by Frank Zafiro
Tower glanced back down at his open case file, then at his picture of Stephanie. When he looked back up at Browning, the older detective was still staring at him. His warm brown eyes radiated empathy.
“He’s just a man, John,” he said. Then he reached out and squeezed Tower on the shoulder. “Just a sick, sad man.”
Tower nodded his thanks.
Browning turned and made his way out of the Sexual Assault Unit.
Tower thought about it a moment longer. Then he decided that Detective Ray Browning was pretty much the best cop he knew, so he should listen to the man. He pushed the PRINT button on the computer, getting a copy of Mr. Jeffrey A. Goodkind’s registration information so that he could start with that particular blind alley again in the morning. Then he reached for the phone.
Stephanie answered on the second ring.
“Babe?” Tower asked.
“Yeah?”
“Put on the steaks,” he said, “and pour the wine.”
2048 hours
Graveyard Shift
Katie MacLeod laced up her patrol boots, cinching down the knot. She reached for her duty belt, strapping it around her waist. She slipped the thin leather belt keepers under her regular belt and around her duty belt to secure the two together. After a quick glance in the mirror to make sure she was presentable, she grabbed her patrol bag and left the locker room.
In the hallway that led down to the sally port in the basement, she dropped her bag. She’d pick it up after roll call on the way downstairs. She made her way toward the briefing room, but was intercepted by Lieutenant Saylor.
“MacLeod?” he said. “I need to see you for a second.”
Katie gave him a professional nod, but inside she suppressed a sigh.
What is it now? I’m going into the Witness Protection Program?
The two stepped into the conference room next to the sergeant’s office. Even after being on the job for five years, going into the so-called “spanking room” with a sergeant or lieutenant gave her a sense of unease in the pit of her stomach.
Saylor closed the door. He turned to face her. Up close, Katie could see the hard lines of his face. He always reminded her of a paradoxical cross between a kindly grandfather and a Marine drill instructor.
“It’s been a bit of a rough ride this last couple of weeks, hasn’t it?” he asked her.
“It’s been fine, sir,” Katie answered. Unconsciously, she found herself standing as straight as she could.
Saylor smiled slightly. “My experience has been that room service is only good for about a day or so. Usually less than that.”
Katie flashed to the tasteless sandwiches and soggy fries that she’d been subsisting on at the hotel. He’d hit the nail on the head. “It hasn’t been gourmet,” she admitted.
“Well, I’ve got some good news,” Saylor told her. “It’s over.”
“Over?”
Saylor nodded. “That’s the word from above.”
“Did they catch the guy?”
“No.”
Katie narrowed her eyes in thought. She wondered why this change of heart had occurred. “So I can check out of the hotel and go home?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t have to ride with anyone tonight?”
Saylor shrugged. “I suppose that’s between you and Sergeant Shen. But there’s no directive from the Captain that says you have to.”
Katie stood in the small conference room, a mixture of emotions rushing through her. There was an overwhelming sense of relief and exhilaration at the situation ending and at returning to something akin to normal. At the same time, she experienced some hesitation and gnawing concern. “I wonder why now?” she asked aloud, more rhetorically than not.
Saylor answered anyway. “I think they figured he’d moved on.”
“You mean left River City?”
“Maybe. Or just emotionally. There’s been no sign of him these last two weeks, right?”
Katie shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then that’d be my guess.”
Katie wondered briefly why the Captain wouldn’t have explained things to Saylor in greater detail, but she long ago gave up trying to figure out how the Byzantine world of the brass functioned. Instead, she wondered if ‘they’ meant Detective Tower or if it meant the Captain and Lieutenant Crawford. Whoever it was, she wondered if ‘they’ were right.
“Are you all right, MacLeod?” Saylor asked.
Katie broke away from her contemplation. She nodded. “I’m fine, sir. Just happy to be back to normal.”
TWENTY
Friday May 9th
0721 hours
Day Shift
Where the hell are you, you fucking bitch?
He watched the police station from up the street. It’d been easy to find a slightly different location to park every day. At first he’d sat patiently, sipping his tea and pretending to read the newspaper while he watched the parking lot where the officers parked. He’d spotted the bitch cop’s Jeep on the first day, but it hadn’t moved since. He’d even checked on the weekend, but the Jeep sat there the entire time.
Sitting off her house was out of the question. Not after he’d spotted the two idiot cops up there that day. He’d driven by twice since, taking care not to turn onto her side street. Both times, he was able to pick out a surveillance vehicle. The one time he was certain the house was no longer being watched, a thrill shot through his body like raw adrenaline. He’d parked a block away and crept down the dark alley behind her house. Carefully, he entered her back yard. There was no activity inside the house. The same lights were on as before. He peered through the sectioned glass window of her back door, but saw nothing. And her Jeep wasn’t out front, either.
He wanted to smash the small glass panes of her door. He wanted to go inside and find her. If she wasn’t there, he wanted to wait for her. He ached for it, like a tooth throbbing in his head. But he forced himself not to. He had to wait. He had to be patient.
Headlights appeared up the street, then winked out. A gray Chevy Caprice rolled to a stop a few houses away. Two shadowy figures sat in the front seat.
He quickly lowered himself into a crouch. He waited for a moment to see if they’d spotted him, but neither door opened. Once he was sure, he crept back to the alley and headed back to his car.
Now, sitting in his car in the early morning hours, he ground his teeth together in frustration. He was tired of waiting on this fucking bitch. Obviously, they’d been hiding her from him, which enraged him all the more. If she didn’t show in the next couple of days, he was done waiting. He’d find some other worthless snatch, lay the whammo on her and carve her up like a Christmas goose. That was more than his worthless father ever did, so the son of a bitch would have to be proud, wherever he was. He’d have to know who the better man was.
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.
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.”