“Two more months,” Sunny said.
“That does not bode well for your relationship,” Jesse said.
“Hardly,” Sunny said.
Jesse got up and went behind the bar and got the coffeepot and poured them both some more coffee.
“Maybe it’s time to move on,” Jesse said.
“You can say that to me?” Sunny said.
“I know.”
“For crissakes,” Sunny said. “You’ve been hanging on for years to an ex-wife who sleeps around.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
“And you’re telling me to move on?”
“Maybe we both should,” Jesse said.
Sunny leaned back on her bar stool and stared at Jesse. Then she smiled.
“We do appear to be running out of options,” she said.
“You still seeing that shrink?” Jesse said.
“Dr. Silverman,” Sunny said. “Yes. You?”
“I still talk to Dix,” he said.
There was a half-pint carton of half-and-half on the bar. Jesse added some to his coffee and stirred in sugar. Sunny had her coffee black, with Splenda.
“You know about my Peeping Tom house invader,” Jesse said.
“Calls himself the Night Hawk?”
“Yes.”
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” Sunny said. “The B-movie, comic-book names some of these guys come up with to make themselves seem heroic?”
Jesse nodded.
“He writes me letters,” Jesse said.
“Oh,” Sunny said. “One of those. I had a guy like that.”
“Spare Change Killer?” Jesse said.
“You followed the case,” Sunny said.
“As much of it as the media got right,” Jesse said.
Sunny shook her head.
“Poor jerk . . . like so many of them, an obsessive loser. But he did such damage.”
“They do,” Jesse said. “My guy less than yours. He hasn’t killed anybody. But . . .”
“He might,” Sunny said. “But even if he doesn’t, those women he’s forced to strip will not be quite the same again.”
“No,” Jesse said.
“So why are we talking about this?” Sunny smiled. “You need help?”
“Probably,” Jesse said. “But here’s this guy doing something to make himself feel good, and it makes him feel bad. But he can’t give it up.”
“That’s why we call it obsessive,” Sunny said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Jesse said. “But what strikes me is that we’re doing the same thing.”
Sunny nodded slowly, thinking about it.
“Our efforts to be happy make us unhappy,” she said.
“And yet we keep at it,” Jesse said.
Sunny nodded some more.
Then she said, “That’s why we call it obsessive.”
“And maybe that’s why we should stop doing it,” Jesse said.
“If we can,” Sunny said.
“We can,” Jesse said.
“We almost made it once before,” Sunny said.
“Remember the dress shop in Beverly Hills?” Jesse said.
“In the changing room?” Sunny said.
“Standing up?” Jesse said.
“I think standing up doesn’t do it justice,” Sunny said.
“We were amazingly agile,” Jesse said.
“Maybe we can regain that agility,” Sunny said.
“I hope so,” Jesse said.
45
THEY WERE in the squad room.
“There was another Peeping Tom reported,” Molly said.
“Wednesday night,” Jesse said.
He looked at Suit.
“Never moved out of his house that I could see,” Suit said.
Jesse looked back at Molly.
“I went down and talked with her,” Molly said. “She looked out of her bedroom window, saw him standing in her backyard. Same outfit. All black, baseball cap. She yanked her shade down, yelled for her husband. Husband ran out into the backyard, but the guy was gone.”
“What does the victim look like?” Jesse said.
“Tall, blonde, maybe fifty-five, maybe more.”
“Different than the people he photographed,” Suit said.
“The peeping is probably pretty much a matter of opportunity,” Jesse said. “The photo-graphy he plans ahead.”
“Could be a copycat,” Molly said.
“It’s him,” Jesse said.
“You know that how?” Suit said.
“It’s him,” Jesse said. “He’s retrenching.”
“Retrenching?” Molly said.
“Backing up and starting over,” Jesse said. “Building his nerve back up.”
“I was sitting out front of his condo when the peeping happened,” Suit said. “He never came out.”
“By the front,” Jesse said. “He spotted us out front the other night.”
“I know,” Suit said. “So after Moll told me about the peeping incident, I went back there and looked around. And of course there’s a back way out. From the cellar. Through the parking lot in back, some trees, and there’s the railroad tracks. Run right on to Sea Cliff Station.
Then Preston, and downtown. He’d be free and easy walking along there.”
“Well,” Jesse said, “he’s back in business.”
“And at a less intrusive level,” Molly said.
“The level will escalate,” Jesse said.
“Higher than before?” Molly said.
“Maybe,” Jesse said. “Poor obsessive bastard.”
“Poor bastard him?” Molly said. “How about the women?”
“Them too,” Jesse said.
Molly said, “I don’t know how you can . . . Oh.”
“Anyway,” Suit said. “Gives us a better shot at him. If he keeps doing it long enough, we’ll catch him.”
“He’ll keep doing it,” Jesse said. “He has to.”
“Be good if we could catch him before it gets too escalated,” Molly said.
“The amount of escalation will depend on the amount of resistance he encounters,” Jesse said.
“You mean if a woman puts up a struggle?” Molly said.
“Pressure builds,” Jesse said. “And there’s no release. . . .” He shrugged.
“What if we blanket him with surveillance?” Molly said.
“I don’t have the people for it,” Jesse said. “Front, back, on foot, twenty-four hours a day, it would take the whole department.”
“I’ll bet some of the guys would work overtime,” Molly said.
“Our job is to police the town,” Jesse said. “Which means the whole town. Not just the Night Hawk. We still have to control traffic and answer burglar alarms and nine-one-one calls.”
“How about we search his place,” Suit said. “We know there’s physical evidence. The gun he uses on the home invasions, the digital camera. There’s probably a ton of pictures on his computer.”
“There’s not a prayer we could get a warrant,” Jesse said.
“I might slip in without one, unofficially, of course.”
“Suit,” Jesse said. “We already know it’s him. We need to be able to prove it, and any evidence you got while B-and-E-ing his pad would be useless to us, probably forever.”
“Damn,” Molly said. “This guy is committing crimes regularly. We know it. We know who he is. We know he’s going to keep doing it.”
“And we can’t do a fucking thing about it, excuse me, Moll,” Suit said.
“Clean up your fucking language,” Molly said.
All three of them laughed, glad to break the tension they’d been building.
“So what do we, for crissakes, do?” Suit said.
“We await developments,” Jesse said.
“ ‘Await developments,’ ” Molly said.
“That, too,” Jesse said, “is police work.”
They were quiet for a moment, sitting around the conference table.
Then Molly said, “He only peeps on Wednesday nights.”
Jesse said, “Yes.”
“How many people you think we’d need to pen him up one night a week,” Molly said.
“Three,” Jesse said. “One out front on foot, one out back on foot, one out front in a car.”
“I bet we can do it with two,” Molly said. “Suit’s in back on foot, with his car handy. I’m out front in a car. He moves on foot out front and I get out of the car. He moves in the car and I follow him in my car and call Suit.”