Kate stood outside in the bustle of the downtown area, studying all the buildings, the traffic, and the parking around her. She was at a busy intersection, and people hustled up and down the streets. Vendors were on the corners, with storefront shops on some of the lower levels, and hundreds and hundreds of offices on the upper levels.
Rodney stood at her side and asked, “What are you looking at?”
“What would it take for somebody to actually notice a man kidnapping a woman out here?”
“It depends on what else is going on. It depends on what it would look like too. If she hopped into his vehicle, nobody would care. If he opened the vehicle door and held a gun against her so nobody could see, he’d get her inside without a fuss probably, and again nobody would know. If he came up and surprised her, and she didn’t struggle very much, didn’t cry out, didn’t do anything, nobody would actually know.”
Kate continued. “What will anybody notice? A woman having an argument with a man won’t even cause a fuss out here. Just too much going on, too many people, and nobody wants to be bothered with getting involved. So, even if somebody were having a hard time down here, how much support do you think they would get from the crowd?”
Rodney replied, “If anybody noticed a problem and if they weren’t in a busy rush to get out of here or if they weren’t on a bus or due in a meeting or something else that was keeping their attention focused somewhere else, the bulk of the time she probably would get some help in that scenario. But lots of things gotta line up for that to happen.”
“Not really,” Kate argued. “All you need is just somebody who cares.”
“Maybe, but if you’re the one who notices, you don’t know that she didn’t recognize the guy. You don’t know that this wasn’t the love of her life. Maybe everybody saw them together and smiled, thinking it was a picture of true love.”
Kate nodded. “Right, that’s part of the problem. We don’t know anything about it.” As she walked into the front of the building, she looked around and noted, “High-end.”
“Most of these business offices look high-end,” Rodney agreed. “They’re paying thousands a month in lease rates, so people want it to look like they’re worth a lot of money. That way, when clients come in, they won’t balk at what they charge them.”
“I guess it’s all part of the mirage, isn’t it?”
“Well, I don’t know about mirage,” he stated, with a laugh, “but it’s definitely a part of the image.”
She smiled. “Same thing. Maybe with different connotations though. Mirage makes you think that it’s tenuous, that it may not really exist and could go poof right before your eyes. Whereas image is all about projecting an aura of success and making the people believe.”
“You mean, like projecting, Hey, we can make you a million bucks if you just give us your money?”
“Same diff.” She nodded.
He agreed, “On that you are correct.”
“And it’s just sad,” she added. “So many people come in here, hoping and believing that these people can help them, but so often it’s just a crock.”
“But not always,” Rodney argued. “Some really good solid investment firms are here too.”
“But how do you tell the sharks from the good guys?” she muttered.
“Well, presuming that you’re asking because you have an awful lot of money that you think you need to invest somewhere,” he replied, with a laugh, “I think personal recommendations are often the best bet.”
“And then you and your friend share in the rook,” she replied, with a shrug.
He burst out laughing at that. “I forgot how negative you are.”
“I am negative about a lot of things in life,” she admitted, “but I really don’t want to be that way about everything.”
“The trouble is, once you go down that pathway, it’s hard to not let the taint of it carry over into everything else, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes. Especially when you do the job we’re doing.”
“Which is apparently the job that you always wanted to do.”
“It is,” she admitted.
“Is that because of your brother?”
She sighed. “My brother was a big part of it.” Kate shrugged. “So was being in foster care. Being raised that way, and seeing the crime going on all the time, I found it really hard in school to see people cheating constantly, yet nobody seemed to care. Nobody would ever call them out. Nobody would ever get them in trouble. And, even when they were called out or caught, nobody really punished them. It was like, Oh, well. It was almost like, Too bad you got caught. Cheat a little better next time.”
“I think that’s very prevalent in a lot of schools.” Rodney nodded. “Unfortunately the way of our world these days isn’t about doing it on your own. It’s become more about stepping on somebody else to get what you want.”
“There should be better things in life than just climbing vertically without giving a damn about who you take down in order to make it happen.”
“I don’t think everybody is like that,” Rodney stated. “I’m sure enough are out there to challenge your interpretation.”
She looked over at him. “Do you know anybody you’d invest one hundred thousand with?”
He snorted. “One, I don’t know anybody who deals with that kind of money. Two, I have never even seen that kind of money. And, three, I wouldn’t invest it with somebody else even if I did have that kind of money.”
“What would you do with it?”
“Real estate,” he stated instantly.
