He hesitated before answering. “At the university. At one of the off-campus residences.”
She bolted upright. “Please tell me that it’s not Candy.”
“I don’t know anything about it. All I got was that we have a body. I’ll pick you up in ten.”
“Great,” she muttered again, and she tossed her phone on the bedside table.
She quickly got dressed, wishing she had time for a shower, but that wasn’t to be. Multitasking—brushing her teeth while running a comb through her hair—got her out the door quicker, aware that it would be a very long day. She and Simon had shared one of those nights. They had talked, made love, talked some more, but no talk of plans, no talk of tomorrow, because, for both of them, there was only just today.
She shook her head, as she stepped outside her building, feeling the chill, as a whistling watery breeze came in off the ocean. Rodney arrived five minutes later. She hopped in, shivering, and he immediately reached to turn on the heat.
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” But her teeth were chattering. “Besides it’s August for Christ’s sake.”
He turned and headed out to the university. “These middle-of-the-night calls always get to me.”
“Yeah, me too, especially when you said it was close to the university.”
“You really think it could be her?”
“If it is, I know who we’ll focus on.”
He shook his head. “We can’t do that.”
“I know, but I really want to,” she said.
“That’s if it’s her, and we don’t even know that yet. We won’t know until we get there. Was she concerned?”
“Not really.” Kate shook her head. “She didn’t appear to be. She was concerned at some level because she didn’t want to tell me anything and said how they’d ‘kill her,’ but, when I asked her specifically if I should take that wording literally, she shook her head, said she just meant they would be furious. But later Candy had wondered if they’d crossed that line another time. She suggested that she already got blamed for everything because she was the odd man out. She was trying to be somebody she wasn’t, somehow just trying to belong, which is why she did what she did. And, when they found out she was quite traumatized over it all, they thought it was hilarious, and that’s one of the reasons they were going for pizza that day.”
“So they saw the latest accident, or they didn’t?”
“No. Candy said they saw the cyclist but just like a casual glance and didn’t realize what had happened, until they turned around, and she was on the ground in front of the vehicle.”
“Did they say anything about hearing a scream or a thud?”
She paused, looked at him. “I don’t think she mentioned anything like that. Those would be things you’d think would be automatic, right? I mean, if you get hit, there’ll be a scream of pain, the sound of a crunched bike, so there should be noise. At least the sound of people hitting their brakes.”
“Yet the driver said he was already basically stopped, so there wasn’t any squealing ofhisbrakes.” Rodney turned off Valiant Street and headed up East 1st Ave.
“You always like going this way, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I just like the road better. You can move along at a decent clip here.”
She shrugged. “We’ll get there soon enough.” She closed her eyes.
“Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Hell no.” She yawned. “But don’t go bugging me about it because, if you’re not bugging me to get laid, you’re bugging me to get some sleep.”
“You could try both.”
“If we didn’t have all these midnight calls”—she glared at him—“I would.”
He nodded. “Got it.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I slept for a bit.”