“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.