Simon Says... Jump (Kate Morgan Thrillers Book 2) Read online

  “I want to go to all three of the jumper scenes,” she said quietly.

  He looked at her in surprise. “They’re hardly crime scenes.”

  “We don’t know that, do we?”

  He looked at the front wall where the latest jumper’s shoes picture was no longer visible, and he said, “You know something? It might be good to go anyway.” He hopped up, grabbed his jacket, and said, “Come on. I’ll drive.”

  “I can drive,” she said.

  “Can and should are two separate things.”

  She glared at him. “It’s not a problem.”

  “Hey, when suicide pushes your buttons, then we do the best we can to make sure they aren’t pushed any further.”

  “It just makes me feel like a wimp,” she said. “I should have gotten over it.”

  “When a friend goes that way, I think we’re all left with a question mark as to why and what we could have done,” he said. “Nothing like guilt to rack you over, time and time again.”

  “And the stupid thing is, even after all the years, you still don’t know, you still don’t understand. So you still have questions.”

  “And that’s human nature, right? And when you care, not a whole lot you can do about it. You just keep asking the same questions and never get any different answers. Maybe this time you can get a different answer.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “But these aren’t people I know.”

  “No, but they’re people that other people know.”

  She winced at that. “Ouch. That’s part of the problem. The friends and families are out there, waiting for somebody to come home or waiting for an answer or waiting for something we can’t give them.”

  “Well, maybe this time we can,” he said, with a bright smile. “Remember. Stay positive, and let’s keep hacking away at it.”

  “Oh, I’m positive,” she said. “Positive we’ll figure out what the hell is going on.” And she was. This guy was starting to piss her off.

  Rodney looked at her as they walked out. “Now you’re getting angry.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I am,” she said. “He’s yanking my chain, and I don’t like it.”

  “Good,” he said. “Get angry, get angrier, get really freaking angry, so that, when something does break, you’re in the right mind-set to deal with it. When somebody targets you like that, it’s easy to slip into the mind-set of a victim, and it makes everything in your world seem wrong.”

  “And that’s exactly what I’ve been feeling like,” she said. “Good reminder.”

  “Hey, no problem,” he said, with a shrug. “You can talk to Dr. Rodney any old time.”

  At that, she burst out laughing. “Hey,” she said, snickering. “I get that wasn’t meant to be super, super funny, but I’m sorry. It’s hysterical.” And, with that, she burst into another fit of giggles.

  “However you want to take it is okay with me,” he said, with a big grin. “And you’re not hurting my ego in any way.”

  *

  When Louisa called Simon, it took him a moment to reorient himself. He was standing in the middle of one of his big buildings, looking at the massive staircase going up inside, wondering why the hell he had decided that this was a good deal.

  “Hello,” he answered distractedly.

  “Simon, it’s Louisa,” she said. “I wondered if you could take a look at something on David’s laptop.”

  He pulled himself together and shifted to look down at his phone. “Sure. What do you want me to look at?”

  “Well, I don’t recognize a whole lot here,” she said. “I didn’t think that he would keep anything from me, but now I’m not so sure.” A slight hiccup in her voice said that she was either on the verge of crying or had just stopped. “I really don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Are you home right now?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m off work until I can deal with his funeral arrangements and everything.”

  “Right,” he said, wincing. “How about I come over in about an hour?”

  “Thank you, that would be great,” she said gratefully. “Honestly I don’t know anybody else who could look at this.”

  “It’s business stuff?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” she said quietly. “I’d just feel better if somebody else would make sense of it and tell me that it’s nothing.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a look,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.” He hung up, then took one last look at the staircase and shook his head because it would be a massive job to fix, which meant expensive as all hell too. Groaning, he shook his head, wondering what he’d been thinking. He knew that fixing the staircase was doable; it would just cost a lot more than he had initially planned for.

  He took his leave of the building and headed over toward Louisa’s house. He didn’t know what she wanted him to look at, but they’d all been friends for a long time. If something was there that she didn’t understand, he was more than happy to help out. He would be astonished if it was something he didn’t understand.

  David had been a hell of a guy, but he hadn’t delved much into business. At least not that Simon knew of, but maybe he’d sunk some money into an investment and had lost it all or something. That could account for why he’d decided that life wasn’t worth living after all. If that were the case, Simon sure as hell wished his buddy would have contacted him. Simon could have bailed him out or at least helped him find a path forward.

  As he walked up the front steps and knocked on the door, he turned to look around. Nobody was nearby, but Simon had that weird sensation in the back of his head. And just then came a whisper.

  Do it. Just do it.

  “Simon? Simon?” Louisa said in a louder voice.

  He gave a headshake, turned to look at her, and said, “Sorry, I was off in another world.”

  “You looked like it,” she said, with a half smile. She reached up, gave him a hug, and said, “Come on in.”

  He stepped inside, noticing that it was the same as the last time he’d been there. “So what’s this all about?” he asked, as he walked in.

