The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  “We?”

  “You and Suit,” Jesse said. “But I’ve been with you in spirit.”

  “That’s been great,” Molly said. “But you’re right. There’s no point to the Wednesday-night stakeouts anymore.”

  “Best we, or you and Suit, can do is make random checks at unexpected times,” Jesse said.

  “Boy, those are great odds,” Molly said.

  “You got a better plan,” Jesse said.

  “I don’t have one as good,” Molly said.

  Jesse smiled.

  “You and Suit could watch Hannah for a week or so,” Jesse said. “See if there’s any pattern in what she does and where she goes.”

  Molly nodded.

  “If he’s as driven as you think he is,” Molly said, “this must be pressuring him something fierce.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “What do you think he’ll do?” Molly said.

  “What I know is, he can’t do nothing. The pressure will build. He’ll have to find a way.”

  “You sound so sure,” Molly said.

  “Obsession can be tough,” Jesse said.

  57

  HANNAH WECHSLER came into Jesse’s office wearing a flowered skirt and a white T-shirt. She had on big hoop earrings and some sort of low suede boot. Her upscale intellectual uniform, Jesse thought.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Okay,” Jesse said.

  Molly stood in the doorway. Hannah looked at her.

  “I would prefer that our conversation be private,” she said.

  “Okay,” Jesse said.

  Molly went back to the desk.

  “What was she going to do?” Hannah said. “Listen in?”

  “We usually ask her to be present when there’s a woman alone in the office with me,” Jesse said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Hannah said.

  “Coffee?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  Jesse nodded and leaned back a little in his chair. Hannah looked around the office. Jesse’s gun lay holstered on top of the file cabinet.

  “There it is,” Hannah said, “the inevitable gun.”

  “Yep,” Jesse said.

  “I don’t like the police,” she said.

  “I sensed that,” Jesse said.

  “The visible representation of a repressive state,” Hannah said.

  “Me?” Jesse said.

  “All of you,” Hannah said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “thanks for stopping by.”

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I . . . my husband has disappeared.”

  “Tell me about that,” Jesse said.

  “Two days ago, three if you count today,” she said. “I came home from the library. . . . God, I don’t need this in the middle of my dissertation.”

  “Must be a distraction,” Jesse said.

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  “No,” Jesse said.

  “I came home and there was a note on the kitchen table.”

  She opened her handbag and took out a piece of white printer paper and handed it to Jesse.

  “I’m going away for a while,” it said. “Don’t look for me.”

  Jesse put the paper on his desk. She looked at him. He looked back.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I guess he’s left,” Jesse said.

  “Of course he’s left,” she said. “Can you find him?”

  “Maybe,” Jesse said.

  “What do you mean ‘maybe,’ ” she said.

  “Police work is uncertain,” Jesse said. “You have any thoughts?”

  “Like what?” she said.

  “Where he might have gone?” Jesse said. “Why he went? How long is ‘a while’?”

  “No.”

  “Have any reason to suspect foul play?”

  “No,” Hannah said. “But why would he leave like that?”

  “Any trouble in the marriage?” Jesse said.

  “No, of course not. We were very happy.”

  “Anything about the Free Swingers that might be helpful?”

  “Oh, naturally, all you moralistic yahoos, you’d love to blame it on swinging, wouldn’t you?”

  Jesse was resting his elbows on the arms of his chair with his fingertips at chin level. He tapped the tips of his fingers together slowly.

  “I don’t mean to be too repressive here,” he said. “But you asked me to find your husband. To do that, I need to ask questions.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “we stopped going to swinger parties.”

  “When?” Jesse said.

  “It’s been several weeks,” she said.

  “Do you know exactly?” Jesse said.

  “Not now. It’s on my calendar. When I get home I can call you,” she said.

  “Do,” Jesse said. “Why did you stop going?”

  “My husband said he’d lost interest, that he was bored by it all.”

  “And you wouldn’t go without him?” Jesse said.

  She looked at him the way she might have studied a caveman.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said.

  “Guess not,” Jesse said.

  “Going alone is not the point,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Has he ever left before?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “No arguments, nothing to precipitate it?”

  “None.”

  “Did you argue at all about giving up swinging?”

  “I wouldn’t call it an argument,” she said.

  “What would you call it?”

  “I wanted to continue,” she said. “He wished to stop. We disagreed.”

  “Angrily?”

  “No, we don’t have an angry relationship,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “He take anything with him?”

  “His computer’s gone,” she said.

  “He have a car?”

  “Yes, a black Chrysler Crossfire,” she said. “You know, with the slanty back?”

  “Plate numbers?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Insurance broker would know.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can get it when I go home.”

  “Let me know that, too,” Jesse said.

  “Plates and the day he stopped swinging,” she said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “And a list of credit cards. He have a checkbook?”

  “Yes, I think he took that, too,” she said. “We each have our own separate accounts.”

  “We’ll need the name of his bank. Account numbers if you have them.”

