It would have to do. He began to insinuate himself into the conversation, deciding to take a passive approach. As other players chatted, he occasionally dropped in a “LOL” if something was funny. He had a second page open on the browser for internet slang. If something was unbelievable, or incredible, he’d type in a commiserative “SMH,” which meant, “shaking my head.” After about twenty minutes of this, a player started talking to him directly. The name was Jubilax. Swift sensed that it was a female player, but of course he couldn’t know for sure.
Jubilax: Hey Kady. U r new? Or an alt?
Kady: Hi Jubilax. Yeah I’m new. Whats an alt?
Jubilax: alt is a player who has more than one acct. kinda cheating, if u ask me
Kady: Oh I see. Ty
A minute passed and there was no more from Jubilax. Other players were having conversations simultaneously, and these interpolated through the chat stream. Swift’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. Then he typed again.
Kady: actually have a friend I’m lookin for
He waited. Nothing from Jubilax. A full two minutes passed. He thought she must have left the game. Then:
Jubilax: oh yeah? who that be?
Swift felt a little ripple of excitement.
Kady: name is Billy Sweet Tea. U know him?
He waited. His fingers left the keyboard and drummed the desk as he stared at the screen. Half a minute went by. He guessed that players didn’t focus exclusively on chat, but played the game and glanced down occasionally. It was not a priority. Finally she came back on.
Jubilax: Nope. Sorry. U sure hes on this server?
Hmm. Swift scratched his chin.
Kady: This server?
Jubilax: lol. U are new
Swift leaned back. He wondered if by server she meant what Kim Yom had meant when she said that there were multiple servers. Swift figured it made sense that all of this information couldn’t be stored on one server, not with tens of thousands of gamers. He hadn’t considered that, while the data might be divvied up, the players themselves played on each different server. He hunched forward and pecked at the keys some more in his one-fingered style.
Kady: lol yeah. guess I knew that. Hey how many servers do you think there are?
He waited another agonizing two minutes for her response. In the meantime, he watched the chat flow among the other players. Some seemed good-natured enough, but he caught racial remarks, concealed profanity (the game didn’t allow straight swearing, but you could add a period or a dash to a curse word), and the occasional insult. He thought for a moment. This chat window represented people from all over the world, thrown together, communicating with one another from a presumably safe distance, free to say whatever they wanted. Some players rose to the challenge and played with respect, others used the opportunity to spew poison.
The game was a microcosm of the world, Swift thought. Building troops and resources took time, but you could spend money on “bullion” and speed those times up artificially. As he glanced at the profiles of chatting players, he noticed quite a spread in the levels of power and respect. Clearly, some players were moneyed. After forty minutes of watching the screen, it was obvious that there were game politics going on. Players from warring families would form alliances, particularly if it gave them a better shot at winning in tournaments, which were ongoing. So you had the “rich” players supporting one another in order to stay moneyed and in power. A system which theoretically started out with every player on equal ground, quickly skewed in favor of those more financially equipped.
Jubilax: Uhm, think maybe almost a hundred by now. Why?
Christ, thought Swift. Nearly a hundred servers. Here he’d thought his player would be automatically incorporated into the same server Fresco and Billy Sweet Tea had played on. He’d never thought to ask Kim Yom about that, and now he’d spent the better part of the afternoon chasing his tail. And what was more, the idea that Sweet Tea was even Robert Darring was now doubtful, because Darring was locked up while Sweet Tea was apparently still playing.
Swift — as Kady — thanked Jubilax for talking to him and prepared to sign off. He stopped short when he saw a flashing indicator in the lower right corner of the screen. There was an icon that looked like an envelope. He clicked on it and it took him to his player message inbox, feeling a momentary flare of excitement.
There were three messages. The first was a general welcome message from Kapow, telling him what fun was in store. The second was an advertisement to buy bullion and purchase various goods in the game store — already they were trying to sell stuff to him. He wondered how much money players spent. The third message said: Reminder: Scheduled Maintenance Downtime.
He opened this message and read that the game would be down — worldwide — for two hours the following day. From the tone of the message, this wasn’t the first time. The Don was a “beta” game, meaning it was available while the creators continued to work on it and tweak it. What was far more interesting than the message, though, was the image which accompanied it.
Swift scrambled to do one of the few things he was proud to know how to do on a computer. He took a screen shot. After exiting out of the game at last, he opened the image, cropped it neatly, and printed it.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Swift met with the Simpkins couple, later than planned, apologizing profusely for the delay. He then shared with them — sparing the graphic details — the results of their son’s autopsy — and the possibility that Braxton had been strangled to death. It was no easier to deliver this information than it had been to report the child’s death. The parents were a wreck. They said they’d been shooing the press off their steps all day. Swift thought they had been fighting — there was a freeze-out going on between them; they stood apart and barely looked at each other. The stepfather, Mike, seemed to have retreated somewhere inside himself, and Swift was worried about how the man looked. He didn’t ask any questions about the 529 account. The Simpkins needed a chance to absorb the autopsy news. He assured them he would talk to the press again about respecting boundaries, and get his captain to assign a permanent detail to the house. They appeared to be even more devastated than when he had first come by. When the phone call came, he felt grateful for the interruption.
