Simon Says... Scream Read online

  But the doctor stepped back, took off his coat and his gloves, and followed her out to his office. When they got in there, Rodney stepped up close, not wanting to be left out. Dr. Smidge looked at him; his glare enough to force Rodney to immediately back up. Smidge let her into his office, as she shut the door on Rodney.

  Smidge sat down at his desk, with a hard thump. “I wanted to,” he snapped in answer to her earlier question.

  “No, you needed to. Why?”

  His fingers thrummed on the big pad atop his desk. “The knitting needle.”

  “Had you already seen that at the crime scene?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t at first. But, when I was looking for a cause of death, the fact that one breast had been opened up caught my attention. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but I could see the hole.”

  “Have you ever seen that before?”

  “Once.” He paused. “Years ago.”

  At that, she stopped and stared. “What do you mean?”

  “I had a case, a long time ago, where another young woman lost her life, with a knitting needle through her heart.”

  “I guess it’s not a common murder weapon,” she noted carefully, “but it might have just been what was handy?”

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen since then. It’s just nothing that I’m aware of.”

  She turned in her seat to look outside, but he was in a tunnel, so no windows were in his office, made even smaller with bookshelves upon bookshelves. “You think they’re related?”

  “That young woman’s wrists and ankles were broken too,” he stated.

  “You’re kidding. Vocal cords?”

  He looked at her for a long moment and then slowly nodded.

  She sank back in her chair. “Shit. Okay, … we’re gonna need to know what that case was. Was it ever solved?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m pretty sure it was.”

  “Do you remember any of the details?”

  He turned to his computer, clicked on the keyboard for a few minutes, and soon the printer spit out a piece of paper. He got up, walked around, picked it up, and handed it to her.

  She looked at it. “Allison Lord.”

  “Yes.” Smidge nodded. “Sounds familiar.”

  She read the details, which were almost exact. “So a copycat or a long sleep in-between.”

  “But, like I said, that doesn’t mean there weren’t others.”

  “Right, just no others that came across your desk.”

  He nodded. “And, if you think about it, a lot of other desks could have come across this.”

  “Back then, would everything have gone into the one database?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Even now we’re not the best at having a central depository.”

  “You would think that Canada would have something like that.”

  He snorted. “You know how much time and effort that would take?”

  “And, if we started today,” she noted, “in twenty years I wouldn’t be looking back and cursing the fact that we didn’t do it earlier.”

  He started to laugh at that. “Well, anytime you want to get on that, feel free.”

  She groaned. “Nobody will listen to me, and you know it.”

  “Nobody ever likes anything that’ll involve a ton of money and that much work.”

  “I feel like it’s more of a software thing.” She frowned, as she thought about it. “I’ll have to talk to the sergeant.”

  “You do that.” Smidge’s good humor seemed completely restored now. Having dumped everything on her, he stated he would be out for lunch.

  She rolled her eyes at him, as she hopped up. As she walked over to the coroner, she asked him, “Anything else about the case bother you, Doc?” He didn’t say anything for a moment, but she pressed on. “Well?”

  “I never thought the guy they charged did it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her brother was blamed,” he noted quietly, “but there was never a motive.”

  “That sounds pretty personal for a brother,” she noted in astonishment.

  He looked at her, tilted his head. “The kid was only sixteen.”

  “Whoa.” She walked back over to the visitor chair and sat down. “Seriously?”

  “He was sixteen when he supposedly committed the crime, and eighteen when he was put away, as I recall.”

  “Is he alive still? That is the next question. Because he was a juvenile at the time, so his sentence couldn’t have been all that long. So, in theory, he could be out again.”

  “That’s up to you to find out,” Smidge replied.

  “Yeah, I’ll work on that.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine doing that to a sister.”

  “Or anyone else for that matter. But, if I’d spent years in prison, thinking about it, it might be the first thing I’d do when I got back out again.”

  She winced, and, with that thought in mind, she added, “I’ll leave you to your next patient.”

  “Other than getting some lunch, I’ll be here all day and probably half the night,” he grumbled.

  “Sorry.”

  He shook his head. “We have a lot going on right now.”

  “It’s not like there’s ever a holiday,” she reminded him.

  “There never is.”

  With that, she walked out to see Rodney on his phone, texting away, as he leaned up against the wall. He looked up, and she could see the anger still evident in his expression.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “Sorry about that. I’m not sure why he didn’t want you in there.”

  “He doesn’t like me,” Rodney stated.

  She stopped, looked at him. “Really no room for like or dislike when it comes to the job.”

  “You want to tell him that?”

  “Nope, I do not,” she stated. “You’ll have to work things out with Smidge on your own.”

  “You’re the only one he seems to get along with.”

  “I don’t think so,” she argued. “In this case, he had a reason to shift his schedule around.”

