The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

“Maybe,” Jesse said. “Maybe the civil suit about the panty patrol.”

  “Sympathy?” Molly said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Or it could be a copycat,” Molly said.

  “It could.”

  “Or the Night Hawk could have escalated,” Molly said.

  “I hope not.”

  “What about the pictures?” Molly said. “Unless it’s the Night Hawk, there shouldn’t be a picture sent.”

  “Public knowledge,” Jesse said. “The women talked about it. The press picked it up. Anyone would know to send pictures.”

  “And the letters?”

  “Less public,” Jesse said.

  “So you might get a picture, but unless it’s the Night Hawk, you shouldn’t get a letter.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And if she made it up, you shouldn’t get either,” Molly said.

  “Unless she took one herself,” Jesse said.

  “Who would do that?” Molly said.

  “Someone who had made this all up in the first place,” Jesse said.

  “And would send it to you?”

  “This is the woman who conducted the great thong search,” Jesse said. “We don’t know what’s driving her.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Molly said.

  “Me either,” Jesse said. “It’s a hypothesis, like the escalated Night Hawk or the copycat. We’ll test them all.”

  “Wow,” Molly said, “like high school physics, the scientific method.”

  “And Ingersoll thinks we’re just small-town cops,” Jesse said.

  49

  SPIKE REOPENED the Gray Gull on a Thursday night, and Sunny Randall drove up and had dinner there with Jesse. They sat at the new and larger bar, and ordered from the new and expanded bar menu.

  “You’re having a martini,” Sunny said.

  “I am.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink anything but scotch.”

  “Sometimes I just don’t give a damn,” Jesse said.

  Sunny smiled. She raised her own glass, and they touched rims.

  “Change is good,” she said.

  They drank.

  “I tell you about this kid I’m trying to help,” Jesse said.

  “Missy?” Sunny said. “Her parents are swingers?”

  “That’s the one,” Jesse said. “The mother hates swinging but does it because the father insists. The father hits Missy, and also Missy’s mother. The younger brother is terrified and wets the bed.”

  “For which the father probably smacks him, too,” Sunny said.

  “Probably,” Jesse said.

  “Time for an intervention,” Sunny said.

  “Yeah, I’m having them in next week.”

  “Kids, too?”

  “No.”

  “Good idea,” Sunny said. “They’ll have less reason to pretend.”

  “What are you after?” Sunny said.

  “At the meeting?”

  “Uh-huh,” Sunny said. “You think you can get the father to straighten up and fly right?”

  “No,” Jesse said. “But first I’ll get a sense of how bad he is—all my information on him is secondhand.”

  Sunny nodded.

  “And if he’s as bad as he sounds,” Jesse said, “maybe I can scare him into behaving better.”

  “At least you’ll have firsthand experience with what he is,” Sunny said. “Long as you don’t expect him to turn into a better guy.”

  “No, but maybe I can get him to stop with the wife-swapping, and no longer hit his wife and children,” Jesse said.

  “That would be a start,” Sunny said.

  “And then maybe if he seemed less scary to her,” Jesse said, “she might find her way out of the marriage.”

  “Clinging too long to a marriage,” Sunny said, “is maybe not a good idea, huh?”

  Jesse smiled at her.

  “We need another cocktail,” he said, and gestured to the bartender.

  “Two’s my limit on these,” Sunny said.

  “I know,” Jesse said. “More than two martinis and my speech starts to slur.”

  “In my case I start to undress,” Sunny said.

  Jesse turned to the bartender.

  “Make that a double for Ms. Randall,” he said.

  They both laughed.

  “No double,” Sunny said to the bartender. To Jesse she said, “It’s not necessary.”

  “Good to know,” Jesse said.

  They looked at their menus for a moment, and ordered stuffed quahogs.

  “I had a thought,” Sunny said.

  “Me too,” Jesse said.

  “Not that kind of thought,” Sunny said.

  She paused and sipped her martini.

  “My sister,” Sunny said, “had an affair with a terrible man, and when she wanted to break it off, he haunted her.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I talked to him,” Sunny said. “My sister talked to him, nothing.”

  She ate half of one of the olives in her martini.

  “He wouldn’t leave her alone,” Sunny said. “So finally I asked Spike to speak with him.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “He never bothered my sister again.”

  Jesse glanced at Spike, who was working the room, the jovial host.

  “Spike got his attention,” Jesse said.

  “He did.”

  “You think he could reason with Missy’s father?”

  “I know he’d be happy to try,” Sunny said.

  “What an interesting idea,” Jesse said.

  50

  JESSE SAT with Molly in the squad room. On the conference table in front of them were three photographs of naked women. Jesse took a fourth out of an envelope and laid it down beside the other three.

  “Came this morning,” Jesse said. “Mailed in town. No return address.”

  “Betsy Ingersoll,” Molly said.

  “In the flesh,” Jesse said. “So to speak.”

  Molly stood and bent over the picture, studying it.

  “She looks better than I would have expected,” Molly said. “No cellulite, everything firm. I’m surprised.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be pleased,” Jesse said.

