sure that’s a legally sustainable argument,” Rita said.
“But she did.”
Rita smiled.
“And you want her to suffer some consequence,” she said.
“I do.”
“That would be you,” Rita said. “If it’s any consolation, Betsy Ingersoll is probably pretty embarrassed and wishes it hadn’t happened.”
“You know her?”
“Not really,” Rita said. “She attends a few of the hideous social events the firm occasionally runs, to prove how warm and fuzzy we are. She doesn’t get to say much.”
“Because Jay does most of the talking?”
“Nearly all,” Rita said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “So tell me about her husband.”
“He was a hell of a lawyer,” Rita said.
“Was?”
“He probably still is,” Rita said. “But he doesn’t do much law anymore. Now he mostly manages the firm.”
“And the firm does well,” Jesse said.
“Very,” Rita said.
“He love his wife?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know.”
“Say he does,” Jesse said. “What else does he care about?”
“The firm.”
“Anything else? Kids?”
“No kids,” Rita said.
Rita finished her mojito. The bartender stepped promptly over.
“Another one, Ms. Fiore?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You, sir?” the bartender said. “Another beer?”
Jesse hesitated.
“Drink scotch, Jesse,” Rita said. “You look miserable.”
“Dewar’s and soda,” Jesse said to the bartender.
“Yes, sir.”
Rita said, “Have you met Jay?”
“He came by and leaned on me a little bit,” Jesse said.
“There are a lot of successful men like him,” Rita said. “After a while he starts to think that he can do whatever he decides to do and who’s to say nay.”
“You like him?” Jesse said.
“I admire him,” Rita said.
“Would you want to be married to him?” Jesse said.
“Oh, God, no,” Rita said.
“Because?”
“He’s totally self-absorbed, like so many of them.”
“He appears to be protecting his wife,” Jesse said.
“He’s protecting his reputation,” Rita said. “He doesn’t want to be seen as the husband of a dope.”
Jesse nodded.
“Why are you so interested?” Rita said. “You going to take him on?”
“Just gathering information,” Jesse said. “It’s always better to know stuff.”
“Well, he’s got a lot of chits that he can call in,” Rita said.
“I figured,” Jesse said.
“And he’ll call them if he needs to,” Rita said. “Don’t think he’s just another empty suit.”
“I won’t,” Jesse said.
“On the other hand,” Rita said, “neither are you.”
19
EVERYONE IN town seemed to be interested in, or amused by, or frightened about, the Peeping Tom at large. They knew about him. They didn’t know his name. But they knew what he did. The Night Hawk was scared . . . and titillated. He didn’t make his usual rounds this Wednesday night. Instead, in civilian dress, he strolled around Paradise, getting a look at the way things were. Shades were down all over town. It made him smile and stirred some sense of power in him. There seemed to be no unusual police activity. No stakeouts, no prowl cars driving slowly through the neighborhoods. The Night Hawk felt faintly disappointed that there was no more police activity. Wasn’t much of a police department, anyway. And it was encouraging that maybe he could still make his rounds. But not the same way. No one would be careless about their shades anymore . . . unless he found an exhibitionist. Wouldn’t that be a chuckle, he thought, for a voyeur and an exhibitionist to find each other. That was pretty unlikely, he knew. And he also knew without quite saying it that it wouldn’t work anyway. He didn’t want to keep seeing them. He just wanted to discover their secret and move on, and discover someone else’s. Maybe he should work another town for a while. Until things relaxed
. . . No. He didn’t want things to relax, and he preferred to discover his secrets in this town.
Where he lived. Where he knew most of the people. He stopped at the main-land end of the causeway to Paradise Neck, and leaned his forearms on the top of the wall, and looked at the ocean. It would be awfully frustrating, night after Wednesday night, to be unsuccessful. He hadn’t even seen a bedroom in the last two weeks. Everywhere the shades were drawn. . . .
There was no wind. The stars were high. The black ocean quietly murmured against the causeway. . . . He stared out to sea. . . . Okay, he thought. A new venue. More risk, yes. But the rewards were greater. He smiled to himself in the darkness. Like the stock market, he thought. Bigger the risk, bigger the reward.
20
SUIT CAME into Jesse’s office carrying a bag of doughnuts.
“Sex in Paradise,” he said. “The saga continues.”
He put the doughnuts down on the edge of Jesse’s desk. Jesse took one out of the bag and had a bite.
“I got an expense account to submit,” Suit said.
“For what?”
“I bought a few beers for Vinnie Basco,” Suit said. “And I took Debbie Basco and Kim Clark for lunch.”
“Give it to Molly,” Jesse said.
Suit nodded and drank some coffee.
“You learn anything?” Jesse said.
“I bought Vinnie a few beers at the Gray Gull. I told him I was curious about the Paradise Free Swingers. You know, not as a police officer, just as a guy used to play ball with him.”
“He buy that?” Jesse said.
“I don’t think so. But his real problem was that he was embarrassed about it. Said it was kind of creepy.”
“Then why does he do it?” Jesse said.
“My question exactly. And my answer to myself was”?Suit grinned?“the little woman.”
Jesse nodded and fished another doughnut out of the paper bag.
“So I say to Vinnie,” Suit went on, “ ‘Your wife likes it?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, it turns her on.’
And that’s about all I got out of that. Rest of the time we talked about how if I coulda held my block longer he’d have had more time to run the deep patterns. And I say to him if he were faster I wouldn’ta had to hold my blocks so long. And like that. I always thought Vinnie was an okay guy.”
“You talk with Chase,” Jesse said.
“Chase Clark? Naw, he’s an asshole. Always was. I couldn’t stand him, and he couldn’t stand me.”
“Hard to believe,” Jesse said.
“How I know he’s an asshole,” Suit said.
“So you went for the wives,” Jesse said.
“I did. Kim Clark was ahead of me in high school. I guess I had kind of a crush on her.”
“She show early promise?” Jesse said.
“As a future swinger?” Suit said. “No. But she did get knocked up. It’s why she’s got a thirteen-year-old daughter, and she’s only a few years older than me.”
“So maybe she did,” Jesse said. “How about Debbie?”
Suit grinned.
“She showed a lot of promise,” he said. “With about everybody.”
“You had lunch with them together?”
“Yeah,” Suit said. “They was always buddies, even when Kimmy was into being Catholic.”
“And Debbie wasn’t,” Jesse said.
“Not so it showed. I told them I was investigating another case that had nothing to do with them, but that I needed to learn as much as I could about the swinging lifestyle.”
“And they told you,” Jesse said.
“Maybe more than I wanted to know,” Suit said.
“Cocktails with lunch?” Jesse said.
“Line of duty,” Suit said. “And a couple bottles of wine.”
“Candy is dandy,” Jesse said, “but liquor is quicker.”
“Man,” Suit said. “I never drink in the middle of the day. I barely sipped a little wine, and I had to go home and take a nap.”
“Being a lush is heavy work,” Jesse said. “What’d they tell you.”
“Well, for openers,” Suit said, “they talked about it like it was some kind of high-minded philosophy of life. The swinging lifestyle.”
“Liberated,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, ‘free of prudish’ . . . what did she say? ‘Free of prudish limitations.’ That’s what Debbie told me,” Suit said.
“Only a repressed pervert would disapprove,” Jesse said.
“Debbie says that studies show that swingers have happier relationships and more stable marriages.”
“Because they are open and loving, and there’s no surreptitious nookie going on,” Jesse said.
“Wow,” Suit said. “Surreptitious nookie.”
“I amaze myself, sometimes,” Jesse said. “How’s it work?”
“The swingers club?”
“Yep.”
“Couples only,” Suit said. “No single guys.”
“Leaves us out,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” Suit said. “Don’t seem fair, does it?”
“How about single women?” Jesse said.
“No rules that I know of about that,” Suit said.
“Sexist bastards,” Jesse said. “So do they meet regularly?”
“They meet once a month at a club member’s home,” Suit said. “And they also have, you know, parties and cookouts and picnics, stuff like that.”
“And this is all about partners having sex with other people’s partners,” Jesse said.
“I guess,” Suit said. “I know that sometimes one partner watches while the other partner does it.”
“I wonder how they decide,” Jesse said.
“Who’s gonna do what with who?” Suit said. “Yeah, I wondered about that.”
“But you didn’t ask,” Jesse said.
“I was getting embarrassed,” Suit said.
“Cops don’t get embarrassed,” Jesse said.
“Never?” Suit said.
Jesse grinned at him.
“Hardly ever,” he said. “Debbie seems to have done most of the talking. What did Kim have to say?”
“Not much. She was kind of agreeing with Debbie, but I don’t know. She didn’t seem to have much to say about it.”
