“Of course. Particularly if they’re naming names now. I think these rich-kid bullies are fairly well-known on campus. They’re the wealthy group.” She rolled her eyes.
“You don’t understand the power that kind of group has,” Colby said, “particularly in a peer group like that. Let me talk to him.”
Colby headed off, and Kate turned to Rodney. “We can still investigate it though, can’t we?”
“No. That’s RCMP’s job. If it’s part of our case, that’s a different story, but we can get their assistance, if necessary. That’s how this shit works.”
“Candy said that it went wrong one time.”
That got the attention of Kate’s other team members, who all stopped what they were doing and turned toward her. She pulled out the USB key she had in her pocket. “This is her statement. Let me pull it up.”
After pulling it up, she printed off copies for everyone and handed them out. “This is what we’ve got to go on, and, of course, the last thing we need is more work, but these bullies must be stopped.”
“It may be more work,” Rodney said, “but this is all about the job. Because, if they’ve killed somebody, that’s a whole different story. I’ll contact the RCMP and bring them in on this. I have a friend in the unit.”
Lilliana added, “And I’ll call Reese. Some jobs take priority over others.”
“Good.” Kate sighed loudly. “I’m not convinced it’s not the same story.”
Her team looked at her in surprise.
She explained further. “I don’t know that it’s connected to the bike that went down with Sally Hardgens at that intersection recently. Candy said that she had seen a bunch of people gathered there, but she couldn’t really remember about our red-hoodie student. Yet Candy was honestly rattled. I told her that I would talk to her later, but she said her group, the six of them, didn’t have anything to do with the killing of our latest victim.”
“And you believe her?”
“I don’t know who to believe anymore”—Kate raised both hands in frustration—“because I can so see that entitled asshole pulling a stunt like this with injured or disabled people. He would consider it a complete lark, and Candy was very convincing. As to the rest of it, I don’t know. And where is the motive?”
“Power,” Lilliana said. “Theperfect racementality. Also an abusive personality.”
Kate nodded. “Ah,… that works for me. If that gives us the right to get in there and to dig a little deeper into his life, I’m all for it. I sure as hell hope we find some dirt too.” At that, she sat down at her computer. “Rodney, did you run any of those witness names we had for priors?”
“Reese pulled them. Found a couple parking tickets. One student was picked up for possession of drugs, and another one had a couple workplace accidents about four years ago. But nothing that really sparks in terms of killing the cyclist.”
“Right. So, with five annual deaths, same place, same weekend yearly, why would somebody wait a long time to kill?”
“Because it’s not about the time,” Owen offered. “Opportunity maybe? They didn’t have access or because they didn’t know what to do or how to do it, and it took him that long to plan it?”
She nodded. “All of those work, I guess. The question really is, was this premeditated, or was it just an off-the-cuff decision?”
“Well,” Andy added, “if it weren’t for the bullet hole in her head, I would say it was an accident. Short of the coroner saying something about it, we don’t really have any reason to think that the car did anything more than bump her, if it made any contact with her at all. And it’s looking more like she bumped him.”
Kate nodded at that. “You know what? This one, Candy, she was supposed to attack a blind woman,” she said, with a frown. “This group ofupstandingcollege students picked out that victim for her.”
At that, Lilliana stepped forward and stared at Kate, incredulous.
“Maybe that unintended victim was protecting herself from them. You know? Like fighting back. Candy attacked somebody healthy instead of that blind woman, made it look like an accident. Candy was bawling her head off over the whole thing. Did she knock somebody over? Yes, I think so. Did she help them up and apologize afterward? Maybe. Was all of this because this group was pressuring Candy to be as bad as them? Possibly. I have no idea. They’re all entitled rich kids, all a brick short of a load.”
“They’re creepy for sure. It comes with that upper-class-privilege personality,” Owen said quietly from the side.
She looked over at him and smiled. “And you’re right there—the privilege, the lifestyle, the wealth. They just ooze arrogance.”
“We’ve all met that kind,” Owen agreed. “But we can’t afford to piss them off and their rich parents with fancy attorneys, until we get some corroborating information. Plus, we don’t want to tip off this group of bullies, or they’ll be lawyered up so damn fast that you’ll have a hard time getting anything out of them.”
Kate nodded. “Absolutely, he’s already threatened that over routine witness questions.”
Just then, Colby returned to the bullpen, a frown on his face. “I spoke to Paul. They have had a couple complaints about a gang of kids from his Faculty of Arts, running around and knocking people over, but, when nobody would come forward to make any definitive statements about it, it was pushed to the side. Nobody seemed to get seriously hurt, and no one wanted to talk to the UBC Legal Department or to the RCMP, so it was never reported beyond Paul.” They all just silently looked at him. Colby shrugged. “It’s a university campus, full of kids, plenty of them drunk or loaded half the time. A lot of them make poor decisions. We’ll need a whole lot more to go on, if we’re to get very far before they’re tipped off.”
Lilliana said quietly from behind them, “So, we all agree that we need to stop this.”