by Ray Daniel
“Tucker, you go by the hacker name Rosetta, yes?”
Caroline kicked me under the table. I said nothing.
“Let me read you this. Someone called Runway—”
“Runway is Peter,” I said.
Another kick.
“Ow!”
“There’s more where that came from,” said Caroline.
Lee read. “It started with ‘Your wife got slashed, dude.’ Then there was some back and forth and then Rosetta said, ‘I am going to’—um … effing—‘cut your head off.’ Pardon my language.”
I crossed my arms and stared at the table.
Lee continued. “And then Runway, who, as you say, was Peter Olinsky, got his head cut off.”
Caroline said, “Yes. Yes. Are we done now?”
Somebody knocked on the door. Lee leaned back in his chair and pulled it open. Looked out, nodded. “Bring her in.”
A cop pushed the door open and Mrs. Olinsky stood in the doorway, wearing her Hertz jacket.
“That’s him,” she said.
“What did he do?” Lee asked.
“He accused Peter of ruining Maria’s life.”
“Don’t think I said that to you,” I said.
“You said it online. The police told me.”
I leaned forward. Caroline gripped my hand. Squeezed. I ignored her. “Mrs. Olinsky, I am sorry for your loss.”
“Save it, you murderer.”
“I didn’t—”
“So he posted some dirty pictures on the Facebook, so what? You kill him for that?”
“I—”
“What? What are you going to say? You going to lie to me now?”
“No, I—”
Mrs. Olinsky didn’t look fast. She looked short, and wide, and solid. Looks deceived. She shot from the doorway, leaned across the table and slapped me across the face. I saw stars as she reared back for another whack. The cop behind her caught her arm as it came forward.
“Murderer!” she screamed. “You fucking murderer!”
It took the other cop and Lee working together to get her out of the room.
“He murdered my boy!” echoed as her voice faded down the hallway.
Lee returned, glanced at me, did a double take, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and tossed it on the table.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“I’ve seen you blow your nose in that handkerchief,” I said. “I’ll pass on the blood poisoning, if you don’t mind.”
Caroline said, “That was a cheap stunt, Lee.”
Warm blood slithered down my cheek. She must have caught my cheekbone with a ring.
Lee said, “I needed an identification.”
“My client is bleeding. Why don’t you go get him something sterile?”
Lee rose and left the room.
“You okay?” Caroline asked.
“Yeah, sure. She’s not so tough.”
“Your hands are bouncing.”
I looked at my hands. Sure enough, they were doing their own little rat-a-tat-tat on the table. “Huh,” I said.
Caroline covered my hands with hers. “You’ll be okay.”
The adrenaline stopped rattling my hands and settled in my stomach, making it feel as if I had eaten a jar of mayonnaise. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“If you do get sick, be sure to throw up all over this table. It would serve them right.”
I focused on not getting sick. Caroline pushed my head forward, just as blood dropped on the table. “Let’s keep the blood off your shirt.”
“She’s not wrong, you know.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Olinsky. She’s right to blame me.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“No, I just unmasked—”
Lee returned with a wad of bandages. Tossed them on the table. “Here.”
I used one to clean my cheek and another to apply pressure to the wound.
Caroline rose, pulled me up by the arm. “Any more baby games, Lee, or can we go now?”
Lee said, “I have means and opportunity.”
“And Tucker has a need for an emergency room. Your boss is going to get the bill, Lee, and you guys had better pay it.”
As we stepped into the hallway, Lee said behind us, “I just have to find the sword.”
twenty-One
The police, while wonderful about giving me a ride to the police station, were not interested in giving me a ride to the emergency room. We stood over Caroline’s new black two-door car.
“Nice,” I said. “What is it?”
“It’s a BMW 428i with a 2.0-liter engine.”
“Pretty.”
“You have no idea what I just said, do you?”
“The B stands for Bavarian.”
“Very good. Do not get blood on it.”
We climbed into the car. Caroline fiddled with a button. The roof lifted up and folded itself away. Pale April sun shone down upon us. It felt good to see the sky. I wondered how much sky one saw in prison.
Caroline worked the clutch, and we started off.
“You got a manual transmission?”
“Don’t you start,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Caroline shifted into a valley-girl cadence. “Look at you! You lost a leg and you still drive a standard. You’re so inspirational.”
“That seems nice.”
“I don’t want to be inspirational. I want to drive a clutch. It gives me something to do in bad traffic.”
And that ended that conversation. Pretty much ended all of them as Caroline navigated her way through the city traffic in silence.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“You literally threatened someone’s life in writing?”
“Not literally.”
“Yes. Yes. Literally. Writing something down is the definition of literally.”
“He said that I must have sexually assaulted Carol before I killed her.”
