by Dale Mayer
He shook his head at a rapid rate, tears coming to his eyes, and, with a sinking heart, he appeared not involved, didn’t have anything to do with it. She looked over at Rodney, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders.
“Did you see anybody around the truck? Why were you even in that area?” Rodney asked.
“I was meeting some friends,” he said. “There’s a, you know, like a casual pool hall around the corner. It’s just an old building, and we go in there, and, for a couple bucks, we play pool,” he said.
“So you left the pool hall and came out when?”
“I don’t know when,” he said. “I mean, I lost track of time as it was. I was on a day off, so I didn’t care. I was just having fun.”
“Doing drugs?”
He flushed. “Just a little weed.”
“And what about the harder stuff?”
“No, my dad gets really pissed at me and won’t let me work if I do anything hard-core.”
“Well, there are a lot of levels between hard-core and weed.”
“No, man, no. I didn’t do anything else, just a little weed. I was just happy.”
“Too happy apparently.”
He flushed. “Yeah, that might have had something to do with it. My dad says it makes me different. Like, I’ve got no worries, and it’ll all be fine.”
“Ya think? Now that you hopped into a truck and stole it while you were on weed, how do you feel?”
“Like I need to reassess,” he said, rubbing his face. “I’m in so much shit.”
“Well, and then there’s your father you have yet to face.”
At that, he paled, and his bottom lip trembled. “Is there any way we can … not tell him this?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s already on the way to the station,” Rodney said. “He called, asking why you were being held.”
At that, the kid deflated completely. “My old man, … he’ll kill me,” he said quietly. “That’s just all there is to it.” But there was no heat, so he wasn’t actually in danger; it seemed more a case of having some consequences for his behavior and choices.
“And what do you think?” Rodney asked. “Do you think you deserve it?”
“Yeah, I do, but that ain’t gonna make a damn bit of difference. I’ve already been warned a couple times.”
Just then the door opened, and Lilliana looked in and motioned at Rodney to come out. With that, Rodney got up and stepped out of the interview room.
The kid looked at her. “How much shit am I in?”
“Quite a bit,” she said.
“But, on the other hand,” he said, some wily intelligence showing through, “because of me, you got the truck.”
“And, because of you, we didn’t get the driver.”
At that, his face fell again. “Holy shit. He really killed two guys?”
“This time,” she snapped.
“Oh, jeez.”
“Now tell me what you saw.”
“Honestly I just … I came out of the pool hall, and people were walking around. I just saw this truck sitting there, idling. I checked the door handle and it was unlocked, and it was just one of those things. I didn’t even think,” he said. “I just hopped in, whistled at what a sweet ride it was, and then,” he said, “I closed the door and put it in Drive.”
She nodded. “So you didn’t see the driver hop out? You didn’t see anybody keeping a close eye on the truck? You didn’t see anybody walking away from the truck?”
“Well, one guy was walking up the street, when I was looking at the truck, but he didn’t turn around or anything. So, I wondered if it was him, but he didn’t appear to care.”
“That’s because he was focused on the chaos he had caused around the corner,” she said quietly. “Can you give me a description of him?”
“Not really. Jeans, looked like he wore an old bomber-style jacket but jeans-colored, you know? Just one of those little short things, and he had on a baseball cap.”
At that, her heart slammed. “And that would probably be him,” she said quietly. “Anything else you can tell me?”
He shook his head. “I just, … honestly, he just looked like he was striding away. He was in a hurry.”
“And it didn’t compute that he was in a hurry and that he would be right back?”
“Apparently nothing computed,” he said, staring at her, downcast.
Just then, the door opened, and Rodney returned. With him was a big barrel of a man, worry written all across his face. When he saw his son, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then he pulled up the spare chair and sat down. “What the hell is going on?” he asked her.
She sat back, as the man glared at her. “I’m Detective Kate Morgan,” she said coolly. “Your son stole a truck.”
He looked at her in shock, looked at his son, then back at her, and said, “No fucking way.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Maybe you should ask your son.”
He turned, looked at the kid, and said, “Chuck, tell me the truth. What did you do?”
“I stole a truck,” he said faintly.
His dad sat back, complete and utter shock and disappointment on his face.
She knew what was about to come. She jumped up and pushed back her chair. “I know you’re about to blow,” she interjected, “but not on my turf, not on my time.”
He looked at her, completely flummoxed, as she cut him off right there. He burst onto his feet, his fist coming up.
“You already got your one free pass,” she warned him. “So, if a fist lands on him or me,” she said, “I’ll take you down and put you in jail, so you can sit in there and cool off.”
At that, the kid jumped up and said, “Dad, don’t, please don’t. Come on. Calm down. I ’fessed up. I didn’t really mean to do it,” he said, “and it wouldn’t probably be such a big deal, but the truck—it was just used in a drive-by shooting, and two guys were killed. That’s why it was just sitting there, idling.”
At that, his dad looked at him and said, “Holy fuck.”
