“I don’t think any of them get it yet,” he said.
“At least one dead victim is from their bullying—Trent, Candy’s potential boyfriend. Plus the two women—Candy and Paula.” Kate held up one finger and shook her head. “No, Aaron talked of killing a woman. Never confirmed who she was. It could have been Paula, since she didn’t have the same ice bullet wounds as Candy and Sally.”
“Right,” Rodney agreed. “So we count Sally instead of Paula in Brandon’s kill column. So maybe three deaths on the bullies.”
“At least.” Kate shook her head. “We can always throw Paula’s death in the mix. See if we can get them to disclaim that death, kinda incriminating themselves on the other three.”
They walked into the first interview room to see one of the guys standing against the wall, an insolent look on his face.
“Three counts of murder, Walter, that we know of so far.”
He looked startled, and then his face paled.
Kate nodded. “Did you think you would just continue playing God, deciding who gets to live and who gets to die?”
“Do you really think Brandon gives a shit about you guys?” Rodney asked, as he pulled out a chair and gestured for the young man to sit down.
She shook her head. “Did you really think that Candy had to die?”
“We didn’t have nothing to do with Candy,” Walter said nervously.
“Well then, one out of three isn’t bad, right?” Kate asked, all serious.
“It’s still two counts of murder,” Rodney said.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he blurted out suddenly, looking frantically back and forth between them.
“Of course not. I supposed Brandon made you do it, right?”
“You don’t know what he’s like.” Walter sat down, as the words poured from him. “If you want to be anybody on campus, you have to toe the line with him. You have to do what he says.”
“And why would you want to be anybody on campus?” she asked curiously. “I mean, particularly with him.”
He stared at her. “Because he’s… he’s the wealthiest on campus. He’s the one with all the connections. He’s the one who can get you a job when you’re done. He’s the one who has the family ties.” He slumped toward the table, his head in his hands. “It’s all about who you know.”
“So, in order to get a job—when this wasted college experience was all over—you were prepared to sell your soul in the process? That’s not the way university life was for me.”
He scrubbed at his hair with both hands. “But we didn’t realize what we were doing. It didn’t start off that way. It just slid into this,… this horrible chain of events that we couldn’t get out of.”
“Tell me what happened at the intersection with Sally, the one in the red hoodie.”
Walter looked at her in surprise and then frowned. “Brandon had this new gimmick ice-cube thing that he got somewhere off the internet. He read about a case on campus a long time ago, and, while we were drinking at the student pub, we searched for it and found it for less than twenty bucks. Brandon ordered it. We took it to the pub and shot these little ice bullets into our drinks. He thought it was a great toy and always has it on him,” Walter said.
“We were walking down the sidewalk, outside of the campus, heading for our pizza joint, when he walked up to this woman on her bike and, all of a sudden, just said, “There you go.” As the girl moved forward, Brandon reached up, and he popped her behind the head. But it was just ice, so we didn’t think anything of it, but the girl wobbled forward and then slowly did this weird hit into the car, and lots of screaming and shouting and whatnot happened, but Brandon just laughed.”
“Yeah. Any idea where that tool is?”
“Probably at his place,” he said.
“What happened to Paula?”
He winced at that. “I don’t really know what happened with Paula,” he said quietly. “I just know that it was bad news. That whole deal was bad news.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Brandon pitted the females against each other.”
“And yet the one, Candy, had a boyfriend?”