Kate walked over to where Dr. Smidge was crouched in front of the victim. He looked up at her. “You need to get on this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because this is the second one.” He pulled back the victim’s hair, so Kate could see the hole behind the ear.
“Good God,” she whispered. She couldn’t see the victim’s face. “Give me a look at the face, will you, Doc?”
Quickly he brushed the victim’s hair to the other side, so Kate could see, and she stared in shock.
“I gather from your expression that you know her?”
She nodded. “We were in Candy’s apartment last night with Paula’s body,” she said in a low tone. “This is Candy.”
He stared at her, then at the victim. “I’m thinking your cases just collided.”
She grimly focused on the scene before her eyes. She turned, looked over at her partner. “We need to get that whole group back in. That’s two of their numbers gone. Both of the females. That leaves the four males.”
He pulled out his phone. “I’ll start setting it up. You want to talk to them individually?”
“I do, but I want them all down at the station.”
He nodded. “We’ll be a while, checking into everybody here.”
“That’s all right. I’m sure we can get some help, maybe from the local beat cops. We need to get statements from everybody. We need to know what the hell happened and how this happened twice without anybody seeing anything.”
“Oh, somebody saw something,” the coroner said. “You can be sure of that. But getting them to talk now? That’s a whole different story.”
She hated to admit it, but he was probably right. Still, she’d do the job and work the case, and, at the end of the day, she’d catch this asshole one way or another. She didn’t know what the hell was going on or what the motive was, but when two cases combined into one, things could get very interesting.
*
At the endof the day Simon felt a whole lot better, at least he hoped so. Some weird images were knocking on his brain, but he found a way to successfully put out the door knocker that read Nobody Home.
He wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but he had to control where and when. Now that he was home, a glass of wine in his hand, lying on the couch in front of the big bay windows that overlooked the beauty of Vancouver, he opened up that same internal door. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
At that time nothing was there, and he took another sip of his wine and just relaxed, thinking that maybe it had been all for naught. Maybe that wholesink into it and allow it to happenthing was bullshit. Just as he considered that, a floodgate of images—or maybe not images but blacks and grays, like shadows, passed through his head. All accompanied by his damn magnified smell again. This time though, the wine aroma was amplified. He bolted upright on his couch, almost spilling it. But he sniffed the aroma and breathed the bouquet that slammed into his senses, once again on overload.
He slowly leaned back into his couch again. “What the hell is going on?”
And he noted more images, more of everything really, and all at the same time. Including good smells and bad smells. He cried out, “What does this mean? What is it you want? I don’t understand how to interpret this.”
Then he heard tears and that weird noise in the background, that almost worrying sound again. The sound that had driven him crazy earlier. Here it was once again, driving through the back of his brain. He groaned. “That I don’t need,” he muttered. But apparently nobody was listening to him.
As he sunk down into his couch again, all he could do was witness everything flooding through his mind, which circled back around and dashed in again for a second viewing. Yet nothing, absolutely nothing, made any sense. Through it all, he heard this sad weeping, and that crying was amplified so much more inside his head that he felt sick with the sadness of it. He shook his head, wondering who it was and what made her so distraught.
“Can I help you somehow?” he whispered ever-so-softly.
What came back nearly broke his heart.
“No.”
Chapter 13
Later that dayKate walked into an interview room, a grim smile on her face. Brandon was here with his lawyer. Rodney sat beside her and turned on the recorder. The two of them introduced themselves. Rodney added, “Interview with Brandon Frost and his lawyer in Interview A.” Rodney stated the date and time.
The kid crossed his arms, then leaned back and crossed his legs, a smirk on his face.
“Tell us the last time you saw Paula Mallow.” Kate stared at him.