  “Course, she’s had no kids,” Molly said. “That helps.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “There a letter?” Molly said.

  Holding it carefully by the edges, Jesse put a short note in front of her on the tabletop. The note read:

  FYI,

  The Night Hawk

  “That’s it?” Molly said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  Molly looked at the note again.

  “Ordinary paper,” Molly said. “Typeface. Nothing that will tell us anything. Fingerprints?”

  “I’ll have Peter go over it, but it seems unlikely.”

  “What about all that save-me-from-myself gush,” she said, “that he usually writes.”

  “Good question,” Jesse said. “Now, don’t look at the pictures again for a minute.”

  Molly looked out the window.

  “If you were going to pose for a nude picture of yourself, what would you do?” Jesse said.

  “You mean that I took myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, you are a suspicious bastard,” Molly said.

  “Just testing the hypothesis,” Jesse said. “What would you do?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t send it to you,” Molly said.

  “Disappointing,” Jesse said. “But think about it as if you were she. Imagine you have faked this attack and are now backing it up by taking a nude picture of yourself that you’ll send to the cops.”

  Molly stood and walked to the window and looked out at the municipal parking lot where the trucks parked, and the plow blades waited for winter.

  “Well,” Molly said, without turning from the window, “first I’d try out my poses in a full-length mirror.”

  “See how you looked best?”

  “Of
course,” Molly said.

  “Even though you’re naked.”

  “Especially ’cause I’m naked,” Molly said. “I’d know it had to be frontal nudity, or no one would believe it. But within that, there’s ways to stand, and where the light falls, and do you want to emphasize your boobs, or your hips, or whatever. Any woman knows what her best assets are. Any woman knows where full-face or profile or something in between is her best look.”

  “Makeup?” Jesse said.

  “Absolutely,” Molly said. “It’s credible, and I’ll look a lot better.”

  “Hair?”

  “Ah,” Molly said.

  She had turned from the window. She was engaged in the subject now. Her imagination was entirely invested in how to look best while naked. Jesse smiled slightly, but Molly wasn’t looking at him and she didn’t notice.

  “Hair is a problem,” she said. “It has to look a bit tousled, as if maybe you’ve been roughed up, or your clothes have been forcibly removed. It can’t be not-a-hair-out-of-place.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “But,” Molly said, “I would know how to tousle it so that I’d look as good as I could.”

  “How would you wear it?”

  “If it were me, I’d have a few thick strands loose on my forehead, and the rest sort of down and fluffed around my face.”

  “You never wear it like that,” Jesse said.

  “Jesse, for crissakes, I’m a cop. If I ever wear it like that I’m off-duty.”

  Jesse grinned.

  “I’ll check with Crow,” he said.

  “Oh, shut up,” Molly said.

  “How about if you were forced to disrobe at gunpoint?” Jesse said.

  “I’d probably be too scared to think about it much. I’d just stand there and hope it was over soon, and that he wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “No posing,” Jesse said.

  “Well,” Molly said. “I might suck in my stomach a little.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Look at the pictures.”

  Molly walked to the table and looked down.

  “She’s posing,” Molly said.

  “Betsy Ingersoll,” Jesse said.

  “Absolutely,” Molly said.

  “That’s what I think,” Jesse said.

  51

  “DO YOU have an opinion on the, ah, swinging lifestyle?” Jesse said.

  Dix smiled and leaned back in his chair, the way he did when he was considering something.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Care to share it?” Jesse said.

  “I will,” Dix said, “on the condition that you then share with me some thoughts on Jenn.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said.

  “First, like so much in my work, and yours, it depends to considerable extent on who the people are.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “In my experience most people who swing are not in a healthy love relationship,” Dix said. “On the other hand, most of the people with whom I have experience are not in a healthy love relationship, or I wouldn’t be dealing with them.”

  “So there’s some self-selection going on,” Jesse said.

  “As in your work,” Dix said.

  “I’m not going to hold you to this,” Jesse said. “I’m just looking to understand it.”

  “If I may generalize,” Dix said, “swinging tends to distort sex in marriage. On the one hand, sex is a crucial part of the relationship, indeed, in many cases, the social life. On the other hand, since both spouses presumably have sex with a wide assortment of partners, and quite publicly, it trivializes sex. Sex becomes something akin to a party game.”

  “I see that,” Jesse said.

  “Sex is intricately connected with emotion,” Dix said. “Which is why, say, pornography is ultimately so disappointing.”

  “Swingers claim that it enhances their marriage,” Jesse said. “You buy that?”

  “No,” Dix said. “It is inconsistent with human emotional life, as I understand it. On the other hand”—he smiled—“despite my best efforts, my understanding of human emotional life remains incomplete.”

  “Any thought as to why people do it?”

  “Some thoughts, but the reasons are probably too various. One common reason seems to me that it allows them to be adulterous without guilt.”

  “Because the other spouse is doing it, too,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “And because it can be dressed up with philosophical crap, so it’s not wife-swapping, it’s an approach to life, among like-minded free people.”