  “I’ve left David’s laptop open on the dining room table,” she said, pointing over at it. “If you want to take a look, I’ll go put on some coffee.”

  He would never say no to coffee, so he nodded and said, “Sounds good.” He walked over, sat down at the dining room table, and took a look. She was already logged in, but he didn’t even know what security might be here, if any. His friend was not really a business guy but had dabbled around in some online stocks and did a few bonds. He kept a few high-interest savings accounts, but that was about it. He worked for a car dealership as a salesman, working off commissions and generally had a solid reputation.

  Simon wasn’t sure at first what he was looking for here. He checked all the open tasks on the taskbar, and they all appeared to be chats.

  When she came back and sat down across from him, he saw she was nervous. “What is it you’re expecting me to find?”

  “I’m not expecting you to find anything,” she said. “But it looks like he belonged to some groups that I wasn’t aware of. And there are conversations with some people I wasn’t aware of.”

  “Sent to his usual email?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She pointed to a small black book that Simon hadn’t paid much attention to on the side of the laptop. “I found that in his night table when I was cleaning it out. It’s a bunch of log-ins,” she said. “I’m too scared to check them all out.”

  “Why?” he asked, settling back and looking at her.

  “I’m afraid he was having an affair.” At that, tears welled up and poured down her cheeks again.

  “Well, I would be very surprised if he was. I know he loved you very much.”

  “If that’s the case, why did he leave me?” she said flatly.

  He nodded because that logic was irrefutable. He opened the book and noted some of the log-ins and then checked it against some of the websites. He nod
ded and started logging into the first one.

  “Well, this one is a chat group,” he said, “for men,” as he read his way through. “It’s discussing marital problems, how to handle different issues.” He checked David’s username, checked on some posts. “His last post was at Christmastime, trying to figure out what to get you for Christmas.”

  She gasped, and her tears ran freely this time. “Is that all?”

  “For that one anyway,” he said. “I don’t know what else I’ll find. Give me a few minutes.”

  She nodded and settled back, looking a little bit more relaxed. When the coffee was done, she got up and poured them both a cup. When she returned, he said, “The next one is on a men’s group, asking about fertility testing,” he said, looking at her. “I gather you were having trouble conceiving.”

  She nodded slowly. “I told him that it didn’t matter to me.”

  “But it mattered to him,” Simon said, with a nod. “It affected his masculinity.”

  “And yet it didn’t have to. And, if that’s why he killed himself,” she said, “I’d want to kill him all over again for being so stupid.”

  He gave her a small smile. “Well, let me keep looking. So far though, nothing indicates that he was having a relationship with anybody else or that he wanted to.”

  “And that is truly good news,” she whispered.

  When he logged into the next one, he frowned.

  “What is that look for?”

  Simon sighed heavily. “It’s a suicide group.”

  She gasped in horror and started to cry, getting up and racing away. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about that, but it was certainly not in him to hold back the truth from her. Even though it was tough, the truth was necessary for people to face. In this case maybe it was a little bit too much. He checked to see if there were posts from his friend, and, sure enough, there was one saying that David was struggling, that things were looking pretty dark and gloomy, and that he wasn’t sure even why he was on the forum.

  Others responded, saying, “Hey, it’s okay. You are in the same boat we are. Not exactly sure why we’re here but always coming back because, if nothing else, here we are understood.”

  As Simon kept reading, he felt the darkness that had crept into the soul of his friend. Sadness that David couldn’t have children and his inability to face a life without them. Several times he posted that My wife said it didn’t matter and that she’s okay with it, but how do I explain that I’m not? Others responded that adoption was always an answer, and he said, No, in our case it’s probably not, he wrote, because I’ve got a prior conviction.

  At that, Simon’s eyebrows raised because he hadn’t been aware of that. As soon as he found that, he looked over at Louisa, when she joined him again. “He talked about adoption not being an option.”

  She sighed and said, “No, probably not.”

  “He mentioned a conviction.”

  She winced at that. “You know that stupid charge. He was caught drunk driving a few years back. It was after a bender, when he found out that he couldn’t have children,” she said. “But, of course, that went against us, when people are looking at ideal parents.”

  Simon could imagine. And he said, “I’m sorry. That just compounded his problems, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. You didn’t know?”

  He shook his head. “No, we haven’t stayed in touch all that much on a regular basis. We hit the highs and lows in life—I thought anyway—but apparently I didn’t hit very many of the lows. Not if these chats are anything to go by.”

  “And I didn’t know how low he really was,” she whispered.

  He nodded and said, “I have a couple more here to check.”

  She nodded and said, “I’ll just grab my laptop too. Something to keep my mind off what you’re doing.” She got up and walked around him, going upstairs. He went to one website, which turned out to be another suicide one. He had avoided going to it at first because something was familiar about it. He thought he’d seen a corresponding email address in David’s emails. But Simon checked it out, and, once again, his friend was talking about how the world would be better off without him and how his wife would find somebody else to be happy with and to have children with.