He stepped out onto the cold front porch. Swift didn’t recognize the incoming number, though it was a local call.
“I have some information,” said a voice.
“Who is this?” Swift thought he heard music in the background, people, perhaps the clinking of ice cubes. A bar.
“Can you meet me at the Knotty?”
The voice was vaguely familiar. “Is this Frank Duso?”
A pause. “Yeah. It’s me. I’ve got something you might be interested in.”
“What are you talking about? How did you get my number, Frank?”
“I called the station. Trooper Bronze gave it to me.”
Swift winced. Bronze was one of the troopers involved in Duso’s DWI arrest.
“So tell me,” Swift said. “What have you got?”
“In person,” Duso said, and hung up.
Swift took the phone away from his ear and looked at it for a moment, staring at the red Call Ended icon.
He put the phone away and looked through the window into the Simpkins’ living room. The parents looked like zombies. The children were morose. He needed to let them be, come back later.
* * *
The Knotty Pine sat on the edge of town. It was a small, single-story building on a dirt parking lot, surrounded by evergreen trees. The sun had set, and only a dark blue glow remained on the westerly horizon. With the darkness came the cold. Swift went inside.
Frank Duso was belly-up to the bar. He was a young man who appeared older, afflicted by premature balding. He tried to hide this beneath a trucker cap. He turned to look as Swift approached, and took a drink from his pint glass.
There were a handful of other patrons in the place. They all seemed to be watching S
wift as he crossed the gloomy space, walking over the gritty wood floor, boards creaking beneath his weight, music from the jukebox playing in the back corner, the air pungent with stale beer and body odor. Swift recognized most of the faces. New Brighton’s population was small. A few of the people in the Knotty had been through County Jail. Others he knew from around town. He smiled and dipped his head at a couple of them and then slid onto the bar stool next to Duso.
Duso looked straight ahead, at the rows of liquor behind the bar. “Buy you a beer?”
“What do you have for me, Frank?”
“Come on. Let me buy you one.”
“Fine. I’ll take a Labatt.”
The bartender was an older woman named Rhoda. She’d been down at the other end of the bar pretending not to stare at Swift, turned towards the Powerball screen in the corner of the room — the only technology in an otherwise timeless place. She came over, wiping her hands with a towel, immediately Frank raised a finger.
“A bottle of Labatt for the detective,” Frank said.
“Hi Swifty,” said Rhoda.
“Hey Rhode.”
Her eyes rested on him for a moment. She was a skinny woman, all gristle and wrinkles, her copper-colored hair pulled back in a loose pony tail that was fraying around the edges. She turned away and bent into the cooler to fish out the beer.
Frank was apparently not going to make a peep until Swift had a bottle of suds in front of him, so Swift waited. They watched Rhoda remove the bottle cap, slide a cocktail napkin over the wood and set the bottle on it.
“Thanks,” Swift said. He reached out and wrapped a hand around the bottle. He looked at Rhoda who faded back to the other end of the bar and tried to look busy. Swift turned to Duso.
“Out with it.”
“So, I just got out of County,” said Frank.
“I’m aware.”
Frank’s voice was low. He played with some condensation on the bar, pushing the liquid around with the tip of his finger. “Interesting guy I met in there.”
Swift leaned a little closer. “You talked to Darring?”
“Sure. We had lunch. Sat down next to each other. Seemed like the only other sane guy in there. Half the people you got in there, Swift, you know, those are mental people. They don’t belong in jail. They got problems.”
“Spare me the lecture,” Swift said. “So what did you talk about?”
“You’re looking at this guy for murder, huh? The kid? The young kid on the road? The one my dad found?”
Swift watched Duso, who kept his eyes forward, taking a long pull from his drink. He was really enjoying this, Swift thought. Having his moment.
“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with you, Frank, who we’re looking at or not. But if you think you’ve got something, if someone said something to you, I need to know.”
Now Duso did look at Swift. He set his drink down slowly and then turned his head. He was a tall kid. At well over six feet, he should’ve been a hundred and ninety pounds of country-boy muscle, but he was gaunt. His eyes looked beyond Swift for a moment. “You know, you and your boys caused me a lot of trouble.” He blinked a few times, as if to demonstrate the harmful effects of the pepper spray.
Swift took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Frank, you know I’m not going to discuss that with you either.”
Swift glanced around, suddenly feeling as if he were in a fishbowl. He caught some looks as the bar patrons, sitting in the three dark booths against the back wall, standing near the jukebox, at the two high, round-top tables by the front door, bent over the pool table in the center of the room, quickly turned their eyes away.
“I’m not looking for discussion,” Frank said. He closed his mouth after that, but the sentiment carried on in Swift’s mind. What I’m looking for is a big old fat apology. Maybe right here in front of all these people.
