“That’ll be really hard on her,” she murmured. “Hopefully she has some support.”
“Well, I’ll be there. I’ve known them both for fifteen odd years,” he said quietly, “so she won’t be alone right now.”
“Just be aware that her survivor guilt could take her down a path where you don’t want her to go.”
“Ouch,” he said. “All the more reason to stay in touch.” And, with that, he hung up.
Chapter 5
Kate’s Friday Morning
Frustrated at havingcome to a dead end on the hunt for the drive-by shooter, already dealing with a murder-suicide on her case list and what looked like another child killing, Kate sat down with a heavy sigh and picked up her extralarge cup of coffee and took a sip.
Rodney sat down at his desk in front of her. “How are you holding up?”
“Sometimes this job sucks,” she said, “but I’m holding.”
“Yep, it does,” he said. “The successes, although there are many, sometimes feel like they’re few and far between.”
She nodded. “Just when it seems like you’re getting somewhere, everything stops. You think that people are cooperating, and the next day nobody has anything to say. You go through twenty, thirty, even forty interviews with people, and nobody saw anything.”
“And you’re always looking for the one person who saw something, even if they didn’t know it was important,” he said.
She stared at the stack of files in front of her. “We have a lot of cases right now,” she said, “and those are just the current ones from this week.”
He laughed. “And then there are the current ones from last week. And unfortunately there will be current ones for next week as well.”
She nodded. “I guess that’s why it’s bugging me. They just keep stacking up.”
“Don’t let it get to you too much,” he said.
She looked at him and said, “You’ve been here in the unit for what, ten years of this?”
He nodded. “Ten years in homicide.”
“How do you handle it?”
“One day at a time,” he said cheerfully. “You understand there are wins, and there are losses. You had a big win right out of the gate,” he said, “and now we’re in an ugly spot, where it just seems like the cases are piling up, and we’re getting nowhere.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose, giving herself a mental headshake. “I guess that’s a good way to look at it,” she said and then stifled a yawn.
“You’ve got to make sure you get rest in between everything else,” he warned her.
“And how do you do that, when the faces of the dead wake you up in the night?”
“You say, ‘Thank you for reminding me of your existence. Now please let me sleep, so I can better fight for your cause tomorrow.’”
She stared at him in surprise. “Wow. That is good advice.”
He laughed. “I’m not just a pretty face around here,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
She laughed at that.
“Have you gotten any more weird emails?”
“No,” she said, “thank God. I have enough things to deal with without some weirdo.”
“I get you there.”