Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

About The Author

Acknowledgements

Deadly Web

Mike Omer

Deadly Web Copyright © 2016 by Mike Omer

All rights reserved.

Cover art Copyright © 2016 by Deranged Doctor Design

All rights reserved.

For Gabi, my Angel

Chapter One

If there was one single reason to be a man, it was the ability to pee in a bottle. Not for the first time, Detective Hannah Shor marveled at the fact that it was 2016 and women were still not much closer to peeing in bottles than they had been in the middle ages. Humankind had made amazing progress in the last hundred years. They had invented TVs, microwaves, air conditioners, the internet, dating apps… yet it was still better to be male on a stakeout, because you could urinate whenever you wanted.

She shifted a bit, trying to find a position that didn’t feel as if she were sitting on top of her bladder.

CRUNCH.

She glanced at Bernard, who was slowly eating another potato chip. Hunched over the steering wheel, staring lazily in front of him Bernard didn’t appear to be in any discomfort. For all she knew, he was happy to sit out here in the cold, eating potato chips, a modern toilet nothing more than a faraway dream. His dark-skinned hand drew another potato chip from the bag. The way he relished them, Hannah wondered how he managed to stay so fit. Fast metabolism, probably. That was what all thin people said when explaining the way they looked. “I can’t help it, I just have fast metabolism.” As if it was a medical condition that ailed them.

CRUNCH.

She scanned the street again. Not the most inspiring place to be, definitely not after midnight. There was a single streetlight illuminating their surroundings. The buildings were all constructed of cheap red bricks, unpainted, left to wear down and crumble in neglect. Numerous pipes, wires, and rusty emergency stairs decorated the structures, intertwining with each other, creating a maze with no clear entrance or exit. The ground was covered with small puddles and streams, with nowhere to drain to. Dozens of mud-spattered vehicles were parked around the patrol car, some of them looking as if they hadn’t moved for years. The alleyway on the other side of the street was even dirtier, with overflowing garbage cans and empty, greasy food wrappers tossed here and there, slowly flapping in the slight wind.

Someone incredibly clever had walked down the street recently and used his finger to draw a penis on each dirty car window. His art lacked merit, and Hannah was pretty sure she could have done a better job at it.

She was beginning to suspect this was another failure. There would be no crack changing hands here tonight, no arrests to be made, no action to be had. Just full bladders, tension and—

CRUNCH.

She practically jumped at the sound. How the hell was she supposed to concentrate on this stakeout with that noise constantly invading her thoughts? It was probably the vilest, most annoying sound in the world. At least the way Bernard did it, as if he was making some sort of statement. As if part of the joy of the potato chip was crushing it as loud as you could between your—

CRUNCH.

“Bernard!”

“What?” He tensed, looking around, searching the street for whatever had made her call his name.

“Eat another potato chip, and I’ll cram that entire bag up your ass.”

Bernard blinked. “Do you want a potato chip?”

“No!”

“Okay.” He mulled that over. “They’re really good. They’re Creamy Garlic Caesar. I really like the garlic tinge.”

“I don’t want any potato chips. I just can’t stand the sound you’re making when you eat them.”

“It’s not me making the sound. It’s the potato chips. The crunching is the very nature of the potato chip. It is the sound of its existence. The potato chip was born to—”

“Shut up,” Hannah interrupted him. “There he is.”

They both hushed, looking ahead. A heavy man wearing an overcoat and a knit cap walked down the street, his hands in his pockets. Hannah inspected him carefully, searching for a bulge in his pants or under the coat. Was he armed? It didn’t seem so. He didn’t have the usual stride of a wary, experienced drug dealer, either.

“I don’t know,” Hannah whispered. “He doesn’t look exactly like the man GD described, does he?”

Bernard shrugged. “GD is a moron. It’s a wonder he could describe anything at all, he was so high when we talked to him. What reason would anyone have to walk around in this neighborhood at this time of night?”

The man stopped walking and looked around. Hannah and Bernard didn’t move. Their unmarked Dodge Charger was one of many cars parked by the sidewalk, the interior completely dark. The two detectives were, for all intent and purpose, invisible.

The man entered the alley, leaned against one of the walls, and lit a cigarette.

“There, you see?” Bernard grinned. “We can book him already. Loitering.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Hannah said. Her heart beat faster. She needed this arrest. She constantly felt as if she was on borrowed time, as if Chief Dougherty and Captain Bailey were wondering if she was worth her salary. It had gotten worse after her screwup the month before—she had mistakenly given a reporter confidential intel, exposing the bait they were using to draw out a serial killer. That mistake haunted her constantly, making her doubt her own worth in the squad. Now she was trying to remind herself and her superiors why she’d been promoted to detective in the first place.

“Relax,” Bernard said, calm as always. “We’ll have something real to book him for in a moment.”

“Yeah.” Hannah shifted again. She wished a buyer would get there already. Her existence was slowly becoming one big, incredibly sensitive bladder.

The two detectives stared outside in silence. The man smoked the cigarette slowly, calmly. Hannah suddenly yearned for a cigarette. She’d quit smoking three years before, but she still craved a smoke when she ate a large meal, or had sex, or whenever she was tense. And she was tense as hell. Her desire to pee wasn’t helping. But the hell with peeing. She’d stay there until dawn if it meant—

A movement caught her eye. She touched Bernard’s arm, pointing.

The man approached the alley wearing dirty, torn clothes. His motions were twitchy, his feet not so much pacing as jerking. As he passed by their car, Hannah could see several black marks on his dry lips. Hannah had seen junkies who managed to maintain a perfect lifestyle, working a stable job, having a happy family. Junkies, she knew, came in all shapes and forms. This one came in the form of someone who looked and acted like a junkie.

He approached the man in the alley and said something. The man in the alley nodded. The junkie handed him a crumpled bill he’d been holding in his clenched fist. The other guy took the money, stuck his hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a small, dark object. He fiddled with it for a while, then handed something tiny to the junkie.

“Let’s go,” Hannah whispered. They opened both car doors at the same moment, the latches making small, barely audible clicks—but that was enough. Both the drug dealer and the junkie turned their heads, took one look at the two detectives, and bolted. Bernard pulled his gun, screaming, “Stop! Police!”

They ran in opposite directions—the dealer into the alley, the junkie down the street. Hannah ignored the junkie, focused on the dealer. This was their man. She drew her gun and dashed after him, hearing Bernard shout into his portable radio, reporting the chase.

The street wasn’t wide, and it took Hannah only a second to cross it, but by that time the dealer was already halfway across the dark alley. Hannah’s reflexes took over as she looked ahead, noticing possible dangers. No light in the tight space; an accomplice could be waiting there. The alleyway was narrow, no room to maneuver. Several doors dotted the walls, possible escape routes for the criminal. She didn’t even slow down as she plunged inside, knowing Bernard was backing her up. The high walls closed around her.

The dealer shoved a large trash can backward, and it fell down and rolled, making a loud, echoing noise that reverberated in the narrow space. Hannah jumped over it and landed, almost slipping on a piece of trash. She gained her footing and kept on running. She heard Bernard cursing behind her, had no time to look back. Had he tripped over the can? Hurt himself? Was he simply cursing because their man was getting away? Hannah pushed the thoughts aside as the dealer reached the end of the alley, turned right, and disappeared from sight.

Stupid to let him have the upper hand. They should have planned the ambush better, perhaps had another car waiting at the other end of the alley. But who knew the info they had would actually pan out? GD was not a reliable snitch. He usually gave them half-baked theories, rumors heard in loud bars, and even ideas he cooked in his own fried, mostly-dead brain.

But this time the intel had been good, and now they were losing their man. She reached the end of the alley, turned right, and felt a small wave of relief when she spotted her man running. They hadn’t lost him yet. Even better, he seemed to be getting tired. He was fat, and out of shape. Hannah was gaining fast. Though she was short, she kept fit; she trained almost daily and ran dozens of miles every week. Her feet were a blur on the black pavement, her body hunched forward, her entire focus pinpointed on the perp’s back. She shouted: “Police! Get down on the ground! Now!”

The dealer was breathing hard, stumbling. This would not be a foot chase for the ages. No jumping on the top of a speeding train. No running through a crowded marketplace, knocking down a fruit stall, apples rolling everywhere. Just a short dash, a couple of hundred feet, no more. As she repeated her order to stop, Hannah braced for impact, crashed into him with her right shoulder, knocking him down.

He screamed in surprise and pain, a high-pitched scream, more fitting for a twelve-year-old girl scout than a twenty-something drug dealer.

Hannah trained her pistol on him. “Hands over your head! Now!”

“Okay, okay!!!” he yelled. “Don’t shoot! I’m putting my hands over my head, okay? Shit!”

Bernard joined Hannah, his pistol in his hand as well, both of them looking intently at the man as he slowly put his hands over his head. Bernard cuffed him roughly, pulling him to his feet.

“The junkie?” Hannah asked, short of breath.

Bernard shook his head. It didn’t matter. They had their man. As Bernard patted him down for concealed weapons, he found a small canister in the man’s pocket, and opened it. He poured its contents into his open palm. Fourteen round pellets, their aluminum wrappers shining in the light of the street lamp.

Hannah drew a long breath as she stared at the drug dealer and his merchandise, and realized she still really, really needed to pee.

“I’m just sayin’, you didn’t have to be so violent, okay? That’s police brutality, that is. I could sue you! I could—”

“Devin!” Bernard barked, “Shut the hell up, okay? We wouldn’t have had to knock you down if you hadn’t run away. Detective Shor here is usually very delicate when arresting drug dealers.”

“I’m not a drug dealer,” the perp said. He was sitting in the back seat. Unfortunately, the protective screen between him and the detectives in front did not mute all sound from the rear.

“You had fourteen rocks of crack on you. We saw you selling one to a client,” Bernard said.

“I was just showing them off, you know? I never intended to sell them. And stop calling me Devin.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Bernard said. “I’m sure you show your crack cocaine to everyone. Me? I show people pictures of my kids. But I guess different people like to show different things, right?”

“Well… Yeah. There’s nothing illegal about showing stuff, right?”

Bernard glanced at Hannah. She drove serenely, a small smile on her face. It was nice to see her smile; it happened so rarely these days. She was constantly exhausted, constantly angry. Her green eyes momentarily gleamed as a car drove past them, its headlights lighting up her face. She was so pale—was she even eating? Her brown hair seemed frazzled, unkempt. He felt the concern gnawing at him.

“Great to see you smiling, for once,” he said, trying to sound casual.

“You know what’s great?” she asked, grinning. “Public toilets. Don’t you think they’re wonderful?”

“Sure. They’re awesome. You were in there for like… ten minutes. I was sure you’d drowned.”

Bernard looked out the passenger window at the empty street. There really wasn’t any good reason to be anywhere but home so late at night. It was freezing outside. Come to think of it, it was freezing inside the car as well, and it wasn’t even winter yet. A night like this one, a guy should be under the covers with his wife, not driving around in a car with a drug dealer.

The only reason Bernard had agreed to this stakeout in the first place was because it was so important to his partner. Hannah had always been intense, and the vast distance between the pace of their work was sometimes hard to bridge. It had gotten worse the month before, after the whole Jovan Stokes affair. Bernard had tried to tell Hannah repeatedly that she couldn’t blame herself. Just like the rest of the women in his life, talking to her had little effect. He saw how on edge she’d been since that day—always trying to push her own boundaries, working eighty hours a week, driving herself to exhaustion. He would have to intervene if this kept going.

“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” the dealer said.

Bernard looked at the man. Pudgy black face, head covered in an uneven stubble, a small mole on his chin. An ugly dude, Bernard thought.

Bernard himself was quite handsome. High, wide shoulders, dark-skinned, with an immaculate short beard and thick black hair. When he’d been a child, everyone let him know he would be bald when he grew up. His father was bald, his uncles were bald, both his grandfathers were bald. The knowledge of his incoming baldness had niggled at him constantly. But he grew up, and the hair clung to his head. The fact that the baldness prophecy had never come true seemed to infuriate his family, and they kept telling him that one day he would wake up to find all of his hair scattered on the pillow. He seriously doubted it.

“We’re getting to the station,” he told the man. “You can throw up in the holding cell.”

“Hey,” the dealer said. “Are those Garlic Caesar potato chips?” He pointed at the small bag on the floor.

“Yeah,” Bernard answered.

“They’re really good.”

“That they are, Devin.”

“Can I have some?”

“No, Devin, you cannot.”

“Why the hell do you keep calling me Devin?”

“Because that’s your name.”

“My name is Mikey.”

“Don’t bullshit us. You’re Devin Derkins. We know who you are.”

“Devin Derkins? That’s my mate,” the man said, sounding surprised. “Hang on. You thought I was Devin Derkins? Ha! You’ve got the wrong guy! Devin’s got the flu, he asked me to cover for… Well, never mind. You got the wrong guy! Let me go!”

Hannah and Bernard exchanged looks. That could complicate things. Bernard saw how Hannah gritted her teeth, noticed the angry glint in her eye. He sighed.

“Listen, Mikey,” he said. “I don’t care. You were caught with fourteen rocks of crack. So you were doing it as a favor for a friend? I guess there’s a lesson here, right? About friendship and crack, and how you shouldn’t mix the two.”

“But you got the wrong guy!”

“Don’t worry, we aren’t picky.”

They drove to the police station, not to the local jail. Mikey should probably go to jail as soon as possible, but the jail was located on the very edge of town, which would mean they’d have to drive there at night to book him, then drive there again in the morning to interview him. The detectives weren’t keen for this double trip, so they decided to put him in a station holding cell, interview him in the morning, and have the Sheriff’s staff pick him up later and transport him to jail.

They parked the car in the station’s parking lot and got Mikey out of the back seat, then escorted him into the station and walked straight to the elevators.

“Can we take the stairs?” Mikey asked.

Bernard and Hannah ignored him.

“I get nervous in elevators. Once I was stuck in one for hours.”

“tough shit,” Hannah said, her voice sharp.

“It’s a good workout, using the stairs,” Mikey said.

“Yeah,” Bernard replied, “you look like you’re really concerned about a workout.”

They got into the elevator and took him down to the cells. The sharp neon light illuminated the sad space where drunkards, prostitutes, gang members, and worse spent some of their nights, waiting for their fate to be determined. Some of them would find their way to jail. Some would be released when the sun came up.

It wasn’t a nice place to be, by any means, but tonight it was relatively empty. Richie sat behind the counter, staring at the consoles, sipping coffee. Bernard felt as if he hadn’t drunk coffee for weeks. The mug was steaming hot. Being hot was another thing Bernard felt like he hadn’t been for weeks. Richie had a thick, blond mustache which hid the top of his mouth completely. It almost seemed as if he wasn’t drinking the coffee so much as letting his mustache soak in it.

“Hey.” Richie said. “Whatcha got there?”

“This is Mikey,” Bernard answered. “We caught him with some crack.”

“Huh. Okay. Only one guy in the holding cells. Lucky fellow will even have a bed to sleep on.” Richie stood up and led the way to the large cell’s iron door.

“Mikey, is that you?” someone called from inside the cell.

Mikey looked pleased. “Rufus? Well, that’s funny, meeting you here!”

Funny, Bernard thought, absolutely hilarious.

Richie fiddled with the lock. It was kind of wonky, always took a few seconds to unlock.

“What are you in for, Mikey?”

“Cops here thought I was Devin.”

“Devin Derkins? What, are they fuckin’ stupid? You ain’t Devin Derkins.”

“I know, I told them.”

“You don’t even look like him. I mean, Devin’s taller, and his hair is brown.”

“I know, man, I told them.”

“And he has that tattoo. You don’t have a fucking tattoo.”

“I know, Rufus. They have the wrong guy.”

“How is Devin? Haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He has the flu. Got it real bad, man.”

“That sucks. My sister had the flu last week.”

Richie opened the door. Hannah pushed Mikey inside, a bit too roughly.

As they walked away, they heard the happy reunion commence again.

“What are you in for, Rufus?”

“I hit someone in a pub.”

“Yeah? They arrested you for that?”

“You know how those cocksuckers are. If they ain’t filling their cells, they feel empty inside.”

The detectives went up the elevator.

“Damn it!” Hannah said, thumping the elevator’s wall. “This is exactly the kind of screwup we don’t need!”

Bernard shrugged “We got the guy.”

“We got a guy. Not the guy,” Hannah said. “Damn GD! He said that Devin Derkins would be there tonight, selling crack. He said that Devin was always there on Tuesday night, that this was his spot, that it was a sure thing.”

“Well, you know, even drug dealers take a sick day sometimes. We have a guy who had fourteen rocks on him. Who cares what his name is?”

“I do! This is the guy we have? Mikey? I don’t want a Mikey! Does this guy know who the supplier is? Probably not. He probably got the stuff from Devin. Damn it!”

The elevator doors opened, and they got out.

“You know,” Hannah said, still fuming. “I bet his lawyer will use this in court somehow . There’s probably a Latin phrase for it. Your honor, this is a clear case of Arrestum Mikus Instedum Devinum. Fuck!”

“Chill, Hannah,” Bernard said, his voice firm. He stopped in the hallway, looked at her. She turned to face him, and he could see it all in her eyes: anger, desperation, exhaustion.

“We got the guy,” he said, his voice softening. “We got a dealer off the streets.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. He could see a tear starting to form, and she turned around quickly and marched into the detective squad. He followed her, pretending as if he hadn’t noticed.

The squad room was a medium-sized open space with four wooden desks, one for each of the detectives. Two whiteboards stood on opposite sides of the room; when a complex case presented itself, the detectives would use the whiteboards to draw the timeline, list the suspects and their connections to the case, and brainstorm ideas. When there was no major case, the whiteboards were used to list random bits of information, draw sketches of cartoon animals, and leave each other messages. One whiteboard was currently empty; the other had the words Jacob, your wife called scrawled on it.

A filing cabinet stood on the far side of the room, the squad’s precious coffee maker on it. Next to the filing cabinet was the door to Captain Bailey’s office. The entire detective squad consisted of only four detectives and the captain. Unlike most squads, there was no sergeant or lieutenant. The chief thought it was beneficial for the captain to work closely with his detectives, with no middle management layers. Bernard secretly thought she was wrong, though he knew that Captain Bailey was happy with this arrangement. Bernard was a strong believer in management hierarchy. As it was, Fred Bailey was spread too thin, and sometimes this prevented cases from moving forward.

Bernard yawned as he watched Hannah sit down in her chair and turn on her monitor. He’d let her do the initial report. If he left for home right now, he had five hours of sleep to look forward to.

“Hey, Hannah, I’m taking off, okay?”

“Yeah—” Her phone rang. “Hang on.”

Bernard winced. It wasn’t fair. He was just about to go home.

Hannah picked up the phone. “Detective Shor,” she said, then: “Oh, hey, Candace.”

Candace was one of the police dispatchers. Bernard felt his shoulders tense.

Hannah listened for a while, then mouthed the word murder at Bernard.

“No, no, no!” he whispered. “Tell her we can’t. Tell her that we just finished with a stakeout and we haven’t slept yet—”

“Uh huh,” Hannah said, writing something on a pad in front of her. “Traynor Road. Uh huh.”

“Tell her to wake up Jacob!” Bernard whispered frantically. “Rory was up all night yesterday. I’m exhausted. I can’t go to another—”

“Yeah, sure, we’re on our way.”

Bernard groaned as Hannah hung up.

“Jacob already took the last two murders,” Hannah told him brusquely. “This one’s ours.”

Bernard shut his eyes, hating his partner for a second. Mikey would be going to sleep on the little cot in his cell right about now. No murder case keeping him out of his bed. No children waking him up crying every twenty minutes.

Being an incarcerated drug dealer sounded like paradise.

Chapter Two

The address Candace had given Hannah was a building on Traynor Road. Hannah knew the neighborhood. It was a popular place for young people looking for reasonably cheap apartments close to the city’s hub. Although the buildings seemed old and dirty, it wasn’t a bad neighborhood, and crime there was not as frequent as people thought. As they got closer to the crime scene, Hannah slowed the car down. Her eyes began to scan the surroundings, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

She fought the urge to accelerate and get there as fast as they possibly could. The murderer could be fleeing the scene right now, hiding behind that billboard, or the tree on the corner. Even if he was long gone, she wanted to get a mental image of the area. Were there security cameras on the street? Perhaps an all-night drugstore whose clerk might have seen something?

The streets were completely empty. It was one in the morning on a Wednesday, and most of the city’s drunk or homeless didn’t hang out in this neighborhood. The windows around them were dark. Only she and Bernard traversed the empty street, on their way to meet a dead man.

“Jacob would have been happy to investigate this murder,” Bernard muttered. “I mean, he has nothing better to do. He would have jumped from his bed like lightning at the thought of a dead man waiting for investigation. But noooo. Detective Hannah Shor didn’t want his precious sleep to be interrupted. Because God forbid Jacob’s sleep be terminated before dawn.”

Hannah didn’t answer. Bernard was in a grumpy mood, but she knew it would soon dissipate. He was tired. He had three small children, and he rarely slept for more than two hours straight. Does he ever regret having children? she wondered. He certainly complained about them a lot.

She parked next to a patrol car, in front of a four-story building whose front wall was sprayed with graffiti. It was an odd mix of artistic signatures, obviously drawn with care and thought, intermingled with a black-sprayed sentence that read Fuck Dan Smi. Either the spray can had run out in the middle of the composition, or the subject really was named Dan Smi.

Officer Tanessa Lonnie was waiting for them at the building’s entrance, sipping from a steamy mug. Someone here was hospitable. Hannah hoped whoever had supplied the beverage would be happy to make more. The detectives got out of the car, Bernard slamming the door much louder than usual. They both approached Tanessa.

“Hey, Tanessa,” Hannah said warmly.

“Hey, Hannah!” Tanessa said, her perfect face remaining serious.

How could someone look so amazing in a patrol officer uniform? Back when Hannah had been in uniform, her body had looked like a dressed-up potato. Looking good wearing the vest, the patrol officer’s gear belt, and the uninspiring uniform seemed impossible, yet Tanessa somehow pulled it off. Like all the Lonnie siblings, she was smashing. Her hair was brown like Hannah’s, but that was where the similarity ended. While Hannah’s hair was always a bit lackluster, Tanessa’s hair was long, rich, and gleaming. It always looked as if it should be in a shampoo commercial. Her skin was a cool, smooth white, emphasizing her constantly smiling rose red lips. And her eyes—almond shaped, sparkling green—eyes that would have sunk ships, thousands of years ago.

Tanessa had returned from sick leave two weeks ago. She’d been kidnapped and slashed by Jovan Stokes, the serial killer. Hannah guessed Tanessa was recuperating from more than just the cut on her neck, though that had left a nasty scar. Whenever Hannah saw her, Hannah felt a pang of guilt. It was partly her fault it had happened.

“What do we have here, Tanessa?” Bernard asked. Hannah noticed his tone was soft. No more bad mood for Bernard Gladwin. Tanessa made it all go away.

Tanessa’s mouth curved downward. “It’s a mess. This guy, Frank Gulliepe, was murdered in his apartment—that’s number thirteen. Top floor. The murder was reported by his friend, Jerome Piet.”

“Did Jerome see the murder?” Hannah asked.

“No, not exactly. You should talk to him to get the full story. He’s currently in the apartment of Mr. Gulliepe’s neighbor. Officer Bertini is securing the entrance to the crime scene and the entrance to the neighbor’s apartment, just in case Jerome decides to leave.”

“Okay. When did you get here?”

“We got here at oh-thirty-five, as did the paramedic. We checked the apartment. It’s… well. It’s not pretty.” Her eyes became distant, as if she was replaying the scene in her mind. She raised her hand, touching the scar on her neck. Hannah had seen her do this repeatedly over the past weeks. Why had they let her come back? The girl obviously still needed time to heal. And now, not long after returning to duty, she’d run into a murder scene on her shift. It was unlucky, to say the least.

Tanessa cleared her throat and carried on, her voice a bit formal, almost mechanical. “The apartment was empty, aside from the victim. The paramedics rushed to his aid. A few minutes later, after deciding the victim was beyond any help they could give him, they called the ME, and received permission to declare the victim dead. Then they left the apartment to avoid disrupting the scene. We contacted the dispatcher immediately, and secured the apartment’s entrance. We got a very basic statement from Jerome Piet and the neighbor. The crime scene investigator… I keep forgetting his name… the short guy…” She pulled a sheet of paper from one of the pockets in her gear belt, the crime scene log. She scanned it quickly “Oh, right. Matt. Matt Lowery and Violet Todd got here at oh-fifty-five. Matt told us to secure the building’s entrance as well, to avoid crime scene contamination, so I went downstairs.”

“And you somehow got coffee in the process,” Hannah said.

Tanessa blushed. “The neighbor made us coffee,” she said.

“Okay. And in what apartment is the crime scene again?” Hannah asked.

“Well, I’m not sure if Matt decided to include the stairs or hallway as part of the crime scene, but the murder took place in apartment thirteen. And the neighbor is in apartment fourteen.”

“Anything else?” Bernard asked.

“The neighbor heard something. It woke her up.”

“But she didn’t call the police?”

“No.”

“Thanks, Tanessa,” Bernard said.

“Just sign the log before you walk in, Detectives,” Tanessa said, and handed it to them.

They both signed the log and entered the building. The light in the lobby was dim, the walls cracked and gray, the entire ground floor bare. There was no elevator in the building, and Hannah and Bernard ascended the stairs by foot, keeping to the right side, their eyes scanning the surroundings. Most likely this was the path the murderer took both before and after the murder. If the staircase was ever washed, it was annually; the entire thing was covered in dirt. The murderer’s footprint was there somewhere in the dust, among hundreds of footprints, but if there was a way to determine which was the murderer’s Matt would know it.

They reached the top floor, where Officer Sergio Bertini—Tanessa’s partner—was standing in front of the door to apartment thirteen. The detectives nodded at him, and he nodded back. There was no small talk. He wasn’t Tanessa.

The door was a simple white wooden door; on it hung a small black sign with the number 13 written on it. Bernard pushed the door open; it swung in to reveal a living room, and the first thing that met Hannah’s eyes was the body of the man, lying on the floor three feet or so from the entrance. He looked about twenty-five, maybe thirty, average height, bald. His face was contorted in a grimace of surprise and pain.

His bathrobe was wide open, and under it he was naked. Hannah could see several gashes on his chest, with clotted trickles of blood spilling from them. The body was lying on an off-white carpet with large brown stains where the blood oozing from the corpse had soaked into it. There was that familiar smell in the air: the coppery, bloody smell of death. No matter how many times Hannah had smelled it, it always made her feel a bit queasy.

Matt Lowery was kneeling next to the body. Matt was one of the shortest men Hannah knew, barely over five feet tall. The joke in the squad was that this helped him to see the evidence better, as long as it was on the floor, har har. He held a camera in one glove-covered hand, the white latex glove contrasting with his dark skin.

Violet Todd, a pale girl with smooth, shockingly pink hair, stood on the far side of the room, drawing something on a small pad in her hand. The crime scene diagram, probably. The detectives were very familiar with Violet’s incredibly accurate and clean diagrams. As far as Hannah knew, Matt and Violet were teammates, neither of them in charge of the other. Nevertheless, for some reason, everyone treated Matt as if he were in charge. It never seemed to bother Violet, but it definitely irked Hannah.

Matt glanced at the detectives, his large eyes looking tired and sad.

“There are gloves near the door,” he said.

Bernard bent and picked up the box of gloves. He took a pair and passed the box to Hannah, who distractedly took a pair and slid them on. She paused in the entrance, while Bernard stepped into the room. It was their usual pattern; Hannah tried to frame the entire scene in her mind, analyzing it, getting a “feel” for whatever happened, while Bernard preferred to start cataloging the details, separating clues and leads with which he later tried to assemble the puzzle.

The light from the small ceiling lamp hit the victim’s face in a way that gave Hannah a jolt. For a second, the dead man reminded her uncannily of her uncle Reuben, whom she had just seen the previous weekend while visiting her mother. He had the same bald head with only a few strands of hair surrounding it, the same stubble on his cheeks and chin, the same nose, slightly longer and wider than average.

Though Frank Gulliepe clearly wasn’t her uncle, the similarity unnerved her and she found herself uncomfortable with the dead body’s visible penis. Blood rushed to her face, and she looked away, pretending to examine a knocked-over chair, so the people in the apartment wouldn’t see her blushing. Her own reaction infuriated her, and she forced herself to look back at the body, focusing on its features. The bloody chest was surprisingly hairless, though a plume of black hairs rose from the penis to the belly.

The lowest stab wound struck there, in the middle of the stomach. The rest of the wounds were higher, slashing the chest thoroughly. Hannah had seen several stab wounds during her nine years on the force, and these wounds definitely looked as if they’d been made by a blade. They’d know more when the medical examiner got there.

“Anything so far?” Bernard asked Matt.

The crime scene tech shook his head. “Just got here. The scene appears to be limited to the apartment and the hallway leading to it. It’ll take some time before I finish documenting everything. For now, all I can tell you is that there are no marks of forced entry, his wallet is on the night table next to his bed, and the apartment seems to be in order. I don’t think this was a robbery gone wrong.”

“What about the stairs?” Hannah asked.

“Well… I doubt I’ll be able to get anything useful from them. I’ll take some photographs of the most recent footprints at the top.”

Hannah looked around. The blood spatters drew her attention immediately, standing out garishly in the otherwise clean and orderly apartment. Aside from the blood around the body, there were three distinct places on the rug which sported blood spray and streaks. A section of the wall, about two feet from the floor, was marked by a spray of blood as well.

Hannah recalled one of her Dad’s favorite sentences: A wall always seems whiter when it has a black spot on it. What would he say if he saw this wall? She knew Matt would triangulate those marks to find the point of origin, figure out where Frank had been when he was stabbed. She focused on the room, ignoring the stains of violence.

It was a typical bachelor’s apartment. The furniture was tasteful but minimal. Two couches, a desk with a laptop computer in the corner of the room. A large TV screen fixed on the wall next to the computer. A small coffee table sat in the middle of the room, and on it were a bottle of tequila and two empty shot glasses. In the wall opposite the entrance door, a small window looked out onto the street. There was a bookcase with several books and what looked like an ugly decorative statue of a Buddha, though it was difficult to see the details from where Hannah stood.

The rug covered most of the floor, which was definitely in the room’s favor, as the flooring was gray and bland. There was a small dresser just next to the door, and it held a framed picture of Frank and a woman standing by what seemed to be a city park. The woman stared at the camera vacantly; Frank hugged her, smiling. They seemed similar to each other somehow. Brother and sister? Again Hannah thought of her uncle, then pushed the thought away.

“You should check the Roomba, Matt,” Bernard said, pointing at a small, round cleaning robot in its docking station. He was right, Hannah knew. Sometimes cleaning robots started working after the murder was committed, vacuuming up important evidence. Matt nodded, then went back to taking a photograph of the victim’s chest.

Hannah entered the apartment, examining the layout . The living room was connected to a small kitchen, and a hallway led out of the living room, probably leading to the bedroom and bathroom. She walked closer to the body, noticing some tears in the bathrobe.

“Sorry, coming through,” a familiar voice said from the doorway. Hannah turned to see Annie Turner striding inside. Annie was the city’s medical examiner, though Hannah always thought she looked more like a librarian, with her square glasses and her curly red hair. Her eyebrows were a bit high above her eyes, giving her an appearance of constant surprise.

“Hello, Annie,” Matt said. His voice was sharp, cold.

No one knew why Matt and Annie were so hostile toward each other lately. The last couple of weeks, being around the two of them was like being at a family dinner just after Mom found out Dad had bought a new sports car with their savings.

“Matt,” Annie replied shortly. “Are you done here?”

“I’m sorry that I’m such an inconvenience,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your thermometer.” He got up and strode away down the apartment’s hallway.

Violet shook her head, exasperated, her eyes still on her writing pad. “Hey, Annie,” she said.

“Hey, Violet,” Annie said, the hostility melting away from her face. She turned and smiled at Hannah, then knelt by the body. “Just give me a moment.”

Hannah nodded. Bernard joined her by the body. They looked down at Annie inspecting the dead man.

“Well,” Annie said. “No rigor mortis at all. Can you give me a hand, Detective? I want to roll the body for a second.”

Bernard knelt by her, and they carefully lifted the right side of the body. Annie moved aside the bathrobe, exposing Frank’s back.

“Some very faint signs of lividity,” Annie said, pointing at some purplish marks on the skin. They carefully returned the body to its original position.

“I need to take his temperature, for protocol,” Annie said, “but he’s warm. This man died between thirty and ninety minutes ago. That would mean…” She glanced at her watch. “Between eleven-forty and twelve-forty. But I got the call from the paramedics at twelve-forty, and according to them he’d been dead for at least ten minutes, so… eleven-forty to twelve-thirty.”

“Okay. Thanks, Annie,” Bernard said.

“No problem, Detective. I’ll take the temperature and fill out some paperwork before the body is removed.”

“Let’s check out the rest of the apartment,” Bernard told Hannah.

Hannah started with the bathroom. It was moderately clean. There was a laundry basket with a pile of clothing. She carefully opened the medicine cabinet. Medicine cabinets could be a treasure trove of mundane surprises: antidepressants, Viagra, small illegal drug stashes. Not in this case. She couldn’t have imagined a more boring medicine cabinet if she’d tried. Some mild painkillers, Band-Aids, gauze. She closed it.

Bernard called to her from the bedroom. She joined him and they both stared at the open drawer in the dresser.

“So he liked to party,” Hannah said.

“Yup.”

The drawer was full of dildos, vibrators, various sexy outfits for men and women, several pairs of handcuffs, some jars of what Hannah assumed were different types of lubricants, some Fleshlights and various other things. Without touching anything, she could count at least eight packs of condoms. Either Frank Gulliepe had been a very optimistic man, or he had been getting plenty of action.

Matt walked in. “Will you two stop opening drawers and cabinets?” he asked, irritated. “I’ll let you know when you can start poking around.”

“Okay,” Bernard said in a humble voice. He gestured to the brown wallet lying on the dresser. “Can we touch the wallet?”

“Yeah, I’m done with it,” Matt answered.

Bernard opened the wallet. It had two hundred and fifty dollars in it. The credit card, driver’s license and a multitude of membership cards were all still inside; nothing seemed to be missing.

“Let’s talk to his friend.” Hannah suggested.

Hannah knocked on the door of apartment fourteen. It was opened quickly by a pale, black-haired young woman wearing a long blue shirt that reached the middle of her thighs. Pants did not make an appearance. Though it was the middle of the night, she looked wide awake—in fact, she had obviously put on some make up and done her hair.

“Hello,” Hannah said. “I’m Detective Shor, and this is my partner, Detective Gladwin.” Bernard, struck by the long bare legs in front of him, had temporarily forgotten the existence of words, so Hannah pushed on. “I understand that Jerome Piet is here?”

“Oh, yes. Poor man. He’s in absolute shock.” She moved aside and motioned for both detectives to come in. “My name is Petal,” she said as she led them inside.

“I’m sorry?” Hannah said.

“Petal. That’s P-E-T—”

“Petal? Like the petal of a flower?”

“That’s right!” Petal smiled happily at her. Hannah fought the urge to roll her eyes.

They all walked into Petal’s kitchen, where Jerome Piet sat at a small table, nursing a large steaming mug. He was a bit short, with a small orange brush-like mustache adorning his smooth, pink face. His hair, like his mustache, was orange—but it was a sickly orange, like the color of an old, wrinkly carrot. He was, in Hannah’s opinion, an incredibly unattractive man.

“These are detectives,” Petal said. “From the police.” She seemed to feel the need to clarify.

“Detective Gladwin,” Bernard said. “This is Detective Shor.”

“Detectives, do you want some coffee?” Petal asked.

Hannah decided she liked Petal. It wasn’t the woman’s fault her name was ridiculous; that was her parents’ doing. “Yes please.” Hannah smiled at her.

“Thanks,” Bernard said, and sat down next to Jerome, turning the chair a bit so his back faced the kitchen counter.

Hannah figured he was probably trying to stay focused, as Petal bustled around—preparing cups, bending to get the coffee jar from a low drawer, the hem of her shirt rising up.

“Can you please tell us exactly what happened?” Bernard asked.

Hannah pulled out a notebook and a pen. Bernard didn’t bother.

“Well,” Jerome said in a wavering voice, “Frank and I just came back from a night out. We went drinking. I just broke up with my girlfriend, and Frank was trying to cheer me up. He was a very good friend…” Jerome’s voice choked, and he took a sip from his mug. “Anyway, we came back, drank another shot of tequila, and Frank called a taxi for me. I wasn’t in any shape to drive home. After a few minutes, the taxi called to say that he was downstairs, so I said goodbye and left.”

Hannah jotted down some notes. “Do you know which taxi service Frank called?” she asked.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, I was three floors down when I heard some yelling from upstairs. It sounded like Frank, so I turned around and started running back up. Then I heard him scream, and then there was silence. I had a very bad feeling. You know how you can sometimes tell when something really terrible has happened?”

Hannah nodded. She also knew that, nine times out of ten, that bad feeling was completely unfounded. It didn’t matter. People remembered the one time they were right, and walked around convinced they had a sixth sense

“So I ran faster. Then someone came fast down the stairs. He nearly ran into me!”

Both detectives tensed. If Jerome wasn’t the killer himself, then this was probably their murderer.

“Did you get a good look at him?” Bernard asked.

“No. The stairway was dark. He was a man. About my height. I didn’t catch anything else.”

Bernard sighed. “Go on.”

“Well, I got to the top. The door to Frank’s apartment was open, and he… he…”

“Was Frank still alive when you saw him?” Hannah asked

“I… I don’t think so. He seemed dead, and there was a lot of blood…”

“Do you remember if Frank locked the door when you left his apartment?” Bernard asked.

“Yeah, sure. He walked me to the door, and then closed it and locked it.”