At that, she stared at him. “Have you checked out the prices of real estate in Vancouver lately?”
He nodded. “I have a small condo,” he shared. “I was looking to get a house but with the current prices?” He whistled, shaking his head. “It’s out of reach at this point.”
“Yeah, the days of owning your own home went out about twenty years ago.”
“I think it’s been longer than that,” he muttered.
“Right, so how is anybody supposed to get anywhere in life right now?”
“I think it takes family at this point,” he suggested. “I know my parents were talking about giving me a hand with the very hefty down payment required, but I’m not even sure that’s a good idea.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “It sucks, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” he agreed, “when you always wanted to have that perfect little house, picket fence and all that.”
“What about moving up to the valley?”
“If I do,” he replied, “I’d also have to transfer my job out there, so I’m not doing the crazy commute.”
She winced at that. “I get that.” Kate nodded in agreement. “Who the hell wants to spend their life commuting?”
“And there’s just as much crime out there in the valley as is here downtown.”
“Well, I hope not,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Hopefully it depends on where you go. In Burnaby you’ve got an awful lot of gang fights,” she muttered. “I guess the answer is, do what you have to do to suit yourself and your family, and then, if the job doesn’t work out, you can always transfer to get another one.”
“Well, that was a thought, but, so far, I haven’t done anything about it.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m not all that comfortable with everybody else on the team yet. Seems like I’ve only been working with you.”
“And that’s mostly on you,” Rodney noted, “not pulling any punches.”
She glared at him, and he laughed.
“Seriously,” he continued. “You still have a bit of a chip on your shoulder.”
“Do not,” she snapped.
“Do too,” he snapped right back.
She laughed. “See? That’s what I’m used to. Somebody who’ll talk back and put me in my place.”
“And the rest of the team will do that too. You just might not like the way it goes down.”
She agreed. “Well, there’s a way to do it so it doesn’t bite quite so badly or so you don’t feel like they’re taking a lot of joy in it.”
He laughed. “Sometimes taking joy in what you’re doing is very necessary.”
“But not if it hurts other people,” she replied immediately, pulling open the door to the building.
“Excuse me, can we help you?”
Kate turned to look at the nearby security guard at the main entrance. She pulled out her badge and explained where they were going.
He nodded. “That company is on the fourth floor.”
“Good, and we’ll have to go from that site to another,” she noted, then gave the name of the ex-boyfriend.
“Right, he’s on the day trader’s floor.” The security guard stopped, shrugged, and added, “The reception desk is right over there.”
“Good enough.” Kate bypassed reception and walked to the elevators; she glanced back to see the guard staring at her. “Did you get the feeling that he wanted us to sign in before going upstairs?”
“Well, we signed in verbally with security, so that should be enough.”
“I don’t think he thinks it’s enough,” she muttered. “He’s still watching us.”
Rodney nodded. “When the cops come, everybody wants to know what’s up. Remember. No matter what job you’re in, the minute you start bringing in the cops, everybody wants to know why.”
She smiled. “Well, depending on how this works out, I’ll be more than happy to shout it from the treetops.”
He shook his head. “See? Now that—going over the top—is what will get you in trouble.”
“Oh, come on,” she muttered. “Sometimes these assholes need to be taken down a peg or two.”
“Most of them do,” Rodney agreed, “but also remember how that’s not our job.”
“Oh, I remember.” She yawned. “It’s too bad too, by the way.”
He smiled. “I agree, but it doesn’t stop any of it.”
“No, maybe not.”
When they got to the fourth floor, they presented themselves at the front desk. Kate asked to speak to Cherry’s boss.
The woman looked up at her in surprise. “I’m sorry. He’s got meetings all day.”
“It’s important.” Kate flashed her badge again.
The receptionist hesitated.
“You can get him now, or we’ll check every office for him ourselves,” Kate demanded.
At that, the woman immediately shook her head. “No, no, no. … I just—I don’t want to interrupt him.”
“Well, the news I have will interrupt everybody,” Kate noted.
The receptionist frowned. “It’s just that we’re really short on staff.”
“I understand, and I know at least part of why that is, so let’s deal with this, shall we?”
The woman swallowed, then got up from her seat and walked over several office doors. She entered one, closing the door quietly behind her.
Kate turned toward Rodney. “Apparently it’s difficult to even talk to people now.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Just the sight of us is enough to set alarm bells ringing. And, if they’re short-staffed because Cherry didn’t show up for work, people will realize that something’s going on.”
