As she got to the corner, Rodney stood there, staring at her in shock.
She nodded. “Yeah, that was him.”
“Well, shit. Did he just shoot at you?”
She nodded. “Sure did.”
A black-and-white came up at the same time. She immediately pointed and said, “That old Oldsmobile that just turned left up there? He just shot at my car.”
They nodded and took off in pursuit. She wanted to go after them herself but not when she had the kid with her. She returned to her car to find Simon outside, studying the parking lot. “You don’t take orders well, do you?”
“The order was for the kid,” Simon noted, “not for me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
He nodded. “Absolutely sure.”
She smiled, opened up the back door, and motioned at the kid to get out. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
“You don’t think they were after me, do you?”
“I’m not sure,” she noted. “Could be you, me, or Simon here.”
He looked over at Simon. “You got people who hate you too?”
“When you live,” Simon replied, “you get people who hate you. It doesn’t matter whether you think you deserve it or not.”
“I didn’t do anything—honest,” he said.
“Good.” Simon nodded. “In that case it should be pretty easy to clear this up.”
“I don’t know,” Rick replied. “This is making me more than a little scared.”
“Did you ever get death threats when you were in jail?” Kate asked him.
“Yeah, I got as many death threats as marriage proposals.” Rick raised both hands in shock. “Who the hell does that?”
“Lonely women,” Simon answered. “Women who have their own issues and who think they can save you. Being young and cute and sometimes misguided, these women think that you would be theirs and that they could fix you.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with me,” he said in disgust.
“Yeah, just don’t tell them that.” Simon laughed.
The kid just shook his head. “It makes no sense.”
“A lot of times these things don’t make any sense,” Kate said. “It doesn’t make sense until we get to the truth, and then it makes way too much sense, and you wonder how you couldn’t have seen it in the first place.”
Rick stopped, looked at her, and then nodded. “It was like that about confessing,” he admitted. “I mean, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I was so guilt ridden, and then all of a sudden it was not the right thing to do at all, but it was way too late to change it.”
“Life is like that,” she noted. “When you do things impulsively, you really need to step back and to try to think about what you’re doing.”
“But I just react,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t think. I just react.”
“I get it.” She nodded. “Yet you also have to consider that, by confessing, and you being a really good suspect, the police stopped looking for anybody else.”
“I assumed they weren’t looking to begin with,” he replied.
“But, if you didn’t actually kill her, don’t you think they should have been sure?” And they were originally keeping their options open, but then they stopped looking because, of course, Rick confessed, making it a slam-dunk deal. She didn’t say anything more but led them to her area and into an interview room. She pointed Rick to a chair. “Take a seat. Simon, are you hanging around or leaving?”