Heather Cameron drove off the campus and put her vehicle in drive for the journey down to the city. She moved past the sign-boards proudly proclaiming her college's identity but barely noticed them. Those words had been a key part of her life for so long. She had once hoped that they would be so forever but just now she had other matters on her mind. The insatiable curiosity that fuelled her studies could also send her in other directions. Directions like the one she was taking now.
The two words on that sign board had been with her since she had first started school. Since the nuns had begun the long programme of education that had got her to where she was now, the holder of a prestigious research fellowship operating out of her own alma mater. That didn't happen often.
If she had glanced in her mirror she would have seen the small frown unconsciously crossing her face. Heather was a smart cookie for sure but her attainments weren't necessarily down to that. The fact that her grandfather had made a huge endowment to the college's expansion had not hurt her prospects any.
She had read an unauthorised biography of her grandfather only last year. Her family name was well known in the valleys not so far north of the college. Many of the settlements up there had developed around the plants established by her family. Three generations of old-style buccaneering 'robber barons'. Taking on Carnegie and the rest and holding their own. Tough hard men but also men that brought jobs and relatively good pay to areas that had seen little of either before them or since their departure.
She knew her ancestors well - each had been painted and had their images in the family home. Blue eyes as cold and hard as ice, impressive facial hair, stern set mouths. They weren't fools and they were hard men but they were fair. Their company towns hadn't had the strikes and trouble that some of the others had. They had been good places to live - while the company had stayed on.
Hard but fair. Her grandfather had apparently only inherited half of those family traits. Perhaps she was being unfair herself. Maybe he had just seen how things were going before some others. He'd felt no responsibility to his workers or his factory towns. He had sold them off without a second thought. Had apparently taken no interest in the rapid collapse that followed, in the hollowing-out of those once proud communities. The world was changing and he'd shifted the family's base of operations just before the cliff edge had become apparent. Moved into property and squeezed his tenants for every cent. Invested in just the right land at just the right time before so many prestigious Federal and State projects. She didn't believe that was down to her grand-father's genius any more than his biographer had. 'Inside information' was the more generous explanation. 'Corruption' the more accurate one.
She had never met her grandfather. Her own father was born when the old man was already in his sixties and had been the only child to survive him. His two sons by a previous marriage had gone to war and not come back. It must have been hard but the old man had taken it out on the world. Making money to fill the gap, to fill the time, to earn and insist on respect. Letting nothing and nobody stand in his way. A hard man indeed.
It had worked - at least in the eyes of the world. He had become more rich and powerful than any of those forbears whose portraits she knew so well. It had never been enough for him. Still he had wheeled and dealed, cleared and evicted, gouged and rent-hiked. Nothing had ever mattered except that bottom line. There had been chapters of that biography that had not made good reading for the subject's grand-daughter. It almost made it worse that she was sure that her grandfather wasn't a bad man. He just hadn't cared, maybe hadn't even noticed the real cost of some of those profitable transactions.
Until the first heart attack. The biographer had been outraged by her grandfather's business methods but he was scornful of what happened next. Their family had originated in the glens and moors of the Scottish Highlands . Forced off their land by rapacious landlords - an irony not lost on Heather. She had wondered if her grandfather had ever considered that, if her father ever considered that. At the end of the day she was well aware of where her trust fund had come from, why she need never go without. She might understand all that but it didn't stop her taking the money. It was that money which funded her researches, her studies, her fellowship.
The endowment of the college and the creation of trusts for his son and any grand-children had been part of her grandfather's repentance when that heart attack had reminded him of his mortality. He had embraced the faith of his forbears, the dogged Catholic clansmen of Lochiel. The college and the church - both had received generous funding. As far as she knew he hadn't cut a single rent though for all of his newly-found Christian charity. The warning of mortality had been timely - the second attack a couple of years later had taken him off.