When the door opened again, the woman came out, followed immediately by a tall man with sparse hair and a stern countenance. He approached, held out his hand. “I’m Tom Bergeron. What can I help you with?”
“May we speak privately?” Kate asked immediately.
He hesitated and then nodded. “Sure, come into my office.” Yet he led the way past his desk to a meeting area. When they stepped into the small room, he motioned the detectives toward the chairs. “Take a seat, please, and tell me what this is all about.”
Kate immediately spoke up, identifying their victim as Cherry, and he stared at her in shock.
“She’s dead?”
“Yes,” Rodney confirmed. “The information is being released now, since we’ve contacted the next of kin. So it’s likely to hit the news media very quickly. Therefore, we wanted to let you know what had happened.”
“Good Lord.” He looked shaky. “I can’t believe it.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed his forehead.
She stared at him. “You had a personal relationship with her?” It was a stab in the dark, but she’d spoken from her heart and her instincts. When he turned toward Kate, she saw the shock in his expression, and his gaze darted from one detective to the other, as if he didn’t know what to say.
“Of course you did, and you’re married.” Kate tried hard to trim the disgust in her voice, but it was difficult.
His shoulders sagged, as all the oomph that had been there—when Tom had first opened the conference room door—had walked out. He slid into the seat nearest him. “Yes,” he confirmed. “I was planning on leaving my wife.”
“You mean, that’s what you told Cherry.”
Tom looked at her with a frown and then shook his head. “No, I actually was.”
“Was. But, of course, now you’re not in a position to worry about that, are you?” she asked quietly.
He stared at her, his face blanching. “I would never have done that to her.”
“I wonder.” Kate pulled a pen and a notebook from her pocket to take notes. “I wonder if you actually would leave your wife or whether this was just a very convenient time to break up an affair that obviously wasn’t appropriate at the office.”
He stared at her, his throat working.
“Maybe you should start by telling us where you’ve been for the last week,” Rodney said.
“The last week?” he asked, his voice rising in a squeak.
Rodney nodded carefully. “Yes, we’re working on a time of death, but it’s not been locked down just yet.”
He stared at Rodney first, his gaze going from one to the other. “I was supposed to be at a conference this weekend,” he stated.
“But you didn’t go, right?” Kate asked.
He slowly shook his head. “I didn’t go, no. I stayed here with Cherry instead.”
“Interesting,” she murmured. “And where were you?”
“At her place.”
“Until when?”
“We had a fight Saturday morning,” he admitted. “I left, and I didn’t go back.”
“Where did you go?”
He hesitated, and she just stared at him.
“I took a room in a hotel in another building,” he replied. “I couldn’t go home to my wife without an explanation. I couldn’t go back to Cherry because, well, we were still fighting. So I went to a hotel.”
“What hotel was that?” she asked him flatly. “When did you arrive, and when did you leave? What did you do while you were there?”
“I checked in at noon on Saturday at the Hotel Vancouver. I left Sunday at four, so I could go home, which would be the normal time to return after the conference.”
“And what did you do while you were at the hotel?”
“I sat in my room and drank myself stupid,” he replied in disgust. “I was upset over the entire thing.”
“What was the fight about?”
He hesitated, then admitted, “Whether I would leave my wife or not.”
“So, you’re telling us that you decided you would leave your wife, yet clearly it wasn’t resolved if you were fighting over that very thing. But you don’t have to deal with that whole problem now.”
“I didn’t kill her,” he stated. “You know that, right?”
“What did you do when she didn’t show up for work on Monday?”
“I sent her several texts, asking her to come in. I was hoping she would, but she didn’t answer my phone calls or my texts.”
“Today is Wednesday,” she noted. “Have you had any contact with her since the fight on Saturday morning?”
He immediately shook his head no.
“And what time was it Saturday?”
“We fought very early that morning,” he recalled. “I left about seven in the morning.”
“You said you didn’t check into the Hotel Vancouver until noon. Where were you for those five hours?”
He stared at her, shaking his head. “Surely you don’t think I killed her?”
“It’s looking good right now,” she noted in a suspiciously bland voice.
The sweat built on his forehead, and he immediately dabbed at it again. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. I loved her. I swear.”
“Which is why you had a fight because you obviously hadn’t made the decision that you loved her enough to leave your wife by then.”
“No.” He sighed. “And I will regret that forever.”
