The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  Hannah looked at him silently for a moment.

  “Well,” she said. “You’re a little more subtle than I might have thought.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You swing, I assume,” he said.

  “I do,” she said. “My husband and I both do.”

  “Tell me about it?” Jesse said.

  “Why?” she said. “Light your fire?”

  “Curious,” Jesse said.

  “Professionally?” Hannah said.

  “Sort of,” Jesse said.

  “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

  “Well,” Jesse said. “We’ve found a possible connection between the man who does the home invasions and the Free Swingers.”

  “So why isn’t that completely professional?”

  “Personal,” Jesse said.

  “And what is this connection?” Hannah said.

  “Can’t talk about it right now,” Jesse said.

  “And why choose to question me?” Hannah said.

  “Well, in fact, we checked out everybody’s background and found out you were studying for a Ph.D. We figured you’d be smart.”

  Hannah laughed.

  “That shows how little you know of Ph.D.’s,” she said. “But on that basis, why not talk to my husband as well? He already has a Ph.D.”

  “We will,” Jesse said. “Just arbitrarily chose you first. We’re a small department, you know.”

  “Or you thought because I was a woman, you could bully me,” Hannah said.

  “How hard have I tried that?” Jesse said.

  “I’ll bet you don’t have any leads and you heard about the swingers, and decided to scapegoat us.”

  “So how’s it work,” Jesse said.

  “No,” Hannah said. “It’s a free and loving human experience, and I’m not going to let you make it into something else because you don’t know what else to do.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Anyone else we should talk with?” Jesse said.

  “Absolutely not,” Hannah said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell your husband, if you would, that we’ll be checking with him, too.”

  Hannah stood and looked scornfully at Jesse for a moment, then turned and walked away. Jesse sat quietly and finished his coffee, and then he left.

  41

  “YOU GET anywhere with Hannah Wechsler,” Molly said.

  “I got a handle on who she is,” Jesse said.

  “She tell you about the Free Swingers?” Molly said.

  “She told me it was a free and loving human experience,” Jesse said.

  “Everybody knows that,” Molly said. “She tell you anything else?”

  “She told me she’d find it exciting to have men looking at pictures of her naked.”

  “Okay,” Molly said. “She’s got a good body.”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t know?” Molly said. “You, an experienced investigator.”

  “She was wearing some kind of dress that looked like a garment bag,” Jesse said.

  “But her hair was good, and she wore makeup,” Molly said.

  “How’d you know?” Jesse said.

  “I, too, am an experienced investigator,” Molly said.

  “And there is no woman in the Paradise Free Swingers club that doesn’t think about her appearance,” Jesse said.

  “That too,” Molly said.

  They were alone in the squad room. The conference table had several cardboard coffee cups lying on it, the wrappers from some fast-food cheeseburgers, and a couple of french fries that had escaped by nestling under the wrappers. As they talked Jesse cleaned up the table and put everything in the corner trash can. When he finished, Molly got a wet paper towel from the washroom and wiped down the table. Then they each got a fresh cup of coffee and sat down again.

  “I hate a mess,” Jesse said.

  Molly nodded.

  “You find out anything that will help with the Night Hawk?” she said.

  “No, but I didn’t expect to,” Jesse said. “She’ll tell her husband that I talked to her. If he’s our guy, it may pressure him a bit.”

  Molly grinned.

  “Squeeze his ’nads, so to speak,” she said.

  “Wow,” Jesse said. “Moll, you’re really getting the lingo.”

  “Makes me proud,” she said.

  “You keep being a cop, you may turn into a guy,” Jesse said.

  Molly had very big, dark eyes. She looked right at Jesse and batted her eyelashes.

  “You think so?” Molly said.

  Jesse smiled.

  “No, Molly,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Me either,” she said.

  “But if you’re ever looking for a free and loving human experience . . .” Jesse said.

  “I’ll call you first,” Molly said. “What are you going to do about Seth Ralston?”

