Page 7 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)
T he next morning Kate walked into the office and noted Reese was already there. Kate took one look at her face and muttered, “Ah, crap.”
Reese nodded somberly. “Yeah, in a way it’s Ah, crap , but, in another way maybe not.”
“Why?” Kate asked curiously.
“It just occurred to me that this case was unusual enough that potentially something else could be going on, just beneath the surface.”
“Of course something else is going on,” Kate agreed, rolling her eyes, “but what?”
Reese handed over three files.
“Three more related deaths? Are these beatings too?” Kate looked up to see if Reese was serious.
“Yes,” Reese confirmed. “Three other deaths, all the result of beatings, their bodies dumped. One is out in Coquitlam, another in Burnaby, the third in West Vancouver.”
Kate frowned at that. “They could be completely unrelated.”
“Maybe,” Reese conceded, as she shrugged.
“The cases were reported from different coroners in different jurisdictions, but one similarity remains. They all were beaten to a pulp. None of them had records either. None of them were the type you would expect to be into boxing, street fighting. If you ask me, I would say that makes it all very unusual.”
“Interesting,” Kate murmured, as she thumbed through the files. “We can’t really think somebody is going around, picking up men, and just beating them for no reason though.”
“You and I both know there’ll be a reason,” Reese stated. “I did my job and found these cases. The issue now is whether you can figure it out or not.”
Kate snorted. “Well then, since I’m tasked with the job of figuring it out, I guess I’ll have to try.”
Reese laughed. “See?… That’s why I decided to find these other case files for you.”
“ Great . So how did you come up with that idea?”
“Lilliana suggested it,” Reese shared, with a wry smile for Kate. “Isn’t it great when a team really comes together?”
Kate shrugged. “Yeah, it took a bit,” she added, staring at the files in her hand, “but I’m hoping we’re there.”
“Oh, I think you’re there,” Reese confirmed, “and what one member doesn’t quite get, the others do. So we’re all good.”
“If you say so,” Kate muttered, as she walked over to her desk with these new related files.
Rodney frowned at the folders in her hand and asked, “What are those?”
Kate sighed. “Yeah, that was my reaction to seeing them too.” She hooked a thumb over at Lilliana. “Apparently Lilliana asked Reese if she could find any other similar deaths.”
And Lilliana, her phone in her hand as she was about to call somebody, looked up at the mention of her name, saw the files, and winced. “Sorry. It was a casual comment because we’ve had so many connected murders lately. I figured that you might find some threads to follow with another one.”
“Me?” Kate repeated, raising her hands. “How is this mine?”
“Anything weird, bizarre, and connected to Simon is generally all yours,” Lilliana pointed out, with a laugh.
“ Crap .”
“It is connected to Simon, isn’t it?” Lilliana asked, studying Kate, then raised an eyebrow at Rodney.
“Maybe,” Rodney acknowledged, with a grin.
At that, Colby walked in, took one look at the folders, then frowned.
“Yeah, I know,” Kate muttered, glaring at him. “Not what we wanted.”
“No, we sure as hell don’t,” he confirmed, staring at the folders as if they would blow up in her hands.
“On the other hand,” Kate noted cheerfully, “maybe we can get to the bottom of something here and prevent some crimes.”
“I hope so,” her captain replied, “because lots of other cases need your attention.”
“Oh, I know,” she acknowledged, staring at him. “Lots of other cases and never enough time.”
He nodded at that. “If it doesn’t move, we have to move it along,” he said, his jaw working.
She nodded. “This one is definitely still on the books because we just came from the victim’s office.”
“And seeing his wife,” Rodney added.
“Right, so what did you find?” Colby asked.
Kate shook her head. “We spoke to his daughter while we were there with the wife, and nobody has any idea who, what, why, or anything else.” She dropped the files on her desk and turned to look at her boss.
“I plan to take a little time and see if I can come up with something that connects our victim to this mess,” she shared, frowning at the files Reese had just brought her.
“We searched the victim’s home but found nothing. ”
“Keep at it,” Colby replied, “but then—”
“I know. I know,” she grumbled. “If I don’t find anything soon, I’ll move on to something else, or at least drop the possibility of its being related to these.
And, just so you know, I’m not the one who brought up the idea that it could be connected to other homicides,” she pointed out, with a wave of her hand. “You can blame Lilliana for that.”
