by Dale Mayer
“Yeah, I was pondering that the other night, wondering how you can remain sane with all that going on.”
“Who says I’m sane?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I already know that you’re half crocked, but apparently we’re half crocked together,” she said, with a sigh.
“So tell me,” he wanted to know, “how come you had to go for such a hard workout tonight?”
“This shitty case at work. It’s out of our jurisdiction likely but borders on another of our cases. We’re stretched kind of thin, what with missing three team members—or at least two for sure.” She took a bite, pointing with her fork as she chewed and swallowed. “Although we sort of have an analyst and two assistants, it never seems to be enough. So you know what that means.” She sighed.
“Yeah, everybody wants their time. The VPD needs more staff, more detectives, in my opinion, just from watching you putting in the long hours, working on your supposed days off. And this city is big, and you have how many murders on a regular basis?”
“I think there’s been, like, what? Twenty-nine already this year.” She shook her head. “You’d think we were Chicago or something.”
He smiled. “I get that this is probably more than you’re used to, but is there anything you can do about these cases, any leads to follow?”
“If I can prove that they’re murders, then maybe, and I’ve got a witness who said these bullies were involved in something that went terribly wrong. She thinks that the person died, but I don’t have any proof of it, and neither does she.”
“So it’s all hearsay?”
“Even worse, it’s hearsay from somebody who’s now basically turning on her own group.”
“So she’s trying to defend herself.”
“I think she’s trying to protect herself. She says she didn’t do anything terrible, but she did do something bad enough, and she’s now suffering from the guilt of it.”
“I just love the human condition.”
“Right.” She tilted her head. “We’re all so screwed up.”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” he said.
She smiled. “If you’re not screwed up, neither am I, but I’m pretty sure the rest of the world would definitely consider both of us well over the mark.”
He shrugged. “No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. So there’s no hope for us whatever then.”
She smiled. “They’re attacking people on the campus, innocent and already disadvantaged people. And they’re not so much directly attacking, they’re more subtle, making it look like an accident,” she said, with a strong emphasis on the word.
“So what are they doing?”
“Knocking them down. One apparently sent somebody down a set of stairs, and she broke her leg.”
“That’s pretty shitty.”
“Hearsay though, and I’m not even sure who that person is. The campus is saying that nobody ever came forward to report or to complain about that, and I don’t know if that’s because of being pressured or because these guys are so good at making it all look accidental. You know? Like, it wasn’t really them, or the suspicion is there but no proof, so it becomes a case of, ‘Gee, I must have tripped and fallen.’ She was apparently on crutches already because she had some injury, but I don’t even know what that was.” She raised both hands in frustration. “It sucks. So this one female was supposed to be part of the group …”
By the time she finished telling him the rest, he stared at her in shock.
She nodded. “And, on top of that, I’m looking at this death at the intersection, where this one young woman on a bicycle dies in what appears to be an accident, except evidence shows some projectile in her head. The autopsy is in progress, but nothing showed up on the scans.”
“Wow.” Simon sat back, staring at her, as he munched on his dinner. “I’d forgotten what an interesting life you have.”
She glared at him. “If it involves standing knee-deep in blood and gore and motives and hate and revenge and shitty people, yeah, it’s interesting all right.”
“It’s complicated and interesting. I deal with a lot of that too, but in a way that you probably wouldn’t expect.”
“You’ve never told me much about what you are involved in.” She studied him. “I get that you’re rehabbing buildings, but that’s all I know about it.”
“I do rehab lots of buildings, and all of them have stories.” She looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged. “I’m kind of partial to buildings, and the ones I buy—versus the ones I don’t—is a combination of a business decision and a heart decision. Sometimes I feel like I have to rescue these buildings.”
She stopped and stared, slowly putting down her fork. “Say what?”
He shrugged. “Nobody said I had to be completely logical all the time. Anybody who tells you that these kinds of business decisions aren’t also emotional at some level is lying. Whether they lock down that emotion and make it fit some parameter, or whatever they’re doing, they’re still using their emotions to buy properties. Either because they think they can make money, and that makes them happy, or because they think they can turn it around and steal it from somebody else, also making them happy. In my case, I like to turn them around and make them useful again after years of abuse. And that makes me happy. So it’s emotional.” And, with that, he picked up a chunk of meat on a skewer and pulled off a piece. “Do you know what this is?”
She looked at it and shrugged. “No, I was waiting for you to try it.”
He laughed. “Here goes nothing.” And he took a bite off the end of the piece in his hand. His eyebrows shot up immediately, and he smiled at the piece remaining. “I think it’s chicken, but, wow, is it ever flavorful.”
She immediately picked up her skewer and took a bite. She looked over at him, nodding. “I don’t know where you got this from, but it needs to go on my Redial list.”
He grinned. “That’s only if you’re nice to me. Otherwise I’m not telling you where it is.”
“That’s okay. I’ll go talk to Harry myself.” His jaw dropped, and she laughed. “Do you really think I’m not on a first-name basis with him by now?”