  “I’m going to talk all around him. I’m going to interview everybody in the swingers club. I’m going to interview his colleagues. I’m going to study his academic record. I’m going to read his doctoral dissertation. I’m going to check his driving record.”

  “But you’re not going to speak to him,” Molly said.

  “Nope.”

  “And you’re not going to accuse him of anything,” Molly said.

  “Nope.”

  “And you’ll be very careful not to say anything to indicate that he’s suspected of anything,” Molly said.

  “Careful,” Jesse said.

  “But you’ll buzz around his life like a big green fly,” Molly said. “And drive him crazy.”

  “That’s my plan,” Jesse said.

  “And the Paradise Free Swingers?”

  “Maybe I can find a way to make things work better for the Clark kids.”

  She held her coffee cup in both hands in front of her mouth, watching the faint wisp of stream rise from it. Then she sipped some, and put the cup back down on the tabletop.

  “That’s diabolical,” Molly said.

  Jesse grinned at her.

  “There’s more than one way,” he said, “to squeeze a ’nad.”

  42

  IT WAS Wednesday night. Jesse sat with Suit in Suit’s truck, outside Seth Ralston’s condo.

  “So if you want him to know we’re watching him,” Suit said, “how come we don’t use a cruiser?”

  “I figure this way,” Jesse said, “we have two chances. He spots you and it inhibits him, and squeezes him a little more. He doesn’t spot you and you may be able to catch him in the act.”

  “Of what?” Suit said. “Peeping? I thought he’d moved on to his day job.”

  “We don’t know that he’s not night and day,” Jesse said.

  “Hell,” Suit said. “We don’t even know it’s him. All we got is that his wife works Wednesday nights.”

  “And he’s in a swingers group,” Jesse said. “And he likes to watch.”

  “Hell,” Suit said. “Just for the sake of discussion. Wouldn’t that be true of any member of a swingers group?”

  “That they like to watch?” Jesse said. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” Suit said, “it sure don’t mean that you like to keep things private.”

  “True,” Jesse said. “It doesn’t have to be Seth.”

  “On the other hand,” Suit said, “who else we got?”

  Jesse smiled and nodded slowly.

  “There you have the essence of police work,” he said.

  “And there he is,” Suit said.

  Seth Ralston came out of the front door of his condo unit. He was wearing black pants and a white T-shirt. He had a Yankees cap on his head, and a dark windbreaker tied around his waist.

  “Making a foray?” Suit said.

  “Dressed for it,” Jesse said. “Put on the jacket, zip it up, and you’re all in black.”

  Ralston walked to the sidewalk and looked back at the truck. He paused. Then he turned and walked toward downtown.

  “Driv
e or walk,” Suit said.

  “One of each,” Jesse said.

  Jesse got out of the car and walked in the same direction as Ralston, on the other side of the street. Suit put the truck in gear and drove past Ralston. Ralston would probably make them, Jesse knew, if he hadn’t already. It was nearly impossible to tail somebody in a town the size of Paradise, with so little foot traffic. Still, it would crank up the pressure, maybe. And it was something to do.

  Ralston walked slowly along Front Street with the harbor on his right. He passed Suit’s truck, parked at a hydrant. He glanced at it but kept going. Jesse drifted along behind him. At the town wharf, Ralston turned and went into the Gray Gull. Suit pulled into the parking lot on the wharf and sat in his truck. Jesse went on into the Gray Gull and spotted Ralston at the bar. Jesse went to the other end of the bar and ordered a beer. He drank it slowly, while Ralston had a martini, paid, stood, and went out. Jesse left a bill on the bar and went out after him.

  With Jesse watching him and Suit circling slowly in the truck, Ralston walked back to his condo and went inside. Suit parked across the street. Jesse went over and got in the truck.

  “Is police work exciting,” Suit said, “or what?”

