Jacob enlarged each of the photos, scrolling and adjusting the frames so that he could look at just the two men, both photos displayed side by side. Christopher looked serious, far more intense than a shortcut through a service corridor should warrant. And the Fierce Burger worker also looked serious and a bit alarmed.
Jacob studied the first photo, in which the fast food worker faced the camera. The employee in the red and orange shirt looked vaguely familiar, though Jacob couldn’t place him. He hadn’t eaten at the Fierce Burger, so perhaps that meant he was a cosplayer?
The police would determine if the photos were further reason to interview Christopher again. Jacob made a note of the filename and saved the second picture as well.
The man in the Fierce Burger shirt…. His face nagged at Jacob. Surely there was something significant about him. Was he another BNF?
After a moment, Jacob alt-tabbed back to the Twitter window. He considered a moment, and then typed and edited to fit the character limit. Does anyone have photos of the Fierce Burger guy in conservatory? Behind Achenar. (This is not an official police request.) #ConJobPhotoReq
The parenthetical disclaimer should keep him out of trouble, and should keep the fast food worker out of trouble too by emphasizing that he wasn’t a police suspect. Jacob wasn’t wholly sure of the legal niceties, but he hoped that was enough to protect anyone. But maybe another photo or two would jog his Fierce Burger memory.
He leaned back and stretched, and then he rubbed his eyes. They burned, dry with indoor air and stress. It had been a long, long day, and he should feel sleepy — but it was difficult to feel sleepy after the mortally-wounded zombie had slumped in his arms.
Music started playing in the lobby down the corridor, a theme from a classic video game Jacob couldn’t quite remember. The Spork Minstrels were playing another set. Jacob closed his eyes and listened through the end of the song, when a scattering of applause indicated the remaining group of con attendees still in the lobby area.
You can do this, Jacob. You have knowledge-local. Lydia’s words echoed through his mind. Jacob wasn’t so sure. If witnesses had reported a figure in red and blue Spandex fleeing from a falling corpse, he could use his comics knowledge and con savvy to narrow down the list of possible characters and then what groups might contain such a cosplayer. But this was beyond his con attendee abilities. This was a police investigation, not a geek endeavor.
He propped his face in his hands, letting his fingers cool his aching eyes. He thought of Jessica, rolling her eyes and breathing out irate indignation over inane rants about fake geek girls. Jacob wondered if he might now qualify as something like that himself: Fake geek sleuth. Fake Academy potential.
“Don’t crash yet, man. Sunday’s not over.”
Jacob withdrew his hands and looked at Sergio, leaning over the pass-through. “Can you give me a nudge when it’s safe to wake up?”
“Hang in there. Drink some Red Bull or Monster.”
Jacob shook his head. “What do you want?”
Sergio came in the door. “First of all, I found these, and they seem like the kind of thing someone would want back.” He set two off-camera flashes on the table.
“Oh, wow,” Jacob said. “Yeah, everyone’s been looking for those. Where were they?”
“Men’s restroom, the back one way behind Main that no one uses. They were in the trash can under some paper towels, but it’s a short can and they showed a little bit.”
“Thanks. Definitely wanted these. They’re probably Laser’s.” He folded them into a spare Con Aid t-shirt and tucked them into a bin. Sergio had probably unknowingly compromised the fingerprints, but there still might be some recoverable evidence.
“No kidding? Somebody stole Laser’s flashes?”
“Somebody assaulted her and stole some equipment.”
“Laser got hurt?”
“She’s okay, just got banged up a little. But yeah, someone knocked her down and stole her gear bag. That’s why we were asking for pictures, wondering if maybe somebody was afraid of a photo she took.”
Sergio whistled. “Poor Laser. So it wasn’t just theft?”
“It could have been, if the thief’s stupid. Which is always possible. But it looked like he’d taken the camera and SD cards and some cheaper stuff, left some of the really expensive gear he could have resold. And now it looks like he ditched the flashes. So that implies some other purpose than resale — or, as we said, a stupid criminal.”
