Page 10 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

K ate rolled over and curled up tighter to Simon, her arms around him, tucking in for a bit more sleep, right when one of their phones rang. She groaned, opened her eyes wider, realizing it was her phone. As she reached over to answer it, Simon snagged her around the middle and pulled her closer.

“You could just spend the day here.”

She laughed. “Wouldn’t that be nice,” she muttered. “On the other hand, if somebody is calling me—”

“Yeah,” he winced. “It means somebody is dead.” And, with that, he let her go.

She reached for her phone and read the Caller ID. “Reese, what’s up?” she asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

“Looks like another beating victim.”

“What?” she asked, bolting upright. “When did this happen?”

“The body just washed up. The coroner is down there right now, and word came back to me that we’re supposed to call you in for it.”

“Meaning Smidge has probably noted something about it. I’ve got to go.”

“Exactly,” she said in relief. “He wasn’t very pleasant about it.”

She laughed. “No, he wouldn’t be.”

“You okay with that?”

“Yeah, I get him just fine,” she replied. She ended the call, rolled out of bed and into clothing almost as fast. By the time she was dressed and out in the kitchen, Simon called out his goodbye. She called back a goodbye to him and moments later was downstairs and heading for her car.

It took another ten minutes on the empty roads to get to the crime scene.

She pulled off to the side, next to where the aquabus normally docked.

She parked her vehicle on the sidewalk, so she was out of the way of the emergency vehicles.

As she walked closer, Dr. Smidge looked over at her and glared.

She nodded as she approached. “Yep, seems we’ve got something ugly happening.” She added, “We found three other cases similar to your two.”

“Fuck.” He stared at her, his hands on his hips. “Where’s the crime scene?”

“One in Coquitlam, one in West Vancouver, one in Burnaby.”

He shook his head. “So not mine.”

“Not yours, not yet anyway, but”—she looked down at their current victim—“if this is the same thing, this makes number two for us, and the list is escalating.”

He nodded. “It looks to be number two for me,” he confirmed, “and that just pisses me off.”

“You and me both,” she noted glumly, as she stared down at the victim’s facial features, barely recognizable. “I don’t understand what our killer gets from this.”

“The same thing they all get,” Smidge grumped. “Power.”

“That’s what I was thinking too. Power, control, some return to whatever sense of control he needs,” she muttered, as she stared down at the body.

Then she frowned at the coroner. “I’ll need that autopsy soon.

” He just glared at her, and she nodded.

“Glare all you want,” she said cheerfully, “but I can’t do shit until I get your report. ”

He groaned. “I know. I was just hoping you wouldn’t keep me quite so busy in the meantime.”

“I was hoping that too,” she muttered, “because this one… Shit, what am I saying? They’re all ugly as fuck.”

“No,” he countered. “This one will be more than ugly.” He pointed at the body. “I’m not sure what defines one versus another and what degree makes it worse, but I’m not liking anything about this one at all.”

“No, I’m not either,” she muttered. “Age, name, date, anything?”

“No ID,” he replied, looking back down at his victim. “Male, I would say forties, maybe fifties, I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m not too sure on that point yet, but I’ll find out.”

“We should get an ID fairly quickly,” she noted, sorrow in her tone.

“Unfortunately somebody is probably already missing him, and, if the pattern holds, he’ll be a businessman, workaholic, who kept to himself.

” Smidge raised his eyebrows. Kate nodded.

“They’re all mild-mannered businessmen. No fighting, no martial arts, no fitness buffs to be sure. ”

“So, easy targets,” Smidge muttered to himself, as he looked down at the body.

“And obviously,” she added, “no fair fight for whoever is doing this.”

“Yeah, our killer doesn’t want competition. He just wants to win.”

“And yet these are easy wins,” she stated pointedly. “There’s no build-up here, no challenge. What happens when he figures he needs a bigger challenge?”

Smidge frowned at her. “It means more victims,” he noted, as he pointed at the victim by his feet. “I’ll take this one back and get to work on it now. I’ll do my job…” He looked over at her.

She nodded. “Then I’ll do mine.”

“Promise me,” he began, frustration in his tone. “I really don’t like being dragged out at this time of night.”

“Neither do I.” She sighed. “So, let’s do what we can and get this asshole off the street.”