  “I think he was going out to peep,” Jesse said, “and spotted us and changed his plan.”

  “Or maybe he just wanted a drink,” Suit said.

  “Who do you know goes out at nine o’clock at night, walks to a bar, has one martini, and walks home.”

  “Most people I know drink beer,” Suit said. “But you got a point. It is like he was going out for another reason and changed his mind when he saw us.”

  “That’s my theory,” Jesse said.

  “Kinda thin,” Suit said.

  “Kinda?” Jesse said.

  43

  JESSE MADE himself a drink and sat at the bar in his living room to read the Night Hawk’s letter.

  Dear Jesse,

  I’m feeling trapped and desperate. No, not because of anything you’re doing (God! Small-town cops). . . . No, I feel trapped by my obsession. The struggle between my obsession and my self is the real struggle, not the pathetically unequal conflict between you and me. It’s not what you do or who you talk to. . . . It’s whether my obsession drives me to do things that I don’t want to do. It’s whether finally, to save me from my obsession, I allow you to catch me and put a stop to it. . . . But I worry that if that time comes, you and the other Keystone Kops won’t have the wherewithal to do it. One thing is certain: I will strike again, and you can’t stop me, and can never stop me . . . unless I arrange for you to stop me in order to stop my obsession . . . It should be interesting.

  The Night Hawk

  Jesse put the letter on the bar. He stood and carried his drink to the French doors and looked out at the harbor. He drank some scotch.

  It’s him, Jesse thought. He’s letting me know that it’s him. He knows I’ve talked to his wife. He knows we’ve had him under surveillance. “It’s not what you do or who you talk to.” He’s letting me know. I wonder if it’s conscious?

  Jesse had some more scotch.

  I wonder what it means that he called me Jesse? He’s getting more ragged, I can hear it in the voice in the letter. I wonder if he started out to go peeping, a deescalating step, so to speak. Maybe he’d been frightened by Gloria Fisher. Maybe he’s got to back up and start over and work himself up to it again.

  Jesse walked back to the bar and made another drink.

  The trick will be, Jesse thought, to put enough pressure on him to make him give himself away but not enough pressure to make him hurt somebody.

  He wondered if Dix could help. He knew one thing. Dix would draw the analogy. The Night Hawk was clinging to an obsession that he felt he couldn’t live without, and it was destroying him. Dix would direct Jesse’s attention to his own situation with Jenn.

  “It’s not exactly the same,” Jesse said as he walked back across his living room to look out at the harbor again. “But you don’t have to bend it too much to make it fit.”

  Everyone wanted him to give up on Jenn. As far as that argument went, everyone was probably right. He’d be better off without her. He was pretty sure that the Night Hawk wanted to stop being the Night Hawk. Except that he also didn’t want to give up being the Night Hawk.

  Jesse looked out at the harbor, except that he didn’t see it. What he saw was himself in the darkened glass. Not old yet, still in shape. The booze didn’t show yet.

  He’d had a lot of women. They had been, by and large, good women. Sometimes amazingly good, like Sunny Randall. And he’d liked them all, especially Sunny Randall. But they weren’t like Jenn.

  Jenn wasn’t good. Maybe that was her charm. Maybe what made their relationship so intense was the anger. Maybe when they did make love it was seasoned with rage, and the rage made it special.

  Maybe he was drunk.

  He walked back to get some more scotch. At the bar he made a new drink, and turned and looked back at the window where he’d been reflected and raised his glass.

  “Sooner or later,” he said aloud, “I’ll bust you.”

  He drank. And looked at the black window. Was he talking to the Night Hawk, or was he talking to himself? He felt sad for the Night Hawk. Sad for himself.

  “So what am I,” Jesse said, “a Day Hawk? How about a Night Eagle?”

  He laughed. It was a derisive sound in the empty room.

  “Night and day,” he sang, “I am the one.”

  He raised his glass toward the dark glass in the French doors that opened onto his deck.

