Night and Day

by Parker, Robert B.

  “Thank you for your kindness,” Betsy said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “May I go?” she said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  They stood. Jesse took her arm and they walked past the couch to the door.

  “You’ve seen the picture of me,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not so unattractive,” she said.

  “You’re quite attractive.”

  “Did you like seeing me undressed?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “He doesn’t even bother to look,” she said.

  “Whatever he does, or doesn’t do,” Jesse said, “it’s not because of you.”

  “What?”

  “The reason he is a womanizer is not in you,” Jesse said. “They’re in him.”

  “You seem so sure,” Betsy said. “How do you know that?”

  Jesse smiled at her.

  “I am the chief of police,” he said, and opened the door.

  61

  JESSE PHONED Sunny Randall in the morning.

  “You’re still seeing that shrink, right?” he said.

  “Dr. Silverman,” Sunny said. “Yes, I am.”

  “So you still think she’s good?”

  “Very.”

  “Okay, I might have someone I’d like to refer to her. She taking new patients?”

  “I’ll ask her,” Sunny said.

  “What’s her first name?” Jesse said.

  “Susan,” Sunny said. “Susan Silverman.”

  Jesse wrote it down.

  “Got a phone number and address?”

  Sunny gave him both. He wrote that down.

  “How soon?” Jesse said.

  “Will I ask?” Sunny said. “Today. I see her at ten. I can give you an answer about eleven.”

  “Good,” Jesse said. “Woman’s name is Betsy Ingersoll.”

  “The panty peeker?”

  “Yep,” Jesse said.

  “The recent Night Hawk victim?”

  “Sort of,” Jesse said.

  “Sort of ?”

  “She faked it,” Jesse said.

  “Faked it?” Sunny said. “Why would you want to send her to a shrink?”

  “Everybody’s going,” Jesse said.

  “Speaking of that, why not send her to Dix?”

  “Too close,” Jesse said. “Dix wouldn’t do therapy with me and take on someone I’m involved with as a cop.”

  “Of course not,” Sunny said. “Dumb question. Why’d she fake it?”

  “Maybe to get her husband’s attention,” Jesse said. “Maybe other reasons.”

  Sunny was quiet for a moment.

  Then she said, “You’re going to squeeze her.”

  “You think?” Jesse said.

  “You’re going to give her a choice between being arrested for filing a false police report and going to see a shrink.”

  “That’s correct,” Jesse said.

  “You’re a good guy,” Sunny said, “but I’m not sure you’re that good. She strike a nerve?”

  “She did,” Jesse said.

  “Which you don’t care to discuss with me,” Sunny said.

  “Not at the moment.”

  “But which has something to do with Jenn,” Sunny said.

  “Stop showing off,” Jesse said.

  “That’s a no-brainer,” Sunny said. “Everything has something to do with Jenn.”

  “Some things change,” Jesse said.

  “And some things don’t,” Sunny said. “I’ll call you after I see Dr. Silverman.”

  62

  SUIT AND Molly came in with Betsy Ingersoll after lunch. She had on a sober blue dress and low-heeled black shoes. She wore a pearl necklace and pearl earrings. She looked like the perfect corporate wife.

  “Your husband with you?” Jesse said when she sat down.

  “No,” she said. “He didn’t come home last night.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “No.”

  “I need to tape this,” Jesse said.

  “That is acceptable,” Betsy Ingersoll said. “But could it be just you and me?”

  “Of course,” Jesse said.

  Molly and Suit left and closed the door behind them. Jesse turned on the tape recorder.

  “This is Chief Jesse Stone, of the Paradise police. This interview is conducted in my office at Paradise police headquarters. The interviewee is Betsy Ingersoll. You ready, Betsy?”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Do you wish an attorney?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “You have the right to one,” Jesse said.

  “I’m very, very tired of attorneys.”

  “If you don’t know who to call, or can’t afford one,” Jesse said, “we can provide you with one.”

