“Does that work?” came a third voice.
It was Mickey Groene, waving from the pass-through. “Sorry, was just passing by. But now that I see the price of admission, do you mind if I join you?” He held up a six-pack of dark bottles.
“Come on in,” Christopher said cheerily. “We can share, and — Jacob? — Jacob can tell us how he’s solving the murder.”
“Oh.” Mickey sobered a little as he entered and closed the door again. “Any leads?”
Jacob shook his head and gestured to the easel. “No, like I was saying, that’s just my own scribbles.”
“And I was asking if it worked.”
“It helps me organize my head.” He held out three cups to distract them. “Something has to.” He smiled.
Christopher smiled too, and he reached to pour a couple inches of amber liquid into two of the cups. “You a private eye or something?”
Jacob laughed. “Not quite. I’m finishing up police science in school, and I’m applying to the Academy soon. So I’m just a wannabe.”
Christopher laughed. “That’s a lousy thing to say about anyone. You’re not a wannabe.”
“Yeah, I’ll hold off on that until after I’m officially accepted, thanks.” Maybe Christopher hadn’t seen the Jakey Tarston screens.
Mickey nodded toward the easel. “Well, this looks pretty complicated.”
“Not really.” Jacob pointed out the circles, partially blocking the paper. He wasn’t really comfortable sharing this, especially with Christopher in those photos. He would play it cool and then put it away for drinks, leaving them less curious than if he hastily hid it. “This is all the stuff that’s been going on, and this stuff is probably connected, but we haven’t — that is, I haven’t put all the pieces together yet. I can’t speak for the official investigation, obviously.”
“They don’t keep you in the loop?”
“That’d be like a chemistry major getting to sit in on a FDA hearing. Nope, they don’t have to tell me anything except whether I’m free to go.” Jacob laughed.
“But you’re also con staff,” Christopher said, “and since this is clearly something to do with Con Job, you should be entitled to some sort of update.”
“I’m not staff, just a volunteer. And no, they still don’t have to tell me anything, even if I were. Even Vince is in the dark with the rest of us.”
“Poor Vince. This must be hitting him hard.” Christopher took a drink.
“I can’t even imagine,” Mickey agreed.
Jacob wondered if this were Christopher’s way of fishing for information. Maybe word of the sticky financial situation had gotten around. “Yeah, he’s been pretty upset about it. They even wanted to question him — but hey, we’re all suspects, right?”
“We are?”
“Pretty much everyone in the building, sort of, but of course no one’s arresting people just for that. It’s just that, this looks almost random. So that makes it harder to sort out suspects.”
“Random, like some sort of psychopath?”
“Whoa, don’t start talking that way, people will go nuts. And it’s probably not accurate, anyway, even leaving aside the fact that ‘psychopath’ is a pretty broad and nontechnical term. It’s just that there’s nothing obviously connecting the murders, you know? So it looks random.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“It’s not about what I think, it’s just a matter of probabilities. You’re not going to get three random murders, two with the same method, in the same hotel in the same weekend.” He shrugged and grinned. “And well, yeah, I don’t think so.”
Christopher leaned forward and refilled Jacob’s cup, though it hadn’t gone down much. He took his own drink straight from the flask, and Jacob was momentarily grateful for the antiseptic qualities of alcohol. “You’re right,” Christopher said. “Those first two deaths were the same, weren’t they?”
“Were they?” asked Mickey.
They looked at Jacob, and suddenly he couldn’t remember if the causes of death had been publicly announced. But yes, they had, because people knew why the kitchens were being cleared. “Yeah,” he said. “But the third was different. Everyone saw the guy bleeding in the hallway. That was horrible, and I hope they find the guy.”
“How do you know it’s a guy?” asked Mickey.
“Statistically more likely,” Jacob said. “The victim was hit in the face and his throat was cut. Women certainly can do stuff like that, but it’s a more typically male approach.”
