“After this, what?” he said aloud in the empty room.
He sat and thought about what he’d said, and nodded his head slowly, and smiled faintly to himself.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
27
MOLLY HAD patched the desk phone into the conference room, and everyone but Arthur Angstrom and Buddy Hall was in there.
“We’ve had two more home invasions,” Jesse said. “Three so far. Pretty much the same M.O. Women home alone in the daytime. Man comes in with a mask and a gun, forces them to disrobe, takes their picture, makes them lie facedown and count to a hundred, and disappears.”
“He dress the same?” Suit said.
“Black pants, black windbreaker,” Jesse said. “Ski mask. Baseball hat, probably Yankees.
The women aren’t sure.”
“Nobody in the neighborhood noticed anything?” Maguire said.
“Nope,” Jesse said. “Not that many people around. Most people’s husbands and wives both work. Kids are in school.”
“Do we know if he was in a car or on foot?” Suit said.
“Nope.”
“He dresses like our peeper,” Molly said. “Think it might be him.”
“They don’t usually escalate like that,” Suit said.
Jesse looked at him.
“I been reading up,” Suit said.
He had a yellow legal pad on the table in front of him, and a ballpoint pen. Jesse nodded and went to the big pot on the file cabinet and got some coffee. There was a box of doughnuts on the table. He took one.
“Any thoughts?” he said.
He took a bite of the doughnut, leaning forward so he wouldn’t get cinnamon sugar on his shirt front.
“We see a pattern anywhere?” Suit said.
“The women,” Molly said. “All of them in their forties. All of them married, with children in school.”
“All of them in neighborhoods which are relatively deserted during the day,” Suit said. “At least the school day.”
“So, which is the appeal?” Jesse said. “Married? Children? Forty?”
“Alone during the day?” Maguire said.
“Relatively upscale neighborhoods,” Suit said.
“All of the above?” Molly said.
“Age is maybe a function of other things,” Molly said. “Most women with kids in school would be in their thirties or forties.”
“Like you, Moll,” Suit said.
“Like hell,” Molly said. “I’m the same age as my oldest kid.”
“How’s that work?” Suit said.
“It just does,” Molly said.
Jesse looked at Maguire.
“Any reports of our Peeping Tom since the first home invasion?” Jesse said.
“No,” Maguire said.
“We have to consider that it may be the same guy,” Jesse said.
“We don’t know who he is,” Suit said. “So what we consider don’t make a hell of a lot of difference.”
Jesse ignored him.
“And we can also entertain the possibility that it’s not,” Jesse said.
“The peeper was my case, Jesse,” Maguire said. “Are the home invasions mine, too?”
“The home-invasions case belongs to all of us,” Jesse said. “If it is our peeper, he’s escalating, and we have no way to know how far it’ll go.”
No one said anything.
“Molly and I will keep talking to the victims,” Jesse said. “I want each of you to listen to everybody you know, questions, gossip, idle chitchat, thoughtful discussion, jokes, whatever, and always listening for anything that might send you somewhere, tell you something, lead you anywhere.”
No one said anything.
“A good police force,” Jesse said, “allows people to feel safe in their homes.”
Everyone was quiet.
“We need to do better,” Jesse said
No one spoke. Everyone looked glum.
Jesse grinned.
“Win one for the Stoner?” he said.
They all looked relieved.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Time to go back to work. Molly, you fill in Arthur and Buddy. Suit, stick around for a minute. Everybody else . . .” He jerked his thumb toward the door and they got up and left. Suit stayed sitting at the table with his yellow pad.
“We get all the rest of the doughnuts,” he said.
He reached into the box and took one.
“You still talking to the swingers?” Jesse said.
“Sure,” Suit said. “Can’t say I’m learning much.”
“See if they have anyone in their group that especially likes to watch.”
Suit nodded as he chewed down half a doughnut.
When it was swallowed he said, “You think it might be one of the swingers?”
“No,” Jesse said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t. But I got nowhere else to go, and at least the swingers group is atypical in their sexuality.”
“It’ll take a while,” Suit said. “I have to do a lot of schmoozing to get a little information, you know?”
“It’s called police work,” Jesse said.
“Awful long shot,” Suit said.
“At the moment, I don’t have a shorter one,” Jesse said.
Suit nodded. He finished his doughnut.
“You think this guy will do something worse?”
“If he’s our peeper, he went up the ladder pretty quick,” Jesse said.
“They dress the same,” Suit said.
“Could be a copycat,” Jesse said. “Could be on purpose to mislead us.”
“Or it could be him,” Suit said.
“Or it could be him,” Jesse said.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Suit said.
28
“SO,” SPIKE SAID, “you two got anything going these days?”
“What we’ve got going,” Sunny said, “as you well know, is my ex-husband, and Jesse’s ex-wife.”
“It’s a start,” Spike said.
Jesse smiled.
“How are things with Marcy Campbell?” Jesse said.
The three of them were sitting on the deck of the Gray Gull as the sun set behind them, stretching the shadows of the boats at mooring toward Paradise Neck.
“Good,” Spike said. “She really likes you.”
“Everybody does,” Jesse said. “Is she finding you any property?”
“She doesn’t do commercial real estate, but she is co-brokering with a guy who does.”
“Find anything?” Jesse said.
He was drinking beer. Spike had a Maker’s Mark on the rocks. Sunny sipped some Riesling.
“Yep,” Spike said.
“You did?” Sunny said.
“Yep.”
“Well, where?” Sunny said.
Spike grinned.
“Right here,” he said.
“The Gray Gull?” Sunny said.
“Yep, soon to be Spike’s North.”
“My God,” Sunny said.
“Congratulations,” Jesse said.
“But you can’t call it Spike’s North,” Sunny said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the Gray Gull,” Sunny said. “It’s been here forever.”
“Or at least since you started fooling around with the chief,” Spike said.
“At least that long,” Sunny said. “The name’s got history. People will be mad if you change it.”
“Like I should care,” Spike said.
“Customers will be mad at you,” Sunny said.
Spike smiled at Sunny. She often referred to Spike as her “compliance consultant,” and Jesse could see why. He wasn’t unusually tall. But he had about him the massive shapeless force of a bear.
“Like, I do care,” he said. “How about Spike’s Gray Gull?”
“Ick,” Sunny said.
“Okay,” Spike said. “Gray Gull.”
“A proven winner,” Sunny said
“Sound right to you, Chief Jesse?” Spike said.
Spike’s receding hair was cut very close to his skull and his beard was trimmed short.
There was a shiny go-to-hell look in his eyes.
“ ‘Fooling around’?” Jesse said.
“Fooling around what?” Spike said.
“Sunny and I weren’t fooling around,” Jesse said. “We were serious.”
“Ah,” Spike said. “Excellent. If I weren’t gayer than laughter, I’d be serious about her, too.”
“Would you like to talk about me further?” Sunny said. “I’ll try to be quiet.”