“It is, but not when you’re frantic like this. Not when you’re still so consumed with terror that you’re running to get away from it, even while you’re sitting here in my office.”
The woman looked around the room. “Oh.” She frowned. “I guess that doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Clearly it makes sense to you on some level because that’s what you’re doing, and you have to understand that’s a part of it. You’re doing everything in your mind and arriving at the conclusion that it does make sense. But what you want to do now is stop giving this dead crazy man the power to hurt you the way he currently is. By giving him that power, he’s still got control over your life, and you don’t want that. If he was still alive, you would be looking around every corner, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would,” she stated quietly.
“Yet you’re still doing that. You’re still looking for him, even though he’s not around to get you anymore.”
“What about the other guys?” she asked. “What about all those other crazy people out there? Can you protect me from them? Can you tell me that, by not looking around and not being safe, they won’t come after me?”
“There’s always achanceof somebody coming after you,” Kate told her truthfully, “just in the sense that there’s an awful lot of assholes out there. But that doesn’t mean theywillcome after you.”
The woman slowly sagged back into the chair. “I really have been letting him dominate my life, haven’t I?” she noted thoughtfully.
“Yes, and it would be really healthy for you to start dealing with that.”
The woman gave her a misty smile. “Thank you. I hadn’t seen it in that light.” She got up and asked, “May I leave now?”
Kate nodded. “Yes, as soon as I get your contact information.” And, with that down on paper, she let the woman walk out of the station. She returned to her desk and sat down slowly, shaking her head.
Rodney looked over at her. “Problems?”
She smiled. “No, not really. I just got a reminder of how far-reaching the damage of domestic violence can be to some of these victims.”
“Is your witness a victim of a different case?”
“Yeah.” Kate sighed. “Sounds like she had been stalked, caught, held, and beaten. She had a restraining order for a time, but eventually the guy committed suicide, so she blames herself.”
“Ouch, that’ll make it difficult to stand her up in court.”
“Almost impossible,” Kate agreed. “Even though he’s gone, she’s still terrified and runs the jogging path frantically all thetime, supposedly keeping herself in shape so she can get away. Yet, in reality, she behaves more like she expects someone to jump out and grab her at any second. And you know any defense lawyer would tear her apart on cross.”
He nodded. “Well, if we can catch the killer, that’s fine. Hopefully we’ll have lots of other things to use for evidence.”
“I hope so,” Kate replied. “I really hate the aspect of the job that requires us to make sure it’s a case that can be tried.”
“Right, and that’s why so many of these cases take so long, since we have to wait until we get the evidence we need to make sure the charges will stick.”
She nodded slowly and started to enter the woman’s report into the database. She looked down at her phone and frowned, seeing the response from Simon.
“Did she have anything helpful?” Rodney asked.
“She described what sounded like the same guy with the yellow rope. She has seen him there several times. Almost every second day according to her.”
“Every second day that she’s been there or every second day he’s been there?”
“Every second day that she’s been there, she has seen him. In this case it’s the same thing because she runs constantly, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the daytime.”
“Ouch,” Rodney replied.
“Yeah, it’s more of an addiction, as she’s still running from what happened to her.”
“That can be pretty rough.”
“Very, and, at the end of the day, even though you come back exhausted, you still haven’t resolved or settled anything, so you get up the next morning to run again because the demons are still chasing you,” she murmured.
He looked over at her. “Have you ever come to terms with the loss of your brother?”