As he stared out the window, she could see the visible tremors in his fingers as he played with a pen in his hand. He was trying to regain some semblance of control. He was obviously overwrought, but she didn’t know whether it was because he was afraid he was about to get caught or because he would actually miss the love of his life. “Can you confirm where you were?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Well, I was at her apartment. I left. I didn’t see anybody that Saturday morning,” he added. “I was pretty upset. I stormed out of there. I took the stairs down, went out the back way, got into my vehicle, and I just drove around for a while.”
“For five hours?”
He winced. “No. I sat at the beach, just thinking about what I was supposed to do with my life. It’s a pretty major deal to get a divorce for an office romance. It’s so cliché and so damn common and frankly just messy on many levels. It’s not what I ever expected. I fell in love, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re married, but do you have children as well?” Rodney asked.
Tom looked over at Rodney and slowly nodded. “I do. I have two daughters and a son.” His voice heavy, Tom sagged even farther into his chair. “I’m not proud of what I did,” he admitted, “and I get that you’re probably judging me.”
“We see it all the time,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “Marital vows apparently don’t matter anymore.”
Rodney looked at her sharply, but she ignored him. Her suspect, now skewered in place, twisted in his seat even more. “I get it,” Tom acknowledged. “God.” And he buried his face in his hands.
“Well, now you get to backtrack, don’t you?” she said cheerfully. “I mean, once you explain to your wife the fact that your girlfriend has been murdered, I’m sure she’ll take you back, with no problem.”
He dropped his hands and stared at her. “Murdered?”
“Oh, yes, murdered after being tortured for days.”
The color completely drained from his face. He shook his head. “No. God, no. Please, not her.”
“What was she like?”
His voice trembling, he replied, “She was an angel. She was the most beautiful, heart-warming soul I’ve ever met.”
“And yet somebody hated her. Any idea who?”
He shook his head. “She was very popular with all our clients, very popular at the office. I have no idea.” His voice went hoarse, as he caught tears at the back of his throat. “I need—I need to go home.” He stood.
“Yeah, interesting to see how you explain to your wife why you’re so emotional.”
He stared at her and slowly sank back down on the chair. “Jesus, I can’t tell her.” He looked at them. “Please don’t tell her.”
Kate shrugged. “Should we need to speak to her, just what is it you expect us to say?”
He took several deep breaths, as if trying to hold back a heavy shock.
She watched him with interest, wondering if he’d have a heart attack over this. She was also being on the bitchy side, but she was damn tired of listening to all these men having a little piece on the side, supposedly loving these women, yet leaving both women in their lives stranded in a terrible in-between state. It’s not how Kate would like to have a relationship. Rodney looked over at her with that look again, and she eased back slightly.
“Again, we need to know exactly where you were. So far, we don’t have an explanation for the missing five hours, and, when you left her, did you leave her alone? Did you leave the apartment locked? Did you notice anybody else hanging around, either in the building on the way down or outside in the parking lot?”
He shook his head. “No, I was horribly upset. We’d had a terrible argument, and I raced out of there. I just ran down the stairs, got into my vehicle, and took off. I didn’t see anybody.” He looked at her. “Are you thinking she was killed there?”
“Good question,” Kate noted. “And it’s more than just that. Somebody kept her for a while, so, if we could find her phone, that would help.”
“As far as I know,” he replied heavily, “she had it with her when I left.”
“Well, no sign of it when we found her body.” Kate got up. “We still need an explanation of those five hours.”
He stared at her blankly. “I don’t have one. I literally just drove around, and then I sat at the beach for quite a while and got a coffee from one of the street vendors, just trying to get my head on straight.”
“What was the decision?” she asked.
“I was honest when I told you originally,” he repeated, “that I would leave my wife.”
She nodded. “Any chance your wife knows about this already?”
He shook his head immediately. “Dear God, no.”
She nodded. “Well, I hope not. Maybe you’ll have a chance to make good on it after all.”
“Make good on what?”
She looked at him and replied, “Your vows.”
With that, she turned and walked out. She stopped at the front desk again. “You’ll find out soon enough,” Kate explained, “but your coworker Cherry Blackwell is dead. I need to know what she was like. How her working relationship was with people in the company and with customers.”
Rodney hadn’t come back out with her, so she presumed he was still talking to the boss. Maybe it was a man thing; she didn’t know. She was just damn sick of cheaters.
The woman in front of her gasped in shock. “Oh my God, she was wonderful. She was so easy to work with. What happened to her?”
“She was murdered,” Kate stated bluntly. “You’ll hear about it in the news, I’m sure.”
