She looked where he pointed and nodded. With that, she bolted across the road, holding up her badge as she darted through traffic. As she approached the pizza parlor, she saw a group of five or six young people, stepping outside, laughing and joking. She immediately intercepted them, stopping their progress.
One of the men said, “Hey, what’s with the pushy attitude?”
“I presume you’re the group I’m looking for.” Kate held up her badge.
They frowned, looked at each other, then shifted uneasily. “We don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “I understand from other witnesses that you were one of the first on the scene to see that poor young woman on the pavement over there.”
“We don’t know anything about it,” one of the two women protested.
Kate turned to her. “I’ll be the judge of that, and I’m really hoping you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Everybody else got there, so no reason for us to stay,” the woman argued, sticking out her chin.
“Interesting,” Kate said. “You didn’t stop to answer any questions though, did you?”
“No,” the first man said. “We knew it would take forever, and we didn’t want to get stuck over there.”
“No, of course not, you’d rather eat.” Kate shook her head.
“It was our lunch hour,” the same woman protested. “It’s not like we could do anything to help her, so why shouldn’t we enjoy our life?”
“Absolutely,” she murmured. “What did you see?”
At that, the men stopped, glanced at each other, and looked at the first woman who had spoken. Still, one male and one female had not said anything.
Kate turned and asked the silent female directly, “What is your name? What are you studying at the university? When did you arrive at the scene, and what did you do when you got there?”
The woman’s jaw dropped, and she looked frantically from one to the other of her group.
“Hey, she’s really shy. Don’t.… You’ll kick her over the edge and make her all stressed,” the other woman said crossly.
“I have questions. I need answers. You can either answer them now,” Kate said patiently, “or you can all come down to the station and talk to our team of detectives down there.”
“Are they any different than talking to you now?” asked one of the men.
She shook her head. “No, not at all. So, what will it be?”
“We could just walk away,” said the first, more belligerent male. “It’s not like you can stop all of us.”
“No, absolutely I can’t, but the cameras here have caught you already, so we will have somebody at your house, your dorm, your family’s home, your classroom, or anywhere else we need to go, depending on what we find out. We’ll find you one way or another. So, is that really how you want to play this?”
The young woman who had been silent said, “No, no, no. We weren’t doing anything. Why are you being like this?”
“I asked you some very basic questions. Why areyoubeing like this?” Kate asked in a hard tone, looking straight at her. “A young woman is dead, and we need to find out what happened and who saw what.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she said quietly. “We had just arrived. We were all talking, laughing, and joking. We were coming down University Boulevard. It’s quite a walk. We were planning on making a fast trip for pizza, then turn around and go back again.”
“How fast will it be when it’squite a walk?” Kate asked, her head tilted, eyeing the nervous woman.
She flushed. “Okay, so we weren’t planning on going back,” she murmured.
“So, already the lot of you have been uncooperative. And now you’ve lied.”
“She didn’t lie,” one of the men said quickly. “We weren’t really sure what we would do, and she got quite upset when we came upon the scene. We called 9-1-1.”
“Who did?” Kate interrupted. “I need the name and the number, so I can verify it.”