Simon Says... Swim, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Books in This Series
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Sneak Peek from Simon Says… Die
Sneak Peek from Simon Says… Die
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright Page
Books in This Series
The Kate Morgan Series
Simon Says… Hide, Book 1
Simon Says… Jump, Book 2
Simon Says… Ride, Book 3
Simon Says… Scream, Book 4
Simon Says… Run, Book 5
Simon Says… Walk, Book 6
Simon Says… Forgive, Book 7
Simon Says… Swim, Book 8
Simon Says… Die, Book 9
About This Book
Detective Kate Morgan is stumped, trying to decide when a case is really a case and when it belongs on her desk or someone else’s. She’s homicide and this? … This is something else, right? Following up the leads doesn’t help, only confuses the issue—until someone slips up or slips away literally.
Simon wakes, choking on water, drowning in the darkness of his night, struggling to understand what madness he is connecting to now. As usual, he has few answers, and the ones he does find make no sense. Add in a young man in desperate need of assistance—yet hiding something—has Simon caught up trying to help someone, who maybe doesn’t want help in the first place.
As Kate works her way through the details of multiple cases—or not cases—the realization is worse than anyone had realized.
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Chapter 1
Two Weeks Later, Second Week of November
Detective Kate Morgan walked into the station, a bright smile on her face. She looked around at her team, who had gotten up on their feet to clap and to cheer. “What was it this time? Three days and three cases closed? We’re on a roll,” she crowed.
Immediately came high fives all around her. “Right, and we needed it. Damn, we needed it,” Lilliana stated.
“Oh, we needed some quick successes, all right,” Kate agreed. “Just so many open cases and more new ones happening all the time that it’s almost impossible to feel anything but depressed.”
“I know,” Rodney agreed, coming up behind her, walking with the help of a cane.
She looked at him critically. “Are you back? How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’ll survive,” he replied, with a casual shrug, “and I’ll probably walk with a limp for quite some time. That SOB got me good, and, thanks to that asshole, I’ll suffer some for a time,” he muttered. “Yet I’m damn glad to be alive.”
It had been weeks since Kate had shot Peter while he was attacking Rodney, intent on adding yet another cop to his list of victims. That snapshot of Rodney’s near-death encounter with their perp had given Kate a whole new perspective on Rodney, as he struggled to recover from the debilitating physical attack. She told him, “I’m just glad that you’re doing better and that you’re back. Doing without you and Andy was tough.”
“I am back and better and thankful,” he declared, with a smile in her direction, “and know who to thank for it.”
“Oh, no, don’t even go there,” she said, with an eye roll. “That’s the last thing I need.”
“Yeah, what she said,” Owen pitched in from the nearby desk, with a grin.
Rodney grinned at the joke and looked back at her, holding up a baggie. “Does that mean, if my girlfriend baked you some cookies, you’ll turn them down?”
“I’ll never turn down cookies,” she stated, staring at him. “What do you think I am? A psycho?” And, with that, she snatched the bag from his hand and eyed it with a greedy expression on her face. Then it came to her. “These were for your lunch, weren’t they?”
He burst out laughing. “Damn, I’m so busted.”
She groaned and handed them back. “You can keep them.” She smiled. “Besides, you’re the injured person, not me.”
“Ah, I’m not injured though,” he added. “I just got released to return to duty.”
“Sure, but you still have to go to physical therapy, right?”
He glared at her and nodded. “Why did you have to go there and ruin my day? Do you know how painful PT is?”
“Oh, I do,” she noted, with a satisfied nod. “Trust me. I absolutely do, which is why you’re not getting out of it.” He just continued to glare at her, and she chuckled. “Not happening.” She pointed at his miserable face. “You need to get that leg back.” Kate turned to ask her team, “Anybody have an update on Andy returning to work?”
Just then Sergeant Colby walked in. “So …” he began.
Something about his tone of voice made Kate cringe. “What?” she asked cautiously.
He nodded at her. “We have the potential of something ugly coming up on the board—reports of a drowning up at Cultus Lake.”
“That’ll be up to the local law enforcement, right?” Kate asked.
“Yes, it’s from a while ago, but yes.”
“What do you mean, a while ago?”
“We have that case, and we have a couple other cases. Those others concern us because they probably link to that older one.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kate said. “You’re not making sense.”
“I will, unfortunately,” he replied, raising his hand to stop her onslaught. “Okay, listen up. I’ll fill you all in from the top. We’ve had a drowning at Wreck Beach.”
At that, Rodney whistled. “It certainly isn’t from the weight of the bathing suits down at that new beach,” he noted, with a smile.
“Maybe, but it happened early in the morning, off one of the rocks,” Colby noted, with a sigh. “According to a witness, somebody out there apparently tried to help, supposedly tried to help, but the victim drowned and was carried along the shore, before being dragged to shore by the guy who had been trying to help. However, in hindsight, now our witness is not so sure.”