“Okay,” Swift said, playing dumb. He brought his gaze back to Frank. “What are you looking for, Frank? You called me here in the middle of the night to tell me you had something for me.”
Frank’s gaze had wandered past Swift again. Was he waiting for something?
“Spit it out,” Swift said, making to leave. “Or I’m outta here.”
Frank lowered his eyes and stuck his bottom lip out. He raised his shoulders. “I just, you know. I would’ve liked to hear you say, ‘Yeah, Frankie, I’m sorry my boys went fucking apeshit on you like that.’” He looked up and dropped his shoulders. “But you’re not going to. Are you?”
“Alright, Frank. Nice to see you.” Swift got up to leave. His beer, untouched, sat on the bar.
“Darring said a lot of things,” Frank blurted in a loud whisper. “He talked a lot. One of those types. Talked about shit . . . I don’t know. He was going on about the internet. Stuff like that.”
Swift stood still, listening.
“Seemed like the kind that needs attention or something. You know those types. Wanted someone to listen. So we were at lunch, and he’s told me who he is, and why he’s there, and how it doesn’t matter. Because he knows how to manipulate people. Something to that effect.”
Swift said nothing. He was looking at Duso, but his mind was elsewhere. His mind was on the two kids. Hideo Miko and Sasha Bellstein. The two kids they had let go. Then he focused on Frank again.
“That’s it?”
Frank looked hurt. “That’s it? I mean, sounds like he’s working with other people, dunnit?”
Without thinking, Swift reached out and grabbed the beer and took a good, long, swig of it. He saw Frank watching him, smiling a little. He needed to call Mathis. He pulled the beer from his lips and swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Thank you, Frank.”
“Hey,” Frank said. “Hey wait. Stick around for a bit. Bury the hatchet.”
“Maybe another time.”
Swift turned and headed out of the Knotty, feeling the eyes on him. He flung open the door and stepped into air, blasted by the cold. He was still holding the beer bottle.
* * *
He dialed the ADA’s number with his free hand. Mathis picked it up before it had rung a second time. He sounded edgier than ever, probably squirming inside his skin.
“Yeah?”
“Lab tests came back an hour ago,” Swift said into his phone.
“Thank God. Wait — Jesus, why are you just telling me now?”
“I had to see the Simpkins family. Then I got a call from someone.”
“A call? Who?”
“In a minute. Test results are that the prints on the guitar cord are a match for Tori McAfferty . . .”
“Right . . . and . . .”
“Initial testing confirms Braxton Simpkins’s DNA.”
“Shit!” Mathis sounded like a gambler whose horse had just paid off. Then the ADA said, more quietly, “Holy shit.”
“There are two tests that have to be done for it to be conclusive. This was a favor to me — friend I have there — but it still needs confirmation.”
“I know that.” Now Mathis sounded like Swift was the dark raincloud coming to rain on his win. “It’s McAfferty. What’s the matter? Now you don’t like McAfferty?”
“I like him fine,” Swift said, “but he’s missing. And his girlfriend is a clamshell, protected by her uncle lawyer.”
Mathis fell silent. Then he said, “Let me work on that.”
Swift took a pull of the beer. He felt something in his bones, something he couldn’t shake. Rather than things getting clearer, they were only becoming more opaque. It made him highly uncomfortable, all the more so because he couldn’t put his finger on it. Swift had that feeling again, like things were happening that he wasn’t privy to, like a puppet in a game. He thought of what Frank Duso had said just now, how Darring said he manipulated people. Swift felt trapped. He didn’t like feeling unfree. His ex-wife knew that. His colleagues and captain knew that. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, and he stayed in control.
“Way I see it,” Swift said
into the phone, “we got one suspect, sitting there in county, charged, awaiting arraignment, and we’ve got nothing solid on him. But he’s pulling strings somehow. He’s . . . shit, Mathis. I think those two other kids were into more than we got out of them. And we let them go.”
“Swift,” Mathis said, sounding like he was trying to be patient. “We’ve got nothing but circumstance to link Darring to the murdered kid. You yourself helped convince me of that. Even the player in the game you thought was him doesn’t look like it now.”
“That’s because . . .”
“. . . And then we’ve got McAfferty, and we’ve got emails with his name on them, sweet-talking the kid, the threat issued by Mike Simpkins, and the drug dealing, the meth lab, Cohen . . .”
“Yeah, well, he’s gone, Mathis. And I don’t know that we’re going to hear from him anytime soon.”
“Come on. We’ll get him. The whole state is looking for him. Like I said, I’ll see if I can work the girlfriend. Cobleskill is working with the task force on the meth lab explosion.”
That was good, Swift thought. If the DA was warming up for the meth lab prosecution, maybe Mathis could get somewhere with Tricia Eggleston after all. Maybe she would sing a little tune.
Swift heard a vehicle approaching. He turned and looked as a news van came down the road and began to brake as it neared the bar. It plowed into the snow covering the dirt lot and jerked to a halt next to The Knotty Pine.
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