Other than that, he had done nothing. Except for being preoccupied, lost in thought like some goddamn middle-aged philosopher.
“Nothing—he had to… he had to go.”
Another eyebrow raise from Stitts, but before he could ask for details, Chase deliberately opened the door to Records and stepped inside.
Officer Dunbar was huddled over a computer, his large frame illuminated by the bluish glow from the screen. The walls on one side of the room were lined with cabinets, paper files that had yet to be digitized, while the other was stacked with hard drives and glowing lights.
The old and the new.
Drake and Chase, working together in… abstraction.
“Dunbar, we need—” Chase started, but stopped when a flicker of movement caught her eye. She leaned around Dunbar’s desk.
A young, thin man with a shaved head looked up at her. He smiled at first, revealing a set of teeth that looked too small for his mouth, but when he saw the expression on her face, he immediately grew serious. His eyes flicked to Stitts and then he jumped to his feet.
“Sergeant Adams, I was just leaving to get a coffee. You want?”
Chase shook her head, and the man, whose name escaped her, fled the room. When he was gone, Stitts closed the door.
“What? What’s up?” Dunbar asked nervously.
Chase moved to behind his chair.
“There’s been another murder,” she said flatly.
Dunbar swallowed hard.
“What? Where?”
“Don’t know yet. That’s what I’m hoping you can help us with.”
And Drake, too, if he ever decides to call me back.
Dunbar turned back to the screen and called up L. Wiley’s author page on Amazon.
There were three books now, all with the same image of the woman with the bloody lips, all a different shade of red.
“Shit,” she swore as her eyes fixed on the third book. Despite what Drake had told her, deep down she had hoped that he was wrong. “It wasn’t online an hour ago.”
Dunbar clicked the cover and then read book synopsis.
It was only a single sentence.
Another murder and the police are no closer to finding out who the killer is.
“He’s mocking us,” Agent Stitts remarked.
Chase felt her anger rising and she pulled the cell phone from her pocket. She clicked redial, but after a single ring, it went right to voicemail.
She swore.
“We have to read it—we need to find out what’s in there. Where the body is. If there are any clues to the killer’s identity.”
Dunbar chewed his lip.
“We can’t buy it.”
Chase frowned.
“What? Why not?” A glimmer of hope. “It’s not for sale?”
Dunbar took a deep breath before answering.
“Oh, it’s for sale, but we can’t buy it. I’ve been reading a little bit about this whole indie publishing scene. Apparently, it’s all about visibility. With over 60 million books online, it’s not necessarily about the quality of book you write—although that plays a role—but it’s about discoverability. People need to see your book to buy it. And every time someone buys the book, it jumps up the ranking a little, gains more exposure.”
“So what? Get to the point, Dunbar.”
“I noticed a disturbing trend over the last few days. The first book—Red Smile Part I—has been trending upward. Not by much, but it’s ranked ten thousand spots higher than this morning even.”
“What does that mean? How many people have bought it?”
Dunbar shrugged.
“Impossible to know exactly, but I’m guessing it’s sold about ten copies a day since its release.”
“Which makes what? Fifty total sold?”
“About that.”
“So we don’t want to buy the damn book because that will push it up the rankings, is that it?”
Dunbar nodded.
“Exactly.”
“Then we need Drake’s copy,” Agent Stitts chimed in.
Did your intuition tell you that? Chase thought angrily, but then breathed deeply, trying to keep her cool.
He was just trying to help—they all were. Even Drake, in his own way. At least that was what she hoped.
“Shit.”
A silence interrupted only by the mechanical whirring of the hard drives stretched out for several seconds.
“We have to take it down,” Chase said at last. “We have to get the books removed before anyone else downloads them.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want anyone at the eBook vendors to find out about it? That it might be leaked that these books are about actual murders?” Dunbar said.
“We have no choice. Let’s hope that if we take the books down, the killer will lose interest, that without a venue for their work, they’ll slow down,” Chase replied, but even as the words exited mouth, she knew that it was a long shot. Killers didn’t tend to slow down between crimes, they sped up.
Her arms suddenly started to itch.
They worked faster, the crimes becoming more gruesome as they sought the feeling of their first kill.
As they fed their addiction.
She turned to Agent Stitts.
“You think we can get the vendors to give up L. Wiley’s real name?”
“I can try to put some pressure, but these companies… they’re massive. Even with a subpoena, they can tie us up in legal garbage for years.”
Chase swore again.
Sometimes the wheels of justice worked so slowly that they were barely moving. Sometimes the wheels of justice were square.
But Drake, he isn’t bound by the same rules… maybe…
She shook the thought from her head.
“See what you can do on that front. We gotta stem this, and quick.”
It was only then that she noticed Dunbar shaking his head.
“What now?”
