More than that, if he nailed someone else, they might just take their eyes off of their precious little girl cop.
Then he’d take care of her.
He smiled.
“There it is, Katie,” he whispered in the stillness of his car. “If you don’t show by the end of the weekend, next week is going to be very newsworthy.”
He imagined the news lady, that plastic-faced talking head Shawna Matheson, reporting his deeds to the Joe and Mary Six-Pack crowd that made up the majority of River City. He could see her affected look of contrived gravitas. He could hear the emphasis she’d place on key words in her video report to make her audience listen more closely. It would be so slick, so Hollywood, and yet he knew he’d love it.
Maybe after Katie, he should go after that Matheson bitch. That’d make headlines.
That’d make him quite the man.
He’d be the Rainy Day Killer.
Or maybe the River City Killer. That’d be even better. Maybe after he took care of that Matheson snit, he’d give that reporter lady another call. Maybe he’d tell her how he wanted to be referred to. And she’d make sure it happened, or else she’d find out what the whammo was all about.
He realized he was gripping the steering wheel in two fists and forced himself to relax. It was nice to dream, but the difference between him now and him when he was younger was that now he made his dreams become reality. He wasn’t fantasizing about the whammo anymore. He was living it.
The door to the police station opened. Several male officers filed out, along with a female. He peered closely, but it wasn’t the one he was looking for. It was some blonde. He settled back in his seat. The floodgates were opening now. The graveyard officers would be flowing out for the next ten or fifteen minutes. Katie hadn’t been part of that exodus, though. He wasn’t sure if that meant she wasn’t working at all, or maybe she was on a different shift. Still, she wasn’t using her Jeep or staying at her house. They had to be protecting her, no question.
He ground his teeth, rubbed his palms on his slacks and waited.
Five minutes later, his faith was rewarded.
Katie MacLeod exited the glass doors of the police station. The sight of her caused him to take in a sharp breath. Excitement buzzed through his limbs. He leaned forward, almost expecting it to be some other woman that just looked like her.
No. It was her.
He stared at her as she made her way directly toward the Jeep. Her stride had a confident bounce to it that made his stomach burn. Gone was the slouch. Gone was the meek shuffle. She strode along like everything in world was right. Like she was in control of everything around her. Like she was the queen of the whole goddamn world.
“Oh, I’m going to fix that,” he whispered to himself. “I am going to fix that today.”
0746 hours
Tower sipped a fresh cup of coffee and rubbed his eyes. He felt tired, but refreshed at the same time. On the one hand, he knew he’d had far too much wine last night. And probably too much Stephanie, too, if there was such a thing. He was sleepy and hung over, but in the midst of that, he felt a level of relaxation that he hadn’t experienced since all of this rapist business started.
When he came into the office this morning, he didn’t dive straight into the pile waiting for him. Instead, he’d poured a cup of coffee and wandered around the General Detectives bullpen, shooting the bull with the detectives there. It felt good to argue about something as meaningless as whether the Seattle Mariners were going to have a good season or not.
He avoided Major Crimes, even though he felt like he owed Browning a thank you. There’d be time for that later. He didn’t want to risk running into Lieutenant Crawford and having his good morning spoiled.
Now, seated at his desk, took another sip of the coffee and reached for his pile of registrations. The top one was the printout from the previous night. He scanned it.
“Jeffrey Goodkind,” he whispered. “Time to eliminate another lucky soul from suspicion.”
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.