“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.