  “We have such a good marriage,” she said. “Sexually compatible. Both love the academic life, love literature.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Well,” he said. “Something happened.”

  “Of course it did,” she said. “Seth disappeared.”

  “In the last several weeks he has made some major changes in his life. He quit swinging. He left you. Something caused that.”

  “Unless something happened to him,” she said.

  “Unless that,” Jesse said.

  “What are you going to do.”

  “Once we get your input we’ll look for his car, check his credit-card activity, see if he’s cashing checks anywhere or using ATMs, the usual stuff,” Jesse said. “You’ll let us know if you hear from him.”

  “Do you think you’ll find him?” she said.

  “Probably,” Jesse said. “Of course, if he’s left voluntarily, and broken no laws, we can’t force him to come back.”

  “I have to know what happened,” she said.

  “Don’t blame you,” Jesse said.

  58

  “HE DECLINED to go to a swinger party,” Jesse said, “two days after Gloria Fisher chased him out of her house.”

  They were in the squad room drinking coff
ee.

  “Must have killed him,” Molly said. “The fearsome Night Hawk.”

  “So why wouldn’t he want to do more swinging, not less?” Suit said.

  He had brought a box of doughnuts and was eating one. Jesse had already had one, and Molly had broken one in half and eaten half of it. Jesse took the discarded half.

  “I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I don’t know why he does what he does.”

  “And then a few weeks later he disappears on his wife,” Molly said.

  “May be a string of coincidences,” Jesse said.

  “But coincidences don’t do us any good,” Suit said. “They don’t give us anyplace to go.”

  “Where’d you get that idea?” Jesse said.

  “You told me that twenty times,” Suit said.

  “Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah.”

  “The good news here,” Molly said, “is now we have a legitimate reason to poke around in his affairs more. Access his credit-card records, see who he writes checks to, that sort of thing.”

  “I’d like to find a way to look at his computer,” Jesse said. “We find the pictures in there, we got him.”

  “Too bad he took it, we’d have had a legitimate reason to look in there, trying to find him,” Suit said.

  “That’s why he took it,” Molly said.

  “If we were to find it, before we found him . . .” Jesse said.

  “We might get away with it,” Molly said.

  “We’ll keep it in mind while we’re looking,” Jesse said.

  Jesse examined the contents of the doughnut box and selected another cinnamon-sugar.

  “Moll?” he said, and offered the box.

  “My God,” Molly said. “Keep those away from me, you animal.”

  Jesse shrugged and pushed the box toward Suit. Suit took out a honey-dip and bit into it.

  “Moll,” Jesse said. “You got the credit-card stuff, the checking accounts, the car registration.”

  “Yep,” Molly said. “Let the phone calls begin.”

  “Suit, get his license picture and take it around to the local motels,” Jesse said. “Check the parking lots, too, for the car.”

  “Molly,” Suit said. “You sure you don’t want another one of these doughnuts? It’s cop food. You’re a cop. Get a little meat on those hips?”

  Molly put her fingers in her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Suit,” Jesse said. “You’re department liaison with the Paradise Free Swingers. They got like a president or anything?”

  “Head wife-swapper?” Suit said. “I don’t know. I could ask Debbie.”

  “Do that,” Jesse said.

  “And if they do?”

  “I’d like to gather them together and talk with them,” Jesse said.

  “And if they don’t?” Suit said.

  Jesse grinned.

  “I’d like to gather them together and talk with them,” Jesse said.

  “Sort of limits my options,” Suit said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “You want all of them?” Suit said.

  “Just the women,” Jesse said.

  Suit smiled.

  “Can I be there?” he said.

  “Probably be Molly,” Jesse said. “She makes the women less uneasy.”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Suit said, “eat my doughnuts, but when I need a favor . . .”

  Molly grinned at Suit.

  “I’ll tell you what they talked about,” Molly said. “It will be almost the same.”

  “The hell it will,” Suit said.

  59

  JENN’S VOICE on the answering machine said, “Jesse. It’s me. I know you’re probably still working, but I needed to talk.”

  Jesse drank some from his first drink of the night.

  “The program is struggling. Syndication isn’t going as well as we’d hoped. They’re talking about restructuring, and it could mean that there’d be no job for me.”

  Jesse sighed aloud in the empty living room. He took another swallow of whiskey.

  “I’m scared, Jesse. I don’t know what to do. I need to talk to you. I . . . I guess I need you. . . . Call me.”

  Jesse stared into his drink. Ice always had a nice, fresh look to it. Clean-looking. He finished the glass and made another. Full glass of ice. Two inches of scotch. Fill with soda. Stir with forefinger.

  “Boyfriend must have bailed on her,” Jesse said aloud.

  Carrying his drink, he walked into the kitchen and looked into his refrigerator. Not much. Maybe later he’d fry a couple of eggs, make a sandwich. Maybe some onions. He took his drink back to the living room and sat down.

  “And I’m the safety net,” he said.

  He laughed without pleasure and drank some whiskey.

  “Backup,” he said.