Kate frowned at him in confusion. “I don’t get it.”
Lilliana snorted. “Thank you. I’m so glad you said that, though I never thought I would hear those words coming out of your mouth in one million years. And, Sarge, for the record, I sure as hell don’t get it either.”
“According to the eyewitness, this person trying to save our victim may have instead drowned our victim.”
“So it could have been one or the other? That’s hardly a solid witness account or a conclusive statement,” Lilliana pointed out.
“Exactly, which is why it has ended up in our purview.”
“So,” Kate asked, “we don’t have a body, or do we?”
Colby faced her. “As of twenty minutes ago, we have a body.”
She groaned. “Okay, so we have a drowning victim. I’m still confused how that has anything to do with us.”
At that moment, their analyst Reese walked in, with several files in her hand. “Because,” she interjected, as she passed out copies to everyone, “we have three other victims with eyewitness accounts, making it sound as if somebody watched them drown and didn’t do anything to help them—or possibly tried to help them but failed.”
Kate winced, then asked cautiously. “Watched them drown or actively helped them drown and then stepped back?”
“That’s what you get to find out,” Colby stated, with a nod in her direction. “We’re taking it in the worst way possible—that they put this person in a position to drown and then stepped back and watched them drown. Now, if that’s the case”—he gave them all a stare—“it’s murder, and, therefore, it’s ours.”
“And if that’s not the case?” Kate asked cautiously.
He shrugged. “Then it has nothing to do with us.” She glared at him, and he smiled. “All I can tell you is that this case has crossed our desk, so it’s up to us to take a look.”
“Okay then,” Kate confirmed, “but it does sound …” Then she frowned and shrugged. “It sounds a little off.”
“Which means it should be a perfect case for you then,” Lilliana noted, with an eye roll. “Nobody does a little off like Kate.”
“Regardless of who does it well,” Colby butted in, “this is a serious case, and, as Reese pointed out, three other cases have similarities. No conclusive link but similar in the manner of death and in the eyewitness accounts.”
“Why the hell would you drown anybody with eyewitnesses around in the first place?” Kate wondered out loud.
Colby turned, looked at her, and nodded. “Exactly, so see what you can come up with and get back to me as soon as you can.”
She groaned. “Will do.” She turned to the others. “I suppose you all have cases to work?”
“Yep, you’re the one who took time off,” Owen pointed out. “So guess what? You’re it.”
“Seems that I’m always it somehow,” she mumbled to herself, as she walked over t
As she looked down at the files in front of her, she had to wonder just what motive anybody would have for this.
Chapter 2
Kate stood at the edge of the water, watching as the sea reached for her boots with every roll of the tide. She was far enough back that she should be safe from getting her feet wet. It was a cloudy and dismal mid-November day, yet not as cold as it could have been. Although a very balmy fall season by anyone’s standards here in Canada, the water would still be cold for swimming. Or drowning.
With various rocks along the water’s edge, and logs that were obviously a favorite of many of the beachgoers, the scene looked worn and a bit worse for wear, but still it was a beauty in its own right. Wreck Beach was a local nudist beach and, for the most part, kept itself pretty much self-regulated.
As she looked around, the beach itself was empty. She smiled as the breeze washed through and lifted the hair off her face and, in a surprisingly odd twist, gave her a sense of renewal, a sense of peace and calm. Something was generously healing about Mother Nature, particularly in a beach setting, like this.
That might seem odd, considering what she was here for, but death was the other half of the constant cycle of life. It would just be nice if people would leave each other to die on their own terms. So, when they didn’t, that’s when Kate ended up involved. She stood here, enjoying the solitary peace of the wondrous space and the fairly isolated beach, looking out to the Vancouver harbor, which had grown to be quite famous.
Several tankers were out there in front of her, plus lots of sailboats and pleasure craft of all kinds. It was hard to imagine, but it was a day like none other in the sense that everybody knew that this season was slowly coming to an end. Fall was well into its cycle, and winter would not be far behind. Winter in Vancouver meant more rain than anything, but that was typical of coastal towns and cities all over the world.
Still, it would be a change, but she really loved living here and experiencing four distinct seasons. She couldn’t imagine living someplace in the world where it was 74 degrees all year round and never changed. She absolutely loved the contrasts that each season brought in Vancouver. There was such a sense of renewal in spring, yet a special rebirth coming after a hibernation period, and fall was special with a sense of closure. A period to go inside and then return to the world, with a renewed sense of enjoyment and peace in the spring.
She knew a lot of people didn’t feel that way, and unfortunately, for her, crime never ceased, no matter what the season.
