RCC03 - Beneath a Weeping Sky (51 page)

He noted the address on the registration. It was nowhere near MacLeod’s house, where the vehicle had been spotted. In fact, the address on the registration put him down near Corbin Park.

Tower read the address again.

It was
very
near. Ten blocks away, in fact.

He swallowed, feeling his pulse quicken.

Careful,
he cautioned himself.
It’s probably just a coincidence.

A coincidence. That was probably it. How many registrations had he checked? Eventually, one of them was going to be registered to an address near Corbin Park, right? River City wasn’t Los Angeles. It was bound to happen.

Tower checked his license plate list. Next to Goodkind’s plate, either O’Sullivan or Battaglia had jotted down the location where the vehicle had been parked and the time. They’d spotted the car a block away very near the beginning of their shift.

Tower figured they probably did a loop around the neighbor-hood before setting up shop at a good surveillance spot. So what was Jeffrey Goodkind’s car doing parked a block away from MacLeod’s house when he lived half a city away?

There could be any number of explanations, Tower knew. Maybe he had a friend or a girlfriend up there, for example.

On another note, it was possible he didn’t even live near Corbin Park anymore. Registrations were good for a year. He could have moved. All of this could be a giant coincidence.

Tower pressed his lips together. None of those answers felt quite right.

He opened up his criminal database and fed in Goodkind’s name and date of birth. Because the computer system was in-house rather than connected to Olympia like his Department of Licensing computer, the results came back almost immediately.

Jeffrey Goodkind had only two entries. The first read:

VEHCOLLSN / 07-13-1995 / ROLE: WIT

Okay, so Goodkind had been a witness in a vehicle collision the previous July. Tower selected that entry. The details flashed on his screen. Goodkind had been directly behind the number one car when it failed to stop for a red light and crashed into another car. Tower opened up Goodkind’s biographical information. It also showed the address near Corbin Park.

The second entry was more confusing, and one he hadn’t seen before.

JUVDEFRD / 3-14-1988 / ROLE: DEF

The ‘JUV’ meant ‘juvenile’ and the role was definitely ‘defendant.’ But what did the rest mean?

He selected the entry. The computer paused, then a response flashed on his screen.

RESTRICTED.

What the hell did that mean?

Tower leaned back, taking another sip of his coffee. He was starting to get a tingling in his fingertips. After another moment of thought, he hit the
PRINT
button, gathered up his paperwork and headed down the hall to Crime Analysis.

0749 hours

Where the hell was she going?

Instead of heading north as he expected, the Jeep turned south toward downtown. That confused him. When she entered I-90 eastbound, that made him wonder further. As they cruised eastward at 65 miles per hour, he started to believe maybe he’d figured it out.

She had a boyfriend.

That was it.

The little slut had a boyfriend and she was heading out to his house instead of home to hers.

He glanced at his watch. He was late getting to work now, but he didn’t care. His boss was clueless. Any excuse would do. So he’d follow her out to her boyfriend’s house, then go to work.

At Argonne, the Jeep slid to the right and took the exit. He followed her at a safe distance. Once off the freeway, she crossed the one way street southbound and hooked a left onto the northbound street. Ignoring the traffic behind him, he waited a few extra moments before making the turn himself. With her finally back in his sights, he didn’t want to risk being seen.

Just a couple of blocks to the north, she signaled and turned into the parking lot of a Comfort Inn. He slowed, his eyes narrowing in confusion. What was she doing here? Some kind of rendezvous?

She pulled into a stall and parked. He drove past the hotel, then turned and circled around. Driving quickly around the back of the building, he pulled to a stop on the far side of the parking lot she’d just entered. He put the car into park and stared at her Jeep.

That little tramp.

Whore.

Bitch.

Slut.

She was meeting someone at the motel. Probably a married guy, he figured. But why not just take him up to her house? She lived alone. Or was it someone the neighbors knew?