“If we shut down Wiley’s account, they can just open another one. Put the book up under another name… L. Wile, maybe, instead of L. Wiley.”
Chase felt her frustration rising.
“Then we need to get the vendors to give up his name. Twist their arm, do whatever it takes.”
Dunbar’s expression soured and he opened his mouth, but then closed it again.
“Just say it,” Chase demanded. “Jesus, just say what you’re thinking.”
“It’s just… online, people have been reporting that these pen names are sacred. The bigger vendors guard them very tightly, to the point that there has never been a leak. There’s also a case where a judge subpoenaed their records for a specific book that contained a photograph from an armed robbery, a previously unpublished photo that contained critical evidence, and while eventually the book was pulled, the author’s real name was never revealed.”
“Shit, you’re just full of good news today, aren’t you?”
Dunbar looked down.
“Sorry, I’ve just—”
“I can still push, see what happens,” Stitts offered.
Chase shut her eyes and breathed deeply. When she opened them again, she found herself focusing on an array of smaller book covers below Red Smile.
“What are those?” she asked.
Dunbar followed her finger.
“Also Boughts.”
“Also what?”
“Boughts—an automatically populated list of other books bought by people who bought Red Smile. Supposed to help buyers find other books they might like. Sort of—wait a second.”
Suddenly excited, Dunbar whipped his mouse about and hammered at the keyboard. A couple of seconds later, the screen was segmented into three panels, one for each of the books.
He then started to scroll through the Also Boughts, capturing the images of the covers and dropping them in an image processing program.
“What now?” Chase asked.
Dunbar clicked several more times and then brought the image processing screen t
o center stage.
“These are all the books that the people have bought in addition to Red Smile. A lot of authors buy their own books to get the also bought machine started… if L. Wiley has written other books under a different pen name, they might be in this group of eighty or so books.”
Chase was nodding now.
They might be onto something.
“Cross reference this with the books that Tanya and Melissa and Charlotte either bought or took out from the library. Maybe this is how he’s targeting the victims.”
Dunbar opened several files and then the screen became a blur of text. More windows popped up and then disappeared before she could get a good look at them.
“I was already running program to find similarities in the victims’s reading patterns, but the number of books that it had to scroll through—especially with Melissa—was immense, and there was a lot of overlap, but—” he clicked a button and then smiled when only three covers showed up on the screen. “Using the Also Boughts, there are only three books in common to all of the vics, and the Also Boughts.”
Chase leaned toward the screen so quickly that she almost knocked heads with Dunbar. A frown immediately formed on her face as she read the titles out loud.
“Embracing the Manbeast, Seducing the Manbeast, Enveloping the Manbeast… what the hell kind of shit is this?”
Dunbar blew up the covers, which all had some derivation of a bare-chested man who looked half wolf and a scantily clad woman staring up at him.
“Shifter romance,” Dunbar said, sounding almost embarrassed. “It’s about—”
“Who cares what it’s about,” Chase snapped. “Who’s the author?”
“R.S. Germaine,” Dunbar said.
Chase felt a weight lift from her shoulders.
“Great. Get his—or her—address. Looks like me and you, Stitts, are going to pay the animal porn author a visit.”
But, once again, Dunbar shook his head.
“Jesus Christ, what now?”
Dunbar gulped audibly and brought up another screen. It was the author profile for R.S. Germaine.
“You can’t.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because R.S. Germaine is also a pen name.”
Chapter 39
Drake couldn’t believe that he was back at Patty’s Diner. He would’ve chosen any location, any other location in the entire city, except for this place, but the bastard refused to meet anywhere else.
In fact, Drake was surprised that he was willing to see him at all. It had been at least a month since he had visited the dilapidated diner, and he didn’t miss it.
It had the same, cracked vinyl booths, the same cloying stench of decades of grease mixed with a hint of bleach, and the same disgruntled staff.
Broomhilda waddled over to him, and if her face wasn’t so heavily lined, Drake would have thought she was smirking.
“Yeah?” she said, and Drake couldn’t help but shake his head in disgust.
“Just a coffee.”
The wannabe smirk turned into a pursed lip grimace, and Broomhilda turned to leave.
Before she returned, the door chimed and a man in a hooded parka stepped in from the cold.
Planting both hands, white from the snow, on the table, he hovered over Drake.
“You have some fucking nerve calling me,” he spat.
Drake leaned back in his chair, wondering if this was such a good idea. After all, he had just spent an hour with one person he wanted to punch, but couldn’t. But this wasn’t Raul, this man…
Drake figured he might be able to get away with giving him a bit of a thrashing.
“Sit down,” he ordered coldly.
The man’s blue eyes narrowed, but after swiping a long strand of blond hair from his face, he did as instructed.
“I took a huge risk and—”
Drake pulled the envelope from his coat pocket and laid it on the cracked table.