  “Yes,” Dix said.

  “At worst, a victimless crime,” Jesse said.

  “Those are rare,” Dix said.

  “Especially if there are children.”

  “About that I am clear, swinging is not good for the children of swingers,” Dix said.

  “In any special way?” Jesse said.

  “In all ways,” Dix said. “It confuses the hell out of them. They’re confused about boundaries and what a family is and what love means and about sex and sexuality and about where they stand in the swingers’ universe.”

  “So I guess you disapprove,” Jesse said.

  “You bet your ass I disapprove,” Dix said. “Tell me about Jenn.”

  52

  CHASE CLARK was tanned, and in health-club, Stair-Master shape. His blond hair was slicked straight back. He had a prominent nose, and the skin on his face was taut and smooth. He wore tinted aviator glasses, a pink polo shirt, and a bright green sweater over his shoulders, the sleeves tied loosely around his neck. The rest of him was olive Dockers and tan boat shoes. Kim Clark had on a white dress with a black pattern, a white belt, and white heels of modest height. Jesse stood when Molly brought them into the squad room and closed the door.

  “Mr. Clark,” Jesse said. “Jesse Stone. I assume you’ve met Officer Crane.”

  “I have,” Chase said, and smiled a big, bright white smile that spoke of careful dentistry. “Hope we aren’t in any trouble.”

  “Not that I know of,” Jesse said. “How are you, Mrs. Clark?”

  “Fine.”

  She looks like June Cleaver, Jesse thought. Everyone sat.

  “First, let me be clear,” Jesse said. “Your membership in the Paradise Free Swingers violates no law.”

  Chase looked at his wife as if he was startled, but he didn’t say anything to her. Instead, he spoke to Jesse.

  “What makes you think we belong to anything?” he said.

  “Police work is boring to describe,” Jesse said. “Let me simply insist that you do, and that it’ll go much quicker in here if we all agree on that.”

  Chase looked again at his wife.

  “Did Kim tell you?” he said.

  “Police work is boring to describe,” Jesse said.

  “Well, say we do, and say you are the standard bluenose that thinks it’s horrid but wishes they could do it. So what?”

  “As I said, it’s in violation of no statute that I know of,” Jesse said.

  “So what are we doing here?”

  “I wish to talk about your daughter and your son,” Jesse said.

  “What have they done?”

  “Nothing yet,” Jesse said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Chase said. “Kim, have you been blabbing to this guy?”

  Kim shook her head. She seemed stiff with tension.

  “If they continue to live in the home you are providing,” Jesse said, “they’ll do something.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The swinging lifestyle, coupled with the occasional physical abuse, is ruining the lives of your children,” Jesse said. “That might come under the heading of child endangerment. We might be able to find a way to take custody from you.”

  Chase sat back, breathing heavily.

  “Who’s . . . been . . . talking to you?” he said.

  “Did you know your son still wets the bed?”

  Chase glanced again at his wife
. She had her head down, looking at the tabletop.

  “Wets the bed?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “You been talking to someone? Kim tell you this crap? That’s just like something she’d say.”

  Kim stared at the tabletop.

  Jesse nodded faintly, and took in a long breath of air.

  “Your daughter came in and asked me for help,” Jesse said.

  Kim looked up at Jesse.

  “Missy?”

  “Missy,” Jesse said.

  “She’s spoiled,” Chase said. “Kim spoils her rotten, the little bitch has no idea how soft she has it.”

  “Are you saying that none of this is true?” Jesse said. “Or are you saying that it is true but no one should have told me?”

  “I’m saying it’s not your business,” Chase said. “It’s family business.”

  “And I’m saying if it fails to provide a proper environment for the children, it becomes my business.”

  “What are you, Mr. Fucking Guidance Counselor?”

  “I am the chief of police of this town,” Jesse said. “And there is only a certain amount of guff I will put up with from you.”

  “We’re being persecuted for being sexually creative,” Chase said.

  “Your wife hates it,” Jesse said. “She does it because she’s afraid of you.”

  “She tell you that?” Chase said.

  “Police work is boring to describe,” Jesse said.

  “Don’t keep saying that,” Chase said.

  “Next time I’ll have Molly say it,” Jesse said.

  “Her? The lady cop? What’s she doing here anyway?”

  “It’s her case,” Jesse said.

  “Case? What case.”

  “You know what I’m doing here?” Molly said. “I’m sitting here trying not to puke listening to you.”

  “She can’t talk to me that way.”

  “Can, did, probably will again,” Jesse said. “Here’s the deal. I don’t care about your sex life. You can have carnal knowledge of a scallop trawler for all I care, or several at a time. But if you do not provide a stable and supportive environment for your children, then I will find a way to make you.”

  “That’s a threat,” Chase said. “You goddamned threatened me. I’m gonna get a lawyer. You’re persecuting us for being sexually open.”

  “And,” Jesse said, “if you lay a hand on any member of your family, I will have you down here in a cell faster than you can say ‘wife-swap.’ ”