"Jacob," I growl. "Fucking Jacob. I should have known. I felt it in my gut that there was something wrong with that man, but I ignored it. I ignored it. If I had listened, I would have figured it out."
"No time to blame yourself, Henderson," Craig says. "We need to find this man."
"What have we managed to dig up on him so far, now that we know it's him?"
Caleb, another detective, says, "Obviously, his first name is Jacob, but his last name is different. He started using a fake last name when he started hunting for girls. I've looked into his real name, he was adopted as a baby. Single mother. She's dead, I'm looking into her."
"Anything else we can work with?" Craig says. "Do we know where the mother lived? Perhaps he's in the same house?"
"Got someone on that now," I say, running a hand through my hair, trying to fight back the anger at myself. He was right there in front of me the whole fucking time.
///
"How did he find her on a fuckin' dating app?" Caleb grunts, crossing his tattooed arms over his chest.
I exhale for calm. "He knew enough about her from the support group, maybe he followed her, tapped into her phone, even listened to Taylor and got the idea as a way to get into her life. I can't see him coming up with that-he waited too long, my guess is he found out about Taylor setting her up and used it as an opening to get into her life."
"He must be savvy with technology, then," Caleb mutters. "It ain't easy to get the information he's gotten, or tap into people's computers … "
"People do it all the time," I mutter. "That's what's fuckin' wrong with the world, it's too easy to find out what you want to know, if you're good with computers."
"Yeah," Caleb grunts. "Do we know how he found out so much about Hartley's husband? How he found out all those things?"
"The smart fucker started breaking into her apartment when the locks were flimsy," I growl. "Then, when she got scared, he changed them and must've kept a key. That's why it was only after I changed them again that it stopped happening inside her house, and he started sending things to her instead."
"So all the things he used to torment her, he found in her apartment? The clever, sick fuck."
I nod sharply. "Hartley said she kept boxes of her husband's things. It wouldn't have taken much for him to snoop through them and learn enough to torment her. Then there's the fact the dirty fuck was dating her, so I'm sure she told him things."
"Smart man, involving himself in her life and even helping her when she got scared. He thought it through," Craig murmurs.
"He's a fucking dead man if I get hold of him."
"He was right there, the whole fuckin' time," Caleb says out loud, but it's more to himself. "Just dating her … right there, under our noses."
I know what he means. The idea that he was right there, right fucking there. I hate it. I study Caleb, and give him a nod. He's good at his job. He's working closely on a few murder cases, and he has a knack for it. I spent some time with him going over them, getting tips and pointers. He's a couple of years younger than me, but the man has an edge that even I wouldn't want to cross. He has had a hard past-I don't know much about it but I know he hasn't had it easy.
It makes him incredible at his job. A determined, strong worker who doesn't take any crap. He lives and breathes his job. He doesn't have a family or even a woman, which surprises me. He's got the looks that stop most females in their tracks-a dark, dangerous edge. He'll make something out of himself, that's for sure, and when he does he'll take the world by storm. I'm glad to have him on the team right now.
"It's a good tactic," I growl, getting back to the subject. "He was squeaky clean, he did a good job of changing his name and living a clean life. He checked out."
"We have his name now, so we're going to find something," Craig assures me.
"What if it's too fuckin' late?"
Both men look at me.
"We'll find her," Craig assures me again.
"Ace," another officer says, coming into the room. "I have some information on the mother. I found a few records. I don't know much about his life with her, but I found a photo. Have a look."
He hands me an old photo and a few notes he's made. I look down to see a junkie-looking blonde standing beside a little boy. She's got her hand possessively on his shoulder, but it's what he's wearing that my eyes zone in on. A bowtie. He's wearing a bowtie.