Page 6 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

A fter talking to Kendra and Sharlene Forbes, the wife and the daughter, Kate and Rodney headed to the workplace of the deceased, Dennison Forbes.

As they approached the main office, they heard voices yelling back and forth, the hustle and bustle of a busy workplace in full swing.

When they walked in, silence fell over the room, as they all turned to look at the newcomers.

Kate nodded and took out her badge. “We’re here about your colleague, Dennison Forbes.” Lots of people winced, and several of the women now wore somber faces.

One of the men came toward Kate at a quick pace. “We can talk in my office. I’m the managing director.”

She and Rodney followed his lead toward his office, and, when he closed the door behind them, he introduced himself. “Alexander Foster. Sorry about the whole lot of them out there. Everybody is pretty upset.”

“They didn’t look upset,” she shared shrewdly. “That seemed to be a celebration, if I’m being honest.”

He winced. “The hard thing about a death,” he explained, “is that, for everybody else, life goes on.” He shook his head and continued.

“For poor Kendra, her world has changed forever. I know Sharlene and Landon are devastated and are looking for answers, but, for everybody else, it’s just another day.

And I don’t mean that to sound so terrible, but that’s the truth of it.

I had to make the decision as to who got Dennison’s position and promoted someone this morning.

What you heard as you walked in was the announcement. ”

“So, who got the promotion?” she asked curiously. “And why?”

He looked at her and flushed. “Rodger worked very closely with Dennison, being his right-hand man, so he was the best choice, the most knowledgeable to take over the workload,” Alexander stated, with a pensive face.

“He is also very dedicated to the company, so it was a no-brainer, and I had no problem giving him the promotion.”

Rodney asked, “And would you have had any problem handing out that promotion if you thought that Dennison might have been murdered?”

He frowned at Rodney and stammered, “Murder? God, no.” He took a moment, then shook his head.

“Jesus frigging Christ, Rodger wouldn’t have had anything to do with it.

Rodger is not… Dennison wasn’t murdered.

Kendra told me that he was found in the water, so,…

nope.” He got up and then sat back down.

“Didn’t he commit suicide?” he asked. “I’ve been wondering if we just pushed him too hard, but he was always the first one here and always the last to leave.

I have to admit, at times, we wondered if his home life was just so sad that he needed to fill his time with work.

In the beginning I thought work was his getaway.

Yet, the more time he spent here, I realized he was just a man who really enjoyed his job. ”

He made it sound as if enjoying his job to that degree was not normal. She looked over at him. “And the person who replaced him?”

“Yeah, Rodger,” he repeated. “I would have absolutely no issues or concerns if you did say Dennison had been murdered. But, thank God, that wasn’t the case.”

“Actually, it was the case,” Rodney declared.

Kate studied Alexander and his reaction closely. The color drained from his face.

“Oh God, no,” he whispered. “Suicide was bad enough, and I…” He winced. “I know that all sounds terrible, and I don’t mean it to, but what the hell? What do you mean, murdered? How? You mean, they drowned him?”

“No, he was beaten up first,” Kate explained, still watching him closely. “He was beaten to a pulp and then thrown in the water.”

“Not alive though, right?”

She turned to Rodney, and her partner shrugged. A curious question on Alexander’s part, she thought, but she answered it readily enough. “No, not alive.”

“Thank God for that,” he said, then flushed. “I’ll have nightmares enough as it is, but I lost a friend in college to drowning, and, ever since,… drowning has always triggered me in a much bigger way.”

Having worked a pretty-ugly case involving several drownings a while back, she could understand. “No, he wasn’t alive when he hit the water. The autopsy found he died from blunt force trauma to the head.”

Hearing that, Alexander sucked back his breath. “Dear God, just hearing you say it that way…”

She nodded. “And yet there is no other way to say it.”

“No, I understand,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been in this situation before. If there’s something I’m supposed to say, or some way I’m supposed to say it, I apologize. I’m probably coming off as completely nuts.”

“Not at all,” Rodney stated. “You’re coming across as authentically shocked.”

“And I am,” Alexander agreed. “I am shocked. Dennison and I weren’t the best of friends in a personal sense, but we weren’t enemies in any way either,” he shared.

“He was one hell of a worker and a good man. Given this office’s scenario, that’s one of the highest tributes I can give anyone.

” He stared around in the direction of the main room outside his office. “It does make it feel even uglier.”

“But does it though?” Rodney asked, with a smile.

“What does that mean?” Alexander retorted, glaring at him.

Kate interjected, “To think that Dennison committed suicide and you promoted his underling right away, now that is ugly. I don’t know what the protocol is here,” she stated in a calm tone, as she focused on him.

“However, it just seems a little quick to me. Particularly if the man was overworking himself to the point that even you felt suicide was the only answer.”

“I just now realize how that’ll look to outsiders,” he admitted. “Damn, I’ve never really been in this situation, so I didn’t have a protocol to follow.”

She didn’t say anything to that, just nodded.

“What can I help you with?” he asked, as he finally seemed to collect his thoughts and looked at the two of them. “Did you want to look at his desk or something?”

“Yes, thank you,” Kate replied. “His desk, his space, his office, his locker. Anything and everything. And we’ll need to talk to a few of his coworkers.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he agreed, as he got awkwardly to his feet. “I’ll make an announcement. Then you can do what you need to do.”

As he stepped out into the larger main room, he called for everyone’s attention. “I’ve just gotten word that Dennison’s passing… wasn’t a suicide. Dennison was murdered.”

Immediately shocked gasps came from various cubicles around the room.

Kate watched their expressions change from shock to horror, as they realized how the unexpected death of their coworker had come about.

Alexander continued. “The police are here, and I’ll give them access to Dennison’s desk.” He turned to a tall youngish man with curly hair. “Rodger, don’t move anything yet.”

