Colby stepped from his office and addressed his team in the bullpen. “Meet up, people.”
Kate grabbed coffee and walked into the larger room, where her team all took a spot.
“Why don’t you start, Owen?” Colby said.
Together, the five of them all went over the various cases that they had and shared any progress.
“And now you’ve got this cyclist,” Lilliana said to Kate.
She nodded. “Yeah, last night before I left, I was able to run through all the witness statements. Absolutely nothing of interest though.”
“Do you have anyone worth following up on?” Lilliana asked.
“I’ll definitely check out two students I want to talk to again. But I can’t really say that anything was there, outside of the fact that, honestly, they just pissed me off.”
Colby agreed. “Sometimes that’s all we get. It’s an impression we have, in the absence of any actual facts.”
“Sure, but we also have to walk a fine line.” Owen sat back, tossing down his pencil. “We don’t need any more accusations of police harassment.”
“Moreaccusations?” Kate turned to him.
He nodded. “Apparently we’ve been hit by a couple recently. It depends on what the cases are and how much of a headache they are to crack. It tends to happen when we think people are holding back on us, and we put the pressure on. But, when it gets to be too much, don’t worry, the litigation starts, and we’ll get smacked for it.”
Colby agreed. “Just something to keep in the back of your minds.”
She frowned, as she thought about it. “I guess that’s viable though, isn’t it? Just because we think they’re guilty or have something to do with it or know something, if we can’t find anything, it makes us look stupid. Yet, at the same time, we can’t let it go because we know it’s there. Except we’re not always right.”
“Not only are we not always right, sometimes we’re completely out in left field,” Rodney added. “Look at our cyclist at the university. I mean, up until we arrived, you and I thought it was just an accident, right, Kate?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I was wondering why we were called.”
“It was a dead body on the scene,” Colby explained, “so you can expect to get called for that.”
“Sure.” And she thought about it. “It was the hole in the head that got me though.”
“Cases are like that,” Lilliana added. “You have to go with the flow and adjust as the evidence changes.”
“The problem is,” Kate asked her team, “what to do when there is no evidence—when we don’t have anything to go on, and it seems like absolutely everything has been done, and we still can’t find anything.”
“And unfortunately that happens way too often too.” Andy shrugged.
They all nodded at that.
“That’s why we end up with so many cold cases,” Lilliana said. “They’re a nightmare for everybody. We don’t want them. We want all of these families to have closure. We want everybody to get the answers they need to move on and for the dead to be recognized and to be honored at an appropriate time after their death, instead of being held in the morgue, which is very offensive and troubling for families.”
“Right.” Kate sighed. “I’ll talk to these two witnesses because I definitely still have a few questions that need answered, but, other than that, it’s camera footage for me today.”
“Remember,” Colby told her. “You can always ask Reese if she has some free time.”
Kate nodded. “I just automatically think she doesn’t have room for something else on her desk.”
“That’s why she’s here,” Colby replied.
“Will do,” Kate said.
“Good.” Colby nodded.
“And let us know if you get anything to pop and if you need an extra hand or two,” Andy told her.