“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 said.
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?”