The woman just stared at her, still shocked, and her bottom lip trembled.
It seemed like, all of a sudden, the word was passed around the office, and suddenly sobs were audible from several areas in the room.
She looked around, then asked the receptionist, “Was anybody here particularly close to her?”
She nodded and, still sniffling, grabbed several tissues from a box on the counter and led Kate to another young woman, sobbing into her hands.
Kate looked at her and identified herself. “I understand you were a good friend?”
The woman sobbed even harder.
Kate grabbed a chair and plunked down in front of her, then said, “I’m sorry, but I do need to ask you some questions.”
Still blubbering, the woman tried to pull herself together and whispered, “I’m so sorry. I tried to call her. I texted her several times, but she didn’t get back to me. I was getting really worried. I did phone her family, asking about her, but they said she was probably fine. And then well …”
“What?” Kate asked.
She shrugged, then continued. “I figured she was mad at me.”
“Why?”
“Because I had told her to break off the romance,” she whispered, looking around in a panic to make sure she wasn’t overheard.
“Ah. Okay, well, I do know about that,” Kate admitted. “Was there anybody else in her life?”
The woman shook her head. “No, it was just Tom, and he was really jealous.”
“Interesting,” Kate replied. “What can you tell me about her?”
“She was beautiful, inside and out,” she whispered, still in tears. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“Did you see anybody here who was interested in her? A client who caused her problems? Anybody in the building?”
She shook her head, then frowned. “Her ex-boyfriend is here in the building. She was quite devastated for a time after they broke up.”
“Did it end badly?”
She shrugged. “Is there ever a good breakup?” she asked, with a wry and teary smile. “It was a problem, but she got over it, and eventually they could at least be in the same elevator when they were going back and forth among the floors here,” she noted. “She seemed to finally let it go.”
“And yet this office relationship came on the heels of that one.”
“Exactly. That’s just what I told her. That’s why she went into it too quickly and without thinking it through … because she was on the rebound.”
“Was she looking at breaking it off?”
She shrugged. “I wanted her to. But she wasn’t really happy with the idea. She didn’t want to be alone.”
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt her or who hated her enough to kill her?”
She started tearing up again, wrapping her arms around her chest and rocking slightly. “No,” she whispered, “she was a really nice person.”
“She didn’t complain about anybody following her? Nobody watching her? Or was she getting strange texts or emails from anybody?”
The woman immediately shook her head. “No, I never heard about anything like that.” Then she asked, “How—how did she d-die?” Kate hesitated, then the woman teared up yet again. “It was bad, wasn’t it?”
Slowly she nodded. “Yes, it was bad. That’s why I’m wondering if anybody suspicious was in her life.”
The other woman sighed. “No. She was really close to her family, but they’d seemed at odds this last bit after they found out about her relationship, you know, with her boss.” She again took a quick look around the office.
“Does anybody here not know about the affair?”
She looked at Kate, horrified, and then she thought about it. “You know what? Probably not. But we all tried to keep it quiet because of his wife. She really is sweet,” she added on a sad note.
“And Cherry’s nice too?”
“Very nice. Oh, gosh, she would never willingly do something like this.”
“I hope not,” Kate replied, with a hard tone.
The woman looked at her and offered, “If there’s anything I can do …”
“We’ll be contacting her family for questioning as well,” Kate explained. “It is a problem though.” She stood and handed over her card. “If you think of anything, please contact me.”
The woman started to cry again, as she wiped her tears impatiently, then added, “It’s so unfair. Cherry had a lot of life to live.”
“We all do,” Kate noted, “so please be careful. I don’t know if there’s any association with this company, with the people she worked with or anything. Just be super vigilant about your own safety.”
The woman looked at her, clearly horrified, then snatched her card and replied, “I will.” And started to cry again.
When Kate walked toward the front desk, Rodney was talking with the receptionist. He looked over at Kate, smiled, and asked, “Ready to go?”
She nodded. “Yes, let’s go upstairs.”
And, with that, they headed out of the company’s entrance door toward the elevators. As they got onto the empty elevator, she asked, “What did you stay and talk to the boss about?”
He sighed. “Pictures of his family were all around his office. I wanted to know if he really had made that decision to go with the girlfriend versus the wife, and, as it turns out, he hadn’t.”
“So he lied,” she stated, as she turned and looked at him.
“I think he thought that you were sympathetic to the victim and that it would look better if he sided with her.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” she snapped.