“I guess if he had brains or marketable skills, he wouldn’t be a criminal.” Sergio shrugged. “Well, maybe. Maybe he just got unlucky.” He hesitated. “Hey, about my money… I remember what you said about never ever spend what you don’t have, and you sounded pretty serious about that. And you said I should talk to my credit card company before it’s due, maybe work something out, and I thought maybe were you talking from experience, and I thought maybe you could tell me what kind of thing I could work out?”
Jacob stared at him. “Seriously? It’s, what, two am, and you’re asking me about negotiating your credit card debt?”
Sergio looked surprised. “You’re up anyway.”
Jacob sighed. “I wasn’t talking from that kind of experience, at least not like you’re thinking. But you should talk to them, yeah. They’d rather negotiate with you and get something than have you default and get nothing, and bill collectors are not as profitable as you just paying. It won’t be easy for you, and it probably won’t look great on your record, but it’ll look better than having some crazy debt hanging over your head forever.”
“So I can work something out? Pay it off a little at a time, at a reasonable interest?”
“I don’t know about reasonable, but it’ll probably be better than what you’ll pay on the card agreement. Or maybe you can borrow somewhere at a lower rate to pay off the card. Point is, do something in advance, or you’re going to hurt when that bill comes and interest starts stacking up.”
“Okay. I’ll call them on Monday.”
Jacob yawned. “See, not urgent. Could have waited.”
“What? I had to drop off the flashes. And I wasn’t going to sleep. Rough weekend, finding out Rick got burned and I’m getting stiffed.”
“It’s been a rough weekend for everybody. A lot of the con attendees are getting off pretty easy, nothing but the chaos about the food, but the hotel staff is getting pounded, the con staff are of course going crazy, and the police can’t take a break without another body showing up. Even the food court staff got burned, getting shut down for the weekend. That’s a lot of work they don’t have.”
“Yeah, I feel bad for the food court people. Bet the employees were expecting a lot of hours this weekend.”
Sergio would be feeling particularly sensitive to the plight of expecting money which wasn’t coming, after all. “Yeah, I don’t know what company policy would be on that. Not sure if the handbook has something on service suspended because of suspected poisonings.”
“Some of ‘em might have been okay with it, though. I knew some were waiting to get off so they could do the con, too, and I guess this just gave them more con time.”
“I guess statistically some of them would have to be fans.”
“Yeah. A burger guy yesterday was going to do the zombie crawl, was all excited about it. They had to make up fresh fries, and while I was waiting he told me all about his costume and the special makeup he had planned and everything.”
Something shifted sickeningly in Jacob’s mind. “Burger guy? Where?” He hoped his voice sounded casual.
“Oh, um, Fierce Burger. Yeah. I ate there last night. The fries are really good, worth waiting for even though they’re always running out.”
Jacob’s thoughts froze up for a moment. Was the Fierce Burger employee familiar because Jacob had met him at the zombie crawl? Was the memory unclear because his face had been obscured beneath the prosthetics and makeup? Jacob had a shiver of guilt that he couldn’t be certain of the young man who had pra
ctically died in his arms.
And if it were the murdered zombie, then that added another layer of suspicion to the picture of Laser’s photoshoot. He had been looking hard at Laser, and someone had attacked her.
“Do you think you could recognize the guy?” he asked.
Sergio looked at him. “Huh? I dunno, why?”
Jacob opened the photos and selected just the Fierce Burger employee’s face, cutting out the rest of the photo. “This. Can you tell me if it’s him?”
Sergio leaned toward the computer. “Maybe. I don’t know, I was just getting dinner, not really paying attention to people. But — yeah, I think it’s him. He had that big zit on the side of his nose, you can sort of see it there. Kind of nasty in a food service job, but what can you do?”
“So that’s him?”
“I think so.”
