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“Lots of reading ahead of us,” Trent said.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” She smirked at him and turned her focus back to the screen. She knew better than to expect a starred document to point them to Katherine’s top suspect, but she would have taken it.
“Where should we start?”
“I’m going into Word and opening the last document she worked on.” It was a thought that occurred to her, and she followed the nudge.
“Sounds smart to me.”
“I have them sometimes.” She smiled, and the expression held while she clicked on a document called Master Notes, but the expression disappeared when she started reading.
FIFTY-TWO
Amanda kept reading the document, most of it in her head, the odd sentence out loud. Trent was hunched next to her reading too. The document contained a play-by-play account of the steps that Katherine had taken during her investigation into the Gilbert case. Katherine seemed to cover events in chronological order. The most recent entry at the end was from last Wednesday.
I feel like I’m getting so close. I just need the evidence to prove it, to finally track down this unknown man. He haunts my dreams at night, and sometimes it feels like I’m being watched. But it has to be paranoia, and all in my head. If I don’t know who he is, he doesn’t know me.
“That was just a week before her abduction.” Trent turned to Amanda, placing their faces within inches of each other, but neither of them pulled back. Rather they lingered in discomfort and demonstrated an admirable display of self-restraint. Who will turn away first? Trent did. Eventually. The pending seconds had her heart pounding like a jackhammer. “And why would she assume paranoia? She received those threats we found.”
“Maybe they are from a while ago.”
“Whatever the case, this guy Katherine suspected of raping and killing Julie Gilbert could have come for her.”
“Eliminating Lowell Mooney from suspicion. In the least, he’s not the mystery man in that photo. He also wasn’t in town yet to be watching her.”
“True enough. Though it seems Katherine had two people stalking her.”
“Yep. Going back to the mystery man, it wouldn’t seem Katherine managed to identify him. Really, how much of a threat could she have been to him?”
“She didn’t need his name for him to be a threat. If she ever got close to him, that could be enough. Maybe she asked the wrong person about him and word reached him.”
“Back in New York though? And when? Also, what prompted him to act now? His left wrist isn’t visible in the photo, so I can’t tell if he has a snake tattoo.” Frustration sank in but gave way to an idea. She brought up the search function within Word and keyed in Prince William County. Nada.
Next, she tried Woodbridge. Bingo.
It took her to the one-and-only mention, which dated back a year ago.
Thad Coffey moved to Woodbridge. But why come all this way? A change of pace or running to escape his guilt?
“That’s this guy.” Trent pointed to a middle-aged man on the board with a high forehead, bouncy white hair, wild eyebrows, and a dominant, if not a slightly crooked, nose.
“Coffey was Julie’s talent manager.” Amanda recalled the name from the media coverage, without needing to refer to the brief note on the marker board.
“She thought he did that to Julie.”
“She’s not the only one if you remember the news from the time. There was a lot of heat directed his way, but he was cleared. There wasn’t any evidence against him that would stick in a court of law.”
“He moved to get away from the limelight then.”
“Except he waited long enough, didn’t he? Katherine’s entry is only from one year ago. Surely, Coffey would have been old news by then.”
“One year ago.” Trent’s eyes widened. “That’s about six months after that article disclosed that Katherine was in Prince William County. Did he come out here for her?”
Amanda looked at Coffey’s photo again. He hardly fit the image of their shooter ten years ago or whenever that photo was taken. Though it didn’t mean Coffey hadn’t hired someone. She continued to read.
Coffey left the beauty pageant world. Again, I ask myself why? Was Julie’s murder just too much for him to stomach? Had his grief consumed him? Is he wanting to put space between himself and what he did?
“Is Coffey’s name mentioned anywhere else? Do that search function again,” Trent said.
