Simon Says… Jump E-Book

Mayer Dale

• Herausgeber: Valley Publishing Ltd.
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Simon Says... Jump, book 2 in a brand new thriller series by USA Today bestseller author Dale Mayer.

Detective Kate Morgan has settled into her position and, although straining under her new caseload, is working hard. Simon is still a big question mark in her world—and his “gift” even more so. Dealing with a frustrating series of drive-by shootings has brought a three-year-old drive-by case to the forefront …

Simon had hoped that his visions would have stopped, especially now that the police had solved the pedophile murders. No such luck. But these new visions are confusing, chaotic, and nonsensical. Unwilling to share yet more disjointed and meaningless information with Kate, he keeps it to himself. Until he sees a pattern and connects to a woman, … one who is suicidal.

While Kate understands his physical and mental torment, she’s underwhelmed by the lack of detail in his latest visions—until she looks into another issue and finds out that the number of suicides are higher than normal, as in way higher …

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Books in This Series

About This Book

A Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse into Dale Mayer’s Simon Says Series

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Excerpt from Simon Says… Ride

Author’s Note

Complimentary Download

About the Author

Copyright Page

Books in This Series

The Kate Morgan Series

Simon Says… Hide, Book 1

Simon Says… Jump, Book 2

Simon Says… Ride, Book 3

Simon Says… Scream, Book 4

About This Book

Introducing a new thriller series that keeps you guessing and on your toes through every twist and unexpected turn….

USA Today Best-Selling Author Dale Mayer does it again in this mind-blowing thriller series.

The unlikely team of Detective Kate Morgan and Simon St. Laurant, an unwilling psychic, marries all the unpredictable and passionate elements of Mayer’s work that readers have come to love and crave.

Detective Kate Morgan has settled into her position and, although straining under her new caseload, is working hard. Simon is still a big question mark in her world—and his “gift” even more so. Dealing with a frustrating series of drive-by shootings has brought a three-year-old drive-by case to the forefront …

Simon had hoped that his visions would have stopped, especially now that the police had solved the pedophile murders. No such luck. But these new visions are confusing, chaotic, and nonsensical. Unwilling to share yet more disjointed and meaningless information with Kate, he keeps it to himself. Until he sees a pattern and connects to a woman, … one who is suicidal.

While Kate understands his physical and mental torment, she’s underwhelmed by the lack of detail in his latest visions—until she looks into another issue and finds out that the number of suicides are higher than normal, as in way higher …

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A Behind-the-Scenes Glimpseinto Dale Mayer’s Simon Says Series

With this new Simon Says series, it seems some background information from me, the author, might be in order. For one, Vancouver is a city where I have many happy memories of my decade-plus years growing up there. As an army brat, I spent most of my childhood years in Vancouver, as I ventured into adulthood. For all the good memories I do have, several are not so good. That’s partly what brought this series to light.

The city of Vancouver, like all big cities, has the wonderful surface layer that hides a dark underbelly. The contrast between dark and light has always interested me. I write on both sides of this coin constantly. The good against the bad, the light of day against the dark of night. The positive versus the negative. The funny compared to the dark. Laughter paired with suspense. It keeps me happy and the words flowing.

I was at a conference with several friends years ago, and I mentioned I wanted to do a new thriller series. The ideas easily flowed forth—which they do naturally with me anyway. But this time, my two main characters, Kate and Simon, fully popped into my mind, both the physical appearance of both as well as their personalities. I didn’t touch the concept for another full year, until I sat down and wrote the first book, Simon Says … Hide. Then self-doubt hit, and I pushed it aside, ignoring it for another year. But Kate hammered away at me inside my head, wanting more page time, so I sat down to write the next four books of this Simon Says series.

Writing fiction, particularly crime fiction, presents its own challenges, especially when you marry that with the fiction license—joining reality with imagination. Meaning, I did my best to line up truth and facts and yet kept my license to create needed bits of information to ensure that the story worked. Remember. These are stories. They are not real cases, not real people, nor real events. In fact, given urban density, at the time you read this story and the others in this Simon Says series, the Vancouver street names, traffic patterns, and even beaches and community neighborhoods could well have changed.

I do thank the Vancouver Police Department for their patience in answering my multitude of questions throughout the writing of this series. They were very helpful in sorting out the divisions between the various community and law enforcement groups that work together to protect and to serve and to keep safe Vancouver and all the neighboring cities.

Remember. All these people, places, events are fictional, creations of my mind. I wrote these stories for entertainment purposes only.

Enjoy!

Dale Mayer, Author of the Simon Says Series

Chapter 1

Vancouver, BC; Third Monday in July

Detective Kate Morgan, a homicide detective for just over four months of her thirty-two years of life, walked slowly across the Lions Gate Bridge—officially known as First Narrows Bridge. Parked off to the side were several cruisers, their lights flashing in the gloomy light. It was not quite morning, and vestiges of the night still clouded the air around her. But the pair of ladies’ white three-inch-heeled pumps, placed carefully at the side of the railing of the bridge, shone with an eerie glow.

