“So you think he’s cleaning up?”
“I do,” she said quietly. “But I don’t know that it’s related to any of these other accidents—those yearly occurrences.”
“No, maybe not. We also don’t know for sure that the recent deaths are even related to each other.”
“I know, yet… these two—Candy and Paula—are definitely related, being in the same gang and all, and that’s what we have to keep our eye on. Plus, Candy and Sally were probably killed with the same ice-bullet contraption. So right there it seems we have a cross-over from our annual deaths to these most recent ones. I still think we have two killers.”
“Or,” Rodney suggested, “one killer with two MOs.”
Kate groaned. “I just want some answers.” And, with that, she looked over at the two boxes of paperwork from Dr. Agress’s office and groaned again. “We haven’t had a chance to go through this collection either, and we need to. Colby will have my head if I don’t get through this, after all the fuss I made.”
“Let’s do it now. We can push back the visit to the mother’s place for an hour,” he said, checking his watch.
“Let’s see if any names here pop at least.” After only a few minutes, Kate sat back. “Looks like Pamela had lodged several complaints against the group of kids.” She shook her head. “Yeah, even before her horrible accident.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “Yes, apparently they harassed her a couple times, badly enough that she was quite nervous around them. They even scared her little girl at one point, when Pamela and Jillie were walking on campus, heading home.”
“Assholes,” he muttered.
“I know, and we have it here in black-and-white.”
“Do you think that’s what Dr. Agress was trying to hold back?”
“I don’t know. Either way it’s not good news for Brandon. But, so far, outside of being an asshole, we don’t have anything bigger than that.”
“No, what we need is a confession or some forensics. And the trouble is, because Brandon says he’s having an affair with both of them,” Rodney stepped in, “his DNA could be all over the place, and we have a logical explanation for it.”
“Yes. I don’t know about the other guys’ particular sexual relationships, his three gang members. However, they all confirmed that the ‘relationships,’ such as they were, had been a shared mess between them.”
“How is that even normal?”
“It’s not normal, but self-expression, exploration, trying to outdo each other? It all fits.” She gave a wave of her hand. “Maybe not common sense or smart choices, but again it’s nothing we’ll get Brandon or his buddies on as criminal.”
“Unless he did do something to those two young women.”
“I am interested in the fact that Bill said that he saw Brandon step up to the first victim—Sally.”
“But do you really think nobody would have seen him shoot her?”
“If he held his hand out and just popped her one in the general direction, I don’t know what it would take, what kind of a firing mechanism it would involve to shoot those ice bullets.”
“Hell, a BB gun, an air gun? Something with some force but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be a pistol.”
She looked at him. “It could be one of those small ones that are easily hidden in the palm.”
“We just have to find that weapon.”
She nodded. “And because the ice pellets melt, no forensics would allow for a match against a weapon.”
“And again, we have to catch him with it. Which means a warrant for his place, but we don’t have enough for that yet.”
“No. That’s another reason to go talk to Pamela.” She looked at the rest of the information Dr. Agress had been forced to turn over. “Dozens and dozens of complaints are in here. Even if we just stick to the years when Brandon was around”—she pulled up just the last year’s worth of complaints in one folder—“I bet thirty complaints are in here.”
“Not necessarily all against him though.”
“No, but I bet a lot of them are.” She sat at her desk to sort through them. “Out of these twenty-four complaints in the two last years, sixteen are against Brandon or his group.”