As they headed back downstairs, Rodney looked over at her. “I’d say he’s clear.”
“He was pretty willing to offer information,” she admitted, “so chances are that he had nothing to do with it. I don’t know about the other girl that Cherry had a problem with though.”
“Do you think this is the work of a female?”
“Well, I don’t want to be sexist and say a womancouldn’tdo it because I’m sure that’s not true,” she explained, “but, no, I don’t think that at all. But we can’t go by what we think.”
“No,” Rodney agreed. “It would be easy enough to stop back by the office and talk to the one good friend.”
“Or even the receptionist,” Kate said, with a nod. She hit the elevator button suddenly to take them back to the fourth floor. As they got out and walked into the office again, the receptionist looked up and frowned.
“Hello again. I’m surprised to see you back again,” she said.
“I understand that our victim had an issue with one of the women who worked here at one time,” Kate stated.
The receptionist frowned. “I don’t know about how much of an issue it actually was,” she replied, “but that person left soon afterward.”
“Can we get her name and number, please?”
She looked at Kate and said, “I have to ask the boss.”
“You do that. We’ll wait.” Kate stood here with her arms crossed.
The woman disappeared and then came running back, with the information on the back of Tom’s business card. “Here it is. She was only here for a week or two.”
“Do you know what the problem was?”
“No.” The receptionist shook her head. “I really don’t, except that they just didn’t hit it off. They were different personalities.”
“Good enough.” Kate took the information and walked back out again.
She wasn’t sure that it would lead anywhere, but, in a case like this, every thread had to be followed, everyThad to be crossed, and everyIhad to be dotted. Loose ends tended to create problems down the road. They had to chase down every detail, so the wrong person didn’t go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Kate was already afraid that may have happened once. She’d do a damn good job to make sure it didn’t happen twice to the kid.
*
Simon focused asmuch as he could on his work, only to find his feet taking him toward Kate’s office on Graveley Street. He found a street vendor within a block and grabbed a coffee and a hot dog and continued on. He shouldn’t be here, but he knew that. The last thing he would have set out to do would be to pursue any relationship with a cop, and he sure as hell didn’t want to end up with a group of cop friends.
Yet he also knew that he couldn’t walk away from Kate.
Finding a bench, he sat down and put the coffee beside him, then proceeded to eat the hot dog, somehow managing to get it down without sending mustard all over his suit. He wasn’t even in his Canadian suit today. He had a mental laugh at that because his favorite outfit was jeans and a blazer.
But today he was more dressed up, as he’d been meeting clients and investors. Not that he gave a shit what they thought, but it made him feel a little more powerful as he dealt with the other side of his business. Rehabbing buildings was one thing, but, once they were rehabbed, they had to be filled, either rented or leased, or in some cases purchased. He didn’t want to be the largest property owner in Vancouver, but, with over twenty-two buildings completed, he was getting there.
As he polished off the last bite of his hot dog, he watched several people walk by. A couple looked at him casually, most of them rushing past, head down, anxious to get to wherever they needed to go. He understood, and he’d been spending an awful lot of his last few days with his head down himself, trying to stay focused and to forget the scream, whatever the hell that scream was, because it kept coming back, but it seemed fainter and fainter. He was also afraid it was connected to the case that Kate was currently working on, with the poor woman who had been tortured so badly before she died.
All he could think about was that this screamer could be another victim, yet that made no sense. He didn’t know if there were any other victims, but the fact that there could be another one, a woman Simon was actually connecting with, sent his spine stiffening ramrod straight—if only to stop it from turning into quivering molded jelly.
To connect with someone in trouble, yet to be so helpless, that was a completely different thing.
Simon stared down at his hands, realizing just how different it was for him, as a big strong male in his prime, to have these particular feelings. They were not about insecurity because it went way past that to helplessness. This was about being a victim of somebody’s agony, pain, and torture, yet Simon had no target to reach out and hit. No way to assuage that pain and that devastation inside these victims. He couldn’t help the fact that he didn’t know anything about this woman. In that moment, his grandmother’s voice seemed to slip into his brain and whispered,But you could.
He stiffened, looked around, and, taking a chance, whispered back, “Is that you, Nan?”
He thought he heard the faintest sound of a laugh before it disappeared from his brain. Unnerved, he bolted to his feet, snagged his coffee, and stormed down the block. He would either cross the street and see if Kate was at the office or keep storming around the block, and the cops in her circle might very well end up saying something to her. Would she understand? He didn’t know, but it didn’t matter if she did or not. He was compelled, like they shared this umbilical cord between them.
If he didn’t see her for several days, he got antsy and wanted to send her a dozen texts in a day, but that sounded more stalkerish and creepy than anything. It seemed like they slept together when it was convenient, and that drove him crazy too. He wanted more; he wanted to wake up to find her beside him. The times that she did sleep over, he found himself not even wanting to sleep.
Sighing, he just kept walking, pacing around the corner and back. All the time a voice so much like his nan’s kept whispering in his ear.