“You’re the only one he seems to get along with.”
“I don’t think so,” she argued. “In this case, he had a reason to shift his schedule around.”
“How do you know he shifted it?”
“Because that was this morning’s body,” she explained. “And he got to it within what? Six hours?”
“Maybe.” He rolled the back of his neck.
“Normally it would be days.”
“Sure, but you seemed to be pretty determined that something was going on.”
She shrugged. “Maybe just instincts.”
He snorted at that. “That’s BS.”
“What? That I have any instincts?” she asked in a mocking tone.
“No, just that you confront him over it.”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Anyway, the reason he moved this one to the front of the line is because he remembered another case like this years ago.” She handed him the printed report. “The brother was charged as a minor. He was eighteen when he was finally put away, sixteen when he committed the crime—supposedly. He proclaimed his innocence. The parents did too, and, of course, he and the sister were said to be close.”
“And Smidge remembered all this why?”
“The cause of death. A knitting needle through the chest wall and on through the heart. Plus both ankles and both wrists broken, and the vocal cords cut.”
“Shit,” Rodney muttered. “God damn it. So a copycat or a repeat?”
“That’s what we’ll have to find out,” she stated.
“Well, the first thing is to find out if he’s still in jail.”
“Given that he was a minor at the time, chances are he’s free by now.”
“But why would you do it all over again, especially if it was your sister—”
“Well, I guess the next thing is, does this woman look like his sister? Did he spend all those years waiting to kill her all over again?”
*
Wednesday, Early Morning Hours
It had beendays since Simon had had the nightmare of the screaming woman that Kate then found dead hours later. Kate had been immersed in that case for the last three days, while Simon kept busy, terribly busy, working himself to the bone. That way, when he did finally collapse, the nightmares would either be too distant or his mind too exhausted to even dream them up. It worked for the first night or three, but last night it seemed to work in reverse.
This Wednesday, he woke up at two o’clock in the morning, screaming out loud, his body covered in sweat. Excruciating pain tortured every inch of his body. He dragged himself to the shower, where he quickly rinsed off the sweat, before coming back and pulling the sweat-soaked sheets off his bed, replacing them with clean ones.
But when he woke up at four in exactly the same state, he just laid here, letting the sweat cool on his body, his expression grim, as he gazed around his room. There was nothing, absolutely nothing that he could see or hear that would do anything to help this woman. And it was a woman; he knew that. It was another case for Kate; he knew that too.
For all he knew, it was old information, the torture of the same woman. Simon didn’t know. Regardless, somebody was in extreme agony, screaming and screaming, but only in his head, although his vocal cords were doing the screaming. He thought maybe she was screaming too, but he had no way to know that. His nightmare was just darkness, incessant darkness. He could almost hear her whimper in the back of his mind, as he lay here.
By the time six rolled around, he got up, had another long hot shower, and put on the strongest coffee he thought he could tolerate. Sitting at his dining room table and staring out at the beautiful horizon outside, he wondered how such a beautiful city could house so much horror. He hadn’t seen Kate since she had caught this latest case. And that was life with Kate.
She showed up whenever and disappeared for days at a time. He could text her, and, if she had time, she’d answer him. However, if she didn’t have time, he always stepped back into the background of her world. He had plenty to deal with on his own, so, in a way, it worked, Yet, in another way, it irked him completely because he wanted more. He needed more. And she wasn’t having any of it.
He sat here, a notepad in front of him, as he worked out all the things he had to do today. Part of it was ordering supplies and going to the bank to move money. Some of it he couldn’t do online, though he preferred to do all of it that way if he had the option. But, every once in a while, actually showing up with a physical presence at the bank was mandatory. It sucked, but that’s what it was. He looked down at the notepad to see that he’d been drawing circles, some weird circles.
After a more careful survey, he realized that they were ropes knotted, with a wrist through it. Even as he watched, his hand continued to draw what looked like one single arm tied down flat. He immediately ripped off the page, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it across the floor.