Simon Says... Ride (Kate Morgan Thrillers Book 3)

by Dale Mayer

  “I can’t. They’ll kill me.”

  Kate heard that phrase, and yet, knowing who she was talking to, she said, “I presume you’re not being literal with that phrase.”

  The young woman looked at her, as if her world had collapsed. “I really love him,” she said.

  Kate’s heart sank. The last thing she wanted was to have a heart-to-heart discussion over a schoolgirl crush. “I can see that. I get it.” When Candy didn’t show any signs of calming down, Kate sighed, got up, and grabbed a box of Kleenex off the desk, then sat down beside her. “Here. Start with this.”

  Candy snatched several out of the box, shoved them against her face, and proceeded to bawl into them.

  “If you’re not talking to me here,” Kate said, “I’ll have to take you down to the station.”

  At that, the woman bolted to her feet, and, the tears still streaming down her face, she stared at Kate, as if her world had completely cracked apart.

  “So, sit yourself back down, get a grip, and talk to me.”

  With that, she sagged into the bed and sobbed a few more times, but it was obvious the onslaught was slowing down. “They wanted me to do it. I didn’t want to.”

  “They wanted you to do what?”

  “Push her over.”

  At that, Kate stopped and stared at the young woman. “Push who over?”

  “A woman on a bike,” she said. At that point, she bawled again.

  Kate reached over, grabbed her hands, and pulled them away, along with the balls of Kleenex, all pressed against her eyeballs. “Before you do damage to your eyes, talk to me,” she said, her voice sharp.

  Candy took several long deep breaths. “I’m not like them,” she cried out. “They do things, and they don’t care. They don’t seem to feel any guilt. They don’t care about anybody else. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Did you push somebody over?”

  She nodded. “Yes. But not the one they wanted me to.”

  “I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Kate said, “but you pushed somebody over?”

  At that, she started to cry. “And I feel terrible about it.”

  “So, why did you do it?”

  “They wanted me to.”

  “Why did they want you to?” she asked.

  “Just a lark. They like picking on people. Particularly on those not perfect, like them.”

  “So, why are you even with them?” Kate asked, looking at her. “That’s hardly your style.”

  “No, it really isn’t. But, when you get into a group like that, it just seems like there’s no other choice. They get you all twisted up, so, if you want to be with them—be one of them—you have to do what they say. And he was my boyfriend. They were all doing it, so it seemed like you have to do it too.”

  “So, what are they all doing then?”

  She frowned. “They were pushing people.”

  “What people?”

  At that, she winced. “Disadvantaged people. Disabled or whatever you call them.”

  Kate sagged in her chair. “So, you’re talking about people in wheelchairs or like on crutches?”

  She nodded. “Yes, and some with diseases or tumors or not smart or whatever.”

  “So these people, who already have enough of a challenge getting through the day, now have to deal with shitheads like you guys deliberately making it harder?”

  Candy just stared, her bottom lip trembling.

  “Yeah, I’m including you in that group,” Kate said, “if you’re doing it with them.”

  “I don’t want to be a shithead,” she said.

  “Did you push one of them?”

  She started to bawl. “I did, but not one of them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t. They wanted me to pick on a blind woman.”

  “Wow, really nice friends you have.” Kate shook her head. “Did they hurt anybody seriously when they did this?”

  She nodded. “They pushed one woman down some stairs. She broke a leg, but, of course, they got away with it.”

  “And what about the others they picked on and pushed?”

  “I don’t know about all of them, but they really like to do things like that.”

  “I don’t care if they really like to do shit like that or not. That’s really not cool, not allowed, and it’s assault. And, if somebody broke their leg, that’s even worse.” Kate thought about the woman at the corner on the bike. “Did you see the woman hit by the vehicle recently at the intersection?”

  She shook her head. “No, we really didn’t.”

  “Yeah, right. Not sure I believe you. After all, I can imagine you didn’t want me to find out about all the bullying your little group does around campus.” Kate was completely exasperated. “That just goes to show what shitty people you all are.”