  He laughed again and drank again.

  “A career backup,” he said.

  He looked at his drink.

  “It’s going good,” he said. “I’m on the bench. It’s going bad, she calls. I rescue her.”

  He drank.

  He looked at his picture of Ozzie Smith. He looked at his gun and badge lying on the bar. He finished his drink and stood and made another one. He walked with his drink into the bedroom and looked at the picture of Jenn on his night table. He gestured at it with his glass.

  “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said.

  He sat on the bed, looking at her.

  It would be nice to have her home. It would be nice to call her and say, Come on home, I’ll look out for you. She enriched a space when she was in it. Her laughter bubbled. Her affection seemed genuine. She was good-looking and funny and she was smart . . . he smiled . . . though not always. If she was to come and stay with him, they’d have sex. Sex with Jenn was like sex with no one else. He knew, if he looked at it for a while, that it wasn’t so much what she did, it was how he felt.

  His glass was empty. Drinks disappeared faster, he noticed, the more of them you drank. He stood and walked back to the living room and mixed another. He’d been doing pretty good lately. Two drinks before dinner, maybe half a glass of wine with dinner. Tonight, not so good.

  He drank.

  He looked at the phone.

  “You keep on doing the same thing you been doing, and expect the results to be different,” Jesse said aloud. “You’re maybe a little crazy.”

  He looked at his picture of Ozzie Smith and raised his glass toward it.

  “Maybe even a little obsessive, Oz. You know?”

  He drank, and looked at the phone.

  Couple more drinks, maybe less, and there’d be no more pleasure to it. Then it would be something else, something dull and needful.

  “But not yet,” he said.

  And drank.

  And didn’t call.

  60

  “I HOPE you didn’t mind coming into Boston,” Jay Ingersoll said in a way that let Jesse know that he didn’t really care whether Jesse liked it or not.

  “I didn’t mind,” Jesse said.

  He sat across from Jay Ingersoll’s big desk on the top floor of Cone, Oakes. Betsy Ingersoll sat to her husband’s left in a comfortable chair facing Jesse. It was a big office, but not ornate, the most prominent features being the view, which rivaled that from the client conference room three flights down, and a large leather sofa on the inside wall next to the door.

  “What can we do for you?” Jay said.

  “I have a letter,” Jesse said, “from the Night Hawk that I thought you both should see.”

  Jay Ingersoll put out his hand.

  Jesse took a photocopy of the original letter from his briefcase and gave it to Ingersoll. He took another copy and started to hand it to Betsy. Ingersoll put up a hand.

  “I’ll read it,” he said.

  Jesse held on to the copy and waited.

  Ingersoll read the letter carefully. His face seemed to harden, but otherwise nothing changed. He looked up at Jesse when he was through reading.

  “You find this
credible?” he said to Jesse.

  “You?” Jesse said.

  “What does it say,” Betsy asked.

  “It’s about you,” Jay said.

  “Then perhaps,” Betsy said, “I ought to see it.”

  Jesse handed her a copy.

  “Don’t say anything,” Jay said to her.

  She read slowly. As she read, her face began to flush. When she finished she stared at the paper for a moment and then looked at Jesse.

  “Well, of course he tells you that,” Betsy said. “He’s a perverted criminal. He wouldn’t admit it.”

  “Betsy,” Ingersoll said, “don’t talk.”

  “I mean, do you think I made it all up, for God’s sake?”

  “Betsy,” Ingersoll said sharply.

  “Actually, ma’am, I do think you made it all up,” Jesse said.

  “Betsy,” Jay Ingersoll said. “He is saying that you filed a false police report. That’s a crime. It is time to let your lawyer do the talking.”

  “Oh, screw you, Jay,” she said. “If you expect me to sit here and be insulted, then you can just kiss my ass.”

  “He’s not insulting you, Betsy,” Ingersoll said. “He’s questioning you in the presence of your lawyer.”

  “Well, I want another lawyer, then,” she said. “I am sick to death of you.”

  “The Night Hawk regularly writes me letters,” Jesse said. “In every one he brags about what he has done. In this letter he denies it. He has never touched a victim. According to you, he hit you and forced you down and tied you up. In this letter he denies it. He has never sent me a letter that didn’t tell the truth.”

  “How do you even know it’s him?” Betsy said.

  “I know his voice by now,” Jesse said. “And who else would write, and why?”

  Ingersoll stood.

  “I’m afraid this meeting is over, Chief Stone,” he said.

  “And you’d take his word over mine?” Betsy said. “A school principal?”

  “Well, your record there is not unblemished,” Jesse said.

  “Enough,” Ingersoll said. “This interview is finished.”

  “She has told me you’re not her lawyer,” Jesse said.

  “Goddamn it,” Ingersoll said. “I am also her husband.”

  “As such, you have no standing to stop the interview,” Jesse said.

  “What blemish,” Betsy said.

  “The panty-check escapade was a little odd,” Jesse said.

  “Betsy,” Ingersoll said.