It was a well-known fact that suicide victims who jumped off bridges often took off their shoes, placing them to the side, as if shoes couldn’t get wet. But nobody thought about their coats or anything else. Sometimes they left purses, keys, or wallets, anything to identify that they’d gone over the bridge, in an effort to help find closure for families and friends, if the body never surfaced.

As Kate walked toward the group of police officers, standing and talking in a huddle, one turned to look at her and nodded. “Good morning, Detective.”

“Morning, Slater,” she murmured, recognizing the officer from her earlier department, her gaze still on the woman’s pumps. “Did we find the body?”

He nodded. “The divers are bringing her out now.”

Kate stepped closer to the railing and looked over. “If she’d been any closer to the park, she would have hit the rocks first.”

“Right,” he said. “Most of them jump from the middle of the bridge.”

Kate looked out and saw that they were not much farther than the lions mounted on either side of the bridge, heading toward West Vancouver. “Depending on the force of her fall, she might easily have hit the rocks, just under the surface,” she murmured.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

“Any identification left with the shoes?”

“Not that we know of.”

Kate nodded. “Sure seems to be an awful lot of jumpers already.” She had done a quick search a few days ago, and the stats had stuck with her.

“This year has been pretty tough on everybody.”

“I know, but we’ve had what? A fifty percent increase in jumpers from last year?”

Two men nodded. “A lot of businesses went under, and people are suffering financially, not to mention the mental health aspect.”

She sighed. “And there’s never enough we can do for them either.”

“Were you called in on this?”

“No, I heard it on the news. I was already close by.”

“Ah, that explains it. I’m surprised to see you here so fast.”

She waited until everything was dealt with as much as they could on scene, while they waited on the coroner. At that point, she walked back to where she had parked up the hill. Not very many places to get out of the way of the normal heavy traffic, but she’d parked on a service road. She would have to go across the bridge in order to get back where she needed to go. But that was all right; it wasn’t a very long turnaround.

She quickly drove across the bridge and turned around to head back into Vancouver. Instead of going to the office, she headed to False Creek area, to a small harbor café that should be open by now. She parked, got out, and walked, the brisk air hitting her senses, the saltwater breeze lifting her hair. She watched as the sun rose, its light shining on the city she loved so much.

Picking up a coffee, she found a bench and sat. She had a morose feeling inside, once again confronted with the realization of just how many people willingly took their own lives because they felt that was better than any other option, unable to see a way out of whatever hell they were in. It made her sad, but it also made her angry.

She’d never gotten to that point herself, but she’d gotten close, and she certainly could understand it. As she sat here, she recognized a man’s voice behind her, ordering coffee at the counter. She waited, knowing that he would come in her direction.

Finally he stepped up beside her. “May I sit?”

She nodded with a half smile. “Why not?”

“I haven’t seen you in a few days.”

“It’s been busy,” she said, with a wave of her hand.

“Why are you here so early now?” Simon St. Laurant asked.

“Why are you?” she replied, her eyes going wide.

He smiled. “Deflecting a question with a question, huh?”

“Are you a lawyer now?”

“No, God help me,” he said. “That would not be what I would choose to do. Not in this lifetime.”

“Neither would I,” she said. “In some ways it was simpler in the olden days. Guilty was guilty, and they were swiftly handled,” she said, shaking her head. “Now the lawyers get in on it, delaying justice, and criminals carry on with their lives, without ever being punished, filing one appeal after another.”

“It doesn’t sound like you have much faith in the judiciary system.”

“Oh, I have a lot of faith in it,” she said. “It’s the process that I struggle with sometimes.”

He nodded slowly. “It’s got to be frustrating when you keep taking bad guys off the streets, only to see them there again, free to commit more crimes. Then it’s up to you to go back out and hunt them down once more.”

She looked over at this man, someone she was struggling to keep at arm’s length. But the more she tried to do that, the less it worked. After all, she’d found her way to his corner of the world, hadn’t she? As if her body had a mind of its own. She sipped her coffee and studied him over the rim of her cup. “Why are you up so early?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. He spread his arms along the back of the bench, studying her. “Why are you?”

She shrugged. “I was awake already and heard news on the scanner about a jumper.”

He winced. “That’s always tough, isn’t it?” Then his gaze sharpened. “But you’re a homicide detective,” he said. “So surely suicides don’t come under your domain.”

“All unattended deaths are investigated.”

“So you just follow police scanners for fun? Don’t have enough cases now, so you have to go find new ones?”

She laughed.

“You’re just not ready to tell me.”

She shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. I guess I’m wondering if there’s anything to be done for the mental health problems we have in town,” she murmured, giving him a partial answer.