“What did you do when you saw Frank?”

“I uh… I screamed.”

“I woke up when I heard Jerome scream,” Petal said, putting two mugs on the table in front of the detectives.

“You didn’t hear anything before that?” Bernard asked her.

“I thought I heard a crash. And maybe some yelling.”

“And you didn’t do anything about it?” Hannah asked

“Well… Frank’s place was sometimes a bit loud at night, you know?”

Hannah nodded. When using the various toys in his drawer, staying silent probably wouldn’t be on the participants’ mind.

“So I peeked out and I saw Jerome in the hallway. And I asked what was going on. And then I invited him in here. I think he was relieved he could sit here and calm down.”

“I’m sure he was,” Hannah said.

“What was the time when Frank was stabbed?” Bernard asked

Jerome hesitated. “I don’t know exactly.”

“It was twenty-five past midnight when I woke up,” Petal said. “I checked the phone.”

“What time did you two go out?” Bernard asked Jerome.

“Around nine-thirty.”

“Where did you go?”

“Leroy’s, down the street.”

Hannah and Bernard exchanged glances. They both knew Leroy’s. Patrol officers needed to break up a fight there every other night.

Hannah glanced at her watch. It was one-forty. She wondered if there was anyone still there.

“And what time did you return here with Frank?” Hannah asked.

“About twenty minutes before I left,” Jerome said. “So I’d guess… around midnight?”

“Was Frank supposed to meet someone tonight?” Bernard asked. Hannah took a sip from her coffee and let him take the lead

“He wasn’t,” Jerome answered. “He was getting ready to shower and go to bed when I left.”

“Any idea what he did before you two went drinking?”

“No. Wait, hang on. Yeah. He mentioned visiting his sister in the autistic center.”

“His sister is autistic?”

“Yeah. There’s a care center nearby. That’s why Frank got this apartment, to be in walking distance of his sister.”

“And he went there yesterday?”

“Yeah. Yesterday afternoon.”

“Does Frank have any enemies?”

Jerome hesitated again. “No.”

“Are you sure? Anything at all could be of use.”

“I don’t know of any specific enemies.”

“Anyone he owed money to?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Did he use drugs?” Hannah intervened.

“Probably, some. Who doesn’t, right?”

Hannah stared at him, narrowing her eyes. “Do you do drugs?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“You just said that everyone does drugs.”

“I didn’t.” Jerome looked panicky.

“You implied it.”

“I don’t do—”

“Did you do drugs this evening?”

“No!”

“Did Frank do drugs this evening? Did he offer you drugs?”

“No!”

“I don’t care about drug violations, Jerome,” Hannah emphasized. “I just want to catch Frank’s killer.”

“I didn’t do any drugs this evening.” Jerome said, his face pale.

“Any threats he received lately?” Bernard asked, stepping in. “Was he behaving strangely recently?”

“No.”

“Is there anything else we should know?” Bernard asked

“Not that I can think of,” Jerome said.

“Anything you’d like to add, miss?” Hannah asked

“Oh, I didn’t know Frank well,” Petal said. “He seemed nice. It sometimes got a bit noisy over there, but I didn’t really mind. Everyone’s entitled to some fun, right?”

“Absolutely,” Hannah said.

Both detectives stood up.

“I’ll uh… I’ll stay here a bit longer. To calm down,” Jerome said.

“If you think of anything else, please call us,” Hannah said and gave them both a card. “And Jerome… don’t leave town without calling us first. I’ll need your address and a phone number to reach you.”

Jerome gave her his details and she jotted them down.

Then she and Bernard left Petal’s apartment and returned to the crime scene.

Annie was packing her stuff, while Matt, his jaw clenched in anger, covered the dead man’s hands with plastic bags.

“Anything else, Doc?” Bernard asked.

“The temperature tells me nothing because the body hardly had time to cool,” Annie said. “The cause of death is probably a stab to the heart.”

“How can you tell?” Hannah asked.

“Well, for one, this is where the heart is,” Annie said, pointing at a stab wound on the victim’s chest. “But see those two wounds here? Note that they have almost no blood trickling out of them.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said, kneeling to take a closer look. “So he was dead when those two wounds were made.”

“That’s right,” Annie said. “That probably means he died instantly, while the attacker was still stabbing him, which would indicate that he didn’t die of blood loss. A stab to the heart is the most likely scenario.”

“I see.”

“My assistants are on their way to collect the body. You’ll have a full report tomorrow afternoon.”

“Thanks, Annie,” Bernard said.

She smiled at them both, threw a contemptuous look at Matt and walked out.

“Matt, did you find the guy’s phone?” Hannah asked.

“Yeah, but it’s locked.”

“He called a taxi service,” she said. “I want to find out which one.”

“Sorry, Detective Shor. Once I unlock it, I’ll let you know.”

“How long do you think it’ll take you to process this crime scene?” Hannah asked.

Matt thought about it for a moment. “About four more hours,” he said.

“Can you process the phone first, then?” she said. “I want to take it to the station.”

Matt frowned. “I don’t know…” he said.

“I want to catch the taxi driver before he ends his shift, Matt,” Hannah said.

He sighed. “Fine,” he grumbled, and went to try and get prints off the phone.

“What do you think?” Hannah asked Bernard.

“Let’s suppose Jerome was telling the truth,” Bernard said.

“Okay,” Hannah said. It was a good start—not necessarily true, but they had to start somewhere.

“Frank is dead, wrapped in a bathrobe, naked underneath,” Bernard said. “Jerome said he was getting ready to shower, so I guess he took his clothes off. Why did he put on his bathrobe?”

Hannah thought about it. “There are no marks of forced entry, and according to Jerome the door was locked.” she said. “He went to open the door.”

“Yeah,” Bernard said. “Which probably means that whoever was at the door was someone Frank knew. A friend, or a neighbor—”

“Not necessarily,” Hannah interrupted him. “Whoever it was knocked on the door immediately after Jerome left, right? Frank probably assumed Jerome forgot something. After all, who else could it be at this time of night?”

“Right,” Bernard said, smiling at her in appreciation.

Hannah returned the smile.

“It wasn’t a coincidence that whoever it was knocked on the door after Jerome left,” Bernard said.

“No,” Hannah said. “Maybe he was hiding in the hallway, waiting for Frank to get back. When he saw Jerome, he decided to wait until Jerome left.”

“Or maybe he followed Frank and Jerome back to the apartment,” Bernard suggested.

“Maybe.”

They both stared at the dead man on the floor.

“Well, it’s a theory,” Bernard said.

Matt approached them, holding the phone in his hand. “I got some prints off it,” he said. “You can take it. But you’ll have to sign for it first. Let me get the form.”

“We think the killer might have hidden somewhere in the hallway outside the apartment,” Bernard said as Matt filled out the paperwork.

“Okay,” Matt said. “We’ll check it out.”

The detectives took one last look at the apartment and left.

Chapter Three

Fizz couldn’t believe his luck. He’d been flirting with Kyla for nine months now. Nine months! That was enough time to make a baby, if one was inclined to do so.

Up until tonight, the waitress had constantly rebuffed him, which had hurt his feelings. What woman wouldn’t want a piece of The Fizz, after all? He was beginning to wonder if she just didn’t swing that way, though he had once seen her leave the bar with a customer. A customer! From the street! While Fizz was clearly willing to jump in the sack whenever.

All this time, working with him, bending down to clean something that spilled on the floor, brushing against him while reaching for a lowball glass behind him, wearing that tight white waitress shirt, those black yoga pants… she was driving him nuts.

Not that he was missing out on action, no need to worry about him. Was there any night when he couldn’t pick from a wide selection of horny, lonely customers? Teens, MILFs, blondes, redheads, big tits, small tits, thin, curvy, black, white—his bed was rarely empty. It was just that Kyla was the Holy Grail, the Everest, the forbidden apple.

And now, finally. Finally! It seemed as if it was about to happen. A simple sentence, uttered as if it was the most casual, everyday occurrence in the world. “Hey,” she had said. “Want to drop by and fuck?”

He did.

And they were just locking the door to the pub, Fizz already imagining her body without her clinging waitress outfit, her ebony skin, those perky round tits, the cleft between her legs…

“Excuse me?” An unfamiliar voice intruded on his thoughts.

Fizz made sure the door was locked and turned around to face the man who had addressed them. A man, and a woman. Even before the man flashed the badge, Fizz knew what they were. Their arms hung a bit too far from their bodies; their eyes stared, unblinking, into his. These were cops.

He had no time for this. He was planning on having his face deep between Kyla’s thighs in about ten minutes.

“What’s up, Officers?” he said. “We’re closed.”

“I’m Detective Shor,” the woman said. “This is Detective Gladwin. We just want to ask a few questions.” She was fine looking—not even close to Kyla, but on a random night he wouldn’t kick her out of his apartment. She would probably be fun in bed. They could use her handcuffs.

“Yes?” he said in a testy voice, trying to make them realize that this wasn’t the best of times. Surely even detectives could understand that some moments had to be seized before they were gone. He exchanged looks with Detective Gladwin. He was a guy. He’d understand.

“Were you two here, this evening, around nine-thirty?” Detective Gladwin asked.

Apparently the man didn’t understand. Fizz sighed.

“Yes,” Kyla answered. “Our shift started at seven.”

“Did either of you serve this man?” Detective Shor asked, pulling out her phone and showing them the screen.

Kyla’s breath caught in her throat, and Fizz cursed inwardly. Was there ever a bigger turn off than seeing a dead man’s face? He glanced at the screen, about to say that he had never seen this man, Goodnight, Detectives, we have some urgent business to attend to… And then he realized he had seen him. Tonight, in fact.

And he could lie, say the guy wasn’t there that evening. He and Kyla could go to her place, tear off each other’s clothes, get on with licking and sucking and kissing… But this man was dead.

“I haven’t seen him,” Kyla said, her voice unnaturally high. She was freaked.

“He sat at the bar,” Fizz admitted heavily.

“What time did he leave?” Detective Shor asked.

“I don’t know. Just before midnight, I think. He was here with another guy most of the evening. The dead guy seemed to be trying to cheer up his friend.”

“Do you know what they were talking about?”

“Naw, man. It’s loud inside. I have a hard time hearing what people are ordering, never mind listening to their conversations.”

“Did either of them appear to be agitated in any way?”

“Well, like I said, the other guy was kinda down. This guy was trying to cheer him up.”

“Did anything unusual happen while they were here?”

Fizz gritted his teeth. “Look, can we continue talking about this in the morning? I could drop by the police station if you want. It’s just that we had a long night, and I was planning on…” Fucking. Getting knee deep in some pussy. Playing hide the salami. “Sleeping.”

“This is a murder investigation,” Detective Shor said in a serious tone, and Fizz thought to himself that maybe she wouldn’t be so fun in bed after all.

“Yeah, whatever. Unusual? I don’t know about unusual, but this dead guy here did go into the restroom with one of the local drug dealers, at one point.”

The detectives exchanged looks.

“So he bought drugs?” Detective Gladwin asked.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe they were just comparing sizes, but usually these drug dealers don’t go to the bathroom with other folks just to pee.”

“When did the drug dealer leave the pub?”

Fizz hesitated. “I’m not sure. I think maybe around the time that this guy on your phone left. I don’t know.”

“We need you to come with us and look at some mugshots,” Detective Shor said.

“I think I’ll go home, Fizz.” Kyla said.

“No, wait—Kyla, hang on!” Fizz was getting angry. Absolutely not. This had gone long enough. “I’ll come first thing in the morning,” he lied. “But right now, I really need to get going—”

“Or we could get a search warrant for this place,” suggested Detective Gladwin. “Look for anything related to the murder. Who knows what we’d find.”

“Could be anything,” Detective Shor agreed. “Unregistered weapons, stashes of illegal substances…”

“I wonder if this place even has a permit,” Detective Gladwin said.

“Probably not,” Detective Shor said. They both edged closer to Fizz, Detective Gladwin smiling a small smile, Detective Shor frowning.

Fizz knew they were bluffing. He was sure of it. Absolutely sure. Well, almost sure.

This was a murder investigation. What if they really did get a search warrant?

Leroy would kill him if these detectives started looking around the place.

“Fine.” Fizz groaned. “I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Fizz,” Kyla said. And her tone was clear. She would see him tomorrow. But the plans they’d had for tonight?

They’d never happen.

The first thing Hannah did when they returned to the station was make a fresh pot of coffee. They’ve been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and everything was beginning to feel woozy. But they had a witness to interrogate.

She made the coffee extra strong.

She sat down next to Bernard and the bartender. Bernard was showing Fizz mugshots. He’d been sullen and quiet the whole way to the station, only once muttering something about a holy grail. Hannah was sympathetic. Like her, the man had worked all night, and he was tired. But, luckily for him, in an hour or two he could go to sleep. She still had to keep going.

Fizz took a sip from the steaming cup she handed him. He grimaced. “It’s hot,” he complained.

“It’s coffee,” Hannah said, pulling Frank Gulliepe’s phone from her pocket. “It’s supposed to be hot. Let it cool down a bit.”

She turned on Frank’s phone’s screen. It was locked with a pattern lock.

Hannah knew that people thought their pattern lock was like the door of Fort Knox: they assumed no one could crack their code. And many times it was basically true; some motion codes were complex enough to protect the phone from simple hackers. But most weren’t. There were several incredibly frequent patterns used in those locks. The most frequent were M, W, Z, reverse Z, and the four rotations of L. And if a hacker got it wrong in three tries, he could usually wait for ten minutes, or half an hour, and try again.

Hannah tried M, W, and Z. It was none of those, and the phone locked itself. She glanced at Fizz, who was flipping through the first album in fast, jerking motions, as if the pages had hurt his feelings.

“Anything?” she asked.

“No,” he said. She could have done without the sulking tone. He sounded like an angry teenager, about to scream “You’re not my mother!” and leave the room, slamming the door behind him.

“We don’t have a file on Frank Gulliepe, and he isn’t in NCIC,” Bernard said, referring to the National Crime Information Center. He was facing away from Hannah, typing something on his keyboard.

“Model citizen. Social networks?” Hannah asked.

“Why don’t we check tomorrow morning?” Bernard said, tapping his foot.

Hannah sipped from her coffee. “Well, we have to be here with our witness anyway, so…”

“Fine, fine!” Bernard said. He turned toward his computer and started browsing. “Well, here’s his Facebook page,” he finally said.

Frank’s Facebook page appeared on screen. It was mostly empty.

“Looks like we have to be his friends to see the interesting stuff,” Hannah said.

“Any luck with the phone?”

“Not yet,” she answered.

Bernard tried Instagram. He had better luck there. “His Instagram profile is public,” he said.

Hannah nudged Bernard aside a bit and rolled her chair next to his. Bernard scrolled down the page. The latest image was a selfie of Frank and Jerome from last night, in a pub. They were both red-eyed, with goofy, fake smiles plastered on their faces. Scrolling further, there were several images of a pretty, tanned, dark-haired girl, some of them taken with Frank. All the images were from the past four weeks.

“Girlfriend?” Bernard asked.

“Maybe,” Hannah said. “She’s tagged here. Lyla.”

Bernard scrolled some more. As far as Instagram pages went, this was as generic as they came. Selfies with various people, some pictures of vistas from what seemed to be an office window, several pictures of food.

Hannah picked up the phone again, tried reverse Z, L, and upside down L. Nothing.

“His Twitter page seems to be mostly about things he saw on TV,” Bernard said. “@FrankG13. A hundred and thirteen followers.”

Hannah’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen; it was Matt. “Yeah?” she answered.

“Hey, Hannah. I’m not done here yet, but I thought you might be interested in this,” Matt said.

“Go on.”

“In the medicine cabinet, he has a box of painkillers.”

“Yeah, I saw them.”

“Only they’re not painkillers.”

“They aren’t?” she asked. “What are they then?”

“I’ll be able to tell you more once I get them to the lab, but I’m pretty sure they’re Ecstasy.”

“Okay,” she said. “Anything else?”

“I need coffee.”

“Try next door. The neighbor’s name is Petal, but it’s not her fault. She makes good coffee.”

“Bye, Hannah.”

She put her phone in her pocket and updated Bernard about Matt’s findings. Then she took Frank’s phone out again. Inverse upside-down L.

The phone unlocked.

“Hey,” she called, feeling pleased with herself. “I unlocked the phone!”

Bernard turned to her. “Great!” he said. “Got the phone number for the taxi?”

She checked the outgoing calls. “There. Twelve-ten, a call to this number…” She jotted the number on a writing pad on Bernard’s desk. “And at twelve-twenty-two, a different number, probably belonging to the taxi driver, called back.”

Bernard took the pad. “I’ll call the number,” he said.

Hannah nodded distractedly. She scanned the rest of the calls from the last couple of days. There were some unknown numbers, several calls to and from Jerome, four calls to the Wexler Care Center, some unknown names she wrote down.

“Hey, I think I found him!” Fizz said. He sounded excited, relieved.

Bernard was arguing with someone, probably the taxi driver, on the phone. Hannah approached Fizz.

He pointed at a picture of a bald, thin, white man. Hannah identified the guy even before she glanced at the name.

“That’s Chad Grimes,” she said. “He sells E, meth, and cocaine on the street. Small-time drug peddler.”

“There you go,” Fizz said. “Now, are you gonna drive me home?”

“We’ll get you a cab.”

“I’m not paying for no cab,” Fizz said angrily.

“Relax,” Hannah said. “We’ll pay for the ride. I just need your name for the report, and any follow up.”

“It’s Fizz.”

She sighed. “Your real name.”

“Everyone calls me Fizz. Even my mother calls me Fizz. It is my real name.”

“Well, unlike your mother, my report actually has to have the name that you have on your driver’s license,” Hannah said, trying to remain patient.

Fizz glared at her.

This was a game she knew well. She glared back.

Finally, he lowered his head. “It’s Theogrblgrblgrbl,” he said.

“I’m sorry?” Hannah said. “What is it again?”

“Theodore Rupert, okay? Happy now?”

“Thrilled,” Hannah said, writing the name down. “It’s a nice name. My great grandfather was named Theodore.”

Fizz grumbled something. She called the taxi station the department used, and ordered a cab for Fizz. Then she walked him out.

“It’ll be here in a few minutes,” she told him. “The driver will charge us later.”

“You sure? I don’t want to be stuck with the bill after all this,” the bartender said.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine. Good night, Theodore.” She smiled to herself as he turned his back to her, refusing to respond.

She returned to the office and picked up Frank’s phone from the desk. Bernard was typing on his computer.

“The taxi driver that Frank Gulliepe called is on his way over here,” Bernard said.

“Cool,” Hannah said, entering Frank’s e-mail app.

“He wasn’t happy about it.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t.” She started scrolling through his incoming mail.

“After we interview this guy we call it a night, right? I mean, aside from the bartender and the taxi driver, there aren’t any immediate leads.”

“Well,” Hannah said, “the trail is warm right now. It would be better if we go to Chad Grimes’s place as soon as possible, wouldn’t it? If he’s our killer, perhaps he won’t have time to destroy all the evidence.”

“Why do you hate me, Hannah?” Bernard said.

“I really don’t,” she said distractedly. Frank didn’t have a lot of mail, mostly confirmations of bills paid, notification e-mails from Twitter and Facebook, the regular stuff. She was about to close the e-mail app when her finger wavered and she frowned.

One of the Twitter e-mails was a confirmation for a new account. It wasn’t the account @FrankG13. It was for @youslut134. She went over to her computer, logged it and browsed to Twitter. She checked out @youslut134.

It was like pouring acid on her screen. This profile, which had been opened two weeks before, was focused on harassing a different Twitter handle, @MelanieFoster52. It had only five messages, written a few seconds apart, after which she had presumably blocked him.

When your husband fucks you in the ass, @MelanieFoster52, how does it feel?

Do your parents know what a slut you are, @MelanieFoster52?

I know how you look naked, @MelanieFoster52

I come when I think of your mouth around my cock, @MelanieFoster52

Does it hurt when people call you a fat slut to your face @MelanieFoster52?

Hannah checked the Twitter confirmation mail. It was forwarded from a different e-mail address, which seemed to be a random collection of characters.

Hannah searched for other e-mails on Frank’s phone in which the subject contained the phrase “Confirm your Twitter account.”

She got eighty-seven results.

She tried the first one, @mybitch3434. It was harassing a different Twitter handle. The next three were suspended, according to the message on their page. The fifth one, @suckme987655, was once again targeting @MelanieFoster52. Scrolling through the e-mails, Hannah saw that all the aliases were pretty much the same. A nasty phrase and a string of random numbers.

Frank Gulliepe was a venomous, vile internet troll. If they were searching for suspects and motive, they had just found a bucketload.

Chapter Four

Damion Cosmatos was about forty, with ruddy skin, light brown hair, a toothbrush mustache, and a pair of the biggest ears Hannah had ever seen in her life. He spoke incredibly fast, and she was having trouble following his sentences. At the moment, he was waving his arms angrily, demanding that the police compensate him for the time he could be working. Hannah stared at him with exhausted eyes, waiting for any gap between the words. None seemed forthcoming.

“—and I just received a call from a passenger who wanted to go to the airport, do you know the fare for driving a man to the airport at night, no you don’t, it’s a lot of money, and I had to tell him no because the police had important business with me, will you pay for the fare that I missed, you better pay, I know a very good lawyer who is also a journalist, and he can sue you and then write about it in the paper—”

“Mr. Cosmatos,” Hannah tried. Her words left her mouth and were trampled by Damion’s angry monologue. There were no survivors.

“—is this country coming to, I am a tax-paying citizen, I did nothing wrong, why do people like me always suffer from the brutality of the police, I have a brother who knows a senator, he can have you fired, do you know how much money—”

“Mr. Cosmatos!” Hannah tried again, with no measurable effect. She wondered if this was a legal ground for arrest: assault with a verbal torrent. Probably not. A pity.

“—my dentist, my doctor, my mother, my cousin, I will tell them all how the police treat the citizens of this—”

“Mr. Cosmatos! If you don’t let me talk, I will arrest you and charge you with obstructing justice!”

This stopped him, though his lips kept moving silently for several seconds more, probably due to inertia. Bernard glanced at Hannah, looking amused.

The three of them stood in the lobby of police headquarters, after the taxi driver adamantly refused to enter any further into the building.

Hannah took a deep breath. “Okay, thank you. If you just answer my questions, this will all be over and you can go back to your job, okay?”

Damion grunted in what sounded like approval.

“I understand you got a call from Traynor Road tonight, is that correct?”

“Yes, they asked me to come, but when I got there no one would come down, I called and called, and no one answered the phone, I don’t know why people do that, do they not respect my time, am I nothing to them—”

“Okay! At what time did you get to the address?”

“At around twelve-twenty.” Damion seemed to be surprised at his own ability to answer succinctly.

“Did you see anyone?”

“No one came, there was one man who ran out of the building, and I called him, but he didn’t answer, just got in his car and drove away, so I don’t think he was my passenger—”

“Right! This man you saw running. Did you see what he looked like?”

“No, it was dark, but he had wide shoulders, and I think he was white, I didn’t see anything else.”

“What color was his hair? What was he wearing?” Bernard asked.

“I don’t know, it was dark, and he was running fast. Maybe a coat.”

Maybe a coat. This was less than helpful. Almost anyone walking outside that night would have been wearing a coat.

“Did you see the car?”

“A red Toyota Corolla.” Damion answered quickly.

“Did you catch the license plate?” Hannah asked hopefully.

“Why would I?”

Hannah shrugged. No reason at all, really. Some people just remembered license plate numbers. “When did you drive away?” she asked.

“Around half past midnight, I got a call from another passenger, I wasn’t about to continue waiting until his majesty decided to show up, I have three children and a wife to support, what do people think—”

“Did you see anyone else during that time? Anything out of the ordinary? Hear something?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Hannah said. “Please let us know if you remember anything.” She gave Damion a card, which she believed would find its way into the first trashcan the taxi driver encountered.

The man seemed to consider starting another tirade about lost fares, but common sense must have prevailed, because he turned and left.

“A red Toyota Corolla,” Bernard said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and Chad Grimes has one.”

“Maybe,” Hannah said.

It was twenty minutes before five in the morning when the detectives parked in front of Chad Grimes’s home. The sky was completely dark, but every once in a while a car drove by, its driver probably on his way to work. A man passed by them, walking a large dog, glancing curiously at their Dodge Charger. Hannah didn’t see a red Toyota Corolla anywhere on the street. Grimes’s home was a small, crumbling, old house, the white paint peeling, the front yard a tangle of weeds and garbage, the windows covered with faded blue shutters. As they got closer to the door, the detectives walked slower, their hands close to their firearms.

Chad Grimes was an unpredictable criminal who had spent a total of eight years in jail, six of those for aggravated assault against a police officer. He had attacked a patrol officer who came to investigate a noise complaint. Grimes had been high on meth at the time. Though he had been out of jail for the past eighteen months, Hannah and Bernard had no reason to assume he wasn’t as dangerous as before.

Hannah knocked on the door. They had no warrant for Grimes’s arrest; all they wanted was to ask some questions. She thought about Frank Gulliepe, lying on the floor, several stab wounds on his body. Had Grimes followed Frank and Jerome when they left Leroy’s? Had he waited in the hallway until Jerome had left, and then entered Frank’s apartment and stabbed him?

She knocked again, louder.

“I have a gun!” a woman called from inside the house. Both Hannah and Bernard moved to opposite sides of the door and flattened themselves against the wall. Hannah’s pulse accelerated as adrenaline rushed in her blood. Bernard drew his gun.

“Ma’am, this is the police!” Hannah called. “Please put down your weapon!”

“Oh!” The woman sounded cranky. “Why the fuck didn’t you say so? What do you want?”

“Is Chad home?”

“No.”

“We just want to ask him some questions, ma’am.”

“He’s not here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Ma’am, can you please open the door?”

There was a moment of silence. “Show me the badge,” the woman finally said from inside.

Hannah carefully pulled out her badge and waved it in front of the peephole. Bernard tensed and pointed his gun at the door.

“Yeah, okay,” the woman said. They heard two locks click, and something that sounded like a deadbolt sliding. Then the door opened.

The woman standing in the entrance was pale and skinny, with short, bleached-blonde hair. She wore a loose blue t-shirt and long black pants, and held a baby in her arms. There was a fresh bruise on her cheek and another bruise, faded, on her neck. Her bottom lip was swollen.

The woman’s eyes dropped to Bernard’s gun and widened. She took a step back, looking as if she was about to slam the door, but Bernard quickly lowered the gun and holstered it. The woman looked at both of them warily.

“You woke up the baby,” she finally said. “Do you know how tough it is to get her to sleep?”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Bernard said, his gun secure in the holster. He sounded completely sincere, and Hannah assumed he was. Bernard’s baby was infamous in the squad room because of Bernard’s frequent complaints about their hectic nights.

“Can we come in?” Hannah asked.

“Do you have a warrant?” the woman asked.

“No.”

“Then you can’t come in.”

“Can you please tell us when was the last time you saw Chad?” Hannah asked.

“Yesterday morning,” the woman said.

“Did he tell you where he was going to be tonight?”

“No.”

“Is he usually gone for the entire night?”

“Chad does whatever he wants.”

“Will he be back today?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Hannah glanced into the house. All she could see was an old, frayed couch and the corner of a table.

“We just want to ask him some questions.”

“So you said. And I said he isn’t here.”

“Ma’am,” Hannah said, her tone softening, “is there something you want to tell us?”

“Not really,” the woman said in a steely voice.

“Your face is bruised…”

“I accidentally ran into a tree,” the woman said.

“That’s one hell of an accident.”

“Yeah.”

“Ma’am, if there’s something you would like to report… Don’t forget, you have to take care of your baby—”

“Don’t tell me I have a baby,” the woman interrupted her. “I know I have a baby. You know what else I have? Two fucking police officers on my doorstep in the middle of the night, asking me questions while my damn nipples are about to freeze off. You worried about the baby? Awesome; here’s a suggestion: don’t knock on my door in the middle of the night—it wakes her up—and mind your own fucking business.”

The voice was fierce and angry, but underneath the fury Hannah could hear a sea of despair. She looked at the woman, who returned her stare, unblinking. Hannah sighed and said, “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

The woman closed the door without saying a word. They heard the door lock. The detectives got away from the house.

“Now what?” Hannah asked.

“Now we call for help,” Bernard said.

It wasn’t even five in the morning when Bernard called Captain Bailey. Fred Bailey was not happy to wake up.

This was the second time that night he’d been woken by a phone call. The first one had been to let him know that Frank Gulliepe had been murdered. Now he was being woken up by Bernard, calling about the same murder. Why did they keep waking him up? What did they expect him to do from his bed? Surely they didn’t expect him to leave it?

He angrily told Bernard he didn’t want to be woken up before seven A.M. unless his own house was burning. And even then, he added, they’d better be sure they tried to put out the fire before disrupting his precious sleep.

Bernard waited until Captain Bailey finished his tirade, and then informed him that Chad Grimes, who was a suspect in the Frank Gulliepe murder case, was either away from his home or hiding inside.

Captain Bailey told him to get a judge to sign a search warrant, and to let him go back to sleep, damn it.

Bernard explained that there wasn’t enough for a search warrant.

Captain Bailey told him to have someone watch the damn house until Grimes decided to show his nose.

Bernard told him that was his job.

Fred Bailey knew this was his job. “Fine,” he said, and hung up.

He thought for a moment. He didn’t want to spare one of his precious detectives on something so mundane as watching a door. He called Captain Jack Marrow, the patrol captain.

Marrow was furious to be woken up, especially since the man who woke him up was Captain Fred Bailey. Marrow suspected it was Bailey who was behind the prank in which someone had pinned a pirate flag on his door. He had always known the promotion to the rank of captain would be cause for mockery. It wouldn’t have been, if only Disney had named their favorite pirate captain by any other name. But the pirate’s name had been decided upon without consulting him, and its resemblance to Captain Marrow’s name was a blight on his life.

One day, Marrow hoped, Disney would create a movie in which the main character was named Captain Fred Kailey, and then he would have his revenge.

Bailey explained that it was critical Marrow send one of his patrols to watch Chad Grimes’s home.

Marrow reckoned it might be a better idea if Bailey assigned one of his detectives to do that.

Bailey asked if Marrow really wanted the murder investigation to stall because he refused to spare one measly patrol team?

Marrow said he was going to go back to sleep, and Bailey could shove his murder investigation where the sun didn’t shine.

Bailey said that if Marrow hung up the phone, he’d call Chief Dougherty herself to resolve the matter.

Both of the captains pondered silently for a couple of seconds, envisioning the wrath this would rain on their heads. Bailey was, in fact, bluffing, but Marrow couldn’t be sure. Eventually he agreed to send a patrol to watch the Grimes’s house for twelve hours. If Grimes didn’t show his ugly face by then, Fred Bailey and his entire squad could piss off.

He hung up and tried to go back to sleep, but memories of the black pirate flag on his door kept intruding. Eventually he got up in a very bad mood, and yelled at his daughter when she spilled a glass of milk on the floor by mistake. Then his wife yelled at him for making their daughter cry, and the entire Marrow family started the day on the wrong foot.

Bernard knew none of this, and was happy to see Tanessa Lonnie and her partner arrive in an unmarked vehicle. He thought it was nice how quickly the issue had been resolved, and it was really a testament to the efficiency and cooperation of the entire Glenmore Park police force.

Chapter Five

Detective Jacob Cooper was a brilliant investigator with sharp instincts, a nose for hidden information, and an uncanny ability to crack almost anyone in the interrogation room. All this was completely moot in front of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amy, who was apparently angry at him again, though he had no idea why.

“Honey, do you want some pancakes for breakfast?”

She glared at him. “I’ll eat some toast,” she snapped.

“Do you, uh… want me to make it?”

“Are you proposing to put a slice of bread in the toaster for me? Thanks Dad, what would I have done without you?” She put the slice of bread in the toaster herself, just in case he’d missed the dripping sarcasm.

Jacob tried to think. Had he missed an important date? This seemed unlikely. Her birthday was four months away. What other important dates were there? Perhaps he’d been supposed to buy her something and he forgot? Or maybe he’d missed some random school event he was supposed to show up at? Why was it that psychopathic murderers and rough drug dealers made perfect sense to him, while his daughter made none?

“Do you want a ride to school?” he asked in a desperate attempt to fix whatever this was.

Amy seemed to consider it, weighing the pros (no school bus, a short and comfortable ride) with the cons (will have to be moderately nice to Daddy, who is the devil incarnate).

“I’ll take the bus,” the relentless despot declared, sentencing Jacob to a long day of wondering what he had done wrong.

“Okay.” He sighed. He decided that drinking coffee at work would be better than drinking it here, with a vicious teenager glaring at him. “Have a nice day, honey.”

She did not wish him the same. Her stare clarified that, as far as she was concerned, his day would hopefully be an everlasting nightmare.

“Bye, Marissa!” he called to his wife, who was still in bed.

“Bye, sweetie!” she called back. At least she wasn’t upset with him. That was definitely something.

He decided to walk to work. The police station was not far from home, and he usually preferred, when the weather permitted, to get there on foot. He put on his coat and went outside, still trying to crack the case of the mysterious fuming daughter. Had he, perhaps, said the wrong thing? Not this morning. She’d been clearly pissed off since the moment she woke up. Perhaps last night? He definitely recalled saying “good night, Amy,” but that didn’t seem like grounds for hatred. He sighed.

He strode down Bifrost Avenue, breathing in the morning’s fresh, chilly air. Despite the cold, the sky was bright and blue, and he slowly cheered up. Amy’s mood was like a force of nature. You had to let it run its course. She never stayed angry for more than a few hours, and once she was done she was the sweetest daughter a man could wish for. By the time he’d passed by the college, he was already quite happy. Even seeing Mad Remington walking down the road, muttering to himself, pushing his supermarket cart, did not manage to dampen Jacob’s mood. It was one of those beautiful days that just made him relish being alive. He didn’t feel like a fifty-six-year-old goat at all. He wouldn’t have given himself a day over fifty-two.

He pulled his iconic hat a bit downward, to protect his eyes from the morning sun. Everyone knew Jacob by his hat. It was an old gray fedora, which he had received as a birthday gift from his wife a decade or so before. He wore it almost constantly, because he was completely bald underneath and did not want to get sunburned. He had lost his last strand of hair when he was twenty years old. He knew people often did things like “comb their hair” or “get a haircut,” but he didn’t even recall what that was like.

He tried to compose his thoughts and prepare for the day ahead. He had some paperwork to fill out. There was a report due regarding last week’s double homicide that, for some reason, had been rejected by the computer. The Glenmore Park police department used a cutting edge program, purchased only a few months earlier, to file their internal reports. It made Jacob’s life miserable.

The current problem, according to the error message he had received when submitting the report, was Err-176 No Instance of Crime Found Searching. This cryptic message, which was as mysterious as his daughter, would probably mess with his day. He could let Mitchell handle it—his young partner would fix the problem in a second—but Jacob wasn’t inclined to ask for his help. Mitchell already did most of the work when their cases involved computers. The least Jacob could do was file the goddamn paperwork.

He reached the police station. There was something very reassuring about this building, which represented a large part of his life for the past twenty-five years. Same old cracked stairs climbing up to the entrance. Same old doorway, with the sign Glenmore Park City Police Department. Same old security guard checking his ID, despite the fact that Jacob had walked through this security gate more than fifteen thousand times.

A cup of coffee with his name on it would make this morning perfect. “Good morning,” he said as he walked into the squad room.

Hannah was there, hunched over a mobile phone, and she did not seem to think it was a good morning at all. “If you’re making coffee, get me a cup,” she muttered. “Better yet, get me a bucket.”

“Weren’t you on a stakeout last night?” Jacob asked, approaching the coffee machine. “What are you doing here?”

“Murder,” Hannah said curtly.

“During your stakeout?”

“No,” she said. “After. The captain didn’t want to disturb your beauty sleep.”

“That’s a shame,” Jacob said, blessing the captain in his heart. “Really, I wouldn’t have minded being woken up.”

“Well, then, I’ll be sure to do that next time,” Hannah said.

“Where’s Bernard?”

“Gone home. Had to sleep.”

“You should go ahead and get some sleep too. I don’t think you’re doing any good in your state.”

Hannah grunted in response.

Jacob handed Hannah a cup of coffee and sat down in his cubicle with his own cup. He opened his mailbox and stared morosely at the rejected report. He tried resubmitting it, and the computer vehemently spat it out again with the message Err-176 No Instance of Crime Found Searching. He tried fiddling with the report—changed the headline a bit, reversed the order of the detectives on it—and resubmitted it. The report was rejected once again, this time due to Err-239 Invalid Detective. Well, that was just rude.

He groaned and turned around. “So,” he said. “Tell me about that murder you’re investigating.”

Hannah was having trouble concentrating. She’d been awake for twenty-four hours, and even a river of coffee could barely stave off sleep by this point. She was trying to detail the facts of the case to Jacob, but she kept mixing up the names, times, and facts. Jacob’s blue eyes were full of confusion as he tried to untangle the mess.

“No,” she said. “Fizz was just the bartender’s nickname. His real name is, uh… Theodore.”

“And who is Damion Cosmatos again?” Jacob asked.

“He’s the victim’s… Hang on,” Hannah blinked and rubbed her eyes as she checked her notes. “Damion? Uh… Oh! He’s the taxi driver.”

“The one you called for Fizz?”

“No, the one who witnessed the suspect escaping.” Her voice was on edge. She knew she was explaining it badly, but she still felt irritated that Jacob wasn’t even trying to telepathically understand what she was trying to say.

“Good morning,” Mitchell Lonnie said, walking into the squad.

“Hey, Mitchell,” Hannah said, her heart jumping, or plunging. Perhaps both. She forced herself to meet his eyes and smile calmly as she said, “I’m just filling Jacob in about a murder case we caught last night.”

