“You must think I’m the worst private detective on God’s green earth. I checked through the databases. If Jeff changed his name to Ron Kochman, he didn’t do it legally.”
“But you don’t have to do it legally,” Kat said. “Anyone can change their name.”
“But if you want a credit card or a bank account . . .”
“Maybe he didn’t want one.”
“That doesn’t really add up, though, does it? You think, what, Jeff changed his name to Ron. Got married. Had a kid. His wife died. Then he went on YouAreJustMyType to look for dates?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Stacy thought about it. “Let me run a full background check on Ron Kochman. If he was married or has a child, I’ll find something.”
“That’s a great idea,” Brandon said. “I started doing Google searches on him, but I didn’t find much. Just some articles he wrote.”
Kat felt her heart go thump-thump. “Articles?”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “Seems Ron Kochman is a journalist.”
? ? ?
Kat spent the next hour reading his articles.
There was no doubt in her mind. Ron Kochman was Jeff Raynes. The style. The vocabulary. “Ron” always had a great lead sentence. He pulled you in slowly but consistently. Even the inane was woven into a rich narrative. The articles were always well researched, backed up by several independent sources, thoroughly investigated. Ron worked freelance. There were pieces with his byline in almost every major news publication, both in print and on the web.
Some of those publications featured photographs of their contributors on the editor’s page. There was none of Ron Kochman. In fact, no matter how much she searched, she couldn’t find one article on Ron Kochman. His biography merely listed some writing credits—no mention of a family or residence, nothing about his education or background or even credentials. He didn’t have an active Facebook or Twitter account or any of the now standard promotional tools all journalists employ.
Jeff had changed his name to Ron Kochman.
Why?
Brandon was in her apartment, working feverishly on his laptop. When she stood up, he asked, “Is Ron your old fiancé, Jeff?”
“Yes.”
“I checked some databases. So far, I haven’t been able to find when or how he changed his name.”
“It would be hard to find, Brandon. It isn’t illegal to change your name. Leave that to Stacy, okay?”
He nodded, his long hair falling into his face. “Detective Donovan?”
“Call me Kat, okay?”
His eyes stayed on his shoes. “I need you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“My mom. She’s a fighter. I don’t know how else to put it. When my dad got sick, he gave up right away. But my mom . . . she’s like a force of nature. She pulled him through for a long time. That’s her way.”
He finally looked up.
“Last year, Mom and I took a trip to Maui.” Tears filled his eyes. “I swam too far out. I’d been warned. There was a riptide or something. Stay close to shore. But I didn’t listen. I’m a tough guy like that, you know?” He gave her a half smile, shook his head. “So anyway, I got caught in the riptide. I tried to swim against it, but there was no way. I was done. It kept dragging me down and farther out. I knew it was just a matter of time. And then Mom was there. She’d been swimming near me the whole time, you know, watching, just in case. She never said anything. That was just her way. So anyway, she grabs me and says to hold on. That’s it, she says. Just hold on. And now the tide was pulling us both out. I start panicking, pushing her away. But Mom, she just closed her eyes and held on to me. She just held on to me and wouldn’t let me go. Eventually, she steered us toward a small island.”
A tear escaped his eye and ran down his cheek.
“She saved my life. That’s what she does. She’s strong like that. She’d never just let me go. She would have held on no matter what, even if I took her down with me. And now, well, it’s my turn to hold on. Do you get that?”
Kat nodded slowly. “I do.”
“I’m sorry, Kat. I should have showed you the texts. But if I had, you’d have never listened.”
“Speaking of which.”
“What?”
“You only showed me the one text. There were two.”
He pressed a few buttons on his phone and handed it to her. The text read: Having a wonderful time. Can’t wait to tell you all about it. I have a big surprise too. Phone reception is terrible. Miss you.
Kat handed him back the phone. “Big surprise. Any idea what that means?”
“No.”
Her cell phone rang. Talk about the perfect interruption—Kat could see from the caller ID that her mother was calling. “I’ll be right back,” Kat said.
She ducked into the bedroom, wondering how long her own mother would last in a riptide, and answered. “Hey, Mom.”
“Ooh, I hate that,” her mother said.
“Hate what?”
Her voice was raspy from too many years of cigarettes. “That you know it’s me before you pick up.”
“It pops up on the caller ID. I’ve explained this to you before.”
“I know, I know, but really, can’t some things remain a mystery? Do we really need to know everything?”
Kat held back the sigh but allowed herself the eye roll. She could picture her mom in that old kitchen with the linoleum floor, standing up, using one of those old wall-mount phones that had yellowed from ivory too many years ago. The phone would be tucked under her chin. There would be a half glass of cheap Chablis in her hand, the rest of the jug back in the fridge to keep it cold. A vinyl tablecloth with faux crochet would be covering the kitchen table. A glass ashtray would, Kat had no doubt, be perched atop it. The peeling wallpaper had a flower pattern, though many of the blooms had also turned pale yellow over the years.
When you live with a smoker, everything starts to take on a yellowish hue.
“Are you coming or not?” Mom asked.
Kat could hear the drink in her mother’s voice. It was not an unfamiliar sound.
“Coming where, Mom?”
Hazel Donovan—she and Kat’s father used to call themselves and sign all their correspondences H&H for Hazel and Henry, as if this were the cleverest thing in the world—didn’t bother to hide the sigh.
“Steve Schrader’s retirement party.”
“Oh, right.”
“You get time off for that, you know. The precinct has to do that.”
They didn’t—Mom had all kinds of weird ideas about the lax rules for cops, all gathered in the era of her father and her husband—but Kat didn’t bother correcting her.
“I’m really busy, Mom.”
“Everyone will be there. The whole neighborhood. I’m going with Flo and Tessie.”
The Trinity of Cop Widows.
Kat said, “I’m working on a pretty big case.”
“Tim McNamara is bringing his son. He’s a doctor, you know.”
“He’s a chiropractor.”
“So what? They call him doctor. And a chiropractor was so good with your uncle Al. You remember?”
“I do.”
“The man could barely move. Remember?”
She did. Uncle Al had gotten worker’s comp for a work-related injury at the Orange Mattress factory. Two weeks later, this chiropractor healed him. It was nothing short of a miracle.
“And Tim’s son is so handsome. He looks like that guy on The Price Is Right.”
“Thanks for the invite, Mom, but I’m going to have to pass, okay?”
Silence.
“Mom?”