“We’re pretty smart,” she said.
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“You think she made it up?”
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
“Why?”
“Husband?” Jesse said.
“To get his attention?”
“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.”