What if some vigilante type had learned it was the Fierce Burger zombie who had assaulted Laser, and so he had killed him in return? Laser was popular, she had a lot of fans. But no, vigilantism didn’t seem right, not when police were already on the scene and clearly taking the incident seriously — and investigating other deaths, making vigilante action even riskier than usual. Perhaps the murderer had hired the Fierce Burger zombie to rob Laser, so he could get the unknown evidence while establishing an alibi himself elsewhere.
Sergio was still looking at him expectantly. “Why? Is he the con killer?”
Jacob stared at him. “Does he have a nickname now?”
“It’s an easy phrase, nice and alliterative. Con killer. There’s a few tweets going around with that hashtag, offering girls escort services to their rooms, with both noble and prurient motivations.”
Jacob shook his head. “Oh, Jessica will have something to say about that, that’s for sure.”
“So, do you think it’s him?”
“What? No. No, I don’t.”
“But you wanted to know about him.”
“Because I have a picture of a Fierce Burger guy at a conservatory photoshoot, which seemed kind of weird. But that’s not any kind of illegal, or threatening, or anything else, and it makes perfectly decent sense if he’s a fan.” Jacob wrinkled his face. “If you thought his zit was nasty, you should just be glad he wasn’t in decomposing zombie makeup or anything while he was working.”
“Now that is disgusting.”
“Yeah, it is.” Jacob withdrew his phone and wrote a text to Daniel. Hey, I know you’re asleep right now, but when you get this, can you check and see if the zombie victim was a Fierce Burger employee?
Sergio was still looking at him oddly, and Jacob thought he was probably still wondering about Jacob’s suspicion. “No, I really don’t think he’s a suspect. Actually, if you can keep it quiet, I think he might have been someone who got hurt. I don’t know that they have an ID on the guy who was killed last night.”
“Oh, the guy who had his throat cut at the zombie crawl?” Sergio’s mouth twisted. “That had to be rough, man. I wasn’t there, but from what I heard…. It’d be like some sort of nightmare, trying to get someone to help and everyone’s just laughing at your zany zombie antics. That’s true horror, man.”
“No argument there.” Jacob’s voice was sober. “We were even getting a little angry that he was leaving blood smears. It was Sam who realized it was real blood. I wish… I wish there was some way to apologize.”
“Who do you think killed him? Same guy who killed the other two?”
“I don’t know. That’s a pretty big jump in method, from poison to slashing a throat, and especially with the victim out and visible in a crowd. That’s not vanilla murder, that’s psycho look-at-me stuff.”
“I guess you learn that stuff in cop class.”
“Still just an undergrad. Hoping to be in real cop class soon.”
“So we’re looking at two murderers? Or three?”
“Well, there’s a chance that the murdered zombie wasn’t turned loose to die in the crawl. Apparently the medical people think he lasted a pretty long time for the type of injury, so maybe the murderer didn’t expect him to get out and look for help at all. That would take it to slightly less psycho, anyway. But it’s still a big jump in method, so something would have had to push him pretty hard, so maybe it is two people. And then there’s the guy who attacked Laser, so….”
“So we’ve either got a couple of murderers and a violent mugger loose, if we’re unlucky, or if we’re lucky just one really crazy and unpredictable SOB. That doesn’t actually make me feel any better.” Sergio shook his head. “And on that delightful note, I’m going to head over and see if there’s any cup ramen left at the food tables. Thanks for the credit card tip.”
Chapter Thirty
Jacob drummed his fingers on the desktop and stared at the screen. Something hovered about the edge of his mind, teasing him with its feathery nearness, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. Frustrated, he pushed the chair back and picked up the sheet of printer paper he’d been doodling on — oh, only hours ago, when Daniel had brought the shoplifter in. It seemed like days.
The two circles in the middle of the page — why kill Tasha/Dead-Laura? And why kill Valerie K? — were insufficient now. He added, why kill zombie/possible Fierce Burger guy?
Off to one side, he tried to add, why attack Laser and steal equipment? But the writing was cramped and bent along the edge of the paper. And when he started to add a note about finding the flashes but not the SD cards, he realized he was going to need a bigger sheet. He thought best when doodling and writing out snippets of thought, but his handwriting, as Lydia teased, was best suited to keyboards. He needed more room.