  “Only me beneath the moon and under the sun.”

  He drank again.

  God, he thought, I’m drunk.

  He walked into the bedroom, where Jenn’s picture still stood on the night table by the bed. He looked at it for a moment and shook his head. Then he turned it facedown on top of the night-stand and drank some scotch.

  44

  JESSE HAD coffee with Sunny at the Gray Gull, which was now closed for renovation. They sat at the bar and watched Spike unload a large stainless-steel refrigerator from a truck and carry it the length of the restaurant.

  “Yikes,” Jesse said.

  “Spike is very strong,” Sunny said.

  “I would have guessed that,” Jesse said.

  “He looks like sort of a big lovable bear, and sometimes people misjudge that,” Sunny said.

  “That’s probably an error,” Jesse said.

  “Plus,” Sunny said, “he does some martial-arts training.”

  “Like he needs to,” Jesse said.

  “Plus, he’s really quite quick on his feet.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “If I ever have trouble with Spike,” Jesse said, “I think I’ll rely on gunplay.”

  “Use a big caliber,” Sunny said.

  Jesse grinned.

  “Besides,” Sunny said, “you won’t have trouble with Spike.”

  “Because I’m the chief of police?” Jesse said.

  “Because you’re my friend,” Sunny said.

  “You still painting?” Jesse said.

  “Not since Rosie died,” Sunny said.

  “But you will,” Jesse said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Might you buy a new Rosie?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t know,” Sunny said. “I invested so much time in her. I was married when Rosie was a puppy. . . . Now I live alone. . . . I don’t know.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Richie’s wife have the kid yet?” he said.

  “Two more months,” Sunny said.

  “That does not bode well for your relationship,” Jesse said.

  “Hardly,” Sunny said.

  Jesse got up and went behind the bar and got the coffeepot and poured them both some more coffee.

  “Maybe it’s time to move on,” Jesse said.

  “You can say that to me?” Sunny said.

  “I know.”

  “For crissakes,” Sunn
y said. “You’ve been hanging on for years to an ex-wife who sleeps around.”

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  “And you’re telling me to move on?”

  “Maybe we both should,” Jesse said.

  Sunny leaned back on her bar stool and stared at Jesse. Then she smiled.

  “We do appear to be running out of options,” she said.

  “You still seeing that shrink?” Jesse said.

  “Dr. Silverman,” Sunny said. “Yes. You?”

  “I still talk to Dix,” he said.

  There was a half-pint carton of half-and-half on the bar. Jesse added some to his coffee and stirred in sugar. Sunny had her coffee black, with Splenda.

  “You know about my Peeping Tom house invader,” Jesse said.

  “Calls himself the Night Hawk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pathetic, isn’t it?” Sunny said. “The B-movie, comic-book names some of these guys come up with to make themselves seem heroic?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “He writes me letters,” Jesse said.

  “Oh,” Sunny said. “One of those. I had a guy like that.”

  “Spare Change Killer?” Jesse said.

  “You followed the case,” Sunny said.

  “As much of it as the media got right,” Jesse said.

  Sunny shook her head.

  “Poor jerk . . . like so many of them, an obsessive loser. But he did such damage.”

  “They do,” Jesse said. “My guy less than yours. He hasn’t killed anybody. But . . .”

  “He might,” Sunny said. “But even if he doesn’t, those women he’s forced to strip will not be quite the same again.”

  “No,” Jesse said.

  “So why are we talking about this?” Sunny smiled. “You need help?”

  “Probably,” Jesse said. “But here’s this guy doing something to make himself feel good, and it makes him feel bad. But he can’t give it up.”

  “That’s why we call it obsessive,” Sunny said.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Jesse said. “But what strikes me is that we’re doing the same thing.”

  Sunny nodded slowly, thinking about it.

  “Our efforts to be happy make us unhappy,” she said.

  “And yet we keep at it,” Jesse said.

  Sunny nodded some more.