He looked over at her, then reached a hand across to cover one of hers. “You know that you can’t help everyone, right?”

“Wasn’t planning on it. Yet I care about a lot of things,” she said, “and kids are number one.”

“Missing kids, you mean.”

She glared at him. She still couldn’t believe she had opened up enough to tell him about Timmy. Then, given Simon’s history, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“That’s better,” he said, with a nod. “I was wondering what was going on that made you look so maudlin.”

“I wasn’t,” she protested.

“Were too.”

“Was not,” she snapped back. He left it at that. After a moment, her shoulders eased. He was right. “I guess just seeing another jumper …” she said. “I mean, it’s like there’s one every day right now.”

He looked startled at that. “Is it really that high?”

“Not quite. If I were to count all the bridges on the Lower Mainland, it’s especially bad,” she said. “It seems much higher than normal.”

“Well, last year was bad overall, and this year has been a pretty ugly one so far too.”

“I know,” she said, “and I get that people are losing their loved ones, their businesses, their homes, plus their families are breaking up. We didn’t even need the pandemic for all that to happen, yet just so much else is going on all the time. The pressures of today’s world are immense, and handling it all seems to be a special skill set that a lot of people don’t have. And, all too often, I think drugs and other enabling issues help bring it all down too.”

He shrugged. “And again, there’s only so much you can do.”

“I know,” she said. “A whim sent me down there. I hadn’t been there at that wee hour of the morning in a long time.”

“Why would you ever be in that area at that hour?” he asked in surprise.

“When I was a teenager,” she said, “sometimes I would go sit on the bridge.” He sat back and stared. It wasn’t hard to understand what he was thinking … She shrugged. “I never really considered suicide,” she said, “but I did know several people who had completed the job, and it always shook me to realize that death was the best answer they saw. I’d sit there and ponder what the attraction was. That water is cold, dark, and often rough. What a way to go.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know because I haven’t told you. I haven’t told you much,” she said, with a shrug. “It’s not like we know each other.”

He snorted at that. “Knowing each other requires taking time to be with each other.”

“You mean, not just screwing like minks when we’re together?”

“Well, okay, that’s pretty damn nice too,” he said. “But getting to know each other, that’s a process that takes time.”

“Well,” she said, “it’s also a process that requires I open up a little bit—and you too.”

At that, his lips turned down, and she nodded. “Right,” she said, “not exactly your style either.”

He frowned. “Maybe,” he said, then turned the subject away from him. “Was there anything different about this suicide scenario?”

“No, not really,” Kate said. “She was pretty close to the shore and got caught up in some driftwood. So, instead of floating past or sinking, she was held right there for the divers.”

“At least her family will get some closure and can lay her to rest,” he said.

“True, yet it still makes me angry.”

“Except anger isn’t the emotion I’m seeing on you right now,” he said. “It’s more what I would call defeated. As in, already too emotionally involved.”

She shook her head. “I’m definitely not,” she said, with half a smile. “But maybe weary. I just turned in all the reports and follow-ups on the pedophile case, which was a long and difficult case.”

“You solved it pretty damn fast, considering.”

“It should have been solved a long time ago,” she said, staring off into the distance. “So many more victims because it wasn’t.”

“And again, not your fault. You weren’t even a detective then. What’s it been? Four months now?”

She nodded slowly. “Four and a half.”

“Well, you’ve already shaken things up in the department and earned a commendation for having done so well.”

“Yeah, and I appreciate that,” she said, “but I wish instead that the kids had been helped.”

“Don’t we all,” he said heavily.

She smiled at him. “See? You’re no better.”

“Hey, you’re the one who’s making me depressed this morning.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m heading off to work anyway.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

“I did,” she said, “but it was a …” She shrugged. “It was a rough night.”

He frowned, as she got up and walked away. “You could say goodbye, you know.”

She reached up a hand and, without turning around, called out, “Bye.”

She walked to her vehicle and then drove on to the station. She needed to shake off this funky mood, but just something bothered her about the last case and the final paperwork she’d had to hand in. The court cases would go on forever, since they had unearthed so many perverts who were involved in the pedophile ring. That was the good thing. It was a good thing, yet, at the same time, it was difficult because none of the bodies had been that of Kate’s long-missing brother. And even though Simon St. Laurant, a reluctant psychic, whose abilities had just blossomed in this thirty-seven-year-old developer and philanthropist, had mentioned the name Timothy from his visions, it had been a different child.

There had never been any other mention of her brother Timmy, who had gone missing so many years ago from the schoolyard. He’d been supposedly under her care—though she herself was only seven at the time. Still, her mother had blamed Kate for the rest of her life, and it was just one of those things that Kate didn’t shake off easily. Having this last case involve a child with the same name had opened old wounds. She could ask Simon if he had any information on her brother, but could she accept whatever he might say? She struggled to understand and to believe the little he’d offered on the case as it was.

