THE MAN WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, Ch 12

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Dragonlily
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THE MAN WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, Ch 12

Post by Dragonlily »

THE MAN WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, Chapter 12
I knew that Ginny and I were headed for a showdown. I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Brew isn’t handling his sensation of uselessness well, and his temper is getting the better of him. So is Ginny’s, in response. But they are on their way to the School Board again, where they plan to aim their ire at Julian Kirke. Or rather, Brew’s ire. Ginny is still being practical. The idea is, Kirke’s employees pretty much hate him. Ginny figures, once she gets Kirke out of the way, Brew can get one of the secretaries to talk.

Here is Brew trying to get through the halls at between-class time.
...The whole time I had to fight this crazy impulse to stop what I was doing and just go hunting for Alathea. Seeing so many young girls made me feel more desperate than ever.
Brew gets lucky and catches Sondra, the secretary Kirke humiliated last time they were here. With Kirke in Ginny’s grasp out in the parking lot, Brew talks Sondra into having coffee with him. Sondra has made up her mind to get a little of her own back on Julian Kirke, office sadist. It’s wobbly courage, but real. Anything Brew wants to know, she wants to tell him, because Kirke will hate it.

It is an odd meeting in the cafeteria. Brew is trying to be charming but doesn’t feel he is succeeding. It takes him a while to realize he doesn’t need to be charming, Sondra is already willing to like him. Sondra is ruled out as a suspect, so Brew asks her everything he can think of about how the files are handled. Just like that, Brew narrows down the suspects to five people. Good work for a man who is fighting the sickening cafeteria coffee at the same time.

Here’s Sondra’s description of one of the secretaries. Very reminiscent of Brew/SRD:
”She works here because she likes hating it. If she had a husband, she wouldn’t need the job, she could hate him instead.”
Brew encourages Sondra by telling her
"...Give me a call if Kirke hassles you about talking to me. I’ll make a pretzel out of him.”
But when they get back to the office, all it takes for Kirke to terrorize her is to stand next to her and look at her.
his chainsaw mouth was gripped tight.
Kirke is seriously ticked at being forced to talk to Ginny – a woman! – and he is taking it out on everyone he can. Brew can’t do a thing about Kirke’s tactics. You can imagine how he feels about that.

Their next stop is the office of Board Member Astin Greenling. Ginny and Brew have forgotten anything about fighting between themselves. They are in perfect harmony here. They already know from Dr. Sandoval (previous chapter) that Greenling’s wife is dying of leukemia, leaving him miserable and, presumably, buried in medical bills. P.I. Smithsonian will check the bills, Ginny just wants to put pressure on him and see what happens.

What happens is that the ineffectual-seeming Greenling kicks them out of his office at first mention of his wife. But not before Ginny has seen that he has, on his desk, the kind of paper on which the girls’ notes were written.
Last edited by Dragonlily on Mon Apr 19, 2004 12:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: THE MAN WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, Ch 12

Post by kastenessen »

Joy wrote:
his chainsaw mouth was gripped tight.
SRD is so...on the spot! :) A very fine lead-in Joy! This chapter, a direct continuation from 11, gives us a lot on Julian Kirke. What an awful person! Right up there with Acton!

And for the second time here, Brew tries really hard at being nice to someone, not playing it hard, in his conversation with Sondra, and it works pretty well.
I took a slug of my coffee, fought down an almost overwhelming desire to throw up-what could they have made the stuff out of, Clorox?
You said it Joy. This coffee must be really something!

And finally, some good leads and connections:
Brew and the hate theme, that the murders where hate murders, as his intuition told him. Here we're to know that Kirke hates women!
Secondly of course, the papers at Greenlings office, torn at one edge...
We're getting closer!

And at the end of the chapter Brew and Ginny are doing the Bad-cop-Bad-cop routine...never seen it that way before! :)

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Post by Dragonlily »

Ginny can do the buzz saw pretty well herself, when she feels like it. There's an inner teddy bear in Brew that would make people feel safer talking to him than to Ginny, no matter how grumpy he gets.
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Post by kastenessen »

Joy wrote:Ginny can do the buzz saw pretty well herself, when she feels like it. There's an inner teddy bear in Brew that would make people feel safer talking to him than to Ginny, no matter how grumpy he gets.
Yes, so it is. He's a nice person at heart and it generally shows...

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