  “You’re reading me my rights,” she said.

  “For the record,” Jesse said, “do you waive your right to an attorney.”

  “I do,” Betsy said.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Tell me what you told me last night in your husband’s office.”

  She told her story as if she was giving an oral report. As she talked she didn’t look at Jesse. She seemed to have picked out a spot on the wall to Jesse’s right. And she stared at it as she talked. She was well prepared. Jesse didn’t have to prompt her. When she finished, she shifted her gaze from the wall to Jesse and smiled and sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. Jesse leaned forward and shut off the recorder.

  “Thank you,” Jesse said.

  “What will you do with me?” she said.

  “Depends on you,” Jesse said.

  “How?”

  “I have the name of a very competent, highly recommended psychotherapist whom I would like you to see,” he said. “She has already agreed to see you, if you’ll call and make an appointment.”

  “You think I’m crazy,” Betsy said.

  “You’ve done some crazy things,” Jesse said.

  “I’m not crazy,” she said.

  “Not very,” Jesse said. “But I think you need help working things out with your husband.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I can probably get you jail time,” Jesse said.

  “So those are my choices?” she said. “I see your stupid shrink or you arrest me?”

  “That’s pretty much it,” Jesse said.

  “You are being very cruel,” she said.

  “I didn’t have to offer you the shrink,” Jesse said.

  She shifted her gaze back at the spot on the wall to Jesse’s right and sat. Jesse sat with her.

  After a time she sighed and said, “What’s his name?”

  “Her name is Dr. Susan Silverman,” Jesse said.

  “She a friend of yours?”

  “I’ve never met her,” Jesse said. “A friend of mine sees her, and my own shrink recommends her highly.”

  “You have a shrink?”

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  Betsy studied the wall.

  “How often do I have to go,” she said.

  “As often as you and she decide,” Jesse said. “And you have to go for at least a year.”

  “A year?”

  “Yes.”

  “She decides how often during the year?”

  “You and she,” Jesse said.

  “So the more she tells me to come, the more money she makes,” Betsy said.

  “Take it or leave it,” Jesse said.

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “You can’t be left alone,” Jesse said. “You need help.”

  She began to cry. Jesse waited. This was real crying, with a lot of heaves and gasps. Eventually she got it under control enough to speak.

  “You’re trying to help me,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “You may be the only one who ever has,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “I’ll see her,” Betsy sai
d.

  63

  JESSE MADE two photocopies of the letter and put the original in his evidence file. When Molly came in he gave her one copy and kept the other for himself.

  They read it together:Hey, Jesse,

  Well, you don’t quit. I’ll give you that. You’ll enjoy the swingers. They’re a fun group. You probably wonder how I know you’re going to talk with the swingers. Let’s just say I keep in touch. One thing for sure, if you’re talking with the swingers group, you must be circling in on me, or think you are. Maybe you’ll get me one day. But if you do it won’t be you that does it. You’ll just be standing around when my old friend Mr. Obsession turns me in. Some shrink would probably say that I was externalizing my pathology and objectifying it by calling it Mr. O. You know anything about psychology, Jesse? Shrinks say tons of stuff like that . . . useless shit. You got any idea what it’s like to have Mr. O sitting on your chest all the time? Probably not. It’s like being a prisoner. I sit here and look at my pictures on my computer, and the more I look, the more they aren’t enough. Mr. O needs fresh meat. Funny, isn’t it? They all look about the same. They all got the same secret. But Mr. O keeps needing to discover that secret again, and again, and again. On that basis, I keep doing it, and doing it, you’ll probably catch me in time. It really sucks, you know? I hate myself for what I do, but if I don’t do it . . . I have to do it. The way you have to eat, or drink. Mr. O requires it. But Mr. O won’t let me touch them. Is that weird, or what? It’s why my wife and I joined the swingers. We didn’t have sex for three years, I think, before we joined. It was exciting to look at her, but I could never perform when it came to actual touching. I didn’t actually have sex with anyone at the swinger parties, either, but Mr. O is a clever bastard, and I think they didn’t know that. I don’t know really why I’m writing to you like this. You’re a small-town cop, probably thinks Freud is a kind of antifreeze. But we’re sort of comrades-in-arms. You know? We’re kind of in this together. Doing some kind of dance where I lead and you follow. Be interesting to see what happens when the music stops.