He bit his lip, thinking. If they were in there having sex, they were extremely vulnerable right now. If he could find a key to the door, he could –

No!

It was too dangerous. He had to wait.

Another vehicle pulled into the lot, an old blue truck. The driver parked it next to Katie’s Jeep, then got out. The man looked older than her from this distance, but that seemed to fit his theory about an affair. He made his way up to the second floor, where he rapped on a door. A woman answered.

Katie.

She smiled and let him inside.

His hands trembled. Oh, it was going to feel
good
when he finally laid the whammo on this bitch.

Sitting in his car, he debated his next move. He could go to work and wait for another day. Or he could wait here until they were finished and follow her home.

If she went home.

He sat in his front seat, clenching and unclenching his fists. He knew he couldn’t leave. Not now. He couldn’t wait anymore.

It had to be today.

0801 hours

“It’s a sealed file,” Renee told Tower.

“Sealed why?”

Renee shrugged. “Probably because he was a juvenile at the time. Whatever he did was dealt with by the courts, but then they sealed his records.”

“I didn’t think that extended to law enforcement,” Tower said. “I mean, I knew it wasn’t available to the public, but I thought we could at least view it.”

“You can,” Renee said, “Most of the time.”

“So why is this sealed?”

Renee took in a deep breath and looked at Tower. When she didn’t release the air, Tower gave her a questioning stare. Then his stomach sank.

“No. Don’t tell me.”

Renee let out her breath in a whoosh. “’Fraid so. The only time I’ve ever seen this is when the subject was a victim or a suspect in a sex crime.”

“And this entry shows him as a defendant,” Tower finished.

“Yes, it does.”

“So he had some sort of issue back in 1988. The question is, what?”

“More importantly,” Renee added, “Why hasn’t he had anything between then and now?”

Tower cursed lightly. “Could a guy do that?”

“Do what?”

“Be messed up enough as a kid to get involved in some kind of sex crime and then stay clean for eight years as an adult?”

“Of course,” Renee said. “The human animal is capable of incredible things. It’s not terribly
likely
that he would, but it’s possible.”

“If that’s the case, why start raping now? Built up pressure?”

“Yes,” Renee agreed, “but there’d probably need to be a trigger, too. Something to set him off.”

Tower took a deep breath of his own and let it out slowly, thinking. “Okay, here’s what we need to do. I need to see what’s in this file, for starters. I probably need a warrant for that, or at least a subpoena.”

“That prosecutor, Patrick Hinote? He could help you with that,” Renee offered.

“Good idea,” Tower said. “I’ll give him a call. Meanwhile, I need you to do as much research as you can on this Jeffrey Goodkind.”

“What do you want me to focus on?”

Tower raised his fingers and counted. “Where he works, for starters. And then look for anything that fits your theory about a trigger point. Something that might have set him off.”

“You got it,” Renee said, her fingers already flying over the keyboard.

Tower reached for the telephone.

0825 hours

He was about ready to give up when she appeared at the doorway of the hotel room, carrying a suitcase. She stepped lightly down the stairs to her Jeep. He watched as she stowed her suitcases in the rear of the vehicle.

He frowned, deep in thought.

Here was another wrinkle. Was she taking a trip? That didn’t make sense. The bags were already at the hotel room.

It dawned on him suddenly. He slapped the steering wheel twice, first in frustration for being so dense and then a second time with exuberance for figuring it out.

This is where she’d hidden from him. She’d packed up a bag and checked into a hotel room in order to avoid him. That had been her grand plan all along. The boyfriend was just an added bonus.

She went back upstairs. After a while, she appeared again. This time, she held two much smaller bags. He was fairly certain they were full of girl stuff – toiletries, makeup, curling irons and so forth. She was definitely packing up to leave.

A thought struck him and he smiled.

Maybe she was heading home.

0841 hours

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Tower shouted into the phone.

“I’m sorry,” the tech support agent told him. “I can’t do it.”

