by Dale Mayer
“And unfortunately that happens way too often too.” Andy shrugged.
They all nodded at that.
“That’s why we end up with so many cold cases,” Lilliana said. “They’re a nightmare for everybody. We don’t want them. We want all of these families to have closure. We want everybody to get the answers they need to move on and for the dead to be recognized and to be honored at an appropriate time after their death, instead of being held in the morgue, which is very offensive and troubling for families.”
“Right.” Kate sighed. “I’ll talk to these two witnesses because I definitely still have a few questions that need answered, but, other than that, it’s camera footage for me today.”
“Remember,” Colby told her. “You can always ask Reese if she has some free time.”
Kate nodded. “I just automatically think she doesn’t have room for something else on her desk.”
“That’s why she’s here,” Colby replied.
“Will do,” Kate said.
“Good.” Colby nodded.
“And let us know if you get anything to pop and if you need an extra hand or two,” Andy told her.
She looked over at Rodney. “You okay to help go through all those camera feeds?”
“Yeah, we need to.”
She nodded. “Yes, exactly.” After the meeting broke up, she refilled her coffee mug and headed back to her desk. Rodney was already logging in to see the camera footage. “I’ll take half of them,” she said.
He nodded.
And they spent the rest of the morning, right up until the lunch hour, checking out all the cameras in the area of the cyclist’s death, looking for anything that would pinpoint their redheaded victim, but every camera seemed to be angled the wrong way. Finally they did catch sight of the victim, riding her bike forward, but saw nothing untoward. She just plopped over, almost crashing with the car. Instead it seemed as if the young woman on the bike had a haphazard fall in front of the vehicle—a small black car, which they were currently running potential makes and models of to see if anyone could match it.
From this feed, Kate couldn’t confirm that the car had even made contact with the woman on the bike.
But, at the same time, it wasn’t clear enough to get a license plate or an image of the driver, who had most definitely backed up and driven away very quickly. The way the redhead had fallen had also been so slow that Kate wouldn’t have expected the woman to have been hurt by the sheer fall either.
So Kate didn’t really blame the driver for leaving, yet she did blame him for leaving a crime scene, leaving a potentially injured person down on the street. He should have stopped and reached out to see if the woman needed anything. That her accident didn’t appear to be something major didn’t mean that it wasn’t.
She pointed out this section of video to Rodney, and he agreed. “But now we know she’s fallen, as if it’s not a major bike-car crash at all. She just went down, and the driver didn’t stick around to see if she got up again.”
“Finding out she’s dead, if he has by now,” she murmured, “must have come as a shock, and now he probably doesn’t know what to do.”
Just then, Kate got a call from the in-take desk out in the front. “We have a man here saying that he killed your cyclist at the university.”
She stared at the phone in her hand, then turned toward Rodney. She bolted to her feet. “Take him into Interview A, please.”
At that, Rodney hopped up, and the two of them walked over. As they entered the interrogation room, a young man, maybe twenty years old, stood nervously.
“You’ve got something to tell us?” she asked quietly. “Please have a seat.”
He nodded. “I don’t know how it happened. I was so careful.”
“How what happened?” she asked, motioning at the chair. “Sit down, please, and identify yourself.”
“My name is Matt, Matt Powell. And I was just driving toward the university. I know I was distracted. I had a really bad exam, and I was struggling. I went by the pizza place but decided against pizza. I went to the corner store, but I couldn’t find anything to eat, so I ended up just going around the block and coming back up, thinking I would head back to the university. And then boom! This woman was right there. I didn’t even think I’d hit her. Honestly, it just looked like she collapsed sideways. There was no braking. I mean, obviously I braked, but there was no speed. There was no need to brake. There was no—”
He stopped talking, completely overwhelmed, and then he burst into tears. “I heard later that I’d killed her.” He was shaking. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to have anything to do with it.”
Kate sighed, looked over Rodney, and he nodded. “First, the problem is, you took off. You should have waited to make sure that she was okay.”
He looked at her, tears in his eyes. “But she didn’t even look like, … like anything was wrong with her. It looked like she was just falling. I pulled around and left. I didn’t do anything to help her.”
“Did you look back through your rearview mirror?” Kate asked.
“No.” Matt shook his head. “I didn’t even think of it. I just thought she’d had an accident, and then I heard … No, I saw her arm hit the street, and I didn’t think anything of it.” He stopped, looked at her. “I should have though, shouldn’t I?”
Kate nodded. “Yeah, that would have been the right thing to do.”
“But I couldn’t have helped her, could I?”
“Probably not, though I can’t say what condition she was in when you were there at the accident.”
“What do you mean?” He was obviously a little confused.
“How did she appear before you hit her?”
“I didn’t hit her. That’s the thing. I don’t think she touched the car. I think she just fell in front of me, so I pulled around her.”
“You didn’t wonder when she didn’t get back up again?”