“Are you bribing my doorman?” He leaned forward, waggling his eyebrows. “And, if you are, maybe it’s me you should be bribing.”
“I don’t have to bribe you, and you should always be friendly with the doorman because they know a lot. People treat servants and staff and the hired help like their slaves, but they don’t consider who these people are with at the end of the day and what they have to deal with. You should treat them better than your own family because already they’re doing a job for you that they probably didn’t want to do in the first place.” She pointed her fork at him for added emphasis.
“Hey, I treat mine great,” he said.
She glared at him suspiciously.
“I’ll have you know that I gave Harry a wonderful bottle of wine today for his anniversary.”
“Yeah?” She suspiciously gazed at him. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because it’s his anniversary.” He looked at her in astonishment.
“Yeah, I get that, but why that bottle of wine?”
He frowned, and then he chuckled. “Because it made me happy?”
She looked at him sideways. “Feels like there’s more to it than that.”
“And here you go being the detective again. Can’t you just leave it as the simple fact that I wanted to give it to him?”
She hesitated and then shrugged. “Since you brought me dinner tonight, I guess I can limit the questioning.”
“I’ll tell you anyway. Caitlyn sent it to me.”
At that, she chewed on her mouthful, as she studied him. He picked up another skewer of meat and eyed it, as if it were a specimen. Or maybe it was Caitlyn he was eyeing. Kate knew of her and knew a bit about that prior relationship of Simon’s but not a whole lot. She wasn’t sure if jealousy was supposed to come into this or if it w
as a nonissue, but she felt her heart sinking a little bit. That made her realize that, as much as she tried to appear disaffected, he really was affecting her, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. She frowned, as she studied her own plate, for lack of anything to say.
He looked over at her, smiled. “She’s trying to get back into my life, and I’m avoiding it in a big way.”
“Why is that?” She tried to detach her own emotions from this discussion.
“I can’t trust her,” he said.
She stopped, looked at him, and nodded. “I guess that’s a big one for you.”
He looked at her in a challenging way. “Isn’t it for you?”
She stopped, thought about it. “It’s kind of everything, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said simply. “If you can’t trust people to do the best for you when they can and to not blackmail you or to cheat or to lie or to do all kinds of other shit that Caitlyn has pulled,” he said flatly, “nothing is there. If you can’t close your eyes and trust that you’ll be safe, there’s really nothing left.”
“And yet this is a new phenomenon for you, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning at her.
“Was she not your fiancée?”
He frowned, then nodded. “Did I tell you about that?”
“It came up somewhere along the line,” she said.
“Yeah, so that was another part of it. I could no longer trust my judgment either. But she has pulled some pretty ugly shit after we broke up, and I just couldn’t let her off the hook on it. As much as I’ve forgiven her for a lot of it, I can’t forgive her for all of it. A part of me wonders if she still thinks she’s got some hold over me, though she tells me she doesn’t.”
“Is she blackmailing you?” Kate stared at him in shock.
“Maybe, she certainly did over her nephew.”
“On that point, if it was about saving my brother, and you had the ability to help me, I might blackmail you too,” she said succinctly. “Love will do that to us.”
He looked at her and slowly nodded. “You know what? That I could accept. And see? You’re right upfront about it.”
“Hands down, if that had been my brother, I’d have killed for him. If I could have answers anywhere along the line for what happened to him and to find the asshole who did it, I would do whatever it took.”
He nodded. “That at least lets me know where you stand. I would never do it unnecessarily. I would never do it for money. I would never do it for power. But … I would do it for love.”
She said quietly, “So, I guess that tells me where we both stand. So the question is, is that a deal breaker?”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “The thing is, in your case—and in the case of Caitlyn’s nephew back then—I could understand it because you’re right. For love, we do things like that. If I could have blackmailed somebody into saving me all those years ago, I would have done it myself,” he said quietly. “It’s love, but it’s also to save someone who you care about. Even if it’s yourself.”
She nodded. “That’s the thing really. The human psyche is pretty basic. It’s called survival.”
*
That was the one thing about Kate that Simon never had to wonder about. She was as direct and as clear-cut as anyone could be. But he also had heard the tremor in her voice when she had talked about her brother. “Just for the record”—he reached across the table and picked up her hand—“I’ve never yet connected to anything about your brother.”
She looked up at him, her gaze searching, and he realized that she probably had wanted to ask that question many times, but it wasn’t in her to do so.
He squeezed her fingers gently. “And, yes, if I had anything at all I could tell you, I would, and I promise that, if it ever happens, I will definitely pass on the word.”
“Good, not that I believe in any of that stuff.”
He smiled as she tossed it off, but he also heard the relief in her voice and saw it on her face. “I get that,” he said comfortably, as he settled back. “And I love the fact that you’re very direct. It saves time.”
“It does, indeed, but most people aren’t that way, and many don’t appreciate it.”
“That’s because most people are idiots.”
She laughed. “No argument there. So, are you going to tell me what she was blackmailing you about?”
