She walked to her vehicle and then drove on to the station. She needed to shake off this funky mood, but just something bothered her about the last case and the final paperwork she’d had to hand in. The court cases would go on forever, since they had unearthed so many perverts who were involved in the pedophile ring. That was the good thing. It was a good thing, yet, at the same time, it was difficult because none of the bodies had been that of Kate’s long-missing brother. And even though Simon St. Laurant, a reluctant psychic, whose abilities had just blossomed in this thirty-seven-year-old developer and philanthropist, had mentioned the nameTimothyfrom his visions, it had been a different child.
There had never been any other mention of her brother Timmy, who had gone missing so many years ago from the schoolyard. He’d been supposedly under her care—though she herself was only seven at the time. Still, her mother had blamed Kate for the rest of her life, and it was just one of those things that Kate didn’t shake off easily. Having this last case involve a child with the same name had opened old wounds. She could ask Simon if he had any information on her brother, but could she accept whatever he might say? She struggled to understand and to believe the little he’d offered on the case as it was.
As she walked into the station and headed to her desk, Andy was already there, and he looked up in surprise.
“Wow, you’re early.”
“So are you,” she said, noting his usual overly coiffed hair and well-dressed self did not seem so pristine today. Was that mustard—or egg—on his tie? “Shouldn’t you be dragging your ass in here late, after a wild date?” As far as she knew, he hadn’t changed his ways, still in the hump-and-dump stage of adjusting to divorce—where his wife chose his best friend instead.
He shrugged. “Bad night.”
“Ditto,” she said.
He looked over at her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s just finishing up all that paperwork on the pedophiles, and… you know.” She shrugged.
“I’m sorry that you never found your missing kid brother in all of this.”
“Me too,” she said. “One day.”
“That’s got to be tough. All you can do is keep looking.”
“Of course,” she said, “but it does give me a certain empathy for the families in similar cases. I know what it’s like to not have answers. I know what it’s like to be looking for that closure that never comes.”
“Still not a healthy way to go through life, always looking for a ghost.”
Well, that was a conversation stopper if there ever was one. He turned back to his work; she got up, grabbed a coffee cup, surprised to see a mostly full pot sitting there, just waiting to be consumed. Deciding that maybe she should be nice, she grabbed another cup and brought Andy one at the same time.
He looked at her, surprised, a smile breaking across his face. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said. She sat down at her desk. “How many open cases do we even have right now?”
“Six, I think,” he said.
She nodded. “Hopefully most of those will go by the wayside pretty quickly.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said.
She looked over at him, seeing the fatigue ravaging his face. “How are you doing?”
He looked up, saw that she meant it, then shrugged and said, “Well, I’m working on getting time with my kids now,” he said. “I’m starting to find a pathway forward. It’s tough though.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t imagine.”
“Yeah, I had no idea, but suddenly it becomes your reality, and it doesn’t matter if you’re prepared or not because it’s up to you to start dealing with it. And I am the parentsupposedly.”
She nodded slowly and said, “As long as you are dealing with it, you’re moving forward—toward something better.”
He nodded with a smile. “The kids miss me,” he said, “and I miss them, so it was really nice to see them this last weekend.”
“Did you have them for the whole weekend?”
He laughed. “Yeah, we spent a lot of time at Stanley Park area. Second Beach has always been one of their favorite places to go.”
“Good,” she said in delight. “That’s a great place for kids.”
He nodded. “It was nice. Like I said, it’s progress.”