“But I’ve got a fucking subpoena!” Tower raged.

The phone fell silent. Then the man said, “Sir, I understand that. I’m not
refusing
to open the file. I’m telling you that I am not
able
to open the file. I can’t do it.”

“Why?”

“It’s password protected.”

“So who has the password?”

“For Juvenile Superior Court, the gatekeeper is in Olympia.”

“Gatekeeper?” Tower snorted. “What the hell is that?”

The tech support agent’s voice didn’t waver or become defensive. “That is the term for the individual charged with the electronic security and integrity of those files. Our county Superior Court transfers the information to Olympia for central housing.”

Tower shook his head. A dull pain was beginning to throb behind his left eye. “Do you have the number for this gatekeeper guy?”

The tech agent rattled it off from memory. Tower wrote it down and hung up without another word. Then he picked up the phone again and dialed. After five rings, an electronic voice answered. With growing impatience, he listened to the phone tree options, finally selecting what he hoped was the right one.

After two more rings, the line picked up. “This is Jonah Brandenburg,” a voice stated, “head of File Integrity for Juvenile Defendants and Victims for the State of Washington. I’m currently on vacation and will return on May twelfth. If you’re requesting information on a sealed file, please forward a request along with a subpoena to my office. I’m currently experiencing a backlog of two weeks in my response time, so thank you for your patience. If you’d like to leave a message, you may do so at the beep.”

Tower hung up, cursing.

“Dead end?” Renee asked.

“Goddamn government bureaucracy,” he groused. “You get anywhere?”

“Getting there,” she answered.

0902 hours

At first, she’d headed back north. He’d been thrilled at that. Anticipation hummed through him so powerfully that he almost let out a preternatural whine. He breathed in deeply and exhaled long and slow to get control of the urge. His grip on the steering wheel tensed and loosened while he drove.

Halfway to her house, when she pulled into a diner, he groaned out loud.

He parked across the street and watched her go inside. A few minutes later, the older man in the blue truck arrived and went inside to meet her. They sat across from each other in a booth near the window, giving him a front seat view to their little breakfast meeting.

“I guess it’s true,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Sex really does make you hungry.”

He laughed nervously at his own joke, but his mind was whirring. Why didn’t they just order room service? Or was this part of the façade? That if someone sees them having breakfast together in public, that explains why they were together today?

It didn’t make a lot of sense to him, but at this point he didn’t care. He just wished the bitch waitress would arrive with pancakes or whatever the hell they were ordering so that Katie should shove some food down her gullet and get her ass home.

He had plans for her.

0921 hours

“All right,” she said. “I’ve got about all I think I’m going to get for a while.”

Tower grabbed his cup of coffee and sidled up next to her desk. “Run it for me.”

Renee picked up her notepad. “The collision report from 1995 didn’t list a work location, but there was a telephone number. I did a reverse on the number. Turns out he works for Men Only, a men’s suit store on Wellesley Street.”

“I know that store,” Tower said.

Renee cast him an appraising look. “Not from shopping there.”

Tower ignored the jibe. “I drive by it sometimes. What else did you find out?”

Renee glanced back down at her notepad. “Okay, no time for jokes, apparently,” she muttered, searching for her place with the tip of her pen. “I also discovered something interesting when I checked the power records for his residence. Up until April, the account was in the name of a Jennifer Gallagher. Then, in late April, the account was switched to Jeffrey Goodkind.”

“What do you make of that?”

“Well,” Renee said, “you could surmise several things. The first is that she moved out in April and he moved in. But –”

“But we already know that’s been his address since at least 1995,” Tower finished.

“Right. So another possibility is that they lived together, but changed the account over for personal financial reasons.”

Tower’s eyebrows scrunched. “So this guy has a girlfriend? Hard to believe.”

“I think ‘had’ is a better word to use.”

“Why?”

“I checked with the power company and the phone company for a Jennifer Gallagher. Both sources showed her with a new account as of early April.”