“And he’s on my list. But he hasn’t had anything to do with anybody in a long time.”
“Right, so you have to find him first in order to even question him.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“What about kids?”
“There were a couple, a son and a daughter, and the extended family, her sister, has them.”
“Hang on a minute. You mean, he walked away from his children too?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He frowned. “In that case, it doesn’t play out the way I thought.”
“That’s what I mean. None of these theories are necessarily looking solid.”
“What about any of the other victims’ families?”
“There was one son from another family and two daughters from yet another victim’s family. The rest had no children.”
“Well, that’s good. It’s one thing to recover from a loss. It’s another thing to recover from a loss when you still have children to raise.”
“And, in many cases, in several of these, the spouses went on to remarry and have somewhat normal lives.”
“Which is the healthy thing to do because focusing on what you’ve lost will never get you that same scenario back again.”
“No, and it just gives you something to dwell on instead of picking up from the loss and moving on,” she said quietly.
He looked at her and winced. “Hey, I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“They are always there, but I do understand loss in a way that a lot of people don’t. So I empathize with some of these people. I certainly empathize with the father who turned and walked away because of what happened, but to leave the kids behind? No way.”
“Yet, at the same time you can’t judge him because you really don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. And that’s another problem.”
He nodded. “I get it.”
At that, her phone rang. She looked at it, frowned. “I’ll have to take this.”
“You’ve got two minutes,” Simon said on a note of warning. “After that, I’ll be pissed if you aren’t here ready to eat a hot meal.”
She nodded and answered her phone. “Detective Morgan speaking.” She listened to the voice on the other end.
“Hey, I’m not sure why you were calling me, but I presume it has to do with my wife’s accident because I haven’t had a reason to be involved with the police otherwise,” said a man with a gruff voice on the phone.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Jack, Jack Wellington. My wife died in a cycling accident at the university years ago.”
“Ah, I’m sorry about your loss.”
“Me too,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “It was probably the roughest time in my life. But the kids and I, well, we got through it.”
She nodded. “And what are you doing now?”
“I’m living in Saskatchewan. My son’s at the university, and I’m dating a pretty professor.”