Mitchell and Hannah had joined the force together. She’d been promoted to detective before him, but he’d followed her only two months later. They’d gotten along nicely until her screwup in the Jovan Stokes case. Mitchell had reacted badly, snapping at her, and they’d hardly talked for weeks afterward, even though he had apologized several times. Though she had forgiven him, it was harder to forgive herself, and she was never entirely comfortable when he was around.

Mitchell had thick, wavy black hair, tanned skin, and wide shoulders. Like his sister Tanessa, Mitchell turned heads wherever he went, and Hannah had seen women act like fools in front of him more than once. His green eyes always seemed full of sorrow, giving him the aura of a man who understood people’s pain.

“Okay,” Mitchell said. He joined them, bending over her notes, his head nearly touching hers. “What do we have?”

His aftershave reminded Hannah of freshly cut wood and cloves. There was a note to it she couldn’t quite place. Sandalwood, maybe.

She tried to ignore his close proximity as she once again detailed the murder of Frank Gulliepe. “We have patrol officers watching Chad Grimes’s house in case he gets back,” she said. “He seems to be the primary suspect right now.”

“What about his family?” Mitchell asked.

“Haven’t talked to them yet,” Hannah said. “His sister is autistic. She’s hospitalized in a place called the Wexler Center.” She rubbed her eyes again.

“You should go home and rest,” Mitchell said.

“Like hell,” Hannah said, snapping her eyes open. “I need to talk to the sister. And I think there’s a girlfriend—”

“You need to sleep, Hannah,” Jacob said, touching her shoulder gently. “We’ll notify next of kin.”

She could feel her resolve draining as her shoulders sagged. Jacob didn’t seem to put her on edge like Mitchell did.

“Fine,” she said. “But if Grimes shows up, you call me and wake me up, okay?”

Jacob nodded.

Satisfied, Hannah stood up and turned toward the door, only to suddenly halt in place. Damn, she had totally forgotten about Mikey, the Devin Derkins wannabe. She muttered curses as she sat down, dialing the Sheriff’s office, ignoring Jacob and Mitchell’s stares.

The cheery voice of someone who’d had a good night’s sleep answered. “Sheriff’s office, this is Yvonne.”

“Yvonne, this is Detective Hannah Shor,” Hannah said, “Listen, we arrested a drug dealer last night, and put him in our holding cells. Can you send someone to pick him up?”

“Why didn’t you take him to jail when you arrested him?” Yvonne asked in a testy voice.

Hannah gritted her teeth, and tried to remind herself that Yvonne was just doing her job, and wasn’t inherently evil. Probably. “We had some issues that needed addressing first,” she said, knowing she had just said a meaningless, unhelpful jumble of words. “Everything is now resolved. Can you pick him up?”

“What’s the prisoner’s name?” Yvonne asked.

“Devin Derkins,” Hannah said, thinking about her soft bed.

“Okay, we’ll send someone over soon.”

“Thanks, Yvonne,” Hannah said, relieved. She hung up the phone, stood up, and stumbled outside.

Mitchell was reading his e-mails, trying to avoid thinking about Pauline, and the fact that today was her birthday. She had left him two months before, right in the middle of the Jovan Stokes case, and he was far from over her. She had been the love of his life, and he was still struggling to figure out what went wrong.

A brief fling he had with an FBI consultant called Zoe helped to ease the pain, but she had left to Boston when the case ended. They had two brief chats on the phone, but neither of them pushed it further, and he hadn’t heard from her for over a month.

Despite his valiant efforts, memories from her last birthday kept popping into his mind. It had been a rainy day a year ago. He had taken the day off, and they’d spent the entire day snuggling in bed, watching movies and having sex.

He sighed. Maybe work would keep his mind busy; a murder investigation ought to get the job done. This was technically Hannah and Bernard’s case, but no one expected them both to work on it without any sleep. The first few days of a murder investigation, when the trail was still warm, were crucial; they all usually worked together to solve it. Mitchell and Jacob would naturally pick up the slack.

Mitchell grabbed Frank Gulliepe’s phone from Hannah’s desk and started methodically extracting information from it.

To a detective, a phone was a treasure trove. It was amazing how many details about a person’s life one could learn from such a small device. The navigation application gave him Frank’s work address, a place named Yorrick & Rodrick Co. From the call log, Mitchell learned that Frank placed a daily call to the Wexler Center, where his sister was staying. Additionally, he’d spoken with a woman named Lyla several times.

Frank’s Instagram account had pictures with a woman named Lyla, and Mitchell assumed it was the same one. She was beautiful, with golden-tanned skin and smooth, jet-black hair. She reminded Mitchell of an actress, but he couldn’t remember which one, or point out any movie she’d played in. By browsing Lyla’s own Instagram profile for several minutes, Mitchell determined that her full name was Lyla Harper, and she worked as a waitress at Bill’s Pizzushi Place, whatever that was.

As Hannah had figured out, Frank had maintained a lot of Twitter accounts which he used to harass several women. Mitchell managed to find some fake Facebook accounts used for similar purposes, as well as seven different e-mail accounts. The amount of hate and venom in the messages of those accounts made Mitchell want to take a shower. He made a list of all the Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, and e-mail addresses of the harassed women. About half of the harassing accounts were suspended, and he assumed they’d been reported to Twitter.

The browser history didn’t reveal much. Frank had periodically visited some blogs from his phone, as well as cnn.com. There was nothing else there, but this wasn’t surprising. Many people did most of their browsing from their laptop, tablet, or desktop computer.

It was a well-known fact in the squad that if anyone knew how to sniff out relevant information from that enormous entity called the internet, it was Mitchell. He would open dozens of tabs on his browsers, scanning multiple profiles, searching for parts that clicked, or digital references that overlapped. Captain Bailey had recently procured him a second monitor for his computer. Now, when he was fishing for information, dragging browser windows across the two monitors, he looked like a criminal mastermind, monitoring the secret agent bumbling around in his evil lair.

Using Frank’s phone, Mitchell could scan Frank’s friends list on Facebook. He found several connections between that list and the harassed women. There was a Melanie Foster, who was both a Facebook friend and one of the main targets for Frank’s attacks. Two others were both Facebook friends and victims as well. There was one celebrity comedian, living in a different state, whom Mitchell doubted Frank knew first hand. It seemed Frank targeted women he knew personally and women he didn’t.

After checking Melanie’s profile, Mitchell established that she and Frank worked in the same place. The connection to the other two Facebook friends wasn’t immediately apparent.

Lyla Harper, Frank’s current partner, had one shared friend with Melanie. A coincidence? Probably. People had shared friends. In fact, according to Facebook, Mitchell’s cousin was Lyla’s friend as well.

Somewhere in the background, he heard Jacob speaking. He tuned out the noise, and dug deeper.

Jacob was talking to Matt on the phone. Matt sounded weary, and Jacob could sympathize. Matt had been woken up in the middle of the night, and had spent the last six hours painstakingly collecting samples from the crime scene and carefully documenting it. Now he was in the laboratory helping to analyze the findings.

“The killer was careful,” Matt said. “He wiped the doorknob before leaving, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t touch anything else. We have several fingerprints from the apartment; they don’t all belong to the deceased, but I doubt any of them are the killer’s.”

“Okay,” Jacob said, glancing at Mitchell. The young detective was looking at multiple open browser windows. Recently, Jacob had found himself feeling crippled next to his partner. He could hardly check his own mail, never mind cross-reference different social networks. How long until his supervisors noticed he wasn’t as useful as the other detectives in the squad? These days, it wasn’t enough just to interrogate well, or have a nose for details.

“The good news is Hannah and Bernard were right,” Matt said. “The killer was waiting in the hallway. We found some scuff marks in the dust where he was hiding. I think he was tapping his foot while he waited.”

Jacob tensed. “Fingerprints?”

“No fingerprints, sorry, but he was biting his fingernails. I have a few samples. They definitely belong to someone male. I’m sending those to the lab, see if they get a match in CODIS, but it’ll take some time.”

“Okay, good,” Jacob said, thinking yet again that CODIS was a really cute name for something that should have been named the great scary big brother who knows us all by our DNA.

“The pills in the medicine cabinet are definitely Ecstasy,” Matt said. “So this guy was buying drugs.”

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “We think we know who he was buying them from. Could be the guy who killed him.”

“Good. Many of the sex toys in his bedroom were used recently. We found some dried bodily fluids on two vibrators and on one of the dildos, and fecal matter on another dildo.”

“Okay,” Jacob paused for a second to consider the fact that fecal matter on one of the dildos was a reasonable phrase to use in a conversation. “When you say recently…”

“The past three months.”

“Right.”

“At least two different partners.”

“I see.” Was Frank seeing two women simultaneously? A jilted lover could have motive.

“According to the triangulation of the blood marks found in the apartment, the victim was standing when he was stabbed. His position in the room was pretty much where we found him. I’ll send you the exact measurements. There are some spots of blood on the floor which probably dripped from the killer’s knife as he was leaving the apartment. I’ll send you their position as well. I found another spot in the hallway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s all I have for you so far,” Matt concluded.

“Thanks, Matt. Keep us updated.” Jacob hung up the phone and got up. He went over to the coffee pot, poured two mugs, and gave one to Mitchell, who thanked him distractedly.

“We have some fingernails which are almost certainly the killer’s,” Jacob told him. That got Mitchell’s attention.

“Any fingerprints?” Mitchell asked, turning away from his screens.

“Afraid not,” Jacob said.

“Okay,” Mitchell said. “I have the girlfriend’s work address.”

“The immediate family should be notified,” Jacob said.

“Parents?” Mitchell asked.

“I don’t know, but the people at the Wexler Center could probably give us a hand there,” Jacob said.

“So who first?” Mitchell asked. “Girlfriend or family?”

Jacob sighed. “Family,” he said unhappily. “We should really start with the family.”

Chapter Six

The Wexler Care Center was only five minutes away from Frank Gulliepe’s apartment. Jacob expected a sterile white building, something similar to a hospital, but in fact it was a charming brown brick building, surrounded by lush green grass spotted with trees and small flowerbeds. It stood in clashing contrast with the rest of the neighborhood, which consisted mostly of old decrepit structures covered in graffiti and soot.

Jacob and Mitchell parked their car and approached the glass front door, which was locked. There was a small intercom to one side, and Jacob pressed the button.

A voice emanated from the speaker. “Yes?”

“Police,” Jacob said.

“Yes, Officer,” the speaker said. “How can I help you?”

“You could open the door,” suggested Jacob.

“What is this about?”

“It’s about a murder investigation.”

The door buzzed open. Murder investigation seemed to be the secret password.

The lobby was well-lit, the walls painted light blue, the floor white and clean. There were several pictures on the wall, all of them displaying various bodies of water: a stream, a lake, a sunny beach.

A woman sat behind a pearl-white front desk. She didn’t wait for them to introduce themselves. “My name is Mrs. Pendergast,” she said, standing up and walking around the desk to stand in front of them. “What is this about, Officers?”

Mitchell introduced Jacob and himself, as Jacob examined Mrs. Pendergast. She was about forty, with a deep brown complexion, short brown hair, and tight lips. She seemed angry, though Jacob suspected this was her natural expression. People with tight mouths always seemed unhappy. She wore a pearl necklace and large gold earrings. Combined with her name, her appearance gave her an air of aloof superiority which Mitchell frequently saw in low level managers and bad teachers.

“We’re investigating a murder, Mrs. Pendergast,” Mitchell said. “I believe the sister of a man named Frank Gulliepe is staying here?”

At the mentioning of Frank, Mrs. Pendergast’s mouth relaxed a bit and her eyes softened. Jacob was impressed by the transformation. She suddenly seemed more like a kindly aunt than an angry headmistress.

“Of course. Melinda Gulliepe. Is her brother all right?”

“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Pendergast. He’s dead.”

She covered her mouth with her hand in horror. “Oh God!” she said, and leaned on the desk. “How did it happen?”

“We are not at liberty to say,” Jacob said.

“But… You said it’s a murder investigation, then… then… did someone…” Mrs. Pendergast blinked, tears appearing in her eyes.

“I understand Frank was here yesterday?” Jacob asked smoothly.

“Yes. He comes… came here every Tuesday afternoon. He visited his sister.”

“What was Mr. Gulliepe’s relationship with his sister like?”

“Oh, he loved her. It’s very rare to see such dedication between siblings. Parents, sure. Most parents regularly come to visit their children here. Sometimes even daily.”

Jacob briefly imagined having a child in a place like this. The thought was ghastly and he pushed it away, shuddering inwardly.

“But siblings?” Mrs. Pendergast continued. “Frank was a rare person. Every Tuesday and Thursday, like clockwork. And every other weekend, as well. Melinda was dearly loved.”

“What about their parents?” Mitchell asked.

“Both their parents are dead,” she answered.

Mitchell and Jacob exchanged looks. There would be no knocking on Frank’s mother’s door to tell her that her son was dead. In a way, it was a relief.

“Did Frank seem different yesterday evening?”

“Well, I wasn’t on shift yesterday, so I didn’t see him,” Mrs. Pendergast answered. “You’d have to ask someone from that shift.”

“Could you please let us talk with the person in charge of yesterday’s shift?”

“Well, Dorothy Hobart was in charge… but she had a double shift and was awake all night. I’m sure you don’t want me to wake her up.”

“Actually,” Jacob said. “If you could wake her up, it would be most helpful. This is a murder investigation.”

“But I… of course.” Mrs. Pendergast sighed. She pulled a phone from her pocket and dialed, then waited with the phone glued to her ear, clearing her throat every two seconds. Finally, the person on the other side of the call seemed to pick up. “Dorothy? It’s Linda. I’m really sorry to wake you up. I… Yes, it’s nine-thirty. I’m sorry, but the police are here. They say that Frank Gulliepe was killed last night... Yes! It’s terrible. Poor Frank… I know you saw him only yesterday, dear, that’s why I’m calling you. They want to ask a couple of questions.”

Jacob nodded silently at Mitchell, indicating that he’d take the call. Mrs. Pendergast babbled for several minutes more, then passed the phone to him. “This is Detective Cooper,” he said. “Could I have your name, please?”

The lady on the other side sounded as if she was weeping. “My name is Dorothy. Dorothy Hobart.”

“Mrs. Hobart, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay.” Dorothy Hobart said, sniffling.

“Did Frank seem different yesterday evening? Was he worried, or preoccupied?”

“No, he was his usual self.”

“Could you describe what he did during his visit?”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly following him around. He usually got to the center at about four-thirty, and then spent an hour and a half with his sister.”

“Is there any way to corroborate that’s what happened?”

“Well, I dropped by at about five-fifteen to make sure that she would be eating in the dining room. Sometimes Frank took her out to eat, and we need to know how many meals to prepare. He was in her room.”

“Doing what?”

“Talking to her.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t listen.”

“Okay.”

“Then, at about six, he escorted her to the community room, where they played cards for about half an hour. They probably took a walk outside before, like they usually did, but I can’t say for sure.”

“And then what?”

“He said goodbye and left.”

“Did he escort his sister back to her room?”

“No, it was time for dinner. She went to the dining room, on her own.”

“Was that usual?”

“Yes.”

“Did Frank fight with anyone, have any confrontations, or take any strange phone calls while he was here?”

“Not at all. He is… was a very peaceful man.”

Jacob recalled the nasty Twitter accounts Mitchell had shown him before they left the station, and tried to connect that to the man they were talking about. “Did his sister behave unusually in any way while he was here?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hobart.”

“You’re welcome. I hope you catch whoever did this.” She hung up.

Jacob handed the phone back to Mrs. Pendergast. “Mrs. Pendergast,” he said. “Did Frank or his sister have any problems with anyone? Perhaps a family member?”

“No. I can’t imagine he would. He was an amazing person. So very kind.”

“Can you give us a list of the visitors his sister has had in the past year?”

“Well… No. Not unless you have a search warrant. Those records are confidential. But I wouldn’t bother.”

“Why not?”

“Because no one except Frank visited her.”

“We need to talk to his sister,” Jacob said.

“Of course,” Mrs. Pendergast sighed. “But I’ll be there the entire time. And you won’t say a word until I explain everything. This is very delicate, Detective.”

“Informing about death always is, Mrs. Pendergast,” Jacob said.

“Yes. I expect so. Nevertheless, you will let me explain.”

Jacob nodded. She led them through several passages to a long hallway lined with doors. She approached one of the doors and knocked.

“Melinda?” she said. “Can we please come in?”

The door opened. A woman Jacob recognized from some of the pictures on Frank’s Instagram page stood in the doorway. Her hair was chestnut brown, and her nose was a bit wide, making it a prominent feature on her face. Her eyes, large and hazlenut, fluttered around, scanning the visitors then lowering to her hands.

“We can talk in the hallway,” she said. “There is no reason to come in.”

“Melinda,” Mrs. Pendergast said in a soft tone. “These gentlemen need to tell you something. And it is something that should be told in your room.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how it’s done.”

“Okay. You can come in,” Melinda said. “Don’t touch the pictures. Please,” she added a second later, as though as an afterthought.

They entered her room. It was simple, but tasteful. There was a double bed, the sheets folded neatly on top. A blue couch stood against the wall on the right, exactly opposite a bookcase on the other side of the room. There was a small doorway to what appeared to be a bathroom. There were five pictures on the wall, all of them depicting famous modern buildings. Jacob identified the Sydney Opera House and One World Trade Center. Melinda walked a few feet inside, and turned around. Her eyes wandered and Jacob realized she was looking at each of the pictures in turn. Finally, her stare focused on Mrs. Pendergast.

“Melinda,” Mrs. Pendergast said. “Something happened to Frank. Something bad.”

“What happened?” Melinda asked. As far as Jacob could tell, she didn’t sound worried or agitated. Was Mrs. Pendergast overly protective of Melinda?

“He was killed last night,” Mrs. Pendergast said. “He is dead.”

“Oh. How?”

Jacob cleared his throat. “He was stabbed,” he said.

Mrs. Pendergast glanced at him sharply, but he ignored her.

“Oh. I see,” Melinda said. “Where?”

“He was stabbed in the heart.”

“No, I mean, where did it happen?”

“In his apartment,” Jacob said, frowning.

“Yes. Where in the apartment?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Where,” Melinda said, and for the first time she began to sound agitated. “Where? Where? In the bathroom? In the kitchen? In the bedroom? In the living room? In the hallway—”

“In the living room,” Mitchell said, interrupting. “It happened in the living room.”

Melinda’s eyes started wandering again. She looked at each of the pictures. “We bought it together.”

“Bought what?” Jacob asked.

“The rug in the living room. We bought it together. Frank used to say that it matched the room well. Did the blood stain the rug?”

“Yes…” Jacob said. Should he stress the fact that her brother was dead? No, she said Frank used to say. Past tense. She understood.

“Maybe it can be dry cleaned. It was off-white. They called the color eggshell white in the store. We went to buy it together. Is it a big stain?” Her eyes started scanning the pictures again.

“Melinda,” Jacob said. “Did Frank seem—”

“Don’t touch the pictures. I think blood can be cleaned. I need to research it. I will do it later. Frank used to say that it matched the room well.” Her face turned from picture to picture, in small, jerking movements.

“Did you notice anything unusual in the past few weeks?” Mitchell asked.

“He wore the green shirt more than usual. He wore it three times in the past month. He usually wore it less. But he wore it three times in the past month. They stopped serving pink Jell-O in the dining room a month ago. There was a blue Ford Fiesta outside every time Frank and I took a walk the past two weeks. It was never here when I took a walk on my own.”

“A blue Ford Fiesta?” Mitchell asked.

“A blue Ford Fiesta. It doesn’t belong to anyone here. I know all the cars that belong to people here. It was a blue Ford Fiesta.”

“Was it Frank’s?” Mitchell asked.

“Frank didn’t drive here. He walked here. Even in the rain. He always walked here. He always”

She stopped talking. Her eyes refused to focus, constantly flipping between the pictures. She began moving her body back and forth, her feet planted in place.

“The blood has to be cleaned,” she suddenly said. “I have to check how. It needs to be cleaned. Frank used to say that it matched the room well. It is off-white. It needs to be cleaned…”

“You need to leave now, Detectives,” Mrs. Pendergast said.

Melinda kept saying over and over that the rug needed to be cleaned. Her voice was getting louder.

“We just need to—” Jacob began.

“Now, Detectives!” Mrs. Pendergast said sharply, and started physically dragging them to the door.

Jacob glanced at Melinda one last time. She was still scanning the pictures, talking about the rug, the fingernails of her right hand digging into her left arm, white with effort. He realized his own heart was beating wildly, and his throat was clenching in sorrow. He quickly turned away and got out of the room. “Ma’am, we need to ask her some—”

“You’ll ask her nothing right now,” Mrs. Pendergast said. “You can come back in a few days. Call first.”

“Ma’am, this is a murder invest—”

“I don’t care if it’s the second coming,” Mrs. Pendergast said, her voice clipped and final. “You are not questioning Melinda. Not like this. Not today.”

And that was that.

Bill’s Pizzushi Place was on Sunshine Drive, a bit outside the city center, and not far from Traynor Road, where Frank Gulliepe had been found dead. Due to a traffic jam caused by roadwork, it took Jacob and Mitchell almost half an hour to get there, and by the time they did Jacob’s stomach was grumbling. What he really wanted was a nice plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. Glancing at the restaurant, he doubted he’d be able to get that there.

The sign said Bill’s Pizzushi Place in a faded, ugly blue. Small, unappetizing cartoons of pizzas, bowls of pasta, and trays of sushi surrounded the restaurant’s name. Someone had thought mixing Italian and Japanese cuisine was a good idea. Looking through the display windows into the empty restaurant, it seemed to Jacob like it wasn’t a good idea at all.

The two detectives got out of the car and entered the restaurant. It was warm inside—in fact, a bit too warm for Jacob’s taste. In the background he could hear one of those songs Amy played over and over at home, some pop song or other. They all blended together in Jacob’s mind.

There was a rich smell of fresh coffee in the air, which was very encouraging. Jacob was not sure what one ate in a Pizzushi Place, but he sure could use a cup of coffee. The tables were all light brown; metallic chairs with cheap red upholstery were placed around them. The floor was checkered white and black, and Jacob started carefully stepping only on the white squares. It was an old childhood habit, which he found hard to break.

He and Mitchell sat down at one of the tables. A waitress—not Lyla—walked over, handed them menus, smiled, and walked away.

Jacob glanced at the menu and sighed. No bacon in sight.

“This stuff looks good,” Mitchell said, scanning the menu.

“Seriously?” Jacob said. “What looks good here, exactly?”

“Well, the pastries, for one. And you can get a small bowl of rice with stripes of red tuna, which sounds interesting.”

“Why would anyone want his breakfast to be interesting?” Jacob asked morosely. He located the hot beverage list. It consisted of about a dozen Italian words he didn’t recognize, and the word Sake.

The waitress approached them. “Would you like to order?” she asked.

“Is Pizzushi an actual dish you serve here?” Mitchell asked her.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “It’s pizza dough, with olives, onions and anchovy, rolled and sliced like sushi. We serve it with some rice.”

“Is it a popular dish?” Mitchell asked.

The waitress looked at him for a second, and said, “Sure.”

Jacob doubted anyone ever ordered Pizzushi.

“I’d like the fette biscottate, with a caffè latte,” Mitchell said.

“Just coffee for me,” Jacob said.

“Which coffee, sir?”

“Whatever you think is best,” Jacob answered. “Is Lyla Harper working today?”

The waitress hesitated.

Jacob flashed his badge. “This is an official matter,” he said.

“Yeah,” the waitress said. “I’ll get her.”

She walked away. A moment later Lyla Harper entered the room through the kitchen door. Jacob had seen some of her photos earlier, but in real life she seemed even more beautiful than on the computer screen. If people ever came here to eat, he thought, they came here for Lyla, not for the Pizzushi. She approached their table nervously.

“Can I help you, Detectives?” she asked.

“Sit down, Miss Harper,” Jacob said.

“I’m working,” she said. “I can’t—”

“Sit down,” he said again. His tone was soft, but left no room for discussion.

Lyla grabbed a chair and sat down.

“Do you know a man named Frank Gulliepe?” Mitchell asked.

“Y… yes,” she said. “We’ve been on a couple of dates.”

“For how long have you been dating?”

“I don’t know. Two or three weeks, I think,” she said.

Their shared Instagram photos went four weeks back.

“When was the last time you saw Frank?”

“We went out two nights ago,” she said. “Why? Did something happen to him?”

“Did he seem unusual when you went out with him? Was he agitated or concerned?”

“No, but…” she stopped.

Both detectives looked at her in silence. The silence stretched.

“There was a man who approached us. He started yelling at Frank. Is this about that man?”

“What did the man yell about?” Jacob asked.

“He screamed at Frank to leave his wife alone. Threatened to call the cops,” Lyla said. “Did he call you? Is that what this is about? Because Frank said he had no idea who this man was. He said that the man got the wrong guy.”

“What did the man look like?”

“Bald. Pretty tall, I think. He had a big nose. Hairy eyebrows.”

Jacob jotted this down. “Did you catch his name?”

“No. I don’t think he said it, but if he did I forgot. It was really scary. He was really mad; it was scary. He had to be escorted outside.”

“Where were you last night, Miss Harper?”

“I had a shift. It ended at midnight. That’s when we close up.”

The other waitress approached their table and put a plate with some sort of dried bread, jam, and butter in front of Mitchell. She gave them both mugs of coffee topped with foamy milk. Jacob took a sip from his. It was surprisingly good.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, miss,” Jacob said. “But Frank was found dead in his apartment last night. He was stabbed multiple times.”

Lyla’s face became deathly pale. “Oh, my God,” she said in a choked voice, her bottom lip quivering. “I… Oh my God.”

The detectives stayed silent, looking at her intently.

“Last night? Oh, God…”

“Did you talk to Frank yesterday?” Mitchell asked.

“What? No… no, I didn’t. Stabbed? With… with what?”

“Miss Harper, do you have any idea if Frank had any enemies, or people who had any reason to harm him? Beyond the man who argued with him that evening.”

“Harm? No… no… I can’t think of… I don’t believe…”

“Did you know that Frank Gulliepe was harassing women online?” Jacob asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her eyes darted to Jacob’s face and back to Mitchell.

“I mean he had multiple Twitter accounts with which he used to post sexual and derogatory comments targeting various women.”

“I had no idea… Please…”

“Were you the target of such an attack?”

“No… no I wasn’t, I…” She suddenly stood up and dashed off.

Jacob saw Mitchell tense as if he was about to get up. He raised his hand, motioning his partner to stop.

Lyla ran into the restroom, the door swinging behind her.

Jacob took another sip of his coffee. Mitchell toyed with his dried pastry a bit. Neither of them spoke.

After a minute, Lyla came out of the restroom, her eyes red, her face wet, as if she had just washed it. She was visibly shaking. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “Is there anything else you need from me? I think I’d like to go home now.”

Jacob shook his head. “Just your address and a way we can get in touch,” he said.

The detectives drank their coffee in silence. The pastry stayed untouched.

Chapter Seven

Something was jumping on Bernard’s head. It was something vicious, malevolent. Possibly murderous. Bernard shut his eyes harder, tried to go back to sleep.

The thing didn’t relent. It began emitting relentless battle cries.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy…”

He considered sobbing. He had slept for what felt like mere minutes. This was illegal torture. He could report this to the government. He should be granted asylum. His family was trying to drive him insane.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy.”

“Sugar,” he mumbled. “Daddy’s very tired.”

“Wake up, Daddy!”

“Daddy needs to sleep.”

“No.” There was a finality in the word. There would be no bargaining, no discussing this. There was no negotiation here.

He heard his wife enter the room. “Gina! I told you to leave Daddy alone. Sorry honey, I left her alone for two minutes, that’s all.”

Two minutes was all it took. “It’s okay,” he muttered. “Why is Gina home? Isn’t it too early?” Gina usually came back from kindergarten in the afternoon.

“I had to get her. They said she bit someone.”

“So? Kids bite and hit each other all the time. It’s the teacher’s responsibility to work it out.”

“Well, the kid was bleeding. They asked me to come and get her.”

Bernard had read somewhere that all kids were psychopaths until they reached the age of three. He could believe it, though he personally thought the actual age for becoming a mentally stable human was more like five. Or seven. Possibly fifteen.

He opened his eyes. His daughter grinned at him, her braids flailing wildly as she jumped again. “You’re awake, Daddy.”

Truly a happy occasion.

“Pumpkin, did you bite someone?” he asked.

“No.”

Fine, if this was how it was gonna be, Bernard would go into full investigator mode. He could imagine his daughter in the interrogation room, a bright light aimed at her face as he sat opposite her, his wife by his side. Good cop, bad cop.

“Pumpkin, the teacher said you bit someone.”

“Bobby bit me.”

“Gina! Tell the truth!” the bad cop said, her hands on her hips. “Bobby was crying when I came to get you.”

“Yes.” A vague confession.

“So you did bite Bobby?” Bernard asked.

“Maybe.”

“Why, pumpkin?”

“Because he hit me.”

Ah. The self-defense plea.

“Where did he hit you?”

“He hit me in the doll.”

“In the…” Bernard really wanted to sleep. “He… hit you in the doll?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not a real sentence. Look, sweetie, we aren’t angry, we just want to understand…”

“I need to pee.”

The bad cop took the suspect to the bathroom. Bernard knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. He was already wide awake. He began thinking about the case. Not the bitten in self-defense due to doll assault case, but Frank Gulliepe’s murder case.

How could someone who lived near his autistic sister so he could visit her every week be such an asshole, and write such vile things online? Was it one of the victims who had killed him? Or the drug dealer from the pub? Or someone else entirely? A mental list of suspects formed in Bernard’s mind as he tried to figure out how to tackle this case. He sighed. They needed to know more, needed to make sure they didn’t miss anything critical around the crime scene.

It was time to go. Gina wouldn’t let him sleep anyway.

He got up and started to dress.

Crime is not a very tidy thing. When a man is murdered, crime does not stop and wait politely for the detectives to investigate it thoroughly. It does not apologize for the intrusion, and offer to come back another day. Violence waits for no one.

Jacob and Mitchell assumed they’d be spending the day interviewing witnesses and suspects in the Frank Gulliepe murder case. They planned to track down the angry husband Lyla Harper had mentioned. They needed to do a door-to-door in Frank’s building. They also needed to check Lyla’s alibi with her boss; shocked as she might have been, lovers and spouses were always suspects. Then they would check the progress on Frank’s autopsy, see if there was anything they could use.

But the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray. Sometimes, they go astray because of an anonymous phone call.

In this case, it was a phone call reporting a murder. A woman named Dona Aliysa had been strangled to death.

Just like that, Jacob and Mitchell were snatched from Frank Gulliepe’s case, and thrown unceremoniously into a completely different murder case.

It was a small house in a poor neighborhood, just beyond the corner of Oak Grove Road and Treat Boulevard. Oak Grove Road was very busy this time of morning, and the cars going back and forth made Jacob wonder what bothered the residents here more: the noise pollution or the air pollution? The noise of the truck engines and the taxi drivers’ honking was almost unbearable, but maybe one could get used to it, if one had to.

The house’s wooden walls, originally white, were gray with dirt; the windows were grimy to the point where you could hardly see anything through them. By the time the detectives got there a patrol car, Matt’s van, and an ambulance were all parked on the narrow sidewalk. Jacob and Mitchell strode forth. There was no front yard to speak of; the house’s door practically bordered the sidewalk. Jacob took the crime scene log from the hands of the patrol officer standing in the doorway—an old, jaded officer named Kevin Finley.

“Anything we should know?” he asked Finley, quickly signing the log.

“She’s inside,” Finley said. “She’s dead.”

A man of few words.

The door was open, and Jacob and Mitchell entered the apartment. The woman’s body was on the floor, no more than three feet from the entrance, lying on her belly. Her head lay sideways on the flooring, pointed at the entrance. The left part of her face was significantly bruised, as if she’d been beaten; this was actually the marks of lividity, the stagnant blood that settled in the parts of the body which were closer to the ground.

Her eyes were shut, making her seem peaceful, but Jacob had seen enough murder victims to know this was misleading. Though victims frequently seemed at ease, murder was usually full of terror and pain.

The victim’s auburn hair was tied back in a haphazard ponytail. She wore a simple green dress, with her feet bare. Matt crouched by her side, collecting something from her nose with a pair of tweezers. Annie crouched next to him, inspecting the woman’s neck.

The room itself was quite bare. A small coffee table with two bowls on it—one with crackers, the other with pretzels. A couple of empty beer bottles stood on the table as well. There were several chairs around the coffee table, no couches. Jacob noted the glaring absence of a TV set. There was a small desk with a desktop computer, the monitor dark; bills and papers were scattered around the desk. Two posters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer hung on the walls, one of them framed, the other bare.

Jacob had already slipped on a pair of the latex gloves he always carried in his case. He crouched by Annie.

“Hey, Annie,” he said. “Do you have an approximate time of death?”

“Yeah,” Annie said. “Rigor mortis has almost completely set in. So has lividity. According to that and the body temperature, I’d say nine to twelve hours ago.”

Matt snorted.

Annie fixed him with a steely gaze. “Problem?” she asked.

“No,” Matt said. “Go ahead with your very accurate information.”

“Perhaps you can do better with your maggots?”

“They’re not maggots, they’re eggs, and—”

“That’s enough.” Jacob said. He looked at the body sadly. “I know you two are tired, and you just finished processing another crime scene. But this is not helping.”

They both quieted down. Matt stood up and walked off to the small kitchen. Annie moved the head a bit.

Mitchell knelt by Jacob and Annie. “So somewhere between eleven-thirty and two-thirty?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Annie said. “Two-thirty sounds a bit more likely. If it were eleven-thirty, I’d expect her to be stiffer. And it matches the body temperature.”

“Anything else we should know?” Jacob asked.

“She was strangled,” Annie said. “Someone choked her with his bare hands. See those marks on her neck?”

Jacob nodded. It was easy to see the bruised finger imprints on either side.

“From their position, I’d wager that whoever did this was sitting on her when he strangled her. She has petechial hemorrhages on the sclera of the left eye, which is consistent with strangulation as well. So far I see no indication for any other cause of death.”

“Thanks Annie,” Jacob said. He turned to the door. “Finley?” he called.

“Yeah?” Officer Finley walked inside.

“Who found the body?”

“I did. I was sent by the dispatcher to investigate an anonymous tip. Someone called to report a murder.”

“Was there anyone here besides the woman?”

“If there was, I would have mentioned it.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“Do we know who she is?”

“The caller said her name is Dona Aliysa.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Thanks,” Jacob said, not even trying to hide the disgust in his voice. Some patrol officers were a joy to work with, while others clearly did the least they could to assist.

Jacob got up and slowly walked to the bedroom, stopping in the doorway. Violet, Matt’s partner, stood in one corner of the room, scribbling on the pad in her hand, frowning as she did so. Jacob liked Violet, and appreciated the focus and skill she brought to her job. She briefly raised her eyes and they met with his. She nodded at him, and he nodded back.

The room was cramped, with a double bed, a nightstand, several shelves, and a closet. It also overflowed with memorabilia. Jacob easily identified the TV series it was taken from: Buffy the Vampire Slayer again. Amy had gone through a phase of binge-watching the entire series.

There were three posters of Buffy on the wall. Dozens of action figures covered the shelves. There was a pile of comics stacked on a small shelf, each in its own plastic binder. An intricate knife was propped on the nightstand, with a small plaque which denoted it as a prop replica. There was a Buffy plushie on the bed, as well as a plushie of one of the side characters, whom Jacob didn’t recognize.

He opened the closet and scanned it. It was tidy and sparse, not a lot of clothes there. There were, however, more Buffy comics. He didn’t touch the comics in the closet or on the nightstand. Those plastic binders would be fantastic for fingerprints, if there were any.

“The woman loved Buffy, huh?” he said stupidly. It was the crime scene chat equivalent of How about that weather. Pointless words, whose sole purpose was to make sure that conversation happened.

“Yup,” Violet said, intent on her pad.

“My daughter watched the series,” he said. “Seemed kind of a silly TV series to me. What kind of a name is Buffy, anyway?”

“I saw all seven seasons,” Violet said. “Twice.”

“Oh.”

He glanced around the room once more, bending to look under the bed, examining the knife replica closely. Finally, he left the room, knowing the short conversation he’d just had with Violet would bother him for the rest of the day.

“Excuse me?” someone called from outside the house. Both Mitchell and Jacob walked out the front door. An elderly woman—about sixty, wearing a garish purple dress and huge red spectacles—peered at them curiously from where she stood on the sidewalk.

“Yes, ma’am?” Mitchell said.

“Is everything okay? Did something happen to Dona?”

“I’m Detective Lonnie, ma’am,” Mitchell said. “And you are?”

“Gwyneth. Like the actress,” the woman said. Jacob wondered if she always introduced herself like that. “I’m Dona’s neighbor.” She motioned at the adjacent house, which seemed better maintained than Dona’s own place. There was even a flowerpot on one of the windowsills.

“Well, ma’am, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your neighbor is dead.”

“Oh, my,” the woman said.

“Did you happen to see anyone here last night?”

“No, not last night. But she has a boyfriend, you know.” Gwyneth pronounced the word boyfriend like some people pronounced the term psycho serial killer.

“Do you know where we could find this boyfriend?”

“No. But I bet he killed her.”

Mitchell raised an eyebrow. “Why would you say that, ma’am?”

“I have a nose for those things,” the woman said, sounding proud.

“Really?”

“I read a lot of mystery books, and half the time I can guess who the killer is before the detective does.”

“Do you know the boyfriend’s name?” Mitchell asked.

“No. How was she killed?”

“We are not at liberty to say. Aside from her boyfriend, did Dona have any friends, acquaintances, or family who came to visit her?”

