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 facade? 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.”
Tower pursed his lips. “So they broke up?”
Renee nodded. “Yes, I’d say so. And did you notice the timeframe?”
“Yeah, right around the time of the Patricia Reno assault.”
“A relationship ending could act as a trigger,” Renee said.
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I’m not,” she answered. “A breakup is no small thing, but it just didn’t seem like enough of a cataclysmic event to send a man over the edge all by itself. Not a man who has been simmering but remaining under control for eight years.”
“It seems like a perfectly logical trigger to me.”
“Well, either way, that’s why I looked at Jeffrey Goodkind a little more closely. I called Men Only and posed as a wife wanting to bring my husband in. I told them Jeffrey had helped us out last time and asked if we could have him again. The manager said that would be no problem.”
“So he still works there,” Tower observed. “No job loss for a trigger.”
“No. And again, depending on how important his job is or isn’t, getting fired or laid off might be a big deal or might mean absolutely nothing.” Renee put a check mark next to that item on her notepad. “But I had to eliminate it.”
Tower nodded. “That’s just good investigative technique. Process of elimination.”
“Problem is, I was running out of things to eliminate.”
“I run into that sometimes, too,” Tower said ruefully.
“Then,” Renee said, “I asked myself what the biggest stress-related event in a person’s life might be. And then it all made sense.”
Tower twirled his finger in a hurry-up gesture.
“Death,” Renee pronounced.
“Huh?”
“Someone dying is the greatest stressor for most people,” she explained. “So I checked the River City Herald obituaries for anything related to Goodkind.”
Tower raised his eyebrows hopefully, but Renee shook her head.
“Nothing there. But when I didn’t find anything, I tried a Lexis-Nexis search on the last name. There were a lot of hits, but I started with Pacific Northwest cities like Portland and Seattle.”
“That’s a lot of work,” Tower said. “How’d you manage that so fast?”
Renee tapped her computer. “Once I had the articles, all I had to do was tell the computer to search for a mention of Jeffrey Goodkind in any of them.”
Tower thought about it for a moment, then nodded his understanding. “Because he’d be listed as a surviving family member in an obituary, right?”
“There’s hope for you yet, John,” Renee said with a wink. “That’s exactly right.”
“So, what did you find?”
“In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I found an obit for Cora Goodkind who is survived by her only son, Jeffrey Goodkind.”
“Amazing,” Tower said. “Before computers, that would have taken days.”
Renee shrugged. “Maybe. Before computers, the networks were people-based. If I didn’t have this here,” she tapped her monitor again, “then I’d have to know a guy at the Seattle PI. I’d make a phone call and he’d get back to me.”
“Still, it wouldn’t be as fast.”
“Probably not. It is pretty amazing.” She leaned back in her chair and looked at Tower. “But what’s more interesting is the date on that obituary.”
“Let me guess,” Tower said. “She died around the beginning of March this year.”
“February 27,” Renee reported. “Which, coincidentally, was around a week before — ”
“Before Heather Torin was attacked,” Tower finished.
“Exactly,” Renee said. “And the death of a mother, particularly one that he likely had issues with would definitely qualify as a trigger.”
“So the death of his mother sets him off,” Tower said, theorizing. “Then he manages to control it again, holding it together for at least another month. But maybe he’s acting hinky or something, because the girlfriend dumps him. And that pushes him over the edge.”
“With the pressure of the mother’s death behind it, I think that’d do it.”
Tower reached out and rested his hand on Renee’s shoulder. He gave her a squeeze. “Renee, you are magnificent.”
“I know,” she said.
Tower turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Men Only,” Tower said. “Sealed file or not, I want to have a chat with Mr. Jeffrey Goodkind.”
0956 hours
Katie pulled up in front of her house and parked her Jeep. She cast a look at the dark red brick of the little home, enjoying the comforting sensation that the familiar sight gave her.
“Be it ever so humble,” she whispered sleepily. Emotion welled up in her chest. Small prickles of tears stung her eyes. Surprised at her own emotion, she turned off the ignition and wiped away the beginnings of tears.
I’m just tired. Tired and glad to be home.
She exited the Jeep, and walked around to the rear. Exhausted from working all night and now with a belly full of breakfast, the task of hauling in her luggage seemed herculean in nature. She considered leaving it for later, but opened the back hatch of the Jeep, anyway. She gathered up all of the luggage, setting it on the damp asphalt of the street while she closed and locked the hatch. Then she trapped one of the smaller bags beneath her armpit, took a bag in each hand and made her way to the front door.
Katie remembered what Chisolm told her at the hotel and again at breakfast.
“Maybe this guy’s gone and maybe he isn’t,” the veteran officer said. “But you need to keep your guard up.”
Katie didn’t want to admit to anyone that while she resented the protective measures while they had been in place, she suddenly felt a sense of vulnerability now that they were removed. That fact, in turn, made her a little bit angry at herself. How did it make sense for her to complain about something on the one hand, but then be glad for it at the same time? And then be mad about both?