“She’s the one we should talk with,” Jesse said.
“Because she didn’t say much?”
“Be good to know why she didn’t,” Jesse said
21
JESSE SAT at a table in Daisy’s Restaurant and looked at Sunny Randall sitting across from him wearing tight jeans and a white tank top.
“Hard to carry a concealed weapon in that outfit,” Jesse said.
“This outfit is not about concealing,” Sunny said. “Gun’s in my purse.”
Jesse nodded.
“The outfit is doing its job,” Jesse said.
“Of not concealing?”
“Yes.”
“I was hoping you’d notice,” she said.
They were drinking iced tea and eating sandwiches. Sunny had a BLT. Jesse had a lobster club.
“We got an agenda on this visit?” Jesse said.
“You mean why did I come up here and have lunch with you?”
“Yes.”
“How about because you’re a white-hot stud, and I’ve missed you,” Sunny said.
“Nice answer,” Jesse said.
“It’s true. I do miss you,” Sunny said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I miss you, too.”
“And,” Sunny said, “I want a favor.”
Jesse nodded.
“Don’t they always,” Jesse said.
“Ohmigod, the weltschmerz,” Sunny said.
“I’m trying it out,” Jesse said. “How’s it play?”
“Sucks,” Sunny said. “Here’s what I need.”
Jesse smiled and nodded.
“You remember my friend Spike,” she said.
“Sure, big guy, beard, looks sort of like a bear.”
“That would be Spike,” Sunny said.
She opened her sandwich and picked up a slice of bacon and took a small bite off the end of it. Sunny always looked as if she’d recently stepped from the shower, combed her hair, ap-plied her makeup carefully, and dressed. There was a freshness about her that made her seem always nearly brand-new.
“He owns a restaurant in Boston,” Sunny said. “Spike’s. Near Quincy Market.”
“Clever name,” Jesse said.
“He wants to expand,” Sunny said. “And he’s looking to get a place up here.”
“Spike’s North?” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Sunny said, “in fact. How’d you know?”
“You got something really clever,” Jesse said. “You probably like to work with it.”
Sunny took a red lettuce leaf from her deconstructed sandwich and nibbled on it.
“I thought being down with the chief of police might be useful to him,” she said.
“How useful has it been for you?” Jesse said.
“More than maybe you know,” Sunny said.
They were quiet for a moment, waiting for the conversation to go to another place.
“I could put him in touch with my friend Marcy Campbell. She’s a real estate broker.”
“Good friend?” Sunny said.
“Yes.”
“With privileges?” Sunny said.
“Why do you ask?” Jesse said.
Sunny nibbled on a tomato slice. Then she put it down and patted her mouth with her napkin.
“How’s Jenn,” she said.
“Gone to New York,” Jesse said.
“To work?”
“Yes.”
“She go by herself?”
“No.”
“Man?” Sunny said.
Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, as if he were stretching his neck.
After a time he said, “Of course.”
Sunny nodded. She sipped some iced tea. Jesse sat forward and smiled at her.
“How’s Richie?” Jesse said.
“I don’t exactly know,” Sunny said. “We decided to try a sabbatical from one another. I mean, you know, for God’s sake, his current wife is having a baby soon.”
Jesse nodded.
“And Rosie?”
Sunny shook her head.
“I had to put her down,” she said. “This spring.”
“Oh, God,” Jesse said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Sunny said. “I’ll get past it.”
“Hard,” Jesse said.
“Very.”
He put his hand on hers on the tabletop. They sat quietly. The waitress came and asked if they were interested in dessert. They said no. She brought them the check. Jesse paid it and added a tip.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jesse said.
“And go where?” Sunny said.
“We can start with a walk on the beach,” Jesse said.
“That feels right,” Sunny said.
“It does,” Jesse said.
And they left the restaurant.
22
EDDIE COX called in.
“Jesse,” he said. “I got a home invasion. I think you need to come down here, now, and bring Molly.”
“Where,” Jesse said.
Cox gave him the address on Beach Street.
“Here I come,” Jesse said.
“Can we do the siren?” Molly said as they drove to Beach Street.
“No need,” Jesse said.
“Damn,” Molly said, and settled back in the passenger seat with her arms folded. “What are we going to?”
“Home invasion,” Jesse said. “Must be a woman involved. Cox requested you.”
“Maybe he just wanted my superior investigative skills,” Molly said.
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
Cox’s patrol car was parked on the street in front of an ordinary-looking smallish white colonial-style house on a street of smallish colonials in the south part of town, near the commuter railroad station. There was a pear tree in the front yard.
When Jesse rang the bell, Cox opened the front door and gestured them to the living room, which ran the length of the house from back to front. A woman sat on the couch, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She was crying.
“Kids?” Jesse said.
Molly walked over and sat down on the couch beside the woman.
“In school,” Cox said. “Husband works in Boston. He’s on his way.”
“Name?” Jesse said.
Cox glanced at his notebook.
“Dorothy Browne,” he said.
Jesse nodded and walked to the couch.
“I’m Jesse Stone, Mrs. Browne. Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Jesse said.
She nodded again. Molly sat quietly beside her. Jesse waited. Mrs. Browne gathered herself.
“What if the kids had been here,” she said.
“It’s good that they weren’t,” Jesse said.
Mrs. Browne took a couple of breaths.
“Michael went to work like always, the seven-forty train from Preston Station. I got the kids onto the school bus at eight.” She smiled very faintly. “That’s always a struggle. I cleaned up breakfast dishes, made the beds, took a shower, and dressed for the day.”
Across the room from where she sat on the couch was a small, clean fireplace, and above it a large oil painting of surf breaking over the kind of rock outcroppings that lined the coast north of Boston. She stared at it blankly as she talked. Her voice was under tight control, almost monotone.
“I came downstairs all neat and clean,” she said, “with my makeup on, and he was in my living room with a ski mask on . . . I was going to have coffee and read the paper.”
Eddie Cox stood near the front door, looking uneasy. Molly sat close to Mrs. Browne on the couch. Jesse waited.
“He had a gun,” she said. “He said he wouldn’t hurt me if I did what he said. I said, I think, something like ‘What do you want?’ He said for me to take off all my clothes.”
Jesse nodded.
“So I said something really stupid like ‘Why?’ And he said, and I remember him saying it just like this, ‘Because if you don’t I will hurt you, but if you do, I won’t.’ ”
She paused and hugged herself as if she were cold. Molly patted her arm gently.
“I couldn’t seem to get started for a minute. I just stood there and he made a little gesture with the gun, and he said, ‘You want me here when the kids come home from school?’ ”
Her eyes filled as if she was going to cry. But she didn’t. She got under control again.
“So I undressed.” She looked down at her lap and shivered. “He stood there and watched me take my clothes off. In my living room, at, like, ten o’clock in the morning.”
Cox turned and looked out through the narrow glass sidelights flanking the front door.
Molly continued to pat Mrs. Browne’s arm.
“And when I got entirely naked, he just stood there looking at me. I think I said something like ‘Please don’t rape me.’ And he nodded and took out one of those little digital cameras and took pictures of me.”
“Oh, God,” Molly said.
“I didn’t know what to do. I just had to stand there. Then he told me to lie facedown on the couch and close my eyes and count to one hundred without looking up. . . . In some ways that was the worst; I didn’t know what he would do. So I counted, and when I got through counting I sort of peeked and he was gone. And I sat up and he was still gone. So I put on my clothes and called you.”
“How close did he get?” Jesse said.
“Close?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not very,” Mrs. Browne said. “Not as close as you are now.”
“So he didn’t touch you,” Jesse said.
“No.”
Jesse looked around the living room. There were no pictures except the oil painting above the fireplace.
“How did he know you had kids?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Browne said.
“You didn’t mention them?”
“No.”
“You didn’t recognize this man?” Jesse said.
“He was wearing a ski mask,” she said. “I told you that.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “But sometimes people recognize a voice, or mannerisms, if the masked person is well known to them.”
“I have no idea who this man was.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Couple of things. First, I am very sorry that this happened to you. I can’t make it up to you. But I can try very hard to catch this guy.”
Mrs. Browne nodded.
“Second, when your husband gets home, you and he will need to decide what you’re going to tell the kids, keeping in mind that this story may become public knowledge.”
“What do you think he’ll do with the pictures,” Mrs. Browne said.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “Often they keep them to themselves.”
“They?”
“People who do this sort of aggressive voyeurism,” Jesse said.
“There are people who do this?” Mrs. Browne said.
“Yes.”
“But they don’t always keep the pictures to themselves?” Mrs. Browne said.
“No,” Jesse said.
“Oh, God!”
