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And with that, they were ushered out of the office.
As they walked through the corridor to the door to the parking area, Johnson repeated, “‘Simplify.’ That’s our big clue, the thing we were called into the office for?” He pushed the door open, held it for her.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said as she stepped outside.
He followed. “Sure I do. I’m old-school.” They crossed the parking lot, their boots crunching through a layer of ice that had formed on the snow.
“Amen to that.” She slid into the passenger side. “And by the way, next time I’m driving.”
“Then who would be checking messages and the Internet? Running down clues while we’re on the road and keeping her nose deep into her phone?”
“We all have our strengths.”
“And mine is behind the wheel,” he said, causing her to roll her black eyes.
“Fine, Ace, so tell me. What’s with ‘Simplify’?”
“Probably nothing,” he said. “Gleason just wants to put his mark on the case and talk to an old colleague before he passes. This way he feels involved. Y’know, on a personal level because he was there that night.”
“Yeah, I know.” She was thinking, her teeth worrying her lower lip. “But what if the guy wasn’t saying ‘Simplify’?”
“What do you mean?” He eased out of the lot, merging with late-afternoon traffic, headlights glowing as nightfall came early this time of year.
“I don’t know, maybe he was saying, ‘Send her to Fai.’”
“Send her?”
“He could’ve been talking about the little girl. Kara. Isn’t her aunt Faiza Donner? Hadn’t Edmund Tate seen that Kara McIntyre’s entire family had been killed? Hadn’t he just rescued her from the lake? So obviously he cared what happened to her. Maybe, in his last dying breaths, he was still trying to save her, so he said, ‘Send her to Fai,’ or even ‘Send her Fai’ rather than ‘Simplify.’” She cast him a glance as they slowed near a strip mall on the edge of town.
“Then again,” she was saying, “it all could be nothing. Just the mutterings of a dying, delusional man.”
“Possibly,” he agreed, considering flipping on his lights as traffic had snarled, barely crawling past the mall.
One corner of the parking lot had been cordoned off. A choral group on risers was singing Christmas carols. Nearby, in a roped-off area, a crèche was displayed. Actors dressed as wise men, Mary and Joseph, as well as a shepherd and at least one angel, all hovering around a manger with a lifelike doll representing the baby Jesus. A donkey and sheep were caged in the makeshift stable, the donkey braying loudly enough to be heard over the chorus.
Johnson rolled down her window. “I love this,” she said. “So Americana.” The final strains of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” seeped inside.
“It kind of puts me in the mood.”
“More than trying to solve a gruesome murder?”
“Yeah, but just a bit more.”
He was able to jockey around the knot of vehicles trying to go in and out of the strip mall’s lot when the beginning notes of “Silent Night” slipped into the interior. Johnson rolled up the window as he picked up speed. Thomas was still thinking about Edmund Tate’s last words. Was the guy so out of it, so near death, he didn’t know what he was saying? His last spoken thoughts hadn’t been “Call my wife” or “Tell my family goodbye.” No, according to the EMTs, Edmund Tate’s final breath came out as “Simplify.”
What the hell did that mean?
* * *
“This is the last time,” Brittlynn swore, thinking of how many other times Chad Atwater had walked out on her. “No more. This is the end.”
She really hadn’t believed that he’d leave her, but she’d watched and listened and thought he’d change his mind. But oh, no. Instead, he’d started the old pickup, the engine grinding like it always did before catching, then torn down the driveway, kicking up snow from the big tires.
“Bastard,” she’d said. “Dick-wad!” And it was her damned truck. Registered in her name, she’d thought, as she’d observed the taillights, winking red through the trees before disappearing altogether.
So, she was done.Reallydone.
Now she carried the last of Chad’s things, his stupid snowboard that he never used, his favorite Oregon Ducks sweatshirt and his precious cell phone that he’d probably left on purpose. It was going to die, too.