As she walked into the station and headed to her desk, Andy was already there, and he looked up in surprise.

“Wow, you’re early.”

“So are you,” she said, noting his usual overly coiffed hair and well-dressed self did not seem so pristine today. Was that mustard—or egg—on his tie? “Shouldn’t you be dragging your ass in here late, after a wild date?” As far as she knew, he hadn’t changed his ways, still in the hump-and-dump stage of adjusting to divorce—where his wife chose his best friend instead.

He shrugged. “Bad night.”

“Ditto,” she said.

He looked over at her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s just finishing up all that paperwork on the pedophiles, and … you know.” She shrugged.

“I’m sorry that you never found your missing kid brother in all of this.”

“Me too,” she said. “One day.”

“That’s got to be tough. All you can do is keep looking.”

“Of course,” she said, “but it does give me a certain empathy for the families in similar cases. I know what it’s like to not have answers. I know what it’s like to be looking for that closure that never comes.”

“Still not a healthy way to go through life, always looking for a ghost.”

Well, that was a conversation stopper if there ever was one. He turned back to his work; she got up, grabbed a coffee cup, surprised to see a mostly full pot sitting there, just waiting to be consumed. Deciding that maybe she should be nice, she grabbed another cup and brought Andy one at the same time.

He looked at her, surprised, a smile breaking across his face. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said. She sat down at her desk. “How many open cases do we even have right now?”

“Six, I think,” he said.

She nodded. “Hopefully most of those will go by the wayside pretty quickly.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said.

She looked over at him, seeing the fatigue ravaging his face. “How are you doing?”

He looked up, saw that she meant it, then shrugged and said, “Well, I’m working on getting time with my kids now,” he said. “I’m starting to find a pathway forward. It’s tough though.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t imagine.”

“Yeah, I had no idea, but suddenly it becomes your reality, and it doesn’t matter if you’re prepared or not because it’s up to you to start dealing with it. And I am the parent supposedly.”

She nodded slowly and said, “As long as you are dealing with it, you’re moving forward—toward something better.”

He nodded with a smile. “The kids miss me,” he said, “and I miss them, so it was really nice to see them this last weekend.”

“Did you have them for the whole weekend?”

He laughed. “Yeah, we spent a lot of time at Stanley Park area. Second Beach has always been one of their favorite places to go.”

“Good,” she said in delight. “That’s a great place for kids.”

He nodded. “It was nice. Like I said, it’s progress.”

She nodded slowly and returned to her files. Her email was overflowing as usual, but she dove in and soon got through it. Toward the bottom was one with a picture. She opened it up and froze. It was a picture of her standing at the bridge before dawn today, just staring at the shoes. Under her breath, she whispered, “What the hell?”

“What have you got?” Andy asked from behind her.

She twisted her monitor slightly and said, “An email with a creepy picture.”

He got up, walked over, and said, “What the hell is that?”

She sighed. “I couldn’t sleep this morning. I heard on the scanner about a jumper on Lions Gate Bridge, so I headed down to the spot.”

He looked at her in surprise, but she shrugged and said, “I’ve spent more than a few days sitting there myself.”

“Ouch,” he said. “We need to talk.”

She laughed. “Really?” she said. “Are you really saying that to me now, with you dealing with your divorce by hooking up with nameless women nightly?”

He winced at that. “Okay, so I’ve been a mess lately. I get it, but I haven’t been suicidal.”

“There are a lot of ways of killing yourself,” she said, with an arched eyebrow.

“Yeah,” he said, “okay, but back to you. So you went down there and then what?”

“I talked to the cops. While I was there, the divers were bringing up the body.”

“And she left her shoes there?” He tapped the picture on his monitor. “I’ve always wondered about that. Why do they leave their shoes? I mean, if she’s got on a good pair of shoes, doesn’t she have on a beautiful dress to match? Why don’t they take that off? Do they take off their jewelry? No,” he said. “It’s like the shoes have some weird significance.”

“I know. But speaking of weird significance,” she said, pointing at the picture, “why is somebody taking a picture of me standing there? And then sending it to me?”

He sat back, studied it, then her. “Just because I gotta ask, were you doing anything wrong being there?”

She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t so much curious as solemn and maybe more than a little disturbed by the harsh increase we’ve had in suicides this last year.”

“Right, I noticed the numbers have gone up.” He shook his head at that. “I mean, it is a little macabre that you go down to the spot, but it is what we do.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And, at the same time, it was like a visit to a place that I had been to before but will never go back to again. At least I hope not.”

“But you never tried to jump, right?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I never did. I wasn’t really suicidal but knew several who had jumped.”

“So why do you think this guy took a picture of you?”

“Not only did he take a picture of me,” she said, “but he then emailed it to me. And it’s my work email.”

