Simon Says... Jump (Kate Morgan Thrillers Book 2)

by Dale Mayer

  “Either,” she snapped. She got up and said, “How can we get more information on these cases?”

  “The suicides?”

  “Unless”—she frowned—“he also said something about a feeling of being watched.”

  “Who said what?”

  She shook her head. “Simon. He said something about a sensation of being watched while on the bridge.”

  “Did he now?”

  “I wonder if, like our drive-by shooter, who’s hanging around to see the aftermath of his destruction, if our jumper guy is sticking around to see if his actions bear fruit?”

  “Please don’t tell me that you’re talking about him physically pushing these people over.”

  “No, no, no,” she said, but she sat back and looked at him. “But how would he know if it worked? I mean, he sent that email to David. How would he know if David committed suicide?”

  “The news, the obituaries?”

  “I don’t know that Louisa’s put in an obit yet, and would the news have identified this jumper?”

  “Maybe a random phone call to the wife?”

  “Meaning that our inciter must have tracked down who David even was and where he was in order to do something like that.”

  “But we already knew that he did, otherwise how did he get a picture of David’s wife? We can’t hack the emails of every other person in the chat, so how could we possibly know if somebody is threatening them?”

  “My only thought is if he’s watching,” she said, with a frown. “And that would mean retrieving all the videos of whatever bridge cameras we have available, before and after any jumper. And not only that, this instigator could be a long way away from the bridge. I mean, just think about it. He could be on land, miles away, depending on how good his set of binoculars are.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Don’t you think he’d want to be a little more up-front and personal with that?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “I honestly don’t know. This is a very remote way to commit murder.”

  “Well, we can give it a try,” he said. And, with that, they split up the three recent suicides they’d identified. She didn’t even want to think about the other jumpers this year or the thought of them being manipulated into this.

  “And what about your thought on it being two people?” he asked.

  “It could be a pair of them,” she said, nodding slowly. “Or at least in the encouraging stage. After that, I don’t know. Or it could be just the one, using both the taunting emails and the threatening pictures.”

  “And it’s not a psychic thing you’re worried about, right? At least not on the part of the perpetrator,” he said, tossing her a sideways glance.

  “No,” she said, looking at him in surprise, “at least, I don’t think so.”

  He nodded. “As long as that’s the way we’re going. The last thing I want to think about is that you’re taking that a step too far and considering that maybe this is somebody psychically causing trouble.”

  “Can they even do that?” she asked, looking at him.

  “Hey, you’re the one with the strange friend. Ask him.”

  “God, I don’t want to,” she said, with a frown.

  “I can’t imagine he’d want you to either,” Rodney said, with a laugh, “but I was just checking.”

  With that disquiet in her mind, she started searching the traffic cams, trying to figure out how many people might have even been in the location.

  “Do we know when they jumped?” she asked. Starting the evening before, she was on the Second Narrows Bridge, and it didn’t have the most ideal placement of cameras. It was great for traffic jams or breakdowns on the bridge, but it wasn’t necessarily any good for some of these pedestrian positions. “I wonder if anybody even looks at the cameras to decide this is a great place to jump. That they’d be on the six o’clock news as a cameo or some such thing.”

  “You know what? For people looking to jump, I doubt they really care where the camera placement is.”

  “Unless they’re really determined to make sure nobody can come and stop them,” she muttered. “I mean, seriously”—she looked over at him—“if you would jump, would you go just anywhere?”

  “Once you are committed to that act, there is no going back, which is why bridges are so popular.”

  She nodded slowly. “And I get that. However, if you were choosing a public bridge like this, wouldn’t you want the cover of darkness?”

  “I would imagine that could be true, but what is the problem with that?”

  “Well, the problem,” she said, “is the cameras.”

  “Ah. For some reason I think people jump in the daylight,” Rodney noted. “Yet I wonder if any studies have been done on that.”

  With that logic, she hunkered down to take a look. She saw people walking, more than she had expected, which surprised her, but apparently it was a favorite spot for romance too. After they’d looked for hours, finally sitting back, she said, “I can’t even see the jumper.”

  “No?” he said. “Mine’s clearer.”

  She pushed her chair over to his and took a look. When he pointed out where the jumper was, she saw somebody standing there, but it was in the early hours of the morning. “What’s that, five o’clock?”

  “It’s 5:10 a.m., according to the time stamp.”

  She nodded. “And that makes sense to me, although I’m usually in a positive frame of mind first thing in the morning, so I don’t know that I personally would commit suicide at that time.”

  “If you had a shitty night,” he said, “maybe you wake up and want it to stop.” He shrugged.

  “I can see that.” And, with a nod, they kept looking, watching other pedestrians up and down on the bridge. There were definitely some, though most people didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on, and others didn’t even look. Some seemed to avoid people, as if this whole world we’re in meant that they shouldn’t have any contact. One couple stopped just past the woman about to jump, and they stood there for a long moment, their arms around each other, talking quietly, and then they kept on walking and didn’t even see when the woman went over the bridge. They never turned and looked.