“Well, that’s the problem. He couldn’t make a decision regarding Cherry, which was the problem.”
“But not making a decision is making a decision,” she snapped.
“It is, but he wasn’t brave enough to tell our poor victim that it wouldn’t be her.”
“Of course not, and, after the fight with her, that would have just cemented the fact that he wouldn’t leave his wife. So, did he actually drive around and spend time at the Hotel Vancouver or did he go home to his wife?”
“He did spend time at the Hotel Vancouver apparently, and he did go home to his wife at the time that he said he did, supposedly anyway. We’ll still have to confirm the story and see if it holds up.”
“Right. Well, a quick phone call to the Hotel Vancouver should confirm that part at least.”
“We’ll probably need to stop there in person anyway though, to get copies of records and to have a look at the camera footage and all, right?”
She groaned. “At least maybe we can cross another suspect off the list.”
“Yeah,” Rodney agreed, “though it would be nicer if we found one viable suspect because, right now, we don’t have much. Though we still need to see our model parolee.”
“I know,” she noted, “but first the ex-boyfriend, since we’re right here.”
As they took the elevator up to the day-trading office, Kate looked over at Rodney. “You know what? It would be revenge served cold if this one came back and killed Cherry after all this time.”
“Unless he only just found out she was having an affair with the boss.”
“So, would it be the affair with the boss because it’s the boss or just the fact that she found somebody else?”
“Probably just because she found anybody else,” Rodney suggested. “Unless this Tyler guy was the super jealous type and would assume that she’d been seeing the boss all along or something.”
When they identified themselves at this day-trading office and asked to speak to Tyler Bjornsson, the receptionist immediately picked up the phone and dialed his extension, saying that he was just about to leave.
“Well, hopefully he’s still here.”
She nodded. “He is.”
When a tall, handsome, thirtysomething man, his hair slicked back, wearing an expensive three-piece suit, stepped forward and looked at Kate, she could have pinpointed his type right off the bat. She walked over, shook his hand, and identified herself. “We need to speak with you privately.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he shrugged. “Sure.”
Just something was a little too smooth, a little too slick about him for her peace of mind. But then he was never her kind of person. As they walked into his office, she took a seat and then asked him when he’d last seen Cherry Blackwell.
He looked at her in surprise. “I don’t know. I haven’t had a relationship with her in over a year.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” she said smoothly.
His gaze went from her to Rodney and back to her again. “Probably in the elevator a couple months ago, I guess,” he replied cautiously. “Why?”
She studied him for a long moment and then answered his question. “She was found dead Sunday morning.”
He stared at Kate, and she watched him as almost shock and then maybe a hint of grief came into his eyes.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said quietly. “She was a lovely person.”
“And that will also explain why we’re here,” she added.
Immediately he shook his head. “I don’t follow. We literally haven’t had a relationship in over a year.”
“Maybe so,” she replied, “but you were her last boyfriend.”
“No, that’s not true. She was having a relationship with somebody in the office.”
“Do you know who that was?”
“No,” he stated. “I just saw her coming out of the offices late one day with this guy, and they were a little too cuddly. At least too cuddly to be just coworkers and too cuddly to be strangers.”
“I see,” Kate noted. “When was this?”
He frowned, grabbed his phone to check his appointment calendar, and said, “It was probably about three weeks ago. I was staying late,” Tyler explained, as he flicked through the screen on his phone. “Yes, it was that Tuesday, three weeks ago. Normally I’m not even here in the afternoons. We work really early mornings. But I was having issues with some accounts, so I was here late.” He shrugged. “When I went down, they came out themselves. She flushed, as if she were embarrassed, and even stepped back a little bit from him. So it was obviously one of those relationships that she either wasn’t ready to make public or didn’t want me in particular to see.”
“Did you say anything to her?”
He shook his head. “No, I’ve had several relationships since I broke up with her,” he admitted calmly. “Now, if you don’t have any other questions …”
She immediately asked for his whereabouts over the last week.
He stared at her in surprise. “Really?”
“Really,” she said blithely. “The sooner we have all the information, the sooner we can work on this.”
“Wow, I don’t know what to say,” he replied. “I was at my girlfriend’s house on the island over the weekend. We took the five o’clock ferry out Friday, and we came back Sunday night. You can confirm that actually.” He checked his phone again, clicked through some emails, and then added, “Here’s our ferry tickets. I have receipts.” And he held up his phone for Kate to see.
“Can you send me a copy of that?”