“Well isn’t this a change of roles,” the man said sourly. His eyes darted to the envelope, which was good, but he didn’t reach for it as Drake had hoped.
Screech had done a little research on Ivan Meitzer, and the rumor mill was abuzz with the idea that the man hadn’t made many friends over the past year or so. In addition to stepping on everyone’s toes, he had also published a rather scathing book about what it was like to work for The New York Times.
Ivan had gone from a relatively unknown reporter to creme of the crop after his exclusive with Drake about the Skeleton King, but had fallen just as hard. Drake had promised an exclusive about Craig Sloan, but hadn’t delivered.
And in the world of reporters, your word was your bond and trust was your currency.
“I need you to do something for me,” Drake said flatly. “Something that requires discretion.”
Again, Ivan’s eyes flicked to the envelope.
“Half is repayment for not giving you the Sloan exclusive. The other half is for this job.”
This time, the temptation was too great, and Ivan reached for the envelope.
Drake held fast.
“Before you take this, I can’t stress how important it is to keep this quiet. No one can know. I mean no one.”
Ivan raised his eyes to look at Drake, and after a short pause, he nodded.
“What do you need?”
Drake let go of the envelope, and Ivan slipped it into his jacket.
“I need a name,” Drake said. “I need the name of an author.”
***
Drake left the diner ten minutes after Ivan had fled into the cold. He made his way quickly across the parking lot and was in the process of unlocking the door to his Crown Vic when he suddenly got the feeling that he was being watched.
His eyes snapped up, but after looking around, he saw nothing out of the ordinary for a Friday afternoon in New York City.
And yet, when his phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.
Chapter 40
“About time,” Chase snapped at Drake as he stormed into 62nd precinct.
Drake still hadn’t fully recovered from what was already turning out to be a very long, and very trying day, and it took all his willpower not to lash out at her.
Instead, he simply nodded and handed over the e-reader. Chase snatched it from him and then passed it to an embarrassed looking Detective Yasiv who was standing at her side.
Yasiv nodded to Drake, then disappeared down the hallway and out of sight.
“Where’s Agent Stitts?” Drake asked.
Although still frowning, Chase’s eyes softened a little.
“He’s trying to shut down the providers of the book. Get them to take it off the market.”
Drake raised an eyebrow.
“I thought we couldn’t risk—”
Chase spun away from him.
“Things have changed.”
She started toward the stairwell, and Drake pulled up beside her.
“What? What’s changed?”
Chase said nothing. Her hand shot out and she grabbed the door and pulled it wide.
Drake followed her into the stairs, but once inside, he reached for her arm.
Chase spun around, her body tense.
“Look,” Drake began, looking down at her pretty face. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m fucking trying here, Chase. I have no idea what it means to be a ‘Special Consultant’. All I know how to do is find murderers—literally, that’s it. I have no idea how to run a business, how to keep old ladies happy—although that seems to be easier than I might have thought—and I don’t know how to do whatever it is that we’re doing here.”
Chase’s eyes narrowed, and she stared at him for a good while before answering.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
Her response surprised him; almost as much as his own openness. It had taken him a lot to come clean with his feelings, but now that he had, he was beginning to regret it.
> And he felt the walls going back up again. He snaked a hand into his jeans pocket, his fingers searching for the finger bone.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know how to run a business, you can’t babysit the elderly, you don’t understand how to be a consultant. It’s all about you and it’s only about you. Let me ask you something, Drake. Did you call Beckett? Reach out to him? See how he’s doing?”
Drake recoiled as if he had been struck.
“Didn’t think so,” Chase snapped. “You may be good at finding murderers, I won’t argue with that. But you aren’t going to find this one on your own. This isn’t Dr. Mark Kruk or Craig Sloan. You need to open up, you need to ask for help, and you need to be a team player, Drake.” Chase sighed. “I know it sounds like a fucking PSA, but I brought you in to help, and all you’ve done so far is fucking drag us down. I have no idea why you are getting the books before anyone else, but it does us no good if you are hoarding them, not letting our tech guys have a crack.” She pushed her lips together, and when she spoke next, her voice was an octave lower. “You drinking again, Drake?”
This time Drake answered. Sure, he had had a few drinks waiting for Ken Smith, but that could hardly be considered ‘drinking’.
“No,” he said, his voice even.
Chase tilted her head to one side.
“No? Then where you coming from? And don’t lie to me, Drake.”
He ground his teeth.
“Patty’s.”
Chase shook her head.
“That’s what I thought. Let’s go, we have to get you up to speed,” she said, turning toward the stairs.
Drake watched her go. He had seen something on her face, something that hurt him deeply.
A lack of trust.
***
“An IP address is basically a way to track a computer on the ‘net. And I think I might have found something.”
Drake stared at Dunbar’s computer screen, trying to take it all in, trying to focus. But his mind continued to wander.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 65