“You and your husband should talk when he gets here,” Jesse said.
Mrs. Browne nodded.
“The other thing,” Jesse said. “Do you have a place where you could go for the rest of the day?”
“Kids, too?” she said.
“Yes, everyone, until about suppertime?”
“I guess we could go across the street,” she said. “The Cronins. Why?”
“I want to seal the house off so my crime scene guy can go over it.”
“There won’t be any fingerprints,” she said. “He was wearing those latex gloves, like doctors wear.”
“Still need to go over the house,” Jesse said. “If we may.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Officer Crane will go with you,” Jesse said. “You and she can talk more.”
“What if he comes back?” Mrs. Browne said.
“We’ll see to it,” Jesse said, “that you are not alone.”
Mrs. Browne nodded.
“So,” Jesse said. “Moll, why don’t you take Mrs. Browne over to the Cronins’, where you can talk.”
Molly nodded.
“What about my husband?” Mrs. Browne said.
“We’ll send him over when he gets here.”
“Can you let me tell him,” she said.
“Of course,” Jesse said.
They were quiet.
Then Mrs. Browne said, “All he did was see me naked.”
Molly said, “Yes.”
“I’m forty-one,” Mrs. Browne said. “Other men have seen me naked. Not a bunch, but some.”
“Sure,” Molly said.
“My body is still okay,” Mrs. Browne said. “It’s not like I should be ashamed of my body.”
“Of course not,” Molly said.
“So why is this such a big deal?” Mrs. Browne said.
Molly put her arm around Mrs. Browne’s shoulders.
“It is a big deal,” Molly said. “For you.”
“Why?”
“The others were voluntary,” Molly said.
23
BETSY INGERSOLL came into Jesse’s office and sat down in a chair in front of his desk and crossed her legs.
Not unattractive,Jesse thought. A little sturdy maybe, but not so sturdy that she was unattractive.
“Thanks for coming in,” Jesse said.
“You are the chief of police,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “I respect authority.”
“Wish there were more like you,” Jesse said. “May I call you Betsy?”
“Which is not to say I necessarily respect you.”
“Just the office,” Jesse said.
“Why do you wish to see me?” she said.
“I wanted to ask you a few more questions about the recent incident, Betsy,” Jesse said.
“Would you like to have your attorney present?”
“You mean my husband,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “I am capable of speaking without him.”
“So you are willing to speak to me without counsel,” Jesse said.
“I have done nothing wrong,” she said. “I am willing to speak with anyone.”
“Nice,” Jesse said. “How many of the girls you checked on that day were inappropriately clothed?”
“How many?”
“Yeah, how many were too risqué, or whatever?” Jesse said. “Isn’t that why you checked?”
“Chief Stone,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “That was some time ago now. I have no idea.”
“You checked twenty-two girls,” Jesse said. “Of whom you sent thirteen home to change.”
“If you knew that, why did you bother to ask?”
“I’m a small-town police chief, Betsy. I got nothing else to do.”
“I would prefer to be called Mrs. Ingersoll,” she said.
“Ah, it’s so formal,” Jesse said. “You want to get even, call me Jesse.”
“Do you have anything else?” Mrs. Ingersoll said.
“Of the thirteen you sent home to change, were all of them wearing thongs?”
“That is a preposterous question,” she said.
“The whole business is preposterous, Betsy. How many were wearing thongs?”
“I have no idea.”
“Seven thongs,” Jesse said. “Four bikinis. And a couple that were too lacy, or the wrong color, or something.”
“Undergarments are not ornamental,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “They are for sanitation and modesty.”
“Does Victoria’s Secret know about this?” Jesse said.
“You are badgering me, Chief Stone, pure and simple,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “And I don’t know why.”
“I’m trying to understand, Betsy.”
“There is nothing to understand,” she said. “My job is the well-being of those children. Not merely that they can read and write; my concern is the whole child, and I will not allow my girls to be anything less than ladies.”
“Chilling,” Jesse said.
“I beg your pardon?”
The door to Jesse’s office was open, and Jay Ingersoll appeared in it.
“What the hell is going on here?” he said.
Jesse glanced up at him and smiled.
“Ah, Jay,” Jesse said. “If only I knew.”
24
THE NIGHT Hawk was frightened. He had gone way past what he’d ever thought he’d do.
And he’d done it in broad daylight. Would he have forced her if she resisted? Would he have shot her? He looked at her picture on the computer screen. Naked and frightened. He clicked onto the other pictures of her. Why? They were essentially the same picture. Yet he felt compelled to look at each of them. And each time he felt the same fearful surge. The same tangle of desire and fright and unsated appetite. It was an uncompleted experience, he realized. And no matter how much he looked, it remained incomplete, and yet looking somehow compelled him to keep looking. . . . He felt shaky. He’d gotten away with it this time, no one had seen him. He’d been careful and left no trace. He should stop. He’d done it. And now he should give it up. All of it. The whole Night Hawk thing. It wasn’t too late. He could have had this life and left it, and he could be safe . . . destroy these pictures, maybe even destroy the computer. Be perfectly safe. No one would ever know. . . . He stared some more at the naked, frightened woman whose name he didn’t even know. . . . I can’t destroy the pictures. . . . He clicked on the next one. Same woman. Same body. Same fear. Why keep looking . . . And just as he kept looking, he knew he’d do it again. He knew he’d scout carefully, observe another woman’s home, get the lay of the land, and, when he was sure, and things were right, he’d go in and make her undress. Take her picture. Then he’d have her secret, in his computer, available to study, never quite enough. I won’t stop. Maybe I can’t stop. What if I do something worse? I don’t want to do something worse. But what if I do? He shook his head as if to clear it, and began to click through his pictures again.
25
“YOU HAVE no business talking to my wife without me present,” Ingersoll said.
Jesse didn’t answer.
“What have you told him?” Ingersoll said to his wife.
“What is there to tell, Jay?” she said.
“This is harassment,” Ingersoll said to Jesse.
Jesse smiled and didn’t say anything.
“And you know it is,” Ingersoll said. “Don’t you.”
Jesse smiled some more.
“Can’t you make him leave me alone?” Betsy Ingersoll said.
“I can,” Ingersoll said, “and I will.”
“I wish you would,” Betsy said. “In fact, Jay, I wish you already had.”
“I told you,” Ingersoll said, “if he approached you in any way you were to call me at once.”
“Yes,” she said. “You did.”
“But you chose to disobey me,” Ingersoll said.
“I know,” she said.
“We’ll discuss that later,” Ingersoll said.
“Why later?” she said.
Ingersoll shook his head.
“Stone,” he said, “I have spoken to the district attorney about you.”
“He mentioned that,” Jesse said.
“And I have spoken to your board of selectmen,” Ingersoll said. “You will, I’m sure, hear from them shortly.”
“Doubtless,” Jesse said.
“Why not now,” Betsy Ingersoll said.
“What?” Ingersoll said.
“Why can’t we discuss my disobedience right now,” she said.
“For God’s sake, Betsy. We’re in the police chief’s office.”
“Perfect,” she said. “You can have him arrest me for disobedience.”
Jesse could see Ingersoll fighting his temper.
“I have no plans for that, Betsy.”
Ingersoll smiled.
“Let’s pursue it at home,” he said.
“When will that be?” she said.
“When will we be home?” Ingersoll said.
“I’ll be home pretty soon,” Betsy said. “But you. When will you be home?”
“When you are,” Ingersoll said.
Puzzlement was pressing for position with anger in his response.
“That will be refreshing,” she said.
Puzzlement was winning.
“That I’m home?” he said.
“You so rarely are,” Betsy said.
Ingersoll looked as if he’d been physically jostled. He stared at her.
“Betsy,” he said finally, “I am the managing partner of the biggest law firm north of New York. I work long hours, and I work very hard.”
“I know how hard you’re working,” she said. “And at what.”
Ingersoll said to Jesse, “Could you excuse us for a moment?”
“You mean step out of my office?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“No,” Jesse said. “You’re free to leave.”
Ingersoll stood silently.
The he said, “Betsy. Time to go.”
“You go along, Jay,” she said. “I’m not through here.”
He stood silent again.
Then he said to her, “God, you’re an embarrassment,” and turned and left the office.
Jesse looked at Betsy and waited.
“He orders me around like I’m some kind of junior law clerk,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“I’m his wife, for God’s sake,” she said.
Jesse nodded again.
“He ought to pay more attention to that,” she said.
Jesse waited. Betsy Ingersoll didn’t say any more.
“Is it that he orders you around?” Jesse said.
“It’s a lot of things,” Betsy said. “Are we through here?”
“I think we probably are,” Jesse said. “For the moment.”