“The address isn’t all that hard to figure out,” Andy pointed out. “If a person had any dealings with the department before, all the email addresses are in a pretty standard format.”

She nodded. “And I get that, but why? Why does anybody care enough to send it to me and to let me know that I was seen?”

“That’s why I was asking if you had any reason not to be there.”

She shrugged. “Not that I know off. Did I break some rule? Is a homicide detective not allowed to go to another scene like that?”

“No, no rules like that,” he said, “not that anybody would care if there were.”

“Well, that’s what I thought. But obviously somebody seems to think differently.”

“No message?”

She shook her head.

“What email address did it come from?”

“Jumpers.com,” she snapped. “[email protected].”

He looked at her and said, “Please tell me that’s not a real group.”

She said, “I just checked, and it’s not. It comes up as a blank website, but, hey, it’s full of ads for building a website, if I want.”

“Well, thank God for that,” he said. “So, a joke maybe? I don’t know.”

“Maybe somebody related to another case?” she suggested. “Maybe one of the pedophiles?” she added. “Like somebody who is absolutely certain we must have fixed the case and their poor little Johnny is being framed?”

“You know what people are like,” he said, shaking his head. “There will always be family members who can’t believe that somebody in their family did something wrong.”

“I know,” she said heavily. She frowned. “Well, I’ll just park it off to the side and see if anything else happens.”

“You need to tell Colby and the others.”

She looked at Andy in surprise. She hadn’t considered the need to tell her sergeant, but maybe keeping Colby in the loop could be helpful. But more likely not. “Why?”

“Just in case,” he said. “That’s just smart.”

She shrugged and agreed; then she never thought anymore about it, until after the team meeting. While Kate still wrote down notes of everything they had to work on today, Andy spoke up. “Everyone, Kate has something to say.”

She looked at Andy in surprise. “I do?”

He nodded and said, “That email.”

“What email?” Colby asked Andy, then turned to Kate.

She wrinkled up her face and said, “Oh.”

“You would like to ignore it,” Andy said, with emphasis, as he rolled his eyes, “but I don’t think it’s something we ought to forget.”

Colby turned toward her. “Kate, what’s up?”

“I got an email this morning,” she said, “with a picture of me that goes back to about an hour and a half before that email.”

Everybody immediately stood around her, and she brought up the email on her phone.

They said, “What the hell is that? You were standing at the bridge?”

She nodded. “I had a really shitty night’s sleep. I woke up early and was sick of tossing and turning. Then I heard on the scanner that a jumper went off the bridge, so, for whatever reason, I went down there to take a look.”

At that, she felt several of them stiffening around her.

“So, as a matter of full disclosure, way back when at one point in my life, I spent a lot of time myself on that bridge. No, I never jumped, and, no, I don’t think I ever seriously considered jumping, but I knew several who had jumped. I never saw anybody commit suicide there, but, because I’d spent quite a bit of time there myself, the whole scene drew me.

“As I walked over, I noticed a beautiful pair of white shiny women’s pumps sitting there, carefully placed off to the side. Already several cruisers were there. I talked to an officer briefly for a few minutes and was told the body had already been found, and they were bringing her up. At that point, I headed back to my car and drove down to False Creek and had a coffee, watching the city wake up.”

There were a couple not-so-hidden smirks at that.

She ignored them. “From there I came into the office, chatted with Andy, checked my email, and this popped up.”

“So somebody saw you there and thought enough to take a picture of it and email it to you?” Colby asked.

“Yes,” she said. “What I don’t know is why they would think that I would care or what the message could possibly be behind it.”

Colby stepped forward, looked at it, and said, “That makes you wonder.”

“I know. Presumably there’s a meaning behind it,” she said. “But honestly I don’t know what that could be. Am I supposed to think that this suicide was a crime? Is this a family member, saying, ‘Hey, she didn’t commit suicide.’ Or is this an observer, just saying, ‘Hey, you got nothing else to do with your time, maybe you should check this out.’ Or … who the hell knows.” She raised both hands in frustration. “Like we have time for anything extra.”

“Right,” Andy said behind her. “So bizarre.”

“But then people are bizarre,” she said.

Colby frowned at her. “Keep us informed, if you hear anything else, and watch your back.”

“I always watch my back,” she said calmly. “I don’t think I’m being targeted.”

“Well, I’m not sure what else you would call it,” Rodney said pointedly. “When somebody sends you a picture like that, it means that they’ve gone to the time and the energy to take your photo and then to let you know that they saw you.”

She stared at him. “It sounds a little creepier when you put it that way.”

“It is creepy,” Rodney said. “What was this guy doing out there at that hour anyway? I’m just saying, let’s be smart about it, okay?”

She didn’t have any argument with being smart about it, but it just seemed like everybody was making a bit bigger deal out of it than there was reason to support.

Colby said, “Log in the email and open a file, just in case.”