  “He’s telling me who he is,” Jesse said.

  “We know who he is,” Molly said.

  “But he wants us to know. He’s making sure.”

  “Then why doesn’t he just say, ‘My name is Seth Ralston,’ ” Molly said.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Then he’s not the Night Hawk anymore,” Jesse said. “Think of this as foreplay.”

  Molly nodded.

  “And the meeting with the swingers?” she said.

  “More foreplay,” Jesse said.

  Molly frowned and then smiled.

  “You’ll say things that you want him to hear,” she said.

  “Try to keep the pressure on him,” Jesse said. “If he stays hunkered down someplace, I won’t be able to catch him.”

  “You think he wants you to catch him?” Molly said.

  “Does and doesn’t,” Jesse said. “I’m trying to work on ‘does.’ ”

  “How do you think he knows about the meeting?”

  “Probably his wife,” Jesse said.

  “Which means she knows where he is?”

  “Or he calls her,” Jesse said.

  “I feel sort of bad for him, in a strange way,” Molly said.

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  “And his wife,” Molly said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess we need to talk with her again,” Molly said.

  “We do,” Jesse said.

  Molly smiled, looking at the letter.

  “And the dance continues,” she said.

  64

  JESSE AND Molly met the Free Swingers in the spacious atrium of a big gray shingled house that faced the ocean on Paradise Neck. Jesse was the only man in the room. No husbands attended. Hannah Wechsler was there. Kimberly Clark was not. Jesse stood in the center of the long room, with a view of the ocean at his back. Molly sat on a slipper rocker near him. Everyone else gathered in an extended semicircle facing him.

  “Thank you for coming,” Jesse said. “Thanks to Mrs. Stevens for allowing us the use of her house.”

  No one said anything.

  “I am not interested as a police chief or a man in the non-criminal private behavior of consenting adults,” Jesse said. “But I am looking for a criminal, and you are in a unique position to help me.”

  They all sat silently. Neatly dressed. A lot of flowered prints. He could have been addressing a group of den mothers, Jesse thought.

  “I know you’ve heard of the Night Hawk. His behavior is essentially voyeuristic. Look but don’t touch, so to speak.”

  “What about that school principal?” a woman asked.

  Her voice was hoarse. She cleared it after she spoke.

  “We think that may be a different person,” Jesse said.

  “A copycat?” the woman said.

  “Maybe,” Jesse said. “But it occurred to me that the Night Hawk might be attracted to a group such as yours. So it would help if you could tell me if there’s anyone you’ve encountered in the activities of your group that looks but doesn’t touch.”

  Everyone looked at Jesse without speaking. Jesse waited.

  “That’s not allowed,” a woman said finally.

  “Would you know?” Jesse said. “Would you always know who was doing what with whom?”

  Again there was silence. Then several of the women began to shake their heads.

  “You wouldn’t,” Jesse said.

  The woman who had cleared her throat cleared it again and then said, “No.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Officer Crane is going to hand out some index cards and pencils. I’d like each of you to list the name of any man with whom you’ve had experience who has watched and nothing else.”

  “You think this guy is in our group?” one of the women asked.

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  “Who do you think he is?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Why do you think so,” the woman said. “Because we are a little unconventional, maybe?”

  She was a big dark-haired woman with a long braid in her hair.

  “We have some evidence,” Jesse said.

  “What do you think of what we do,” the woman with the braid said to Jesse.

  “I think it’s legal,” Jesse said.

  “Would you do it?” the woman said.

  Jesse was quiet, thinking about it.

