“Yeah? Will you learn to use it properly?”
“I sure need to,” she said. “Some of these are great, and some of these are shitty. I mean, like, why? Why is one better than the other?” She shook her head again.
“Usually it’s because you moved, or you didn’t give it a chance to lock on to whatever it was supposed to focus on,” he muttered.
“I can see that in some of these. When you look at them, it’s pretty obvious that I was either still in motion or hadn’t stopped long enough because they’re blurry.”
“Exactly, but, if they’re not any good, you took another one.”
“I took a lot from every position. I took hundreds of them. I think I was just snapping, afraid whoever would be out there was already leaving.”
He looked at her. “We often talk about having that feeling that somebody committed a crime and stood around to watch. But why would they in a case like this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just for the chaos. Or maybe to make sure she was dead because they didn’t get the chance to confirm it.”
He frowned at that, as he turned back to his desk. “It could be any number of things, and the problem is,… they all suck,” he snapped.
“Yep, they all do, but it doesn’t change the facts.”
Sergeant Colby Stevens walked in just then. “What are we looking at?” he asked, one eyebrow lifted.
She shrugged. “We had what we initially thought wouldn’t be a case for us, but, as it turned out, it is.”
“Okay, try again, and this time tell me something,” he said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be off doing paperwork or schmoozing with the brass?” Kate asked.
He glared at her. “Come on. Spill it. As you just pointed out, some of my tasks aren’t that enjoyable. So I’m looking for a distraction.” He added, “I don’t like what I have to do next, so you can take my mind off it.”
“Fine, that’s way too much information. We have a woman struck by a vehicle.”
“Okay. So why did it end up on our desk?”
“We had an unidentified body, which is why we got the call in the first place,” Rodney said.
“It looked like a vehicular accident, but we weren’t sure,” she interrupted, “and, when the coroner took a look, we found a small hole of some kind behind the ear.”
“Bullethole? She was shot?” he asked, his eyebrows rising.
“Well, we said shot, but I’m not exactly sure with what just yet. It was an extremely small caliber.”
“So, an air gun?”
“We don’t know. Maybe a BB gun or something smaller than a .22.” She scrunched up her face. “I’m not exactly sure what’s out there when it comes to something that small.”
“The coroner will be on it,” Colby said. “As soon as it’s pulled, we can get the forensics people on it.”
She nodded. “Whatever it is, it still means that she was murdered. We’re just at the beginning of the investigation.”
“Good, that’s a good thing.”
“Why?” she asked.
“To keep you busy,” he said cheerfully. “I’m sure an awful lot of people were there watching.”
“There was, and there wasn’t. A lot of people but nobody saw anything.”
“They didn’t see anything because they didn’t comprehend anything,” Colby said. “You have to jog their memories, so that they can remember something.”