She groaned and said, “That’s just extra paperwork.”

“Do it,” he said. “No arguments.”

She flipped her hands, palms up. “Fine.” And rose, headed back to her desk, got down to work. After making sure her requested file was complete, she carried on with her day. “Where are the witness statements, from that drive-by shooting down on Hastings Street?”

“They were supposed to come in last night,” Lilliana said. “Did they not?”

Kate shook her head. “I wasn’t tagged on them, and they haven’t been dropped into the file. Let me check,” she said. It took a few minutes for her to shake down the officer out canvassing the neighborhood. “He apologized, said that they’d been out all night with a different case, and hadn’t had a chance to send them to us.”

“So, is he sending them now?”

Kate nodded. “Apparently. They should be in the file within a few minutes.”

“Good enough,” Lilliana said.

“I wonder what other case they had?” Kate asked. “I didn’t get tagged. Did anybody else?”

Everyone shook their heads. Lilliana said, “Maybe check the computer.”

“Well, they get called out on plenty that has nothing to do with us, don’t forget.”

It took about twenty more minutes before they had all the statements that had been collected on the recent drive-by shooting.

“What’s the point of a drive-by anyway?” Kate mused out loud.

“To murder and to get away with it,” Rodney said, glancing over at her. “Hands off, easy escape.”

“I get that, I do, but it’s not very personal. You do get a split-second chance to see who it is you’re shooting down, but there can’t be much job satisfaction in that.”

“You mean, it’s not up-front and personal? Yet it is in a way,” Rodney said. “When you think about it, you get to pick the victim. You get to see the shots fired. There is that sense of power, the sense of control, but, at the same time, you have speed on your side, so you get the hell away safely. And, as you can tell with this one, we haven’t got very much to go on.”

“That’s the other thing I don’t understand. I mean, normally we have cameras everywhere, and, while we’re still lobbying for more cameras for this area, it’s one of the heavier populated downtown streets. So we know for a fact that witnesses are around somewhere. Witnesses with cell phones. What are the chances of the shooter getting away with this?”

“Good enough to take the risk apparently,” Rodney said. “If you think about it, their getaway vehicle would be ditched in no time, and they would change to something else. So we’ll have a pretty rough time proving that they were the ones involved.”

She frowned at that. “Not if we can pinpoint who was driving on one of the city cameras, particularly in that area. Then, if we can put that vehicle at the scene of the crime, even better.”

He nodded. “And I get that,” he said, “but things never seem to line up quite so nicely. Remember that.”

She winced. “I know. I know,” she said. “We’ve still got one drive-by from a few years ago that we never closed, don’t we?”

“Exactly,” he said. “You never know. This could be the same players though.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Why is that?”

“Both … involved old Chevy trucks,” he said.

She stared at him. “Well, in that case, they could easily be connected.”

“Not necessarily,” Rodney said. “I’m mean, sure it’s a similarity, but it’s not enough. The trucks were different colors. I don’t have any confirmation of what years they were, and we don’t have any ID on the driver from the first one—or for this one, for that matter. If I understand it right, the victim was standing outside, smoking a cigarette.”

“Where was he?”

“He was on the same block as a popular nightclub. So it could have been random, I suppose.”

“Or it could have been targeted.”

“Both possibilities are still on the table right now.”

“But the shots were also well-placed, correct?”

He nodded. “Yes, the victim died at the scene.”

She nodded. “And what about the one before, … the older open case?”

“Same thing,” he said, looking at her in surprise.

She shrugged. “It’s just one more consistency between the two cases, that’s all.”

He frowned. “That’s pretty thin as far as consistency goes, even more than the Chevy.”

“Hey, thin is my middle name,” she said, with a laugh. “Let me go through these statements. I’ll see if anything’s there.”

“Yeah, thin ice maybe. Good luck with that. Most of the statements came from the partiers who were going in or out of the nightclub.”

She nodded. “The thing is, somebody saw something. It’s just a matter of finding out who saw what, and, if they saw what they said they saw.” He blinked at her several times, frowning, but she just waved a hand. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, with a chuckle. “You carry on, and so will I.”

*

After the early morning start, Simon carried on through the downtown area. He had several addresses he needed to look at, to consider for purchase. One was for rehabbing; another was a potential rehab or drop. He wasn’t sure which it would be. The Realtor had tried to tell him that she already had offers coming in, and, if he was interested, he needed to make an offer soon. If that were the case, she shouldn’t have called then because he didn’t do anything under pressure and never just because somebody else told him to.

Breathing deeply of the fresh morning air, he stopped at the first place on Hastings and looked at the surroundings. This area was really up for a lot of renewal, and it was happening, just very slowly. A lot of these buildings needed complete remodels or rebuilds, but the businesses were either older, gone, or at the lower end of what he wanted to be associated with. A sex shop was in the middle of the block and what looked like a pawn shop right beside it, with multiple For Lease signs on other windows.