A beat of silence.
“You didn’t kill her.”
“Of course I didn’t kill her.”
“Why would he say that?”
“It’s the Internet. He wanted to get a rise out of me.”
“He succeeded in that.”
“Succeeded?”
“You threatened to cut off his head.”
I watched the city sidewalks slip by. The sun went behind a skyscraper and April’s chill settled into my bones. “He started it.”
“And cutting off his head was simply the next step.”
“Don’t you start.”
“I’m just pointing out the simple logic of the prosecutor’s case.”
“He got a rise out of somebody else too. There must be dozens of people he’s pissed off.”
Caroline turned onto Storrow Drive. The Charles River, now free of winter’s ice, glittered blue in the springtime sunshine.
“Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now,” Caroline said.
“Yes, he is.”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
I remembered what Peter had said about Carol, and said nothing.
“Are you sorry?”
“I’m processing.”
“So you’re not sorry. I can see that. The jury will see it too.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Lee sees it now.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Just stating the case.”
Caroline upshifted and downshifted her way through the Mass General parking garage. Then we sat around while the emergency room handled gunshot wounds, heart attacks, stabbings, and other more-serious-than-a-slap injuries. Though she sat with me, Caroline mostly worked her phone.
&nbs
p; “What’s really going on?” I asked. “You’re mad at me for some whole other reason.”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m worried about you.”
“What? Because of one meeting?”
“It’s not going to be one meeting, Tucker. It’s going to be a big thing. Lee’s going to arrest you.”
“Not if I arrest him first.”
Caroline didn’t even crack a smile.
“Come on. That was a little funny,” I said.
“Here comes the doctor,” said Caroline rising and shrugging on her coat. “I’ll call you later.”
Three hours later, after various people prodded the cut, poured searing antiseptics into it, commented on its raggedness, and declared the need for a plastic surgeon, I left Mass General with eight tiny stitches holding my cheek together. They told me to expect a scar.
Sometime during the prodding, poking, sticking, and stitching sessions, Bobby Miller had sent me a text: Call me.
I called him.
He said, “Get your ass over here so that maybe we can keep you out of jail.”
Twenty-Two
Bobby and Hunter peered closely at my cheek, Bobby probing with the eraser end of a pencil.
“Does that hurt?” asked Bobby.
“Yes!”
“That’s going to leave a scar,” said Hunter.
“That’s what they tell me. I am marred.”
“It’ll be dashing,” Bobby said.
“Can’t hurt,” Hunter said.
Bobby had invited me down the street to his office in Center Plaza, where he said he would buy me lunch.
“And a drink,” I had said.
“And a drink,” he’d agreed.
Now Bobby and Hunter sat on either side of me at a curved bar in the Kinsale Irish Tavern, a warm, woody restaurant tucked improbably into the brutalist sweep of Center Plaza across the street from Government Center. Bobby and Hunter each sat behind a Guinness. I cradled a double Jameson’s.
“That Hertz lady packed a wallop,” Bobby said.
“She used a foreign object,” I said. “I think it was a ring.”
“Maybe you’re just a bleeder,” said Hunter.
“I don’t blame her,” I said. “She had just lost her kid.”
“Actually, she thought you had killed her kid.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Which raises a question.”
I drank some whiskey. Let it settle in my stomach, tamp down some leftover stress from getting hit in my face. “Yes, Special Agent Hunter, what would that be?”
“How did you dox Peter?”
“Are you going to add this to the curriculum at Quantico?”
“Depends if it’s clever enough.”
I told her about Facebook.
Her face fell. “That’s it?”
“This is why a magician never reveals his secrets. It’s always disappointing.”
Bobby said, “Have to admit, Tucker, you never fail to disappoint.”
I toasted Bobby, drank more whiskey, ate a potato skin.
“The problem we have now,” said Hunter, “is that Peter was our only link to PwnSec.”
“What do you care about PwnSec?” I asked. “They’re kids. They can’t write software, they can only run scripts other people wrote.”
“You’re saying they’re script kiddies?”
“They’re not even script kiddies. They’re just mean little shits.”
“Our information tells us that they stole some important information.”
“Confidential information?”
“Yes. We’re supposed to find it before it gets out.”
“What was it?”
“Confidential.”
“Ah, well,” I said, finishing my whiskey. “Good luck with that.”
Bobby motioned the bartender to bring me another round.
I said, “It’s a little early.”
“You don’t want it?”
“Make it a Guinness.”
My beer arrived. I ate another potato skin. Blew out a big breath, suddenly exhausted. This thing with Maria had been jangling my nerves for days, a constant twisting of my guts. I’d been hoping for closure, but seeing the kid murdered wasn’t closure.
You don’t sound sorry.
