Chapter 5
Kate sat downat the beach, a cup of coffee in her hand. She was an oddity here in more ways than one, with the beach still full of sunbathers. The smell of suntan lotion and fries permeated the air for some reason. The fries really spoke to her. She lifted her nose and noted a couple food trailers off to the side. She was tempted to take a look, but fries were hardly a meal, and she wasn’t sure what her plans were at this point. She was still processing the information she had just picked up from the ex-husband. It didn’t really surprise her to hear Barry claim that Jenna was the abuser.
It was something that she had heard several times before. Everybody automatically wanted to think that the man always beat the woman, and 95 percent of the time it was true. Yet there was that other five percent, and, if Barry’s words were true—something Kate would have to confirm—she wasn’t sure how that actually helped him. Didn’t it potentially make him evenmoreof a suspect? Yet, if that were the case, why would he have said something? He had clearly had a very hard time telling Kate about the abuse, and the shame was heavy in his voice. He had left soon afterward.
But she was more bothered by the fact that this didn’t seem to help anything. So, was it a red herring to throw her off the track or to garner sympathy, so she would have a harder time looking at him as the killer? She wasn’t even sure how all this fit together.
Just wanting to have a time-out from all of it, she was out here among the sunbathers, in her jeans and shirt, with a jacket covering her holster.
As she sat in the blazing sun, drinking a cup of hot coffee, she shook her head. On display all around her were beach bodies, many of which were barely covered. People were in the water. People were on the sand. People were all around her, most of them ignoring her because they were intent on enjoying their own experience. And who could blame them? It was a gorgeous day—and hot—but the sun was finally beginning to ease up, reducing that intense heat, as it started to cool down for the evening. Still not cool enough yet for her.
Plenty for her to do yet today, although she could call it quits and start again tomorrow. It’s just that every day that went by was another day without anything happening. Therefore, in no time at all, she would run out of days. On every case, the first forty-eight hours were incredibly important, and she had already exceeded that in this joggers’ case by almost twelve hours, counting from the approximate time of the murders early on Saturday morning. It didn’t stop her from wanting to sit here and to pull on all these threads she had. Yet, if she didn’t get any answers, she really had no place to carry on with her investigation.
As she sat here, her phone rang. She looked at it and saw Dr. Smidge’s phone number and sighed with relief. “There you are,” she greeted him. “I’ve been dying for answers.”
“I got to it as soon as I could,” he declared in his customary testy voice. “At least you haven’t brought me any new ones.”
“No.… However, I’m not sure there won’t be more.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked curiously.
“I don’t know. Just something very odd about this case.”
“Hell yeah, there is, but I wasn’t expecting you to say that without any information.”
“I have to say that,” she stated, “because none of this makes any sense at all, unless it’s a personal thing.”
“What’s wrong with it being personal? Isn’t that why most of these things happen?”
“Yes and no.” Then she told him what the ex-husband had told her.
“Oh, now that’s a twist, isn’t it? But is it a twist we believe?”
“That’s where the trouble comes in.”
“Well, it just makes him look like he’s a bigger suspect, I would say.”
“I know, and that’s the problem. Why tell me, if that’s the case?”
“Because he’s thinking emotionally, not rationally. He’s finally able to tell somebody and hopefully got them to believe it.”
“Do you believe it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. That’s your job.”
“I’m working on it, but I have to confirm it somehow, and that’ll be difficult,” she began. “He never went to the hospital, never got photographed, and never contacted the cops.”
“No, that would be embarrassing as hell.”
“And yet it shouldn’t be,” she cried out. “Abuse is abuse, no matter who’s dishing it out.”
“Yes, but so much of the male psyche is tied up in being the strong male and not being a victim,” he reminded her. “And certainly not at the hands of a woman. So, in this case, I can see why he wouldn’t have told anybody.”
“Yeah, and that doesn’t help me confirm it now.”
“Did you ask him if he told anybody?”
“No, and I need to.” She looked down at her phone, making a mental note. “Maybe he told his parents or a buddy at work or something.”