The detective opened her mouth, then hesitated. Sarah knew that the woman had been about to give the automatic response, the one she’d been trained to give, something safe and legal. The detective looked at her partner and then back at Sarah. She let out a sigh, then sat on the bed next to Sarah.
“He seems guilty to me. All of my instincts tell me that he’s a fucking creep who belongs behind bars. It’s just that my hands are tied without an eyewitness. I can’t compel him to give us a DNA sample. No one’s going to give us a warrant on what we’ve got. I can dust your house for fingerprints and then see if he has any on record to compare them to but I can’t arrest him.”
Sarah nodded, acknowledging the detective while at the same time wondering why she bothered. She certainly wasn’t agreeing with her. She was getting sick of these cops telling her that they couldn’t do shit to help her.
She smirked and wiped a tear from her eye, then picked up her suitcase and began balling up her clothes and shoving them in without folding them.
“Thank you, Detectives. We’re going home now. I guess we just have to do this ourselves.”
“Don’t do something you’ll regret. I’d hate to have to arrest either of you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let Josh kill that piece of shit. Not unless we catch him in our house. Then all bets are off. But one way or the other I’m going to get that evidence. I’ll make sure you have enough to arrest him.”
Detective Lassiter stood in the middle of the room not saying a thing. Sarah could feel the woman’s eyes on her back as she packed. Josh began packing as well, leaving the two detectives to just stand there and watch.
Finally, Detective Torres spoke up.
“I’ll speak to the lieutenant and see if we can get a patrol car to cruise by your place a few times at night. You know, just to check for anything suspicious. But like Detective Lassiter said, we don’t want you two doing anything that’s going to make us have to arrest you. Just stay cool and let us do our thing. If this guy’s really been breaking into your house, we’ll catch him. Believe that.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said without turning around, still hurriedly packing her suitcase.
“Are you going straight home?” asked Detective Lassiter.
“No. We have one stop to make,” Josh said. He had already thrown a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, along with his work uniform, deodorant, shaving cream, razor, and toothbrush into a duffel bag and was ready to go.
“Do you mind if we stop by later on today?” Lassiter asked. “We’ll dust your house for prints and see what we find. We’ll need to get your prints as well to compare them against any that we find.”
“That’s fine. We should be home in a couple of hours.”
“Okay. We’ll come by this afternoon.”
The two detectives turned to leave. Sarah had just zipped her suitcase shut. Detective Lassiter turned back to face Sarah. The two women made eye contact and Sarah saw the woman mouth the words, “I believe you.” Reflexively, Sarah reached out and hugged her.
“Thank you, Detective. You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“Call me Trina. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
Sarah fought back tears as she let the detective go and watched the two of them leave the hotel room. Now she and Josh would have to leave as well. It was time for them to go back to the house.
“If you want, I could take the night off.”
“You’re working tonight?”
“Yeah, I was called in to work the highlimit table.”
“That’s more money isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Much bigger tips.”
“Then you’ve got to go. We need the money. All of this is just costing a fortune. I’ve got a gun, we’re buying a security camera, and there’ll be a patrol car cruising by the house a few times a night. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m just working ten to six. I’ll be home by seven. We can take a nap when we get back to the house until I have to leave and then you can stay up until I get home if you’re nervous.”
“That’s fine. I’ll just load up on coffee. I’m thinking about changing my dissertation topic anyway so this’ll be a perfect excuse to get some work done.”
“You’re changing it again? What to this time?”
Sarah picked up her suitcase and handed it to Josh, who took it automatically and carried it out the door. That was the best thing about being married to a guy as big as Josh. She felt no need to try to prove to anyone that she was his physical equal. He was a big man so he moved all the furniture and lifted all the heavy stuff. Fuck women’s lib. Sarah waited for Josh to hold the door for her before she walked out of the hotel room.
“I have no idea what I’m going to write about. I was thinking about doing something on the psychological effects of the housing crisis and the recession on marriages. Losing your dream house to foreclosure must be devastating to a relationship. And a lot of marriages are going through a total change of dynamics since most of the jobs lost are in male-dominated industries like banking and construction. Women are taking over as breadwinners. That has to fuck with a guy’s ego, and that in turn must wreak havoc on the marital bedroom and would probably even cause an increase in domestic violence and divorce.”
What didn’t need to be said was that she was changing it this time because she just couldn’t write about sexual deviancy while she was going through her own sex-crime drama.
“That sounds pretty damn interesting. If you can write that one fast enough you could probably sell that as a book. It’s timely enough.”
“We’ll see.”
“You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Yup. I’ll be fine. I’m going to go for a long jog to burn off all that rich food we ate last night. I haven’t worked out the entire time we’ve been in the hotel. And then I’m going to spend the rest of the night doing research until you get home. I’ll keep the gun right beside the computer and put holes in anyone who steps foot in that door.”
“Then we’re stopping by the hardware store to get a security bar for that slider door. And we’re leaving all the lights on in front of the house. If someone walks up to the house, I want everyone to be able to see him.”
After checking out, they drove directly to The Spy Shop.
“I knew you two would be back. I could tell the way you were looking at that nanny cam, the one with the teddy bear, right? It’s one of the most popular items we sell. But that’s kind of old-school. I’ve got something a bit more state-of-the-art.”
The clerk walked them over to a tiny round disk with a lens in it.
“This is the perfect camera for any type of light conditions and the lens is only one and a quarter inches. It’s the smallest camera we make. The Night Observer Wireless B/W Camera System can ‘see’ in three times less light than the standard nanny cam, making it perfect for mounting in any darkened area around your home. Its small size makes it easily concealable. You could lay this sucker out in plain sight and no one would even notice it.”
“How much is it?”
“I can let you have the camera and the remote VCR for just about a hundred and forty dollars.”
“Why is it so much cheaper than the bear?”
“Because the bear is cuter.”
The guy winked at Sarah and Sarah scowled back.
“Does it have a motion detector?”
“No. Once you turn it on it’s just on.”
“But the teddy bear has a motion detector and it’s in color?” Josh asked.
“Yeah, and we’ve got it in a wireless version now.”
“We want something that will record everything that happens in the room. Or something we could put really close to someone, close enough to see their face, without them knowing it’s there,” Sarah said.
“If you like the concealment possibilities of the teddy bear, and the color recording features, we have a few other hidden cameras you might be interested in.”
The clerk walked them over to where the teddy bear camera sat amid a bunch of other seemingly innocuous household objects.
“We have a radio alarm clock with a camera in it. This one has that motion sensor you asked about, and it comes in color.”
Sarah looked over at her husband and smiled. This would be perfect if she was attacked in her bed again. The
