Chapter 3 #2
“No idea,” Rodney said. “Just black trash bags so he couldn’t tell what it was. He figured John had done some spring cleaning and was happy to get it out of the apartment, happy with the way it made him feel.”
“I guess that’s what we all would feel,” she acknowledged, as she wrote down a note on that.
Rodney stared at her and added, “Aren’t you reading too much into that? It could just be … cleaning.”
“What if he cleared out the last belongings of his ex-girlfriend’s?”
Rodney zeroed in on her and nodded. “Yeah, or maybe somebody else.”
She winced and then groaned. “God, Rodney, don’t even say that. I’m still reeling from the last one. Let’s not have another murder in that same apartment.”
“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” he asked. “Maybe this John guy offed somebody, only to turn around and get offed himself.”
Kate sighed. “Let’s stick to facts before we start delving into fiction,” she muttered.
He laughed. “Are you kidding? You guys, you and Simon, you guys live in fiction.”
With Rodney now working on checking up on some phone calls, Kate went through the rest of the text messages, finally found a work-issues message, and had a phone number. She picked up her phone and called it.
She reached the person whom John had been texting, then identified herself and asked him to identify himself and his company. When he hesitated, she asked, “Unless you have a problem with that?”
“No, of course not. I’m Bill Simmons, a coworker of John’s, and we’re an insurance company. What’s going on with John? He hasn’t returned any of my recent texts.”
“When did you last text him?”
“Just a sec.” Bill came back a moment later and replied, “A couple times this morning.”
She confirmed that quickly because John’s records sat in front of her.
“Last night I had a couple questions about work, so I sent him a text then too. Yet I told him it could wait until this morning because, well, it was obviously already afterhours.”
“Did you often text him about work over the weekend?”
“If I had a problem, yes. John’s a mentor to me as well as a coworker,” he acknowledged. “So I try not to bother him after hours, but sometimes I have to.”
“Of course,” she noted. “Same as my job.”
He gave a grunt and asked, “Has something happened to John? That would be pretty rough if it did.”
“Pretty rough in what way?”
He explained, “No matter how I say it, it’ll sound wrong, but we had a couple big jobs due this morning, proposals for an underwriter, and John was supposed to get the work done, and he hasn’t sent it yet.”
“All I can tell you at the moment is that he won’t be sending anything.”
“Is he hurt?” he asked. “Oh no. Did you say you were with the homicide division?”
“I am, yes.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. Please don’t tell me something happened to John,” he cried out in almost a frantic tone. “He’s my coworker, but also my friend,” he shared. “We go to the gym all the time and hang out. Please, … I need to know.”
She sighed. “He was murdered. We don’t necessarily have a specific time of death yet, but somewhere between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. yesterday,” she noted.
“Oh my God, oh my God.”
Obviously she had completely rattled him. “So, when did you last speak with him?”
“Is this because of work? Oh, work, Jesus, my God, work.”
“What about the work that was due to you? Did he email it to you?”
“I don’t know,” Bill wailed, still frantic.
Kate heard him clicking away on a keyboard.
Then he groaned and whispered, “Thank God, yes, the work is here, but I don’t know how complete it is.
Normally he does about 80 percent of it, and then together we figure out how to get that nicely locked in,” he shared.
“But, yeah, I’ve got the work. And I’m not an asshole.
” He kept ranting on and on. “I’m not just thinking about the work here.
I know it sounds that way, but it’s pretty devastating for us, if we lose this work, on top of losing him. ”
“Were there any issues with him at work?”
“No, not with those of us who worked with him. John was a good employee. The higher-ups weren’t terribly impressed about his persistence to keep working from home, but it was part of his contract.
The rest of us on staff all wanted him back in the office because it’s so much easier to deal with people face-to-face,” he explained. “Yet he didn’t want to do that.”
“Why was that?”
“Who knows? He was fighting his bosses on it,” Bill stated, “but he wouldn’t lose his job over this. From what he told me, he wasn’t ready to come back to the office. Yet he never really gave a reason why.”
“And did he have any other people he worked with consistently?”
“Sure, a whole team of us work with John. Oh, God, I’ll have to notify them.”
“Are they all in the office right now?”