Mickey went over to look at the easel, deflating Jacob’s hopes that they would move on. “So what’s all this?”
Jacob stood, uneasy. “Um, I’m not sure you guys should be looking at that.”
“You just said you weren’t a cop yet, and that they didn’t tell you all the updates. So anything you know should be okay for us, right?” Christopher spun in his chair to look at the mind map.
Jacob started forward, but Mickey was already pointing at a circle. “RB creeping on girls? Is that—”
“That’s not common knowledge,” Jacob said hurriedly, “and it’s not related to the homicide investigations, and I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be talking about it. Sorry.”
“What about this cocoa thing?” Christopher asked, pointing at the CaCO notation.
Jacob’s ears grew warm and he knew he was blushing. He hoped the others would miss it in the mediocre lighting. “That’s not related to the homicide investigations, either.”
“Oh, I saw that on the screens and Twitter,” Mickey said.
The heat spread from Jacob’s ears to his face and neck. “I’m never gonna get away from it now.”
Mickey stepped nearer and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t be such a teenager. Of course you will; you’ve got all kinds of time in front of you. And trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I was pretty sure I’d never work again after Posy Picnic Massacre. I fired my agent and I spent the week after release hiding in my apartment, drinking cheap beer and eating canned refried beans because I was too scared to go to the grocery where someone might recognize me.” He smiled a crooked little smile. “But after a couple of months, the internet moved on to something else shiny, and I got another job. Which just happened to be Death Walks Quietly, and that was a huge break for me.”
Jacob sighed and nodded. It was too hard to argue it again.
Christopher seemed to take pity on him and tried to change the subject. “What’s the RVD thing?”
“Oh, that’s actually pretty sad.” Jacob nodded toward the easel. “The zombie — I’m sorry, that’s kind of a terrible thing to call him. But the guy who died after the zombie crawl, who was made up like a zombie, he told us that right before the EMTs came. That’s who attacked him, who actually killed him.”
Christopher blinked. “He talked? In initials? That’s like some crazy movie script.”
“No, he was whispering, and that’s what we could make out. Those are consonants in the murderer’s name.”
Christopher swore. “That’s freaky. And scary. Who’s got initials like that? Rupert Vincent Dare? No, that sounds like an adventure comic. Wait, did they — did they talk to Vince?”
“Does it have to be either of those two sets?” Mickey asked. “Because if you were just grabbing consonants, then it seems like they could be in any arrangement, right?”
“Well, they have to be in that order.” Jacob was confused.
“Yeah, but not necessarily in that grouping. So you’ve got RVD and RFT, but it could also be RFD and RVT. Right?”
Jacob considered. “Oh, yeah, right.” He reached for a marker to write them in.
“No, blue,” Mickey corrected, handing him the right color. “I don’t know what all the colors mean, but obviously they matter.”
“It’s not a very good system,” Jacob said. He wrote in the extra visemes and frowned at the paper. Blue….
“Good thing I’m the Terra Vista Ranger, and not the Ranger Vista Terra. That would
be awkward.” Christopher frowned. “What happens if those initials get out and people start going crazy looking for matches? That could get ugly.”
“They’re not out,” Jacob said. “And don’t say anything about them, please. I wouldn’t even know them except I’m the one who asked the guy.”
Mickey’s expression softened. “That must have been terrible.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad. A dying statement can be admitted in court only if you ask the victim if he knows he’s dying. There’s no way for it not to be rough.”
“Ouch. Man.”
“It can be used in court even if the victim himself is no longer alive to testify?” asked Christopher.
“It’s the only time hearsay evidence can be admitted. The theory is, someone who knows he’s dying has no reason to lie.”
“But only the guy who heard it, or else it’s just hearsay again.”
“Right.”
“Weird. I’d never heard of that.” Christopher took another drink. “So who was he? The dying statement victim?”
“We haven’t heard yet,” Jacob said.
“You wrote here that he’s a Fierce Burger employee.”
