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Building. The suite listed was empty. Amazingly, the Dog Warriors had scouted
the offices without unduly manhandling anyone. They had verified that the
Ontongard were nowhere to be found and left the actual questioning to the FBI.
The guard at the receptionist desk reported that a bin on the front desk saw a
constant traffic of packages left for bike messengers, UPS, and Federal
Express. He merely made sure no one walked off with the wrong one. He
remembered the package being left, puzzled by the return address He had been
.
trying to find out if the suite had been rented without security being
notified when the messenger arrived to take the package away.
Indigo showed the guard the two artist sketches. "Did you see either of these
people?"
The guard studied the artist sketches. "Oh, yes, it was the girl. I guess they
played me for a sucker. If this creep had left the package, I probably would
have called the bomb squad. I let it ride so long because she was young and
sweet. She was dressed like a temp, you know, a dress cut a little too high
and a little too low for a regular secretary. I cut her slack, thinking she
got the address wrong."
***
Max and Ukiah were back at the office before noon.
Sam had set up in the keeping room office just off the kitchen. She was on the
phone when they came through the back door. She nodded a greeting but stayed
focused on the voice on the other end of the line.
Whatever the voice was saying to her wasn't good. She sighed and shook her
head. "No, it was a long shot. Hang loose. I'll get back to you. Thanks,
Chino."
"How's it going?" Max kept the tension off his face, but not out of his voice.
"Not well." Sam hung up the phone. "This is what we've got so far."
Sam kept careful notes on a flip tablet, something that probably would change
if she joined the agency. "Adam Rudolph Goodman, born 1970. Father dead.
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Mother dead. I just put Chino on trying to find distant relations. Graduated
from high school in California in 1987 and held down security guard positions
into the nineties."
"Ouch," Ukiah said. Security training was never good in a felon.
Sam acknowledged that by nodding her head. "Yeah, basic knowledge of how cops
catch thieves, and thus how to be avoid being caught." Sam flipped over the
sheet on her notebook. "The first job was at Disneyland, then next at an
amusement park, and then a mall. I called them on the guise of needing job
references. They all indicated that he quit before they could fire him, but
wouldn't say why."
"Worried about civil suits from both sides," Max commented.
"Basically." Sam flipped to the next page. "He then got a job as a janitor at
a high school."
"Wait," Max said. "Didn't Indigo say this guy was in jail for sex with minors?
Amusement parks, mall, high school; work hell, they're all hunting grounds."
"It's possible," Sam said. "In 1994 he was arrested and convicted for multiple
counts of sex with a minor, sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin. He served
out the sentence and was released six months ago. That's where he disappears;
he just drops off the face of the earth."
***
"Drops off?" Max echoed, sounding leery. It wasn't the kind of comment that
sat well with Max, especially in his present mood. From Janey or Chino, it
would mean they hadn't known where to take the search after the obvious failed
The madness in Oregon aside, Sam was an unknown quantity. Had they
.
credited her with more ability than she actually had?
Sam sighed, scrubbing her fingers through her short blond hair. "Goodman was
released April second. No one picked him up. He took the transit bus into San
Francisco and checked into the YMCA.
He started up a bank account, applied for welfare, and began looking for a
job. He even got a library card. Two weeks later, he checked out, wrote out
checks that took his bank balance down to zero, and disappeared. He could have
stolen a car, but he didn't buy one or rent one, nor did he fly out of
California anytime in April."
Sam obviously had covered a lot of ground while they had been at the bank; it
was not her fault that she lost the trail.
Max relaxed, settling on the edge of Sam's desk. "There's the girl. She might
have supplied the car."
Sam bobbed her head as if she was considering the girl. "She wasn't there to
meet him at the prison. He was in the dorms at the YMCA, not a private room."
She squinted, crinkling up her nose.
"It's it's the Pittsburgh thing that gets me. He laid out all the foundations
of settling into San Francisco and then pulled up roots to come here."
"You don't like Pittsburgh?" Ukiah beat Max to the question.
"It's not that. It's just to leave
San Francisco
for Pittsburgh? Or anyplace else in the Midwest.
Cincinnati. Cleveland." She dismissed the steel cities with a wave of her
hand. "You've got to have a good reason to go to that extreme, but I can't
find any connection between Goodman and here. All his family was from the West
Coast."
"He's been here for six months," Ukiah said. "Unless he's staying with the
girl, he got someplace to live."
"Working on the assumption that he's here in Pittsburgh, I had Chino go to
the" she paused to search her memory "Northside with the sketch of Goodman to
see if he checked into the YMCA there under an assumed name." Northside was a
seedier neighborhood across the rivers from downtown. "No luck there or in the
Hill District."
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That was the call Ukiah and Max had walked in on.
"When he opened his bank account" Sam checked a number written on her desk
pad "he only had like seven hundred dollars. I picked up the info on the YMCA
in California via his MasterCard.
He used it extensively in the two weeks before he vanished, running up about
five hundred dollars. The last check of his bank account that cleared paid off
its balance. He hasn't used it since."
"If he's not using his credit card, and he used up all his cash, what's he
living on?" Ukiah asked.
Sam shrugged "It's not showing up on normal credit reports, whatever it is "
.
.
The grandfather clock struck noon
.
Max sighed, standing up "You're right he dropped off the face of the earth
We've got three
.
.
hours before the ransom call I want to hit the gun shop before then I know
that you keep saying that this
.
.
Goodman is human." This was to Ukiah. "But this all feels wrong. I want to
pick up some heavy artillery if we end up going against the Ontongard again."
Sam made a sound of disgust at the thought of fighting the Ontongard. "I'll go
back to digging, but
I'm a little hampered. I have tons of West Coast contacts, but nothing here in
Pittsburgh."
"I can check to see if Goodman applied for welfare here," Ukiah volunteered.
"I'll also see if he's contacted the DMV, or any of the utilities."
"Eat something first," Max told him. "We need you in top condition. I'll be
back in an hour."
***
Ukiah ate at his desk as he made his calls. At first Sam's voice was a
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