He turned to the over-sized easel in the corner, waiting for updates to staff schedules, photo gatherings, police interviews, whatever needed to be posted on the Con Ops wall. Jacob shook out the little box of markers on the tray and flipped to a clean sheet.
Red for murders, right in the middle. Tasha/Dead-Laura on the left, Valerie K in the center, zombie/Fierce Burger guy? on the right. A little beneath them, floating somewhere between Valerie and zombie/Fierce Burger, he wrote Laser’s name with a question mark. She hadn’t been murdered, certainly, but it had been a violent assault which could have gone much worse, and the attack might be connected to the deaths.
He took up the blue marker and began to list all the incidents which were probably connected to the crimes. Powder in kitchen. Photography gear abandoned. Missing camera and SD cards. R-F-T or R-V-D killed zombie/Fierce Burger guy.
Orange marker next, for all the weird things which might or might not be connected. CaCO in viewing rooms, panels, vendor hall. S out $8k. RB creeping on girls. Con in debt. VC took money.
Green marker for all the things which weren’t necessarily odd or out of place, but were definitely present and influential. Photos and photobombs. RB outs CaCO. Cosplay. Voice acting. Theft in vendor hall. Viewing rooms. Dance.
Just as he had done on the printer sheet, he drew a dotted line between photos and photobombs and Laser. He drew another to connect them with missing camera and SD cards. He linked Tasha and Valerie, with another dotted line to indicate an uncertain connection with the white powder found in the kitchen.
He thought a moment and then wrote in, Access to kitchens and connected it to the zombie/Fierce Burger circle. Maybe the zombie had poisoned the two women, and someone had learned and retaliated instead of going to police. That would explain the difference in methods and approach. Poison was calculated and planned, while punching and knifing were more likely to be done in anger, a moment of fury.
“You’re still here?”
Jacob whirled, startled, and then felt foolish. “Oh, hi. Yeah.” He capped the marker and gave a sheepish grin to Christopher Adams, who was leaning upon the pass-through. “Holding the fort in the graveyard shift. And mixing my metaphors, I guess.”
“I hope you’ve at least got something to drink back there.”
“I don’t like to drink alone.” Jacob shrugged. “Too young to
start that downward spiral.” He smiled and wondered if he should ask about the service corridor and the Fierce Burger employee.
Christopher was wearing his Terra Vista Ranger costume. He reached down to a backpack he was carrying and brought up a metal flask with a screen-printed logo of himself as Terra Vista Ranger on it. “Well, if I came in, you wouldn’t be alone.”
“Can’t argue with that logic.” Jacob dropped the marker onto the easel tray. Normally he wasn’t a big drinker; he’d watched far too much of its effects growing up to want to risk losing any of his own self-control and independence. But there was a lot of social pressure on students to drink, and he’d finally started drinking a little just to make the comments stop.
Christopher came inside and let the door swing closed again with a faint little click. “You don’t mind sharing, do you?”
Jacob started for the other side of the room. “Um, I’m pretty sure there’s some paper cups or something around here, left over. I’m fighting a cold or something, you probably don’t want to share with me.”
Sharing meant taking a drink each time it was passed or faking a drink. And besides the risk of being caught faking, faking a drink always felt really awkward, like he was lying to the people around him, and then he’d wonder if he should care about lying to people who had already pressured him into doing something he didn’t really want to do, and maybe he should be lying to them just to assert himself, or maybe be more assertive about not drinking in the first place, and then he’d start to think he’d been listening to Jessica too much. It was much easier to nurse a cup of his own and let other people lose track of his progress.
He found a stack of plastic cups in a box beneath a table and turned back to Christopher, who was studying the easel. “Is this how the investigation’s going?” he asked, taking a sip from his flask.
“Sort of,” Jacob said. “That’s not official, just — er, I was just mind-mapping.” Was there anything on there that shouldn’t be seen? He started back toward the easel.
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