“No, no, no,” she cried out. “They’re not that bad. At least I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”
“It’s just a matter of degrees,” Kate said. “Once you go down the pathway that you’re talking about, it is a very simple step to cross that line.”
“No, they wouldn’t do that.”
Kate snorted at that. “You know something, Candy? Anybody who’ll deliberately attack disadvantaged people or people with disabilities, or someone suffering with injuries already, yeah, they absolutely will. It’s a very thin line between acting that way to somebody and participating in their deaths.”
At that, the other woman stopped and stared. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“What do you think happens when one of these accidents goes wrong?”
“I think it already did. They’re really secretive about one of them.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know any of the details. They won’t tell me.”
Kate sighed and stared at the young woman. “And did you break up with him now?”
“Well, supposedly.” She sat here, with her shoulders sagged, as if the whole world was over.
“Okay, clue me in on this relationship stuff. As much as I don’t want to go there, I don’t get what you’re talking about right now.”
“We’ve broken up several times. And honestly, I usually come crawling back,” she admitted shamefully.
“Why?”
“Partly because I have to live here too. And I’m afraid that I’ll become one of the people who they decide to knock over one day.”
“That would be justice, wouldn’t it? Some would call it karma.”
“I get that. I really do, and, if I thought that would be my punishment, and then I could be free of all this guilt, then I’d take it. I really would. I’d take it and be happy to move on. But, like I said, I’m not so sure that something else hasn’t gotten much worse.”
“So you think they killed somebody?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, “but I think one of their jokes backfired or something, and somebody got seriously hurt.”
“In that case, I’ll need more information.”
“And I can’t give it to you. You don’t understand. These guys are really dangerous.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Kate said, “but the question is, what will we do about it?” She pondered that for a moment. “I’m also here about that accident you saw.”
“But we didn’t see anything,” she said.
“What about the blind woman?”
“She was at the intersection. I think a man was escorting her,” She nodded. “But I don’t know how close she was to that accident.”
Kate frowned at that. “I’m waiting for the autopsy report on her now.”
At that, Candy gasped. “That would be terrible.”
“Why would that be any more terrible than what they wanted you to do to her? Or knocking someone down the stairs?”
“It wasn’t supposed to involve the stairs. She was just supposed to fall over, but instead she tripped, stumbled, fell forward, and ended up falling down the stairs.”
“Even picking a place that’s dangerous where she could fall down the stairs is stupid. Are you really making excuses for this? You’re all lucky she only broke her leg and not her neck.”