“Just makes me wonder how recent his fall from grace was,” she said, as she straightened up. “Check the back of the coat collar for a brand name. Some places in town still customize and even tailor jackets,” she said, “and that’s very high quality, that one.”
“It is,” the coroner said, and he tugged the collar to the side. “It says,Custom Made for James.”
“Too bad his name isn’t James.”
“Anything in his pockets?”
They checked the coat pockets, pulled out a few more bits of change, and that was it.
She sighed. Nothing useful. She watched Smidge check the body over. She stopped and leaned closer. “What’s on his wrist?” Holding her phone’s flashlight over the dead guy’s wrist, highlighting the shadows, she could barely see. “Please don’t tell me that’s the same mark.”
He looked closer, then at her, back at the mark, and said, “Damn it. You know something? I think you’re right.”
“What mark?” Rodney asked, blustering forward.
She held the wrist in such a way that he saw. “This mark,” she said. “It’s been on every one of those child victims.”
*
Saturday Late Afternoon…
Simon walked intothe casino, more unsettled than he wanted to acknowledge. Something was seriously wrong in his world, and he didn’t know what had happened. He’d been a different person these last few days, and he didn’t know who or what to blame. But he wanted a target, so he could beat it into little pieces.
His grandmother’s voice slipped into his mind.Once you start down this pathway…
“Screw that,” he snapped.Ne pas y aller. He shrugged away that voice and the other messages, all pounding inside his skull, as he squeezed the yellow ball in his pocket, like some stress ball. He didn’t even know why he felt compelled to phone in that first murder of the hopped-up husband killing his wife with a knife. Except that Simon knew for sure that it was a murder and that the asshole husband could get off scot-free if Simondidn’ttell the cops. But he’d seen other assholes in the past do things that he knew needed to be turned in, so why hadn’t he back then?
Everything was different now, and he didn’t know why. Since when had he grown a conscience? And here he was, tonight, trying to shake it off and to lose himself in what he knew was comfortable and normal for him. As he walked through the carpeted craziness, with games going on around him, a friend of his called out.
“Simon, over here.”
He looked over to find Reggie, sitting at the bar, having a drink. Feeling like that just might be the perfect answer, Simon walked over. “Hey, I haven’t seen you in months. What? Six, seven, or more?”
“Maybe,” Reggie said, with a tilt of his head. “It seems like you’re here, and then you’re gone. I don’t know what the hell you’ve been up to lately, but you are never really here.”
“I’ve been to a few private games,” Simon said, with a shrug. “But, other than that, I’ve been busy.”
“Busy doing what?” Reggie asked, with a smirk. “You don’t work, just like I don’t work.”
“How the hell did we end up getting a lifestyle like that?” Simon asked, as he turned to the bartender and cocked his finger to get a whiskey.
“You hitting the hard stuff right off the bat, huh?” Reggie noted.
“It feels like a whiskey night,” Simon said. In fact, that might be the fastest way to get drunk. And he was up for that. Anything to help him forget the changes in his world.
“Obviously something is wrong,” Reggie said, snickering. “You only hit the whiskey when things are bad.”
“Oh, well now, that’s really nice,” he said, mocking him. “Come on. It’s the drink of choice in the evenings.”
“Yeah, but you are not at home. You are not in your own bed, and you’re sure as hell not tucked up and ready to go to sleep.”
“No,” he said recklessly. “I’m here to play and to play hard.”
“Poker?”
He thought about it, and he didn’t even want that anymore. Typically it was his game; it was how he won. He looked at the craps tables and said, “Maybe I’ll try that tonight.”
Reggie’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow, it must be a really bad time in your life. You’ve always been very adamantly against the craps table.”