“Not that I noticed. She was very quiet. She was a nice neighbor. Her boyfriend talked loudly on the phone out here on the sidewalk one night, so I asked him to be quiet. I sleep very lightly. He was rude.”

“Rude how?”

“I can’t repeat what he said, but it wasn’t nice.” She tried to peer around the detectives into the house, but, if her disappointed face was any indication, didn’t manage to see anything interesting.

“Thanks, ma’am.” Mitchell said

The woman turned around and started walking briskly to her home. Jacob was sure there would be a news reporter there within fifteen minutes.

“Oh!” The woman turned around, and marched back. “See that car parked over there?” she pointed at a dirty gray Chevy. “That’s Dona’s car. That’s useful information, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob answered. “It is.”

The neighbor beamed, and Jacob knew without a doubt she would tell all her friends and family how she had single-handedly helped the police crack the mysterious murder of Dona Aliysa.

The car was, in fact, registered to a Rene Aliysa, not Dona Aliysa. Mitchell and Jacob drove off to Rene’s home, leaving Annie and Matt alone with the unpleasant Officer Finley.

It was not a good day for Rene.

Two strangers appeared on her front steps. Peering at them through her peephole, she asked what did they want. She wasn’t about to just open the door for anybody. That was how poor Felicia next door got robbed.

They flipped out their badges.

It was a real outrage. Sending two policemen just to harass her again? Was it her fault Gustav kept running away? He was a strong dog; she couldn’t help it if he sometimes tore his chain apart. It was probably that asshole from down the street who’d reported her again. Just because Gustav once dug a small hole in his lawn. Seriously, people should—

They weren’t there about Gustav.

They were there about Dona.

As the bald detective explained how sorry he was, listing people she could talk to, asking some questions about her daughter. Rene could only stare. It was strange, how his lips kept moving, but the words made no sense.

Dona? Dead?

Murdered?

She thought of her beautiful daughter, when she was two years old, grinning at her after going down the slide for the first time. Laughing hysterically when she was five, running around the backyard naked, refusing to get dressed. Aged eight, riding her new red bicycle for the first time, looking so proud. Dona at fourteen, sobbing because Peter had dumped her and was now going out with Stephanie; Rene softly caressing her hair, telling her it would get better. At seventeen, making her parents a beautiful dinner for their anniversary. The phone call they’d gotten just last week—Dona in a good mood, saying that she was thinking of looking for a job, that she wanted more from life, that she was getting better.

She couldn’t be dead.

They were wrong.

The detectives were asking her questions.

She couldn’t talk.

The bald one with the cold blue eyes was holding his hat in his hands. He was telling her softly that maybe she should get inside, sit down, drink something. She clutched at those words, at those mechanical tasks that could be performed. She walked inside. She drank a glass of water. She sat down.

They started asking her questions again. They were in her house. Had she invited them in? Did it matter? She started talking to the angel-faced one, whose eyes mirrored the pain she felt. He understood her, she knew. She told him about Dona. How she had felt when Dona was born. How Dona was already walking by the age of ten months. How she was the top of her class. She remembered a painting she had, that Dona had painted when she was only six. Did they want to see it?

The angel-faced detective asked her about friends, about enemies, about disagreements. No, she explained, Dona had no friends, no enemies. In fact, she had no one. She suffered from depression, could not keep a job, Rene and her husband paid for Dona’s apartment.

There must be some friend, the sad detective said, someone Dona occasionally talked to. Or maybe a boyfriend…

No, Rene repeated. Dona had no one. She stayed in her home for weeks at a time. The only people she saw regularly were her parents. They were everything to her. She was everything to them.

Rene realized she wasn’t talking anymore. She was sobbing. There were no more words. She waved the detectives away, would not even open her eyes until they were out of the house. Then she went and retrieved all the photo albums.

She started flipping the pages in the album labeled Dona, 0 - 6 months.

Chapter Eight

Hannah opened her eyes and groaned. Her neck felt incredibly sore. She had a terrible taste in her mouth - the unmistakable product of drinking a lot of coffee followed by sleeping without brushing her teeth. There was a drool stain on her shirt collar. In retrospect, shutting her eyes for a minute before driving home had probably not been the best of ideas. She glanced at the time. Five hours. She’d slept in her car for five hours. This was as pathetic as it could get.

Well, on the bright side, she was already at the station. No need to fight traffic. This was wonderful! She sighed. Her self-deception wasn’t working at all. And she needed to pee. Once again, the result of too much coffee.

She got out of the car and stretched, rolling her head slowly in one direction then the other. She entered the station, hoping to avoid anyone who might notice she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, or perceive the crumpled state of her shirt. She reached her locker without incident, because sometimes the gods smiled upon the unworthy. There was a pair of jeans and a faded shirt in the locker, as well as a toothbrush and a towel. She went to the bathroom and had her second pathetic moment that day as she did a quick makeshift shower in the bathroom’s sink, and (third pathetic moment) changed her clothes in the bathroom stall, banging her elbow painfully on the stall’s door.

Well, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, sometimes you had to have as many as six pathetic moments before breakfast.

The squad room was empty when she entered it. She took out her phone to call Jacob and find out how the case was progressing, and saw she had a missed call from Bernard. She called him back.

“Hey,” he said. “Hang on for a sec.”

Hannah poured herself a cup of coffee, listening. Bernard was talking to someone, asking someone to call him if he heard anything. A door closed.

“Yeah,” he said to Hannah. “You awake?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Where are you?”

“I’m doing a door-to-door in Frank Gulliepe’s building.”

“Found anything?”

“There’s an old woman here who said that she might have heard something, but then she said it might be the rats, so I don’t think she’s very credible. Another woman tried to enlist me in her war against the next-door neighbors whose trash bags are always dripping in the hallway, making a mess.”

“Sounds important. What about Jacob and Mitchell? Where are they?”

“Investigating another murder,” he replied. “I just talked to Jacob on the phone. They talked to Lyla Harper—that’s Frank’s girlfriend. She says two days ago Frank ran into someone who started yelling at him to leave his wife alone.”

“One of the harassed women’s husbands?” Hannah asked, turning on her computer.

“That would be my guess,” Bernard said. “We have a good description. Tall, bald, with a big nose and hairy eyebrows.”

“Hairy eyebrows, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Okay,” Hannah moved her head to the side. Her neck still hurt. “Anything else?”

“Frank’s sister reported seeing a blue Ford Fiesta whenever Frank came to visit her. But she says it wasn’t Frank’s.”

“So now we have a red Toyota Corolla and a Blue Ford Fiesta,” Hannah scratched her forehead. “We’ll be able to open a car dealership soon. Do you want me to join you over there?”

“Well, I only have four apartments left,” Bernard said. “Sounds like a waste of time. Why don’t you go over our harassed women? Check out their social network profiles, try to establish if any of them has a tall, big-nosed, bald husband with bushy eyebrows.”

“Okay,” Hannah said. “Good luck.”

She sat down and found the page on which she’d scrawled the list of the women Frank had targeted. She opened their Twitter accounts, and any matching Facebook and Instagram accounts she could find, and browsed through them. She paused on one of the Instagram photos, a woman leaning on a brown Toyota Corolla. It wasn’t red, but still… She called the DMV, while glancing at the Instagram profile name. Jenny Tarp.

A man answered, sounding as if all he’d done for the past fifty years was smoke one cigarette after the other. Hannah asked him if they had a brown Toyota Corolla registered to Jenny Tarp in Glenmore Park. The man put her on hold for a few minutes, then came back and said they did, giving her the details.

She thanked him and nearly hung up, then changed her mind. She explained that they had a murder, and a suspect was seen fleeing in a red Toyota Corolla. Could the DMV send the Glenmore Park police department a list of all red Toyota Corollas registered in Glenmore Park? Oh, and all the blue Ford Fiestas as well. Sure, the man said; he’d get right on it.

Hannah thanked him again and hung up. She knew from experience that “getting right on it” meant they’d get the list in a few days. The DMV had a different interpretation for “Getting right on it” than she did.

She printed Jenny Tarp’s image. A few more minutes of going through the different social network profiles produced another printed image. She saw that Violet had sent the diagram of the crime scene, so she printed it as well. Then she retrieved an image of Chad Grimes from his record and printed that, too, for good measure.

As Bernard walked into the squad room, Hannah was taping the images to one of the squad’s whiteboards. “Anything?” she asked, without turning her head.

“Nope. You?”

“Yeah, some.” She pointed at a picture of a bald, middle-aged man staring sleepily out a window. “This is Derrek Foster, Melanie Foster’s husband.”

“Okay,” Bernard said.

“He matches the description of the man who accosted Frank in the restaurant.”

“His eyebrows are not bushy,” Bernard pointed out. “And his nose is not that big. I think.”

“Whatever,” Hannah said testily. “It’s not a bad match.”

“Okay, who’s that?” He pointed at a selfie of a woman, taking a picture in a parking lot.

“That’s Jenny Tarp.”

“She’s not really bald. Nice eyebrows.”

“Yeah, but the car she’s leaning on is a Toyota Corolla.”

“A brown Toyota Corolla,” Bernard said. “Brown is not red.”

“Thank you, Big Bird. I can distinguish between colors. Brown might seem like red in the dark,” Hannah said. “Maybe the taxi driver got it wrong.”

“It might not be her car.”

“It’s her car. I checked.”

“Is her husband—”

“I couldn’t find a picture of her husband in her Instagram account,” Hannah said.

“Okay,” Bernard said. “Any luck finding that blue Ford?”

“No, but I asked the DMV for a list of all the blue Ford Fiesta cars in Glenmore Park.”

“Okay, good,” Bernard said. He sounded distracted.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

“The blue Ford. Does it ring a bell? I feel like I’ve run into a car like that somewhere before.”

“It’s a pretty common car, Bernard.”

“Yeah…” He was silent for a second. “What about the rest?” he finally asked.

“I ruled out two women who were clearly single according to their profiles, and one who’s married to a woman. One woman is married to a man with a ridiculous-looking haircut and a beard, so he’s out.”

“So we have two potential husbands so far.”

“Yup.”

“That’s a good start.” Bernard said.

Hannah and Bernard decided to talk to Melanie Foster first, since she was currently at work at Yorrick & Rodrick Co., which was also where Frank Gulliepe had been employed. Yorrick & Rodrick was on the seventh floor of a tall office building in the city’s center. It was a vast office, split into dozens of cubicles. The entire place was alight with white, aggressive fluorescent lamps. Considering the number of people sitting in this huge space, the atmosphere was quiet and somber. Most of the noise came from vigorous typing of the employees in the room. Hannah glanced at a couple of the monitors. They all seemed to display Excel spreadsheets. Bernard asked one of the employees if Melanie was at work today, and the man pointed in a vague direction. He tried to ask two additional employees until a wide, curly-haired woman said, “I’m Melanie.”

She was about thirty-five, with a plump, pinkish face and a kind smile. Her hair, though blonde, had long, dark roots. She wore a large, unflattering pink shirt and tailored black pants. Hannah thought she seemed like the kind of woman who would fit in better at a bakery making cinnamon rolls than in a cubicle typing into a spreadsheet.

“How do you do, Mrs. Foster?” Hannah said. “I’m Detective Shor, and this is my partner, Detective Gladwin. Can we take a minute or two of your time?”

“Sure,” Melanie said. “I’m glad you’re finally taking this seriously.”

“I’m sorry?” Hannah said.

“My stalker. The guy who is harassing me. I’ve been waiting for more than two weeks for some indication of progress.”

The detectives exchanged looks. “Did you complain to the police that someone was harassing you?” Hannah said.

“Yeah. More than two weeks ago. I thought that was what this was about.” Melanie seemed deflated. “You aren’t here because of the complaint?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “We’re here on a different matter, though it might be related.”

“Oh. What is it then?”

“Do you know Frank Gulliepe?”

“Sure!” Melanie motioned to the empty, adjacent cubicle. “He works next to me. A really sweet guy.”

“When did you last see Frank?”

“Yesterday. He was at work.”

“When did he leave work?”

“Around four, I think. What is this about?”

“Mrs. Foster, Frank was found dead in his apartment last night,” Hannah said, and looked into the woman’s eyes.

Melanie shrieked.

It was an ear-piercing sound, full of horror and sorrow, worthy of a theater show. She followed up the spectacle by bursting into tears.

The detectives waited for the sobbing to subside. Hannah was very much aware that every eye in the room was trained on them.

“Excuse me.” A black woman with an expensive-looking gray pantsuit and unpleasant makeup approached them. Her tone of voice was hard and sharp enough to cut through diamonds. “Is there a problem here?”

Bernard flipped his shield. “Police, ma’am. We’re on official business.”

“They say that Frank is dead,” Melanie said, blubbering.

“Is this true?” the woman asked.

“Is there a place where we can talk more privately?” Hannah asked.

The woman nodded briskly. “My office.”

Hannah, Bernard, and Melanie Foster followed the woman, clearly one of the managers, to her office. It stood on the edge of the open space, separated from the rest of the cubicles by a thin wooden door. There were only three chairs, and Bernard walked out to find a fourth, returning a moment later with one in his hands. The manager looked at him and narrowed her eyes as he sat down, and Hannah imagined a chair reallocation e-mail would be sent later to all the employees.

“What’s this about?” the manager asked.

“I’m sorry, we weren’t properly introduced,” Hannah said. “I’m Detective Shor. And you are…?”

“Abbey Yorrick,” the manager said.

“You’re one of the owners, then?”

“That’s right.”

“Mrs. Yorrick, Frank Gulliepe was found dead last night in his apartment.”

“I see,” Abbey Yorrick said dryly. “That’s terrible.”

“It is,” Hannah agreed, quirking an eyebrow. “Now, if you don’t mind, we need to question Melanie for a few minutes.”

“Very well.”

“Alone.”

Abbey Yorrick looked at Hannah in shock. “This is my office—”

“Yes,” Hannah interrupted her. “And your employee was found dead. This is a murder investigation, Mrs. Yorrick.”

Abbey Yorrick opened and closed her mouth a few times, and then stood up and left her office in a huff, slamming the door behind her.

“Okay,” Bernard said. “Now. Mrs. Foster, I understand that you’re married.”

“Yes, I am,” she said in surprise.

“Do you know where your husband was last night?”

“Absolutely. He was with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! What’s my husband got to do with this?” Hysteria was quickly being replaced by indignation.

“May I ask what you were doing?”

“It’s none of your business, but I don’t mind telling you. We watched some TV and went to bed.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“Around half past ten.”

“So as far as you know, your husband could have sneaked out once you were asleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she stared at them both, her face red, her lips clenched tight.

“Mrs. Foster do you recognize the Twitter profiles youslut134, youslut444 and melaniefatslut?” Hannah asked.

“Those are all Twitter profiles of my stalker.”

“Why do you think he was stalking you?”

“Because he knows private stuff about me. The names of my husband and children, where I work, where I live. I told all that to the cop who interviewed me when I reported this.”

“Mrs. Foster, were you aware that Frank Gulliepe was the man behind those Twitter profiles?”

“Don’t be dumb,” Melanie said, her voice rising. “Frank was a good man. Everyone who knew him thought so. He was caring and considerate. He was always there for me. When my son was sick, when I had troubles at home, when I was nearly fired… Frank helped me get through it all. I knew him well. You have the wrong guy.”

“I assure you we don’t.”

“Detective, I know Frank. You don’t. I’m telling you, you have it all wrong. The man who is behind those profiles is a sick man. He’s stalking me and harassing me. Frank actually promised to check it out. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if… Oh my God.” Melanie covered her mouth with her hand. “What if the man who’s stalking me killed Frank?”

“Mrs. Foster,” Bernard said, trying to veer the questioning away to a different path, “what is it you do here?”

“We’re data miners.”

“What does that entail?”

“Well… we go online, research a certain type of product line and then document it.”

“Go on.”

“There is no going on,” Melanie Foster said. “That’s what we do.”

“What was Frank working on recently?”

“Screws.”

“Screws?” Hannah asked.

“Yes. He was documenting various prices and attributes of screws.”

Hannah felt as if she were going to fall asleep just from hearing about this. “Mrs. Foster, can you think of anything out of the ordinary that happened lately, and relates to Frank?”

“Yes. I told you. He said he would try and track down my stalker.”

Hannah sighed. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Foster.”

They walked back to her cubicle, and Melanie sat down. Hannah was just fishing for one of her cards when Bernard said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Foster, who’s this?” He pointed at the background wallpaper on her monitor. It was a photo of a smiling man with a dark, wavy mane of hair.

“That’s my husband,” Melanie said.

“But…” Bernard hesitated. “Isn’t he bald?”

“Of course not. What gave you that idea?”

“There’s a picture on his Facebook profile…”

Melanie stared at them both coldly. “Is that what the police have come to? Following our Facebook profiles? I’ll be sure to remove mine. Yes, my husband was bald. Two years ago. He had cancer, and he was going through chemo.”

“Oh,” Bernard said weakly.

“He’s much better now, thank you for asking,” Melanie said acidly.

“So what do you think?” Mitchell asked Jacob as they drove back to the station. “Her mom says she had no friends or boyfriend.”

“Wouldn’t be the first mom to know nothing about her daughter,” Jacob said. “She was clearly with someone the night she was killed. Probably her boyfriend.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and his fingerprints will be in the system.”

Jacob nodded absentmindedly, staring out the passenger’s window. He was thinking of his own daughter, and how little he knew about her in some regards. And she was mad at him for some reason. It occurred to him that she might have cut her hair the day before. He couldn’t be sure, but it had looked a bit different. And if she got a haircut and he hadn’t mentioned it… well, that could explain her mood. Definitely.

His phone rang, an unfamiliar number. He answered. “Detective Cooper.”

“Hello,” a gentle, feminine voice said. “Uh… my name is Vera. Vera Aliysa. I’m Dona’s sister? I understand you just met my mother, and informed her—” Her voice cracked.

“That’s right,” Jacob said. “I’m sorry for your loss. Your mother didn’t mention that Dona had a sister.”

“Yeah,” Vera said softly. “She wouldn’t. I’m not very close to my parents, Detective. Dona was always the one they fluttered around.” There was no bitterness in her voice, only something that sounded like sad acceptance. “After college, I pretty much stayed away. I don’t see any of them much.”

“I see.”

“But I talk to Dona… I mean I talked to Dona every week. And sometimes we’d chat online. It’s funny, I hated Dona when I was living at home, but once I moved out… we became really good friends.”

Jacob had heard that story many times before. He remained silent, let her talk.

“Anyway, my mom said you were asking about a boyfriend, and of course she told you there was no one.”

“That’s right,” Jacob said.

“Dona was seeing someone for the past three months, Detective. His name is Blayze Terry. And I know that you’ll be able to find him pretty easily, because he just got out of prison six months ago. That means that you have his file, right? With fingerprints and DNA and everything.”

“That’s right miss. We’ll be able to contact him.”

“I… look, Detective, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that’s your guy. And maybe you’re right. But he was sweet with Dona, and caring. My sister can be a really difficult person to be with, and he was incredibly patient. I talked with him twice, and he always sounded full of love. He wasn’t a violent man, or anything. He was a burglar—that’s why he was in prison. He never hurt anyone.”

Jacob knew love could turn into hate pretty quickly, and passion could become violence. Nevertheless, he said, “Thank you for telling me this, miss. We don’t assume anything, but we would like to follow all possible leads.”

“Thanks, Detective.”

“Did your sister mention anyone else she was in contact with? Maybe someone she had a disagreement with?”

“No… my mom was right about Dona avoiding people. She was suffering from depression, and mostly stayed at home. She tried to kill herself last year, but Dad found her before it was too late, and got her to a hospital. Sorry, I’m rambling. She didn’t mention anyone.”

“Did you notice anything unusual in your sister’s manner? Was she agitated or angry or—”

“Detective, my sister can have radical mood swings mid-sentence,” Vera said. “So asking about unusual behavior is a bit moot.”

“Okay,” Jacob said. “Thanks. Please let me know if anything occurs to you.”

“I will. And I would appreciate it if you kept me posted on any progress. Uh… my mom won’t necessarily let me know if there’s any update.”

“Goodbye, miss.”

He hung up, and turned to Mitchell. “Looks like we found our boyfriend,” he said.

Chapter Nine

Jacob and Mitchell drove back to the station to check out the file on Blayze Terry. They wanted his address, as well as the name of the cop or detective who had arrested him. They didn’t want to go into this blind. If Blayze Terry was a dangerous man, they wanted to know it beforehand.

The name of the officer who had arrested him was one Jacob Cooper.

Every job can get monotonous after a while. Lawyers, doctors, clerks, porn actors, trapeze acrobats… whatever your profession is, if you do something for long enough the days tend to blend into each other. It doesn’t mean you don’t like the job, or you find it boring. It’s just that not every day is a fireworks display of excitement and adventure. Even secret agents probably sometimes feel that the plans for the nuclear submarine they just “procured” kind of feel like the secret plans they stole last month.

Jacob couldn’t really remember arresting anyone named Blayze for burglary. He couldn’t remember writing this report. It probably hadn’t been a very interesting case. Guy broke into a place, guy told an acquaintance, the acquaintance turned out to be a snitch, guy went to jail. Been there, done that. And it had happened more than five years ago, he told Mitchell hotly.

Mitchell seemed to think Jacob was getting old. He asked if Jacob was taking his Alzheimer’s pills.

Ha ha, Jacob said. What a comedian.

Blayze Terry’s current address was listed in his file. Like Vera Aliysa had told them, he’d been out of jail for the past six months. There were several phone numbers in the file. The first one was Blayze’s, and it went unanswered. There was another phone number, for Blayze’s pastor. At the trial, the pastor had testified to Blayze’s character and his desire to change. It hadn’t helped.

The pastor answered Jacob’s phone call. He told Jacob that Blayze was doing very well so far. He’d been an alcoholic before the burglary and, as far as the pastor knew, he was staying away from alcohol.

Jacob thought of the bottles of beer on Dona’s table. It didn’t seem to him like Blayze was doing such a good job at staying sober.

Blayze was working in an electronics store, the pastor said. He had the name of the store somewhere. Jacob waited patiently until he found it.

Blayze did not answer his door, nor was he at work. The shift manager told Jacob and Mitchell that Blayze was a good employee, caused no problems. They were pleased with him. He had taken the day off; the shift manager didn’t know why, or where he was.

It seemed as if their suspect might be on the run. Or drunk. Or both. Time was ticking, and Jacob and Mitchell decided to split up.

Mitchell went looking for Blayze at the pubs around his address.

Jacob went off to talk to the snitch mentioned in the report.

It was the third bar he’d checked, a place called The French Frog. So far, Mitchell had managed to meet a drunk who thought Mitchell was his long lost friend, to be propositioned by a prostitute, and to be propositioned by a woman who didn’t seem to be a prostitute. No luck finding Blayze, or anyone who knew where Blayze was—though the second woman who propositioned him suggested Blayze might be hiding in her pants.

Mitchell doubted that was the case.

The French Frog had one bartender, a bored waitress, and two customers nursing beers. Mitchell walked slowly to the bartender, looking around. The bar didn’t seem to be doing very well. It was dirty, and most of the chairs seemed old, rotting, or broken. There was an old jukebox in the corner, and a pool table with no balls on it. Several faded advertisements for beer plastered the walls. It seemed like a place one would come to alone, for the sole purpose of getting drunk.

“Can I help you?” the bartender asked. He was about twenty-five, maybe a bit older, with a tattoo of an octopus on his neck.

“I’m looking for a man,” Mitchell said.

“There are two right here,” the bartender said, motioning at the customers. “Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Mitchell flipped out his badge and then took Blayze’s mugshot from his pocket. “This is the guy I’m looking for.”

“He ain’t here,” the bartender said. “What’d he do?”

Mitchell shrugged. “Have you seen him?”

The bartender took the picture from Mitchell and looked at it closely. “Hey, Tara,” he said. “Isn’t this the guy from two days ago?”

The waitress took the picture from the bartender and studied it. “Which guy?” she asked.

“The one who was trying to get all the women to show him their boobs for five dollars.”

She squinted. “Nah,” she said. “That guy was way older. Way, way older. Hang on, isn’t this Monday guy?”

The bartender took the picture back from her. “Could be,” he said. “Definitely could be Monday guy.”

“Who’s Monday guy?” Mitchell asked.

“There’s a guy who comes here every Monday,” the waitress said. “We call him Monday guy, because that’s the day he shows up here. Monday.”

“Okay,” Mitchell said.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the guy,” the bartender said.

“When was the last time you saw him?” Mitchell asked.

“Last Monday,” the bartender said.

Walked right into that one, Mitchell thought.

“So, Monday guy… would you happen to know where he is?”

“Nope. I think he lives around here, though, ‘cause he always gets really drunk, and when I offered to get him a cab he said he’d walk home.”

“So, last Monday, this guy comes in,” Mitchell said, trying to jolt their memory. “What did he do?”

“Same as always,” the waitress said. “Ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer, and drank them both. Then ordered another shot and another glass of beer.”

“Usually by the third round, he’s already kinda woozy,” the bartender said.

“Did he mention anything?” Mitchell asked.

“Oh, it’s always the same with him,” the waitress said. “When he comes in he’s all polite and shit. Then, when he gets drunk he starts talking about how he’s gonna kill that bitch.”

Mitchell tensed. “What bitch?” he asked.

“Who knows? Half the men who come here talk about their wives or girlfriends, and when they talk, it usually ain’t about how they love them and how lucky they are,” the waitress said.

“Yeah?” Mitchell said.

“It’s the opposite,” she clarified.

“I got that, thanks. So this guy talks about killing that bitch. He say anything else?”

“No. He usually just says every few minutes that he’s gonna kill that bitch, or he’s gonna shoot that bitch or strangle that bitch—”

“Did he say strangle?” Mitchell asked, laying his hand on the counter.

“Probably. Yeah, I guess. Anyway, when he’s done he pays with a hundred-dollar bill and leaves. Always the same. A hundred-dollar bill.”

“How long has he been coming here?” Mitchell asked, wondering if Blayze had begun drinking the moment he got out of prison.

“I don’t know,” the waitress said. “Two years?”

“Nah, Tara, it’s way more. Three years, I think,” the bartender said.

“That can’t be,” Mitchell said. “The guy I’m looking for only got out of prison six months ago.”

“Oh,” the bartender said. “Really?” He looked at the picture again. “Huh,” he said. “Now that you mention it, he is kinda different. Hey, Tara, don’t Monday guy’s eyes look a bit different?”

She checked the photo. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Totally. Monday guy’s eyes are more narrow like uh… almost like a Chinese guy.”

“But he’s not Chinese,” the bartender said.

“And anyway, I think Monday guy’s name is Phil,” the waitress said. “At least, that’s what people call him. Sometimes people here say ‘hey Phil’ when they see him.”

Mitchell stared at the bartender and the waitress in frustration. “Can I have my photo back?” he said.

“Sure,” the bartender said, and handed it over,

“Do you know that the octopus on your neck only has six arms?” Mitchell asked, pocketing the mugshot.

“Yeah.”

“Octopuses have eight arms,” Mitchell said.

The bartender’s lip twitched, and he looked away. “This one has six,” he said.

“Yeah. Thanks for your time,” Mitchell said, and left the bar. He had two more places to check.

Alex the snitch actually liked being a snitch. He always thought of himself as an undercover cop, roaming the hideous underbelly of Glenmore Park, befriending the criminal element, supplying the cops with useful tidbits of information. He was protecting the city, that was what he was doing. That, plus he had a one hundred bucks per tip agreement with the cops. That was a nice bonus. The cops also didn’t hassle him when he fenced stolen stuff. He was pretty sure they were only letting it slide because of the useful information he kept supplying them.

In fact, at one point in his life, before he was a snitch and a fence, Alex had tried to go to the police academy. He’d been sure he would be an amazing cop, like those guys from Law & Order or CSI: cracking cases, finding clues in the most unlikely places, playing good-cop-bad-cop in the investigation room. The academy had rejected him outright.

Well, the joke was on them. He was now doing the police more good than any cop, he reckoned. Hell, he probably made better money, too.

When Alex got a phone call from Detective Cooper, he was delighted. He went into full snitch mode. He suggested they should meet in the Newhall Community Park, sit on benches near each other, and feed the ducks. Talk when they were sure no one was watching.

Detective Cooper had asked if they couldn’t just meet for lunch at a burger joint. He’d offered to pay for lunch as well.

Alex had asked if Jacob wanted someone to spot him talking to the cops? Did he want to get Alex offed?

No, Detective Cooper did not.

They now sat on adjacent benches in the park. Alex was feeding ducks. Detective Cooper was not; he hadn’t brought any bread with him. Alex was irritated with the amateurs he had to deal with.

“So,” Detective Cooper said. “I’m looking for a guy named Blayze Terry.”

“I might have heard of him,” Alex said very softly.

“What’s that?” the detective said.

“I might have heard of him!” Alex said louder.

“Of course you’ve heard of him, Alex. You’re the one who tipped me last time.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ve heard of him. Got out of prison six months ago.”

“I’m looking for him. Do you know where I could find him?”

A woman was going past them, walking her dog. Alex shut his mouth, waiting for her to pass.

“Hey, Alex, did you hear me? I asked if you know where I can find this guy?”

With his eyes, Alex motioned at the woman. Couldn’t Detective Cooper see they weren’t alone?

“Are you okay? What’s with your eyes?”

Alex motioned carefully with his finger that Detective Cooper should shut the hell up.

“Oh, right,” the detective said.

When the woman was out of earshot, Alex mumbled carefully “I don’t know where he is. But I know a guy who does.”

“What’s that?”

“I know a guy who does,” Alex said, more loudly.

“I can’t hear you. Can I move onto your bench? You’re too far away.”

“No!” Alex nearly shouted. “I said I know a guy who probably knows where he is!”

“Oh. Cool,” Detective Cooper said, and smiled a friendly smile.

Alex frantically looked at the ducks, trying to avoid the detective’s eyes.

“So what’s the guy’s name?”

“Do you have the stash?” Alex asked.

“Eh?”

“The stash! The money! The payoff!”

“Oh, sure.” The detective got up, pulling some bills from his pocket.

Alex hissed in panic.

“Well, I need to give you the money somehow,” the detective said.

“Just leave the money under a newspaper.”

“I don’t have a newspaper.”

“Well, do you have a… a book?”

“No.” The detective thought for a moment. “Maybe the ducks can deliver the money?”

“Are you joking?”

“Could be.”

“Just put the money on the bench.”

“It might fly off. It’s windy.”

“Then put it on the ground and put a rock on it.”

“Ooh, good idea. Stealthy,” the detective said. He bent, put the bills on the ground, and placed a rock on them.

“The guy’s name is Richard Vance,” Alex said. “When Blayze was a burglar, Richard used to sell the shit he stole. They were accomplices.”

“Oh, good. I’ll check it out. A fence, huh? You aren’t just trying to get rid of some competition, are you Alex?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. Thanks, Alex. It’s been a pleasure, as always.” Detective Cooper got up and walked away. He seemed to be smiling to himself.

Alex got up and walked over to the second bench. Under the pretense of tying his shoes, he knelt and quickly snatched the money from under the rock. He pocketed it and stood up, his heart beating fast.

It wasn’t easy, being a snitch. But, God, he loved doing it.

Chapter Ten

Jenny Tarp lived on Clayton Road, an upscale area at the edge of town, just by the Oakhurst golf course. The street was well maintained; all the lawns were green and fresh. The few cars parked in the street or in open garages had an expensive feel. As a patrol officer, Bernard had been there a few times, mostly on burglary calls or noise complaints. He didn’t like to hang around in that area. He felt out of his element. These were people with money and power. Almost every time he was there, someone mentioned an acquaintance with the mayor, or the chief of police, or the district attorney. They said it in an offhand way, but the message was clear.

Do your job, or we will talk to our friends.

The detectives walked up the white driveway to a big, mahogany door. The house’s garage door was closed. Was there a brown Toyota Corolla behind it?

Hannah rang the doorbell, which made a chirping noise. The rich could get birds to chirp when someone rang their doorbell.

“Just a second,” a man called from inside the house. There was movement behind the peephole, and the same voice said “Yes?”

Hannah flipped her badge open in front of the door. “Police,” she said. “Can we have a minute of your time?”

There was a moment of silence and then the door unlocked. It opened, and a tall, bald man with a slightly large nose and bushy eyebrows stood in the doorway. Actually, calling his eyebrows bushy was practically a compliment. They were forest-y. They were jungle-y. There were probably wild animals in there somewhere. Bernard wondered why a man who clearly had enough money to spare couldn’t get someone to trim his eyebrows. Hell, with the state they were in, he could ask the gardener to do it.

“Mr. Tarp?” Hannah said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Detective Shor; this is Detective Gladwin. Can we have a minute of your time?”

“Sure. What’s this about?” He suddenly seemed scared. “Is everything okay?”

“Is there a reason it wouldn’t be?” Bernard asked.

“No, no. It’s just… when detectives show up on your doorstep… I guess I watch too much TV. Uh… would you like to come in?”

They entered his house, stepped into a beautifully decorated living room. A large, thick rug covered the floor; two couches were positioned around a glass coffee table. There was a huge TV on the wall, and a well-built fireplace. Bernard guessed he could pick any piece of furniture there and it would cost more than his monthly salary.

“What’s this about?” Tarp asked.

“Mr. Tarp,” Hannah asked. “Do you or your wife know a man by the name of Frank Gulliepe?”

The transformation was incredible. Tarp’s jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed to slits. His breathing became fast and shallow. Bernard began to wonder if he was about to have a heart attack.

“Yes,” Tarp said in a tight voice. “I know the bastard. What’s this about? Did he complain about me?”

“Did you by any chance see him two days ago?” she asked.

“You know damn well I did. So he did complain about me, huh? The slimy bastard. What does he say I did?”

“Why don’t you tell us in your own words,” Bernard suggested.

The man glanced at Bernard, then turned back to Hannah. “Look,” he said. “Maybe we should have gone to the police instead. But my wife was embarrassed, and I said I’d handle it. That scumbag was harassing Jenny constantly! It started about two months ago. He started creating fake Twitter accounts to send her messages—mostly sexual. She’d block him, and he’d create a new one. Then he started with Facebook as well. It was very upsetting, but my wife sometimes gets those crazies. She’s a well-known TV producer, and the people you meet in that business… Anyway. She paid it no mind. Then it got worse.”

“Worse how?” Bernard asked.

“Well,” the man said, still talking to Hannah. “He started posting pictures. At first he would take a picture of a woman with a tiny bathing suit, Photoshop my wife’s face on it, and tag her in a photo. All her Facebook friends would get a notification about a new photo with my wife, and they’d click on it and see my wife with her ass almost bare, or a picture of her in the bath, with bubbles hiding her nipples. My wife changed her security settings on Facebook, so that stopped, but then he began Photoshopping my wife’s head on porn pictures. Twitter and Facebook don’t let you post those pictures, so he’d put them somewhere online, post a link on Facebook and send it to her friends and acquaintances.”

Bernard twisted his mouth in disgust.

Tarp was getting visibly angrier. His face was red, a vein throbbing on his forehead. “Can you imagine? The humiliation? The rage I felt? Do you know what’s it like to find your wife crying in the bathroom? What would you have done, Detective?”

“What did you do?” Hannah asked.

“First of all, I hired a top-notch private detective to find out who was doing it. He knew some computer hackers or something like that. They got me the name. Initially, I wanted to find out where he worked, get him fired, and ruin his life. I can do that. I have connections. I know the mayor.”

Bernard contained his sigh.

“But then I happened to run into him in a restaurant. I lost my temper, started yelling at him. Told him to leave my wife alone!” Spittle sprayed from Tarp’s mouth. “Yeah, I lost control a bit, wouldn’t you? They kicked me out. But let me tell you something. My wife hasn’t gotten any messages since then. Would the police have done a better job?”

“Where were you last night?” Bernard asked. Tarp turned to him, then back to Hannah. It was getting on Bernard’s nerves.

“I don’t know,” Tarp said. “What do you care? I was out.”

“Frank Gulliepe was found dead in his apartment last night.”

Tarp stared for a minute. Then he burst laughing. It was a wild laugh, full of anger and satisfaction. “Really?” Tarp roared. “Dead? That’s fantastic news! The world is a better place. Did he suffer? Tell me he suffered!”

“He was stabbed several times,” Hannah said, exchanging looks with Bernard.

Tarp’s laugh intensified. “Oh, this is simply incredible,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Wait until my wife hears about—” Suddenly his face froze. “Hang on,” he said. “You think I did that?”

The detectives stayed quiet.

“I would never… I mean I’m glad he’s dead—he was a piece of shit—but I would never resort to… Wait a minute. Last night, you say?”

“That’s right,” Bernard said.

“Oh, okay then.” Tarp seemed relieved. “Last night my wife and I went to celebrate the kickoff of her new show. It was a long dinner party. Ended at three in the morning. More than twenty people saw me there.”

“We would like their details, please,” Bernard said.

“Absolutely,” Tarp said. He got up and went to prepare a list, leaving Hannah and Bernard alone.

“Nice place,” Hannah said.

“Yup,” Bernard agreed.

“Notice how even when you talked to him, he replied to me?”

“Yup.”

“Weird.”

Bernard shrugged wearily. He had met many like Tarp over the years. Some people didn’t want to talk to the black cop. They liked their cops nice and white. It always bothered him, but he had nothing new to say about it.

Tarp returned with the list and handed it to Hannah.

“There,” he said.

“Mr. Tarp, do you know why Frank Gulliepe targeted your wife?”

“Oh, sure,” Tarp said. “We figured that one out pretty quickly. He auditioned for a part in one of her TV series. She didn’t accept him. Told him he should go to acting school.”

“I see.”

“Told me he was one of the worst actors she had ever met.”

“Thank you for your time, sir. If there’s anything else, please let us know.”

“I will.”

They left the Tarp residence.

“He has enough money to hire someone to do the job,” Hannah said as they got into the car.

