“If I don’t make excuses,” Candy whispered, “I have to face up to the fact of what I did.”
“News flash,” Kate said in a hard voice, “you have to do that anyway.”
*
Interesting, he thought.Maybe that was the female detective again. He recognized the car. He was just sitting here, having coffee, watching her go around and around the block. Either she was well and truly lost or she was checking out the block. But really, how much checking out could you do from a vehicle? That’s just lazy. Sloppy and lazy. She should get out of the vehicle and walk the area, and, even then, she wasn’t likely to pick up on anything. It was all over with. Nothing to see. He’d been sitting here, perusing the people coming and going, wondering if anybody even realized that somebody just died. Did anybody even care?
It was such a fake world, where people could do whatever they wanted, and nobody seemed to give a damn. It often amazed him how callous everybody else was out there, as if it was literally just a worldly life outside. It used to bother him, but now it was an advantage. It made life so much easier and simpler. With a smile, he got up, put his money and a tip down for the coffee, then walked toward the corner light. Another day in paradise. But he had things to do, plans to make.
Victims to pick.
Everything had to be just right.
Chapter 8
Fuming, Kate contactedRodney, not too long after she’d left the university, as she drove back to the office, and just spilled everything this woman had shared.
“Jesus,” Rodney said. “They’re targeting people with disabilities?”
“Disabilities, diseases, those obviously sick, broken legs, whatever. Anybody considered as weaker or more vulnerable than them,” she spat out. She quickly shifted down 12thAve, loving the traffic that flowed smoothly. She knew it was too much to ask that it be smooth traveling the whole way, but she’d take it while she could. She shifted over onto South Grandview Highway and continued on toward the station.
“I don’t know how, but we’ve got to do something about this.” Unseen by him, she shook her head, while he was still talking about it. “There’s got to be something we can charge them with.”
“Absolutely there is, but it’s not a homicide. And these crimes happened on campus, so you know that’s the RCMP’s jurisdiction. If we have any evidence of this, in the pursuit of our case, we hand it off to them.”
“It’s also just her story.”
“I don’t suppose you got that on tape, did you?”
“I did get a statement from her, and she signed it. She didn’t even know all the victims’ names, just a few of them. Apparently one of them fell down the stairs and broke a leg from this group’s actions.”
“That’s definitely assault.”
“And I think the one guy in their group—who I can’t stand,Brandon, the one entitled student with the family lawyer—is probably the ringleader. That’s exactly the shit he would pull, thinking he’s untouchable.”
“We can bring them in and can ask them about our case, how it led us to this other crap, but it’ll let them know we’re on to them.”
“We want to hold off on that as long as we can.” She pounded her steering wheel. “I’m about fifteen minutes out.”
“Forget about that bullying report for a bit and get back here safe and sound, so we can go see how these punks hold up to somebody their own size,” he snapped. “This whole thing just pisses me off.”
“You and me both,” she said.
She hung up and continued downtown to the station. When she pulled into the rear parking lot, she was a little bit calmer but knew she’d get riled up as soon as she saw Rodney. Some things were just too shitty to even think of people doing, and then they surprised you and did something even worse.
As she walked in, Rodney was busy talking with the others in the team. He looked up at her, smiled. “You seem a little bit calmer.”
“Not really. I still can’t believe they think they can do that to people. It totally pisses me off.”
“I wonder if their dean knows anything about it,” Colby said, as he joined in.
“I don’t know yet,” Kate noted. “If you’ve got any pull with him, maybe give him a call and see if he has any idea what the hell’s happening on his own damn campus. Otherwise we’ll need to talk to RCMP.”
“True.” He frowned at that. “I do know the man. Dr. Paul Agress,” he admitted. “He’s the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. We’ve attended multiple functions together, but, as you know, it’s not our jurisdiction.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said hotly. “It needs to stop today. And you know it’ll be that rich kid Brandon behind most of these.”
“Oh, I agree with you there, but he might not know he’s even got a problem. Depending on how closely this group of bullies has been holding their cards and how well they’re keeping this under wraps, nobody may even know. And for anybody who reported that they’d been pushed or whatever, you know there’ll be plenty of people in Brandon’s sphere ready to not believe them or for Brandon’s crew to shut them down.”