“You know,” Kate suggested, “it might be better, from now on, if you took another route to run.”
The woman looked at her in horror. “No, you don’t understand. This is my route. This is what I do.”
“You can’t change it?”
“No, no,” she declared in outrage. “He needs to change who he kills, but he’s not taking my pathway,” she stated loudly, with so much indignation that several of the cops turned and looked at her. She immediately flushed. “Oh God, I’m sorry. That’s obviously not the right thing to say. But it’s how I feel.”
“What? That this guy is ruining the run for you?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He’s ruining it for everybody.”
“Have you seen the guy with the rope before?”
She stopped, frowned. “Well,probably. I mean, I’ve seen so many people here. He didn’t strike me as somebody I’dneverseen. He wasn’t giving off any creepy stranger vibes or anything like that.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Sure. Tall, slim, and fit,” she noted, “just like the rest of us. Now, I mean, if he was like, you know, 275 pounds, obviously overweight, and didn’t fit in with the runners who often run here,” she noted, “then he would have stood out more. Butbecause he was exactly what I do expect to see here—particularly at that hour of the morning, it’s usually the hardcore runners,” she explained, “he didn’t stand out at all.”
“And that’s very important too,” Kate murmured. “But you can’t identify him any more than that?”
“He had black tech leggings, runners, and a tank of some kind,” she said. “He was fit, and I didn’t notice any jewelry.”
“Any tats, hair?”
“Brown,” she replied instantly. “But it was just a fleeting glance. I saw the rope mostly.”
“What color was it?”
She looked at her and grimaced. “It was yellow. I think that’s why I recognized it. It’s that nasty stuff. It’s got like a coating on it. It’s cheap. I told my husband not to buy that rope anymore because it always comes undone.”
“Interesting,” Kate noted. “Well, the next time you see him, I suggest you run in the opposite direction—and fast.”
The woman stopped and stared. “Do you think it was him?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
“I think there’s a very good chance that you’re lucky your timing was off today.”
“And it was off,” she confirmed. “I’m actually ten minutes late.” She stared down the pathway, and her face paled. “Oh my God,… that could have been me.”
“But you saw him earlier today too, right?”
“Yes,” she stated, “he was here. I headed down and swung around and came back, as I usually do. Only, as I was coming back up this way to head off in that corner—see? It’s an intersection here. Runners can come down. They can come up, and they can cross over,” she said, explaining some of the routes. “And it’s only as I crossed over that I saw the bodies.”
“But you didn’t see him then?”
“No, no sign of him. But then he could be still running the trail,” she suggested, “as if he had nothing to do with this. He could still be up there running now. Hell, there’ll be any number of people coming through here, probably dozens of them over the next hour.”
“Well, today,” Kate noted, “and for a while, they’ll be disappointed because this is now out of bounds.”
“Too bad you didn’t make that clear before today,” she stated, with a note of bitterness.
Kate turned to face her and asked, “You said you came down to this trail from the other side. Would you have followed all of the various intersecting trails normally anyway?”
“No,” she replied. “I often come in off the side. I don’t drive here. I just walk over, so then I pick and choose wherever I want to start.”
“So how would you have known if we had to close this off?”
She stared at her, and her bottom lip trembled. “Fine. I get what you’re saying. You couldn’t have blocked off the trail entirely. But please, dear God, get the message out now.” And, with that, she sat back down again and curled up, with a blanket around her shoulders.