He had said one thing that was right. They had the truck. If he hadn’t dumped it where he had, it wouldn’t have been picked up, flagged as stolen, and hauled into impound. Still it had been stolen two times now, and it should have a plethora of DNA for them to harvest. So, all in all, still a damn good day.
*
Simon’s Monday Morning
Sitting over hismorning coffee and hoping that Kate’s morning was going as well as it could, Simon opened up his laptop and started in on his business dealings. Two minutes in, a headache slammed into his brain. He gasped at the force of it, the pain almost crushing. He grabbed his abdomen, as he bent over. He tried hard to force back whatever this shit was that was trying to push him into a nightmare. Then, once again, he was staring down at feet, the same damn feet. He shook his head.
“No, no, no, no, not again,” he cried out. But the feet were walking. He looked around, trying hard to separate from the vision, but instead he got sucked in deeper and deeper. Once again, he was a visitor in her eyes. He saw a road ahead, dark. Why was it dark?Ah, wearing sunglasses. She wiped her eyes, and they were wet.Shit, he muttered to himself. He tried to turn her around, tried to get her to go back. But he had nothing there to grab on to. He wanted some way to identify her or something, but he couldn’t even see into her mind; all he could do was see out of her eyes. Helpless.
He knew the city well, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t place that street. And, even if he could, he couldn’t possibly get there in time. He stared out, looking for any clue, but he could only see more when she turned her head, and right now it was basically locked on the sidewalk a couple feet in front of her. And the shoes were just white sneakers, ordinary. And again, nothing to say it was a woman. It’s not like she was looking down on her body to determine whether she had breasts or not.
Still he knew she was female.
Frustrated and angry, he tried to tear himself free and failed, but, if he couldn’t free himself, could he at least slam himself further into the vision so he could get more information? And, just like that, as if being sucked out of a long tunnel, he snapped out of the vision, until he was sitting here at his kitchen table, shaking and staring around his own penthouse suite, almost in a blind panic.
What the hell just happened? And why? And the really big question: how could he stop it from happening again? He sat here, his hands cradling the cup of coffee, his throat parched and dry. Probably because her throat was parched and dry. He lifted the cup and took a sip, wondering if, by easing his throat, it would ease hers. It didn’t make any sense that it would, but, hell, none of this made any sense. He took several more sips, allowing the warm caffeine to hit his bloodstream and to flow into his stomach, as it calmed him down and warmed him up. Because that had been another part of that vision. She was cold, so very cold.
Too bad he couldn’t see her in a mirror or a reflection, a window, anything that would help identify who she was, so he could reach out. Before it was too late. He didn’t want to be connected to a woman when she drowned. God, that would be the worst. He remembered his grandmother had said that she had connected with the driver of a car who had committed suicide by slamming over a cliff edge. Only he had taken his wife and kids with him. The fact that Grandmother couldn’t do anything about it had tormented her for a long time.
That was not an experience he wanted to count among his most memorable moments.
Chapter 14
By the endof the day Kate had several points ticked off her list. The aqua truck was with forensics. Kate had an update on email addresses in the suicide chat rooms. The techs had tracked down two of the suicidal people in those chats, and she would talk to them next. And Andy, who had been playing a person contemplating suicide in the chat rooms, had received several more emails back and forth from the one guy, then received another email from somebody different.
In both cases, the tone had turned from being supportive to being more equitable and playing both sides, like sometimes suicide was a good thing. She shook her head at that, but Andy was pretty excited, feeling like they were getting somewhere, feeling that either one or both of these people would start urging him to do something. The only problem with that was neither of those emails had sent the manipulating photo to David.
The kid who had stolen the truck was in lockup. His dad had left to arrange for bail, but she imagined life at home wouldn’t be quite the same. The reality was that this kid would be facing time for this one. It was a first offense, and she didn’t know if that would make it a little easier on him or not. But they did have the truck used in the drive-by shootings, and they were now in a position to run all kinds of tests on it.
Although that was limited as well. It had been stolen out of a garage from an old couple’s house, and the owner, a male, had since died. His wife, also a senior, was now in a retirement home. The family didn’t want the truck back, which was a good thing because it would be tied up with this case for quite a while. But something else the joyriding kid hadn’t said anything about was the weapon under the front seat, and that would go against him.
And that was a whole different story. They weren’t certain it was the one used in the shooting, questioning the accuracy compared to other weapons, though this could be a backup piece. When the kid had been asked about it, his eyes had grown large, and he’d immediately shaken his head.
“I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t see any weapon. I don’t do guns.”
The father had backed that up and said, “The kid can be trouble but mostly stupid trouble,” he said. “I’ve never known him to have anything to do with weapons.”
And that was fine and dandy, but it didn’t mean that the dad knew everything.
As it was, things were progressing, and Kate was happy with that. The shooter had lost his truck, and now he would be on the hunt for another one. It was too much to hope that he might not get involved in another shooting. Chances were he would take this as another challenge and just carry on. They could hope not, but life didn’t always go their direction.
She walked out of the office and headed to her vehicle, still in a good mood. Buoyed by the day of what seemed like a whole pile of checkmarks and boxes being ticked off her list, she headed to the dojo for a workout. She was tired, but it was a good tired. She was stressed, but it was a good feeling, all tied to a lot of accomplishments in her day.
She walked in, quickly changed, stepped out onto the judo floor, and started one of the hardest workouts she’d been through in days. When she was finally done, she stood there sweating freely but with a big happy grin on her face.
“Now,” her sensei said, with a laugh, “you look like you could take on the world.”
“Some days it feels like I have,” she said. “Today was a good day though.”
“Good,” he said, “you don’t get enough of those.”
“No,” she said, as she nodded in agreement. “Some days there’s just no winning. The world out there is an ugly place, and sometimes,… sometimes that ugliness overshadows everything.”
“But it doesn’t have to,” he reminded her.
As always, his wisdom struck a chord, and, even after she got home, showered, and crashed on her couch, she was still thinking about his words. It didn’t have to overshadow everything, but somehow it always seemed to. She lived, ate, and breathed work. And, even with Simon, their relationship, which wasn’t a whole lot, was based on his involvement in her cases.
If he hadn’t done that, if they didn’t share any of that common ground in their worlds, would they still be friends? Or more? She didn’t know. She didn’t have much in the way offriends-friends. She had a couple, although she hadn’t seen Becky in a long time. Nor Afton. Then her phone pinged. She frowned at that. It was almost as if somehow—psychically—somebody knew and texted her.