“Too late,” Smidge noted. “I think he’s tucked in for a nice long visit.”

Unfortunately she was pretty sure Smidge was right.

She hung around until the body was removed, and then, with the help of several cops, questioned onlookers and the person who found the body.

Afterward she approached a crowd of curious people still hanging around and talked to them.

Several of them moved away as she neared, but she was more concerned about a certain criminal who just stood around and watched, sometimes even getting involved in the actual investigations.

It was apparently more fun for them that way.

As she joined the first two men still standing here, she asked, “Have you ever seen him before?” Both men shook their heads.

“Another drowning?” asked one man, staring down at the black water. “That is not how I would choose to go.”

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” the other one agreed, with a shudder. “I don’t even swim, so no way you would catch me over there.”

“I do swim, and you still would never catch me over there either,” added his buddy.

They both worked close by and were just coming off the night shift in the commercial district. She got their names and let them go on their merry way, once again reminded how life and death can change in a heartbeat.

As she walked over to a lone man standing off to the side, he looked at her and said, “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t say you did,” she replied.

“So why are you talking to everybody?”

She smiled. “It’s standard practice. For all I know, you knew this guy.”

“No, I sure didn’t,” he stated, with feeling. “But it’s got to suck to hate your life so much that you’re willing to throw it all away—and worse in a place like this.”

“If he committed suicide, I’m not sure that this is any better or any worse than any other place,” she murmured. “And, with the currents around here, I would think that he would still end up here no matter where he went in.”

“I don’t know about that,” he countered, staring out at the black and angry sea. “It still sucks.” With that, he turned and walked off. She called out to him to try to talk to him some more, but he quickly disappeared.

She knew that he would be on the cameras, so that wasn’t necessarily an issue.

His demeanor was interesting, not so much that she was afraid he was suicidal himself but that something was off about him.

Making note of it, she quickly moved on, and by the time she was done with the next few bystanders, the first responder vehicles were all dispersing, and so was the crowd.

She joined Rodney, who was on his cell phone. “Texting your girl already?” she asked.

“Nope,” he declared, “but I did catch images of everybody standing around though.”

“Good.” She nodded. “I want to talk again to that last guy in particular, who wasn’t all that excited about seeing me.”

“Yeah, I saw that one,” Rodney said. “He’d been here for a while too. You think he’s involved?”

“I don’t know whether he is or he isn’t,” she acknowledged. “I just know that he was… odd.”

Rodney nodded. “It’s a great world we live in when somebody doesn’t say the things we expect them to say, and, all of a sudden, we consider them odd.”

She smiled. “Sounds like you didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

“Nope, I sure didn’t,” he agreed, a yawn escaping. “Rough night.” He looked over at her. “You?”

“Mine was okay,” she murmured. “We brought in food last night, and I ate a ton.”

He laughed. “When did you not bring in food? You’re just lucky he’s wealthy and can do it all the time.”

She frowned at that comment several times throughout the morning, as they processed all the reports and interviews coming in, even as she waited to hear from Smidge. She was just heading off to grab some food for lunch when she got a phone call from him.

“It’s the same,” Smidge greeted her, his tone bitter.

“Blunt force trauma to the head, multiple blows, and over multiple days from the looks of it. The most recent hits—though I hesitate to guess—were probably about two days ago, so that’s how long he’s been dead.

Some of the wounds are still pretty fresh, so it might even be within a twenty-four-hour window. ”

“In other words, he’s escalating.”

Silence came from the other end. Then Smidge groaned. “Yeah, that would be my take on it.”

“ Great ,” she muttered. “Thanks for the heads-up.” She ended the call and turned to look at the others. “This one hasn’t been dead as long, and the body was found faster. We don’t know whether that was deliberate or not, but Smidge puts the death between twenty-four to forty-eight hours ago.”

Just as Kate finished, Reese walked into the room.

“And I may have an ID on our victim,” she interjected.

“I have a John Hobert who went missing after work two days ago. The family contacted the police and got the standard response that maybe he left on his own and maybe the family should wait and see, before filing a report. Sounds as if they were about to post a missing person’s report. ”

At that, Kate walked over and took a look at the photo she had with her. “Where did you get the picture?” she asked.

“His driver’s license.”