26
“HAVE YOU seen me?” Jenn said when Jesse answered the phone.
“On the tube?” Jesse said.
“Yes, silly, where else?”
Jesse sipped his first drink of the night, carefully, so Jenn wouldn’t hear.
“I haven’t,” Jesse said.
“Probably not syndicated up there yet. But we will be. The show is really taking off.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Jesse said.
“I’ve been doing a style report every Wednesday morning and some interviews, and of course the weather.”
“For the whole syndication area?” Jesse said.
“You know,” Jenn said, “one of those generic reports: Weather in the east is mostly clear and mild. There are some storm clouds in the area of Chesapeake Bay, and unseasonable temperatures along the coast of Maine. Now, here’s the forecast for your area. Cut to local news, one minute.”
“Find a place to live?” Jesse said.
“Downtown,” Jenn said. “Nice little studio on Tenth Street, between Fifth and Sixth. Rent-controlled.”
“Sublet?” Jesse said.
“No, my friend has had it since rent control,” Jenn said.
“You sublet from your friend?”
“No, we share,” Jenn said.
“Helps with the rent,” Jesse said.
He took another drink, carefully.
“Yes,” Jenn said.
Jesse didn’t say anything.
“Well, actually,” Jenn said, “I guess he pays the rent.”
Jesse finished his drink.
“Helps quite a bit with the rent,” Jesse said.
Jesse considered whether he could make another drink without Jenn’s knowing.
“I’m trying to be honest with you, Jesse,” she said. “Please don’t make it harder for me.”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“We’ve always been honest with each other,” Jenn said.
“Actually,” Jesse said, “we haven’t.”
“Well, it’s not too late to start,” Jenn said.
“Nope,” Jesse said.
He stood and walked to the bar, took a handful of ice from the bucket, and put it in his glass.
“Are you drinking?” Jenn said.
“You bet,” Jesse said.
He broke the phone connection and shut off the answering machine. Then he put more ice in the glass, added some scotch to his usual level, and filled the glass with soda. The phone didn’t ring again. He took a long pull on the drink and sat on a bar stool and looked at Ozzie’s picture. He nodded to himself. He could never have been Ozzie, but he could have made the show. Whenever he looked at Ozzie’s picture he remembered. Playing at Pueblo. The three-hopper to the right side. The runner coming down from first. The second baseman’s feed, a little high, as Jesse covered second. The takeout slide was a clean one, but it caught him as he was reaching for the throw and trying to stay with the bag. He flipped. He landed on his right shoulder. He hung on to the ball, but they missed the double play, and his shoulder was broken. It was his last professional game. He stood and walked to his French doors and stared out at the harbor. He had no claim on Jenn. They were divorced. He slept with other women. She slept with other men. She started it. They were still married when she started it.
Jesse took in more scotch. That was then. This is now. It all seemed a downward spiral. He was going to be a big-league shortstop, and then he wasn’t. He was a detective in Robbery Homicide in Los Angeles. Then he wasn’t. He was married to Jenn. Then he wasn’t. He finished his drink and went back to the bar and made another one. He gestured with the full glass at the picture.
“You and me, Wizard,” he said.
Now he was a small-town cop in the far corner of the country, drinking alone at night and talking to a fucking baseball poster. He took his glass to his chair and sat and looked at the phone. No need to turn the answering machine off, she wasn’t calling back anyway. He reached over and turned it on. He looked around the empty room and took a drink.
“After this, what?” he said aloud in the empty room.
He sat and thought about what he’d said, and nodded his head slowly, and smiled faintly to himself.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
27
MOLLY HAD patched the desk phone into the conference room, and everyone but Arthur Angstrom and Buddy Hall was in there.
“We’ve had two more home invasions,” Jesse said. “Three so far. Pretty much the same M.O. Women home alone in the daytime. Man comes in with a mask and a gun, forces them to disrobe, takes their picture, makes them lie facedown and count to a hundred, and disappears.”
“He dress the same?” Suit said.
“Black pants, black windbreaker,” Jesse said. “Ski mask. Baseball hat, probably Yankees.
The women aren’t sure.”
“Nobody in the neighborhood noticed anything?” Maguire said.
“Nope,” Jesse said. “Not that many people around. Most people’s husbands and wives both work. Kids are in school.”
“Do we know if he was in a car or on foot?” Suit said.
“Nope.”
“He dresses like our peeper,” Molly said. “Think it might be him.”
“They don’t usually escalate like that,” Suit said.
Jesse looked at him.
“I been reading up,” Suit said.
He had a yellow legal pad on the table in front of him, and a ballpoint pen. Jesse nodded and went to the big pot on the file cabinet and got some coffee. There was a box of doughnuts on the table. He took one.
“Any thoughts?” he said.
He took a bite of the doughnut, leaning forward so he wouldn’t get cinnamon sugar on his shirt front.
“We see a pattern anywhere?” Suit said.
“The women,” Molly said. “All of them in their forties. All of them married, with children in school.”
“All of them in neighborhoods which are relatively deserted during the day,” Suit said. “At least the school day.”
“So, which is the appeal?” Jesse said. “Married? Children? Forty?”
“Alone during the day?” Maguire said.
“Relatively upscale neighborhoods,” Suit said.
“All of the above?” Molly said.
“Age is maybe a function of other things,” Molly said. “Most women with kids in school would be in their thirties or forties.”
“Like you, Moll,” Suit said.
“Like hell,” Molly said. “I’m the same age as my oldest kid.”
“How’s that work?” Suit said.
“It just does,” Molly said.
Jesse looked at Maguire.
“Any reports of our Peeping Tom since the first home invasion?” Jesse said.
“No,” Maguire said.
“We have to consider that it may be the same guy,” Jesse said.
“We don’t know who he is,” Suit said. “So what we consider don’t make a hell of a lot of difference.”
Jesse ignored him.
“And we can also entertain the possibility that it’s not,” Jesse said.
“The peeper was my case, Jesse,” Maguire said. “Are the home invasions mine, too?”
“The home-invasions case belongs to all of us,” Jesse said. “If it is our peeper, he’s escalating, and we have no way to know how far it’ll go.”
No one said anything.
“Molly and I will keep talking to the victims,” Jesse said. “I want each of you to listen to everybody you know, questions, gossip, idle chitchat, thoughtful discussion, jokes, whatever, and always listening for anything that might send you somewhere, tell you something, lead you anywhere.”
No one said anything.
“A good police force,” Jesse said, “allows people to feel safe in their homes.”
Everyone was quiet.
“We need to do better,” Jesse said
No one spoke. Everyone looked glum.
Jesse grinned.
“Win one for the Stoner?” he said.
They all looked relieved.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Time to go back to work. Molly, you fill in Arthur and Buddy. Suit, stick around for a minute. Everybody else . . .” He jerked his thumb toward the door and they got up and left. Suit stayed sitting at the table with his yellow pad.
“We get all the rest of the doughnuts,” he said.
He reached into the box and took one.
“You still talking to the swingers?” Jesse said.
“Sure,” Suit said. “Can’t say I’m learning much.”
“See if they have anyone in their group that especially likes to watch.”
Suit nodded as he chewed down half a doughnut.
When it was swallowed he said, “You think it might be one of the swingers?”
“No,” Jesse said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t. But I got nowhere else to go, and at least the swingers group is atypical in their sexuality.”
“It’ll take a while,” Suit said. “I have to do a lot of schmoozing to get a little information, you know?”
“It’s called police work,” Jesse said.
“Awful long shot,” Suit said.
“At the moment, I don’t have a shorter one,” Jesse said.
Suit nodded. He finished his doughnut.
“You think this guy will do something worse?”
“If he’s our peeper, he went up the ladder pretty quick,” Jesse said.
“They dress the same,” Suit said.
“Could be a copycat,” Jesse said. “Could be on purpose to mislead us.”
“Or it could be him,” Suit said.
“Or it could be him,” Jesse said.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Suit said.
28
“SO,” SPIKE SAID, “you two got anything going these days?”
“What we’ve got going,” Sunny said, “as you well know, is my ex-husband, and Jesse’s ex-wife.”
“It’s a start,” Spike said.
Jesse smiled.
“How are things with Marcy Campbell?” Jesse said.
The three of them were sitting on the deck of the Gray Gull as the sun set behind them, stretching the shadows of the boats at mooring toward Paradise Neck.
“Good,” Spike said. “She really likes you.”
“Everybody does,” Jesse said. “Is she finding you any property?”
“She doesn’t do commercial real estate, but she is co-brokering with a guy who does.”
“Find anything?” Jesse said.
He was drinking beer. Spike had a Maker’s Mark on the rocks. Sunny sipped some Riesling.
“Yep,” Spike said.