  “No,” he said after a moment. “Probably not.”

  “What a waste,” the woman with the hoarse voice said.

  All the women laughed, including Molly.

  “Do we have to sign the card?” a woman asked.

  “No,” Jesse said. “And if there is no one in your experience, just don’t write on the card.”

  Molly handed out cards and pencils.

  A woman wearing large tinted glasses raised her hand.

  “I have a question,” she said.

  Jesse nodded at her.

  “Can we keep the pencil afterward?” she said.

  The women giggled. Jesse laughed.

  “Sure,” he said. “Swap them around if you’d like.”

  The women giggled again, and most of them wrote on their cards.

  “If there’s anyone who took pictures,” Jesse said, “without, ah, engaging, I’d like to know that man’s name, too.”

  “No picture taking,” the woman with the pigtail said.

  “Covert is always possible,” Jesse said.

  Several women shrugged. No one looked convinced. When they were through writing, Molly walked along the semicircle, picking up the cards. She gave them to Jesse, who slipped them into the side pocket of his coat.

  “Anyone have anything else?” he said.

  From her seat at the far end of the semicircle, Hannah Wechsler said, “I think this is a witch hunt.”

  Several of the women looked at her, but none of them spoke. Jesse nodded.

  “Anybody els
e?” he said.

  “Are you and Officer Crane going to attend our next meeting?” the woman with the big glasses said.

  “Only if somebody calls the cops,” Jesse said.

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” the woman said.

  65

  HANNAH WECHSLER walked into Jesse’s office and sat down in a chair. Molly appeared behind her in the doorway and raised her eyebrows. Jesse shook his head faintly.

  “You bastard,” she said. “You think my husband is the Night Hawk.”

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  “I knew you’d find a way to use the Free Swingers against us,” she said. “A cop is a cop is a cop.”

  Jesse said, “I need to ask you an impertinent question.”

  “You are nothing,” she said, “if not impertinent.”

  “It’s a question that needs an answer,” Jesse said. “How long has it been since you had sex with your husband.”

  “Jesus, you are out of control,” she said.

  “How long?” Jesse said.

  “None of your goddamned business,” she said.

  “Actually, it is,” Jesse said.

  He took the Night Hawk’s last letter from his drawer and gave it to her.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “Read,” Jesse said.

  Hannah read the letter carefully, as if Jesse might be trying to trick her. As she finished, her face began to redden. But she clamped her jaw and read it again carefully. When she was done she placed the letter on Jesse’s desk, and sat back. The letter lay on the desk at an angle. She leaned forward and carefully squared it to the edge of the desk. She stared at Jesse.

  “I got seven names from the swinger women yesterday, of men that watched but didn’t touch,” Jesse said.

  Hannah continued to stare at him.

  “All seven names were Seth Ralston,” Jesse said.

  She continued to stare. Her mouth was a thin, straight line on her red face.

  “I had Molly call every woman that was at the meeting, except you,” Jesse said, “and ask each of them if Seth Ralston had ever touched them. All of them said no.”

  Her shoulders hunched and her neck seemed to get thinner.

  “You have sex with your husband,” Jesse said, “in the last three years?”

  Hannah suddenly made a low, harsh screaming sound and doubled over in her chair, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. As she rocked, the scream changed to a steady keening sound. Molly appeared in the doorway. Jesse put up his hand and nodded that she should stay there. The keening and rocking continued. Molly came in and sat down in the chair next to Hannah and put her arm around Hannah’s shoulders. Hannah turned awkwardly toward her and pressed her face against Molly’s shoulder. Molly patted her hair. Hannah moaned. Jesse sat silently behind his desk with his arms folded. It took a while, but eventually she got herself under control and sat up. Jesse pushed a box of Kleenex across the desk. She took one and blew her nose, and another and wiped her eyes. Jesse held out the wastebasket, and she discarded the used Kleenex. She took a fresh one from the box and held it, apparently in reserve. She breathed as if she’d been running a long way.