“Yes, but the blow from the vehicle didn’t cause very much damage. There would have been some bruising, but she had no broken bones, and she didn’t hit the pavement with a horrific force. Obviously all of it together kills her, but the driver swears to God that he was stopped and didn’t hit anybody, but he took off anyway.”
“So he panics, and now you’re looking at him.”
“It’s hard not to. But then we had the second murder at the off-campus student housing.”
He nodded. “I remember you said something about that.”
“Yeah, but it was in another woman’s room.”
“Right, but they were all partying that night.”
“Exactly, but the woman who belonged in that room was missing.”
He turned and looked at her. “Did you find her?”
“I did. In the intersection, the same intersection, with the same projectile hole behind her ear.”
He stared at her in shock, his jaw dropping. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “Yes, so now our most recent cases, all within one week, are linked—the murder of Paula in student housing and the two others, shot by the same type of projectile, Candy and Sally, both found at the same intersection. Things are bad, and I’m worried there will be more victims. The only thing I have is this group of six people, of which two are now dead, the only two females. But get this. Both women had a sexual relationship with this rich-ass Brandon kid, and there was some fighting between the two females, but there is also talk that they may have had a relationship of their own.”
“As in?” He looked at her, clearly puzzled.
“Apparently they often did threesomes with this puke Brandon, and then the two females would go off and have a twosome. That’s according to Brandon though, and I don’t believe jack shit that comes out of his mouth.”
“Because he’s the kid with the silver spoon, is that what you mean?”
She nodded. “He’s also arrogant and slimy.”
“Meaning, you find it hard to trust anything about him.”
“And he has a lawyer on speed dial. He also earned himself an ugly reputation at several other universities, before he ended up at this one. I did speak to Dr. Agress, who acknowledged that Brandon came with a checkered past, but they didn’t have any real proof because nobody at the previous institutions would go on record, saying he was a bad apple, so no one saw any reason not to allow him in UBC.”
“Wonder how these decision makers will feel about that when this is all over.”
“When I was there, asking him for any and all complaints against this group of bullies or any others on campus, Dr. Agress told me that he was part of a movement to get the city to change the traffic pattern so that these cyclist accidents could be avoided.”
“And was the traffic pattern determined to be at fault?”
“According to the city of Vancouver, no, so their request was denied.”
“That in itself could make people angry,” he said.
“I hadn’t considered Dr. Agress a suspect.”
“No, and I don’t suppose that he would make a good one anyway,” Simon said. “I’m just pointing out the fact that, when you go through a lot of effort to affect change, and then it doesn’t happen, it can leave people with an ugly taste in their mouths.”
“Maybe.” She groaned. “There’s just nothing that I can lock down. I found a strange guy at a nearby pizza parlor, who likes to watch that intersection a little too much, so I wondered if he was watching the results of his actions.”
“But he couldn’t be shooting somebody and watching them get hit in the intersection at the same time, right?”
She looked at him and slowly shook her head. “No, which is another reason why occasionally our discussions in the bullpen have suggested there could potentially be two of them, working together.”
He gave a low whistle. “Wow, these are brain twisters.”
“Sometimes cases are simple. Sometimes people think that they’re really smart and that we won’t figure anything out, but then we get the evidence we need, and it all falls in place quickly. And then there are cases, like this, where you just sit there and stare at it, wondering if it’s just too much of a coincidence to have all this stuff happening, and yet none of it even be related.”
“That’s the problem though, isn’t it? If it’s not related, then you have multiple separate incidents.”