  Simon swore at that because, if Louisa wanted one thing, it wasn’t life without David. She would never choose children over having a life with him. On the whole, it sounded like David was working his way through it in some of the conversations. Simon checked the dates, and nothing there suggested that anything had triggered this suicide action or that he was close to taking that final walk off a bridge.

  When Louisa sat back down again, Simon asked, “Was there any trigger or anything upsetting him this last week?”

  She looked up and shook her head. “I’ve asked myself that a million times, wondering what would have set this off,” she said, “but I don’t know of anything.”

  He nodded slowly. “And—” Then he stopped and said, “I don’t even know how to ask this, but, outside of the parental thing, can you think of any reason why he would choose to do this?”

  “I would never have imagined he would ever choose this,” she cried out. “I know in the past he’s made a couple dumb comments, and I’d shut it down really fast,” she said, “because who wants to hear anybody talk about suicide? That’s not funny,” she said, “so I didn’t think anything of it or put any credence into it because he would only bring it up when he got depressed.”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m just not seeing anything that shows a trigger for why he did it. I can’t imagine that, from one day to the next, he just woke up one morning without any reason to live.”

  Somebody had been talking to David in the one chat on a private message board. It took Simon a moment to figure out how these boards worked, but he found the one message with a response at the top.

  Go ahead and do it.

  His friend had responded. Hell no, why should I?

  You should.

  David’s response was clear and succinct. Fuck off.

  Simon smiled. “Well, he said fuck off to somebody pushing him to commit suicide,” he said to Louisa. She gasped in joy. And then she looked at him, the smile falling away. “So then why did he do it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still looking.” He went through it, and then, taking note of the one, he checked the other message board. And found the same type of message from somebody else.

  Go ahead and do it. You’ll feel better. Everybody’ll be better off without you.

  Simon frowned at that and went to one of the others. And it was the same thing. In each case, always somebody who private-messaged him, then said how it would be much better if he did it. That he would feel so much better and that his family could move on without this curse. Somebody was actively encouraging David. Simon’s fingers thrummed on the table as he thought about that. Then he went to the emails. “Did he have more than one email address?”

  “Yeah, he had a couple anyway,” she said. “I don’t know all of them. Check the book.”

  Simon flipped through the book and, in the back, were the email accounts. He checked the first one, but it’s the one that he used all the time, and there didn’t seem to be anything in it. When he checked the other two, one was completely blank and empty, and the last one appeared to be the one he used for all these chats.

  Simon checked and found several messages from several different senders, all saying some version of Hey, dude, you should. A few were supportive, saying things like, Don’t, the world is still a brighter place, and you’ll be happier if you’re in it.

  And then the last one was very different.

  Do it or else.

  Alarm growing deep inside him, Simon opened it up to see a picture of Louisa, sitting right across from him, only this time, the photo had been doctored, and a bullet hole was in the center of her forehead.

 
He slammed the laptop shut.

  Chapter 6

  Kate walked the first suicide scene, remembering how she had felt that morning. She stood back in the same position, where her memory said she must have been when the picture of her had been taken.

  At her side, Rodney asked, “Were you standing there?”

  “I think so.”

  He immediately shifted to look up in the hills behind him. “He could have been anywhere. Probably took multiple attempts.”

  “And a lot of people were here,” she said, “so it could have been from a vehicle across the street too.”

  “Agreed. Wouldn’t find much at this point.” Rodney added, “It’d be pretty murky at this point in time.”

  But she walked over to the bridge railing, took a closer look, and said, “If he picked her up and tossed her over, he’d have to be sure that nobody was here, and this bridge is superbusy. Has anybody checked the cameras?”

  “We need to double-check whether they have or not.” Rodney nodded. “I can do that.”

  She said, “Let’s go on to the second site.” It took longer to cross town than she expected.

  They went to the second jumper scene, and, although she only had a vague idea of where the jumper dove off the bridge, based on the shoes she had seen in the photo, she could walk to within ten feet of the spot. She looked over the railing, saw the flowing water below, and winced. It bothered her to imagine such an end. “The water’s not as high today, but, if caught in that heavy current down there, it would be pretty rough. They wouldn’t survive for long.”

  “Hard to imagine jumping, isn’t it?”

  “Most bridge jumpers don’t make it at all,” she said. “And, in this case, it was a healthy thirtysomething male. And that I don’t get,” she said, turning to look at Rodney. “I mean, if we were talking murder, and somebody tossed the body over, there should be something else to show as a sign of death. Surely a struggle? Defensive wounds? The victim wouldn’t be an easy target, right?”

  “Being a jumper,” he said quietly, “no tox screens are even done, and visible signs of trauma, outside of … what?” he asked, raising both hands. “I mean, what damage would there normally be with a jumper? Wouldn’t there be bruising from hitting the water? I mean, hitting water at a distance like this is like slamming into concrete.”