“I don’t actually know that, it’s just my hunch at the moment.” Jacob thought of the conservatory photos. “Actually, do you know a Fierce Burger guy?”
“What? I mean, I eat there, but I don’t know if I know anyone who works there….” Christopher’s mouth twisted. “Well, maybe. I mean, I don’t know.”
Mickey frowned at him. “It’s not a hard question.”
Christopher turned. “It’s a hard question if a burger employee has just been murdered and you don’t want to accidentally implicate yourself.”
“Sorry, man.” Mickey held up his hands in appeasement. “Don’t get snippy about it. We’re all in this together, wanting this guy caught.”
“Anyway, yeah, I talked to a Fierce Burger guy for a while, but it’s not like we’re friends or anything.” Christopher took another drink. “Sorry. It’s just — this has been a really freaky weekend.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Mickey held out his cup for a refill.
They were silent for a while, but it wasn’t a comfortable silence. Jacob wondered how to ask what Christopher and the Fierce Burger employee had talked about without sounding suspicious.
Mickey stared at the easel and Jacob’s mind map. “Red seems kind of brutal,” he said after a while. “I mean, yeah, maybe the most important, but a bit brutal.”
“Huh?” Jacob followed his eyes to the easel.
“In the middle, the victims’ names, in red. Just kinda, you know, hurts to look at them.”
“I wasn’t thinking that hard about it. I mean, I was using different colors, but they didn’t have any particular color meaning other than different layers.”
“They should be, I don’t know, green or blue or something.”
Blue…. The feathery whisper brushed against Jacob’s mind again, like a finger tracing his skin, and he grasped after it. But Mickey was still talking, and it slipped away.
“Or maybe not green, because that’s all about life and growing and — sorry, my girlfriend’s big into color symbolism. Uses it in all her work, though I don’t think most people get what she’s thinking. Maybe it still works subconsciously, I don’t know. Don’t tell her I said that, though.” He smiled faintly. “You and Sam, are you…?”
Jacob shook his head. “Just friends.”
“Bitch,” said Christopher.
Jacob’s head jerked toward him. “What?”
“Friend-zoned,” Christopher said. “Sorry, man.”
Jacob couldn’t formulate a coherent reply. “I’m not — she didn’t friend-zone me. We’re just friends.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize — I didn’t know you were gay. Sorry.”
Jacob stared at him, and Mickey cut in. “You got a girlfriend, Christopher?”
“Used to.” Christopher took another drink from his flask.
Mickey traded glances with Jacob. Well, that explained it.
Christopher drew out his phone and began to scroll. “Looks like you’re getting a lot of photos coming in.”
“Yeah, people have been sending hundreds. A few fakes — seriously, who pranks a homicide investigation? — but mostly legit.”
“Anything useful?”
“Well, that’s hard to say. There’s a reason these things usually take a long time to investigate.”
Christopher held up his phone. “There’s a request for pictures of the Fierce Burger guy. You said that was just your theory.”
“Yeah, I tweeted that. Hope I don’t get in trouble for it. But he looks kind of like the zombie who was killed, if you try to look past all the makeup and special effects.”
“Huh. And you got photos of him in the conservatory?”
“I haven’t checked yet. Do you see anything new?” Jacob turned to the computer on the desk, wondering if Christopher would mention again his contact with the employee.
“Nothing yet. Why the conservatory?”
Christopher might be afraid of association; a lot of people did that, didn’t volunteer information because they thought it might make them a suspect. He could be feeling Jacob out to know whether it was safe to mention that he’d been there, too. Or he might not be mentioning it because he had something more significant to hide. “Um, I saw a photo of him there. In the background of another shot. I thought someone else’s photo might show more of what he was doing there.”
Christopher shrugged. “A guy can walk through a hotel public space, right?”
“Yeah, but in the photo, he was looking kind of funny at Laser — from Laser Focus Photography, you know her? And a little later she was assaulted and robbed.”