He nodded, tapped on the phone a few times, asked for her email, and then sent it to her.
“Good enough. And these last few days?” Kate asked.
He replied, “I’m here at four o’clock in the morning every day of the workweek, and, usually in the afternoons, I go home and do a workout. Then I spend some time with my girlfriend. She works nights,” he added. “Yes, you can check with her,” and he gave Kate the girlfriend’s name and phone number as well.
“Thank you,” she replied. With the information in hand, she said, “We appreciate your willingness to provide the answers we need.”
“The sooner you get me out of the mix,” he noted, “the better. I had a lovely relationship with Cherry, and I’m very sorry she is gone because she was a really nice person, but I didn’t have anything to do with her death.”
“Do you know of anybody who might have had an argument or some problem with her?”
“No—oh, wait, one of the other women in the office,” he added. “She was jealous or something, but I’m not exactly sure when. But that would have been a long time ago. They had a problem, but I don’t even think she’s there anymore.”
“Do you know her name?”
He shook his head. “Cherry just said somebody didn’t like the fact that she was there. And the person left soon afterward. I guess you could ask down there and see if anybody knew about it. I don’t think it was a big deal though,” he noted. “You asked if there was anybody who didn’t like her, and I supposed that would qualify, but did the woman hate Cherry? Enough to kill her? No. I can’t imagine that.”
And, with that, Kate nodded and took her leave.
As they headed back downstairs, Rodney looked over at her. “I’d say he’s clear.”
“He was pretty willing to offer information,” she admitted, “so chances are that he had nothing to do with it. I don’t know about the other girl that Cherry had a problem with though.”
“Do you think this is the work of a female?”
“Well, I don’t want to be sexist and say a woman couldn’t do it because I’m sure that’s not true,” she explained, “but, no, I don’t think that at all. But we can’t go by what we think.”
“No,” Rodney agreed. “It would be easy enough to stop back by the office and talk to the one good friend.”
“Or even the receptionist,” Kate said, with a nod. She hit the elevator button suddenly to take them back to the fourth floor. As they got out and walked into the office again, the receptionist looked up and frowned.
“Hello again. I’m surprised to see you back again,” she said.
“I understand that our victim had an issue with one of the women who worked here at one time,” Kate stated.
The receptionist frowned. “I don’t know about how much of an issue it actually was,” she replied, “but that person left soon afterward.”
“Can we get her name and number, please?”
She looked at Kate and said, “I have to ask the boss.”
“You do that. We’ll wait.” Kate stood here with her arms crossed.
The woman disappeared and then came running back, with the information on the back of Tom’s business card. “Here it is. She was only here for a week or two.”
“Do you know what the problem was?”
“No.” The receptionist shook her head. “I really don’t, except that they just didn’t hit it off. They were different personalities.”
“Good enough.” Kate took the information and walked back out again.
She wasn’t sure that it would lead anywhere, but, in a case like this, every thread had to be followed, every T had to be crossed, and every I had to be dotted. Loose ends tended to create problems down the road. They had to chase down every detail, so the wrong person didn’t go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Kate was already afraid that may have happened once. She’d do a damn good job to make sure it didn’t happen twice to the kid.
*
Simon focused as much as he could on his work, only to find his feet taking him toward Kate’s office on Graveley Street. He found a street vendor within a block and grabbed a coffee and a hot dog and continued on. He shouldn’t be here, but he knew that. The last thing he would have set out to do would be to pursue any relationship with a cop, and he sure as hell didn’t want to end up with a group of cop friends.
Yet he also knew that he couldn’t walk away from Kate.
Finding a bench, he sat down and put the coffee beside him, then proceeded to eat the hot dog, somehow managing to get it down without sending mustard all over his suit. He wasn’t even in his Canadian suit today. He had a mental laugh at that because his favorite outfit was jeans and a blazer.
But today he was more dressed up, as he’d been meeting clients and investors. Not that he gave a shit what they thought, but it made him feel a little more powerful as he dealt with the other side of his business. Rehabbing buildings was one thing, but, once they were rehabbed, they had to be filled, either rented or leased, or in some cases purchased. He didn’t want to be the largest property owner in Vancouver, but, with over twenty-two buildings completed, he was getting there.
As he polished off the last bite of his hot dog, he watched several people walk by. A couple looked at him casually, most of them rushing past, head down, anxious to get to wherever they needed to go. He understood, and he’d been spending an awful lot of his last few days with his head down himself, trying to stay focused and to forget the scream, whatever the hell that scream was, because it kept coming back, but it seemed fainter and fainter. He was also afraid it was connected to the case that Kate was currently working on, with the poor woman who had been tortured so badly before she died.