  “Jesus, it’s as if everybody is blind.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that they’re blind or whether they’re just so focused on themselves and not on other people.” Rodney continued. “It’s almost like we’re geared not to be nosy and taught not to intrude, that we should keep to ourselves. It’s a scary world out there. Maybe they ignore it all, unless bullets or bombs are going off. Then that would cause them to turn and look,” he said, as if by explanation.

  She struggled as she searched through the people. Some were walking and looked to be dressed for work, heading to the other side of the bridge, which would be a hell of a commute, but it wasn’t out of the realm. Some people were jogging, and there were cyclists all over the place. “I didn’t think,” she said, tapping the monitor, “but a cyclist could get there, and faster, to keep an eye on things.”

  “Sure, but which one?” Rodney asked. “Look at all of them.” At that, they watched some more. One stopped and took several photos, as if picking up on a beautiful sunrise. Then he went forward a little bit and took more photos. Even as Rodney went to skip past and go forward again, she said, “Stop. I want to see this guy.”

  With a careless shrug, Rodney said, “Fine, I don’t know that he’s got anything to tell us though.”

  But she watched as he took more photos, and then slowly he would turn to look behind him and take a few more.

  “Look at that. See? He’s looking at her.”

  “Looking but doing nothing. But then why would he? Why would he even contemplate that she’s about to do something to herself like that?”

  Kate frowned and nodded. “It’s still pretty upsetting. There, she’s taking off her shoes. There she goes.” And, as they watched, the guy took another photo, completely unconcerned that she went over the bridge.
r />   “Instead of running to help,” she cried out, “he took off.”

  “Help how?” Rodney asked quietly beside her.

  “He could have called for help among the others biking, walking the bridge. He could have called the police. He could have looked over the side …” And she stopped. “God, I don’t know. What do you do in a situation like that?”

  He said, “Well, 9-1-1 would be a great start, and he was on the phone as he left.”

  “Right. So he takes off and leaves and maybe calls on his way out but doesn’t stay. Why?”

  “Maybe he’s late for work. Maybe he doesn’t want to get involved. And stay for what? She’s gone.”

  Kate groaned. “None of the vehicles stopped either. Did you notice that? The traffic just keeps on going.”

  “Again, it’s early in the morning, and, as soon as you call something like that in,” he said, “it can just be a huge traffic jam.”

  “So everybody’s more concerned about themselves than the poor person who just went off the bridge?”

  “And we also know what the stats are for anybody who would have survived. Chances are, she was already dead.”

  “But,” she said, looking at him, “there was a chance. Some people have survived.”

  “One, two, maybe three,” he said. “The numbers do not add up in favor of the jumper.”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “That’s why it’s such a popular spot for people determined to end their lives.” There was no bitterness in her voice; it was just a sad acknowledgment of the facts. As she continued to watch, she said, “So, that cyclist took photos, and it’ll be almost impossible to identify him.”

  “Even if we could identify and talk to him, it’s not like we can charge him with anything. He might be a shitty human being, if he didn’t call for help, but we don’t know that. And we also don’t know,” Rodney reminded her, “what he was looking at, you know? From his angle? Maybe he wasn’t even aware that she jumped.”

  She nodded slowly. “I know. It’s so easy to judge, isn’t it?”

  “Way too easy,” he said.

  “Check the other feed,” she said. “I’m going back to this one and watching it from the beginning to the end.” Even adjusting the lighting still didn’t reveal anything she needed it to. “It’s just too dark,” she said in frustration.

  “Well, I haven’t had a chance to look at this one,” he said. “Want to take a run through it?”

  She nodded and worked on the third jumper cams. “It’d be nice if something would break somewhere.”

  “Unfortunately, whatever breaks,” he said, “tends to be when something else happens.”

  She looked up, frowned, and said, “Yeah, and that wouldn’t be a good deal for anybody.”

  “Or any of these other cases we have,” he said, pointing to the stack beside them. “I know, and I’m spending a lot of time on this one.”

  “Do you have any strings to pull on any of the high-priority cases?” Colby asked, as he walked into the room.

  “We’re waiting on Forensics for most of it.” Kate grimaced.

  “Most of it?” he said. “If that’s on all of it, then you’re clear to do whatever you think is happening with the suicides. But, if you have anything else to pursue on another case that is hot right now, you need to be working on that.”

  She nodded. “I’ve covered everything I can right now.”

  “Okay. Then keep doing what you’re doing,” Colby said, “and let’s hope something breaks somewhere pretty damn soon.”

  “Exactly my problem,” she said, groaning. “It seems like absolutely nothing breaks anywhere, and it’s all going the wrong direction.”

  “It will, at least we hope so,” he said, and, with that, he called a meeting, having them all move to an interview room.

  Kate sat through the meeting, a typical weekly one, where everybody shared everything happening on the pending cases. Then Colby turned to Kate and said, “Now do you want to give us an update?”

  “On what?” she asked in surprise.

  “How about why these suicides have you so bothered.”

  She shrugged. “I think everybody here already knows by now. But we found with David, the second of three suicides that I’m looking into, that he received an email with a picture of his wife with a bullet through her forehead. ‘Do it … or else,’ was the message.”