Mickey swore. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s okay. Scary, though.”
“Obviously.”
“So you think he did it?” asked Christopher.
“I don’t think anything solid yet,” Jacob said. “And I’m just a wannabe detective killing time in the middle of the night with theories.”
Christopher took another drink. “I think you’re selling yourself short,” he said. “I think you’ve got a lot more you’re working with.”
“Oh?”
“All those photos you’ve been looking at on Twitter,” Christopher said, “I’ve been looking at them, too. Everyone can see them, following the hashtag. So you already know that I was in the photo with the Fierce Burger guy.”
Jacob’s pulse quickened. “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t really clear. And I didn’t want to sound like I was saying anything about you.”
“Why not?” Christopher turned to look hard at him. “Because you were worried about my reputation?”
“Well, no, there’s no one here to talk about your reputation,” Jacob said awkwardly. “I was just being polite.”
“Just being polite,” Christopher repeated, “or you were just keeping your mouth shut because you were suspicious of me.”
Jacob held up his hands. “Calm down, man. It’s just a picture of you and a guy together. There’s probably a couple hundred pictures of people with that guy just on his Facebook page. It doesn’t mean anything on its own.”
“But you thought it meant something, or you wouldn’t have tweeted about more photos.”
“Hey,” Mickey said, “go easy, Christopher. You’re kind of over-reacting to this.”
“Shut up, Mickey.”
Mickey’s face darkened but his voice remained steady. “There’s no call to be this way. It’s been a hard weekend on everybody, but we don’t want to leave with nasty impressions of each other. People are stressed, but when we get back to—”
“Get back to what? I’ve got nothing to go back to. You’ve got a bunch of shows and games and I don’t know, commercials and whatever. I’ve got no show at all, thanks to that freakin’ bitch and her bitch sister.”
Mickey stiffened, and Jacob remembered his clandestine rel
ationship. Jacob glanced at Mickey, but the voice actor gave a minute shake of his head, without looking at Jacob.
Christopher’s jaw clenched. “I thought for a bit that maybe now that she’s dead, maybe the rest of MEGAN!ME would pick up the show again.”
Jacob made a show of pushing the alcohol away from him. “Time to slow down, I think.”
“We all think privately of how things will change when something happens to someone and whether or not we’ll get called as a result,” Mickey said quietly. “Like I got brought in once when Rob Paulsen got strep throat. Just, most of us have the decency to keep it to ourselves.”
“Yeah, but you got called in for Rob freaking Paulsen! He’s a legend. I just need to get paid for the show I was promised.” Christopher gestured sharply. “Is that so much to ask? Just get paid for my work? But no, some tarted-up slut in a powersuit decides to cut me for a chibi mascot to nepotism, and I’m out of luck.”
Mickey frowned. “Are you saying Valerie dropped your show idea because she wanted to use a chibi?”
Jacob stopped listening, because Christopher’s rant had finally anchored the drifting, nagging thought in his head. Blue.
Girls noticed these things, right? He pulled out his phone and texted Sam, wondering if she were still awake. What was MEGAN!ME Valerie wearing when we saw her? Be specific if you can.
Mickey and Christopher were still arguing about the chibi character. Jacob rotated in his chair and opened Google on the computer. It was easy to find: Shadow’s wife Laura was buried in a blue suit, and that’s how she appeared through the book. Dead-Laura would have been wearing a blue suit.
His phone buzzed. She was in a navy blue suit with skirt on Friday. Saturday she was in a green pantsuit. Emerald, not kelly or lime. Why is that important in the middle of the night?
Blue. Powersuit. That was the connection between the two seemingly-random poisonings; both victims had been wearing blue suits on Friday. By Saturday, when Valerie had died, the connection had vanished, but it had been there on Friday.
And there was the motivation for Tasha/Dead-Laura’s death — it had been a mistake. The murderer had intended to kill Valerie.
Con Job Page 19