“You did?” Sunny said.
“Yep.”
“Well, where?” Sunny said.
Spike grinned.
“Right here,” he said.
“The Gray Gull?” Sunny said.
“Yep, soon to be Spike’s North.”
“My God,” Sunny said.
“Congratulations,” Jesse said.
“But you can’t call it Spike’s North,” Sunny said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the Gray Gull,” Sunny said. “It’s been here forever.”
“Or at least since you started fooling around with the chief,” Spike said.
“At least that long,” Sunny said. “The name’s got history. People will be mad if you change it.”
“Like I should care,” Spike said.
“Customers will be mad at you,” Sunny said.
Spike smiled at Sunny. She often referred to Spike as her “compliance consultant,” and Jesse could see why. He wasn’t unusually tall. But he had about him the massive shapeless force of a bear.
“Like, I do care,” he said. “How about Spike’s Gray Gull?”
“Ick,” Sunny said.
“Okay,” Spike said. “Gray Gull.”
“A proven winner,” Sunny said
“Sound right to you, Chief Jesse?” Spike said.
Spike’s receding hair was cut very close to his skull and his beard was trimmed short.
There was a shiny go-to-hell look in his eyes.
“ ‘Fooling around’?” Jesse said.
“Fooling around what?” Spike said.
“Sunny and I weren’t fooling around,” Jesse said. “We were serious.”
“Ah,” Spike said. “Excellent. If I weren’t gayer than laughter, I’d be serious about her, too.”
“Would you like to talk about me further?” Sunny said. “I’ll try to be quiet.”
“When I heard you were a private dick, I was hopeful,” Spike said. “But then when I met you my hopes were dashed.”
“Short for detective,” Sunny said.
“Sure,” Spike said. “Now you tell me.”
Sunny giggled.
“When do you close?” Jesse said.
“Sixty days,” Spike said. “Then if you want, you can run a tab here.”
“What I need,” Jesse said. “An open tab at a bar.”
29
JESSE SAT in his office, reading a letter from the Night Hawk.
Dear Chief Stone,
I know you have been looking for me. I am your Peeping Tom, and I am the one who forced those women to undress so I could take their pictures (see enclosed, so you know it’s really me). When I’m doing that, I am in some sort of feverish coma. When it’s over I feel disgusted with myself and swear that I’ll never do it again. But I do. I am really afraid I might do something even worse than what I’m doing. When I’m in the coma, I seem to be somebody else. I guess it’s some kind of obsession. The funny thing about it is how I get pleasure from it when I do it, but overall it’s ruining my life. Maybe it’s the nature of obsessions. I hate it. I hate myself. I’ve seen plenty of naked women in my life. But never enough for my obsession. I won’t turn myself in. I probably should, but my obsession won’t let me. I guess I can’t. And I don’t even know if this letter is a cri de coeur asking for help, or if it’s part of my obsession to taunt you. What I know is that my life is becoming more unbearable every time I act out my obsession. . . . But I need to see, I need to know their secret.
The Night Hawk
Jesse picked up the three pictures that had come with the letter. They were remarkably similar. A frightened and humiliated woman standing naked, looking into the camera. The women even looked somewhat alike. Dark hair, not fat, about the same height. What secret were they revealing? Their naked selves? You could go online and find thousands of pictures of nude women. What was special about these women? Maybe it wasn’t about nudity or sex.
Maybe it was about control, about power. In most men, Jesse suspected, sex and power were not unrelated. Did it matter that they looked superficially alike? Most women of their age and weight and social status would probably look pretty much like they did, if forced to stand naked in front of a stranger’s camera. Why had he written? Was it that he wanted to get caught?
Or was he like those people who had sex in public places, the experience intensified by the possibility of getting caught? Or both.
Jesse took the pictures to his office window and looked at them carefully in the sunlight.
They told him nothing. The Night Hawk had obviously used a digital camera and fed the pictures into his computer, and printed them out on ordinary printer paper. He turned the pictures over. Nothing. He turned them back faceup. Nothing. Nothing to tell him what computer, or what printer, or even what kind of camera. He went back to his desk and took a lavender file folder from a desk drawer. Molly bought his office supplies, and she liked colorful file folders.
He spread the three pictures out on his desktop and covered them one at a time with the file folder and then slid the folder down an inch at a time, looking at each narrow segment of the picture as the folder revealed it. Nothing. He did the same with the letter. Nothing. He took the letter to the window and studied it in the sunlight. Ordinary paper. Common typeface. He went back to his desk and put the three photographs in the lavender folder with the letter on top of them. Then he went to his office door and yelled for Molly.
“Close the door,” he said when she came in.
She did, and sat down in front of his desk. Jesse handed her the folder.
“Read the letter first,” Jesse said. “Then look at the pictures.”
Molly nodded and opened the folder. She read the letter and looked at the pictures, and when she was done she put everything back in the folder, closed the folder, and put it on the edge of Jesse’s desk.
“The son of a bitch,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“You’ve been over these?”
“From every angle I could think of,” Jesse said.
“Prints?”
“Not yet,” Jesse said. “You can have Peter Perkins go over them, in your presence.”
“In my presence?”
“I want you to take care of these pictures,” Jesse said. “I give them to anybody else in the department and they’ll be in the copy machine thirty seconds later.”
“What is it with men and nudity,” Molly said.
“I guess we’re in favor of it,” Jesse said.
“I mean, I’ve been married seventeen years,” Molly said. “My husband has seen me naked maybe five thousand times. But every time I come out of the shower or whatever he looks at me like he’s peeking in a window.”
Jesse nodded.
“What’s that about?” Molly said.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“Are you like that?” Molly said.
Jesse nodded slowly.
“Pretty much,” he said.
“In the time you’ve been a cop,” Molly said, “have you ever heard of a female Peeping Tom?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t get it,” Molly said.
“Me either.”
“I mean, have no interest in seeing a man with his clothes off,” Molly said.
“Not even certain Native Americans from the Apache tribe?” Jesse said.
“Oh, hell,” Molly said. “Will you ever let up on that?”
“I have no plans to,” Jesse said.
“One little indiscretion,” she said. “Why did I ever tell you?”
“I’m the chief of police,” Jesse said.
Molly nodded.
“Sad but true,” she said. “So, is this part of my case?”
“We gotta hang on to the pictures,” Jesse said. “They’re evidence. But I don’t want a bunch of male cops looking at nude pictures of them. I don’t want those women humiliated any more than they have been.”
Molly nodded again and picked up the folder. She stood for a moment, looking at Jesse.
“You’re not so bad,” she said. “For a guy.”
“If only I were Apache,” Jesse said.
Molly looked at him for another moment.
“Oh, fuck you,” she said.
“Hey,” Jesse said. “How ’bout a little respect.”
Molly grinned.
“Oh, fuck you, Chief,” she said, and left the office.
30
JESSE BROUGHT a copy of the Night Hawk’s letter with him when he went to see Dix.
“Could you read this for me?” Jesse said.
Dix nodded and picked up the letter. He read it carefully and handed it back to Jesse.
“The serial home invader in Paradise?” Dix said.
“Yes. There were pictures of his victims, but I didn’t bring them.”
“No need,” Dix said.
“Whaddya think?” Jesse said.
Dix tipped his chair back with his elbows resting on the arms and his fingers laced across his flat stomach.
“He seems to understand himself,” Dix said.
“You don’t think he’s crazy?” Jesse said.
“I do,” Dix said. “And that is what he seems to understand.”
Jesse nodded.
“Anything in there that will help me catch him?”
“Not much,” Dix said. “Tell me about the women.”
“Married, mothers, all around forty, dark hair, good-enough-looking, but not head-turners.”
“Three so far,” Dix said.
“Yes.”
“So we may have some idea of what kind of woman he favors.”
“Kind of a small sample,” Jesse said.
“It’s all you have at the moment,” Dix said. “Theory of the case?”
“Guy likes to take pictures of naked women,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled.
“Hard to argue against that,” he said.
“Anything you see in the letter?” Jesse said. “Besides he knows he’s crazy?”
“He promises to keep doing it,” Dix said.
“It’s my impression that it is unusual for Peeping Toms to graduate to home invasion,”
Jesse said.
“That is my impression as well,” Dix said.
“But it happens.”
“Yes,” Dix said.
“And it happened with this guy,” Jesse said.
“Unless he’s lying about being the Peeping Tom.”
“You think he is?”
“Don’t know,” Dix said.
“So, say it’s the truth. Why would someone take that step?”
“There’s no way to know, as was the case with your panty checker,” Dix said. “We have no idea what all of this means to him.”
“Peeping Tom work is so much less dangerous,” Jesse said. “And if you are caught, the consequences are much less severe.”