He frowned at that and studied the huge building that reminded him of the brownstones in England, where they were pinched between two other stone buildings. This one looked to have been built around 1960, and he checked his paperwork to see it was 1965. He nodded to himself. “Everything will have to be redone, from plumbing to electrical and probably even structural.”

He let himself into the building, as the Realtor had told him it was empty. As soon as he saw just how decrepit the structure actually was, he moved swiftly through the place. It was probably 50-50 on costs as to whether this one needed to be dropped or rebuilt as it was. With the property prices in Vancouver skyrocketing in the last five years, the price they were asking for this piece of crap was unbelievable.

He put a question mark beside the listing, but he sure as heck wasn’t in love with it, and he knew, if he decided to take it on, it would strictly be a financial decision and none other. He felt no joy in this building, and trying to restore her would be very expensive. She’d been unloved for a long time, and, although it was unfair to her, he wasn’t sure he needed to take on every building crying out for attention. He would have spent a lot more time and way more money if that had been his agenda.

As he headed toward the next address on his list, he noted it was now midmorning. He’d spent longer at the last building for sale than he’d intended, so something there must have drawn his attention. As he passed a coffee vendor, he stopped, snagged a coffee, and carried on. A bench was just up ahead. As he got closer, he almost stumbled, making him stop and collapse onto the bench with more force than intended, as a number slammed into his brain. The number thirteen.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked out loud. He set his coffee beside him on the bench and rubbed his face.

The coffee vendor raced toward him. “Are you okay, sir?”

He looked over at the young girl with a smile, then nodded and said, “Sorry, I’m fine. I just tripped.”

She looked like she didn’t believe him. “Are you sure you didn’t have a heart attack?”

He winced at that. Did he look so old? “No, I’m fine,” he repeated, then pointed. “You’ve got another customer now.”

She turned, but looked back at him doubtfully, and then headed over to her next customer.

Simon sat here for a long moment, more pissed at what appeared to be happening again than he could have imagined. He had thought the whole psychic thing was done and over with. After all, he had a logical connection to the last case. He had congratulated himself on avoiding his grandmother’s prediction of a one-way street down the psychic pathway because, ever since they’d found the pedophile ring, he’d been sleeping perfectly once again. No nightmares, no more visions of boys, nothing—well, except for that one black-and-white vision. Otherwise awesome. He’d thought it open and shut forever.

As he sat here, trying to regain his equilibrium, all he could do was watch as a series of thirteens slammed into his brain in a repetitive motion—just like when you finished an online game of solitaire, and the cards did a weird little shuffle pattern at the end of it. But, in his case, every card said thirteen.

Not knowing what to do with the information, he did what he always did. He pulled out his phone and texted the number to Kate. And then he laughed because no way she would have any clue what that was all about. Hell, he didn’t either, and that was the problem. She always expected him to have some idea, and, of course, he didn’t. He was hoping this would mean something to her. It often had, but no guarantee that it would this time.

And, of course, bringing her back to mind also brought back their conversation from this morning and had him wondering about her mood. The knowledge that she had wandered that bridge earlier in her life, contemplating the suicides of her friends, had him off-kilter. It just was a bit hard to imagine. She said she’d never gotten that far herself, but to have been there at all said a lot about where her mind-set had been.

It couldn’t have been easy being blamed for the loss of her younger brother, particularly when she’d been only a child herself. But since her mother couldn’t accept any of the responsibility herself, it had been much easier to push it off on her other child. And the fact that Kate got some closure for the families in some of these pedophile cases, yet nothing that had anything to do with her own brother, just made it that much harder. The wounds would still be raw for her. Simon hated that she did so much work for so many other people, but just no justice was out there for her. He hoped that one day there would be, but that could be a long time coming.

When his phone buzzed, and he saw a question mark from her, he just laughed and sent a smiley face and a message. No clue but that’s what came up.

And he carried on. Hopefully she’d come up with her own answer. He had a lot of work to do yet and was tired and getting cold. He raced through the next couple potential buildings for purchase and ended up seeing more than he had planned when the Realtor had reached out and suggested a couple more that he should take a look at. Since he was already here, and his mind was on the work, he went through all of them and then started back home again. He had gotten a bit farther from home then he’d intended to, so he grabbed a cab and got dropped off outside his place. It was almost dinnertime.

By the time Simon entered the lobby, Harry, his usual daytime doorman, smiled broadly at him, until he got a good look at Simon.

“Oh dear,” the doorman said. “Long day?”

“Yeah, long day,” he said, shaking his head. “Some of them are just that way.”

“I hope you picked up a meal for yourself.”

“Nope. I didn’t get that far,” he muttered. “Though I should have.”

“How about I order something in for you?” he said immediately. “You know you can’t keep working like this, if you don’t feed yourself.”

