He nodded and quickly wrote down the address and phone number for Rick Lord, then handed it to her. “What do I do if I see him?”
“You call me,” she stated. “I’ll let you know if I find him and talk to him, and then I can get some answers.”
“I really hope he comes back because I need him as a worker.”
“I get that, and he might still return. What I don’t know is where this is going yet.”
He nodded slowly. “I am torn about him. Can’t say I feel all that great about it now.”
“Understood.” She turned her attention to Simon, who had been listening in. “We’re just about done here,” she told him.
He nodded and looked over at the boss, who was still finishing off the paperwork for the service of Kate’s car and taking payment. “You might want to tell the kid that, if he did anything wrong, he should just talk to her. She’s not here to nail his ass to the wall, unless he did something bad.”
“I don’t think he has any trust anymore,” the boss noted.
“And the problem with that is that he confessed last time,” she shared.
The boss’s jaw dropped open. “Oh, shit,” he replied in a squeaky voice.
She got into her car and motioned at Simon. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He hopped in, and they tore off out of the building. “That’s a great way to keep things calm and quiet.”
“What am I supposed to say? He did confess, and confessions have consequences.”
“Yes,” he muttered. “I know.”
“And I get that not everybody likes the law, but, at the same time, it’s not exactly easy for us to handle murders either. This guy confessed to murdering his sister, and he did time, and now we’ve got a second body, but he’s free. What am I supposed to think?”
“You can’t think anything but what is right there, staring you in the face.… And yet I hear you trying to justify your actions,” Simon replied.
“That’s because I don’t think the kid did it,” she stated bluntly.
He looked at her in surprise. “You don’t?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t. You have to really hate your sister to do what was done to that woman.”
He sank back and nodded. “You know what? That’s a level of hate I don’t understand myself, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there.”
“Nope, not at all,” she agreed. “It’s one of the things that has to be dealt with.”
“No, I get it.” He looked at the piece of paper that she handed him. “This address is not very far from here.”
“No, it isn’t, like five minutes around the corner.” She took several turns, turned around, then pulled up in front of a small house, with curtains closed in the front windows. The driveway led to a very old beat-up garage. She looked at this place and shook her head. “Not what I expected.”
He hopped out beside her. “No, not what I expected either.”
“But,” she added, “in the last however many years, it’s probably cost them a lot.”
“In many ways,” he added.
“People who commit crimes never think about the consequences to their actions that can affect their family,” she noted. “The stepfather lost his job and couldn’t get anything at the same level. He has been working at a security job for the last five years.”
“What was he before that?”
“He was a business CEO and got fired because of his involvement with his stepson’s case.”
“Well, they had to have a reason for that too.”