All of the action was long gone, and he thought that was interesting too. He figured it would take hours and hours for sure, but it didn’t. They had been beyond efficient. But, to them, there was absolutely nothing to this. And here he was, already looking at a completely normal traffic pattern.
That was a disappointment.
And even now the two investigators pulled away in the small Jeep that she had driven in, yet he had driven out. He wondered if they were partners in life as well or if there even was such a thing. They were dressed in plain clothes, so they couldn’t be street cops. Had been plenty of uniforms on the scene earlier; still were a couple. But any motor vehicle accident involving a fatality would bring more than the average patrolman, since an investigation would have to be done.
And that was very true. It was all good and definitely something he wanted to keep feeling. But he also didn’t want to lose his focus—or his reason for doing this. With a smile he turned and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Chapter 4
Kate walked intothe bullpen, sat down at her desk, and downloaded the photos off her phone into her computer. After printing those out, she put them all into a physical file, setting up a new one for this latest UBC case.
“What’s the matter?” Rodney asked.
She looked over at him, shrugged. “I’m… not sure. I—I just—something’s wrong about that bullet.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Based on the entry wound, it had to be super-small, like a BB or a pellet.”
He frowned at that. “If the shot happened from a distance, regardless of the size of the ammo, wouldn’t she have completely collapsed from the force alone?”
She replied, “I don’t know. I mean, do people continue to walk or to ride a bike after that? Could she have been disoriented enough that she rode into an intersection, where she was hit by a car? What was the sequence of events? What are the chances that somebody came up after the motor vehicle collided with her, carrying a small BB gun, and shot her behind the ear, even though she was down and potentially already dead?”
Rodney looked at her in shock.
Kate shrugged. “I’m just tossing out ideas and various concepts as to what could be going on here because it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“So, you’re taking something that looks like a pretty normal shooting, where the person is shot in the head, and circumstances propel her forward into traffic, where she also gets hit by a vehicle, but now you’re wondering if that’s how it really happened?”
“Yes, I am. You didn’t see the size of that hole.”
“I’ll wait for the autopsy report, thanks.”
“And I get that. I know it’s not your thing to stand beside the dead, whereas it fascinates me. I could easily have gone into that field myself.”
“Why didn’t you?” She just gave him that look. His gaze caught sight of the folders beside her, and he winced. “Sorry. Okay, so we obviously know why you didn’t, and I applaud you for the dedication that took you down this pathway because we obviously need your help,” he said, with a smile.
She rolled her eyes at that. “I don’t know about that, but this case?” She shook her head. “Just… something feels off.”
“Definitely something is off in the sense that she was killed for no apparent reason. She was picked out as a victim, targeted, and brought down. But why?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” she said, turning to her computer.
“Where will you start with that?” he asked curiously.
She smiled. “First, I’ll go through these faces at the crime scene because there’s always that—that feeling that somebody out there is watching what we’re doing. Watching however long we’re out there doing it.”
“I’m sure there is.” Rodney nodded. “The press is always looking to hunt down whatever it is that we’ve found and to tear us apart for our methods, and the general public is right there with them.”
“When you say it that way, why would anyone even want to do this job, since everybody is out there working against us?” she asked, looking at him sideways.
“I’ve asked myself that a hundred times,” he said, with a grimace.
“Did you ever get an answer?”
“Not a good one.” He laughed. “I mean, when you think about it, what’s a good answer?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, then pulled up all the images she’d taken, and slowly sorted through them. A couple that were really terrible she deleted, since she had better ones. “I have got to get a better camera phone,” she muttered.