Simon laughed at that because it was one of the arguments he always used against Kate to get her to eat properly. She was always on the go and missing solid meals. The last thing he wanted to do was follow in her footsteps in that regard. Besides, anything from Mama’s place was to die for. He nodded. “The special of the day at Mama’s would be great. If you could bring it up,” he said, “I’ll pay you then, if that works.”

“Not a problem,” Harry said. “We’ve got a fund here for just such emergencies.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Otherwise I can pay you right now.”

“Let me bring it up, and then we’ll know what it actually cost.”

With that, Simon headed upstairs, the rain starting just before he made it home. He threw off his suit and hopped into a hot shower. By the time he came out, dried off, and had redressed in gray slacks and a black turtleneck, he felt 100 percent better. When the doorbell rang, he walked over to his penthouse elevator door, checked the peephole, and opened it to the doorman. “Wow, that was fast, even for you, Harry.”

“That’s Mama for you. The minute she heard it was for you, she was all over it.”

Simon laughed. “What would we do without her?” He checked the tab, then pulled bills from his pocket. “Here’s for the meal and a tip for you and a tip for her.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said respectfully. “I’ll make sure this gets to her.”

“You do that. You know I’ll ask.”

The doorman laughed, knowing full well Simon would do no such thing because they had a mutual trust and respect that didn’t require it.

With that, Harry headed out swiftly.

When the elevator door closed, Simon locked it behind him and took the very large container to the kitchen, where he placed it on the counter and opened it up. Mama always sent far more food than was necessary. He didn’t know if she thought he kept a harem at his place that she had to feed at the same time or if she figured he could at least eat good food two days in a row. Regardless he had to appreciate it because her food was always good home cooking. She was Italian and had married a Mexican man, and the two of them had somehow created a special cuisine between them that worked. Simon didn’t even know what to call it, but it was good. It was hot. It was fresh, and, as always, it went down with joy.

Even hearing that phrase made him want to laugh and to cry at the same time. He’d heard it time and time again. Some Japanese woman was all about joy and finding joy in the day, in your life, even in your possessions, and making a fortune with that.

He looked around and smiled. “Well, I find joy in my location. Does that count?” There was some merit to what he said because he definitely only liked to take on buildings where he found joy in their rehab because it was one of the things that he loved to do. He loved to see something old and broken-down be fixed and brought back up to their former glory again. Or sometimes they just needed to be completely dropped and rebuilt in the same space, but that didn’t give him the same sense of accomplishment as a restoration.

And, as such, he wasn’t too thrilled with three of the buildings he’d looked at today. One of the latter ones held the most promise, but still he wasn’t into getting pushed by the Realtor. As he sat down to his meal, the Realtor called him. He looked at the number and just let it ring. No way he would answer her call and ruin what was no doubt the best meal he’d had in several days.

He wasn’t a bad cook, but he didn’t particularly enjoy cooking if it was just for him—any more than he bothered about eating sometimes if it was just him, which put him in the same category as Kate. Only she didn’t eat because usually she overworked herself to the bone and had no time to eat or no time for a good meal, or she didn’t care because she was already past hunger and looking at the next job on her desk. He’d given her enough shit about it that he pretty well had to make sure he stepped up and looked after himself; otherwise he was being a hypocrite, and she’d be the first to call him on it too. He laughed at that.

When the phone rang a second time, he pushed away the empty plate away, looked at the number, and answered it. “Hey, did you figure out what that number meant?”

“No,” Kate said crossly. “How about a little more explanation?”

“I got nothing,” he said. “It literally was a case of that number damn-near dropping me in my tracks,” he said. “I didn’t like it either because I figured all this woo-woo stuff had gone bye-bye, and I was free and clear.” Hearing the frustration in her voice, he asked, “Where are you?”

“I’m still at the office,” she said. “We had a couple drive-by shooting cases that broke open today but not enough to close them quite yet.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said. “You seem to be busy, as usual.”

“As long as assholes are out there killing each other,” she said, “I won’t run out of work anytime soon.”

“Sorry about that,” he said. “It would be nice to think that they’d take a holiday once in a while to give you a bit of a break when you’re tired.”

“Nah, if they thought I was tired,” she said, “they’d be in there looking to do some serious damage to everybody they hated.”

“Unfortunately that is quite true.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I was just checking to see if you had any clue what that number meant.”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “I’m tossing that on your plate.”

“Great,” she said, “the least you can do is make it a useful toss.”

“Always,” he said. “There’s got to be something you can do with it.”

“Not yet,” she said, “not yet.” And, with that, she hung up, as was her custom.

He smiled and looked down at the spaghetti, thinking he should have asked if she’d eaten. He was thinking about calling her back when his phone rang yet again. He groaned and noted it was the Realtor yet again. He answered it and said, “I haven’t made a decision.”