“I know. I know. When I cross the line, I always go way too far. But I didn’t know anything about the truck. I had no idea it was being used for that. I didn’t know anything about the killing,” he said. “I was down at the pool hall with the guys.”
“The guys I told you to stay away from.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t like them, but I don’t have any other friends. Everybody else is online, and it’s pretty damn hard to meet people these days. I’ve known these guys for years.”
“So, you’re sitting there, smoking your weed, and you think it’s a damn good idea to hop in somebody else’s truck and take off, is that it?”
As far as Kate was concerned, that was a pretty good summation.
The kid slowly nodded his head.
“Oh my God,” the dad said. “I’ve got to get some air.” And, with that, he slammed the chair back down again and bolted from the room.
She looked at the kid. “Well, Chuck, I guess you need to sit here for a little bit.” And, with that, she got up and walked to the door.
“What will I get charged with?” he asked anxiously.
“Grand theft auto. Isn’t that one of the games you like to play?” And, with that, she turned and walked out.
He had said one thing that was right. They had the truck. If he hadn’t dumped it where he had, it wouldn’t have been picked up, flagged as stolen, and hauled into impound. Still it had been stolen two times now, and it should have a plethora of DNA for them to harvest. So, all in all, still a damn good day.
*
Simon’s Monday Morning
Sitting over his morning coffee and hoping that Kate’s morning was going as well as it could, Simon opened up his laptop and started in on his business dealings. Two minutes in, a headache slammed into his brain. He gasped at the force of it, the pain almost crushing. He grabbed his abdomen, as he bent over. He tried hard to force back whatever this shit was that was trying to push him into a nightm
are. Then, once again, he was staring down at feet, the same damn feet. He shook his head.
“No, no, no, no, not again,” he cried out. But the feet were walking. He looked around, trying hard to separate from the vision, but instead he got sucked in deeper and deeper. Once again, he was a visitor in her eyes. He saw a road ahead, dark. Why was it dark? Ah, wearing sunglasses. She wiped her eyes, and they were wet. Shit, he muttered to himself. He tried to turn her around, tried to get her to go back. But he had nothing there to grab on to. He wanted some way to identify her or something, but he couldn’t even see into her mind; all he could do was see out of her eyes. Helpless.
He knew the city well, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t place that street. And, even if he could, he couldn’t possibly get there in time. He stared out, looking for any clue, but he could only see more when she turned her head, and right now it was basically locked on the sidewalk a couple feet in front of her. And the shoes were just white sneakers, ordinary. And again, nothing to say it was a woman. It’s not like she was looking down on her body to determine whether she had breasts or not.
Still he knew she was female.
Frustrated and angry, he tried to tear himself free and failed, but, if he couldn’t free himself, could he at least slam himself further into the vision so he could get more information? And, just like that, as if being sucked out of a long tunnel, he snapped out of the vision, until he was sitting here at his kitchen table, shaking and staring around his own penthouse suite, almost in a blind panic.
What the hell just happened? And why? And the really big question: how could he stop it from happening again? He sat here, his hands cradling the cup of coffee, his throat parched and dry. Probably because her throat was parched and dry. He lifted the cup and took a sip, wondering if, by easing his throat, it would ease hers. It didn’t make any sense that it would, but, hell, none of this made any sense. He took several more sips, allowing the warm caffeine to hit his bloodstream and to flow into his stomach, as it calmed him down and warmed him up. Because that had been another part of that vision. She was cold, so very cold.
Too bad he couldn’t see her in a mirror or a reflection, a window, anything that would help identify who she was, so he could reach out. Before it was too late. He didn’t want to be connected to a woman when she drowned. God, that would be the worst. He remembered his grandmother had said that she had connected with the driver of a car who had committed suicide by slamming over a cliff edge. Only he had taken his wife and kids with him. The fact that Grandmother couldn’t do anything about it had tormented her for a long time.
That was not an experience he wanted to count among his most memorable moments.
Chapter 14
By the end of the day Kate had several points ticked off her list. The aqua truck was with forensics. Kate had an update on email addresses in the suicide chat rooms. The techs had tracked down two of the suicidal people in those chats, and she would talk to them next. And Andy, who had been playing a person contemplating suicide in the chat rooms, had received several more emails back and forth from the one guy, then received another email from somebody different.
In both cases, the tone had turned from being supportive to being more equitable and playing both sides, like sometimes suicide was a good thing. She shook her head at that, but Andy was pretty excited, feeling like they were getting somewhere, feeling that either one or both of these people would start urging him to do something. The only problem with that was neither of those emails had sent the manipulating photo to David.
The kid who had stolen the truck was in lockup. His dad had left to arrange for bail, but she imagined life at home wouldn’t be quite the same. The reality was that this kid would be facing time for this one. It was a first offense, and she didn’t know if that would make it a little easier on him or not. But they did have the truck used in the drive-by shootings, and they were now in a position to run all kinds of tests on it.
Although that was limited as well. It had been stolen out of a garage from an old couple’s house, and the owner, a male, had since died. His wife, also a senior, was now in a retirement home. The family didn’t want the truck back, which was a good thing because it would be tied up with this case for quite a while. But something else the joyriding kid hadn’t said anything about was the weapon under the front seat, and that would go against him.