  “And are we sure that it didn’t have anything to do with the rest of his life?”

  “No, I’m not sure of anything at this point. Again, Forensics has his laptop, although I am supposed to go collect it, so I can return it to the wife.”

  “Did they tell you what they found?”

  She shook her head. “No, nothing. The coroner did confirm that David was perfectly healthy, wasn’t struggling with a major illness, and he wasn’t on drugs. There didn’t appear to be any alcohol abuse, and, according to his wife, he was perfectly healthy and happy. Yet his laptop shows he was upset that he could not father children.”

  “True, since he belonged to a suicide chat room,” Rodney said.

  Owen agreed, nodding his head. “So, nothing about him was perfectly healthy and happy then.”

  “And that’s where it becomes … difficult.” She quickly explained the little bit that they knew.

  “And Simon?”

  She looked at Colby with a flat look. “What about him?”

  He raised an eyebrow and said, “Spill.”

  She growled. “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on. It’s got to be something.”

  “Nothing we can prove.”

  “No, but he was also instrumental in that pedophile case.”

  “The case with the kids, yes,” she said, with a nod. “But that doesn’t mean it will happen that way again.”

  Colby crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot on the floor, waiting. She just glared back at him.

  “You spill it, or I will,” Rodney said at her side. She gasped at him. He shook his head. “Sorry, but it’s important, and the team needs to know.”

  “Fine,” she snapped, then explained what Simon had said today.

  “Seriously?” Colby said, as he stared at her.

  She nodded. “Yes, but we don’t know if the voice in his head is somebody pushing the victim to jump or if it’s the victim’s own subconscious, and Simon’s tapping into their emotions. But, yes, he saw himself standing on the bridge, overlooking the river, all from the perspective of a jumper. And, when we did a check of the cameras just now”—she pointed at Rodney and herself—“we did see somebody there but not close enough to identify him or her in any way.”

  “So then,” Rodney added, when she fell silent, “we looked at the videos again, trying to see if somebody may have been close enough to watch.”

  Colby turned his sharp gaze on him. “Watch? As if to see if his actions netted the result he was after?”

  Rodney nodded. “Exactly. And Reese and Andy are still haunting the chat rooms and have had several people talk to him, both good and bad, on the suicide loops.” Rodney pointed to Andy.

  Andy nodded. “It always amazes me. One guy has these mocking comments all the time. Then another one laughs it off.”

  “Yet you can’t take them at face value,” Colby said. “People hide who they really are on the internet all the time.”

  Kate immediately stepped in. “Agreed, and, at the same time, you also can’t disregard all the people encouraging you to get help and to be focused and to find something positive in your life to make it all worthwhile.” She paused. “Because, as you well know, that can cover a multitude of sins.”

  Colby nodded. “Forensics hasn’t had any luck yet?”

  “They are still working on it, as they can,” Kate said, “around the other cases, of course.”

  At that, Andy’s phone dinged. He pulled it up casually, took a look, then frowned and said, “I just got a message from somebody on the loop.” He left their meeting and heade
d back to the bullpen.

  “How do you know that?” everybody asked, crowding around him at his computer.

  “Because I deliberately left a different email address, so, if they wanted to contact me directly, they could. This guy is making a comment about me needing help. But saying that, in some cases,” he read it off, “in some cases, suicide often comes to mind as being my best option.”

  “So,” Rodney said, “he’s making it personal, as if you both are in the same boat.”

  “And, for all we know, he is in the same boat,” Colby said. “We can’t assume that just because somebody messaged him privately that it’s the killer.”

  “No, if there even is one,” Kate said quietly, “and I’m not so far gone that I haven’t kept that in mind.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s important too.”

  She nodded. “I get it. I really do. But, in this instance, it’s also interesting that somebody reached out beyond the chat.”

  Andy looked up, nodded, and said, “I’ll respond, and we’ll see if we can get this chat to keep going.”

  “I wish we could check the history, but nothing was there.”

  “You mean, on David’s computer?”

  “Yes, unless he deleted his.” She frowned at that, picked up the phone to contact the computer forensics geeks, “Stoop, Kate here. I’ll give you an email name and address.” Then she read off the information from Andy’s screen.

  “Hang on.”

  She heard Stoop typing in the background, she presumed going through David’s emails.

  “Well, several are from that email address,” he said. “Interesting.”

  “What it is?”

  “Well, it starts off friendly enough but then isn’t so friendly.”

  “That’s not the same email address that sent the image of David’s wife, right?”

  “No,” he said, “not at all. But it’s another sender who appears to be both sympathetic, yet angry.”

  “Seems like a lot of these people are in that boat,” she wondered.

  “Or they’re just manipulative,” he said sarcastically.

  When she looked up, she saw Colby had already left the bullpen. She looked over to Andy, who was busy answering the direct message he had. “Keep an eye on it, will you?” she told Stoop. “On those particular emails, keep track of whatever might be posted and whatever might be coming from those emails and sent to others. He’s just contacted Andy here, who set up the suicidal chat persona.”