Simon Says_. Walk (Kate Morgan #6)(42)
Author: Dale Mayer

 

“Any other friends, relatives, enemies? Anybody in particular?”

 

He stared at her and winced. “The friends in their marriage were my sister’s. I don’t think he had any, except for whoever was at his favorite pool halls. He certainly didn’t stick to any one pool hall because sometimes he got banned from one of them. If he was having a bad night and decided to make life miserable for somebody,” Joe shared, “often they would kick him out and give him a thirty-day ban. However, Luca spent good money at those places, so they always let him back in again. It’s the nature of the business.”

 

She could imagine. “Okay, that’s good enough. If you think of anything else, give me call.” She pulled out a card and handed it to him. “All info could be helpful. Now, we’ll take a look at this graffiti and see if it’s got any connection.”

 

He led her to it and asked, “Why would it have any connection to Luca’s death?”

 

She shook her head. “Only in that it’s got Simon’s name on it and your brother-in-law worked for Simon.”

 

His eyes widened in horror. “Hey, Simon didn’t do this,” he declared. “He couldn’t. That’s not his thing at all. You have to know that.”

 

She gave him a ghost of a smile. “I do know that, but we look at all the evidence regardless, as we try to figure out who’s behind this. So it doesn’t matter whether Simon did or he didn’t. What’s important is that we find out who did it in the end.”

 

Relieved, Joe took several steps back. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it then.” But he sounded uncertain as he walked away.

 

She nodded and waited until he was gone, then turned to Rodney, who had been busy taking photos. “What do you think?”

 

“I think his brother-in-law Luca was probably an easy target. Big ego, which somebody could so easily see that he was desperate to be loved and appreciated and seen for the big man that he thought he was versus who everybody else thought he was. Therefore, flattery would have gone pretty easily to his head. And unfortunately with fatal results.”

 

“That’s what I was thinking too. Particularly for anybody looking to haunt Simon’s world, they would have seen a weak employee, dissatisfied, somebody who’s willing to talk. Whether Luca gave our killer anything of interest is a different story, but who knows.”

 

Rodney nodded. “No, I hear you, but this graffiti isn’t definitive either.”

 

“Sure isn’t,” she agreed, “but I don’t know about those lines.” She pointed out the ones that appeared to be tally marks, as if counting victims, and Rodney stared at them for a long moment.

 

“But to find two victims that we’ve supposedly missed won’t be easy, particularly when we don’t have anything other than this killer’s simple stabbing patterns to go by.”

 

“That and the torture,” she noted.

 

“And that too, yet even that’s not huge because we don’t have a location.”

 

She pondered that and looked around to the site behind them. “We never got a location from Patricia either, did we?”

 

“No, not at all, only a rough time frame.”

 

Kate nodded. “Let’s take a look on the maps. Where does that rough time frame of driving take us? Because the killer and his victims had to be somewhere close enough to do whatever torture he had planned but not necessarily put him out in any way.”

 

“Put him out?”

 

“Yeah. Inconvenience our killer. I don’t know for sure, of course,” she added, “but I seem to think that this guy’s all about easy.”

 

“And yet if he hauled the body back …”

 

“Yeah, how did he haul the body back? Granted, the brother-in-law was not a big man,” she noted. “Hell, it’s a hotel, so even a suitcase would do it.”

 

Rodney frowned at her. “Or a laundry cart.”

 

She nodded. “That works too. He’s really not that big. Isn’t he about five-one? The sister wasn’t big either.”

 

“No, but I’d have pegged Luca at about five-three,” Rodney suggested.

 

“That fits too.”

 

“So then he really fit the profile—somebody the killer could easily manhandle, overpower, and con, plus Luca worked for Simon.”

 

“Exactly. So let’s look at the map and also go back to the hotel and see if a bloody laundry cart is found. Or maybe one is missing. Check cameras—if they have any, which I somehow doubt.”

 

*

 

Simon answered his phone to hear his foreman on the other end, saying the cops were here. “Oh, good,” Simon replied, his mind distracted by the figures on the laptop he reviewed, while sitting at the coffee shop.

 

Joe hesitated and then added, “I think it was your girlfriend.”

 

“Should have been. She’s the one I called.”

 

“Oh man, okay. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to say anything or not. That’s always a dicey scenario.”

 

He smiled. “You tell her anything that she wants to know. She’s a cop and a good one, and, if anybody can solve your brother-in-law’s murder, it’ll be her.”

 

“I’m glad to hear that,” Joe said, relief washing through his voice, all with enough emphasis to make Simon smile. “Because I wasn’t sure.”

 

“No, it’s all good. Are they still there?”

 

“No, I think they walked away a little bit ago. They took a bunch of photos, made some measurements, took note of the surrounding locations. I don’t know what all they were doing.” He snorted. “I wanted to stay close, but obviously I wasn’t welcome.”

 

“No, you wouldn’t have been welcome,” Simon concurred. “I wouldn’t have been welcome. She would have thrown me out of there too.”

 

“Really?” Joe asked.

 

“Yep, when it comes to being a cop, she’s very professional.”

 

“I guess that’s a good thing,” he said doubtfully, “but it’s your place. You’d think that she’d give you whatever information you’d want to have.”

 

“She might if I asked,” he stated gently. “But the less I have to do with the workings of the investigation, especially when it involves my properties and my employees, definitely the better.”