“Then let’s prove it,” Bernard said, slamming the driver’s door.

Jacob and Mitchell paid a visit to Richard Vance’s home, only to find him gone. His girlfriend, a middle-aged, pudgy woman with curly hair, garish makeup, and a red dress showing off a ridiculous amount of cleavage, obligingly agreed to call him. She did so, hissing at him angrily from inside the house, and then returned to let them know that Richard was parking his truck at the corner of Ayers Road and Murchio Drive, and would probably stay there the next hour or so. They thanked her and drove off.

They reached the corner, looked around, and couldn’t see a Richard in sight. It was a pleasant enough suburb, and they stood at the edge of the Newhall community park, where a few kids threw around a football. A mother stood with one small boy and one toddler near an ice cream truck, trying to get them to decide what they wanted to have. The toddler was screaming angrily, apparently enraged by the fact that he couldn’t have three different types of ice pops. Another woman walked past them, pushing a stroller. The small girl in it pointed at the detectives and giggled. Jacob did not feel like giggling.

“Do you want to go back to his house?” Mitchell asked. “It’s not far.”

“Well, rush hour is pretty much now, so it might take longer,” Jacob said, glancing at his watch. “I wonder what he was doing here, anyway.”

“Maybe he was moving something in his truck,” Mitchell said.

“Then why stay here for an hour?”

“Maybe he was loading furniture from one of the homes around here,” Mitchell said, looking around him.

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “Or maybe…” He strode toward the ice cream seller. The toddler was now quiet, a yellow ice pop in one hand, a purple ice pop in the other. The woman was just paying the ice cream vendor, a thin, middle-aged black man with delicate hands and strangely long eyelashes.

“Richard Vance?” Jacob said.

“Yeah,” the vendor answered, giving the woman her change. “You the detective who came to my house? Lily was spitting fire at me through the phone. She thought I was returning to my evil ways.”

“And are you?”

“Nothing evil in selling ice cream,” Richard said, shrugging. “Unless you’re a dentist. What do you want, Detective?”

“I’m looking for a friend of yours. Blayze Terry? He isn’t answering his door,” Jacob said.

“Yeah? And what makes you think I know where he is?”

“You two were pretty tight back in the day, weren’t you?”

A father approached the van, tugging a kid after him. “I’d like a Coke, please,” he said.

“Sure, sir, anything else? Something for the child?”

“The child isn’t allowed to eat sweets, because he misbehaved. Didn’t you, Ronnie?”

“Yes, Daddy,” the shamefaced kid said, staring at the ground, tears in his eyes.

Jacob looked at the man as he paid for the Coke and dragged the kid away, sipping from the can.

“Sometimes I think the crowd I used to hang around with before was much nicer than the people I meet now,” Richard said.

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “I can see why you’d think that.”

“Anyway, you’re looking for Blayze, huh? What’d he do?”

“We just want to ask him some questions.”

“Blayze isn’t a burglar no more.”

“Really? Is he also an ice cream truck owner?”

“No. He works at an electronics shop. I forget the name. But he’s clean.”

“Well, I’m happy to see that you’ve both started a new chapter in your life,” Jacob said. “We just want to ask him some questions. We aren’t here to arrest him.”

“Okay,” Richard said, looking skeptically at Jacob. “Well, it makes sense that he isn’t answering the door. He’s gone fishing off the North Shore.”

“Do you know where?”

“There’s a small beach he likes to go to. I can show you where. Or I can call him and ask him.”

“No need to call him,” Jacob said. “Just show us the place.”

Richard took out his phone. “I’ll show you,” he said, and began fiddling with the device.

“Do you have strawberry ice pops?” Mitchell asked.

“Yup,” Richard said.

“Can I have one?”

“I didn’t have you pegged as a strawberry ice pop lover,” Jacob said.

“What’s not to love? It’s strawberry, and it’s an ice pop.”

“Wise words,” Richard said, and showed them the phone screen. “See here? This is Route 133. If you take the turn here, the beach is just about ten minutes’ drive that way. It’s a quiet beach, not many people, so if he’s there you won’t have any difficulty spotting him.”

Mitchell paid for the ice pop and the detectives returned to their car.

“You know that this guy’ll call Blayze the minute we drive off.” Mitchell said, peeling the wrapper off the ice pop.

“Well, he didn’t answer our calls,” Jacob said. “Let’s hope that Blayze likes to turn off his phone when he’s fishing.”

Chapter Eleven

Hannah called the district attorney’s office the moment she and Bernard got back to the station, requesting a search warrant for Tarp’s bank accounts. She explained that Tarp had admitted to verbally assaulting the victim, that his wife’s car was similar to one described leaving the scene, and that they knew he had hired a private detective to check out the victim. The woman who answered the phone assured her they’d do it as soon as possible, but seeing as it was already the afternoon, and it wasn’t likely Tarp could get rid of any evidence in the bank records, Hannah doubted she’d get the warrant before the following day. She and Bernard sat down with a box of muffins they had bought on the way. Hannah knew there was a misconception about the relationship between cops and doughnuts. Personally she hated doughnuts, but she really loved muffins, and she felt like she needed the sugar.

“So we’re thinking either a hitman hired by Mr. Tarp, or some sort of drug-related crime, right?” she said.

Bernard nodded, taking a bite from a raisin muffin. “Those are the likely candidates so far,” he said.

“Could they be related somehow?” Hannah said.

“What, like Tarp hiring Chad Grimes to kill Frank?” Bernard asked.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Possible,” Bernard shrugged. “How would Tarp find a killer?”

“He’d have some contact,” Hannah said. “Some sleazy middleman who knew the right people.”

“Right. But would that middleman connect Tarp with Grimes?”

They were both silent for a few moments.

“Could it be anyone else?” Hannah asked.

“We have a list of about fifteen women that Frank harassed,” Bernard said. “It’s not like we’re lacking suspects.”

“Yeah, but most of them didn’t know it was him,” Hannah pointed out. “Tarp had money to hire a good private eye. Who else could have known about this?”

“Frank could have written something incriminating in one of his messages,” Bernard said. “Something which revealed his identity. For example, something that only he knew.”

“We should check those messages again,” Hannah said.

Bernard sighed. “Fine,” he said.

“I’ll take Twitter, you’ll take Facebook,” Hannah said.

They both got to work silently, and were scanning the messages when Hannah’s phone rang.

“Detective Shor,” she answered.

“Hey, Hannah,” a female voice said.

“Hey, Holly, what’s up?” Holly had been a police dispatcher for the past three years. She was one of Hannah’s favorites.

“Well, you know the surveillance you requested on Chad Grimes’s house? The patrol team watching the place just reported that he came home.”

Hannah snatched the keys off her desk and motioned Bernard to follow her. “Is he still there?” she asked.

“He is so far,” Holly said. “I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Bernard drummed his fingers impatiently on the dashboard as Hannah parked their car next to the unmarked white Dodge Charger the surveillance team was using. The two patrol officers, Noel and Kate, sat inside, bored looks on their faces. When they saw Hannah and Bernard, they got out of the car.

They were a strange pair, with Kate taller than Noel by at least five inches. They were minor celebrities among the patrol policemen, after arresting a notorious serial rapist whom they’d caught completely by accident.

Bernard had once dreamed he and Kate were sleeping together. Ever since, he felt uncomfortable whenever he saw her.

“Detectives,” Kate said with a half smile.

“Is he still there?” Hannah asked.

“Should be,” Kate said. “Haven’t seen him leave the place.”

“How long have you two been here?” Bernard asked.

“We replaced the previous shift at eight-thirty this morning,” Noel said. “That was seven hours ago. Though it feels like seven years.”

“Okay, thanks,” Hannah said.

“Do you need us to stick around?” Kate asked.

“No need,” Hannah said, just as Bernard said, “Yeah, just a few minutes.”

Kate looked at them in amusement. “So which one is it?” she asked.

“Just a few minutes,” Bernard said.

Kate nodded. Bernard and Hannah began walking toward the crumbling home of Chad Grimes. Bernard was mulling over the case in his mind. Grimes had been seen entering the bathroom in the bar with Frank Gulliepe. Later, Frank Gulliepe was found dead in his apartment, and Grimes might have left the bar at the same time Frank did. Not a very compelling evidence trail.

“You think there’s any point in asking him about Tarp?” he asked Hannah.

She shrugged. “Can’t hurt, I gue—”

The sound of an explosion interrupted their discussion. Bernard was moving before he realized what was going on. He rammed into Hannah, and she tumbled down. “Down, down, down!!!” he yelled. Another explosion echoed in the street. Somewhere he heard a scream.

“What the hell?” Hannah shouted.

“Gun!” he shouted back. “The bastard’s shooting at us!”

A third explosion, and he felt something zoom past his ear. He rolled behind a picket fence and pulled out his own gun. He heard a siren in the background. A fourth shot was fired. The surveillance car entered the fray, pivoting, wheels screeching, halting with its side pointing at Grimes’s house. The passenger’s door was kicked open and Kate burst out, holding a gun. There was another explosion and the car’s front window cracked. Kate dropped down, training her gun on the house.

Time moved strangely, sluggishly. Bernard had time to take it all in. Kate’s expert, flawless movements, the product of hundreds of training hours in the police academy. Holding the gun steadily, searching for the target. Noel barging out of the driver’s door, flattening himself against the car, drawing his gun. Hannah running low toward a nearby tree, looking for cover.

“Don’t shoot!” Bernard shouted at Kate. “There’s a woman and a baby in the house!” His own voice sounded strange in his ear.

One more shot, though he couldn’t tell where it hit. Time started moving at a normal pace. Kate lowered her gun, took cover next to Noel behind their car. Noel was yelling into the radio, calling for backup, reporting the shooting. Bernard looked around him. Were there any civilians around? Anyone hurt? No, the street seemed to be empty. Anyone outside wisely took cover as soon as the shooting started.

Three additional shots rang out, and at least two hit the patrol car with loud clangs.

Then there was silence. The silence stretched. Bernard and Hannah’s eyes met, and they both raised their heads at the same time. Bernard was trying to locate the window from which the shooter was firing at them when Hannah yelled, “There!”

It was Chad Grimes. He was getting away, jumping over the picket fence between his yard and the neighbor’s. Hannah was already up and running. The woman was damn fast, Bernard thought.

“Check the house!” he yelled at Kate and Noel, hoping the woman and the baby were unhurt, then rose and dashed after Hannah. She sprinted heedlessly after Grimes, focused on the target. She reached the picket fence between the yards, grabbed it and leaped over. Her leg hit one of the wooden boards and she stumbled, crashing on the other side.

Bernard reached the fence and jumped over it without thinking, clearing it flawlessly; his feet hit the ground and he kept running, glancing back at Hannah. She was getting up, grimacing in anger and pain, but she seemed okay. He turned ahead, saw Grimes bursting through a gate on the other side of the yard. Bernard gritted his teeth and ran even faster, looking for a way to cut Grimes off, to lure him to a dead end.

Bernard reached the gate and ran through it, the wood bruising his arm as he shoved the thing away. They were both out in the street now, Grimes no more than thirty feet ahead, running fast. Bernard heard the siren from Kate’s car again. Dammit! Had they checked the house? The woman could be hurt!

Grimes suddenly turned around and lifted his arms, his hands clutching a black object. Bernard dove behind a parked car, the first shot ricocheting off the sidewalk exactly where he’d stood a moment earlier. The sound of the shots synchronized with his beating heart—a shot for each heartbeat. One… two… three… four… He heard the clanging as the bullets hit the car’s metal body, a deafening smashing sound as one of the windows burst, and then silence.

Bernard raised his head. Grimes was still pointing his gun at him, his finger pulling the trigger over and over though the weapon was empty. Bernard realized that his own Glock 22 was pointed straight at Grimes, that his finger was about to press the trigger. Instead, he bolted from his hideout, rushing at the man with the empty magazine. Grimes seemed to realize his weapon was empty, turned around, and started running again, tossing the useless gun aside.

The patrol car zoomed past Bernard, the siren squealing, piercing his ears. It overtook Grimes and swerved left, crashing into the sidewalk; Grimes collided with the hood, rolling over it, falling down on the other side. He was getting up as Bernard reached him, pointing his gun at Grimes’s face, yelling, “Police, don’t move!” There was a strange echo to his words, and he realized Kate had yelled the exact same thing, standing on the other side of the car, her gun raised over the car’s hood, trained on Grimes.

Grimes whirled around, and Bernard saw he was holding a knife.

“Drop it!” Bernard screamed. “Do it now! Now!”

Grimes hesitated, and Bernard knew he might have to kill a man today after all. His heart was in his throat, his safety off, his finger on the trigger tense and ready.

Grimes let go of the knife, and it fell on the ground with a clunk.

“Down on the ground! Hands behind your head!” Bernard yelled. Grimes slowly went to his knees, his hands behind his head. His eyes stared forward, unfocused; his mouth was twisted in a grimace of rage.

Kate was already beside him, cuffing him roughly, snarling at him. “Stay down! Stay the fuck down!”

“The house?” Bernard asked.

“Noel’s checking it,” Kate said, breathing heavily. She lifted Grimes to his feet and pushed him into the backseat of her car.

Bernard watched her, his heart pumping quickly, his knees weak. No matter how many times it had happened before, getting shot at was something he would never get used to. He swallowed hard, a bitter taste in his mouth. He looked back, searching for Hannah. She limped slowly toward them, still holding her gun.

The street was very quiet, Bernard noticed—an entire block still holding its breath. Kate slammed the door shut, with Grimes locked up behind it. They exchanged looks.

Somewhere, above them in one of the trees, a bird started chirping.

Noel had indeed checked the house to make sure the woman and the baby were fine. They were. The woman was also pretty adamant that the officers couldn’t enter her home without a warrant. Hannah and Bernard argued with each other, trying to establish if they had reasonable cause to enter the house without a warrant. Hannah thought they did; Chad Grimes had shot at them, and been arrested. This meant they could search the immediate surroundings of the arrested individual to make sure they were safe.

Bernard pointed out that their immediate surroundings was the street, and asked if Hannah really wanted to search the nearby tree for dangerous birds that might be collaborating with Grimes. Hannah said any competent prosecutor could make the case that the immediate surroundings in this case was the house. Bernard said any competent defense attorney could claim the opposite. They argued about this for some time, as Grimes’s girlfriend watched them, bemused. Their final conclusion was that it was maybe okay to search the house without a warrant.

Maybe okay was not good enough for a murder suspect. No way were they letting any evidence from the house be disqualified in court.

Hannah drove off to get a warrant while Bernard engaged in a staring contest with the girlfriend. He made it clear to her that the second she moved to destroy any evidence, he had legal grounds to enter the house without a warrant. Kate and Noel drove off to take Grimes to the station.

Ultimately, the search warrant was acquired incredibly fast. Hannah could never figure out why certain warrants appeared as if a magic legal genie was pulling the justice system strings, while others seemed to get lost in the labyrinth of lost paperwork, only to appear weeks later when the issue was no longer relevant. She returned to Grimes’s ramshackle house, brandishing the warrant as if it were a sword.

The woman let them pass, her eyes weary and sad. Hannah and Bernard started searching the tiny home; the woman followed them, watching with big, empty eyes as they invaded her privacy. The baby began to cry, and the woman asked Hannah if she could prepare her a bottle of milk.

Hannah nodded, uncomfortable at being asked. She would have much preferred it if the woman had demanded to pass through, instead of this meek request. It was as if the woman’s entire resolve and backbone had disintegrated once the detectives were let through.

“What’s your name?” Hannah asked her.

“Melissa,” the woman replied, retrieving a bottle from one of the cupboards.

“Melissa, is this your house?”

“Not really. Chad just lets me stay here. This isn’t even his baby.”

“Are you Chad’s girlfriend?”

Melissa shrugged. “Jennifer needs some peace and quiet to drink her bottle,” she said. “I’ll be out in the front yard, feeding her, if you need me.”

“Okay.”

Melissa walked out, and Hannah kept looking through the cupboards in the kitchen. Everything was surprisingly clean. Either Melissa was a very tidy woman, or Grimes was one of those people who cleaned obsessively while high. Hannah hoped it was the first. She was beginning to like Melissa.

Opening the fridge, she felt her heart crack a bit to see that it mostly contained beer bottles and baby food. Grimes took care of himself. Melissa took care of the baby. No one took care of Melissa.

“Hannah!” Bernard called her from the bedroom, and she joined him. He was staring into a gym bag. The bag was full of several large nylon packets of pills—some green, some yellow, some white. There were two Glock G43s, as well, and six magazines.

“Found it under the bed,” Bernard said.

Hannah knelt and peered under the bed.

“What do you think?” Bernard asked.

“I think that it’s really clean under the bed,” Hannah said softly. “No dust at all.”

Hannah and Bernard drove back to the station, and began hosting their esteemed guest, Chad Grimes, in the interrogation room. The conversation did not flow very well. Bernard gave Grimes the Miranda rights speech, and Grimes responded unkindly by suggesting Bernard go fuck himself. Bernard tried to get Grimes to sign a form stating he understood his Miranda rights, and Grimes spat on the form and suggested self-procreation again.

Hannah was getting annoyed.

“We found twenty-two pounds of ecstasy, and two unlicensed Glocks in your home,” she said. “You shot at a police officer. If we manage to implicate you with a murder charge—”

“What fucking murder?” Grimes sneered. “I ain’t killed no one.”

“I’m talking about Frank Gulliepe, who you stabbed multiple times after following him to his home.”

“Who the fuck is Frank Gulliepe?”

“Frank is the guy you were paid to kill.”

“I didn’t kill anyone!”

“If you wanna talk about it,” Hannah said, “You need to sign this form.” She pushed the waiver of rights form along the table over to Grimes. His spit had soaked the words remain silent, but they were still legible. Grimes scanned the form with wide, frantic eyes. Hannah wondered if anything he told them in this state could even be used in court.

“I need a fucking pen or something,” Grimes said.

Hannah gave him a pen, and he signed the form. “Now,” he said. “Who is Frank Gulliepe?”

Hannah retrieved the pen from him. “You should know,” she said. “You saw him last night.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I have a witness who saw you selling drugs to Mr. Gulliepe at Leroy’s.”

Grimes snorted. “Bullshit,” he said.

“You entered the men’s restroom at Leroy’s with Mr. Gulliepe, and you sold him some Ecstasy. Then you later followed him to his home and killed him. Why did you kill him, Chad? Did he refuse to pay? Or hadn’t he paid enough?”

“I followed no one,” Grimes said. “I sold drugs to no one. I was at Leroy’s, and I went to the restroom to piss. That’s it.”

“We have the pills from your home,” Bernard said. “They match pills found in Frank Gulliepe’s possession, and we have a witness who saw you enter the public toilets together. The same witness reported that you followed Frank when he left—”

“Who the fuck told you that? Was it Crystal? I’ll fucking kill that bitch—”

“You’ll kill no one,” Hannah said, wondering who Crystal was. “Cool it.”

“Look, yeah, sure, there was an asshole who bought some X from me at Leroy’s. But I never followed the fucker. I don’t go killin’ customers. That’s bad business.”

“What if they don’t pay?” Bernard asked.

“I make them pay,” Grimes explained.

That was indeed a good business strategy, Hannah thought. “What time did you leave Leroy’s?” she asked.

“How the fuck should I know that?”

“Where did you go after that?”

“Look, bitch—”

Bernard thumped on the table. “Watch it!” he barked angrily.

“I ain’t followed nobody!” Grimes said, his voice getting louder. “I went over to my friend’s, and we popped some pills. Then we had a nice party, and that’s fucking it.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Fuck you.”

“If he’s your alibi, you should give us his name.”

“I want my motherfucking lawyer.”

And that was that. Hannah escorted Grimes down to the holding cell. There were a couple of men inside. “Hey!” one of them called to her. She peered at him through the bars.

“Mikey?” she said. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in jail?”

He shrugged. “Maybe they don’t want me there. Are you going to let me out?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, and turned to the officer behind the counter, an overweight man named Will.

“Why is Mikey still here?” she asked. “He was supposed to be taken to jail.”

“Hang on,” Will said, and checked the log book. “Says here that the sheriff’s guys didn’t have his name in their list. They were looking for a man named Devin Derkins, though. Couldn’t find that one.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Hannah restrained her desire to grab Will by his collar. “There is no Devin Derkins. This is the guy we arrested.”

“Then why were they looking for Devin Derkins?”

Hannah blinked. She recalled talking to the deputy in the morning. She’d told him the guy’s name was Mikey, she was sure of it! Pretty certain, anyway. She had been very tired, and the murder had been occupying her mind—

“Hey!” Mikey called from the holding cell. “Let me out! You got the wrong guy! I’m not Devin Derkins.”

“You think this fat motherfucker is Devin?” Grimes asked, and burst out laughing. “He ain’t Devin! Devin looks like a man. This guy looks like someone’s bitch.”

Mikey looked upset. “I’m not… look, did you hear him? I’m not Devin! Let me out!”

“Listen,” Hannah told Will impatiently. “This is the guy we arrested, okay? I’ll talk to the sheriff’s office, get it straightened out. You make sure to tell the officer that replaces you that Mikey should be delivered to jail, okay?”

“I’ll write that in the log.”

“Yeah, do that, and tell him face-to-face, okay?”

“Sure,” Will said, looking offended.

“You won’t forget?”

“You don’t have to tell me how to do my job, Detective.”

“Okay, sorry.” Hannah took a deep breath. “It’s been a crazy day.”

Chapter Twelve

The beach was almost completely empty, its main visitors the numerous seagulls that flew above the detectives’ heads. It was a rocky beach, the sand gravelly and rough, its color more brown than yellow. Despite the strong wind, the water was calm, the bay blocking the unbridled waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

Mitchell recalled going with his father and brother to fish at a beach nearby, their sister begging to join them. Their father had always refused, though he had never given an explanation, and Mitchell suspected he’d mostly wanted to avoid her endless chattering. When the three of them had gone fishing, it was a silent affair. Most conversation was short and to the point, like “Pass me the bait box” or “Watch it son, you wanna throw the line away from those rocks over there.”

He had loved those fishing expeditions, the hours spent with their father, who had otherwise mostly been away from home. He’d been a sought-after criminal defense attorney, and had spent long hours in the office, always working on an important case. Why hadn’t Mitchell gone fishing since then? He resolved to call his father, suggest they go fishing together.

As they progressed along the sandy terrain, they saw a lone man on the edge of a small, dark reef. He stood calmly, a fishing rod in his hands, a bucket and small tackle box near his feet. As they came closer, a bunch of seagulls who were in their way took off, screeching angrily. The man turned around, and Mitchell saw the similarities to the picture in the mugshot. This was Blayze Terry, their only suspect in the murder of Dona Aliysa.

He had a mane of dirty-blond hair, which had been left to grow long, touching the nape of his neck. He was thin and tall, and with the fishing rod in his hand he almost looked like a twisted branch, split into two. He looked at them for a second, then turned back to the water. Jacob and Mitchell got to the reef and walked along it, the slippery rocks almost making Mitchell lose his footing and fall once. A small crab, intent on its sideway business, crossed their way and crawled under a rock.

“Blayze Terry?” Jacob said.

“That’s right,” the man said, his stare fixed forward, not looking at the two detectives.

“I’m Detective Cooper. This is Detective Lonnie,” Jacob said, flipping out his badge.

The man refused to even glance at it.

“We have a few questions for you.”

“Richard told me you were on your way,” Blayze said. “He suggested I take off.”

“Why did he suggest that?” Mitchell asked.

“Because, like you, he assumed I’ve stolen something, and was on my way back to jail.”

“We don’t think you’ve stolen anything,” Jacob said.

“Then why are you here, Detectives?” Blayze asked, and for the first time turned his head to face them.

“Do you know Dona Aliysa?”

Blayze frowned. “Yes,” he said. “She’s my girlfriend. Is she all right?”

“Why do you ask?” Mitchell asked.

“Don’t play games with me, Detective. What’s the matter with Dona?”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Two days ago. Did her mother report her missing? Because she sometimes doesn’t answer the phone, you know. She gets those moods. She told me that when that happens, her mother starts to worry. Did you check her house?”

“We—”

Blayze suddenly grunted and turned toward the water. His fishing rod bent a bit, the line suddenly taut.

“Looks like something bit,” Mitchell said, squinting his eyes, looking at the eddies in the water surrounding the fishing line.

“Could be a rock,” Jacob said.

“Naw, I feel it. It’s definitely something,” Blayze said, intent on the rod. “He’s a strong one, that’s for sure.”

“What bait are you using?” Jacob asked.

“I got some live shrimp on right now,” Blayze said, smiling at the water. “They always go for the shrimp. Tried crabs, earthworms, small fish. Nothing works here better than live shrimp. Ha, he’s fighting hard.” He turned the reel handle slowly, twisting the line around the reel. The monotonous ticking sound made Mitchell think of his father again, reeling in a catch.

“Watch out,” Jacob said. “If you pull too fast the line might break.”

“Yeah, I got this, don’t worry. Hardly lost a fish in fifteen years. I once took a fifteen-pound blue out of these waters with a pretty thin leader. It never broke.”

“I once caught an eighteen-pound shad not far from here,” Jacob said. “Could hardly get the thing out of the water, it was struggling so hard.”

Mitchell had never caught anything larger than a four-pound fish on his fishing trips. He frankly doubted anyone caught any fish larger than ten pounds in this bay.

The fishing rod suddenly jumped sideways, and the three men all shouted at once.

“Look at him go!” Blayze said. “I think this is the biggest one I’ve caught this trip! Caught two three pound mackerel yesterday. Cooked them over a small fire for dinner.”

Jacob and Mitchell exchanged glances. So this was Blayze’s alibi. Fishing. Only the fish could tell if he was lying or telling the truth, and the defense attorney would have a hard time finding a fish that would testify to it. Then again, the prosecutor wouldn’t be able to find any fish to deny the alibi either.

Mitchell looked back at the beach. Sure enough, he saw a sleeping bag next to the remains of a small campfire, but that proved nothing.

“I think we’ll be able to see it soon,” Blayze said. The rod shifted left and right frantically. They all stared hard at the the point where the fishing line met the water.

As it hopped around, Mitchell found himself straining his eyes, trying to spot the fish first. “There!” he suddenly called victoriously.

A silvery shape appeared at the surface for a moment and disappeared.

“It’s a big one!” Jacob said. “Six pounds at least!”

“More like seven,” Blayze said, grinning, slowly rolling back the line.

The fish broke out of the water, truly a beautiful catch. Mitchell doubted the seven pounds assessment, but he guessed about five. It flipped its tail and struggled to get free as the line swung toward them. Blayze deftly caught the line just above the fish, and almost effortlessly slid the hook out of its gaping mouth. The fish stared at them with bulging eyes, opening and closing its mouth, its gills moving, trying to get some water running through them.

For a moment Mitchell was struck by the image of Dona Aliysa’s face after she, too, had lost the ability to breathe.

Jacob handed the bucket to Blayze, who dumped the fish inside with a splash. The bucket was full of seawater, and except for this catch it was empty.

“Well,” Blayze said, his grin disappearing as reality sunk back in. “What about Dona?”

“I’m sorry to inform you that she was found dead in her home this morning,” Jacob said.

Blayze’s face crumpled. “What? How? Oh God, did she… did she kill herself?”

“Why would you think that she killed herself?” Jacob asked.

“She got into these moods… How did she die?”

“She was strangled.”

Blayze stared at them for a second. “Someone killed her?” he finally asked. “Why? Who would… How did this happen?”

“Mr. Terry, did anyone see you here last night?”

“You think I did this? I would never kill Dona! I love her!”

“We have to follow all possible leads,” Jacob said. “I’m sure you understand. But perhaps it would be best to continue this interview at the station. I’m sure you need some time to calm down. Would you like to ride with us to the station? We could collect your car later.”

Blayze’s eyes seemed unfocused. “No,” he said slowly. “I can answer your questions right here.”

“You were here last night, right? Did anyone see you?”

“No,” Blayze said numbly. “I was alone on the shore.”

“How would you define your relationship with Dona?”

“How would I define it? She was the love of my life, that’s how I would define it.”

“Did she feel the same way?”

“Of course she did! What are you implying?”

“I just want to get the facts straight,” Jacob said softly.

“Look, Detective, I get it. You see the boyfriend, you see my criminal record, you think I’m your guy. But you’re wrong. I would never do anything to harm Dona. Hell, I would never do anything to harm anyone. I got arrested for burglary. I served my time, but I never hurt anybody.”

“You had a gun on you when you were arrested.”

“Only for intimidation! I would never kill another person! Please, do what you have to rule me out. DNA tests, fingerprints, whatever. I mean… My fingerprints are all over her apartment but that doesn’t have anything to do with it…”

“Can you think of anyone else that might harm Dona?”

“Anyone that might harm her? Why would anyone want to do that? Hell, I don’t even think I can name anyone else who knows her. I mean, she had a sister, and her parents, but she kept to herself. She didn’t work, didn’t go out. She’d stay at home all day and play computer games. I was the only one she… saw…” Blayze became quiet. “I’m not really helping myself here, am I?” he said, his voice barely audible over the wind.

“How did you meet Dona?”

“An online forum. A sort of mutual help group for people who are depressed.”

“Are you usually depressed?”

“I was. I was just out of prison, in a boring, low paying job, and I was struggling with alcoholism.” Blayze lifted his hand, his finger and thumb nearly touching. “I was this close to falling off the wagon. Yeah, I was not in a good place. And she helped me. And we began to talk. First on the forum, then we started chatting privately. We chatted for hours every day. I was already falling in love with her. She was so warm, and innocent, and…” Tears began flowing down his cheeks, but he kept talking. “Eventually I convinced her to meet me. At the time, I didn’t know how incredibly rare that was. Dona never met anyone. I mean anyone. We started meeting up almost daily. She made me feel happy again. I didn’t need the forum anymore, all I needed was to see her. And I think she was improving as well. She was talking about getting a job. She started walking around the neighborhood every morning. Short walks, but it was an amazing step for her.”

“Did you notice anything else different lately with her?”

“Besides those walks? Not really. She was still spending most of her day playing Dragonworld on the computer. She had the same extreme mood swings. I got to her place on Saturday, and she was in bed, crying her eyes out for no reason. Took me two hours to get her to eat something and calm down. I know that sounds irregular, but it really wasn’t. Dona was suffering from intense depression. That’s why I asked if she killed herself. I think she had tried to do that twice before. But I would never imagine that anyone—” His voice cracked.

Jacob waited a second, then said, “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Terry. If you want, we can go to the station right now and get your full statement, just to speed things up.”

Blayze took a long breath. He looked at the bucket, the fish gaping within. It was too large to swim inside; it would die soon. “No, thanks,” he finally said. “I changed my mind, Detective. You want to ask me any questions here? No problem. But I’m not coming with you to the station, and I won’t give you anything without a warrant.”

“This is not helping your case, Mr. Terry,” Jacob said, his voice hardening.

“I thought it was Dona’s case you were investigating, Detective,” Blayze said. “But unless I’m under arrest, I prefer to stay here. I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“No.” Jacob said.

Not yet, Mitchell thought.

Blayze sat on the sand, looking at the waves.

“Thank you, Mr. Terry,” Jacob said. “I assume that if we need to talk to you again we’ll be able to find you at home?”

“Yeah, sure, I guess,” Blayze said. “You can try my phone as well. When I’m not fishing, I answer every call.”

The detectives turned to leave. As they walked past the remains of the campfire, Mitchell put his hand just above the ashes. They were still hot.

“What do you think?” he asked Jacob.

“Well, I can’t really tell,” Jacob said. “But he deeply loved her. And deep love turns to hate very fast in the right circumstances. It’s almost always the boyfriend, or the husband, or the lover.”

They walked in silence for a few more minutes.

“Besides,” he said. “We have no other suspects.”

Things became even more incriminating on their way back to the city. Matt called them to say there were five different sets of prints taken at the crime scene. One set belonged to Blayze, one belonged to Dona. He assumed the rest belonged to her sister and parents. The door handle and the snack bowls on the table didn’t have any prints on them, which meant whoever was there last had wiped them clean. That could mean anything.

The computer wasn’t password protected. Matt had accessed Dona’s e-mail account. She had no social network accounts as far as he could tell, which was obviously unusual. Her e-mail account was almost empty, just some promotion e-mails related to the computer game Dragonworld or to the Buoy Forum, which was a mutual assistance forum—probably the one Blayze had mentioned. Dona had stopped visiting the forum four months ago, which narrowed down the people who talked to her routinely even more.

There were some online searches for Buffy memorabilia in her browser history from the last couple of days. At first Matt had assumed she’d been shopping, but then he’d realized the searches matched the items in her possession. She’d been checking out prices on eBay. He thought she was considering selling her collection. Her collection’s worth, according to Matt, was above seven thousand dollars.

“She had in her closet a jacket worn by Sarah Michelle Gellar during one of the episodes,” Matt said. “Worth more than three thousand dollars. The knife replica on the night table is the knife Faith used—”

“Who?” Jacob asked.

“Faith. She’s a big deal in the Buffyverse. The knife’s worth two hundred dollars. Several jewelry pieces inside her dresser that were used on the set and were worth a couple of hundred each.”

“Okay,” Jacob said. “What about the anonymous phone call to dispatch? Did you check it out?”

“I heard it,” Matt said. “It was pre-recorded with a text to speech application. It’s very short, just her name, address, and that she needs assistance. The call was made using a prepaid phone with a new SIM card, as far as we can tell. We’re still checking to see if we can trace it, or find out where it was purchased from.”

“Great, Matt. Keep us posted about it,” Jacob said.

“And now I’m going to sleep,” Matt said, his voice brittle. “And if anyone else is murdered tonight, you can wake someone else.”

“There is no one else, Matt. You’re our guy,” Jacob said.

“I’m turning off the phone.”

“Good night, Matt.”

“Good night, Jacob.”

Jacob hung up, and they drove in silence a couple of minutes.

“Seven thousand dollars could also be a motive for murder for a man like Blayze,” Mitchell pointed out.

“Yeah.”

“Blayze could have wiped the fingerprints himself, make it look like someone else did it.”

“That’s true,” Jacob agreed.

Mitchell thought about it. “He did look as if he really does love her,” he said. “I mean, you know, you could see the loss in his eyes.”

Jacob glanced at him in amusement. “Seriously? Since when do you solve a case by looking into a man’s eyes?”

“Well, it’s just a feeling I had.”

“Yeah, well, love can do funny things.”

“I know,” Mitchell said vacantly. Would someone like Blayze hurt someone he truly loved? Strangle her with his bare hands? How could that even be possible? He shook his head. What was wrong with him? A boyfriend or husband killing his partner was one of the most common murder types there was. Why should Blayze be any different?

“We need to find some proof,” he said hoarsely.

“Yup.”

The smell of the morgue always made Bernard want to flee. He had a keen sense of smell, keener than most, and the coppery smell of blood, the ghastly odor of the dead body, and the smells of disinfectants and formalin were almost too much to bear. The first time he’d been in an autopsy room during his police academy days, he’d left the room to throw up. He wasn’t the only one, but as far as he could tell he was the only one who had done so three times. These days, he had better control over his gag reflex—though he made sure to verify that the path to the exit was unobstructed, and that he knew where the bathroom was.

A pair of white lab coats, spotted with some brown stains, hung next to the exit doors. The white cloth reflected the cold light of the fluorescent lamps. The tiled floor, though clean, felt a bit sticky under his feet.

As he walked toward Annie Turner and the dead body of Frank Gulliepe, Bernard tried to avoid thinking about the stickiness, concentrating on the number of tiles instead. Thirteen tiles between the door and the metal gurney. Thirteen, now there was a number. He looked at Frank Gulliepe, half covered with a pale blue blanket, his torso bare, the Y shape of the incision marks foreign and strange.

There were tools on a metal table beside the body. An electric saw, a scalpel, forceps, something that seemed to be a hammer. Bernard always forgot what they did with the hammer thing. It didn’t match the style of the rest of its grisly siblings. It would have been more at home beside some nails, used when a picture on the wall required hanging.

“What can you tell us, Annie?” Hannah asked. She didn’t seem to be troubled by the smell at all. Bernard wondered if it was because her nostrils were smaller. He would have been glad for a smaller pair of nostrils right about now.

“Well, the cause of death, like I said, was a stab to the heart,” Annie said. “We have seven stab wounds. Also, the fingers on the right hand are sliced, looks like a defensive wound. Two stab wounds went through the liver, one punctured the kidney, one punctured the lungs. Two stab wounds were much more superficial, probably because the blade hit the ribs. And this here is the stab to the heart.”

She pointed at the stab wounds as she explained this. Bernard counted with her. One, two, three… someone wanted to make sure this guy was dead.

“The stab to the kidney, and the superficial one here, were done after the victim was already dead. The bathrobe he was dressed in was torn in two places, which line up with these two wounds, so those two stabs went through the bathrobe and into the body. The rest of the stabbings were directly into the body.”

“The blade used was sharp and uncommonly clean. There were no particles from it left in the body, not even where it hit the bone. No rust either. The stab marks are quite wide, making me believe the blade was about two inches wide, but it’s hard to be accurate. One of the stabs, the one that punctured the liver, went about seven inches deep, so this knife was pretty long as well. Judging from the slice wound on the fingers, and the edges of the stab wounds, it was sharp on one edge, blunt on the other.”

“A bread knife?” Bernard suggested, trying not to inhale too much.

“Not likely. A bread knife has a serrated edge. This one was completely smooth.”

“Okay. Do you have an accurate time of death?” Hannah asked.

“I got it right the first time,” Annie said. “Twenty past midnight, give or take five minutes.”

“What else?” Hannah asked.

Bernard thought she sounded a bit strained. Perhaps she was affected by the smell after all, and wanted to leave as well?

“Toxicology report is not back yet,” Annie said. “But his blood alcohol level was pretty high. I’d say that if he hadn’t been killed, he’d have had a wicked hangover the morning after. Small blessings, huh?”

