“It’s the suicides,” he snapped. “Somebody is trying to pressure them into jumping.”
“Well, that’s what we were thinking, wasn’t it?” she asked curiously.
“Yes, but now it’s a different case.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“NowI know. God, I mean that I was in her head, as he was yelling at her.”
“You saw where she was?” Kate bolted upright.
“Well, I saw the water from the bridge railing through her point of view. I was screaming at her,No, no! Hesitated, lost the connection then, so I don’t know. I don’t know if she jumped or not.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you were there. Maybe you stopped it,” she said, quietly pacing the big bullpen room, knowing that everybody else was listening in. She stepped out into the hallway. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I passed out though. Some kind passerby called an ambulance.”
“Jesus, do you want me to come?”
“No,” he said, disgust in his voice. “I’m just pissed off that it happened.”
“Well, sometimes there’s something out there bigger than us.”
“Is that you saying that?” he said in a mocking voice.
She winced because she heard the disgust in his voice. “Thank you for telling me,” she said quietly. “We’re working on this. We really are.”
“I know,” he said. “If I thought I had anything more to show you, I would.”
“Well, if you do find somebody else in this position, let me know as soon as it happens. Maybe you can convince them to not jump.”
“I don’t know, maybe,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know that this guy is active and is really pissing me off.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” she warned.
“Says you,” he replied. With that, he hung up.
She walked slowly back inside the bullpen and sat down, then grabbed her report and wrote down notes of what he’d said. It was tough. How did they catch somebody who was a phantom voice in Simon’s head, yet an obvious voice in somebody else’s? Was the manipulator using these promptings to make the depressed people crazy, thinking they had to jump, or was that what the pictures of loved ones with bullet holes in their foreheads were for? It didn’t necessarily make sense, unless it was a two-pronged approach, and that stopped her in her tracks. What were the chances that two people were doing this? Jesus, that would be horrible. Surely that couldn’t be. She stopped to look back at the latest suicide reports and then wrote down some musings.
“You okay?” Rodney asked.
“Yeah, just some problems.”
“Anything we can help with?”
“Not yet,” she said in a low voice. “Soon, maybe.”
*
Simon continued hisday, working hard and shutting down the devil voice in his head. As such, Simon went from one of his rehab projects to another, again and again. By the time four o’clock rolled around, he was tired and ever-so-slightly wet from what appeared to be the damp atmosphere around him. The rain was holding off, spitting every once in a while, matching his mood.
That voice saying,Just do it, grew louder and louder. Sometimes it seemed to back off; then other times it seemed to punch in hard and fast. It made no sense.
Simon stood in front of the huge building on Hastings and shook his head, trying to regain his focus. “We’re behind here. What do you think?” Simon asked his project manager, Simon’s tone caustic. “Every day we’re behind costs more money.”
“I get it,” Francis said, “but we’re having trouble getting some of the materials we need. A lot of the plumbing supplies didn’t show up.”
Simon looked at him, his stare flat. “I get it. Not your problem.”