He hesitated and then shrugged. “It’s not exactly something that you don’t already know.”
She frowned. “If I already know, then what’s to blackmail?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know.”
“Meaning?” She looked at him. “You’re talking in puzzles.”
“Okay. Have I ever had nightmares when I’m sleeping with you?”
“Yep. Have I ever had nightmares when I’m sleeping with you?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Well, yeah.”
“It’s the life we live. The nightmares catch us when we’re subconsciously weak and get in through our lowered defenses, then attack us to the point that we don’t even know if we’re coming or going.”
He sat here and stared.
Kate asked him, “What? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s just that forthright honesty that I love so much.”
“Good. So what’s the blackmail thing?”
“She says that she made recordings of when I was having nightmares. She said she would release them to the public, and that some pretty horrific things were on them.”
She stared at him in shock. “Jesus, that’s a pretty mean and lowlife thing to do, isn’t it?”
“That’s Caitlyn for you.”
“Did she really record them?”
“See? That’s where the confusion comes in. She says she didn’t now.”
“Oh, but she said she did when she needed you to find her nephew?”
“Exactly. She was looking for leverage. I would have helped her anyway, and I did, in fact, try to help her. As it happened, I did connect with him down the road. I didn’t do it because of the blackmail, but she thinks I did. So now she’s using it. I think she’s keeping that in the back of her mind as a weapon.”
“Wow, I really don’t like this person. It’s pretty interesting that she was your choice of a partner.”
“Don’t even go there. Sometimes you look back on your history, and you wonder what the hell you were thinking.” He looked at her. “Isn’t there a relationship somewhere in your background where you now wonder what the hell you were doing?”
“Yep, another cop. I knew better—Don’t do it, bad news, stay away—but, no. Hormones got the best of us. We were jumping in the sack every chance we could get. It wasn’t until later that I found out he was married.”
At that, Simon winced. “Ah, shit.”
“Yep, guess how I found out.”
He stared at her and waited.
“The wife came to me. That was a pretty ugly scene. Not doing that again, and I wouldn’t have done it in the first place if I’d known. But I also didn’t check it out, so it’s my bad.”
He agreed. “Back to that people can be people thing, huh?”
“That’s the lesson, isn’t it? That people will be people, and it’s up to you to protect yourself.”
He winced. “And we both learned that the hard way.”
“And that’s one of the reasons we’re good together. But it’s also damn scary.”
He reached across, grabbed her hand. “But I trust you.”
She looked up at him, her thoughts shattered, as she said, “And I trust you. But are we sure this is a good idea?”
He studied her for a long moment, seeing the insecurity and the doubt in her face, and nodded. “Yes, it is.”
Chapter 10
Kate woke in the middle of the wee hours of the morning to the sound of her phone, the incessant drumbeat rolling through her brain, bringing her exhausted and yet happily humming body to full awareness. She groaned,
as she turned over and reached for her phone, noting Simon was still here, had even slept through the buzzing of her cell.
When she answered the call, Rodney said, “Sorry, kiddo. We’ve got another body.”
“Great.” She yawned. “Where is it this time?”
He hesitated before answering. “At the university. At one of the off-campus residences.”
She bolted upright. “Please tell me that it’s not Candy.”
“I don’t know anything about it. All I got was that we have a body. I’ll pick you up in ten.”
“Great,” she muttered again, and she tossed her phone on the bedside table.
She quickly got dressed, wishing she had time for a shower, but that wasn’t to be. Multitasking—brushing her teeth while running a comb through her hair—got her out the door quicker, aware that it would be a very long day. She and Simon had shared one of those nights. They had talked, made love, talked some more, but no talk of plans, no talk of tomorrow, because, for both of them, there was only just today.
She shook her head, as she stepped outside her building, feeling the chill, as a whistling watery breeze came in off the ocean. Rodney arrived five minutes later. She hopped in, shivering, and he immediately reached to turn on the heat.
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” But her teeth were chattering. “Besides it’s August for Christ’s sake.”
He turned and headed out to the university. “These middle-of-the-night calls always get to me.”
“Yeah, me too, especially when you said it was close to the university.”
“You really think it could be her?”
“If it is, I know who we’ll focus on.”
He shook his head. “We can’t do that.”
“I know, but I really want to,” she said.
“That’s if it’s her, and we don’t even know that yet. We won’t know until we get there. Was she concerned?”
“Not really.” Kate shook her head. “She didn’t appear to be. She was concerned at some level because she didn’t want to tell me anything and said how they’d ‘kill her,’ but, when I asked her specifically if I should take that wording literally, she shook her head, said she just meant they would be furious. But later Candy had wondered if they’d crossed that line another time. She suggested that she already got blamed for everything because she was the odd man out. She was trying to be somebody she wasn’t, somehow just trying to belong, which is why she did what she did. And, when they found out she was quite traumatized over it all, they thought it was hilarious, and that’s one of the reasons they were going for pizza that day.”