“Maybe that’s the charm of home invasion,” Dix said.
“The risk?”
“It seems from his letter that he wants to be caught,” Dix said.
“So we just sit around and wait until he catches himself?” Jesse said.
“He also doesn’t want to be caught,” Dix said.
“Conflicted,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled and nodded.
“And obsessive,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled and nodded again.
“If we knew why,” Jesse said.
“Probably wouldn’t do you much good,” Dix said. “A lot of obsessions are rooted in long-ago events that the obsessed aren’t even aware of.”
Jesse nodded.
“I mean, pretty much every guy I know would look at a nude woman if he could,” Jesse said.
Dix nodded.
“Wouldn’t you?”
Dix smiled.
“I’m behind the desk,” Dix said. “You’re in front of it.”
“Which means I don’t get to know anything about you?” Jesse said.
“You know several things,” Dix said.
“I know you used to be a cop and you used to be a drunk,” Jesse said.
“And you also know that I have a Ph.D. from Chicago, and an M.D. from Harvard.”
“How would I know that?” Jesse said.
“And you a trained detective,” Dix said.
He pointed to the diplomas framed on his wall.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “But you know what I’m saying. Most men are interested in female nudity.”
“Most straight men,” Dix said.
Jesse nodded.
“But most men don’t do what this guy does,” he said.
“Because they are not driven by his need,” Dix said.
“So what the fuck is his need?” Jesse said.
“There may be a clue,” Dix said. “In the letter he speaks of a need to see.”
“ ‘I need to see,’ ” Jesse quoted. “ ‘I need to know their secret.’ ”
“You didn’t miss it,” Dix said.
“What’s the secret?” Jesse said.
“We have no way to know,” Dix said.
“How about a guess?” Jesse said. “Anything is better than nothing.”
Dix paused and didn’t speak for a moment.
“There was a famous British aesthete,” Dix said, “who, on his wedding night, was so traumatized by the sight of his bride’s pubic hair that he could not consummate the marriage.”
“He was a virgin?” Jesse said.
“Apparently,” Dix said.
“That had to be a while ago,” Jesse said.
“Long time, yes,” Dix said. “It is difficult, in our time, to reach marriage age without being aware that women have pubic hair.”
“But,” Jesse said. “If it was a kid discovering that . . .”
“And the circumstances were sufficiently traumatizing . . .” Dix said.
“The shameful secret,” Jesse said.
Dix nodded.
“Every woman’s shameful secret,” Jesse said.
“To one degree or another,” Dix said.
“He might need to keep going over it,” Jesse said.
Dix shrugged.
“Might,” he said.
“Either because he is hoping it won’t be true this time?” Jesse said.
“Or because he wants to reaffirm the essential baseness of women,” Dix said.
“And the pictures would be evidence,” Jesse said. “Proof of the secret.”
“Maybe,” Dix said. “You’ve interviewed the victims?”
“Of course.”
“Did he touch them?”
“No. He never got close to them,” Jesse said.
“Threaten them?”
“Just along the lines of ‘Do what I say and you won’t get hurt,’ ” Jesse said.
“Verbally abusive?”
“No,” Jesse said. “Course, it might not be that.”
“True,” Dix said.
“Might be something entirely different,” Jesse said.
“Might,” Dix said.
“So what difference does it make?” Jesse said.
“None that I can see,” Dix said.
“So why are we talking about it?”
“It’s your session,” Dix said.
Jesse was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “Maybe it’s better than talking about me.”
Dix nodded and looked at his watch.
“Or maybe you think it is,” Dix said. “Let’s talk about that next time.”
31
SUIT CAME into Jesse’s office and sat down across the desk from him.
“And now,” he said, “this update from swingers’ correspondent Suitcase Simpson.”
“You converted yet?”
“I been trying to,” Suit said. “But like I told you, no single guys.”
“Maybe you could bring Cissy Hathaway,” Jesse said.
“That’s over,” Suit said. “She’s too old for me.”
“Lotta people are,” Jesse said. “Whaddya got?”
“I been talking to Kim Magruder—Kim Clark—like you said.”
“And?”
Suit shrugged.
“I feel kind of bad for her,” Suit said. “I mean, she was the golden girl, you know, going steady with the star quarterback.”
“Chase Clark,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, and he knocked her up. And she was real Catholic and”?Suit shrugged?“they had to get married.”
“And produced Missy,” Jesse said.
“Yep. They got a little boy, too. Eric.”
“Why do you feel sorry for her?” Jesse said.
“One, because she’s married to Chase Clark, who’s a fucking jerk. Two, because she doesn’t like the swinging thing. But does it because she thinks she has to, to save her marriage.”
“She say so?”
“Not exactly. But I’m pretty sure,” Suit said.
Jesse nodded.
“She more talkative about things this time?”
“Yeah, much,” Suit said. “Once we were alone, you know, Debbie Lupo wasn’t around.”
“Now Debbie Basco,” Jesse said.
“Right,” Suit said. “Once Debbie wasn’t around, Kimmy kind of relaxed. We talked a little about high school and me dating her kid sister and where Tammy is now, and what she’s doing, and like that. But from the start it seemed like she wanted to talk about the wife-swapping thing. Like she needed to talk with someone about it.”
Jesse nodded again.
“She’s known you since you were kids. You used to date her little sister.”
“It was like, how threatening could I be?” Suit said. “Little Luther Simpson.”
“She calls you Luther?”
“Never mind about that,” Suit said.
“Anything that might help us with the Night Hawk?” Jesse said.
“I’m not sure,” Suit said. “There are people who like to watch their spouse with someone else.”
“Men?” Jesse said.
“Yeah.”
“Names?”
“She won’t tell me names,” Suit said. “It’s like a club rule.”
“You think if you brought her in, she’d talk to me?” Jesse said.
“Not here,” Suit said.
“Where?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know,” Suit said. “I’ll ask her. What do I tell her about why?”
“I got two reasons,” Jesse said. “One is the Night Hawk, and two is her daughter.”
“I thought you promised the daughter you wouldn’t give her away.”
“I did, and I won’t. It’s why I need to talk with her,” Jesse said. “I have to feel my way along.”
“I can’t tell her that,” Suit said.
“I know,” Jesse said. “I’ll meet her anywhere she wants.”
“So what do I tell her it’s for.”
“You’ll think of something,” Jesse said.
32
“THIS IS on me,” Marcy Campbell said to Jesse. “For the business you sent me.”
They sat across from each other at a window table in the Gray Gull.
“I thought you were doing me a favor,” Jesse said.
“Nope. I got to co-broker with Chuck Derby and get half his commission for very little work.”
“Well, good for me,” Jesse said. “I accept.”
“I knew you would,” Marcy said.
She was a handsome woman, several years older than Jesse, divorced, with grown children.
“Spike seems an unusual man,” Marcy said.
“I believe he is,” Jesse said. “But he’s Sunny Randall’s best friend.”
“And you like Sunny a lot,” Marcy said.
“I do.”
The waitress brought a vodka gimlet for Marcy, scotch and soda for Jesse.
“But not as much as Jenn,” Marcy said.
Jesse looked into his glass for a moment.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“My God,” Marcy said.
Jesse shrugged.
“I’m trying to rethink things,” Jesse said.
“She’s gone again?” Marcy said.
“She’s in New York,” Jesse said.
“Alone?” Marcy said.
“Not likely,” Jesse said.
Marcy nodded.
“Good news and bad,” Marcy said.
“The good news?”
“That you’re starting to rethink.”
“You’ve never been a fan of Jenn’s,” Jesse said.
“I’ve always been a fan of yours,” Marcy said.
“And you’ve said your say already about Jenn.”
“Yes,” Marcy said.
“No need to plow that field again,” Jesse said.
“No,” Marcy said.
They each drank a little.
“Too bad we don’t want to get married,” Jesse said. “We get along so well.”
“Maybe if we wanted to get married,” Marcy said, “we wouldn’t get along so well.”
“Possible,” Jesse said.
He drank some more scotch.
“You’ve slept with a lot of men,” Jesse said.
“Excuse me?” Marcy said.
“Oh, stop it,” Jesse said. “We’ve both slept with a lot of people, and enjoyed it, and neither one of us is embarrassed about it.”
“Well,” Marcy said. “Yes.”
“Any of the men you know that didn’t want to look at you naked?”
“Didn’t?” Marcy said.
“Didn’t,” Jesse said.
“Are you implying something dreadful about my body?” Marcy said.
“No,” Jesse said. “I’m serious. Do you know any straight men who don’t want to look at a woman naked?”
“No,” Marcy said.
“Do you want to look at men with their clothes off?”