  The other woman gasped at the hard insult.

  But Kate wouldn’t hold back. “Seriously? They wanted you to push a blind woman? Who won’t even have the chance to know where that blow comes from? Do you think she hasn’t grown up with other little shitheads just like that? But that would have been years ago, like grade school, possibly even high school. But this is the university. This is about being an adult, in an adult world—or not. You get to make that choice now. Every day, it’s your choice to be a good person or a shithead,” she snapped. “Congratulations for proving yourself to be in the shithead category.”

  The other woman looked at her, shocked.

  “Yeah, don’t even go there. Why should I take any pity on you? You pushed somebody, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “But she was healthy at least.”

  Kate snorted, totally disgusted. “And that makes it better, right?” Candy just bawled again. Kate shook her head. “Wow, now I have all that shit to get through, as well.”

  “What will you do?”

  “You’ll talk to your dean for one thing.”

  “No, no, no. You don’t understand. They’ll kill me.”

  “And so, do you mean kill me as in fear for your life kill me?” she asked. “Because now I have to wonder just what kind of shitheads these guys really are. I mean, for all I know, they’re into murder.”

  “No, no, no,” she cried out. “They’re not that bad. At least I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”

  “It’s just a matter of degrees,” Kate said. “Once you go down the pathway that you’re talking about, it is a very simple step to cross that line.”

  “No, they wouldn’t do that.”

  Kate snorted at that. “You know something, Candy? Anybody who’ll deliberately attack disadvantaged people or people with disabilities, or someone suffering with injuries already, yeah, they absolutely will. It’s a very thin line between acting that way to somebody and participating in their deaths.”

  At that, the other woman stopped and stared. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “What do you think happens when one of these accidents goes wrong?”

  “I think it already did. They’re really secretive about one of them.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any of the details. They won’t tell me.”

  Kate sighed and stared at the young woman. “And did you break up with him now?”

  “Well, supposedly.” She sat here, with her shoulders sagged, as if the whole world was over.

  “Okay, clue me in on this relationship stuff. As much as I don’t want to go there, I don’t get what you’re talking about right now.”

  “We’ve broken up several times. And honestly, I usually come crawling back,” she admitted shamefully.

  “Why?”

  “Partly because I have to live here too. And I’m afraid that I’ll become one of the people who they decide to knock over one day.”

  “That would be justice, wouldn’t it? Some would call it karma.”

  “I get that. I really do, and, if I thought that would be my punishment, and then I could be free of a
ll this guilt, then I’d take it. I really would. I’d take it and be happy to move on. But, like I said, I’m not so sure that something else hasn’t gotten much worse.”

  “So you think they killed somebody?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, “but I think one of their jokes backfired or something, and somebody got seriously hurt.”

  “In that case, I’ll need more information.”

  “And I can’t give it to you. You don’t understand. These guys are really dangerous.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Kate said, “but the question is, what will we do about it?” She pondered that for a moment. “I’m also here about that accident you saw.”

  “But we didn’t see anything,” she said.

  “What about the blind woman?”

  “She was at the intersection. I think a man was escorting her,” She nodded. “But I don’t know how close she was to that accident.”

  Kate frowned at that. “I’m waiting for the autopsy report on her now.”

  At that, Candy gasped. “That would be terrible.”

  “Why would that be any more terrible than what they wanted you to do to her? Or knocking someone down the stairs?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to involve the stairs. She was just supposed to fall over, but instead she tripped, stumbled, fell forward, and ended up falling down the stairs.”

  “Even picking a place that’s dangerous where she could fall down the stairs is stupid. Are you really making excuses for this? You’re all lucky she only broke her leg and not her neck.”

  “If I don’t make excuses,” Candy whispered, “I have to face up to the fact of what I did.”

  “News flash,” Kate said in a hard voice, “you have to do that anyway.”

