Chapter 6 #2
“Ooh, ouch,” he muttered. “Sorry. I can try and stay out of your cases for a while.”
“Sure, that’s great,” she muttered. “Now if all the woo-woo elements going on in your space would also give us that consideration, it would be great.” She took a deep breath.
“In the meantime, you and I both know that, for whatever reason, you seem to have a susceptibility, shall we say, to things connected to my cases—even though I would just as soon you had nothing to do with them.”
“That kind of a day, huh?”
“It shouldn’t be,” she stated, “except that other case I mentioned earlier can’t be ruled out.”
He went silent, then asked, “How is that even a thing?”
“I don’t know,” she grumbled. “I’m still working on that. I’m a little concerned.”
“A little?” he repeated. “Concerned that there could be a lot more?”
“A lot? No,” she declared, “but I am concerned that there could be a couple more. We have three deaths over two Christmases, but what about the Christmas in between?”
Simon whistled, coming through loud and clear to her.
She sat down, slumping onto the edge of the nearby desk, the same spot Colby had recently vacated. “Yeah, that’s where I’m at.”
“Not the easiest place to be,” he agreed. “I’m sorry, Kate.”
“As long as it’s a good day on your end, I’ll take that as a win.”
“I’ve barely even started,” he noted, “so I have no idea. I will soon see what problems I’ve got for the day.”
“But if they haven’t called you already, maybe that’s a good sign.” She left it at that, feeling mildly better after the call. Simon always seemed to understand where she was coming from, and that helped. It always made her feel small to even think she wouldn’t want his help on something like this.
On the flip side, it just made her angry to think that other people would consider his help better than doing good, solid police work.
It’s not that woo-woo was better, but it was obviously difficult for everybody if she had access to some source of information that allowed her to do her job better than everybody else.
All too frequently it appeared that, after laboring with limited results, Simon would suddenly pop in with something bizarre, yet clearly connected.
Then everybody would jump on it, making her feel as if, had she only done something earlier, they could have gotten further along and much sooner.
It was a no-win situation in her case, and it was very frustrating.
As she finished off the three cases on her whiteboard and headed back to her desk, she sat down and quickly went through the files that Rodney had left, wondering where she was supposed to go from here.
Smidge, she thought. She should visit the coroner and find out if he had any ideas about what was going on.
If he was the coroner on all three of these cases, it would help.
She checked the jurisdictions, then found out he wasn’t the coroner on the case that had just come in today.
Still, with the details of that branch, she pulled the autopsy reports on the previous case and headed down to see him.
When she walked into the morgue, nobody was there, which meant everybody was most likely out in the main surgical area, working on the tables.
She donned the blue scrubs, pushed open the big door, only to have somebody yell at her to gown up. “I already did,” she replied, immediately annoyed.
Of course Smidge had yelled at her. When he saw it was her, his shoulders slumped, and he announced, “If you’re looking for answers, I don’t have them yet.”
“I know,” she replied, “and I’m not trying to add more work to your plate.”
At that, he turned to glare at her. “But …”
“But … we may have found two other victims, potentially connected to this case.” His eyes widened in shock, and a bank of fury lit his expression and filled his gaze. He reached out a hand.
She handed him a copy of the Kurt Conner file from a couple years ago.
“The other one just happened this morning, but it’s not in your jurisdiction.
I literally walked into their business offices to question them about the death of another employee within the same company but a different location from two years ago.
This one,” she noted, tapping the papers she had shared with Smidge, “and now somebody else had been murdered overnight. They are over in the Coquitlam jurisdiction. I can get you a case number, and I would appreciate it if you would look at all three reports.”
He stared at her. “I don’t understand why.”
“I don’t either. I also don’t understand the how. So, this third one will have its own issues.”
He snorted. “They all have their issues,” he declared. “And the other one?”
“This third one was two years ago, around this time of year, … so it happened around Christmastime. He was wrapped up … in tinsel and whatnot that time.”
His eyes widened, and he stared at her.
Kate continued. “Also the three dead men were all in the insurance industry.”
