Simon Says_. Walk (Kate Morgan #6)(30)
Author: Dale Mayer

 

She shook her head. “No, he called me late and told me that he was staying at this guy’s house.”

 

“And what guy was that?”

 

She started at her, bewildered. “I … dunno. … Joe would know, my brother. He would know. You can talk to him.”

 

“I will be talking to Joe again,” she shared. “Do have any idea who this friend was, so I can contact him?”

 

“No.”

 

Her silent acceptance seemed to highlight how little she knew when it came to her husband.

 

“I thought he was staying at his friend’s because he was overworked.”

 

“The hotel,” Kate noted gently, “is right around the corner from a pool hall.”

 

At that, the woman jumped her feet, fury in her face. “It’s what?”

 

Kate winced and nodded. “And he was there earlier in the evening.”

 

“Of course he was. That’s his weakness, pool halls. He blows all kinds of money on it,” she said in a disgusted, disgruntled, and grief-ridden tone. “It’s one of the reasons he had to get a different job, and I begged my brother to give it to him.” She smeared her tears around her face. “He’s terrible with money.”

 

“Terrible with money or terrible with gambling?” Kate asked.

 

The woman flinched. “He’s not a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man,” she said, correcting herself and yet shuddering as she did so, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms around her chest. “He’s … He was …” She stopped, swallowed hard. “A good man. He was just …” She winced. “The gambling bug had him,” she relented and took a deep sigh, as if reliving some old wound. “It was ruining our lives. It was the only bane of our miserable lives.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I know that’s tough. It’s an addiction, and that’s hard to beat.”

 

“And he never seemed to get a handle on it. He promised me that he would never go back to that place.”

 

Kate considered that remark, wondered how many days the kidnapper had with Luca to torture him, then focused on Luca’s wife. “What are the chances that’s where he’d been every day this week? Did he come home this week at all? When did you last see Luca?”

 

“I haven’t seen him in four days now,” she muttered. “Normally he would come home because he needs a change of clothes, the usual.” She shrugged and then looked around absentmindedly. “We’ve never really had marital problems, but then I’ve never really pushed him, not until the gambling got so bad that our mortgage was in jeopardy.” She stared at Kate in horror. “He’s supposedly worked late every day this week.”

 

“I can certainly find out if he worked late this week, if you would like.”

 

The woman nodded mutely, and Kate quickly texted Simon, asking him, and got a response saying he’d check. “I contacted his boss, the owner of the company, and he’ll check for us,” she told her.

 

But Luca’s wife looked as if she were absolutely terrified of what the answer would be.

 

“I’ll just ask my brother,” she whispered.

 

Kate could certainly understand why the wife was hesitant to get answers. And, if this were a classic case of an addiction gone wrong, she also could potentially figure out how Luca had been picked up, had been slated to be the killer’s next victim. Pool halls were not exactly the friendliest of places, but it was pretty easy to bond over a couple games and some beer. And, if this killer knew where Luca worked, it would set him up for being an easy mark all around.

 

Finally his wife asked cautiously, “Can you tell me how he died?”

 

“I can’t actually. I have to wait for the postmortem myself.”

 

“So maybe it was just like a heart attack?” she asked hopefully.

 

Kate gave a decisive shake of her head. “No, that much I can confirm. It was definitely murder.”

 

She said goodbye and walked away from the wife, with both relief and pain, because how did one leave such grief and confusion? Nobody understood why Luca had done what he’d done, and yet his wife had it in her mind that there was likely another reason—any other reason than the one staring her in the face. The realization that her husband was a gambler—although it shouldn’t have come as any surprise—was obviously enough to shock her.

 

Kate figured the wife’s anger would come pretty quickly after the grief and shock. Anger that he would do that, anger that he’d put them into that precarious financial situation again, anger that, even after telling her that he was no longer involved in gambling, he obviously still was. Anger was like a fire that had no outlet. It burned hot and bright and damaged so much, and yet, for this poor woman, now a widow, it might also give her some peace, once she finally reached the point where she understood and realized how much gambling was an addiction and that maybe Luca would have made it through this, except somebody cut Luca’s life short.

 

Because of Luca’s connection to Simon.

 

To think of somebody dying because of Simon’s involvement was enough to terrify Kate, and it made no sense to her. Why did somebody have it out for Simon anyway? She knew she needed to sit down and have a deeper, longer, harder talk with him, but she also knew that he was racking his brain trying to figure this out too. That this killer was somebody Simon may have touched in his life in a superficial way didn’t feel right because the anger revealed through this killer’s MO was so extreme. Yet what could possibly be so wrong in the murderer’s world that it triggered this kind of reaction?

 

Stumped, she left the widow’s home and returned to the hotel crime scene, then back to the station, even as she sent in requests to have everything about this new victim’s life completely uncovered, so they could see if there were any similarities between him and Patricia. But, in her heart, she figured that it would be a case of bad timing—as in Luca was there—and the killer either realized who he worked for or hunted him down because of his gambling addiction.

 

Maybe the killer knew that Luca had this weakness and that it would be the killer’s way to get at Luca. Bringing him back into the gambling world would leave Luca much more open and vulnerable to this killer’s level of persuasion. She’d certainly seen that BS from people before, and, as much as she hated to think of it happening over and over again, people were people, and sometimes they were absolute shits.

 

Now Kate had compelling evidence of a very strong personal vendetta against Simon.