“What kind of survey is this?” Marcy said.
“Bear with me,” Jesse said. “Does male nudity interest you?”
“If a man’s in good shape, and we’re in the process of making love, yes, I sort of like to look at his body.”
“If I had a bunch of pictures of naked men, would you want to look?”
“No.”
“What about male strippers?” Jesse said. “Many women seem interested in them.”
“I’m not,” Marcy said. “I think that’s mostly about proving what wild-and-crazy girls they are.”
“You know any pornography for women?”
“Not for straight women,” Marcy said.
“Whorehouses for women?”
“Where women go to have sex with male prostitutes?” Marcy said.
“Yeah.”
“Ugh,” Marcy said.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Jesse finished his drink and looked around for the waitress.
“This is about that guy that breaks in and photographs women,” Marcy said.
“I guess,” Jesse said.
“You’re trying to figure him out,” Marcy said.
“I guess.”
“Jesse,” she said. “Maybe there’s a difference between normal male impulse and this guy.”
Jesse nodded.
“He doesn’t forcibly photograph nude women because he’s a man,” Marcy said. “He does it because he’s a wack job.”
The waitress came with their next round.
“So I don’t have to wrestle with gender guilt,” Jesse said.
“You have enough to wrestle with,” Marcy said, “without worrying about basic differences between the sexes.”
Jesse raised his glass.
“Vive la différence,”he said.
Marcy smiled.
“I’ll drink to that,” she said.
They looked at their menus quietly for a time.
“What’s bothersome,” Jesse said, “is that even in normal men, whatever that quite means, there’s never enough.”
“You mean no matter how many women you see naked, you want to see another one?”
Marcy said.
“Or the same one again.”
“That’s probably why he takes the pictures,” Marcy said.
“Maybe,” Jesse said. “It also suggests that he’ll keep going.”
“And that’s what you’re worried about,” Marcy said.
“Yep.”
“It is sort of crazy, isn’t it,” Marcy said. “Lot of men like to take pictures of wives and girl-friends.”
“Whom they’ve often seen naked,” Jesse said.
“And will again.”
“Maybe it’s not exactly about the nudity,” Jesse said.
“Even if it isn’t,” Marcy said, “how does that help you?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I just figure the more I understand about him, the better chance I have to get him.”
“It would probably be even more helpful if you knew what, exactly, it is about,” Marcy said.
“Sooner or later,” Jesse said.
“You really believe that?”
“Have to,” Jesse said, “to keep being a cop. I know better, but I still have to believe that if I keep looking at it and turning it around and rolling around on it, eventually I’ll come up with something.”
“To be the kind of cop you are,” Marcy said.
Jesse shrugged.
“Anybody take pictures of you?”
“Sure,” Marcy said.
Jesse smiled.
“Got any on you?” he said.
“No,” Marcy said. “But perhaps later this evening there’ll be a photo op.”
“I was hopeful,” Jesse said.
33
SUIT BROUGHT Kimberly Clark into Jesse’s office.
“Kim Clark,” he said. “Jesse Stone.”
They said hello and Kim Clark sat in a chair in front of Jesse’s desk. Suit looked at Jesse.
“On your way out,” Jesse said to him, “ask Molly to step in.”
Suit nodded and left. Kim Clark looked after him. Molly came in.
“Molly Crane,” Jesse said. “Kim Clark.”
They said hello. Kim was a smallish woman, neat figure, too much dark hair, about forty.
Jesse could see her daughter in her.
“I saw both of you at the school,” Kim Clark said. “That business with Mrs. Ingersoll.”
Jesse nodded.
“I’ve asked Molly to join us, as I do whenever I’m talking with a woman in my office,” Jesse said. “Unless you object.”
“I have no objection,” Kim Clark said.
“This is a first-name police department,” Jesse said. “I’m Jesse. She’s Molly, and I hope we may call you Kim.”
“Of course,” Kim said. “Why am I here?”
“As I’m sure Suit explained,” Jesse said, “we’re investigating a case unrelated to you, but we feel that you might be able to help us.”
“I’m not in trouble, am I?” Kim said. “Luther said I wasn’t in trouble.”
“No, no,” Jesse said. “Of course not. I’m just hoping you can give us some information that will help us.”
“Is it about the swinging?”
“You are not in trouble,” Jesse said. “About the swinging or anything else. But I am looking for information about swinging.”
“It’s perfectly legal,” she said.
“I know,” Jesse said.
“I’ve always been sort of fascinated with it, to tell you the truth,” Molly said. “We haven’t actually done anything yet, but my husband and I have certainly discussed it.”
“It’s very freeing,” Kim said.
“I can see how it would be,” Molly said.
“Did you know that the incidence of divorce is lower among swingers?” Kim said.
“I didn’t know that,” Jesse said.
“And infidelity,” Kim said.
“Of course,” Jesse said. “Everything is right out in the open.”
Kim nodded.
“I don’t mean to be nosy,” Molly said. “But is it really?”
“Is it really what?” Kim said.
“Right out in the open?”
“You mean the, ah . . .”
“The sex,” Molly said. “I mean, do you get to watch each other?”
“If you wish,” Kim said.
“Wow,” Molly said. “That sounds like it would be fun. Do you and your husband see each other?”
“Sometimes,” Kim said.
Her face was flushed. She didn’t look at Jesse.
“Wow,” Jesse said. “I’m not so sure I could perform. Is it possible to just watch?”
“Some people do that,” Kim said.
“Men and women?”
“Men mostly,” Kim said.
“Is there anyone who just watches?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know,” Kim said.
“Anyone come alone?”
“No,” Kim said. “No single men.”
“Single women?”
“I don’t think it’s against the rules, but women aren’t into it that much.”
“Really?” Molly said. “I thought it sounded exciting.”
Kim’s mouth clamped shut for a moment before she spoke.
“Not to anyone I know,” Kim said.
Molly smiled and shrugged.
“Well, it’s all about freedom,” Molly said. “Isn’t it?”
Kim nodded.
“Who’s the biggest watcher?” Jesse said.
“Oh, I can’t tell you anyone’s name,” Kim said.
“Kim,” Jesse said. “We’ve staked out your house. You had what appeared to be a party there three weeks ago. We have photos of who came and went. We have the plate numbers of all the cars. We’ve checked the registrations. We know who’s in the club. We only want you to tell us which ones like best to watch.”
“You . . . you can’t do that,” Kim said. “We’re within our rights.”
“We can do it. We did do it, and yes, you’re within your rights,” Jesse said. “But I need to know who likes to watch. And I can question everyone in your club until I find out, but it would be easier if you told me now.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You’re just saying that.”
Jesse nodded and opened his middle drawer. He took out a sheet of paper and began to read.
“Mr. and Mrs. Martin Felts, Ralph Alfonzo and Maria Dupree, Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Crosland
. . .”
“Oh, God,” Kim said.
“Shall I go on?” Jesse said.
“No,” Kim said. “No.”
Jesse nodded and put the paper back in his middle drawer.
“How did you find out in the first place?” Kim said.
Jesse shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“But they’ll know you got their names by watching my house,” Kim said.
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“And you’d question my husband.”
“Yes.”
“So he’d know,” Kim said.
Jesse waited. Kim’s eyes began to fill.
“Why can’t you just leave us alone?” Kim said. “We’re not harming anyone.”
“Just looking for a name,” Jesse said.
Kim looked at Molly. Molly smiled encouragingly. Kim looked back at Jesse, and quickly around the small room.
Then she said, “Seth.”
“Seth?”
“Seth Ralston,” she said.
“He ever watch you?” Jesse said.
Kim’s face reddened again.
“Yes.”
“Others?”
“We all talk about how he mostly doesn’t want to actually do it.”
“We?”
“All the girls,” Kim said.
“So what does his partner do while he’s watching?” Molly said.
Kim shrugged.
“Sometimes she does a three-way with Hannah and Hannah’s partner.”
“Hannah is?” Jesse said.
“Seth’s wife,” Kim said. “Hannah Wechsler.”
Jesse nodded.
“Thanks, Kim,” he said. “That’s a great help. Do you need a ride home?”
“No,” she said. “I have my car.”
Jesse stood and put his hand out. Kim shook it. Molly stood, too.
“I won’t have to come again, will I?” Kim said.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “No. Of course not.”
34
“YOU MEAN that?” Molly said.
“What?”
“That she won’t have to come in again?”
“No,” Jesse said. “I didn’t. I just figured we’d squeezed her enough for today.”
“Yes,” Molly said. “She was going to break down on us if we pushed her more.”
“I still have the issue of the kid to deal with.”
“We skirted around that pretty good,” Molly said.