I had said I was processing. Processing complete. I still wasn’t sorry.
Bobby was talking. “ … the same way.”
“What?”
Hunter said, “Bobby wants you to help me find PwnSec the way you found Peter.”
“Facebook would be happy to help. Look at Peter’s account and do what I did.”
“And if they’re not on Facebook?”
“Then they’re smarter than Peter.”
I drank my Guinness. They know how to pull a Guinness here, of course. Probably should have started with Guinness. The whiskey had made me a little sleepy. Given the week I’d had, I deserved a nap.
“People are going to get hurt if you don’t help me,” said Hunter.
“People have already gotten hurt,” I said, pointing to my cut. “Me least of all.”
“Putting your head in the sand isn’t going to help.”
“Look, all I want to do is repa—”
I glanced out the pub’s front window. Standing there, trying nonchalantly to peer through the glass, an impossible task, was the hook-nosed guy in a different suit. He’d gone from gray to brown.
“Don’t look now, but who’s that guy in the window?”
Hunter looked.
“I said don’t look!”
“How am I supposed to see?”
Hook Nose realized that he’d been made, and took off.
“I don’t see anyone,” said Hunter.
“He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
I told them about the museum visit and about being followed.
“Guy in a suit with a big hooked nose?” asked Bobby.
“Yeah. You know him?”
“Never heard of him.” Bobby went back to drinking his beer.
“What’s he talking about?” I asked Hunter.
Bobby gave Hunter a glance, and she drank her beer instead of answering.
“This is bullshit, Bobby. If you know what’s going on, you should tell me.”
“Why? You said you don’t want to help.”
“I don’t want to help.”
“So go about your life.”
“What about this guy?”
“He’s harmless.”
“Who is he?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m telling you he’s harmless. I mean you scared him away.”
“Hey, you know, I can get pretty ragey.”
“Yeah, well, don’t go all Hulk on us, okay?”
I pushed back from the bar. Stood.
“You didn’t finish your beer,” said Bobby.
“I’m done with this.”
“C’mon, don’t leave in a huff.”
“Screw you, Bobby.”
“Aw, jeesh.”
“Bye, Special Agent Hunter. Thanks for the beer.”
“Tucker, let’s talk,” Bobby said.
I turned from the two and stalked out of the pub, across the street, and down into Government Center station. It was time to put my life back together. I stood on the platform waiting for the train, pulled out my smartphone, and opened Twitter.
I had forty-five notifications. Forty-five people had mentioned me on Twitter.
That could not be good.
Twenty-Three
Click and Clack were unusually active, which for hermit crabs meant they were moving. I flipped open my laptop, opened the Twitter site. I was up to fifty-eight notifications. I clicked the notification number.
Someone knocked on my door. Jael strode in.
Tall and lithe with black hair and gray eyes, Jael Navas was the only friend I had who carried a purse and a Glock 17. Bobby Miller had introduced her to me as a bodyguard back when I was going through a nasty bout of office politics in my previous company. We’d since become friends. Usually we were the kind of friends who’d have dinner a couple of times a month, but sometimes we were the kinds of friends where the one with the Glock 17 protected the one who couldn’t shoot.
Jael said, “Have you seen the Internet?”
“You mean Twitter?”
“Yes.”
“I just opened it.”
We sat in front of my laptop, opened the notification screen. I now had more than a hundred messages mentioning me, @TuckerInBoston. All of them were discussing the notion that @TuckerInBoston had killed Peter Olinsky.
I recognized @PwnSec:
@PwnSec: RIP our friend @Runway, killed by
@TuckerInBoston #TuckerGate
The tweet contained a link to the 4chan.org picture of Peter’s murder scene.
“Jesus, they haven’t taken that down?”
Jael said, “There are comments beneath the picture that say it is not real.”
“It’s real. I was there.”
“You were there?”
“Yes. I found Peter.”
“And you didn’t call me before you went to his house?”
“I went there expecting his head to be attached.”
The @PwnSec tweet had spawned a long conversation about whether I could have, or would have, cut off Peter’s head. The damning bit of evidence was the same IRC post that Lieutenant Lee had latched on to, where I was speaking as Rosetta:
Rosetta: I’m going to fucking cut your head off.
Jael said, “A previous tweet says that you are Rosetta.”
“The previous tweet was right.”
“You threatened to cut his head off?”
“Don’t you start.”
“That is not like you.”
Not like me.
It seemed to be more and more like me lately. My anger had emerged when I had entered into a strange parenting troika with Catherine and Adriana, a pair of women who had not figured out what to do with me. It had escalated when Peter had hacked Maria’s Facebook page, spewing lesbian porn at her friends, and it had exploded when Peter opened the scab related to Carol.