“Fine,” she moaned. “And obviously we’re not in that world.”
“Nope.… Last I checked, it was still full of assholes.”
She smiled. “I agree. So where are you going from here?”
“Well, I was hoping to spend some time with you, but apparently you’re not off work yet.”
“I’m not,” she confirmed, “although the visit with the husband probably won’t take all that long.”
“Well, in that case, let me come along,” he said, yet a part of him hated that he even had to ask, but that’s just the relationship they had. She was busy, and he was busy, but her busyness seemed to take priority over his, or maybe he was letting it. He didn’t know. But the truth was, he could also do an awful lot of his stuff on the go. As long as he had a laptop, it didn’t really matter.
But her work was very different, and it required going out, meeting people, checking up on their stories, and doing all kinds of related stuff. He’d never really been exposed to her side of the police before. It was fascinating work that she did—time-consuming, demanding, both emotionally and physically exhausting—but watching her mind work was truly a wonder.
He wasn’t sure that she even understood just how analytical she could be or how well she could fit herself into the mind of a killer. She did it with such ease that he thought it was something she didn’t even see as unique, which was also an interesting aspect.
He wondered if God, in His wondrous form, actually considered the fact that, for every criminal out there, He needed to provide somebody like Kate to handle them. Was that part of what this good-and-bad balance was all about? Simon wouldn’t doubt it, but, at the same time, it seemed like a foolish process, when God could have just wiped out the criminals in the first place.
But it all came back to that whole free-will thing, as far as he was concerned. People made choices, and those choices sometimes got them in trouble. This shouldn’t have happened, and terrible crimes like murder should never be, but people were people. That was one of his favorite sayings.
“I guess you could come along,” she relented. “Too bad you’re not in your running gear. We could go for a run.”
“We can go home and get my gear,” he offered. “I only need a couple minutes to get changed.”
She frowned.
He added, “A run down there would be great. Maybe I could give you a different insight into the layout of the run.”
“I ran it late yesterday afternoon and again this morning,” she stated thoughtfully. “I was thinking of just doing a walk, not another run, tonight.”
“Well, a walk would be good,” he agreed. “Come on. Let’s go.” He hopped up, and she looked at him with a frown. He shrugged. “Hey, the only way I get to spend time with you is while you’re on the job,” he explained, “so don’t hold it against me that I’m trying. I’ll take whatever time I can get.”
“It’s not exactly quality time,” she noted slowly.
“But it’s time,” he declared, “so I’ll take it.”
She smiled. “Is it that bad?”
“It can be,” he murmured. “You’re always busy.”
“No,” she began, “it’s just that some cases…”
“What is it about this one?”
“It just seems so random. No suspects for one of the women potentially, and the favorite that everybody likes to consider for the other is an ex-husband and an ugly divorce.”
“Yep, that’s often a good suspect, isn’t it?” he agreed, with a smile. “But you’re right, it’s also very cliché. It doesn’t mean that he had to kill the second woman though.”
“Unless they were inseparable, and that’s what people keep saying,” she related, “but I’m not buying it.”
He looked at her in surprise.
She continued. “Killing one is pretty intense. To take out both of them with no real reason for the second one doesn’t make sense to me.”
“That’s because you don’t yet understand his motivation. What if the ex blamed her girlfriend for the breakup of their marriage? What if the relationship with the girlfriend was stronger than what he thought the relationship with him was? What if she had sided with her friend and had helped her make the choice to leave him, or things like that. In his mind, she could be equally responsible for the breakup.”
She muttered, “Oh, now that’s an interesting point.” She hopped up and said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“And where are we going?”