“I’m sure his parents could buy his way back in again,” she said.
“Probably so, but they might be getting pretty damn tired of it. This is his third university.”
She jerked her head up, looked at him. “What? Why?”
“I contacted the Committee of Student Affairs at the University of Toronto, and let’s say they were more than happy he was moving.”
“Wow, same shit?”
He shrugged. “They wouldn’t go into any detail.”
“Of course not,” she said.
“He did say that the kid had little respect for life.”
“We’ve already seen that he’s just a sheer troublemaker. A spoiled punk-ass troublemaker.” She shook her head. “He needs to be knocked down a peg or two.”
“Maybe, but we have to make sure it sticks. Otherwise the family will get him off, and he’ll be laughing all the way out of the station, as he continues to pull more stunts like this.”
She agreed with him, but it just made her even angrier. The onus was always on them to prove their case, but it didn’t make it any easier when they were up against guys like this because they could always find ways to wiggle out of everything. An open-and-shut case was what she needed. But, so far, she didn’t have jack shit to make anything happen.
But she would, no way she wouldn’t.
“We’ve got the other three to deal with this morning?” Rodney asked her.
“Right. Tell me about that.”
“We did talk to them over conference calls yesterday. That was the best we could get at the time.”
“I wish we could have gotten them down here, so we could make sure Brandon didn’t talk to them.”
“We did get short statements from them, so they couldn’t change their tune, and they’re all coming in person this morning.”
“Good enough. What time are they starting?”
“Nine is the first one,” he said. Silence ensued for the next little bit, as they worked their way through the research, and then he went “Huh.”
She turned, looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“This vehicle here on the side of the road.”
“And?”
“I’d have to run the plates to see, but it looks like it’s been modified. It’s a convertible, and the gearshift has been extended up to the front dash.”
“And that would only happen why?”
He shrugged. “Somebody has a deformed arm maybe? There could be other modifications made on it too.”
“You’ve got the license plate?”
He shook his head. “No, but I have the make and model of the car. Let me work on that.”
He dove into that, while she sat back, with all her theories running. When she came to Brandon’s case history, it was clean. It was way too clean. As in scary clean. She realized that some history here had been secreted away, and somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that nobody ever found it. And most likely he had a juvie record as well, but good luck getting that unsealed.
“Belongs to a student with a disability. According to the records, he has half a right arm. So makes sense on the gear shift.”
“Good catch.” Returning to her keyboard, while shaking her head, she pulled up an email and sent off a request. It would come back saying the records were sealed, but maybe that would be enough. That fact alone would give her a little ammunition. People had gone to great lengths to make sure nobody ever found out what the hell Brandon had been up to. Maybe the suggestion of a court order would be enough.