And that was a whole different story. They weren’t certain it was the one used in the shooting, questioning the accuracy compared to other weapons, though this could be a backup piece. When the kid had been asked about it, his eyes had grown large, and he’d immediately shaken his head.
“I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t see any weapon. I don’t do guns.”
The father had backed that up and said, “The kid can be trouble but mostly stupid trouble,” he said. “I’ve never known him to have anything to do with weapons.”
And that was fine and dandy, but it didn’t mean that the dad knew everything.
As it was, things were progressing, and Kate was happy with that. The shooter had lost his truck, and now he would be on the hunt for another one. It was too much to hope that he might not get involved in another shooting. Chances were he would take this as another challenge and just carry on. They could hope not, but life didn’t always go their direction.
She walked out of the office and headed to her vehicle, still in a good mood. Buoyed by the day of what seemed like a whole pile of checkmarks and boxes being ticked off her list, she headed to the dojo for a workout. She was tired, but it was a good tired. She was stressed, but it was a good feeling, all tied to a lot of accomplishments in her day.
She walked in, quickly changed, stepped out onto the judo floor, and started one of the hardest workouts she’d been through in days. When she was finally done, she stood there sweating freely but with a big happy grin on her face.
“Now,” her sensei said, with a laugh, “you look like you could take on the world.”
“Some days it feels like I have,” she said. “Today was a good day though.”
“Good,” he said, “you don’t get enough of those.”
“No,” she said, as she nodded in agreement. “Some days there’s just no winning. The world out there is an ugly place, and sometimes, … sometimes that ugliness overshadows everything.”
“But it doesn’t have to,” he reminded her.
As always, his wisdom struck a chord, and, even after she got home, showered, and crashed on her couch, she was still thinking about his words. It didn’t have to overshadow everything, but somehow it always seemed to. She lived, ate, and breathed work. And, even with Simon, their relationship, which wasn’t a whole lot, was based on his involvement in her cases.
If he hadn’t done that, if they didn’t share any of that common ground in their worlds, would they still be friends? Or more? She didn’t know. She didn’t have much in the way of friends-friends. She had a couple, although she hadn’t seen Becky in a long time. Nor Afton. Then her phone pinged. She frowned at that. It was almost as if somehow—psychically—somebody knew and texted her.
Hey, Stranger. How’re things?
She stared at the phone in the dim light. And then, instead of texting, she responded with a phone call. “You know that you’re just topping off a good day,” Kate said.
“That’s good news,” her girlfriend, Afton, said.
“And what are you doing?” Kate asked. “Normally I don’t hear from you, except for what? Your birthday and what? One other event that I missed.”
“I wish I could come for a visit,” Afton said, and then her voice turned hesitant. “But it’s not possible right now and probably won’t be for a while.”
Kate stared at the phone in surprise. “You’re welcome any time to come for a visit. You know that. I haven’t seen you in what, two years?”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been living in San Fran for that long.”
“You sound depressed. Any particular reason?”
“Because.”
“No, no, no, no. We need more than because.”
“Really? Okay, fine. I broke up with Jared.”
“Ouch, like permanent-permanent?”
“Yeah, like permanent-permanent.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come visit anytime,” she said. “Unfortunately I’m always busy though, so, no matter when you come, I’m not sure that staying here with me will even give us much time together.”
“Well, on the other hand,” Afton said, “you won’t be there to bug me, as I tear up every once in a while. Like I said it won’t be for awhile though. I’m still getting stuff organized here.”
“You can always tear up with me. We’ll go get Häagen-Dazs and some wine.”
“Now that’s my friend,” she said on a laugh. “I’ll let you know later, when I can get free here.”
“Okay, good enough. I’m still at the same place, so it’s not a biggie.”
At that, she hung up with a smile on her face. She had not seen Afton in at least two years. She had gone down to San Francisco to see her, and they had had a blast. Afton and Jared had seemed great together then. Kate didn’t know what the problem was now, and it was obvious that her friend wasn’t up to talking about it on the phone, but they’d have time for some girl chats coming up. Hopefully soon.
Then Kate thought about her caseload and about all the problems she was dealing with at work and winced. She was honest when she said she wouldn’t be home all that much. But hopefully her friend wouldn’t have a problem with it because some of these cases would take an awful lot more than a nine-to-five work schedule. And that wasn’t likely to change. In fact, Kate saw it getting worse. So it really didn’t matter when Afton got here, just so long as she did.
Kate smiled at the thought of seeing her friend at some later date. Also Kate had gotten off early today, so another checkmark on that good-day thing.
Then she grimaced because she didn’t exactly want to share the details of her relationship with Simon with Afton so early on. Or note even later into this relationship, as Kate feared she’d still be full of doubts when it came to Simon. And yet, no doubt over Afton’s eventual visit, depending on how long her friend would stay with Kate, Afton and Simon would cross paths.