“I hear you,” she said. “I’ll get there.” She looked over at him. “What are you working on?”
“The victims,” he said. “While you were working on that, I figured I’d drill down on the victims to see if any connection was there.”
“That’s a good idea. It seems so strange to think that, if you had this need to kill somebody, you would go pick a complete stranger off the street.”
“But, if you think about it,” Lilliana said, from her desk behind them, “it’s the easiest way to not get caught. If there’s no connection, there’s nothing for us to find.”
Kate frowned at that but nodded. When her computer chimed to say an email had come in, she popped it open and sat back with a low whistle.
“What’s up?” Andy asked, as he walked into the bullpen area, starting his day late, probably from all the time he spent on his hair. Or maybe it was a kid-related thing. “That was an interesting whistle.”
She looked up at him but was a little disconnected over what she’d seen. “Remember that email I got yesterday?” she asked, and the others looked at her.
“The one with the picture of you at the bridge?” Andy guessed.
“Yeah,” she said, with a nod. “I’m not sure what the hell is going on, but I just got another email.”
“What does this one say?” Lilliana asked, getting up and walking over to take a look. She too whistled when she saw it. “Well, that’s a strange thing to put in the subject line.”
It saidMaybe notand attached a picture of a bridge and another pair of shoes.
“You’re not in this one,” Rodney murmured, joining them around Kate’s desk.
“No,” she said, “I’m not. I don’t know anything about it, like what bridge this is or when this was taken,” she said. But then she looked at it again and said, “Wait. A time stamp’s on the photo. It’s from this morning.”
“Wow, let’s check to see if we had another suicide this morning,” Lilliana said, looking at the date stamp. “Why the hell is he sending this to you?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said, “and what is ‘maybe not’ supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know either,” Lilliana said, “but I don’t like it. Send that around to all of us, so we can each take a good look. Let’s get on the horn and check if anybody’s gotten notice of a suicide. Anybody recognize that bridge?”
“I wondered if it was the Port Mann,” Rodney said. “But not enough of it is in the photo to tell. And the other email didn’t have a message, did it?”
Kate said, “No, it didn’t. At least not that I saw, but we better check.” She brought up the first email and cast it to a big projector on the front wall. “Can anyone see one?”
Rodney got up, walked over, and pointed. “Do you guys see this?”
At the bottom of the first picture, blending into part of the bridge railing, it readFinally.
Immediately Kate cast the second photograph to the big wall screen and asked her team, “Is there anything on this one?”
They all looked, and then Rodney shook his head. “No, but, if he thinks you didn’t see his note on the first one, he put it in the subject line of the second one to be sure you did this time. So it’s ‘finally’ and ‘maybe not,’ right?”
“Maybe notwhat though?” Owen asked, listening in to the whole conversation, and now speaking up.
“I don’t know,” Kate said, as they stared at her. She rubbed her temples. “This doesn’t make any sense.” She double-checked the sender. “This is from the same email address.”
“And, if you send a reply, it’ll go somewhere right into cyberspace,” Andy muttered.
“But that doesn’t mean our cybersecurity team shouldn’t check it out anyway,” Lilliana warned. “And now that you’ve got a second one, you better let Colby know.”
Again Kate nodded. “I really don’t need this right now,” she muttered. “I was happily working along on the drive-by case.”
Just then, Colby walked in, usually the last one on each shift. “Hey, what about that drive-by? Did you catch a break on it?”
“I don’t know if it’s a break as much as another distraction,” Kate said.
“Oh, now there’s an interesting point.” Lilliana spun on her heels and looked at Kate.