  “How do you know he shifted it?”

  “Because that was this morning’s body,” she explained. “And he got to it within what? Six hours?”

  “Maybe.” He rolled the back of his neck.

  “Normally it would be days.”

  “Sure, but you seemed to be pretty determined that something was going on.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe just instincts.”

  He snorted at that. “That’s BS.”

  “What? That I have any instincts?” she asked in a mocking tone.

  “No, just that you confront him over it.”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Anyway, the reason he moved this one to the front of the line is because he remembered another case like this years ago.” She handed him the printed report. “The brother was charged as a minor. He was eighteen when he was finally put away, sixteen when he committed the crime—supposedly. He proclaimed his innocence. The parents did too, and, of course, he and the sister were said to be close.”

  “And Smidge remembered all this why?”

  “The cause of death. A knitting needle through the chest wall and on through the heart. Plus both ankles and both wrists broken, and the vocal cords cut.”

  “Shit,” Rodney muttered. “God damn it. So a copycat or a repeat?”

  “That’s what we’ll have to find out,” she stated.

  “Well, the first thing is to find out if he’s still in jail.”

  “Given that he was a minor at the time, chances are he’s free by now.”

  “But why would you do it all over again, especially if it was your sister—”

  “Well, I guess the next thing is, does this woman look like his sister? Did he spend all those years waiting to kill her all over again?”

  *

  Wednesday, Early Morning Hours

  It had been days since Simon had had the nightmare of the screaming woman that Kate then found dead hours later. Kate had been immersed in that case for the last three days, while Simon kept busy, terribly busy, working himself to the bone. That way, when he did finally collapse, the nightmares would either be too distant or his mind too exhausted to even dream them up. It worked for the first night or three, but last night it seemed to work in reverse.

  This Wednesday, he woke up at two o’clock in the morning, screaming out loud, his body covered in sweat. Excruciating pain tortured every inch of his body. He dragged himself to the shower, where he quickly rinsed off the sweat, before coming back and pulling the sweat-soaked sheets off his bed, replacing them with clean ones.

  But when he woke up at four in exactly the same state, he just laid here, letting the sweat cool on his body, his expression grim, as he gazed around his room. There was nothing, absolutely nothing that he could see or hear that would do anything to help this woman. And it was a woman; he knew that. It was another case for Kate; he knew that too.

  For all he knew, it was old information, the torture of the same woman. Simon didn’t know. Regardless, somebody was in extreme agony, screaming and screaming, but only in his head, although his vocal cords were doing the screaming. He thought maybe she was screaming too, but he had no way to know that. His nightmare was just darkness, incessant darkness. He could almost hear her whimper in the back of his mind, as he lay here.

  By the time six rolled around, he got up, had another long hot shower, and put on the strongest coffee he thought he could tolerate. Sitting at his dining room table and staring out at the beautiful horizon outside, he wondered how such a beautiful city could house so much horror. He hadn’t seen Kate since she had caught this latest case. And that was life with Kate
.

  She showed up whenever and disappeared for days at a time. He could text her, and, if she had time, she’d answer him. However, if she didn’t have time, he always stepped back into the background of her world. He had plenty to deal with on his own, so, in a way, it worked, Yet, in another way, it irked him completely because he wanted more. He needed more. And she wasn’t having any of it.

  He sat here, a notepad in front of him, as he worked out all the things he had to do today. Part of it was ordering supplies and going to the bank to move money. Some of it he couldn’t do online, though he preferred to do all of it that way if he had the option. But, every once in a while, actually showing up with a physical presence at the bank was mandatory. It sucked, but that’s what it was. He looked down at the notepad to see that he’d been drawing circles, some weird circles.

  After a more careful survey, he realized that they were ropes knotted, with a wrist through it. Even as he watched, his hand continued to draw what looked like one single arm tied down flat. He immediately ripped off the page, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it across the floor.

  “No fucking way,” he muttered. “It’s bad enough to have all this crap penetrate my nightmares. It’s another thing to have it get in the way of my working world.”

  He admitted a lot of the background emotion from his nightmares centered on fear, seeping into Simon too. He’d spent a long time not being a victim. A long time standing up straight and daring anybody to look down on him for whatever reason. He was well respected within his industry. He earned millions on a yearly basis, and, by now, it was actually every quarter. The money flowed quite nicely, as he worked to fix up the lower-end areas of the city.

  He’d been asked by several people why he chose these buildings, and he couldn’t say anything, except that they had heart and that the rest of the world had forgotten about them. It was foolish and even a bad business deal at times, since he was a philosopher, looking to reclaim lost souls and buildings. It was just BS, the whole lot of it. And yet, every time another one came up for sale, he found himself completely unable to do anything but buy it and then immediately turn around to fix it up again.