“Right,” Bernard said.

“Stomach contents indicated a small dinner, not much more. He had no foreign matter under his fingernails, unfortunately, so I doubt we’ll get a DNA sample from there.”

“We have DNA samples from the crime scene that we’re pretty sure belong to the killer,” Hannah said.

“Good luck convincing the jury with that,” Annie said contemptuously. “As far as DNA samples go, nothing is better than cells under the fingernails. Matt can’t get you incriminating evidence like that.”

“Nor can you,” Bernard pointed out.

“Not this time,” Annie said, her voice sharp. “However, I’ve collected hair samples from the rest of the body, so maybe there’s something there. I’ll send it to DNA analysis if necessary. That’s pretty much it.”

“Thanks, Annie,” Hannah said, then turned and briskly went out the door.

“Weak stomach,” Bernard said, indicating the door. “Not everyone can stay cool in a morgue.”

He stood there for ten seconds more, just to make a point, then left the room as fast as his feet could carry him.

Chapter Thirteen

Hannah sat in Captain Bailey’s office with the rest of the detectives, filling the captain in on their progress on the murder cases.

“We got Chad Grimes on multiple possession charges, not to mention shooting police officers, so he’s not getting back to the street anytime soon,” Hannah said, summing up. She craned her neck, trying to see Captain Bailey’s face, which hid behind a pile of paperwork. Fred Bailey’s desk had once been named the Desk of Chaos, and the name had stuck. Mounds of papers always covered every inch, the piles tumbling into each other and creating a strange mountain range with peaks, valleys, and the occasional canyon. Hannah was shorter than most, and when the paper wall divided them it was hard to actually be sure the captain was there. She shifted a bit to the left, managing to position herself so she could see most of him through the small crack between two piles of paper. “But we don’t think Grimes is the murderer,” she added.

“Okay,” Captain Bailey said. “Let’s recap. We have one case with one suspect, and one case with about a gazillion suspects, right? Let’s start with the simpler case. This Blayze guy. Do we have enough to give the district attorney?”

“Not really,” Jacob said. “It’s all very circumstantial. The victim had no other contacts beyond her family and her boyfriend. That, and his criminal record, are currently the only things we have.”

“My dad would say that what we have amounts to an old man’s drool in a beer mug,” Bailey said. “That’s not even enough to get a search warrant. Hell, I wouldn’t even know what to search for. The woman was choked by someone. It’s not like we can search for the murder weapon in her boyfriend’s house. What are we looking for?”

“Dona had a Buffy memorabilia collection worth more than seven thousand dollars,” Mitchell said. “We think she was considering selling it. Maybe Blayze was after the money.”

“You think he killed her for seven thousand dollars?” Captain Bailey rubbed his chin. “Well, we’ve seen people kill for less. But why didn’t he wait for her to sell the stuff? And why didn’t he take some of it to sell himself?”

“Maybe they had an argument about it and he got angry,” Mitchell suggested.

It was a half-assed thing to say, far from typical. Mitchell seemed weary, and Hannah wondered if something was wrong.

Captain Bailey narrowed his eyes. Hannah could usually tell how pissed off he was by how narrow his eyes became. Almond-sized meant he was content. Paper-thin slits meant people should update their resume. Currently his eyes were somewhere between pencil-thin and shoelace-thin.

“I’m not convinced,” he said. “Find us something to give the DA. You think that this was about money? We can try to get a search warrant for Blayze’s finances. But we need a bit of proof to get it. What about her relatives? Maybe she told one of them that her boyfriend threatened to kill her? That could be helpful.”

“The sister likes the guy, thinks that he’s reformed,” Jacob said. “The parents didn’t even know he existed.”

“What about the forum they met in?” Bernard asked. “Maybe one of the members—”

“She hasn’t been to the forum in four months,” Mitchell interrupted. “Matt could find no e-mails or personal messages sent by Dona to anyone in the forum. I doubt anyone there knows anything.”

“There’s a neighbor,” Jacob said doubtfully. “We could question her. But I didn’t get the feeling that she knew Dona all that well.”

“What about the other Dragonworld players?” Hannah asked.

The rest of the detectives stared at her.

“What?” she said, irritated. “Look, Dragonworld is a multi-player game. They have a name for it. A… Morpeg or something.”

“MMORPG,” Mitchell said.

“Right. Anyway, she must have played with other players, right? Don’t they have like… groups, or something?”

“Guilds,” Mitchell said after a second. “You’re right. It’s likely she has friends in the game. I’ll check it out. Maybe one of them can give us some dirt on Blayze.”

He smiled at her. She felt her face grow warm and looked away.

“Good.” Bailey said. “See? We’re closer to closing this case already. Now for the real nightmare. Okay, we have this fantastic standup guy, who sexually harassed at least a dozen women online. He also bought drugs from a trigger-happy drug dealer the night he was killed. And we have at least one very angry husband, a Mr.…”

“Tarp,” Bernard said.

“So, we have suspects galore. Like my dad used to say, we have more cocoons than we could use in a lifetime. Let’s sit down with the list, narrow it down. We have a car model, right?”

“Two, actually,” Hannah said. “The sister said she saw a blue Ford Fiesta several times lately when her brother came to visit. The cab driver saw a red Toyota Corolla driving away from the scene of the crime.”

“Well, the Ford Fiesta that the sister saw is probably Frank’s,” Bailey said.

“It isn’t,” Jacob said shortly. “Frank’s car is an Audi.”

“Look,” Bailey said tiredly, “we have a thousand leads we can follow, right? Let’s try to narrow them down. So a red Toyota Corolla was seen fleeing the scene?”

“Driving away from the scene,” Hannah said, “I asked for some info from the DMV. It’ll take some time.”

“Okay, how else can we narrow our suspect list? Let’s comb through the victim’s e-mail account and social media. Try to find some stronger motives than a few mean comments on Twitter. Figure out who was harassed more frequently and maliciously, like that Tarp woman. Who could have figured out Frank’s identity? Try to see if any of them has a criminal record. Yeah, we have a lot of work to do.”

The four detectives sat in front of him, blinking.

“Well?” Bailey said. “What are you waiting for?”

“What… now?” Jacob asked.

“Of course now!”

“Fred, it’s kinda late—”

“Leads are getting cold! Witnesses are forgetting what they saw!” Captain Bailey said loudly. “Evidence is being destroyed and criminals are making their escape! The least we can do is sit down and read some e-mails, right?”

The mood in the room dampened considerably.

“I’ll buy us all pizza,” Bailey said in a cheerful voice. “And I’ll make some coffee.”

Searching a crime scene, as far as Mitchell’s experience went, was a finite endeavor. One knew when and where it started, and where it ended. Sure, you could be more diligent when searching for fingerprints, and it always seemed like there were more fibers to collect, but generally you knew that in an hour or two, or four, you’d be done.

Searching a man’s online history was different. For one, it was potentially endless. Did you search the profiles of the man’s friends? Did you check out their shared friends? Reconstruct the social network structure completely? How far back do you check his browsing history, or his e-mail archive? Is the image of him drunk at a party waving a bottle of beer evidence or a distraction? Should you check who the other guys in the image are? Two of them are tagged, the third isn’t. Why not?

It never stopped. A detective could get lost for years, trying to find anything relevant in the muck. In the end, one had to guess how deep to dig. And when it came down to online data, Mitchell’s hunches were better than most.

He took a bite from his slice of pizza. Red’s Pizza was just across the street, and was probably the most popular pizza place among policemen. Red gave a twenty percent discount if you showed your badge, and on Fridays he’d give you free garlic bread with every order. Mitchell felt like he had to be glad for the small things in life, because the big things were an ex-girlfriend who’d broken his heart and a dead man who had angered a lot of people when he was alive.

“Coffee, anyone?” Jacob asked.

It was the third time he’d gone for coffee. Mitchell guessed that his partner suffered the most from this kind of work.

“I’ll have another cup, thanks,” Mitchell said.

Hannah grunted something as well. She was staring at her screen angrily, sifting through Frank’s e-mails. She would carry on until she dropped.

Mitchell looked at her for several seconds. She seemed to notice, and turned toward him. Their eyes locked for a second, then she abruptly broke eye contact and resumed scanning her screen.

He sighed and turned his stare back to his own monitor. He was looking at Frank’s Facebook profile, scanning his timeline, looking for anything interesting Frank might have posted. He was already six months back, and it seemed most of Frank’s posts were selfies with other people—mostly women—and terrible memes. There was nothing there. He clicked the Friends tab and started scanning the friends list, trying to find a link.

“Find anything?” Hannah asked. She was standing behind him, looking at his screen.

“Not really,” Mitchell muttered.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the chart on his screen.

“I’m trying to match Twitter and Facebook accounts of people Frank knew,” Mitchell explained. “See? This is Melanie’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. And these are Tarp’s accounts. But it’s tricky.”

“Why?”

“Well… sometimes it’s hard to figure out if someone doesn’t have a Twitter account, or if it’s just hidden well. And apparently Frank didn’t follow, on Twitter, all of the people who were his friends on Facebook. I’ve managed to match one hundred forty-six of his Facebook friends so far. Out of those, twelve were harassed on Twitter by Frank’s accounts…” Mitchell paused and frowned.

“What?” Hannah asked.

“Look here,” Mitchell pointed at his screen. Hannah bent a bit, looking closer at the screen. He could feel her warm breath by his ear. “Uh… see those twelve I marked? Those are Twitter accounts that have been harassed, and this column here shows the Twitter handles that harassed them. That way we can see who was targeted the most.”

“Right,” Hannah said softly.

“But this one here, Annie_Bardr, was targeted by only one handle: @youreugly12. Here’s the weird thing, though. I am absolutely certain this is not one of the Twitter handles we found in Frank’s e-mail account.”

“So… maybe he erased the e-mails?” Hannah suggested. “Does the handle harass anyone else?”

“Let’s see,” Mitchell said. He double clicked the Chrome shortcut on his desktop. While waiting for the slow computer to react, Mitchell turned to Hannah, suddenly realizing how close their faces were. They both froze for a moment and then Hannah drew back, clearing her throat. Mitchell turned to his computer, feeling his face flush, and browsed to the Twitter handle @youreugly12.

It had only three messages.

you’re fatter than a hippo, @Annie_Bardr

your breath stinks, @Annie_Bardr, it kills anyone who gets near you

how are your zits, @Annie_Bardr?

“Those don’t look like the rest of Frank’s messages,” Hannah said. “They aren’t sexual, and they’re kinda lame.”

“Right,” Mitchell agreed. “It’s like the kindergarten version of an internet troll.”

Mitchell opened Annie’s Facebook account. Her name was Annie Bardera, and she was friends with Frank. Mitchell checked their mutual friends. There were three. One of them was Jerome Piet. He entered Jerome’s profile, scanned backward. He didn’t have to look far.

A month before, Jerome had been photographed with Annie Bardera, hugging her waist tightly.

“Hey,” Mitchell said. “Does Jerome have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. Wait. No, he had just broken up with her. That’s why they went out. Frank was cheering him up or something.”

“I think Frank did more than just cheering Jerome up,” Mitchell said. “I think he was teaching him.”

Chapter Fourteen

Hannah sat down at her kitchen counter, a bowl of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese in her hand. It was after one in the morning. They had scanned Frank’s online history thoroughly, collecting a vast pile of information, most of which was probably completely useless. Mitchell was the only one who’d found anything worthwhile—an indication that Jerome Piet was trolling his ex-girlfriend. Not very enlightening by itself, but it did lead to some theories.

Bernard thought it was possible Frank had threatened to blow the whistle on Jerome, and Jerome decided to kill him. Hannah didn’t think that was likely; they hadn’t found the murder weapon, and she didn’t think he’d had enough time to hide it. Besides, Frank had bigger skeletons in his own closet. But it merited further inspection, and Bernard and Hannah had decided to interrogate Jerome more thoroughly in the station the following day.

She shoveled some pasta into her mouth and chewed it, staring at the counter, thinking. Shifting the macaroni in her bowl a bit, she frowned, then set one piece on the counter. Say this was Frank. The salt shaker was his door. One theory was that someone had hidden in the corridor, waiting for Jerome to leave.

She positioned another piece of macaroni on the opposite side of the salt shaker. Jerome left the apartment… She stuck her fork in another piece of pasta, and started marching it past the salt shaker and along the counter. The lurking pasta knocked on the door…

With her finger, she moved the mystery macaroni attacker toward the salt shaker door. Frank opened the door… she prodded Frank toward the salt shaker as well.Then she grabbed her knife. Stab stab stab! The mystery pasta ran away across the counter, past Jerome, outside, where the taxi driver—a blob of cheese—saw him enter a red Toyota Corolla. Jerome, assisted by the fork, ran back up, opened the salt shaker door, and screamed.

The other option was that there was no lurking pasta. She popped the escaping macaroni into her mouth. Jerome decided to kill Frank. He’d probably gone out just as he said he did, and then returned, as it was unlikely Frank would change into a bathrobe in front of his friend. Or maybe he would—who knew? In any case, he stabbed Frank to death—

She stuck her knife in the unhappy Frank macaroni several more times.

Then Jerome hid the knife somewhere, maybe even under his shirt. He screamed, and Petal ran out to meet him. Hannah located a spoon to represent Petal.

Petal took him to her apartment… and maybe he got rid of the knife there? Hannah made a mental note to call Petal in the morning, ask if she’d encountered an unknown knife. Maybe ask for permission to look for it there. And in that case, who was it that the cheese—the taxi driver—had seen running out of the building? Just some random guy? Maybe.

So what was more likely? She looked at the counter. It was a mess. Cheese everywhere, macaroni Frank shredded to bits, the salt shaker sticky…

Hannah sighed. Normal people did not reenact murders with their Kraft dinners. A traditional Jewish dinner, such as the one she had eaten with her mother on Friday, would have fit this purpose much better. The slices of challah would have left less of a mess everywhere.

She finished the bowl of pasta amidst the carnage, then cleaned the counter. She considered going for a drink, maybe finding someone to have some fun with. Then she glanced at her watch. It was almost two o’clock.

Too late for fun. It was time to sleep.

The city was quiet when Mitchell reached his home; the roads were mostly empty, the dog walkers and the joggers in their beds, the restaurants and coffee shops closed. But he was not misled. As a young patrol cop, he had spent more than a year on the graveyard shift, between midnight and eight, and he knew well that this silence hid the worst types of violence, the most heinous crimes. Rapes, pointless drug-induced murders, assaults fueled by rage and alcohol in equal amounts. The city wasn’t peaceful. It was merely less noisy.

He unlocked the door, walked inside, locked the door behind him, and latched it for good measure. He put his wallet, keys and gun on the table, a small wooden thing his brother and sister had bought for him after Pauline left and took the previous table with her. It was one of the furniture pieces she’d originally owned, as about two thirds of the apartment’s contents had been.

Now that she’d left, taking her things with her, the apartment was abysmally empty. Mitchell hadn’t found the will to go buy new things. His living room had one couch, the aforementioned table, and a television set. His laptop stood on the floor, by the couch. The rest was vacant, the floor bare. He told himself it made cleaning easier.

He got his mobile phone from his pocket and called Tanessa.

She answered almost immediately. “Hey, why are you calling me during my shift?”

“When else can I call you?” he asked. “You’re asleep during the day.”

“God forbid you call me in the evening,” she said. “Maybe buy your sister dinner once in a while.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said. “How’s your shift?”

“Quiet so far. I heard you got that guy, Grimes.”

“Yeah, Bernard arrested him.”

“Noel told me it got violent,” Tanessa said.

“Yeah. Grimes was packing, and fried out of his mind. I’m glad he didn’t show up when you were watching the house.”

There was a moment of silence. “I would have been fine,” Tanessa finally said. “This is my job, Mitchell.”

“I know.”

“You can’t protect me from—”

“I know, Tanessa, okay?” he said. It was becoming an old argument.

“Yeah, okay. Go to sleep, Mitchell. It’s really late for regular people.”

“Hang on. You used to date a guy who played Dragonworld, right?” Mitchell asked. He vaguely remembered making fun of Tanessa about it.

“This is what you called to ask me after one o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“You’re weird, Mitchy. Yeah, I did, but only for a few weeks.”

“Any chance you can introduce us tomorrow morning after your shift?”

“Well… you do realize that we broke up, right? I wasn’t really into him. And he has a job, and I’ll be really tired—”

“It’s for a murder investigation, Tanessa.”

“Who was murdered? A goblin?”

“No. A young woman.”

“Seriously? Yeah, okay, sure, I’ll talk to him in the morning, see what I can do. I can’t promise anything, though.”

“Thanks, sis.”

“Goodnight, Mitchell.”

He hung up, got a beer from the fridge and sat on the couch, lifting the laptop from the floor. He browsed to his Facebook page, read some bland posts about politics and babies, telling himself he’d just shut off the thing, go to sleep.

He didn’t. Instead, he browsed to Pauline’s Instagram profile.

She was an avid Instagram user, and she posted two or three times every day. Lately, those images contained a lot of pictures of a man named Paul. Paul! This made them “Pauline and Paul.” Hadn’t she thought about that when she’d hooked up with this guy?

Pauline and Paul had posed for a selfie in a pub today as well. They looked disgustingly happy. Paul was so clearly not Pauline’s type. Mitchell realized he was grinding his teeth, his fist clenching the beer can hard enough to dent it. He felt angry and lonely.

He glanced at his phone, wavering. For a crazy minute he considered calling Hannah, asking if she wanted to go for a late-night drink. But no, that would be dumb in epic proportions. They worked together all the time. Making things weird between them because he felt momentarily lonely was probably the stupidest thing he could possibly do.

Eventually he turned off the laptop, his nightly self-torture complete. He went to bed promising himself he wouldn’t check Pauline’s profile ever again, knowing already that his resolve wouldn’t hold.

Chapter Fifteen

Brian Hale was surprised when Tanessa called. He hadn’t heard from her in more than eight months. He was embarrassed at how flustered he was when he answered the phone, stuttering, fumbling at the most basic small talk, his voice high-pitched. She quickly explained that the police needed his help with a murder investigation. It flattered him, though he knew it made sense. He had recently finished his Geology bachelor of science degree and his expertise could be of great use to—

They wanted him because he played Dragonworld, Tanessa explained.

An hour later he was at the police station. In the room with him were Tanessa, who was even more stunning than he had remembered, her brother, who was a detective, and some old bald guy, who seemed a bit dumb and introduced himself as Detective Jacob Cooper.

“This is the computer belonging to the murder victim,” Mitchell explained. “We know she played Dragonworld, and we want to talk to some people she played with. Can we do that?”

“Was she in a guild?” Brian asked.

“We don’t know,” Mitchell said.

“They’re completely clueless,” Tanessa told him. “They could really use your help.”

Brian nodded, his throat dry. He noticed that Tanessa seemed a bit tired. Perhaps police work was wearing her thin.

The computer was already on, the Dragonworld shortcut on the desktop. He double-clicked it, and they waited together for the game to load.

“So… How have you been?” he asked Tanessa.

“Oh, you know,” she said, shrugging. “Really busy. The graveyard shifts are a killer.”

“I can imagine,” Brian said, having no idea what she was talking about. “What are you doing later?”

“The game’s up,” Mitchell said.

Brian began to dislike him. He glanced at the screen. The login prompt said the character’s name was Willow Hannigan. Brian smiled.

“Willow Hannigan,” he said. “Clever.”

“Why is that clever?” Jacob asked.

“Well, because she used the first name of Willow from Buffy and the last name of…” Brian realized the three cops were staring at him. “Anyway, it’s a nice name,” he ended lamely.

“So she played under a different name? Was she hiding her identity?” Jacob asked, frowning.

“No, no. That’s just her character’s name,” Brian said.

“So why didn’t she name her character Dona?”

“Most people don’t name their characters after their own name,” Brian said. “It’s kind of tacky.”

“Why?”

“That’s just the way it is,” Brian said, curbing his impatience. “Okay, do you know her password?”

“Doesn’t the game remember her password?” Jacob asked.

“Uh… You see the checkbox that says Remember Password?” Brian asked.

“Yes,” Jacob said after a second.

“It’s unchecked.”

“So it doesn’t remember her password?”

Brian decided the detective was an absolute moron. How had he been promoted to detective? Could Brian himself become a detective? Well, if this guy was, probably anyone could.

“Without her password, we can’t log into her account,” Brian said, talking a bit more slowly.

“So there’s no way to find the people she was playing with?” Mitchell asked.

“Well, if she’s in a guild, it’s in her public profile,” Brian explained. He opened the browser and entered the URL of the Dragonworld home page, then browsed to the Characters page, and searched for Willow Hannigan.

“There,” he said, as her character appeared on screen. She was a human witch, and was listed in a guild. “See? The Black Arrow guild.”

“So how do we talk to these guys? Do you have their e-mails here?” Mitchell asked.

“Of course not,” Brian said. “But you can talk to them in the game.”

“But we don’t have the password.”

Brian stared at them in pity. “You can create new characters to enter the game.”

“Oh,” Mitchell said. “Right. How stupid of me.”

Brian held his tongue.

“Can you help us with it?”

“Sure.” Brian said.

They spent the next half-hour setting up two computers side by side, and installing the game on both of them. Tanessa fell asleep, her head on one of the desks, a strand of her lovely hair lying carelessly on her cheek. Mitchell explained that she’d just finished a graveyard shift, and Brian finally realized that it meant that she’d been patrolling all night long. He asked if she did that often. Mitchell told him rookie cops did the graveyard shift every night. Brian was aghast. It sounded incredibly unfair.

He created two characters for them. An elf ranger for Mitchell, and a dwarf fighter for Jacob. He almost set Jacob’s character’s intelligence to three, just to amuse himself, but decided it was petty and unlike him to do so. Then he explained the basics: how to walk, and how to chat. He didn’t bother explaining how to fight. He doubted they’d need it—and if they did, God help those two level one characters if they met anything worse than rats.

“Okay,” he said. “Now you just need to fast travel to the guild headquarters. If any of them is online, they’ll get a notification, and hopefully will come and talk to you.”

“Good,” Mitchell said. “Just show us how to do that.”

Jacob the Mighty and Mitchell Forest Lover walked slowly on the old trail, the dark forest surrounding them. The only noises to be heard were the methodical sound of their feet on the gravel, and the wind rustling the tree leaves. Their progress was slow, much slower than they had originally planned. This was mostly because their pace was dictated by Jacob the Mighty’s insistence of zig-zagging left and right instead of walking straight. Forest Lover tried to control his temper, telling himself repeatedly that it wasn’t Jacob the Mighty’s fault. He simply wasn’t used to… walking.

The path opened in front of them, the sudden light of the midday sun making them squint. In front of them was a beautiful valley, the grass green and lush, small trees and shrubberies dotting the landscape. A few cows grazed in the fields, their cowbells tinkling, filling the air with a pleasant, earthly tune. In the center of the valley stood a large, stone fortress, surrounded by a moat. The outer wall was high and wide, and Mitchell counted four spires along it. On the top of each one flapped a large red flag depicting a black arrow stuck in a white skull. Jacob and Mitchell glanced at each other and smiled wearily. Their journey was at an end. Long had they sought the Black Arrow guild and at last they’d found it. Mitchell hoped they would find the answers to their questions within the great halls of the fortress.

The drawbridge was lowered and the front gate was open, as if someone was expecting them. There were legends of great wizards within the Black Arrow guild, and it was possible one of them had prophesied their coming. Perhaps one such was watching them even now. Mitchell shivered at the thought. But he had not left the farm and become an adventurer only to balk at the first sign of danger. Feeling the curve of his oaken long bow, he marched forward. They crossed the drawbridge, an alligator swimming lazily in the moat below their feet. They strode inside the fortress and into the great hall. The vast space was alight with dozens of torches. A crimson carpet covered the floor from wall to wall, its texture flawless and mesmerizing. The walls were decorated with trophies and pictures of heroes fighting various monsters. These were probably the guild members, immortalized by some unknown painter. Though there was a large fireplace in which a fire danced merrily, the hall was eerily empty.

“No one here,” Mitchell said.

“Hang on,” Brian told him. “See the small icons on the top right of the screen? Three of the guild members are currently online. They’ve all received notifications that someone is walking around their headquarters. Hopefully one of them will come and talk to you soon.”

“What if they won’t?”

“We can go and look for them, but I’d rather avoid that.”

“Why avoid—”

“Hang on, look!” Brian said, pointing at the screen.

A beautiful young blonde woman entered the hall from one of the side doors. She was dressed in shiny metal armor, though surprisingly little of it; her taut stomach, legs, and deep cleavage were all prominently on display. A huge scabbard on her back held an incredibly heavy-looking sword, but the woman seemed to pay it no mind. She approached them slowly, her movements catlike and sleek, her face showing a complete lack of emotion. Mitchell was aware that in front of him stood a woman of great power, one of the legendary heroes of Dragonworld. She had been there before the cataclysm, before the great changes of free-to-play. She was one of the first.

“Sup,” she said.

“Hello,” Mitchell Forest Lover responded. Jacob the Mighty stood with his mouth closed, then whirled to the right and took three steps.

“Looking for someone?” the woman said.

“My name is Mitchell.”

“Yeah, I know,” the woman said shortly. “I can read.”

“Read?”

“If you hover with your cursor above a character it shows you the character’s name,” Brian said.

“Oh, okay,” Mitchell said, moving his mouse. “Jacob, what’s going on? Your character is moving like a drunk.”

“I’m trying to talk with her,” Jacob muttered, clicking furiously. “Why doesn’t it work?”

Brian sighed and moved over to help Jacob.

“Sorry,” Mitchell Forest Lover said. “I meant that my real name is Mitchell. Detective Mitchell, actually. I wanted to ask you some questions…” He stood motionless for a second. “Katrina.”

“Srsly?”

“Yes. Do you have a phone number or e-mail, so we can contact you?”

“No offense,” the woman said. “But I don’t give my personal details to just anyone who shows up.”

“WE ARE FROM THE POLICE,” Jacob the Mighty said, standing at the far end of the hall, his face against the wall.

“Caps lock, Jacob.” Mitchell said.

“Yeah, okay, okay.”

The woman looked at them. “So you say,” she finally said. “But I don’t think that your characters have badges, right? We can talk here. You won’t believe the kind of creeps I sometimes meet in this game.”

“You are from the Black Arrow guild?” Mitchell asked.

“I’m the guild master.”

“Do you know a woman named Dona Aliysa?”

“Yes. She’s in our guild. She plays Willow, one of our mages.”

“When was the last time you saw her in the game?”

“Two days ago,” Katrina said. “We were planning a raid together for last night. Then she never showed up. It was a disaster. We had no mages, the monster level was way too high for that raid, our healer was drunk, our tank was killed within twenty seconds… we had to abort the entire thing.”

“Did she seem concerned when you saw her?”

“Not that I noticed… What’s going on? Why are you two here?”

“WILLOW HANnigan is dead.” Jacob the Mighty said, his nose still rubbing the wall.

“Yeah, okay.” Katrina said. “So? Is there a problem? Isn’t she spawning back? I heard there was a problem, but she should be talking to Dragonworld support. They’ll fix it.”

“What my partner is trying to say,” Mitchell Forest Lover said, “is that Dona Aliysa, who used to play Willow, was murdered the night before last.” After a second, he added, “I’m sorry.”

There was silence in the great hall. Katrina stared forward, her face frozen, as if fighting the turmoil of feelings within her.

Mitchell waited patiently. “We wanted to ask you some questions,” he finally said.

There was no response.

“What’s going on?” Mitchell muttered.

“We just told her that her friend is dead,” Jacob said. “She’s probably still processing it.”

“Oh,” Mitchell said. He realized he was used to people bursting into tears, or yelling at him, or bolting out of the room, when he informed them about the murder of a friend or relative. In all likelihood, Katrina’s player was doing the same, except nothing of it filtered into the game. It was a bit disconcerting.

“This isn’t a joke?” Katrina finally asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

Katrina gave Mitchell Forest Lover her phone number, a number in Canada, then disappeared from the great hall, leaving Mitchell and Jacob to stare at the thin air.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you my phone number earlier,” Trish Geller said, sniffling. “If I’d known...”

“That’s all right, no harm done,” Jacob said. “We would like to ask you some questions about Dona.”

“I mostly knew her as Willow.”

“But you talked to her from time to time?”

“Yes. We talked all the time. She was one of my best friends. We spent hours almost every day playing together. I knew something was off when she didn’t show up last night, but she disappeared sometimes for a day or two. You should probably know she was clinically depressed.”

“We know.”

“Are you sure it was murder? That she didn’t… didn’t…”

“Kill herself? She didn’t. Did Dona give any indication lately that she was preoccupied or worried about anything?”

“No. She was much happier than usual. She was in a relationship. She considered getting a job. Things were really looking up for her.”

“About the relationship, did Dona ever tell you about the guy she was dating?”

“Sure. She was really into him. He was considerate, warm, caring. She joked about how sexy he was, too.”

“Did she ever seem to indicate if he was abusive, or had a short temper? Did they have any arguments? Was there any problem in the relationship you’re aware of?”

“Not anything that she told me. She really talked about him as if he was the perfect guy.”

“Did she mention he had recently gotten out of prison?”

“No,” Trish said, sounding shocked. “She did not.”

Jacob tapped with his pen on the table, thinking. If Trish hadn’t known about that, she probably wouldn’t know about anything else related to Blayze. This felt like a dead end.

“Did Dona have any enemies you’re aware of?”

There was a moment of silence. “We were playing a multi-player game together,” Trish finally said.

“I know,” Jacob said.

“My point is, these games do create friction. Between guilds, between players. It’s very standard.”

“So did Dona have any friction that you’re aware of?”

“Of course. We had a long-standing feud with the Bloody Hedgehog guild. There was a player she kept beating in PVP battles. She managed to win the grand Sorcerer’s tournament last year, and it’s a well-known fact that there was a warlock there who didn’t take it well. There was a guy we voted out of our guild—”

“Okay, okay. I get it. Do you think any of those frictions were more… personal?”

“Well…” Trish thought. “That guy she beat constantly kept challenging her to duels over and over again. He was kinda obsessive about her.”

“Okay, then,” Jacob said, leaning back in his chair. “Let’s start with him.”

The quest to find Lord Vaderon was a long and arduous one, but it was at an end. Mitchell and Jacob found the warlock checking out the bulletin board in the small village Rahorn. He was dressed entirely in black, holding a long golden staff, a long cloak billowing behind him. Power radiated off him, the air crackling, making the hair on the backs of their necks stand on end.

Mitchell Forest Lover considered leaving, only to return later with some heavy firepower, but he knew that their time was short and that Jacob the Mighty would not think kindly of such cowardly behavior. Instead, he cleared his throat and approached the infamous dark warlock.

“Excuse me,” Mitchell said. “Lord Vaderon?”

“Wat U want?” Vaderon asked, not bothering to turn and face them.

“We’re police detectives. I’m Detective Mitchell Lonnie, and my friend is Detective Jacob Cooper. We wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“Fuck off.”

“Do you know Willow Hannigan?”

“Ya. She’s a fucking double fisted cunt. You her friends? Do you have some tissue to clean yourselves after I fuck you both?”

“What the hell’s wrong with this guy?” Jacob asked disgustedly.

“Dragonworld draws some unpleasant players,” Brian said. “We can report him if you want.”

“And then they remove his character?”

“No. They sometimes suspend it for a bit.”

Jacob the Mighty walked closer to Lord Vaderon, unslinging his battle axe. “So,” he said. “Did Willow manage to tick you off? Kill you one time too many? And you decided to get even?”

“Fuck yourself with ur axe handle, dwarf. Get lost.”

“How did you find out where she lived, huh? Did you somehow manage to find her address online?”

“Wat?”

“Visited her house in the evening? Had a chat and then strangled her to death?”

“Wat U talking about?”

Mitchell Forest Lover took a step closer himself. “We just want you to answer some questions,” he said. “No need to be unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable my ass,” Jacob the Mighty said, walking forward, blocking Lord Vaderon’s route. “This guy’s the killer.”

They got closer yet, entering the suspect’s personal space, a practiced maneuver they had done dozens of times before. The partners slid into their well-honed parts: good elf cop, bad dwarf cop.

“Look here,” Mitchell said to Lord Vaderon.

Lord Vaderon raised his staff, and both Mitchell Forest Lover and Jacob the Mighty were engulfed in flames. When the air cleared, only two small piles of ash signified where the now-deceased heroes had once stood.

Chapter Sixteen

“What happened?” Jacob asked, staring at the screen.

“I think you irritated him,” Brian said dryly. “He killed you both.”

“Isn’t that a bit of an overreaction?” Jacob felt upset. He had begun to relate to the angry dwarf he’d been playing. And now the dwarf was dead.

“Not really,” Brian said. “This is Dragonworld. Most servers allow players to attack each other whenever they want, and it happens quite frequently.”

“He got rid of us really fast,” muttered Mitchell. “You should teach us how to fight in this game.”

“It won’t do any good,” Brian said. “This guy’s a level forty-seven warlock. Your characters are both level one. You don’t stand a chance.”

Tanessa suddenly snored on the desk, a drop of drool on her chin. Brian looked at her, his eyes tender. He clearly had a crush on the girl, Jacob realized.

“So what do you suggest?” Mitchell asked.

“I suggest you let some real players show you how it’s done,” Brian said, grinning.

“No,” Jacob said. “This is a waste of time.” He felt frustrated, out of his element. This was no way to solve a murder, he was sure of it. He could not interrogate witnesses as an axe-wielding dwarf. He could not spot clues in a virtual world full of dragons, trolls, and women with low-cut bikini armor. “I’m done playing this game,” he said with finality.

Jacob was the first to admit he wasn’t great when it came to computers. He had managed to stay afloat when the things had first started cropping up, but these days everything changed constantly. He couldn’t even trust his word processor to stay the same for more than a year. Jacob believed a man must face his weaknesses and acknowledge them, and computers were his bane.

The telephone, however, was his trusted ally.

Ever since he had been promoted to detective, back in the nineties—oh, God, he was getting old—he’d realized that, with a little tenacity and a lot of what Hannah would call chutzpa, one could get very far with the telephone in hand. And now it was time to put his skills to good use.

It took a few phone calls to get to a lowly manager at Tornado, Dragonworld’s publisher. Jacob explained that he required the phone number of one of their players. The manager, curt and dismissive, told him there was no way in hell this would ever happen unless Jacob had a warrant.

Jacob assumed that, given time and persistence, he could probably get a warrant. But he didn’t plan on waiting that long. Instead he painted a picture to the manager. He explained that this was a murder investigation. He started talking about what the search warrant would allow the police to do. The word “confiscate” was used several times. He talked about the many servers they would have to check, the numerous computers they would have to take to the station.

Then he explained to the manager how long it took to get things back from the police. He told the manager about the evidence storage room and about form 67A, which a person needed to fill out in triplicate to retrieve his possessions after the police were done with them. He talked about the workload of the police and the amount of time it would take them to comb through all those servers.

The manager became a lot nicer. He asked Jacob to please hold. Jacob had no problem with holding.

The manager’s boss got on the phone. He was very impolite. He told Jacob to get a search warrant.

Murder investigation. Storage room. Form 67A in triplicates. Workload.

Jacob was told to please hold again.

This time a woman spoke to him. She sounded infinitely more polite than the earlier two, and in a very helpful mood. She asked what exactly he wanted. He explained about the murder, and about an unpleasant player named Lord Vaderon. She asked if this was the only thing he needed. Well, Jacob said, there might be a few more players they would want to talk to, no more than five or six. But it was one of Dragonworld’s players who’d been murdered, after all.

Terrible business, the woman said. So sad.

Yes, Jacob agreed. It was very sad. He was sure Tornado could show some goodwill and help the police catch their player’s murderer.

Would he want Lord Vaderon’s address as well, the woman asked sweetly, and Jacob said that if it wasn’t too much trouble, he would. He was put on hold. He grinned at Brian, who was staring at him in awe.

The hold music terminated unexpectedly just as Jacob began to enjoy it.

Would he also like a copy of the complaint? the woman wanted to know. Apparently Willow Hannigan had submitted a complaint regarding Lord Vaderon. Wasn’t that why Detective Jacob called?

Why, yes, that was exactly why. He would be happy to have a copy of the complaint.

He received the info by e-mail two minutes later.

Lord Vaderon’s player was named Tim Raffield. His address was in Haverhill, no more than an hour and a half by car from Dona Aliysa’s home.

Jacob read the complaint, stood up, grabbed his gun, and walked out with Mitchell in tow.

The complaint was for abusive language. There were three threats of rape, one of mutilation, five threats of murder.

And one of strangulation.

Jerome Piet sat in interrogation room one, looking as worried and anxious as people usually did when left alone in the police interrogation room. Hannah and Bernard had made sure to drop by his place unannounced early in the morning, explaining that they had some further questions for him. They said he should probably come with them. As expected, confused and bewildered, he had followed them obediently to their car.

They let him wait in the interrogation room for ten minutes, because some food simply tasted better when left to simmer a bit. Then they walked in, their faces serious. Usually during interrogation Hannah asked most of the questions and Bernard sat, imposing and scary. When the time was right, he’d pounce with a completely unrelated, accusatory question. This treatment, in their experience, got them pretty good results.

“Mr. Piet,” Hannah said. “We want to ask you a few more questions.”

“Please,” Jerome said, “call me Jerome.”

“Mr. Piet, can you please tell me who Annie Bardera is?”

“Annie?” Jerome looked completely bewildered. “She… we used to date a bit.”

“When did this relationship terminate?”

“Uh… just a few days ago.”

“Can you tell me her Twitter account name?”

“Not off the top of my head, but I can check my—”

“Is it Annie underscore B-A-R-D-R?”

“Maybe. I don’t—”

“And can you tell me who the Twitter account @youreugly12 belongs to?”

