“Sure,” Spike said. “Now you tell me.”
Sunny giggled.
“When do you close?” Jesse said.
“Sixty days,” Spike said. “Then if you want, you can run a tab here.”
“What I need,” Jesse said. “An open tab at a bar.”
29
JESSE SAT in his office, reading a letter from the Night Hawk.
Dear Chief Stone,
I know you have been looking for me. I am your Peeping Tom, and I am the one who forced those women to undress so I could take their pictures (see enclosed, so you know it’s really me). When I’m doing that, I am in some sort of feverish coma. When it’s over I feel disgusted with myself and swear that I’ll never do it again. But I do. I am really afraid I might do something even worse than what I’m doing. When I’m in the coma, I seem to be somebody else. I guess it’s some kind of obsession. The funny thing about it is how I get pleasure from it when I do it, but overall it’s ruining my life. Maybe it’s the nature of obsessions. I hate it. I hate myself. I’ve seen plenty of naked women in my life. But never enough for my obsession. I won’t turn myself in. I probably should, but my obsession won’t let me. I guess I can’t. And I don’t even know if this letter is a cri de coeur asking for help, or if it’s part of my obsession to taunt you. What I know is that my life is becoming more unbearable every time I act out my obsession. . . . But I need to see, I need to know their secret.
The Night Hawk
Jesse picked up the three pictures that had come with the letter. They were remarkably similar. A frightened and humiliated woman standing naked, looking into the camera. The women even looked somewhat alike. Dark hair, not fat, about the same height. What secret were they revealing? Their naked selves? You could go online and find thousands of pictures of nude women. What was special about these women? Maybe it wasn’t about nudity or sex.
Maybe it was about control, about power. In most men, Jesse suspected, sex and power were not unrelated. Did it matter that they looked superficially alike? Most women of their age and weight and social status would probably look pretty much like they did, if forced to stand naked in front of a stranger’s camera. Why had he written? Was it that he wanted to get caught?
Or was he like those people who had sex in public places, the experience intensified by the possibility of getting caught? Or both.
Jesse took the pictures to his office window and looked at them carefully in the sunlight.
They told him nothing. The Night Hawk had obviously used a digital camera and fed the pictures into his computer, and printed them out on ordinary printer paper. He turned the pictures over. Nothing. He turned them back faceup. Nothing. Nothing to tell him what computer, or what printer, or even what kind of camera. He went back to his desk and took a lavender file folder from a desk drawer. Molly bought his office supplies, and she liked colorful file folders.
He spread the three pictures out on his desktop and covered them one at a time with the file folder and then slid the folder down an inch at a time, looking at each narrow segment of the picture as the folder revealed it. Nothing. He did the same with the letter. Nothing. He took the letter to the window and studied it in the sunlight. Ordinary paper. Common typeface. He went back to his desk and put the three photographs in the lavender folder with the letter on top of them. Then he went to his office door and yelled for Molly.
“Close the door,” he said when she came in.
She did, and sat down in front of his desk. Jesse handed her the folder.
“Read the letter first,” Jesse said. “Then look at the pictures.”
Molly nodded and opened the folder. She read the letter and looked at the pictures, and when she was done she put everything back in the folder, closed the folder, and put it on the edge of Jesse’s desk.
“The son of a bitch,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“You’ve been over these?”
“From every angle I could think of,” Jesse said.
“Prints?”
“Not yet,” Jesse said. “You can have Peter Perkins go over them, in your presence.”
“In my presence?”
“I want you to take care of these pictures,” Jesse said. “I give them to anybody else in the department and they’ll be in the copy machine thirty seconds later.”
“What is it with men and nudity,” Molly said.
“I guess we’re in favor of it,” Jesse said.
“I mean, I’ve been married seventeen years,” Molly said. “My husband has seen me naked maybe five thousand times. But every time I come out of the shower or whatever he looks at me like he’s peeking in a window.”
Jesse nodded.
“What’s that about?” Molly said.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“Are you like that?” Molly said.
Jesse nodded slowly.
“Pretty much,” he said.
“In the time you’ve been a cop,” Molly said, “have you ever heard of a female Peeping Tom?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t get it,” Molly said.
