The Good Guy by Dean Koontz Page A

from her purse, she said, “I’m not depressed. I just used to think I ought to be.”
    “Why did you think you ought to be?”
    “Because I was hanging out with university types, they love doom. And because of all the stuff that happened.”
    “What stuff?”
    Instead of answering, she said, “For a long time I was so angry, so bitter, I didn’t have room for depression.”
    “Then it seems like you’d be writing
angry
books.”
    “There was some anger in them, but mostly anguish, torment, wretchedness, and a festering kind of sorrow.”
    “I’m glad we weren’t dating in those days. Sorrow about what?”
    “Just drive,” she said.
    He drove, but he said, “Now that you won’t be writing anguished, wretched, festering books anymore, what
will
you be writing?”
    “I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe a story about a bricklayer who goes insane at a Peter, Paul and Mary concert.”
    Tim’s cell phone rang. He hesitated, thinking the caller might be Kravet.
    Instead, it was Pete Santo. “Hey, Doorman, you’ve got yourself into something mondo weird.”
    “Don’t call me Doorman. What weird?”
    “You know how guys who use a lot of fake ID often keep the same initials for first and last name?”
    Pulling to the curb and stopping in a residential neighborhood, Tim said, “All right.”
    “So I put together a search profile for anyone in DMV records with an
R
first name,
K
surname. Other parameters were from Kravet’s license—male, brown hair, brown eyes, six feet, birth date.”
    “You got some hits?”
    “I got twenty-some hits. Nine are what we’re looking for. The photo is the same guy, your guy with that creepy little smile. Robert Krane, Reginald Konrad, Russell Kerrington—”
    “You think one of them might be his real name?”
    “I’m gonna run them all through local, state, and national law-enforcement databases, see if one turns up with some kind of badge. This guy
has
to be connected somewhere.”
    “Why?”
    “This is where the weird starts. According to the DMV, these licenses were applied for in nine different offices up and down the state. But every one has the same photo, not nine different ones.”
    As Tim processed that news, Linda turned in her seat to stare out the rear window, as though the moment they had come to a stop, they had become easier to find.
    Tim said, “So the guy’s working with someone inside the DMV.”
    “Your garden-variety dirtbag,” Pete said, “when he wants fake ID, he doesn’t go to the DMV. He buys it from a fake-doc shop. It’s good for a lot of things, but not all. Say he’s stopped for speeding. If the officer ticketing him runs his license for priors, the DMV won’t have a record of it. It’s just a doc-shop job with no
roots
.”
    “But these nine licenses have roots. They’ll stand up.”
    “Man, they’ll stand up and sing ‘God Bless America.’ So he’s got someone in the DMV or he can funnify their files himself.”
    “Funnify?”
    “Funny them up, insert bogus records.”
    “I should take one of those vocabulary-enhancement courses.”
    Pete said, “Save your money and get a personality transplant first. Here’s another thing. California has some new DMV-access agreements with a couple of neighboring states. This Kravet Krane Konrad Whoever—he has three licenses in Nevada and two in Arizona, no repeats on the names, but all with the same photo.”
    “Well, it is a handsome photo,” Tim said.
    “It is,” Pete agreed.
    “That smile.”
    “Those eyes. What is this about, compadre?”
    “We’ve been through that. Parrot mug, egg-custard pie.”
    “These licenses, funnifying DMV records, these are felonies. Now that I know about this, I can’t sit on it forever, not even for you.”
    The name Richard Lee Kravet was almost certainly not the killer’s real name, so the burnt-out Chevy in the alleyway might not be easily tied to him under his true identity. Anyway, the wrecked car was not evidence