Jerome seemed suddenly pale. “No, I have no idea—”

“Did you know that the account @youreugly12 messaged Annie two days ago?”

Jerome’s face was twitching, the panic rising in his eyes. He turned to face Bernard, who sat there looking at him with dark, angry eyes. He turned back to Hannah. “No, how would I—”

“The messages called her fat, made fun of her stinking breath, and asked her about her zits. Does that ring a bell, Mr. Piet?”

“No! What does that have to do with Frank’s death?”

“Did you buy the drugs from Chad Grimes?” Bernard suddenly roared, thumping on the table.

“What? Who’s Chad Grimes?”

“The drug dealer in the pub! Did you buy the drugs from him?”

“I have no idea—”

“We know you and Frank bought X from Chad. Did you pay for the drugs? Chad Grimes shot at me yesterday, Mr. Piet. Did he shoot at me with a gun he bought with your money?”

Hannah could literally feel Bernard’s roar vibrate in the room.

“No! Frank bought the drugs! I don’t even use Ecstasy, I swear!” Jerome’s voice trembled.

Good. The meal was ready. Now they just had to serve it.

“But you did open that Twitter account,” Hannah said sharply. “And you did send those abusive messages.”

“I… yes, I did,” Jerome said, tears in his eyes. “It was Frank’s suggestion. He said it would make me feel better. Annie shattered my heart. I was completely devastated! I didn’t know what to do! And then Frank said that he had done this before, that it was the perfect way to get even, and to let go. So I… I opened a new Twitter account while I was in the pub, and I sent those messages.” He burst into tears, covering his face with his hands.

“And did it make you feel better?” Hannah asked coldly.

“No! I felt horrible! Annie is really obsessed about her weight; it was such a nasty thing to do! I called the next day and apologized. She hung up on me, which wasn’t surprising.”

“What did Frank say when you sent those messages?”

“He… he said that it was good for a first try. Then he asked if I had any nude images of Annie, or videos to upload to a porn site.”

Hannah snorted in disgust.

“He was kidding! He’d never suggest something like that seriously. He just wanted to cheer me up a bit, that’s all!”

“When you returned to the apartment,” Hannah said slowly, “what did you talk about?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we talked about Annie a bit. We drank a shot of tequila, talked a bit about women we’d like to have sex with… like celebrities and stuff… and then I left.”

“Did Frank at any point say he was going to tell Annie that it was you who sent the messages?”

“Of course not! Why would he do that?”

“Or perhaps you were worried that he might do that…”

“It never crossed my mind!”

“And then, Mr. Piet, perhaps you realized that if Frank was dead, Annie would never find out!”

“What? Are you insane?”

“Did you stab Frank, Mr. Piet?”

“No!”

“Stab him several times, then get rid of the knife?”

“No! There was someone who ran down the stairs—”

“Just so Annie would never find out about those tweets—”

“I called Annie the next day! You can ask her!” Jerome was crying loudly at this point, shaking like a leaf.

Hannah and Bernard glanced at each other.

“Would you like something to drink, Mr. Piet?” Bernard asked.

Jerome did not respond, just laid his head on the table and sobbed.

Hannah and Bernard got up.

“We’ll be right back, Jerome,” Hannah said, and they left the room.

“What do you think?” Bernard asked.

“He might be a really good actor,” Hannah shrugged. “But I don’t think so. We can call Annie Bardera and ask. He wouldn’t have told her about those tweets after he killed Frank.”

“Unless he felt like we might figure it out and wanted to cover his bases,” Bernard said. “Though it doesn’t sound likely. I’ll call Annie.”

“And I’ll call Petal,” Hannah said. “I’ll ask her if she encountered a knife she didn’t recognize, maybe send a patrolman to check her kitchen.”

The phone calls were quick. Annie had received a phone call from Jerome the day before, and he’d admitted to sending her the tweets. Petal hadn’t seen an unfamiliar knife, but she would check again. She’d gladly let a patrolman check her apartment… but what if he found some substances which weren’t exactly legal? Oh, he’d just look in the kitchen? Not in the living room? Then it wasn’t a problem at all, ha ha.

Bernard and Hannah returned to the interrogation room. Jerome seemed to have calmed down, though his eyes were red and he was sniffling heavily.

“Anything else you would like to tell us, Mr. Piet?” Hannah asked.

“I didn’t kill Frank,” Jerome muttered. “He was my friend.”

“I believe you, Jerome. Is there anything else?”

“Yeah. I just remembered. Frank told me that he kept feeling like someone was following him for the last couple of days.”

“He said that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not just making that up now, because we were accusing you?”

“No! He really said that!”

“Why didn’t you mention that before?”

“I didn’t remember it before! He just said it offhandedly, while I was talking about Annie. I thought he was trying to change the subject.”

“And you didn’t ask him about it?”

“No. Do… do you think it was the guy who killed him?”

“We’ll check that out,” Bernard said. “Thank you, Mr. Piet.”

“Can I leave now?”

“Yes. You could have left at any time. We never detained you.”

“Oh.” Jerome got up. He walked to the door and pressed the handle, looking a bit surprised when the door opened. Then, without looking back, he marched out.

“Do you think Frank really said that?” Bernard said.

“He might have,” Hannah frowned. “That would explain the blue Ford that his sister saw. Who would be following him?”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Perhaps Chad Grimes?” Hannah said.

“No, hang on…” Bernard said.

“Maybe Grimes wanted to know where he lived…”

Bernard shook his head, frowning, and then snapped his fingers. “Tarp!”

“Jenny Tarp’s husband?”

“Yeah! He said he ran into Frank in the restaurant by chance. How likely is that? And he also said he had hired a private detective.”

“So you think—”

“He had Frank followed! And whoever he hired to follow Frank told Tarp he was at that restaurant.”

“Let’s talk to Tarp,” Hannah said.

Chapter Seventeen

On the way to Tim Raffield’s home address, Jacob contacted the Haverhill police department and filled them in on the details. He asked if they could supply backup, since the suspect might be armed and dangerous. The dispatcher, her voice reminding him of a girl he used to date when he was a young patrol officer, promised to send someone over and to alert her supervisors.

Traffic was slow, and it took them two hours to get to the suspect’s house. Two cops waited for them on the street, outside their own patrol car. They introduced themselves as Officer Vargas and Officer Bert. Officer Vargas was a ridiculously tall Hispanic cop. Officer Bert was short and plump; his skin had an orange tinge to it, and his hair was short, black, and spiky. This made him look a bit as if Ernie from Sesame Street had grown up and joined the police.

Jacob found the thought hilarious. He was beginning to feel giddy and cheerful, as he always did when he knew he had found the guy. Finding the guy was his favorite part of the job.

Tim Raffield’s place was a nice house in the middle of a quiet suburban neighborhood, the kind in which people greeted each other in the morning while getting the paper, or chatted while trimming their hedges during the weekend. Tim’s own house wasn’t any different from the rest. The front lawn had been mowed recently; its color was green to the point of feeling artificial. The entrance was meticulously clean, and a mat with the word “Welcome” on it lay squarely on the porch.

Officer Bert circled the house and located the back door. He crouched in the yard, midway between the front and back doors, and unholstered his gun. Officer Vargas fell back as Mitchell and Jacob approached the front door. Jacob knocked on the door and called “Police!”

The door was opened within a few seconds by a middle-aged blonde woman with an oven mitt on her hand.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Does Tim Raffield live here, ma’am?” Jacob asked.

“Yes, can I ask—”

“Is he here right now?”

“Yes, he’s in his room,” she said, motioning behind her. “Can you please tell me—”

Jacob gently slipped by her, drawing his gun; Mitchell followed him. Officer Vargas entered the house and stayed with the woman, ensuring that she didn’t interfere or risk herself in any way.

The door the woman had motioned to was ajar. Jacob kicked it and yelled “Police! Put your hands…” His voice trailed off.

Every wall in the room was plastered with printed screenshots from Dragonworld. The floor was a mess—dirty clothes everywhere, bedsheets crumpled in the corner, at least three empty cereal bowls in various locations. Tim Raffield was sitting at his desk, in front of his computer, the monitor displaying Dragonworld’s interface.

He couldn’t have been more than eleven years old.

Officer Bert barged in after Jacob and Mitchell, and stared.

“What?” Tim Raffield said in a nasal, high pitched voice.

“So…” Officer Bert said. “Detective Cooper, I guess you need our assistance arresting this suspect?”

Jacob holstered his gun.

“Maybe we can get some tear gas, I’m pretty sure we have some in the squad car,” Officer Bert suggested helpfully. “He looks as if he’s about to resist.”

“Tear gas?” The boy’s eyes opened wide; his voice became even higher than before. “I’m not about to resist!”

Jacob suddenly felt very weary. Finding the wrong guy was his least favorite part of the job.

“Or do you want us to use a taser? You know, just to make sure. I guess you guys back at Glenmore Park like to play it safe, huh?”

Jacob turned around to face Officer Bert.

“I could call SWAT,” Bert said. “We don’t want to take any chances here.”

“Thank you, Officer Bert,” Jacob said. “You’ve been very helpful.” He tried, unsuccessfully, to smile; the disappointment weighed heavily on him.

Officer Bert left, and Jacob heard him tell Officer Vargas “Those Glenmore Park detectives need backup to arrest an eleven-year-old…” The front door slammed shut behind the two patrol officers, and the rest of the sentence was mercifully unintelligible.

“Are you Tim Raffield?” Jacob asked.

“Yes,” the nasally voice piped. Tim’s mother barged in, a furious look on her face, the oven mitt still on her hand.

“How dare you intimidate my son like that!” she screamed, shaking her flower-pattern-covered hand threateningly. “I’m calling my attorney right now!”

“Ma’am,” Mitchell said, his voice calm and sweet. “There’s no need to be angry. A woman was murdered. Your son is a crucial witness. We just want to get his statement.”

Jacob was well aware that, in the realms of looks and charm, Mitchell easily outranked him. However, it still rankled to see how quickly the woman’s face softened, how fast the oven mitt of death was lowered.

“Oh,” she said. “I see. Well, as long as I’m present, I have no problem with that. I… when did he witness anything? At school?”

“We’re not at liberty to say, ma’am,” Mitchell said with a small, secretive smile on his face. The smile seemed to indicate that if he could, he would—and, in fact, he might call later to fill her in on the details. The woman seemed to relax even more.

“Tim,” Jacob said. “Do you play Lord Vaderon in Dragonworld?”

“Yeah,” Tim said.

“Do you know a player named Dona Aliysa?”

“No.”

“A character named Willow Hannigan, maybe?” Jacob asked.

“Oh, yeah, sure, I know Willow.”

“Did she file a complaint about you?”

“Yeah, but it was a bogus complaint,” Tim said, his voice wavering in anger and fear. “I wasn’t rude or anything.”

“You threatened Dona’s life several times,” Jacob said. “You even said you would find where she lived and strangle her.”

“Now look here!” the woman said. “This has to be a mistake. My son would never say such a thing. I’m calling my attorney, and I want you to get out!”

“Ma’am, we can continue this interview at our police station, back in Glenmore Park, or we can do it here,” Jacob said impatiently. “Calm down. We’re not going to arrest your son for murder.”

The woman seemed about to slap Jacob with her oven mitt. She huffed angrily, her face becoming red in patches. Jacob could see the resemblance to her son. Finally, she took a step back, and sat on Tim’s bed.

Jacob turned back to Tim. “I have a formal complaint about you,” he said. “There are chat logs.”

“I just said that stuff, I didn’t mean it! Everyone says things they don’t mean in Dragonworld,” Tim said.

That was probably partly true, Jacob thought. “Can you tell us what led to your threats?” he asked.

“She kept killing my warlock,” Tim said, tears springing into his eyes. “All the time! She and her asshole friend!”

“We’ve heard that you kept challenging her to fight,” Mitchell said.

“Yeah! Like a one-on-one fight. But he kept barging in, healing her. It was unfair! I didn’t have anyone healing me!”

“Who exactly are you talking about?” Jacob asked.

“That priest she always hangs around with. Brother Florentius, I think he’s called. He’s like… her boyfriend or something.”

“When was the last time you saw Willow?”

“I don’t know, a few days ago. She killed my warlock again, so I cursed at her a bit. Then she filed that complaint against me.”

“You haven’t seen her since then?”

“No, I’ve been on an ongoing quest in Granoldin. It’s in a completely different zone than the one she hangs around in lately.”

“Where were you two nights ago?” Jacob asked. The woman instantly stood up, her entire body tense.

“He was here!” she screamed, just as Tim said, “I was here.”

“Why aren’t you at school right now?” Jacob asked.

“He’s homeschooled!” the woman said sharply.

Great homeschooling, Jacob thought.

“Okay.” Jacob exchanged a look with Mitchell. “Thank you for your time. If you recall anything…” He hesitated.

Mitchell drew out his own card, gave it to the woman.

“Please, give Detective Mitchell a call,” Jacob finished.

They left the room; the woman followed them, hissing, “I’ll be calling my attorney about this. I have a friend who’s a journalist. I—”

“Mrs. Raffield,” Jacob said. “Have you ever spoken with Tim about the birds and the bees?”

“What?” she asked, momentarily taken aback.

“Did you talk to him about how kids are born? You know… When a daddy and a mommy love each other very much—”

“How dare you—”

“It’s just that he uses the word ‘fucking’ a lot in his chat,” Jacob said, pulling out the printouts of the chat logs and handing them to the woman. “And ‘suck my cock.’ Better make sure he knows what he’s talking about. Also, ‘double-fisted cunt’ and ‘asshole-licking bitch.’ You should discuss that in your mother-to-son talk as well. Good day, ma’am.” He touched his hat and walked out the front door.

Mrs. Raffield stayed blissfully mute until they got into their car, standing in the doorway of her house, holding the small stack of pages limply with her oven mitt.

This time, Bernard and Hannah decided to talk to Tarp in the police station. A man like him, rich and connected, was too much at ease in his own home. But get that man to the police station, past the entrance barrier, get an officer to frisk him and walk him through corridors packed with armed cops, with lowlife crooks, with prostitutes and drug dealers… and his self-confidence began to waver. He began to question his connections.

Would they really help him if he was in trouble? Sure, he’d played poker once with the mayor, but did the man even remember his name? Could his money get him out of a serious pickle? It could get him an expensive attorney, but even the rich sometimes went to prison. Expensive attorneys were not get out of jail free cards.

Roland Tarp had agreed to come to the police station to tie up some loose ends. But now, as he sat in the interrogation room, waiting for Hannah and Bernard to walk in, he clearly looked as if he regretted his decision. Hannah and Bernard watched him on the monitor as he checked his watch for the third time. They waited another moment, then walked inside and sat in front of him.

Bernard leaned forward and cleared his throat. They had decided that this time he would do the interrogating, using Tarp’s discomfort with black cops against him.

“Mr. Tarp,” he said. “Last time we met, you told us you ran into Frank Gulliepe by accident in the restaurant. Do you remember?”

“Of course I do,” Tarp said. “I would hardly forget something like that. I got thrown out.”

“Except it wasn’t by accident, was it, Tarp?” Bernard said.

“What?”

“You knew he would be there, didn’t you?”

“Of course not. How would I—”

“You had him followed, Tarp, don’t lie to us. You already told us you hired a private detective. He didn’t only get you Frank’s name, did he? He followed him around!”

“Absolutely not—”

“Was that your plan all along, Tarp? To have him followed until the right moment? Until he was alone and you had a tight alibi? Did you pay someone to kill him? Or did you fake your alibi? Which one was it, Tarp?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Tarp looked at Hannah, his face begging for her to stop this.

Hannah stared back at him calmly, her eyes narrowing slightly with each question.

“Your detective told you that Frank would be in the restaurant, didn’t he, Tarp? That’s how you knew where to go. And he also told you that Frank was back in his apartment that night he got stabbed, didn’t he? And then—”

“Okay!” Tarp shouted, “You’re right. My detective followed Frank around! Happy now?”

Bernard sat back, waiting for him to go on. The silence lengthened.

“I wanted him followed,” Tarp finally said. “I wanted to know everything there was to know about him. Do you know why? Because I wanted to destroy him.” Tarp’s fists tightened on the table. “I found out where he lived, where he worked. I was in the process of getting him fired. I was also getting some great pictures which I was planning on sending to all his friends. Give him a taste of his own medicine.”

Tarp gritted his teeth in what was almost a snarl. “No one messes with my wife, Detective. No one.”

“What happened that day in the restaurant?” Hannah asked in a cold tone.

“I lost my temper,” Tarp said. “I was monitoring my wife’s social networks—she was afraid to check them. That’s what that piece of shit did to her. I was monitoring them and he posted a new link. Another Photoshopped image. It showed her being… she was with a dog. I called the detective, asked where Frank was. The detective gave me the name of the restaurant. I drove over there, barged in, and threatened Frank to stay away from my wife. They kicked me out. It was embarrassing. I called off the tail after that happened. I had enough on Frank to make his life a living hell, and he stopped bothering my wife.”

“Except you didn’t call off the tail,” Bernard said. “You hired someone to kill Frank, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Tarp said, looking at Bernard. “I’m a businessman, not a criminal. How would I find someone to kill for me? Look, you don’t believe me? Ask the detective I hired. He’s an ex-cop, maybe you even know him. A guy named Adler?”

Bernard and Hannah looked at each other. Bernard’s heart sunk. So that was why the blue Ford had sounded so familiar.

“I want to call my lawyer,” Tarp said.

“Feel free,” Bernard said. “But please do it outside the station.”

“I’m free to go?”

“You were always free to go, Tarp,” Bernard said.

As the door closed behind Tarp, Bernard sighed deeply.

“Jurgen Adler,” he said. “Fuck my life.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Who should we check out next?” Mitchell asked. “The guy who was voted out of the guild sounds like maybe—”

“I don’t think there’s any point in following those leads,” Jacob said. “Who kills because of a game? This is pointless. We know who did it, right?”

Mitchell glanced at his partner. Jacob was driving with both hands on the wheel, a sure sign he was frustrated. When he was relaxed, he’d hold the wheel with one hand, the other hand resting on the window sill.

“We have a pretty solid guess,” Mitchell said carefully.

“There’s only one guy,” Jacob said. “Our victim didn’t really see anyone else. He has a criminal record. We need to focus on finding evidence on her boyfriend.”

“Her friend and her sister don’t think it was him,” Mitchell said.

They drove a bit in silence.

“We can get him to the station,” Mitchell said. “Let him sweat a bit in the interrogation room—”

“He won’t sweat,” Jacob said. “You saw how he reacted the first time. He’ll lawyer up in two seconds flat. And we have nothing on him. Nothing.” His fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

“We can call that guy Tim said hung around with Dona all the time,” Mitchell suggested. “Maybe she told him something.”

“Good idea,” Jacob said.

Mitchell dialed Trish Geller, Dona’s friend. She answered immediately. He asked her about Brother Florentius and she said, sure, he was part of their guild. His real name was Henry Konner, and she had his phone number.

Mitchell wrote down Henry’s number, his handwriting shaky from the car’s vibrations. The number had a Kentucky area code. He thanked Trish and called Henry.

“Hello?” a hoarse voice answered.

“Henry Konner?” Mitchell said.

“Yeah?”

“My name is Detective Mitchell Lonnie.”

“This is about Dona, right?” Henry asked. “Trish told me.”

“Yes, we were wondering if you had a few moments to talk…”

“Sure,” Henry said. “Anything to help you arrest him.”

“Arrest who?” Mitchell asked.

“Her killer. Her damn boyfriend. Blayze.”

Jurgen Adler loved to see the confusion in people’s eyes when he introduced himself. The name Jurgen invoked images of a blond man from Germany or Norway, probably six feet tall, wearing a dark coat, talking in short, heavy sentences. It definitely didn’t make people think of a short, constantly smiling, black-haired Chinese man. Yet that exactly was what Jurgen was.

He was only half Chinese, to be fair; the other half was indeed Norwegian. His father, Sven Adler, had actually been a tall, blond man who spoke in short, heavy sentences. But his mother was Chinese and, despite his name, Jurgen was one hundred percent his mother’s son.

“They need to stop drilling,” Jurgen said. “They need to stop yesterday. It’s already too late.”

As a private detective, Jurgen found himself spending very long hours in his car, a 2012 blue Ford Fiesta. In fact, he frequently spent more time in his car than in his own home. Stakeouts were a long and uncomfortable ordeal. Even worse, they were lonely. When he’d been a cop, Jurgen could talk to his partner during the stakeout, and time generally flew by. But these days he had no partner for his long hours of stalking. Lately, he’d begun having one-sided conversations with his car, which he dubbed “Sharon.”

“The point that you don’t seem to grasp,” he told his car angrily, “is that we have enough oil to last us fifty years. We don’t need to drill for more oil. We have oil pouring out of our ears.”

He and Sharon were talking politics while they waited for Vivian Ramen to emerge from her home. Harris Ramen suspected his wife was having an affair. Jurgen had been hired for the exciting task of seeing if Harris’s suspicions were true. This was his third day of investigation and the political discussion, which had started off mild, was getting heated. Sharon, Jurgen suspected, was a staunch Republican, her main agenda being the desire for oil. Jurgen’s passionate speech about global warming was falling on deaf ears.

“Here’s an interesting statistic for you. If we used all that oil, the amount of pollution that would—”

His phone started ringing. He checked the number, and whistled in surprise.

“Well, we haven’t heard from him in a long time, have we, Sharon?” he said, and answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Jurgen?” the familiar voice from the other side asked.

“Tweegie!” Jurgen said. “How have you been, man?”

“Fine,” Bernard said, clearly annoyed at the nickname. “Listen, do you have a few minutes?”

“For you? All the time in the world.”

“Good. There’s this case we’re working on, and it looks like one of the suspects hired you—”

“Oh, I won’t be talking about my clients,” Jurgen said quickly. “Not unless you have a warrant.”

“This guy told us to talk to you,” Bernard said. “His name is Roland Tarp and—”

“Even if he did, I won’t talk about it over the phone,” Jurgen said, interrupting Bernard again. “We have to talk face to face.”

“Okay. Can you come to the station?”

“I’m in the middle of a tail; I can’t go anywhere,” Jurgen said, shuddering at the thought of entering that station again. “Why don’t you come over here?”

“Jurgen, it’s a murder case.”

“All the more reason for you to hurry up,” Jurgen said.

Bernard testily asked for directions, which Jurgen was more than happy to give him. He then called Roland Tarp and made sure he could talk freely to the cops. After that, he looked around the car. He and Sharon hadn’t had any visitors for a long time, and the interior could do with some cleaning. There was a bottle on the floor in the backseat, half-full of sloshing yellow liquid that was not lemonade, as well as a thermos which under no circumstances should ever be opened by anyone except Jurgen himself. Both his camera detection kit and his surveillance kit were scattered all over the car. There was a ridiculous amount of burger wrappers, empty Styrofoam cups, and napkins everywhere. Just looking at his own car, thinking that someone other than himself might see it, made Jurgen feel embarrassed. He tidied up a bit.

Fifteen minutes later, a Dodge Charger parked next to Sharon. Jurgen tried to ignore the fact that he recognized the Charger all too well. It was the same car he and Bernard had driven when they were partners.

Bernard and his current partner, Hannah, got out of the car and walked over to Sharon. Bernard got into the front passenger’s seat. Hannah sat in the backseat. She looked around her with clear distaste in her eyes. Jurgen’s cleaning skills weren’t enough for her.

“It’s great to see you, Tweegie!” Jurgen beamed at Bernard. Bernard grunted in response. He was still angry. Jurgen was not surprised. Bernard was not the most forgiving person on the planet. Then again, Jurgen never let bad tempers get in the way of a perfectly good conversation. “I see you and Hannah are still partners. That’s great!” He turned back toward Hannah and asked, “How are you Hannah? Still punching pedophiles?”

“That only happened once,” Hannah said, her face becoming a bit pink.

“That’s not what I heard,” Jurgen said.

“You’re one to talk!” she said sharply.

“Enough,” Bernard said, his voice steely.

Jurgen turned back to Bernard. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Roland Tarp. He hired you to follow someone, right?”

“Frank Gulliepe,” Jurgen said, nodding. “A real asshole.”

“Frank’s dead,” Bernard said.

Jurgen didn’t even blink. Tarp had already told him that on the phone. “Then the world is a better place,” he said.

“We wanted to ask some questions about—”

“Hang on,” Jurgen tensed and stared outside. A garage door opened thirty feet from them. A red Nissan Murano convertible pulled out of the garage and drove down the street. Jurgen started the engine and slowly stepped on the gas pedal. Sharon moved forward, her engine humming in satisfaction.

“Hey, wait a moment,” Hannah said. “You can’t—”

“I need to follow that car,” Jurgen said. “You want to talk to me? Fine. You’re coming with me.”

“Damn it, Jurgen, we don’t have time for—” Bernard began.

“Make time,” Jurgen snapped. “This is what pays my rent. I don’t have a cop’s salary, you know.”

“Well, whose fault is that?”

Jurgen ignored him. The Nissan was driving south at a leisurely pace. Jurgen drove even slower, letting the distance between the cars expand. After a few minutes, the Nissan turned right, and moved out of sight. He instantly accelerated, his passengers shouting in surprise and anger.

“Seat belts,” he said. “You should probably use them.”

Jurgen’s style of tailing a car was a bit erratic. When the car was in sight, he did his best to stay far behind, to avoid drawing any suspicion. But once his quarry disappeared from sight he panicked and accelerated to catch up. When he caught up, he instantly slowed down to a crawl, to let the distance grow again. He was sure there was a better way to do this, but he hadn’t found it yet. As a cop, he’d rarely had to follow a car on his own.

“You should probably start asking your questions,” he said cheerfully as he turned right. He noticed the red color of the Nissan ahead of him, and pressed the brakes instantly.

“Jesus!” Bernard said, jolting forward.

“You want to ask me about Jesus?”

“I want to ask you about Tarp!”

“Ask away.”

“When did Tarp hire you to follow Frank?”

“About two weeks ago. I’ll have to check my calendar to be exact.”

“Okay. Can you do that later and send me an exact time and date?”

“Sure!” The Nissan disappeared again, and Jurgen hit the gas, his heart rate climbing. Where is it where is it where is it… there! Brakes.

“You’re awful at this,” Hannah said.

“I challenge you to do better,” Jurgen said angrily. “This isn’t a car chase! It’s a tail. I don’t have police helicopters or other patrol cars to help me.”

“The driver will notice you if you keep on driving like a madman,” Hannah pointed out.

“That… hardly ever happens,” Jurgen said.

“When did Tarp call off the tail on Frank?”

“Last Monday,” Jurgen said. “Said he had all he wanted.”

“Has he contacted you since?”

“Nope.”

“Have you seen Frank since?”

“Nope.” The Nissan accelerated onto the highway. Jurgen drove after it, taking the leftmost lane.

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary while you were tracking Frank?” Bernard asked.

“Define ordinary.”

“Don’t mess with me, Jurgen.”

“Well, he visited the Wexler Care Center by his apartment a lot,” Jurgen said. “He had a sister there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a good detective.”

“Okay, what else? You’ve been following him for two weeks; you must’ve noticed something, Jurgen.”

“Look, the guy didn’t lead a very interesting life. He’d go to that boring job of his in the morning, come back in the afternoon, spend most of his time at home in front of the computer.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He went on a couple of dates with that girl, the one in the restaurant. But she wasn’t the only one he was sleeping with. I saw at least two others. One of them was a pro. Frank liked having sex with the light turned on, so it was easy to get some good photos. My client was happy with them. Maybe one of the women he was sleeping with killed him.”

“We need names, Jurgen,” Bernard said.

“Look, I have a file on him and I’ll send it over to you, but I don’t have anything exciting there. Just some work acquaintances, a friend or two and the women he was having sex with.”

“We know he was using drugs.”

“Yeah, but so what? Get your head out of your ass, Bernard. Half this city is using drugs.”

“It’s getting off,” Hannah said.

“Huh?” Jurgen asked, confused.

“Your red Nissan. It’s getting off the highway.”

“Shit!” Jurgen slammed the brakes and twisted the wheel. Sharon swerved aside, crossing traffic-packed lanes, the passengers screaming obscenities. A truck honked its horn as Jurgen’s car veered in front of him, the driver close enough to see, his face twisted in horror. The car and the truck missed each other by mere inches, and Sharon shot off after the Nissan, Jurgen slowing down to a crawl as they got closer to the red car in front of them.

“Damn it, Jurgen!” Bernard shouted. “You’re even a worse private detective than a cop!”

“Go to hell!” Jurgen said, gritting his teeth. “I was a good cop.”

Bernard snorted and stared out his window. Jurgen knew what he was thinking. Internal affairs hadn’t exposed the results of their investigation, but they’d had enough to get Jurgen to quit. He often wondered what would have happened if he had stayed. Would they have managed to implicate him in the crimes of bribery and misconduct?

Maybe. The dirt had been there to be found, Jurgen had never been the cleanest cop around. He had tried, though. He’d been a good detective, cracked many cases before the stench of corruption started reeking bad enough to get internal affairs poking around.

Whatever. Water under the bridge.

The red Nissan stopped, and Jurgen turned onto a side street and parked the car.

“Well?” Hannah asked, still breathing hard. “Is this where you’ll get your dirty pictures? Will your client be happy?”

“Doubt it,” Jurgen said tiredly. “This is where she takes Pilates lessons. The teacher is a sixty-year-old woman.”

“Well,” Hannah said, “this has been… anticlimactic.”

“Welcome to the fun life of the private detective,” Jurgen said.

“Our car is parked back where we met you,” Hannah said.

“Well, this woman is bound to return home eventually,” Jurgen said. “Though she tends to go shopping after Pilates. It would probably be more efficient if you got a cab to drive you back.”

The detectives got out of the car. For a second, Bernard looked as if he was about to say something, but then he shut the door and walked away.

Jurgen sighed. This had been more depressing than he had anticipated.

“Well, Sharon,” he said. “We have fifty minutes until the lesson ends. Where were we?”

The phone interview with Henry Konner was important enough to conduct in the police station. Jacob and Mitchell called from Jacob’s phone, the call recorded like all other calls on the department’s landlines.

“Henry?” Mitchell said. “It’s Detective Mitchell Lonnie. Can you talk now?”

“Yeah.”

“You should know we are recording this conversation.” Mitchell said.

“Okay.”

“Can you repeat what you told me when I called you earlier?”

“Yeah, sure. I said that Dona’s boyfriend, Blayze, killed her.”

“Can you tell us how you know that?”

“Yes. Me and Dona talked a lot. We were really close. Lately, she’s been telling me that her boyfriend was scaring her.”

“Did she tell you why?”

“She said he had hit her a couple of times, that he began drinking again. And that he needed money.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know why he needed the money. Maybe he was on drugs, or he was gambling it, I don’t know. But he kept asking her for money. She said that she only started looking for a job to get him more cash.”

“Do you know for a fact that she gave him money?”

“Yeah, she gave him money out of the allowance that her parents gave her, but that wasn’t enough.”

Jacob and Mitchell looked at each other.

“So what happened then?”

“Well, he started pressuring her into selling her Buffy collection. She had a lot of Buffy stuff, you know? Like… She had a signed poster. It was probably worth two hundred bucks. And a Spike plushie, you can’t get those anymore. She had a replica of Faith’s knife, that was also worth a lot, I guess… Anyway, she had a bunch of stuff. And Blayze wanted her to sell all that. She didn’t want to, and he got violent.”

“Violent how?”

“She said he swore at her, and hit her in the stomach…” Henry’s voice began to waver. “That bastard. I mean… she was such a wonderful human being.”

“That’s it?” Mitchell asked. “Did she say anything else?”

“Yeah,” Henry said after a second. “She said that Blayze was coming over two nights ago. She sounded really frightened. I told her she should call it off, tell him to go to hell, but she wouldn’t.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I guess she should have listened to me,” Henry whispered, and began sobbing.

Chapter Nineteen

Blayze did not look surprised when Mitchell and Jacob came to arrest him. He mostly seemed weary. As they walked him into the police station, his shoulders slumped, his feet began to shuffle, and Jacob could see the instant transformation: a free man becoming an incarcerated criminal again.

Jacob was hoping for a quick confession. He geared himself up for the aggressive cop routine: threatening Blayze with the fingerprints they had, the DNA samples they could acquire, the testimony of the murdered victim’s close friend. Blayze’s criminal record did not improve his chances, of course.

If they played this right, Jacob thought, looking at the broken man in the handcuffs, they could shut the case before dinner. He could eat with his family tonight. The thought was encouraging. Maybe they could go out, eat somewhere nice. He vaguely remembered that his daughter had recently requested they eat at a Syrian restaurant she had heard of. Jacob wondered what one ate in a Syrian restaurant. He was pretty sure hummus was involved.

“I want a lawyer,” Blayze said, as soon as they sat down in the interrogation room.

Any hope for hummus that evening quickly dissipated. In fact, Blayze didn’t seem broken at all, now that Jacob looked more closely. He just seemed like a man hunching down in the rain, knowing he had foolishly left his umbrella at home, preparing himself for the inevitable consequence of getting wet.

They let Blayze make a phone call. While they waited for his lawyer, Jacob and Mitchell worked on paperwork. They gave Blayze a Miranda rights form to sign, though he clearly knew and understood his rights. Jacob called home. Marissa answered, and was unhappy to hear that her husband would once again be late. She said something about a dinner in the fridge. If there was a passive aggressive undercurrent in her tone, it was well hidden. Jacob doubted it. Marissa knew the man she had married. She had given up on trying to change him long ago.

Blayze’s lawyer turned out to be a short, chubby, bald man who looked around him with wonder in his eyes as if it was the first time he’d ever been in a police station. He reminded Jacob of a hobbit, and an image popped in his mind of the lawyer sitting in his burrow, smoking a pipe, his hairy feet on a small stool. He introduced himself as Mr. Dobbyn.

The hobbit and his client talked for a few minutes in the interrogation room, after which Mr. Dobbyn came out of the room and demanded his client be set free. The police had nothing on him besides unwarranted prejudice due to his prior convictions. His client was trying to start fresh with a clean slate, and the police were harassing him. His client had just lost the woman he loved in a most violent way, and the police could maybe do their job and arrest the actual killer, instead of badgering the poor, grieving man. There would be a civil suit.

“Okay,” Jacob said. “Are you done? Did you get everything out of your system? Can we please interrogate Mr. Terry?”

“If you insist on prolonging this charade,” Mr. Dobbyn said. “Be my guest. I will be in the room the entire time, advising my client.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jacob said. He did not like Mr. Dobbyn. He thought the lawyer gave hobbits a bad reputation.

Mitchell and Jacob sat down with Mr. Dobbyn and Blayze.

“Mr. Terry, can you tell us where you were on Tuesday, the 10th of October, during the evening and the following night?” Jacob said.

“I was on a fishing trip all that night,” Blayze said.

“Was there anyone with you on that fishing trip?”

“You know damn well there wasn’t.”

“Did anyone see you on the way to the fishing trip? On the way back?”

“Not that I can think of.”

Mr. Dobbyn whispered something in Blayze’s ear. Blayze frowned, then said, “My car was out of gas on the way to the bay. I filled it.”

“Can you tell us where that was?”

“I don’t know exactly. I can show you the road I was driving on. It was in the afternoon.”

Jacob sighed and noted this in his notebook. There would be a lot of security footage to scan. Maybe they could pass the case over to the district attorney, let his guys watch hours and hours of security tapes, searching for Blayze’s car. In any case, it proved nothing.

“You didn’t call Dona Aliysa, and inform her that you were about to visit her?”

“My client already told you he didn’t,” Mr. Dobbyn said.

“I didn’t,” Blayze said, ignoring his lawyer.

“Mr. Terry, did you have a cash flow problem lately?”

“Don’t answer that,” Mr. Dobbyn said.

“Why not?” Blayze asked.

“Because I told you not to,” Mr. Dobbyn said.

“I’d prefer not to answer that,” Blayze told Jacob.

“Why not?”

“Because my lawyer told me not to.”

“We’re about to acquire a search warrant for your bank account,” Jacob said.

“I’m very happy for you.”

“It would be better if you cooperate.”

“Better for whom?”

“Mr. Terry,” Mitchell said, leaning forward, “did you take money from Dona Aliysa?”

Blayze’s eyes widened. “No, I did not,” he said.

“She did not help you with some cash flow problems?”

“No.”

“Did you demand that she sell some of her memorabilia collection to solve a cash flow problem you were having?”

“Don’t answer that,” Mr. Dobbyn said. “Detective, where are you going with this?”

“Just asking questions.”

“I think we’re done here,” Mr. Dobbyn said.

“Hang on,” Blayze said. His fingers clutched the table tightly, white with effort. “I don’t know what gave you that idea. I would never ask Dona to sell anything from her collection. I mean… she loved that collection. In fact, I bought her one of the original props used in the series. It was a bracelet. She kept it in her dresser.”

Jacob flipped the pages of the case file until he found the list of the memorabilia items. There was indeed a bracelet there.

“Can you describe the bracelet?” he asked.

“Yeah, it was like a silver bracelet with a white stone. Cost a lot.”

“Did it?”

“I have the PayPal receipt. I can send it to you if you want.”

Jacob frowned. He sat back. Something suddenly began to bother him.

Mitchell glanced at Jacob, then said, “Mr. Terry, did you ever hit Dona Aliysa?”

“Of course not!”

“Would it surprise you to know that she had told someone you did?”

Blayze stared at Mitchell, his face becoming deathly pale.

Mr. Dobbyn shuffled his papers. “My client will not answer any more—”

“I never hit her,” Blayze said. “Never.” His voice was hoarse, as if he was on the verge of tears.

Mitchell waited. Then he glanced at Jacob. Jacob realized his partner was waiting for him to pounce with a new set of questions, grilling the suspect, unbalancing him even more.