Her father had lacked the old man's ruthlessness or perhaps the stomach for what was required. Their properties had been run by agents for as long as she could remember. She was an only child and she knew she was loved but that hadn't stopped her parents packing her off to the exclusive Catholic boarding school for girls, the junior institution attached to the college where she was now a Fellow. There had once been lots of establishments like those across the country but most had gone in the last century or become co-ed. That her college was still thriving, expanding even, was in no little part due to her grand-father's generosity and the smaller sums since provided by her father. She knew that had played a big part in securing her Fellowship. She hoped, no believed, that it wasn't the only reason.
Her father was not political. It frustrated her - especially when she read about her grand-father's actions She felt the heavy weight of responsibility. Just as an example the old man had played a key role in driving a freeway through the city to the south, the city she was now driving towards. Long-established neighborhoods had been destroyed and their communities broken up.
She knew that her funding ultimately came from that. Not that it was her fault - this had all happened long before she was born. So she could usually push it to the back of her mind. It was still always there though, a nagging disquiet, a responsibility.
Her field of study was economic sociology. She had a natural interest in it and she thought she had a talent for it. She had become interested in that city to the South, a city so different from her own surroundings, a city notorious throughout the nation and beyond. She knew there had been innumerable studies of gang life and poverty. She didn't want to tread such well-beaten paths. Besides, the reports and studies piled up but nothing was ever DONE about it. Maybe always looking at the problems and failures was not the way forward. Maybe they needed to look at life down there more broadly and at the cultural inter-actions happening. Heather was young enough to believe no-one had ever thought of that before.
Her problem of course was that her privileged background had ZERO resemblance to life down in the city. Her project would be approved - well of course - but she was hardly the natural fit for it. The answer, as so often, was the internet. She knew that it was a shadow-play of reality but it might give her some ideas. She found a few accounts and boards that were of interest. The latter were mostly dormant but they supplied some background. Social media was more current but very superficial. Still she observed and picked up information here and there.
Her break-through came when she began noticing references to the TKB. She expected it to feature on google but none of the returns seemed relevant. So she returned to her sites and boards and searched for just that term. It took several days but in a long-forgotten post she found a link. She half expected it to be defunct but it wasn't. However, it was protected and apparently not admitting members. Another dead-end.
Finally she had posted on one of the most active sites she had found. She had requested information and contacts. The response had not been encouraging. A lot of scorn and not a little abuse. One response had been a little different.
'You think you the first? You think our time and knowledge is worth nothin. Why should we help you?"
Not exactly encouraging but literally the only response that even suggested the possibility of assisting her. She tried other sites and accounts but that really was as close as she got and so she returned to it. This account, unlike most, wasn't accompanied by a picture. However, that answer did open the possibility of a DM. The outside chance of a contact and an 'in' down there was certainly worth a try.
She sent the account a DM outlining her study and suggesting how good it could be for the neighborhoods studied. A little stretching of the truth maybe but she hoped someone might take notice.
"Nuff BS. One last chance girl...'
Heather re-evaluated her approach. Clearly what worked with her faculty staff wouldn't work with contacts like this. So she tried again. She gave a straight-forward outline of what she was interested in and what she needed. She asked for help.
'Better. Just that u don't seem the best to be doing this. U know ANYTHING about down here?'
'I've done my preliminary research. I've read all the studies I could find. Now I need the ground-work. But first I need contacts. Could you help?'
He responded with an image. An area of wall, strangely ridged, with graffiti. Stark large letters in blue outlined by black. Around it the white scrawl of smaller painted symbols and words. 'Find that and get a picture in front of it. Then I know u serious, not frontin. Then maybe I'll help.'
She looked at the image more closely. She remembered gang studies she had read and understood the symbolism. The letters were the gang, the smaller symbols surrounding it were members. She also knew just which gang it was - that was easy. The 'BLN' or the Black Lords Nation. Which was great but the BLN was one of the biggest gangs in the city. These markings were used to lay claim to neighborhoods and so she could guess they were located round the edge of BLN territory but that still left a lot of ground to cover and her assumption might not even be right.
