Bill stepped down the hallway, positioned the two of them on either side of him. “If I’m the cyclist, I was up here, and they came up on either side of me.”
“Was this before or after the blind woman?”
“It was all around the same time really. They weren’t all hassling the blind woman. They were just crowding and jostling everybody. You couldn’t really see who was doing what, and you sure as hell couldn’t prove what they were doing to any legal standard because everyone was all so crowded together.”
“Which is probably part of the MO,” Rodney said.
“Then you don’t know if it was an accident or not,” Kate said.
“Maybe. The one guy, Brandon, looked like he raised his hand and punched the person in the red hoodie on the bike or did something, but it looked pretty odd.”
“What about the woman riding the bike? Did you see her face?”
“No, except for the fact that she was coming in and looked a little woozy.”
“Were the guys around her?”
Bill frowned. “Somebody was, but I think like four or five people were at the intersection. I mean, that’s a popular place, as intersections go.”
“It is, so, no, I’m not surprised that a few people were hanging around. Now if only I had some proof of it.”
“Proof of what?”
“That they were all there at the same time and that they were hassling people.”
“If you find the one guy they knocked down, I’m sure he’d have something to say.”
“He probably would, but I also have to identify him in order to ask him.”
“The one girl knew who he was because she was talking to him before she shoved him. They werefriendlylike.”
“And you think that’s why he was targeted?”
“Yeah. At least it’s a reasonable assumption, and the other guys didn’t look like they appreciated her being friendly at all.”
“No, I’m sure they didn’t.” She looked at Bill. “So I guess you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?” he asked.
“The female from the second biking accident?”
“Yeah?”
“She was Candy, the one in that bully group at the first accident this week, the one who didn’t knock down the blind woman but did knock down the guy.”
Bill stared at Kate, and his jaw dropped. “Yeah, but like…” He stopped, frowned. “My God, that’s really shitty. I feel like she got into something she couldn’t handle. Now she’s dead?”
Kate nodded. “Your theory is totally possible. Can I get you to come down to the station and give us a statement?”
He stared at her. “You know what? If you hadn’t told me about that one, I would have said,Fuck off, but because of her…” He sighed. “Are you thinking it’s those damn kids?”
“I don’t know, but they are definitely up to no good. Now at least we have a direction to go on.”
“They looked like the punk-ass kind who never get caught.”
“They’re also therichpunk-ass kind,” she said.
He nodded. “Of course they are. I know a bunch like that gave my son a hard time a few years back. He was in his first year, and he just couldn’t seem to keep it together. He was trying so hard to get aligned and to stay afloat, but he was just overwhelmed with it all. He put them in their place, but it never seemed to really take. When he was killed, for the longest time, I wondered if they had had anything to do with it, but I didn’t have any reason to suspect that. And it was the drunk driver who knocked him out anyway,” he said sadly.