“Thank you, Mr. Terry,” he said instead. “If you’ll excuse me and my partner, we need to verify several things before we continue with this interrogation.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Mr. Dobbyn said. “You’ll set my client free. You have nothing to—”

“We have enough evidence against your client to keep him here, Mr. Dobbyn,” Jacob said shortly. He got up and left the room.

Mitchell quickly followed him. “What’s wrong, Jacob?” he said. “We were halfway there! He was bound to slip soon and—”

“Henry Konner told us that Blayze was trying to get Dona to sell her collection to get money,” Jacob said.

“Yeah, he did. Is that what’s bothering you? The bracelet? Maybe Blayze bought her the bracelet when he was flush, then lost his money later. Maybe he got her that bracelet when he was madly in love with her. Maybe he was lying and he didn’t get it at all. Who knows? We need to interrogate—”

“That’s not what’s bothering me,” Jacob said. He opened the case file and flipped the pages. “Look. Here’s a list of the stuff we found, her collection. See that? There’s a jacket that the Buffy actress wore in one of the episodes. Do you remember what Matt said? He said that the jacket was worth about three thousand dollars. Here, the list of jewelry props and prop replicas in her dresser. There are some pretty expensive items here.”

“What’s your point?” Mitchell asked.

“When Konner told us about his chat with Dona, about the monetary value of her collection, he talked about a poster, a knife replica, and a plushie—random bits from her collection—but he never mentioned the really expensive stuff. That’s a bit weird. I mean, he was trying to make a point. He was claiming that Dona told him that Blayze was forcing her to sell her collection for money. But he just mentioned those comparatively cheap items.”

“Well… okay. What does that tell us?”

“The jacket was in the closet. The jewelry was in the dresser. The poster, the plushie, the replica—all those things that Konner mentioned were out in the open.”

Mitchell blinked, then his eyes widened as realization sunk in. “Konner didn’t know about the items in Dona’s collection because she told him about them,” he said.

“No,” Jacob said. “He knew about them because he saw them, when he was in her room.”

Chapter Twenty

“Okay, then,” Bernard said when he and Hannah finally got back to the station. “What’s going on with our search warrant? We really need to check his finances, Hannah. He could have hired someone else to kill Frank. After all, it isn’t likely he’d ask an ex-cop to do that.”

Hannah gave it a moment’s thought. Bernard was probably right. Jurgen was not hit man material, after all. He wasn’t anything material, as far as she could tell, though she knew that before the internal affairs investigation he’d been thought of as an excellent detective. But Tarp could have found someone else to do his dirty work. She didn’t buy the whole “I wouldn’t know where to look” routine. A person like Tarp always knew someone who knew someone.

“Hang on,” she said. “I’ll call them.”

The woman in the DA’s office assured Hannah they were checking on the matter, and they’d have an answer for her the following morning. Hannah curbed the rising frustration and thanked her coldly. She hung up and turned to Bernard.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Let’s check some of the other suspects.”

“Sure,” Bernard said, groaning as he sat in his chair. “Who do you want to talk to next? His teacher, whom he charmingly called an ugly stinking whore, or that Facebook friend of his whom he threatened to rape?”

“I’m starting to think the world wouldn’t be such a bad place if this murder was left unsolved,” Hannah said, her skin crawling. “Okay, hang on. Let’s zoom out a bit, think this case through again.” She approached the small white board in the squad room. The day before, while researching, they had used it to outline the case’s details. It had a timeline, a list of suspects, some with little notes written next to them, the murder scene diagram, pictures of Chad Grimes and Jenny and Ronald Tarp. It looked very professional.

“Okay,” Bernard said, rolling his chair lazily to sit closer to the board. “Let’s go over the timeline. We’ll treat anything that’s corroborated by two unrelated witnesses as a fact.”

“Right.” Hannah said, and located a red sharpie. “Okay, Frank and Jerome went out for drinks, because Jerome was feeling down about his breakup.”

“Wait. Before that, Frank visited his sister in the care center.”

“That’s right. He was there until… six-thirty.” She marked an X on the board’s timeline.

“And then, sometime in the evening… do we know what time they left?”

“Nine-thirty,” Hannah said, marking the timeline.

“Right. At nine-thirty, Frank and Jerome left Frank’s home and went to Leroy’s.”

“We can’t really be sure they went straight to Leroy’s,” Hannah said. “Jerome could be lying about that.”

“Okay. Anyway, they eventually got to Leroy’s, where they stayed until one A.M., buying drugs from Chad Grimes, hassling Jerome’s girlfriend via Twitter, and generally acting like dipshits.”

“We know this because it’s corroborated by the bartender and by Grimes,” Hannah said. “Then they went to Frank’s place, possibly followed by someone—”

“I don’t think they were followed,” Bernard said. “The red Toyota Corolla was parked near Frank’s house.”

“Whoever parked it there could have followed them to Leroy’s and back,” Hannah pointed out.

“Sounds like a lot of trouble to go through.”

“Whatever. They got back. Had a drink. Jerome allegedly left; Frank locked the door. Then, a minute or two later, at one twenty-five there was a scream—”

“Allegedly.”

“Well… Petal also heard it, but allegedly Jerome heard it from the staircase. He stated that he ran up, saw someone running down the stairs, got to the top floor, saw Frank dead, screamed himself, which got the neighbor out of her apartment.”

Hannah paused and chewed her lip, staring at Chad Grimes’s picture. She wanted to find the missing part. She wanted the epiphany that made the case clear, that made her go “Aha!” just before she collected all the involved parties in the mansion’s guest room to tell them how she had cleverly solved the case. Not for the first time, she felt frustrated with murder cases in real life, which were messy, conflicted, and never ended with the detective cleverly twirling his mustache.

“Right,” Bernard said. “We know that someone was probably lurking in the corridor because Matt found his fingernails. And we have the taxi driver’s testimony that a person really did run out of the building, so it sounds like Jerome was telling the truth.”

“So,” Hannah said.

“So,” Bernard said.

“What did we miss?”

“Maybe Petal did it,” Bernard said.

“Maybe the butler did it,” Hannah said, hitting the whiteboard with her open palm “Damn it! What the hell are we missing, Bernard? So many leads, and we’re getting nowhere!”

“Cool it, Hannah!” Bernard said, his own voice rising. “Losing your shit isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Well, neither is anything else!”

Bernard clenched his jaw. “You’re just impatient,” he said. “There’s a bunch of things we’re waiting for. The DMV records, results for the DNA tests from the fingernails, the warrant. In a few days it’ll all be crystal clear.”

“In a few days, the murderer could be in Mexico!”

“He could be there now. Relax, Hannah. Wait a few more days. We’ll crack this thing wide open.”

Hannah wanted to scream, but she didn’t. She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. She could never make Bernard understand how she felt, as if she were in a constant race in which the ground itself was escaping her feet. As if she were trying to catch a train that was about to leave, not knowing where she could buy a ticket. She needed to have results. She needed the captain and the chief to know they could trust her to crack cases, or… or… She took another deep breath.

“What aren’t we asking ourselves?” she said, her tone much calmer, in contrast with the way she felt.

“Where did the knife go?” Bernard asked.

“The killer probably took it with him,” Hannah said. “Why did Frank target all these women?”

“Misogyny?” Bernard guessed. “A dominant mother? Why do other internet trolls do what they do?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said.

“Neither do I.”

“I need to pee.”

“Knock yourself out,” Bernard said.

Hannah went to the bathroom. She closed the stall door behind her, considered padding the toilet seat, and decided it wasn’t worth the bother. As she sat on the bare plastic, her mind began to wander. It hopped from an advertisement she’d seen on TV to a random thought about the weather to the case. Then she tried to remember when her dad’s birthday was. It was pretty close, but when was it exactly? She always forgot. She’d have to ask her sister. She used to be able to remember birthdays, but then Facebook began to remember them for her, and all the dates evaporated from her brain.

Then, suddenly, something clicked.

Jacob had once told her that he solved half his murder cases on the toilet. She was pretty sure he was exaggerating, but she couldn’t argue with the fact that being in the bathroom or the shower somehow gave everything a fresh perspective. And now, as she carefully thought over the things she’d heard in the past day, she arrived at a conclusion. It wasn’t an “Aha” moment—she hadn’t cracked the case, and there would be no twirling of mustaches. Just two puzzle pieces that clicked together, a new angle they hadn’t checked yet.

She flushed, washed her hands, and returned to the squad room.

“Jurgen told us that Frank liked having sex with the light on,” she said to Bernard.

“That’s right,” Bernard said, his eyes on his monitor, reading an e-mail.

“And Jerome said that Frank asked him if he had any sex clips to upload online to humiliate his ex.”

“Yup. He was a real awesome guy.”

“Do you think that maybe the reason that Frank liked to have sex with the lights turned on was because he was filming it?”

Bernard turned around and looked at her. “It’s possible,” he said after a second.

“And then maybe he uploaded those movie clips to the web. Just as another sort of abuse.”

“Maybe… what are you getting at?”

“Well, maybe he has an account on some porn site somewhere to which he uploads those movie clips. Our suspect list might not be complete.”

“Hang on,” Bernard said. “Are you looking for even more suspects? Don’t we have enough?”

“I’m not looking for suspects,” Hannah told him. “I’m looking for the killer. Bailey was right. People don’t kill because of a mean tweet.”

“Fine.” Bernard raised his hands in frustration. “Let’s have a look.”

They opened Frank Gulliepe’s e-mail account again, and began to search patiently through the e-mails for anything that might belong to a porn site. They almost missed it. They were looking for words like porn and xxx, but then Hannah noticed an e-mail for which the subject was “Ex-revenge: complete your account.” It piqued her curiosity, and she clicked it. It was a registration e-mail for the site ex-revenge. Its tagline was Submit your ex-gf for our pleasure, and get your revenge!!!

The site had a depressingly large number of images and videos, mostly of women, for the most part uploaded without any consent. Each image, Hannah realized in disgust, could be tagged with the woman’s e-mail address, Twitter handle, Facebook account and even telephone number, so the site’s patrons could harass the victims of the site, and let them know their privacy had been deeply invaded.

“This is sick,” Hannah said.

“Yeah,” Bernard said.

“Let’s look for our victim,” Hannah said. “Though I seriously hope that whoever killed him gets away with it.”

The account name was slut_punisher. They searched the site for slut_punisher and quickly found his profile page. Three videos, eleven images to his name. He didn’t tag any of the videos or the images with the woman’s name or details, which was fortunate, or unfortunate, depending on the perspective. It definitely made Hannah and Bernard’s life more difficult, but Hannah was nevertheless relieved.

“We should try and cross-reference these with Frank’s Facebook friends, I guess,” Hannah said.

“Should we?” Bernard asked. “It would take forever. And we haven’t looked through the current list of suspects yet. Okay, so he was an even worse piece of garbage than we thought, but I’m not sure that—”

“She looks familiar,” Hannah said, pointing at one of the thumbnails of a girl straddling Frank in his bed, completely naked. She seemed oblivious to being filmed, a smile of pleasure on her face, her eyes closed. Her hair was in disarray, covering part of her face.

“I don’t recognize her,” Bernard said. He moved the cursor to close the browser window.

“Hang on,” Hannah said. “Click it.”

“You click it,” Bernard said sharply, then got up and walked away.

Hannah raised an eyebrow at the sudden outburst. She grabbed the mouse and clicked the image.

The video window appeared on screen. The recording was low quality, probably taken by a web camera. Hannah guessed it was the laptop’s web camera, since they hadn’t found any other recording gear in Frank’s apartment. The girl and Frank groaned in unison, the girl gyrating slowly. Hannah found herself transfixed by the movie. She had watched porn before, of course, but this was different. These weren’t actors, expertly showing the viewer what he wanted to see. These were two random people simply having sex for their own pleasure. The noises and movements were completely different, the camera’s angle a bit off.

Hannah suddenly realized she wasn’t even focusing on the girl’s face anymore. She was completely mesmerized by the scene. She shook her head, took a deep breath, and forced herself to look only at the girl’s face. The girl suddenly threw her head back, and the movement exposed her profile completely to the camera. Hannah paused the video, and stared at it. She frowned. Then she opened Frank’s Instagram page and scrolled down.

“Found her,” she called to Bernard. “It’s the girl he was dating. The one who was with Frank when Tarp threatened him in the restaurant.”

“Yeah?” Bernard said. “Jacob and Mitchell interviewed her.”

“Right,” Hannah said. She located the interview report and scanned it.

“Her name is Lyla Harper,” she said. “She works at Bill’s Pizzushi Place. It’s a restaurant, I guess.” She opened a new tab, googled Bill’s Pizzushi Place.

“Yeah,” she said. “Here. It’s an Italian-Japanese restaurant. What a stupid mix. Want to check it out? It’s located at…” she paused.

“What?” Bernard asked.

“The owner’s name is Bill Harper,” Hannah said. “Harper. Just like this girl.”

“You think they’re related?” Bernard asked.

“Probably.”

They sat in silence for several seconds.

“A sushi restaurant would probably have a large, smooth, sharp knife.” Bernard said.

“It definitely would,” Hannah agreed.

“Let’s check what Mr. Harper drives,” Bernard said.

Chapter Twenty-One

“You seem pissed off,” Hannah told Bernard as he drove them to Bill’s Pizzushi Place.

Bernard realized his jaw was clenched tight. “Yeah,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s this case. Got under my skin.”

“Yeah. Gulliepe is a real asshole.”

Bernard nodded. That wasn’t all of it. There was something that angered him even more. As they’d been looking at the images in Frank’s account on ex-revenge, Bernard realized he was turned on. He actually wanted to watch those women having sex, to watch those videos published without their consent. Frank had somehow managed to contaminate even him, making him a low human being who could find this invasion of privacy arousing. He thought of Frank’s victims. Women and spouses delighted to hear that a human being had been murdered. One of them had become sufficiently enraged to stab Frank repeatedly. Frank’s best friend had been driven to harass his ex-girlfriend. Frank Gulliepe had managed to ruin almost anyone he knew. He was a walking, breathing cancer.

They parked in front of Bill’s Pizzushi Place. The skies were beginning to darken; the sun had almost completely set. The faded sign was illuminated by a bright, ungainly neon frame. The restaurant’s interior was dim, though Bernard wasn’t sure if this was due to a desire to make the lighting a bit more romantic, or if it was just an effort to reduce the electricity bill. Whichever it was, one thing was clear in the dim light: the restaurant was empty.

They walked inside. Only one waitress worked in the small space. Lyla Harper was wiping one of the tables. As they walked in, she raised her head.

“Hello,” she said. “A table for two?”

“Lyla Harper?” Bernard asked, though he knew it was her. He flicked open his badge. “I’m Detective Gladwin; this is my partner, Detective Shor. We’re investigating the death of Frank Gulliepe.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice weak. “I thought it was investigated by those other two. I don’t remember their names.”

“They’re assisting us,” Bernard said. “Would you mind if we ask you some additional questions?”

“I…” It seemed for a moment as if she was about to refuse. Then she said. “Sure, no problem. Please do.”

“You were dating Frank Gulliepe, right?”

“Well… we only went on a couple of dates,” she said.

“When did you realize that he’d published a video of you two having sex?” Bernard asked. He hadn’t been sure if Lyla knew about it before he asked, but her face told him everything.

“What?” she asked, her voice shaking. “What do you mean?”

“You know what he means,” Hannah said. “Frank Gulliepe uploaded a video of you two online. We know that you saw it.”

A single tear ran down her cheek. “Yeah, I saw it,” she said.

“When?”

“It was during my shift,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Two customers had a laptop on the table, and they were looking at it… And then at me. They were laughing…” She paused.

Bernard found himself trying to avoid her eyes. He forced himself to look straight. “Go on,” he said quietly.

“I took a look. Just one look. At first I was just a bit disgusted. I mean, who watches porn in a public space? But then I recognized… I recognized Frank. And then I realized the other person on the screen was me.” She wiped her eye with her finger and sniffled. “I turned away and ran into the kitchen. I hid there until I was sure they were gone.” Her voice became bitter. “They left a huge tip, probably for the show.”

“It must have been horrible,” Hannah said.

“I would never have thought… I mean I’ve heard stories of people it happened to,” Lyla said. “I always thought it was a bit their fault, you know? But Frank seemed so sweet. The night that… that he filmed the movie? I slept over and he brought me breakfast in bed. Coffee and muffins. He bought them at a bakery down the street. It was just like in the movies. I actually thought that I might have found someone.”

“But then you saw the video.”

“Yeah.” She looked at them. “Did you watch the video?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Hannah said.

“Oh.” Lyla said, looking at the floor. Bernard wanted to tell her that he hadn’t, that he’d refused to look, but his mouth stayed closed, his lips tight.

“What did you do then?” Hannah asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did you confront Frank? Did you tell anyone?”

“I… No.”

“Lyla, is your father here?”

She looked at them pleadingly. “Please don’t bring him into this. It’s been bad enough—”

“Excuse me,” a strong voice said. A man entered the room through the kitchen door, looking at them with his brow furrowed. He had thick, black hair, and his eyes were almond-shaped, just like Lyla’s. In fact, almost all his features were mirrored in Lyla’s face, Bernard realized. Thick lips, small ears, the same frown, almost identical eyebrows. The similarities between Bill Harper and his daughter were staggering.

“Is there a problem, Lyla?” the man asked.

“Bill Harper?” Bernard said, routinely. “I’m Detective Gladwin; this here is Detective Shor. We’re investigating the murder of Frank Gulliepe.”

“Yeah, my daughter told me about that guy,” the man said, his voice rough. “Why are you bothering her again?”

“Frank Gulliepe uploaded a video of your daughter and himself online,” Bernard said, doing his best to ignore Lyla’s despairing eyes. He focused on Bill’s face instead.

The man’s entire face had gone completely blank. Bernard knew that face well. It was the poker face of people who didn’t know what a poker face was. It was a poker face that screamed of deceit.

“You saw the video,” Bernard said quietly. “Didn’t you, Mr. Harper?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please leave; we’re about to close.”

“Frank Gulliepe was stabbed to death in his home. The murderer was seen leaving the scene in a red Toyota Corolla,” Bernard said. “Isn’t there a red Toyota Corolla registered to your name, Mr. Harper?”

“It’s a very common car, Detective.”

“It is,” Bernard agreed. His eyes flicked to Bill’s fingers. “I notice that you have a bad habit of biting your fingernails. My wife does it when she’s nervous or angry, it drives me insane. We found some fingernails at the crime scene, Mr. Harper. We can get DNA from fingernails, did you know that? Who would that DNA match, I wonder?”

Bill Harper clenched his jaw tight enough that it was a wonder his teeth weren’t crushed to a fine dust.

“Frank was stabbed with a very large knife, dull on one edge, sharp on the other. My partner and I searched online a bit, and you know what we found out? There’s a sushi knife called Deba. I understand that it’s practically essential in a sushi restaurant. Do you have Deba knives, Mr. Harper?”

“I don’t like where this is going, Detective,” Bill Harper said.

Bernard noticed the flicker in his eyes when the knife was mentioned. Bernard was almost sure there was relief there. So Bill Harper had gotten rid of the knife.

“Where were you two nights ago, Mr. Harper?” Hannah asked.

“At my home.”

“Can anyone corroborate that?”

“My wife.”

“I have a daughter, too, Mr. Harper,” Bernard said quietly. “If someone did this to her… I’m not sure what I would have done. My mind won’t even go there. When I start thinking of it, my thoughts get foggy with rage. I would definitely want to get the guy who hurt her like that. I would want to make him pay.”

Bill Harper said nothing.

“We have enough evidence,” Bernard said. “We could take you right now, go to trial. The DNA evidence would be enough…” He knew it wouldn’t be. It was outside the apartment. It was circumstantial. Harper’s lawyer would have a field day with it. “But here’s the thing. At the trial, the prosecutor will need to show the jury the motive for the murder. And when he does that, he’ll show them the video. He’ll show it several times. I know enough about you, Mr. Harper, and I know you wouldn’t want your daughter to—”

“Enough,” Bill Harper said. “That’s enough.” His shoulders slumped.

Bernard realized that Lyla was crying softly. Had she known? He suspected she had.

“If I confess, there will be no trial? The video will not be shown?”

“I can make sure of that,” Bernard said.

“A few days ago, I saw Lyla run into the kitchen,” Bill said. “She was crying. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. And when I walked in here, I saw these two men. Laughing. Their laptop open. And I saw the video.”

Hannah and Bernard exchanged glances.

“My mind—as you said, Detective—became foggy. I don’t remember much of that day. I remember getting the address from Lyla. I remember getting there, realizing that he was not home. I almost left, but then I thought He’s probably out, he’ll return soon, I’ll kill him as soon as I see him. I waited.”

Lyla collapsed on the floor, sobbing. Hannah helped her up, led her away, outside.

“He came back with a friend, and I hid. I decided to wait a bit longer. The friend left. I waited a few more seconds, then I knocked on the door. He opened it almost immediately. He must have thought it was his friend, who forgot something.” Bill sighed and shook his head. “There was no talking. I did not tell him that this was for hurting my daughter. I did not wait for him to realize that he brought it upon himself. If there’s anything I regret, Detective, it’s not doing that. He should have known.” He fell silent.

“And then?” Bernard asked, prodding the man to get over the final hurdle, to confess to the murder.

“The knife was in my hand. I stabbed him. He screamed. I stabbed him more. Then I took off. I ran downstairs, got into my car and drove away. I drove to the park and threw the knife into the lake. Then I drove back home. My wife was already asleep. I tied my clothes in a garbage bag and threw them away. Then I went to bed.”

Bill and Bernard looked at each other for a few seconds.

“I would do it again,” Bill said.

“Yeah.” Bernard said.

“That man deserved to die.”

“Maybe.”

“So what now?”

“Now you come with us,” Bernard said, and reached for his handcuffs.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jacob and Mitchell entered the police department in Georgetown, Kentucky, looking around them. Whenever he visited a strange police station, Jacob was always struck by how different things were from their own station. This station’s clearly brand-new metal detector, which made an angry buzz whenever someone with metal passed through, was completely different from their own ages-old metal detector and its high-pitched beeping. The bathroom near the entrance, on the opposite side of where it should have been—different door, different sign. The reception desk, mahogany-colored, fancy-looking, but behind it one could spot a jumble of paperwork, unlike their own plain, worn, white counter, immaculately clean and orderly.

Jacob always reached the same conclusion: their station was better. Why would anyone want to work in this place, where the soft drink vending machine was clearly in the wrong place, and completely lacking in Sprite?

“Excuse me,” Mitchell said to the receptionist. “We’re here to see Detective Vern? We’re Mitchell Lonnie and Jacob Cooper from the Glenmore Park police department.”

The receptionist, a bald, busy-looking cop, asked Mitchell to wait a moment, and made a call. He repeated the information given to him, then hung up.

“He’ll be right over,” he told the detectives, and resumed staring at his monitor. Jacob thought Officer McLure, their own receptionist, would have asked them if they wanted to sit down, maybe offered them a drink of water. Their receptionist was much better, no doubt about it.

“Cooper and Lonnie, right?” A dark man in a gray suit approached them. He had a pair of large glasses that struck Jacob as hipstery, and clearly clashed with his suit. “I’m Detective Vern. I guess you had quite a long drive, huh?”

“You bet,” Jacob said, shaking Vern’s hand. “Over thirteen hours.”

“I’d have let the guy off the hook,” Vern said, grinning. “Thirteen hours! Damn.”

It had indeed been a very long drive. They’d driven late into the night, stopping at a motel around two A.M., then woken up around eight and been back in the car by nine. Mitchell had suggested they fly, but Jacob said it would be much easier if they drove in their car. He didn’t mention the fact that he was deathly afraid of flying. Why would anyone fly anywhere if he could drive there? He had managed to get hold of Detective Vern on the way, with the help of their own dispatcher, and had filled him in on the details of the case.

“When is Konner getting here?” Jacob asked Vern as they walked down a crowded corridor.

“Oh, he’s already here. Been here for the past half hour,” Vern said.

“Seriously?” Jacob felt annoyed. “I thought you’d wait.”

“Well, we knew you were about to get here, and we wanted to make sure that he didn’t disappear. Besides, I thought you’d be happy if we let him cook a bit first.”

Vern pushed open a door labeled Interrogation Room 2 and walked inside. Jacob and Mitchell followed him. Jacob quickly realized that when Vern had said they let Konner cook, he meant it very literally. The room was stiflingly hot. Konner, a young blond man with a pale face, sat next to the gray interrogation table, drinking from a cup of water. He was clearly sweating, the bright light in the room emphasizing the droplets on his brow and neck. Jacob and Mitchell sat down on the other side of the table. Vern stood behind them, folding his hands.

“Henry Konner?” Jacob said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“It’s okay,” Konner said, sounding as if it wasn’t okay at all.

“I’m Detective Jacob Cooper. This is my partner, Mitchell Lonnie, to whom you’ve talked on the phone.”

“Hi,” Konner said. “So, do you want to get my statement about Blayze? That’s what Detective Vern here said. That you need a written statement?”

“Sure,” Jacob said, “But first some questions, if you don’t mind. Just to get some of our details straight.”

“Okay.”

Jacob glanced at his notebook. “I understand that you play a character called… Brother Florentius, in Dragonworld, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s a… priest?”

“Yeah, but what has that got to do with—”

“Help me for a second, because all those terms get me confused. A priest is considered a healer in Dragonworld, right?”

“I guess…”

“Did you know that when we talked to your guildmaster about the raid your guild did the night that Dona was killed, your guildmaster told us that the healer was drunk?”

Konner stared at Jacob, confused.

“Is there another healer in your… guild?” Jacob asked.

“No.”

“Were you drunk that night?”

“Maybe. Just a bit. I don’t know.”

“In fact, we called her again last night, and she said you were completely trashed… Her words, not mine, and that it wasn’t very typical of you.”

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

“Okay, never mind then. Let’s talk about something different. I think congratulations are in order.”

“What?” Konner asked, clearly confused.

“Well, I understand you were accepted to Glenmore Park Community College, and will probably start there next year. I assume you’re very excited.”

Konner didn’t answer, but Jacob noticed the shift in his eyes. Fight or flight, they said, and Konner wasn’t the fight type. He wasn’t under arrest yet; he had come here voluntarily. Would he ask to leave?

Jacob pressed on. “It’s an… odd decision. I mean… I love our college, I think it’s the best in the world, but I’m from Glenmore Park. Why did you choose to study there?”

“It… it seemed nice,” Konner said, stammering a bit.

“It is nice!” Jacob smiled warmly. “I hope that my daughter will go there, but she wants to study somewhere else. Anywhere else, in her own words. So, tell me… did you go visit?”

“I don’t… what has got to do with—”

“Did you maybe visit there three days ago? To check out the swimming pool and the dormitories?”

“What are you talking about?”

“If we scan the security footage from three or four days ago, will we see your face there?” Jacob’s voice became harder.

Konner’s eyes were becoming frantic. “I don’t know what you mean…”

“What was your IP address the night that Dona Aliysa was murdered?” Mitchell suddenly asked.

“What?”

“I don’t know about those things,” Jacob said. “But my partner tells me that computers have a sort of unique identification when they go on the web. It’s called an IP address. Apparently, you can find out where someone is according to his IP address. Is that right, Mitchell?”

“More or less,” Mitchell said.

“And do you know where that IP address is registered when you log in to Dragonworld? In Tornado’s server logs. Isn’t that useful? Now I think what my partner was asking is… If we get those logs—which I promise you we will—what will your IP address be?”

Konner got up. “I’m leaving,” he said.

Ah. Game over. Jacob sighed. “No, you’re not,” he said.

“Henry Konner,” Detective Vern said. “You are under arrest for the murder of Dona Aliysa.”

“Sit down,” Jacob said gently.

Konner sat down, shaking.

“Detective Vern, back in our own police station we have those handy forms that we call Miranda right forms,” Jacob said. “Do you have them?”

“Sure,” Vern said. “We call them Miranda slips.”

“Can you get us one, please? I would have done so myself if I knew where it was.”

“Sure,” Vern said, and left the room.

“What that form basically explains,” Jacob said, “Is your rights. It tells you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. That you have the right to an attorney, and if you can’t afford one, you will be supplied one. You must have heard it a thousand times on cop shows.”

“I don’t watch cop shows,” Konner said, his voice croaking.

“Really?” Jacob said, his eyebrows raising in surprise. “I don’t either. I thought I was the only one.”

“You have to understand—” Konner began.

Jacob raised a hand. “Konner,” he said. “No offense, but until you sign that Miranda slip, I really don’t want to talk to you about anything in particular.”

They sat in silence. Detective Vern walked back in, holding a slip of paper and a pen. He gave the form to Konner, who signed it with a shaking hand.

“I was just visiting the college, that’s all,” Konner said, pushing the form and pen over to Jacob. “I got back the very next day.”

“Of course you did,” Jacob said. “But I don’t care where you were the following day. What interests me is where you were that night.”

“In a motel.”

“Uh-huh. And at no point did you visit Dona Aliysa’s home?”

“Of course not!”

“Yes. You wiped the fingerprints very carefully, but let me ask you something: did you wipe the DNA as well?”

“What?”

“If I get a warrant for your DNA,” Jacob said. “Will it match samples taken in her home? Taken from the body?”

“You don’t need a warrant,” Detective Vern said gruffly. “You have the cup with his DNA on the table.”

Jacob turned his head and smiled thinly. He was very much aware what the point of the hot interrogation room and the cup of water was. But it was a low technique, and he knew there was no need for it. “Oh, I’m sure we can get a warrant,” he said. “We have very compelling evidence.”

Detective Vern narrowed his eyes and said nothing. Jacob turned back to Konner, and folded his hands.

“You know what tipped us off?” he said. “The list you gave us, of the memorabilia. It was very clearly a list that someone made after being in Dona’s room, without searching in her dresser and closet.”

Konner stared at Jacob, tears in his eyes. “It was an accident,” he said.

Jacob nodded.

“We were in love. She knew that. And I was moving to live next to her. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“And then you found out she had a boyfriend?”

“He wasn’t a boyfriend!” Konner shouted. “He was just some random guy! He didn’t understand her the way that I did! What could that… that… criminal know about Dona?”

Jacob refrained from mentioning that Konner was now a criminal himself.

“When I told her I was moving to Glenmore Park, she started saying that we were just good friends. Just good friends. That she was in love with someone else. And then we argued a bit. I said some things… things I shouldn’t have said, and she walked over to the door. She wanted me to leave.”

Konner became silent. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffled. Jacob waited. Detective Vern cleared his throat, clearly impatient, but Jacob ignored him. Every detective had his own ways. Jacob was a sound believer in long silences.

“I don’t know what happened then,” Konner said. “I guess I was on top of her. I… and then suddenly I was sitting by her body, and she was dead.”

Jacob nodded.

“I wiped everything. Everything! I think I was there for a whole hour, just wiping. Then I got back to the motel. And… and the following day I called the police. I pre-recorded a message about Dona, and I played it to the woman on the other end of the line.”

“Why?” Jacob asked.

Konner shrugged. “I didn’t want her to just lie there.”

“After you killed her,” Jacob asked, curious, “why did you log into Dragonworld to play?”

“Well, I thought if I just joined the raid as if nothing happened, it would give me a good alibi.”

“But you got drunk,” Jacob said.

“I never got drunk,” Konner said. “I was just devastated. I didn’t really know what was the point. What was even the point of playing Dragonworld anymore? What was the point of playing it without Willow?”

“Well,” Jacob said, “her name was Dona, but I think I know what you mean.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was late in the evening of the following day when Detective Mitchell Lonnie finally sat down to write the report of the arrest of Henry Konner. There had been some complications, of the type that made Mitchell believe humanity had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the past. It had been understood that Henry Konner had to be extradited, so he could be charged for Dona Aliysa’s murder back in Glenmore Park. This required the district attorney to formally charge Henry Konner with murder. Fine, that was the easy part.

The difficult part was to schedule a rushed extradition hearing. No judge was available. Mitchell and Jacob had tried to explain to various secretaries, clerks, lawyers, and cops that they lived Really Far Away, and it was a long drive, and no, they wouldn’t be able to do it again in a week’s time. Someone had suggested they stay for the week. Things had started to get ugly.

Finally, Detective Vern had called his brother-in-law, who had a friend who played Settlers of Catan—whatever that was—with a judge every Friday. The judge had agreed to do the extradition hearing. The hearing had been incredibly fast, and the detectives could finally be on their way back. Except it was evening. Once again, they had driven late into the night, slept in a motel, and got back to Glenmore Park only late in the morning.

All they had to do was write up the report. Mitchell had told Jacob he could go home to his wife, volunteering to do the report himself. Jacob didn’t need to be told twice, and disappeared instantaneously, leaving an imaginary cloud of smoke in his wake.

Writing the report, of course, was no big deal. Mitchell had been writing truckloads of reports for the past nine years. Submitting it to the Glenmore Park’s police new and improved report management application was where things went awry. Apparently, the fact that the suspect was arrested in a different city was problematic. Mitchell stared at the error message, Err-87 City Name Malformed Please Insert, feeling tired and frustrated. He usually had no problem with the system, but the long drive seemed to have impaired his technical skills, and he could not fathom what the idiotic program was asking for.

A very angry female voice approached the squad room. Mitchell turned around, only to see Hannah storm in, yelling into her phone. Mitchell was always amused by the fact that while other people became red with rage, Hannah’s face became a cute pink.

“No, I will not hold!” she barked into the phone. “You tell me right now why the hell this happened!”

The unfortunate person on the other end of the call said something, to which Hannah replied, “But that’s not his name, you idiot! His name is Mikey!” She blinked, then turned to Mitchell, confusion in her eyes. “He hung up,” she said.

“How very strange,” Mitchell said.

“They released my suspect,” Hannah said.

“Who? Frank’s murderer?”

“No, not him. Mikey.”

“Who’s Mikey?”

“The drug dealer I caught a few days ago. I caught him red-handed with fourteen rocks of crack. Damn it!” Hannah kicked a chair, and Mitchell watched it roll on its wheels across the room. Sometimes chairs with legs instead of wheels were better. You kicked a chair with legs, it fell down. Way more satisfying.

“Why did they release him?” he asked.

“There was something wrong with the paperwork. The Sheriff’s department got it into their heads that his name is Devin Derkins.”

“I know Devin Derkins,” Mitchell said. “He’s a drug dealer in Wellington Square. A real pain in the ass.”

“Yeah, I know that, Mitchell.”

“Why did the Sheriff think that it was Devin Derkins?”

“Because I told… Look, forget it, okay? They’re a bunch of morons, and my suspect was just released because his lawyer said we can’t hold him.”

“That sucks,” Mitchell said. He looked at the monitor. The hell with it. He inserted Glenmore Park in the city text-box and submitted. A satisfyingly green message informed Mitchell his report had been stored. Victory.

Hannah sat down in front of her computer, muttering. Mitchell rolled his chair next to hers. Sometimes chairs with wheels were much better.

“Congratulations on catching Frank’s killer,” he told Hannah.

“Yeah,” Hannah said, looking at him. “It’s one of those cases where I almost wish I didn’t, you know?”

“I know.”

“We found this revenge porn site, where people post nude photos and videos of their exes. We reported it to the Cyber Crime Division… They said they’d take care of it. But it’s still online.”

“These things take time, Hannah.”

“I don’t know if they’ll remove it. I’m not even sure it’s illegal.”

They both lapsed into silence.

“Oh, and congratulations on catching Dona’s killer,” Hannah suddenly said.

“Thanks,” Mitchell smiled.

“Piece of work, that guy, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mitchell said.

“Love is a dangerous thing,” Hannah said.

“That wasn’t love, Hannah. He was obsessing over that girl, creating a false picture in his head about who she was and what she felt. That guy was completely delusional.”

Hannah looked at Mitchell, then glanced away. “Well,” she said, “I guess that’s exactly what falling in love is.”

The silence stretched between them for a few seconds, until Mitchell cleared his throat. “I was just going. Uh… You want to grab a beer before going home?”

“Sure,” Hannah smiled at him. “I think we earned it.”

They stood and left, switching the light off as they walked out the door. Only Mitchell’s monitors still stayed on, casting an eerie blue light in the dark squad room.

Enjoyed this book? Subscribe to Mike Omer’s newsletter to get a discounted release price on every book he publishes: http://strangerealm.com/mikeomer/newsletter/

About the Author

Mike Omer is the author of the Glenmore Park Mystery Series. He has been in the past a journalist, a game developer and the CEO of the company Loadingames. He is married to a woman who diligently forces him to live his dream, and the father of an angel, a pixie and a gremlin. He has two voracious hounds that wag their tail quite menacingly at anyone who comes near his home.

Mike loves to write about true people who are perpetrators or victims of crimes. He also likes writing funny stuff. He mixes these two loves quite passionately into his mystery books.

You can contact Mike by sending him an e-mail to mike@strangerealm.com

Acknowledgments

This book could never have been written without Liora, my wife. It would have been a three chapter long attempt at a book, and probably written poorly as well. She’s my everything - my developmental editor, my brainstorm partner, my coach. I’ve been informed many times that I was very lucky to find her, and to those who tell me that, I say, you have no idea.

Thanks to Christine Mancuso for giving me incredibly valuable, unfiltered comments, which made this story so incredibly better.

Thanks to Richard Stockford who answered all of my questions with the patience and diligence of a saint, and then added some additional helpful and insightful beta comments.

Thanks to Axel Blackwell and my dad for their extremely helpful beta reading input.

Thanks to Tammi Labrecque for editing this novel. She does great by my books, and I cherish her contribution gratefully. It’s worth noting that she doesn’t edit the acknowledgments section, because I find that tacky. So any mistake here is my fault.

Thanks to all of the authors in Author’s Corner, for surrounding me with love and assistance, and for being a second family. And thanks for all the hats, dudes.

Thanks to my parents for both their invaluable advice and their endless support.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

About The Author

Acknowledgements