“I thought I saw her there, as I went around, but she was on the other side of my car. Vehicles were everywhere, and I was trying to get out of the way. People were behind me.” Running his hands through his hair, he said, “I waited for some people to go by, then I pulled out and left. I didn’t even think she was hurt.” He stopped, shook his head. “My parents will kill me.”
Kate wanted to laugh because that was certainly one of the problems he was facing, but another problem was the fact that he had left the scene of an accident, though he hadn’t killed her. Unless they could prove he’d even hit her. She frowned as she thought about that. “When you saw her, how did she look?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Her head was down, and she was leaning over the handlebars. Honestly, I wondered if she was drunk. So many parties and stuff are going on at the university that it’s not uncommon. She didn’t look all that great.”
“So she was leaning over the handlebars?”
He nodded. “Yes, but she kept on going. I hit the horn, and she jolted and then collapsed. So I went around and took off.” He let out a long breath. “How much trouble am I in?”
She looked at Rodney, who picked up the interrogation from there and explained what happened. Matt looked at him in shock. His voice sounded like a tiny-mouse squeak. “She was shot?”
Rodney nodded.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” He shook his hands. “I didn’t shoot her. I didn’t shoot her. I don’t have a gun. I don’t know anything about guns.”
“No,” Rodney said, “and I’m glad to hear that because that makes things a little bit easier.”
“Not for me it doesn’t. Oh my God, that poor woman.”
There. That’s what Kate had been waiting for, that sense of empathy, that sense of understanding of what had happened to the victim. “Did you recognize her?”
He shook his head. “No, when she jolted, I saw her face, some of it, and, of course, saw the red hoodie. I mean, so many people wear those hoodies, and then you can’t see much. Everybody’s so rushed, so busy, so
stressed right now, that, I mean, I just expected her to be another stressed-out student, like me. We’re all just trying to complete our studies, get a degree, and get ahead in life.”
“And I get that,” she said quietly. “So you have no idea who she is or who did this, but you definitely saw her go down in front of you.”
He went over it again, this time hopping up, explaining where he was and where she was. It jived with what they’d seen from the cameras.
She got his contact information and the other details she needed, then told him that he was free to go.
He asked, “Will I get charged with anything?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll be talking to the prosecutor, and we’ll follow up.”
He nodded slowly. “Honest, it seemed like she just fell over in front of me. I should have stopped. That was an asshole move on my part. I should have stopped and helped her. She might—I will live with that regret forever. I should have stopped.”
Kate nodded. “I get it. So next time, remember that there are more people in the world than just you, and plenty of them have problems too.”
He winced at that. “And she’d been shot. Jesus, what kind of a shitty day did she have?”
“She’s dead, so I rather imagine it was the worst.” He stared at her, his bottom lip trembling. She hopped to her feet. “You can go home now. And remember—”
He bolted to his feet. “Got it.” He hesitated. “When do you … When will I hear?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. I’ll let you know.”
With that, he nodded and raced out.
“You could have let him off the hook.”
“Maybe, but he did drive away from somebody who collapsed in front of him.”
“Being an asshole is not a crime.”
“Leaving the scene of a crime too. But I know, and I’ll let him off the hook tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “Are you trying to make his today worse or his tomorrow better?”
“I just want him to remember that this selfish attitude doesn’t work in this world, and, if we don’t help each other, things can get pretty ugly.”
“I get it. You keep thinking about your brother, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Sure. It would have been nice if somebody had seen Timmy, if they had stepped up to the plate to help him. It didn’t happen.”
“Did you ever wonder if maybe he was kidnapped, and he’s living another life somewhere?”
“Absolutely. I keep hoping for that. You hear of cases like that. As you know, we’ve seen it, where various girls have been held captive for ten-plus, even twenty, years, and all of a sudden they surface—after living horrific lives in captivity somewhere. Some of the cases aren’t that bad, and others are something you don’t ever want to contemplate.
“In my case, this was my brother. So it’s a little different, since most of those cases are about girls, but it’s not impossible. There’s always that sense, that bit of hope that maybe Timmy’s alive out there somehow. But hope is scary because there’s absolutely no guarantee that it will come true. And so you wait, and you wait some more, and then you wait even more.”
“In the meantime,” he reminded her, “you’re checking out every lead that comes, every time we get a boy or a child’s body.”
She nodded. “And those are the worst,” she said quietly. “Because, even though you hope, every time a body is found, you know it could be the one you don’t want it to be.”
He nodded in understanding, got up, and they left the interview room. As they walked back to their desks, Rodney said. “Now what?”
“Now let’s look into those other cases you pointed out at the very beginning of this case, the ones you emailed me, and also I want to phone those two pizza-eating kids.”
“Did they really say something that triggered a lead, or did they just upset you?”
“Both. I just don’t know what it was. For all I know, they didn’t want to talk to me because they had joints on them or something stupid like that.”
“And yet it’s legal.”
“It’s legal, but maybe they have a reason that it’s not allowed in their world. Maybe they’re on a sports team or something. Maybe they don’t want their parents to know. Let me put it this way. They definitely acted guilty about something.”