  *

  Interesting, he thought. Maybe that was the female detective again. He recognized the car. He was just sitting here, having coffee, watching her go around and around the block. Either she was well and truly lost or she was checking out the block. But really, how much checking out could you do from a vehicle? That’s just lazy. Sloppy and lazy. She should get out of the vehicle and walk the area, and, even then, she wasn’t likely to pick up on anything. It was all over with. Nothing to see. He’d been sitting here, perusing the people coming and going, wondering if anybody even realized that somebody just died. Did anybody even care?

  It was such a fake world, where people could do whatever they wanted, and nobody seemed to give a damn. It often amazed him how callous everybody else was out there, as if it was literally just a worldly life outside. It used to bother him, but now it was an advantage. It made life so much easier and simpler. With a smile, he got up, put his money and a tip down for the coffee, then walked toward the corner light. Another day in paradise. But he had things to do, plans to make.

  Victims to pick.

  Everything had to be just right.

  Chapter 8

  Fuming, Kate contacted Rodney, not too long after she’d left the university, as she drove back to the office, and just spilled everything this woman had shared.

  “Jesus,” Rodney said. “They’re targeting people with disabilities?”

  “Disabilities, diseases, those obviously sick, broken legs, whatever. Anybody considered as weaker or more vulnerable than them,” she spat out. She quickly shifted down 12th Ave, loving the traffic that flowed smoothly. She knew it was too much to ask that it be smooth traveling the whole way, but she’d take it while she could. She shifted over onto South Grandview Highway and continued on toward the station.

  “I don’t know how, but we’ve got to do something about this.” Unseen by him, she shook her head, while he was still talking about it. “There’s got to be something we can charge them with.”

  “Absolutely there is, but it’s not a homicide. And these crimes happened on campus, so you know that’s the RCMP’s jurisdiction. If we have any evidence of this, in the pursuit of our case, we hand it off to them.”

  “It’s also just her story.”

  “I don’t suppose you got that on tape, did you?”

  “I did get a statement from her, and she signed it. She didn’t even know all the victims’ names, just a few of them. Apparently one of them fell down the stairs and broke a leg from this group’s actions.”

  “That’s definitely assault.”

  “And I think the one guy in their group—who I can’t stand, Brandon, the one entitled student with the family lawyer—is probably the ringleader. That’s exactly the shit he would pull, thinking he’s untouchable.”

  “We can bring them in and can ask them about our case, how it led us to this other crap, but it’ll let them know we’re on to them.”

  “We want to hold off on that as long as we can.” She pounded her steering wheel. “I’m about fifteen minutes out.”

  “Forget about that bullying report for a bit and get back here safe and sound, so we can go see how these punks hold up to somebody their own size,” he snapped. “This whole thing just pisses me off.”

  “You and me both,” she said.

  She hung up and continued downtown to the station. When she pulled into the rear parking lot, she was a little bit calmer but knew she’d get riled up as soon as she saw Rodney. Some things were just too shitty to even think of people doing, and then they surprised you and did something even worse.

  As she walked in, Rodney was busy talking with the others in the team. He looked up at her, smiled. “You seem a little bit calmer.”

  “Not really. I still can’t believe they think they can do that to people. It totally pisses me off.”

  “I wonder if their dean knows anything about it,” Colby said, as he joined in.

  “I don’t know yet,” Kate noted. “If you’ve got any pull with him, maybe give him a call and see if he has any idea what the hell’s happening on his own damn campus. Otherwise we’ll need to talk to RCMP.”

  “True.” He frowned at that. “I do know the man. Dr. Paul Agress,” he admitted. “He’s the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. We’ve attended multiple functions together, but, as you know, it’s not our jurisdiction.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said hotly. “It needs to stop today. And you know it’ll be that rich kid Brandon behind most of these.”

  “Oh, I agree with you there, but he might not know he’s even got a problem. Depending on how closely this group of bullies has been holding their cards and how well they’re keeping this under wraps, nobody may even know. And for anybody who reported that they’d been pushed or whatever, you know there’ll be plenty of people in Brandon’s sphere ready to not believe them or for Brandon’s crew to shut them down.”

  “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 ove
r 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. “The perfect race mentality. 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.”