“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.”
“Who jumps in his car,” Suit said, “and joins the tail. I like it.”
Jesse nodded.