  Speaking of which, he had an ongoing tag problem with a certain realtor. She had a property he wanted, and she knew it. But she was asking way too much money for it, so they were stuck at an impasse.

  Periodically, once a week or so, she would reach out, asking if he’d thought more about that property. So far, he’d been ignoring her, but, yeah, he was considering it still. It was on his list to take another walk by it, just to see if he felt the same about the place. It was one of four that he had thought about getting. If he could get all four, he could just drop them and put up something nice. Something to help rejuvenate that part of town. But what she wanted for that one property was what he should pay for two, and agreeing to her price would set a dangerous precedent for the others on the block.

  And, although money flowed through his fingers with regularity, he didn’t get there by being a fool. So, when it came to actual money landing in his pockets, he knew that the more he had there, the more he could do. Only people, like this realtor, were intent on trying to take out every penny they could. He knew this was business, an industry on its own, but he now had less respect for these types who were greedier in this area than in most industries.

  It was tough enough to deal with the various building trades. They promised they’d show up on a Monday, and, when they finally appeared on Wednesday, looking completely innocent, they would look you square in the face and say that you’re the one who made the mistake. It was enough to make you want to rip out their hearts and toss them off the damn building. But Simon had been in this business for way too long and had a short list of contractors he would work with, and a secondary list of contractors he would consider trying again, providing they actually showed up as promised.

  The problem was, he had so many buildings in progress right now—whether rehabs or tear-downs—that it was hard to find enough good workers. At that, he checked his phone and found a couple texts sitting there from his contractors, waiting to be read. He perused them, noting nothing was major. One was just an update, and the other one promised completion of a new section today. Simon wouldn’t even say that he’d be there at the end of the day because, at this point in time, he wasn’t sure he was going anywhere.

  Then he looked down at the scratchpad. Once again, he’d drawn a woman’s wrist, tied to a table. He felt the fear jolt into his heart. “I don’t need this,” he said in a very low and threatening voice. He almost heard his grandmother’s voice in the background, saying, Tough shit. Deal with it.

  He got up, with a hard shake of his head, then ripped off the second piece of paper, scrunched it up, and threw it across the living room. That wasn’t enough, so he grabbed both pieces of paper, stormed out to the recycling and garbage chute, and dumped them in. At least then they’d be gone, maybe not forever, but gone for the moment. He came in and sat back down, but, yet again, his hand immediately picked up the pencil and started sketching the same image. He looked at it and glared.

  “What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

  And, at that moment, almost like he’d opened a damn door, a scream ripped through his mind.

  Chapter 4

  Kate reached for the phone and called the parole officer and identified herself when he answered. “I’m looking into case file 127264D.”

  “Hang on,” he muttered, as he brought it up on his computer. “Oh, right. Lord.”

  “Yeah, was the first name, Richard?”

  “Yes, but he goes by Rick,” he confirmed.

  “Did he complete everything required?”

  “He did actually. When he got out of prison, he came every week, and he never did anything wrong,” he stated. “Why?”

  “Just checking to make sure he’s not a suspect in a current case.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have thought it of him,” the parole officer replied. “He was a model inmate. He got his education and even earned a degree.”

  “In what?” she interrupted.

  He checked through his notes. “English Literature.”

  She snorted at that.

  “Hey, I think he intends to become a teacher, you know?”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “It is if he can get some job experience. They might hire him, if they don’t do a record check.”

  “Doesn’t he have to state that he has a criminal record?”

  “He was charged as a juvenile, so that would have been expunged from his record.”

  “How is that even a thing?” she asked hotly.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s no danger to society.”

  “I understand that he also maintained he had nothing to do with it.”

  “Even on his last visit, he turned to me, and he repeated, ‘You know that I didn’t do this. I’m as much of a victim as my sister.’”

  “And you believed him?” It was hard to not question the parole officer because, when somebody was let out of jail, that parole officer was the one person who consistently saw the newly released prisoner over the following six months or one year.

  “You know what? I do actually,” he noted. “I think he got a bad rap. He was in trouble at the time, heading down a bad pathway. He made a good suspect, and they ran with it.”

  “There still should have been forensic evidence.”

  “The problem was, he and the sister lived together,” he explained, “so hairs and fibers were all over the place.”

  “Of course. Did they ever find the location where she was held?”

  “You tell me,” he snapped, his tone turning hard. “As far as I’m concerned, the system railroaded this kid into confessing, and that ended his life.”

  “Or made it,” she added quietly.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the parole officer grudgingly acceded. “Or made it. You’re right. He was into drugs and gangs prior to this.”

  “Interesting. I wonder if it wasn’t him. I wonder if it could have been somebody affiliated with the gang.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what. If you can solve it, then that kid has got some relief coming for all the years he sat in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Other than that, I’ve got nothing to offer.”

  When she hung up, she looked down at her notes, wrote them up on her file and sat back.