“Good enough. Sometimes all we have to go on is that instinct.”
She nodded. “In this case something’s there. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Let me know how it comes out.”
She laughed. “Yep, will do.” And, with that, she headed back to her desk and had an afternoon that just wouldn’t quit. “I’ll start with those two kids,” she muttered to herself. She began with the male, the one who really got to her with his arrogance and his entitled attitude. She looked up his name, and, when she called the number he had given her, he answered but sounded distracted. “This is Detective Kate Morgan. I spoke with you yesterday … about the accident.”
“What about it?” he asked, his voice immediately surly.
“It seemed to me like you weren’t saying something,” she said calmly. “So I’d like to go over some of these questions again.”
“And maybe I should phone my lawyer.”
“That’s fine. In that case, I’ll expect you both down here tomorrow at one o’clock. Okay?”
“Wait, wait. What are you talking about?”
“If you’re calling your lawyer, you may as well come in and give a formal statement and be done with it,” she said, her tone hard.
He hesitated. “Fine. What questions?”
“The same ones. I just want to go over some of these because it doesn’t jive with what other people were saying.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t jive?” he said in disgust. “Who the hell were you asking?”
“Everyone who was there.” She calmly went over the questions again, what he’d seen, who he’d seen, and basically he didn’t have anything to say. “Hmm.” She tried to make it sound like she was unimpressed.
“What? Did I get something wrong?” He sounded stressed. “Nothing was there. Honest.”
“So, what are you hiding then?” she asked quietly.
“Nothing, and, if you say that again, then we will be talking to my lawyer.”
“Okay, give me his name, please.”
He hesitated and then gave her the name of a local legal counsel that she was familiar with.
“Your own personal lawyer?”
“My family’s.”
His pompous tone made her eyebrows go up. “Perfect. I’ll give him a call. Thank you.” And, with that, she hung up. Rodney happened to look over at her. She shrugged. “He pulled the lawyer card.”
“Interesting. You bringing him in for questioning?”
“We’ll see. He gave the same answers to the same questions as before. Thus, so far, nothing necessarily to get antsy about, but he’s definitely hiding something.”
“He’s a kid. He’s in college, away from the folks. Who the hell knows what shit he’s up to?”
“Exactly, and it is what it is.”
“It’s probably more than that, but it’s probably not criminal.”
“Maybe. You know what? The quiet young woman was the weakest link.” She thought about that for a moment. “I think I’ll go to the university and talk to her myself.”
“Not call?”
“No, if anything’s there, she’s the one who’ll spit it out.”
“Do you want me to come?”
She laughed. “No, it’s all good. I’ll go take a look. I want to return to that scene anyway.” He frowned at that. “You can come if you want. It’s really not a big deal. I just want to double-check something.”
“You’re trying to catch her in a lie?”
“I want to find out what the hell she’s hiding. That’s the part that bugs me. And I want to do a search on this other guy and see what the hell’s going on in his world that require
s lawyers primed for his phone calls.”
“What do you want to bet the kid’s got a record?”
“You’re right. That’s something else I need to do—pull all these names, everybody on that witness list. We need to run their names through the database and see if anything pops.”
“Why don’t you run up to the university and talk to her, and, while you’re doing that, I’ll input everything here and see if we can come up with anything interesting.”
“That would be great. Thank you. And add that kid who came in and confessed.”
He nodded and added Matt Powell’s name to the list. “Okay, give me an hour and check back in,” he said.
With that, she walked out of the station and headed for the university. At least she had something concrete to do, and sometimes getting away from the computer and talking to people through legwork, the good old-fashioned style of police work, was still the best way to go. She hoped it made something pop. No guarantee, but she was running out of time.
*
Simon made it through most of the rest of his day with absolutely none of the enhanced sense of smell symptoms he had experienced the day before. He even stood at the harbor and spent a long time just inhaling the sea air, wondering at the absolute lack of saltiness. It made no sense that yesterday he would be so hypersensitive and that today it would be so bland. Not really caring either way, he was just a little perturbed at the quirkiness of his “gift” when so much else was going on in his world. Still, he was grateful to not be connected with the crazy psychic scenarios he’d been through twice with Kate and her cases.
He walked to the market, picked up an apple, and, since they had fresh coffee, grabbed one of those too. Back outside he wandered along until he found a bench, where he sat down and just watched the world go by, as he enjoyed a snack. He rotated his shoulders, gently easing back the stress. It was one of those days where he was dealing with multiple people, usually with problems associated with his rehabs. As much as Simon could be a people person, he also found that it used up a lot of his energy.
The psychologists had a million names for it, but Simon considered himself more of a social introvert. That didn’t quite fit either though; it wasn’t totally correct. He knew people who fed on crowds and just got louder and lighter and brighter. While Simon could be social in a crowd, the interaction with too many people drained him. Then he had to leave and go recharge somewhere else. That was just the way he was built, and it worked for him.