She returned her attention to the terrain. Not a whole lot of rocks could be seen, as they were underwater, but a few buoys were out there. A few visible rocks were at the end of the beach around the bend. She had already spent an hour wandering back and forth on the sand, getting a feel for the location. She had a good idea where the body had been pulled from, which was farther down, and a good idea of where the eyewitness saw the woman drowning.
Shitty people were all over the world, but that still didn’t mean it was murder. Yet not making an effort to assist or to contact people to render aid was also a crime, though not necessarily one easy to prosecute.
Of course, if the body had zero signs of struggle but just evidence of a simple drowning, then that made her job still harder, at least to enforce any kind of criminal activity involved. However, if the cops had several other cases, as Colby and their analyst had pointed out, then that was a different story. Was somebody deliberately doing harm, or was it a series of ugly accidents?
She didn’t believe in coincidence, never had. Too many times what seemed like coincidences just raised her instincts to delve in further, or sometimes those coincidental events were—and she hated herself for even thinking this—fate intervening. She really didn’t know what she believed anymore. Simon’s psychic visions interacting with her black-and-white attitude had completely changed her worldview to allow for a lot of gray, getting grayer every day.
It wasn’t easy to admit, but her other team members often questioned her to see if she had any contribution from Simon, her boyfriend and reluctant psychic, regarding any of the various cases that crossed their desks. Thankfully for the last little while, he’d been calm, quiet, and sleeping peaceably. So no nightmares to warn them of something coming soon.
Everybody was happy for his sake, but, for some of these cases, that still had them bothered. Most of her team much preferred that Simon wake up screaming the name of a murderer or giving them exact locations of bodies and weapons. Of course nothing in his world worked that way.
So, for him, silence was golden.
Kate looked out at the harbor, noting several pleasure craft heading toward the marinas. The day was slowly ending, and most of the daytime boaters were heading back to their safe harbors for the night. It was only 5:30 p.m., but in mid-November, an overcast day heading toward dusk had a dark gloominess to it.
She suspected boating would be right up Simon’s alley, or sailing as the rich called it. He wasn’t much for beachgoing out in the hot sunshine for very long though, but he would be out on a day like today, thoroughly enjoying the weather and the change in temperature. She glanced down at her watch and nodded. She would be here specifically on site around the time of the most recent drowning, as identified in the police report.
Not the time that the body had been discovered but the time when the female witness had supposedly seen somebody refusing to help the drowning victim or had tried to help them and had failed. Had this witness herself called it in? She supposedly had, but Kate hadn’t seen a copy of the transcript yet to read exactly what she’d told the cops or how her phone call may have set all this in motion.
Stepping back, Kate got a broader, wider-angled view of the beach itself and the cliffs rising behind her. A few people walked around, all dressed, mostly because of the weather. Just because it was a nude beach, people didn’t have to be nude all the time or at any time. People came with all different levels of comfort, depending on how modest they were in regard to their own bodies. For some people, nudity would never be okay because of religious or cultural upbringing, and that was okay too. This beach was relatively hidden, safe from the public eye, except for those who came to enjoy the same pastime, whether partaking in the nudity or coming to ogle it. Still, predators were possible too.
Those were the ones who Kate would prefer just stay away, but it was almost impossible to have any say in that.
She wandered back and forth for a bit at the specified time of the drowning. Not long afterward, she headed to her vehicle. Still, she stopped several times, looked down at the view, nodding, as she saw various people on the beach and what any onlooker might have seen or what they couldn’t have seen.
Yet, at this time of day, it was quite possible that nobody had even been around. The body had also been found fully dressed, so not out for a swim, and that’s the part that concerned Kate. If the body had been in a bathing suit, potentially with evidence of having gone for a swim and gotten caught in a tide, well that was a different story.
Accidental drownings happened, far too many to make anybody happy. Outside of posting lifeguards here twenty-four hours a day, it was almost impossible to regulate. British Columbia was known for hundreds of miles of beaches up and down its coast. So common sense must be used when swimming, and, if common sense were lacking, not a whole lot anybody could do about it. But still, Kate was always sad for the families, and, in this particular case, she sighed because the victim was a young woman, only twenty-three years old.
Patty was her name.
Kate had her last name, but, for some reason, only the victim’s first name stuck with Kate. As she continued up to her vehicle, stopping yet again to peruse the shoreline, she saw a large boat, maybe a yacht—she wasn’t even sure; she didn’t do boats. That was a Simon thing. It was a boat of some sort out in the distance that looked pretty interesting.
She stared at it for a long moment, picked up her phone, and took a picture of it, wondering what it would cost to have something like that and what it would take to keep something like that maintained and on the water. Would anybody have been close enough to have seen what had happened to her drowning victim? Or, with the rocks nearby in the water, were they parked so far out that nobody could have seen the shoreline?