Smidge didn’t say anything, just stared at her.
She sighed. “I know. We’re already dealing with the suggestions about somebody’s claim being denied or something along that line.”
“What do you know so far?”
“All three men were lotharios. All three played the field and had very active female traffic in and out of their lives, and we don’t know if that is connected.”
“Yet how can it not be connected in some way?” he muttered, as he looked at the file in his hand.
“They’re all dead. I don’t have time to go through this right now,” he shared, tossing the Kurt Conner file on a ledge behind him and returning to the corpse on the table. “However, I’ll take a look later.”
“That’s all I can ask,” she said.
“Why is it always you?”
She turned and frowned. “Why is what always me?”
“Why is it always you who comes in here?”
“Nobody else will. They’re scared of you,” she stated cheerfully.
He frowned at her, and then an evil grin overlaid his expression with delight. “Perfect, that’s just the way I like it. … How come you’re not? Afraid of me, I mean.”
She looked at him and shrugged. “Because my bark’s as bad as yours, I guess,” she suggested. “I recognize another sheep in wolf’s clothing.”
His eyes widened in horror, and then he started to laugh and laugh. “Oh my God,” he muttered, still in fits. “If anybody else ever told me that …” And he left it at that.
“I know,” she agreed, with a grin. “I would feel exactly the same way.”
He nodded. “Besides, it’s just as well that they don’t come in here,” he noted. “They’re disruptive, and I don’t like that.”
“Nope, neither do I. None of us want our work … interrupted,” she shared.
“So, I’m here just for a short time, to see if you’ve got any updates, and to hand you that third file in the hopes that you’ll take a look at all three of the reports, when you get them on your desk. Then I’ll expect to hear from you.”
“It won’t be today, you know?”
“No, of course, it won’t be,” she muttered, with a sigh.
“Unfortunately, it is what it is. I can contact the morgue on the newest one and see who’s handling it and tell them that we might have something similar, which would be pretty damn ugly all around.
However, I’m not sure what else to do,” he admitted, as he stared down at the body on his table.
“A very healthy, physically fit male in his prime and yet look at him. Cut down for what?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s that for what part that we’re still working on, hoping we can figure it out soon.”
He nodded. “You got your work cut out for you on this one.”
“Don’t I always. It’s not as if we have any immediate insights. It always ends up a whole lot different than what we think it’ll be.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then pivoted, taking a long moment before he spoke. “This one feels …”
She nodded with a sad smile. “I know. The minute I start to say feels in the office, you can bet everybody started in on me about picking up psychic flashes or something. I fucking hate that.”
He started to laugh, but just enough horror filled her expression that Smidge grew serious. “I don’t envy you there. I can’t imagine having all my good work tossed away as being something that some psychic told me.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she piped up. “It’s definitely a challenge for me too. It just totally pisses me off.”
He nodded, then, as she walked away, he called out, “Has Simon connected with you? Has he mentioned anything about this one?”
“We’re not sure,” she replied, turning back to him. “He’s connected to something in a vision, but we’re not sure it’s criminal, so there is that.”
“I never even thought about that.” Smidge gave her a head tilt. “He connects to a lot of things that have nothing to do with crimes.”
“He does, and that’s a lot of it, but now?”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Unfortunately, since he’s met me, the bulk of what he connects to are crimes,” she shared. “I mean, even when buying real estate, right?”
“Tell me about it,” Smidge muttered. “I’m still dealing with those bodies.”
“You got no help?”
“We did bring in an anthropologist, and that has helped somewhat. It’s fascinating to see the deterioration of the bones in that dry and dusty setting. The bodies were almost falling to pieces.”
“I’m glad it’s interesting for you,” she noted, with a calm smile. “Can’t say I share that enthusiasm. Makes my job a hell of a lot more difficult.”
“You’re not on that case anymore, are you?”
“We know who did it, and we know why,” she confirmed. “So, in that sense, no, but, once you’re into something like that, it’s not something you can exactly walk away from. Where are you at with it?”