All he could think about was that this screamer could be another victim, yet that made no sense. He didn’t know if there were any other victims, but the fact that there could be another one, a woman Simon was actually connecting with, sent his spine stiffening ramrod straight—if only to stop it from turning into quivering molded jelly.
To connect with someone in trouble, yet to be so helpless, that was a completely different thing.
Simon stared down at his hands, realizing just how different it was for him, as a big strong male in his prime, to have these particular feelings. They were not about insecurity because it went way past that to helplessness. This was about being a victim of somebody’s agony, pain, and torture, yet Simon had no target to reach out and hit. No way to assuage that pain and that devastation inside these victims. He couldn’t help the fact that he didn’t know anything about this woman. In that moment, his grandmother’s voice seemed to slip into his brain and whispered, But you could.
He stiffened, looked around, and, taking a chance, whispered back, “Is that you, Nan?”
He thought he heard the faintest sound of a laugh before it disappeared from his brain. Unnerved, he bolted to his feet, snagged his coffee, and stormed down the block. He would either cross the street and see if Kate was at the office or keep storming around the block, and the cops in her circle might very well end up saying something to her. Would she understand? He didn’t know, but it didn’t matter if she did or not. He was compelled, like they shared this umbilical cord between them.
If he didn’t see her for several days, he got antsy and wanted to send her a dozen texts in a day, but that sounded more stalkerish and creepy than anything. It seemed like they slept together when it was convenient, and that drove him crazy too. He wanted more; he wanted to wake up to find her beside him. The times that she did sleep over, he found himself not even wanting to sleep.
Sighing, he just kept walking, pacing around the corner and back. All the time a voice so much like his nan’s kept whispering in his ear.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Finally he stepped into an alleyway and hissed out loud, “What the hell do you want?”
You came the whisper, and then complete silence followed in his head. Shaken and not sure what the hell to think, yet only able to consider that maybe it was his nan, he slowly returned to the bench where he’d been sitting. As he sat down again, he looked at his hands and realized somewhere along the line he had completely misplaced his coffee. Struggling with that and really wanting the hit of caffeine to jolt his senses, not to mention the comfort of the hot brew, he got up and walked back to the block where the vendor was. As he bought a second cup, the vendor frowned. Simon shrugged. “I lost it somewhere.”
The vendor just laughed, gave it to him, and told him to keep his money.
He looked at him in surprise. “You don’t have to do that. It was my fault.”
“It doesn’t matter if it was or not,” he replied. “You’re a regular, so enjoy.”
Appreciating the gesture, Simon added a tip to the jar, then turned and walked away. More nice people were in the city than not, as far as he was concerned. Although he certainly heard an awful lot from other people about how it was so hard to get to know anybody or how cold and uninviting the city was. It was truly a beautiful location, but that didn’t always make for warm bedfellows.
In his case though, he’d been blessed on so many fronts for many years. Of course he made money, and money was always a strong reason for people to put a smile on their face. Either you could do something for them or they wanted you to do something for them. It was a strange thing about money, but he was acclimating himself to having it. It had been a few years since he had come into such strong success, and it was now second nature. He certainly wasn’t born to it, and he was working his way up, dealing with as much as he could. But he kept most of his business quiet and under the radar, trying to stay out of trouble. Because, once trouble started, it never ended well.
That was always the lesson; it never ended well. You had to do what you had to do to stay clear of it. So Simon tried to stay on the straight and narrow and to not get involved with any of the very distracting and often very profitable side businesses that went on around town here—side businesses that were anything but legal.
He stayed legal because it was easier and because it helped him sleep at night. The last thing he wanted was to lose everything he’d worked so hard for. He knew others who took a lot of fun from that whole aspect of cheating the system, and Simon could admit there were times when cheating the system might not be a bad thing. The system sucked, and sometimes it was as corrupt as anything else in this world, but long ago he’d made a promise to his nan to not get into any of that trouble. She’d saved him at one point in time and had dragged him out of the foster care system, when he’d been in desperate need.
After her death, when Simon was only ten years old, he’d gone back into the system again, where he’d become a handful, as a sad and frightened preteen who acted out, guaranteeing he would never be adopted. And unfortunately Nan could do nothing to stop the foster care system from having responsibility for Simon that time.