As I drove, Radar read me the file that Ralph had put together last night on Griffin.
“Okay, so Timothy went to high school in Deerfield, dropped out when he was a sophomore, eventually got his GED and worked for a decade in a series of odd jobs in Milwaukee-three years delivering garbage, McDonald’s burger flipper, construction. Then a plumber’s apprentice in Beaver Dam. Looks like none of them was a good fit for him. Attended one year of tech school, dropped out. Evidently, he started collecting and selling this paraphernalia soon after that.”
“Beaver Dam’s just twelve miles from Horicon. He could easily have known the area.” I remembered the coats in his closet. “He’s a hunter.”
“The tree house. Goose hunting?”
“Possibly.”
Radar was quiet.
“Never anything to do with law enforcement, though?” I asked. “Did he enter and drop out of any police academies?”
“Nothing’s listed. Nope.”
“Man, we gotta find out how he’s trafficking stuff that ought to be in police evidence rooms.”
“No kidding.”
“What else?”
“He’s lived in Fort Atkinson since June 1996. Mallory moved in with him about a month later on the day she turned eighteen.”
“Which means-”
“He had a relationship with her before that, when she was still a minor.”
I felt my hands tighten around the steering wheel. “How do we know when she moved in?”
“She changed the address on her driver’s license.”
After Radar finished reading the files, we were silent and I was thinking about the case of Jenna Natara, the investigation that wouldn’t leave me alone, even when I slept.
“Pat, I know you’re angry.”
“Don’t tell me not to be, don’t-”
“No, I get it. It’s okay. It’s a good thing.”
“It’s good that I’m angry?”
“It shows you care. As my dad used to say, anger is the cousin of love.”
I looked at him quizzically. “What does that mean?”
“The more you love something, the more angry you’ll be when that thing is threatened or attacked. If you love children, you’ll be incensed at pedophiles; if you love your wife, you’ll get angry when someone insults her; if you love endangered species, you’ll be furious when they’re hunted to the point of extinction; if you love unborn children, you’ll be outraged about abortion. Anger always, and only, runs as deep as love.”
I’d never thought of it like that. “Your dad was a smart man.”
“Yes, he was.”
A thought: To find out what you truly love the most, look for what makes you the most angry.
Anger is the cousin of love…
I said, “You know how psychologists will tell you that no one can make you angry, that you only choose to become angry?”
“Sure.”
“I can’t remember a time ever in my life when I’ve chosen to be angry. And I’ve never met anyone who’s said to me, ‘This guy cut me off on the interstate and I decided to get angry.’”
“Anger’s a response”-Radar was right with me-“not a choice.”
“Right. Nobody ever chooses to become angry, we can only choose not to respond with anger. If we want to.”
“Okay.” He could tell there was more. “And?”
“And I’m not going to do that with Griffin.”
“You’re going to remain angry.”
“Yeah, and respond that way.”
“So am I.”
“I guess we’ll see where that leads.”
He was quiet. “Yes, we will.”
The trip went by fast and before I knew it I was pulling up to the side of the road in front of Timothy Griffin’s dilapidated house on the outskirts of Fort Atkinson.