A text came through next.He is missing. You can help.
Simon didn’t answer. Just stared at the message.
You know you can. Please.
He got up and, carrying his wine with him, walked into the bedroom, put the glass down, and stripped down, heading for a hot shower. As he stood under the hot steaming spray, he let it slosh over his body and directly onto his face. The hot beating water pounding his skin. But the pounding in his psyche wouldn’t stop.
Absolutely nothing would stop this, would it?
He desperately wanted all these people to go away. To have some control, hoping he could get it to slide back into oblivion. But it was too late. Something inside had broken free and had opened up, and there was no going back.
He didn’t like people. Didn’t trust anyone. Especially himself and whatever this weird ability of his was. It had been wrong before. At a time when he’d needed it. No way he could depend on it now.
Especially not if children’s lives were at stake…
Chapter 7
Wednesday Evening, Late
Kate stared atthe phone, wondering if she should try calling Simon St. Laurant again. He was avoiding her, and that pissed her off. She hoped he went to bed tonight and woke up covered in sweat from the nightmares. Mean of her maybe, but she needed answers, and she didn’t know whether he was responsible in some way or not. However, if he had anything more to offer, she wanted it.
Working with a charlatan went against everything she believed in, but, to get justice for these kids, she’d deal with him. Since she didn’t believe in psychics, the only other answer in her mind was that he was part of this. And, if he was, she would make damn sure he paid for it.
She covered one wall of her apartment with big sheets of butcher paper and then posted pictures of the children, the victims, along with her notes and timelines. It just made no sense. Huge gaps were in between, like several years even, and she didn’t know whether that meant that she was missing more victims or the victims had been kept longer back then or something else had interfered with the perv’s murderous activities. Was it random, or was there a pattern to this? The unknowns were really driving her crazy, but then they were what drove her to find the answers. It’s what made her a good detective, while driving everybody around her nuts.
Her personal methodology was more like that of a lone ranger than a team operative. When she’d had her detective interview, they had asked her about that. She told them that she could work with a team, but she was more effective on her own. It had been made clear to her that she needed to include everybody on the team. All she could say was, she was working on it.
She stood back and studied the nine cases on the wall, Jason’s and the other eight that were similar. She knew in her heart of hearts that there were more. Possibly a lot more. The only thing she had to go on was that weird mark on the wrist, and it was really faded on some—to the point of nothing visible at all—yet always a piece of clothing that didn’t belong to the victim was with the bodies.
It made no sense, but then serial killers didn’t ever make sense. Not to her. That didn’t mean it wasn’t still important to figure out why these people did what they did. If anything, it was even more important because somebody had to stop them. To do that, she needed to understand these killers.
It was late. She didn’t want to go to bed, yet she was tired, but these kids—her gaze flitted to the wall and away—they were eating into her psyche. She was starting to dream about them. Nightmares really. That brought St. Laurant back to mind. She shoved her hands into her pockets. If Simon were involved, she hoped his actions choked him to death.
But, in the meantime, she would do everything she could to stick close to him. Tomorrow was her day off, and she planned to see what he was up to. And that meant she had to get to bed. As she checked her watch, she groaned. It was already two in the morning. How had it gotten to be that late?
*
Thursday Morning
When her alarmrang at seven the next morning, she groaned, rolled herself out of bed, and stumbled into the shower. She made herself a pot of strongbite her in the asscoffee, poured it into a thermos, and headed out the door. She was in front of Simon’s False Creek North penthouse apartment building by 7:30 a.m. According to the doorman, he usually went for a walk in the mornings. Some days he was gone all day; some days he left again in the afternoon. She didn’t know what the hell he was up to, but something was going on because she’d done a full rundown on him and hadn’t come up with much. He owned a company, Novel Investment, which said nothing. He was just too damn clean for her liking.
Not even a parking ticket was on his record. Neither was a marriage or a child. She also hadn’t run down any family. Foster care, yes, but no sealed juvie records either. It was damn suspicious. Nobody was perfect, especially not a guy as smooth and as silky as this one. She walked past the entrance to his apartment and over to the pretzel seller across the street. She bought one hot off the cart.
Then she sat down on a nearby bench and ate while she waited, enjoying the beautiful scenery of the harbor. At ten to eight St. Laurant came out, dressed in a suit, looking just a little too dapper for her. She’d only gotten five hours of sleep, and who knows what the hell he had had. By the looks of him, it was way more than her, and, for that, she hated him already. She got up, tossed her pretzel wrapper into the garbage, and followed him, staying a block behind.
When she crossed the street to the next block, a man behind her asked, “Detective, what are you doing here so early? Are you looking for me?”
She knew she was made. She glanced at him, took a sip of her coffee. “What the hell?” she said sarcastically. “Everything isn’t about you, by the way.” She’d always learned it was much better to be offensive than defensive. It seemed to work this time too. He frowned and looked around. “We do have crime in the city,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said. “So what brings you out so early?”
“I have to meet someone,” she said. “What are you doing out here this morning? Why aren’t you lying on your silk sheets?”
“They’re actually linen,” he said. “Much nicer on the skin.”
She gave an irritable shrug. “Whatever.”
“I’m guessing you sleep on cheap polyester,” he said, with a sneer. “And don’t even know the difference between linen, polyester, silk, or cotton.”