Kate stepped forward and clarified, “Leave his office alone for a few days, please.”

“Yes, of course,” Rodger replied. “Do you know how or—?”

She looked at him and stated, “None of the details are being released at this time.”

He just nodded and sank back into his chair. “God,” he muttered. “That’s awful.”

“I gather you knew him very well.”

He looked at her, startled.

Immediately Alexander stepped up. “Look. You can have my office for interviews, if you like. At least that would give you some privacy.”

Kate nodded and motioned for the young man to come to the designated office with her.

She entered first, and they stepped up to the desk.

She asked him several questions about what he was doing for Dennison, when he’d last seen the victim, projects they were working on, but nothing felt out of place.

She interviewed everybody else currently in the office, individually in the manager’s office.

Kate quickly realized that, chances were, nothing would be here.

Still, Kate needed to go through the process anyway.

When she pulled in the woman continually drying her eyes, Kate eyed her intently. “You’re the only one I’ve seen crying so far.”

She nodded. “It’s not that he was hard to work with,” she began, “but he was demanding, and I’ve worked with him for a long time. So, we had found a rhythm in the work,” she muttered. “Now I have to get used to somebody else.”

“And yet that somebody else has already been working with you and Dennison for a long time as well, right? Hasn’t Rodger worked here a while? That’s what Alexander implied.”

“Yes, yes,… he has,” she confirmed, “and I shouldn’t have any problem with that. It’s just change,” she muttered. “Change is hard.”

“It is, indeed,” Rodney interjected, as he leaned into the office and gave Kate a headshake, meaning that he hadn’t seen anything suspect in the office.

After concluding her talk with the crying woman, Kate stood. The woman hurried out of the office as if her life depended on it.

“I guess I’ll take a look at Dennison’s office myself,” she muttered.

“Nothing’s there,” Rodney replied.

“I need to look, just so I have an idea of who this guy was.” As she walked into Dennison’s office, she stopped and winced. Nothing was on the walls, nothing on the desk. The top surface was completely clean. She called Alexander in. “Is this how he would have left his desk?”

He looked around and nodded. “Yes, that was the way he always left it. It was normal for him to confirm everything was spotless before he left from one day to the next.”

“And what about logging in to the computer system for any of the information he needed?” she asked. “We’ll need access.”

He hesitated. After she raised one eyebrow, he nodded. “I’ll get them for you.” And promptly left.

She looked over at Rodney. “Does this Dennison guy just seem a little too… perfect?”

He gave a quirk of his lips. “Maybe, but lots of these numbers people can be OCD.”

“Really?” she asked, with a headshake. “He just seems so…”

“ Perfect ,” he repeated. “Just like you said.”

When Alexander returned, he unlocked Dennison’s computer, standing around to watch.

Kate sat down and went through the history to check on what he’d been doing. Then she went to the browsers and the emails. His inbox was flooded with messages, but everything appeared to be work-oriented. “How long had he worked here?” she asked.

“Seventeen years,” Alexander stated, “and he would have been a lifer.” At that, he winced. “Now that’s a phrase I’ll never use comfortably again.”

She didn’t say anything as she went through all that she could and then finally nodded. “Okay, I think we’re done here for now.” The relief on Alexander’s face was so palpable that she smiled at him. “We really have to cover all our bases.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he noted. “It’s just so stressful, and, as I mentioned, originally I was all torn up, thinking it was the job and that maybe I’d been too hard on him—or maybe something that I just hadn’t seen had happened.

But now to find out that it’s murder? It’s an entirely different thing. The game has changed.”

“It absolutely has changed,” she confirmed, with a narrowing gaze. “And is there any particular reason why you used the term game ?”

“God no,” he said, staring at her. “It’s just the word that came to mind.”

She didn’t say anything, nodding, not sure what anybody would even think about that usage in this context.

By the time she walked out of Dennison’s office, it was clear that the employees were all just waiting.

She felt everybody waiting for them to leave.

As soon as they stepped out of those offices, she looked over at Rodney. “That was fairly tense.”

“Tense and odd,” he agreed, shaking his head. “Did you get the feeling that, while people may have been celebrating the fact that somebody got a promotion, they were likely also celebrating the fact that Dennison was gone?”

“Yes. I got the same impression,” she stated. “And that just pisses me off. Was his life worth so little that, the minute he was out of the picture, they couldn’t think of anything else to do but cheer? Is that all we are to anybody?”

“I hope not,” Rodney replied, “but you know all too well that we’ve seen it, time and time again. People do what suits them.”

“I know,” she muttered, “but I hadn’t really seen such a universally odd reaction in an office environment before.”

“Maybe he was tough to work with, had been here since forever, probably didn’t like change, and most likely didn’t take the time to make friends,” Rodney suggested.

“And that kind tends to cause trouble because they won’t move forward in life.

They stay right where they are because that’s what they know.

They oppose any change or progress, making life difficult for everybody. ”

“Maybe,” she conceded, with a headshake.

“But, Jesus, how would you like to be the bane of everybody’s existence, where everything you’ve done winds up being part and parcel of what you represent, and, instead of earning their respect, they just can’t wait until you’re out of the office for good? That just sucks.”

He nodded. “That would be awful,” he agreed, “and I can’t think of much that would be worse.”

Together they walked back outside and stood in the sunshine for a long moment, contemplating Dennison’s life of nothing but work and the way he ended up.

Kate asked, “How the hell does a meek and mild businessman wind up getting beaten to death and tossed into the harbor?”

Beside her, Rodney sighed. “We don’t know the answers yet, but I can tell you one thing…”

She smiled over at him. “I already know what you’ll say.”

He laughed. “That’s because I learned it from you. We will find out .” And, with that, he walked to the car. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. It’s lunchtime.”