“I’ll be involved,” Jesse said. “But with a twelve-man department, how big a task force do you think we can put together.”
“Besides,” Molly said, “we’re worth several ordinary task forces.”
“There’s that,” Suit said.
“What did you find out about Hannah Wechsler’s daytime activity?” Jesse said.
“No pattern,” Suit said. “No pattern to the photo sessions, except they were all on week-days.”
“As they’d need to be anyway,” Molly said. “Have to have the husband and kids out of the house.”
“And no daytime obligations for Hannah,” Suit said. “That I can find out about.”
“I wonder if he’s still peeping at night?” Jesse said.
“We’ve been assuming he’s moved on to home invasion,” Suit said.
“But it isn’t necessarily either or,” Molly said. “He could do both.”
“Any reports of peeping?”
“No, but people don’t always notice,” Molly said.
“And even if they do,” Suit said, “they don’t always report it.”
“They would now,” Jesse said. “With the home invasions being talked about.”
“Still,” Molly said. “They might not always know. I mean, that’s one of the points about peeping, isn’t it? That the person being peeped doesn’t know it?”
Jesse nodded.
“You have the file,” Jesse said to Molly.
She patted the big brown envelope on the desk in front of her.
“Good, you keep it. Share it fully with Suit as needed, and no one else.”
“You worried about the pictures?” Suit said.
“I am,” Jesse said. “I don’t want them circulating. These women have been through enough without having a bunch of people looking at them naked.”
Suit nodded.
“You think I’d circulate them?”
“No,” Jesse said. “I think you might examine them closely, as I did, but you’re a good cop and a good guy. You’ll be fine.”
“And Molly got no interest in them, being a straight woman,” Suit said.
Jesse nodded.
“Okay,” Suit said. “I see that.”
Jesse smiled.
“Thank you,” he said. “We got no real evidence that this guy is our man.”
“But you think he is,” Molly said.
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“The Wednesday-night thing could be a coincidence,” Molly said.
“Could be,” Jesse said. “But if I decide it is, where does that get me?”
Molly and Suit both nodded.
“What do we do?” Suit said.
Jesse inhaled audibly. Then he was quiet for a bit.
Finally, he said, “I think he’s feeling some pressure. His last letter, after Gloria Fisher chased him away, sounded a little hysterical.”
“What’s he feeling pressure about?” Molly said. “He has no reason to think we’re getting close to him.”
“I think it’s the pressure of his craziness,” Jesse said. “I think he knows his behavior is obsessive, and he’s afraid of where it will take him.”
“And he won’t be able to stop himself,” Molly said.
“I think that’s his fear.”
“So this thing he does, because he needs to do it, because he seems to get pleasure from it, is also a torment and could lead him to disaster,” Molly said.
“You’ve read the letters,” Jesse said. “That’s my sense.”
“Christ,” Suit said. “He’s like a victim, too.”
“Of himself,” Molly said.
“This may be getting too deep for me,” Suit said.
Molly grinned at him.
