“Indeed,” he said, with regret. “I’m taking her now. I’ll look after her.” And, with that, he stood and went over to talk to his team.
She stepped back, looked around at the crowd, and found Rodney, talking with a group of young women. Kate joined them to hear him asking about anything they might have seen. And, of course, they hadn’t seen anything. She moved through the crowd herself, asking questions, taking names and contact information, getting explanations as to why people were here.
More often than not, they were just gawkers, interested in something different that had happened, something that added a bit of dash and verve to their monotonous lives, even though it was terrible news for somebody else. Like always, as long as it wasn’t bad news for them, everybody was fascinated. Murder had a way of doing that to people. Something was horrifically mesmerizing about it.
As Kate moved through the throng, she hoped the crowd would dissipate—but not before she took photographs of the bystanders and potential witnesses. She had noted street cameras here, but there was also construction going on which could complicate things. What she really needed was to find out if anybody had heard or seen the shooter—without mentioning the shooter first. She had to be careful with her questioning of witnesses, so as not to influence their recollection.
The bullet hole already made this case something very unusual. The question now was, did the vehicle kill her, or had she died from the gunshot and then swerved off into the oncoming traffic? Had she been hit because she was already down on the ground?
Kate knew the coroner would have to help them sort some of that out. The roads were freshly rained on, and she saw no tire tracks, although she took several photographs of the roadway for her own use as well. As she stood here, turning in a slow circle, studying the remnants of the crowd definitely shifting away, Rodney joined her.
“Nobody saw nothing,” he said in disgust.
“Was she alone?”
“Nobody’s stepping up to say they were with her.”
“No, of course not.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I am. Listen. What you need to know is that she was shot.”
He stared at her, shocked. She pointed to the back of her own head, where the bullet had gone in. “It’s tiny, so probably a .22. Or”—thinking about it—“it could even be one of those new BB guns. You know? The air guns or whatever they are.”
“Whatever it was, it certainly changes things, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe,” she murmured. “Though it cements our role. Somebody targeted her, and, whether the vehicle was a part of it or not, I don’t know.”
“I wonder if the other cases have anything to do with this?”
“I have no idea.” She turned to look at him. “We’re a little short on information. Yet we can’t ask anybody about hearing gunfire, without giving that tidbit away.” She paused. “Unless the killer used a silencer.”
He nodded. “Yeah, but what we aren’t short on is bodies.” He looked down at his witness notes. “One of the women said that a group of young men and women—five or six, she thought—were here, and they had all been there before her death and headed over to the pizza parlor for lunch.”
Kate stared at him. “So, you watch somebody die, hang around to look at the body, and you get hungry?”
“Hey, absolutely no way you’ll bring me into that discussion. You know it takes all kinds of people.”
“That it does. That it does. We’ll have to hit them when we’re finished with all these people here.”
“It’s just amazing,” he muttered, “how observant some people are. Somebody said that they came upon her, saw her on the ground, and called it in.”
“We had four different 9-1-1 calls, I think,” she muttered, “if I remember that right. I’ll run it, so we can make sure we catch everybody.”
“And, of course, so many people don’t like to give any information at all.”
“I’ve never understood that,” she said.
“They don’t want to get involved. It’s easy enough to understand, I guess. All these questions. It’s… an unfamiliar experience for most everybody, so nobody wants to bother.”
“Maybe. If we don’t go over to the pizza parlor pretty quickly, they’ll be gone too,” she said. “I think I’ll go there first, if only I knew which one.”
“Probably the one everybody talks about. It’s been popular for a long time.”
Something about his tone got her attention, and her eyebrows raised. “Don’t even tell me that you attended UBC.”
“Sure did,” he said, with a big grin. “The go-to pizza place is just across the street and on the corner over there.”