“We did,” Jesse said.
“Course, Kim’s not the brightest bulb in the string,” Molly said.
“You think she likes swinging?” Jesse said.
“No.”
“So why do you think she does it?” Jesse said
“I don’t know, but I’ll guess it has to do with her husband.”
“I was starting to worry about you,” Jesse said.
“I was pretty convincing,” Molly said.
Jesse grinned.
“When you decide to get into swinging,” he said, “can I watch?”
“Ugh!” Molly said.
“ ‘Ugh’ about swinging, or ‘ugh’ about me watching.”
“All of the above,” Molly said. “I especially like her saying that there’s less infidelity among swingers.”
“Depends on how you define ‘unfaithful,’ ” Jesse said.
“Like it’s okay if we both do it?” Molly said.
“Or it’s okay if we each give permission to the other one,” Jesse said.
“Right,” Molly said. “Eat this apple, Adam. It’s okay if we both take a bite.”
“Boy, are you retro,” Jesse said.
“I am,” Molly said. “And no remarks about Native Americans.”
“Moi?”Jesse said.
“Vous,”Molly said. “My one-night stand with Crow was infidelity. I’m not exactly sorry I did it. But it was unfaithful to my husband and my marriage, and I know it and don’t pretend otherwise.”
“You love your husband,” Jesse said.
“I do, and did while I was unfaithful.”
“You’re okay with it?”
“Yes.”
“What if he’d given permission?”
“Permission, shmission,” Molly said. “It’s still infidelity, and gussying it up with a bunch of free-to-be-you-and-me crap doesn’t make it otherwise.”
“So you were just pretending when you told her how tempting it was to you,” Jesse said.
“I was,” Molly said.
“God, you were good,” Jesse said.
“Everybody says that,” Molly said.
Jesse grinned again.
“Does this mean I’m not going to get the chance to watch,” he said.
“I’ll put you on the list,” Molly said. “We gonna look into Mr. Ralston?”
“We are,” Jesse said. “Ms. Wechsler, too, I think.”
“How about the Clark kids?” Molly said.
“Step at a time,” Jesse said. “First I’ll find the Night Hawk, then we’ll save the children.”
“And after that?” Molly said.
“Probably leap a tall building,” Jesse said. “At a single bound.”
35
“I SIMPLY couldn’t do it,” Gloria Fisher said. “I simply would not.”
Jesse sat across from her in her living room. Molly sat beside her on the couch.
“Tell me about it,” Jesse said. “From the beginning.”
Gloria nodded. She was like the others, dark-haired, trim, in her early forties.
“My husband went to work. I got my daughter off to school, took a shower, got dressed, and when I came out of the bedroom, he was here.”
“Door unlocked?” Jesse said.
“I guess it was. It’s stupid. I knew this had been happening. But I forgot. . . .” She spread her hands. “I’m terrible about locking up. Anyway, I said, ‘What the fuck do you want?’ And he pointed his gun at me and said, ‘Do what I say and I won’t hurt you.’ And I was enraged. . . . I said, ‘Like hell.’ And he said, ‘Take off your clothes,’ and I said, ‘Like hell.’ It’s funny, I wasn’t scared, I was very, very angry. The sonovabitch came in my house. . . . Now I’m scared.”
Molly nodded.
“That’s because now it’s safe to be scared.”
“I guess,” Gloria said.
“So what did he do?” Jesse said.
He said, ‘Undress or I’ll shoot you.’ And I said, ‘Get out of my fucking house.’ And his eyes got really big and he took a step toward me and then stopped, and, like, stared at me, and then he turned around and ran out of the house.”
“Did you see his car?”
“No.”
“Which way he went?”
“No,” Gloria said. “I went right to the phone and called nine-one-one and Officer Friedman was here in like a minute.”
Jesse looked at Steve Friedman, standing in the kitchen door.
“I was two blocks away,” Steve said. “I didn’t see him.”
“Description?”
“Oh, about my husband’s size, I would say. Five-eleven, hundred and eighty-five pounds.
Black jacket and pants, black ski mask, had on those latex gloves like doctors use.”
“The gun?”
“I don’t know anything about guns,” she said. “It looked small to me, kind of silver-colored.”
Jesse nodded.
“Any sign of a camera?”
“I think so,” Gloria said. “I think he had some sort of digital camera in his other hand.”
“Which hand had the gun?” Jesse said.
Gloria closed her eyes for a moment and pantomimed with her hands. She opened her eyes.
“Right hand,” she said. “He had the gun in his right hand.”
Jesse nodded.
“That would mean he’s right-handed,” Gloria said.
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“You wouldn’t carry a gun in your off hand,” Gloria said.
“Probably not,” Jesse said. “If he was anybody you knew, would you have been able to tell?”
“I don’t think so,” Gloria said. “His voice didn’t sound familiar.”
“Did he do anything to disguise his voice?” Jesse said.
“Like whisper or something?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No,” Gloria said. “That would mean he wasn’t someone I might know.”
Jesse grinned at her.
“Ah, come on, Mrs. Fisher,” he said. “Could you let me do a little of the police work?”
“But,” she said, “if we didn’t know each other, he would have no reason to disguise his voice. Doesn’t that make sense?”
“It does,” Jesse said. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“Not really,” she said. “He was only here, probably, a couple of minutes.”
“You’re a brave woman,” Jesse said.
“I didn’t know I was going to be,” Gloria said. “But . . .”
She looked at Molly.
“You got kids?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Daughter?”
“I have a daughter and three sons,” Molly said.
“I just have the one daughter,” Gloria said. “I kept thinking of her when I saw him. I knew who he was as soon as I saw him, you know? I’d heard about the other women. And I . . .
kept thinking of my daughter . . . and I couldn’t let her mother be forced to strip naked in her own living room in front of some stranger . . . I couldn’t. I would not.”
She looked at Molly again.
“Could you?” she said.
“I won’t know unless it happens,” Molly said.
Gloria nodded.
“We’ll leave Officer Friedman here,” Jesse said. “Until your husband gets home.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Driving back to the station, Jesse said, “Tough woman.”
“Yes,” Molly said. “I wonder if I’d have done what she did?”
“You were right when she asked you,” Jesse said. “No way to know until you’re in the situation.”
“I hope I’d be like her,” Molly said.
“Be a good woman, and a good cop, Moll,” Jesse said. “Whether you did or not.”
“Thank you,” Molly said.
“That’s what you are,” Jesse said. “And whatever you do in one specific situation doesn’t change what you are.”
“Even what I did with a certain Native American person?”
“Even that,” Jesse said.
36
THE WEATHER was pleasant, so Jesse took his first drink of the night out onto his balcony and sat and reread his new letter from the Night Hawk.
Dear Chief Stone,
By now you must know of my recent humiliation. The woman defied me. And I had to run.
Run away! I don’t know why I didn’t force her to do what I said. I wanted to, God knows. But somehow I seemed frozen by her. I couldn’t approach her. I wanted in the worst way to take her and strip her clothes off. But I didn’t. For reasons I don’t understand I fled, and am now in my home, frightened and enraged. What I wanted to do frightens me. That I couldn’t do it enrages me. And it is the rage that I really fear. I have never felt such rage. To be denied like this and humiliated in the process. It will drive me. I can feel it driving me, and if you do not stop me, I don’t know what it will drive me to. I am becoming ever more dangerous. What started out as a basically harmless adventure is turning into something monomaniacal.
Something—shall I say it? Yes!—something evil. So be warned, and be alert!!!
The Night Hawk
Jesse read it twice more. It seemed to him more a display of bravado than a call for help.
To be denied what? Jesse thought. A photo op? He’s embarrassed because the woman faced him down and he ran. He’s explaining to me and himself that he’s really a dangerous bastard and needs to be stopped. Jesse’s glass was empty. He stood and went back into his living room and made himself another one. He took it back out on the balcony and sat with his feet up on the rail and looked out over the dark harbor. Jesse felt some comfort in the fact that the Night Hawk had run. Maybe he wasn’t so dangerous. Maybe he protested that he was because he really knew he wasn’t. But why to me? He doesn’t need my approval. He needs the approval of the town. Jesse sipped quietly at his drink. And the chief is, for him, the face of the town. It was a clear night, but the moon was a slender crescent, and it shed very little light. Jesse took another sip of his drink. Approval isn’t quite it, Jesse thought. Fear? Respect? Fearful respect? Jesse drank again. Then he nodded to himself. He needs us to think he’s not a pathetic creep. He wants us to think he’s THE NIGHT HAWK! instead of the nasty little voyeur that he knows he is. Jesse finished his second drink and went back to the bar. As he mixed the third, he looked at his poster of Ozzie.
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