Simon Says_. Walk (Kate Morgan #6)(75)
Author: Dale Mayer

 

“Crap,” Rodney muttered. “That’s our tax dollars not at work.”

 

“It is to an extent, and there’ll always be a certain amount of government funding for these places, but it does make you wonder how much of it is enough to do what they need it to do, and how much of it is not even close.”

 

“I imagine a lot of it isn’t even close,” Rodney guessed. “If that shelter gets thirty people in a month, is that a lot or is that a few?”

 

Kate frowned. “Lisa mentioned twenty-something as being a lot, but is that based on fluctuating funding or the rooms available? I didn’t really have that talk with her.”

 

“Sounds as if you might need to. I can go, if you want.”

 

She shook her head. “I think the fewer male appearances in that shelter, the better. Lisa won’t like it. And Helen? … She will be so pissed.”

 

“How about cop interferences?” he asked, his voice hardening.

 

She smiled at him. “Not trying to keep you out of the loop here. Just letting you know that these women have been battered time and time again by the men in their lives. Therefore, I want to minimize their pain, if I can.”

 

He nodded and settled back. “That’s fine, but I don’t want to leave you inside for too long, just in case.”

 

She gave him a smirk. “In case of what?”

 

“You don’t know what.” He took a deep breath, as if trying to arrange his thoughts. “A lot of strange people are out there. Let’s not have somebody attack you because we didn’t consider that it could be somebody from the shelter.”

 

Kate frowned. “And that goes back to the fact that we don’t know for sure that our perp is male or female, doesn’t it?”

 

He nodded. “Knowing and even making that small distinction … would help too.”

 

Just then forensics called them over. “Nothing’s here but lots of trace evidence,” he stated in a businesslike tone. “No weapons. A small amount of blood. I wouldn’t say that anybody dead was moved from here, but we will do our full run on it, especially if you’ve got a kidnapping connected to this vehicle.”

 

“We do,” she stated in a forceful tone. “The vehicle was caught on camera.”

 

The lead forensics tech nodded. “You guys don’t need to stay. Go home. Get some sleep. Then you’re ready to catch the bad guys another day.”

 

As his spiel had a half-loopy rhyme to it, she rolled her eyes at him and then shrugged. “That’s pretty corny.”

 

“Hey, it’s best I can do at this hour.”

 

She checked her watch and noted it was 1:00 a.m. “Sorry, guess we should have towed it in.”

 

He shrugged. “As we have a kidnapping right now, let’s deal with what we’ve got, and we’ll take it back to the lot later.”

 

“Good enough.” Kate waved goodbye and looked back over at Rodney. “Bedtime.”

 

“Sounds good to me.” He yawned. “I’ll see you back here in the morning.”

 

“Here?” she asked, with an eyebrow raised.

 

“No, not here.” He laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And, with that, he took off.

 

She slowly stepped out from the car park, looked around, wondering what would make this place a nice alternative to anything else somebody could have thought up. She walked to the manned parkade ticket booth and asked, “Do you guys keep somebody on staff twenty-four hours a day?”

 

He shook his head. “Nope, but when the cops came, they sent me in here to keep an eye on things.”

 

She nodded. “And that vehicle is a long-term lease, you said?”

 

“I didn’t say it,” he corrected. “Nobody officially asked me about it, but it is long-term, yes.”

 

“Okay, so that must have been your boss we talked to earlier.”

 

He nodded. “If that was on the phone, yes,” he stated in a bored voice. “He’s the one who called me in to keep an eye on you.”

 

“Yeah, as if we’ll steal something.”

 

“I don’t think it’s that as much as the fact that there’s always been a certain number of problems around this place, and we do try to keep it contained,” he noted. “However, there are problems, and then there are problems.”

 

“When you say, problems, exactly what do you mean by that?”

 

“Break-ins, couple of thefts, uninvited guests, that sort of thing.”

 

“And yet you’re not here twenty-four hours a day?”

 

“No, but we did set up a new security system.” He gave a quick shrug. “Although it’s only been functional for a couple weeks.”

 

“Of course it has been. Can you tell if this vehicle has left the lot in the last few weeks?”

 

He went to his records, and, after a few minutes on the computer, he shook his head. “I don’t have any record of it leaving the lot, except for around three weeks ago.” He gave her the date. Which coincided perfectly with Samantha’s disappearance.

 

She pulled up a picture of Samantha on her phone and held it up to him. “You ever see this woman?”

 

He looked at it and shook his head. “No, sure haven’t. Why? What’s going on?”

 

“She was kidnapped in that vehicle three weeks ago, the night you mentioned,” she stated. “Nobody’s seen her since.”

 

“Ah, shit.” The color drained from his face. “I really don’t like hearing that.”

 

He might not like hearing that, but she had a whole lot more to go. “Do you see any people around here on a regular basis, anybody who makes you question why they’re here?”

 

He shook his head. “And, if there was, we would question them. We would immediately head over and talk to them to find out what they were doing. No loitering’s allowed. It’s not that we have a homeless problem in this particular area, but you always have to watch out for people looking to break into cars. That’s never a good thing either.”

 

“Of course not,” she muttered.

 

Not sure what else to ask, she finally asked him if any regulars were here that he had trouble with—or anybody the opposite, almost too ingratiating.