“Yes. It may be a Saturday, but it’s still a workday for us. We’re all here. Only John worked from home.”
“Interesting,” she noted.
Bill jumped on that. “Interesting why? … What’s interesting about it? God, I still can’t believe it.”
“I don’t want you to say anything to anybody,” she began and was met with only silence on the other end. “Do you hear me?”
More silence came.
She repeated again that she didn’t want anyone told.
“But I’ve already got people here, waiting for me to get off the phone so I can fill them in on the details.”
“Well then, you don’t fill in any details, and you just say that the police are on their way. Do you hear me?” she asked. “I will be there soon.” She glanced at her watch and added, “In about ten minutes, depending on traffic.”
“I didn’t even give you an address.”
She quickly ran off the name of the company.
“Yes, yes, that’s us.”
And she gave the address that she’d already looked up.
“Yes, that’s our office. … God, okay.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she told him. “And I’m being very direct here. Do not tell anybody. You leave that to me.” And, with that, she ended the call, hopped to her feet, and snatched up her keys. “I’m going up to John’s office to talk to them.”
“Something suspicious?” Rodney asked, turning to her as he put down his phone.
“Not so much suspicious but apparently this coworker was also one of his best friends, and I need to check in on a few things there. You coming?”
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Rodney confirmed, standing up. “Are you driving?”
“Yeah, unless you want to.”
“Oh, I’m tempted, but it’s all yours.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Why?”
He noted, “I just figured you’re not paying for your gas either.”
“We get per diem for it, remember?” she replied.
“Yeah, I know, but you’re probably not paying for your own gas. I bet Simon’s filling up your tank all the time.”
She glanced at him and rolled her eyes. “You’ve got a real money thing going on right now. What’s up with that?”
“No,” he argued, “that’s the problem. I have no money going on, and I’m feeling more than broke at the moment. So tagging along with you and not burning my own gas seems to be a nice option.”
She snorted. “What are you spending it on?” When he flushed, she asked, “Dates, by any chance?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t want to delve into that and didn’t really want to keep hassling him either. It wasn’t any of her business to begin with. Too bad her team didn’t butt out of Kate’s personal life. God knows they all had more than enough to say about her relationship with Simon.
As they made their way to the insurance company, she quickly pulled into the back parking lot and grabbed a spot. While walking around to the front of the building, she said, “Let me do the talking on this one.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. Any reason why?”
“Yeah, I’ve already got this Bill guy off kilter, and I gave him very specific instructions to not let anybody know. So, if he’s broken that rule, I want to know why.”
“It could just be that he’s very rattled to hear his friend and coworker was murdered, and he’s not used to talking to the police. Plus, if you were on his case, he might be scared.”
“Yeah, and why would he be scared?” she asked, shooting Rodney a glance. “Unless he knew more or heard more or did more than he’s letting on to me.”
Rodney didn’t have an answer for that.
As soon as she walked into the office, she noted all the crying and the silent stares. So Bill hadn’t followed through with her instructions. She immediately asked to speak with Bill Simmons.
Bill came out of one of the offices. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. He took one look at her and started blubbering. “I couldn’t not tell them,” he cried out. “I couldn’t not.”
“Right,” she snapped. “So, you disobeyed a direct order.”
He blinked at her, glanced around at the rest of the staff, and muttered, “It’s not as if it was an order-order.”
Kate raised her voice to address Bill. “It was very clearly an order that I repeated four times to you. You have absolutely no room for any miscommunication here. So, please explain yourself right now.”
He started to blubber again.
A man came out of another office, glancing at her, and said, “Surely it isn’t necessary to yell at him over this.”
“I gave him an explicit order to not tell anybody here about what happened. And apparently he completely ignored my order.”
The boss blushed. “Cut him some slack, please. He was good friends with John,” he pointed out.
“Obviously he’s overwrought, yes. But is he overwrought for a reason?
” she asked, glaring at Bill. And the hapless kid blubbered more and more.
He was supposedly about the same age as John, only with a baby face.
His age was hard to pinpoint, and she did really want to know why he had completely ignored her instructions.
She turned and looked at the man in charge. “Is this your company?”
“Yes, it is. We’re associated with the parent company. So, I own this portion of it,” he replied. “It’s a franchise of sorts.”