Lilliana got off the phone, frowned at her, and asked, “Did you just throw me under the bus?”
“I absolutely did,” Kate admitted, with a smirk. “You’re welcome.”
Lilliana snorted at that. “Yeah, there’ll never be a good time to have this crap happen,” Lilliana muttered.
“No, there isn’t, which is one of the reasons I said that.” Kate then asked her, “What are you working on?”
“A dead child,” Lilliana shared. “I figured I would take this one.”
“Are you sure?” Kate asked, turning to her. “You were part of the last one too.”
“The problem is, we’re all part of all of them,” she stated, “and sometimes we can handle them and sometimes?… Well, they get a little bit harder. I suspect this one doesn’t belong with us, so I wanted to go to bat over it.”
Kate frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The child had multiple health issues, and the police seem to think that the mother killed her daughter in order to bring peace to her.”
“Oh, crap,” Kate muttered. “Yeah, you can have that one. It will be tough no matter how it comes out.”
“Yep,” Lilliana agreed, “because, if she’s guilty, a court of law would have to settle that.
Maybe it’s not related or her daughter just died of natural causes”—she winced and shook her head—“or it could be a result of all her medical treatments, which is another issue entirely. So, it’s pretty much just as you said. It’ll be difficult regardless.”
Kate grabbed a cup of coffee, happy to leave that one to Lilliana, then sat down at her desk to look through the three possibly related files.
The team had worked together long enough for Reese to know that Kate absolutely preferred paper copies.
Then, when she did more research, she always went to digital, which she could search easier on the computer.
But, for the initial reading, she definitely wanted a paper copy in her hand.
And, with that, she settled down to read. It didn’t take long for her to get deeper and deeper into the mess, and she realized just how many similarities there were.
Rodney stopped in front of her. “You’re scowling,” he noted. “So?”
“I’ve gone through all three reports, nothing else,” she replied, turning to him.
“There is definitely a pattern, and definitely something is there, but we need to prove they’re all from the same killer,” she added.
“They occurred in very different jurisdictions, and the victims appeared to be very different, from all walks of life. So, finding common ground that ties them together won’t be easy. ”
He nodded. “I guess I’m not surprised by that either,” he shared, with a headshake. “This shit is never easy.”
She smiled. “On the other hand, we do have to follow up.”
“Yep, we do,” he agreed. “So where do we start?”
She tossed him all three folders. “You could contact all three coroners and confirm we have autopsy reports on all three. We also need to contact the families and see if we have the same issues, such as workaholics or people who aren’t athletic, or if something else was brewing under the surface.”
“You think somebody is targeting people who are pretty defenseless, in a way?” he asked, surprised.
“I’m not sure about that, but let’s just see what kind of people they were and get a feel for what they did with their lives.”
“A lot of that should be in the files already.”
“It should be,” she agreed, “but I didn’t get that far. So that’s where you can start.”
“And what will you do?”
She hesitated, then frowned. “I feel this nudge to talk to my mother.”
“Your mother?” he asked, turning on the spot.
She shrugged. “I know it’s bad timing to do this, but when would it ever be good timing? Plus, she took off, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me. Yet, after I had to deal with Ken recently, I still have that weird sense that maybe my mother and I need to connect more.”
“It’s probably not a good idea, since she continues to blame you for Timmy going missing.”
“I know that,” she muttered, sagging back in place. “I keep going around the bend on it.”
“She left for a reason,” Rodney stated.
Kate’s expression flashed with anger. “You do what you need to do or give me the damn files back, and I’ll do it myself.”
“Why don’t you set up a whiteboard?” he suggested, with an understanding smile, returning the files to her for that project.
“Now that I can do,” she conceded, trying to mask the anger that had come out of nowhere. Yet it would probably always be there, until she found out what happened to Timmy.
Rodney nodded. “Meanwhile, send me the digital copies, and I’ll make some calls to see if we can get any more personal information on these three victims.”
She did that and got up and headed into one of the conference rooms with these paper files to set up a board.
Then they could each post their findings, to help them figure out if they had one killer who had done this to more than one person.
The thought that anybody would want to do this much damage to another human being was mind-boggling, but, typically in this line of work, Kate always found way more shitty stuff than good things.