“You mean like the harassing texts and emails you receive? I thought that was mostly homophobia.”
“No. The homophobia is bad. The misogyny is much, much worse. The default male gamer assumption is that if a woman has entered into gaming or comic book fandom, it’s to garner male attention. They’ve been known to try to make the environment very unwelcoming for female fans.”
“In what way?”
“Check out Fat, Ugly, or Slutty—all one word, no spaces or punctuation—dot com if you want to see some samples. One common response to a female fan bringing up anything is ‘Tits or get the fuck out,’ by which they mean, ‘If you’re not here to entertain and titillate us, you’re not welcome.’”
Tim frowned. “Couldn’t that be chalked up mostly to the age demographic?”
“The average gamer is around midthirties.” Niles sighed. “And male gamers, specifically, don’t want to see gaming change. Homophobic and gendered slurs are common, and they like that female characters in games and comic books tend to be designed to appeal to the male gaze—unrealistically dressed, objectified, anatomically impossible, hypersexualized poses.”
“And it’s grown men defending this?”
“Well, as you’ve seen with my harassment, guys can get very vitriolic when their preeminence is challenged. It’s basically the whole anti-sexism-racism-homophobia debate in a microcosm: ‘I, the privileged demographic, don’t have a problem, and therefore anyone pointing out that problems do actually exist or trying to change the status quo is a threat to me.’” Niles shrugged. “But they do their bullying anonymously, with words and cyber attacks, not physically. Any hints otherwise is just them talking big.”
“Yeah, well, one guy—or a group of them—could take it into his head to up the ante.” Tim frowned thoughtfully.
Niles groaned, rubbing his temples. “See, you’re doing it. Assuming it’s a gamer.”
Tim sighed. “Niles, I’m acknowledging that it could be a gamer. It could also be some random stranger who got the drop on the young women in the parking lot. The difference between those two theories is that one leaves me a possible connection to investigate, and honestly, the crimes don’t seem random. Stranger-on-stranger crime is much less common than crimes where the victims know or have some connection to their attackers. So I need to know the sort of people these young women would have associated with.”
“Fine. Okay.” Niles scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Just . . . don’t get tunnel vision where gamers are concerned, okay? Especially not based on all the crap people have thrown out about gaming and its effects on our culture.”
“I know how to do my job.” Tim fought to suppress a frown. “You can trust me to give everyone a fair shake.”
“Can I? You were never very open-minded back when we were in school.” Niles pressed his lips together and shook himself. “Forget it. What sort of cosplay did they do?”
Tim blinked at the change of subject but forced himself not to be diverted into discussing personal business that had no place here. “There are different kinds?”
“I mean the characters.”
Tim was interrupted when the waitress approached to take their orders. He tried not to flinch when Niles ordered two meals packaged to go.
“One was a sort of femme fatale,” Tim answered when the waitress was gone. “The other was sort of an alien or nonhuman creature, we think, judging from the leftover face paint. No one working the crime scenes recognized a specific character or costume.”
“Okay, well, that narrows it down to, oh, at least a couple hundred archetypical characters,” Niles said wryly, refilling his glass. But then something tightened in the corners of his eyes and his face went a little gray, putting Tim on alert. “Um, one of the girls wouldn’t happen to have been wearing brown leather, was she?”
Tim straightened, then leaned farther across the table, pitching his voice low. “Yes, actually. Do you know who she was portraying?”
Niles closed his eyes, his lips moving silently. When he opened them, they were bright with tears. Tim felt an answering knot of unease form in his stomach. “If it’s who I’m thinking of, she was playing Issis Lowe. And her companion, the alien, was a character named Gairi. I saw them that day. Talked to them. Me and Rosie and Jordan, at the autograph signing.”
“Did you get their names?”
Niles nodded. “Yeah, but off the top of my head, I couldn’t—”
“Charity Anspach and Lakshmi Agrawal?”
“Oh God. That’s them.” Niles blew out a shuddering breath. He hung his head for a moment, then wiped his eyes and looked up. “They’re really dead?”
Tim nodded and reached across the table to squeeze Niles’s hand, hesitating at the last moment. He cleared his throat. “Look, I’m going to need you, your brother, and your boss to come down to the precinct and give us statements on your contact with the victims that day.”
“All right.” Niles’s voice was little more than a whisper. “I’ll call Rosie and Jordie. Just let me take the food home to my guest, and then I’ll come down to the precinct.”
“Okay, I’ll call Payne, have her meet us down there.” He stood, digging his phone out of his breast pocket while Niles stared at the table. Tim could almost see his mind trying to throw up its defenses, shutting out the ugly image of what those young women had suffered. Things like that had no place in Niles’s universe. Tim had always adored him for that dewy-eyed worldview, but it was heartbreaking to see Niles when he couldn’t protect himself from the harsh realities of life.
“Niles?” He had to repeat himself before Niles looked up. He didn’t like how hard Niles was taking this. What sort of connection had he had to those girls? “Just one thing: the characters the girls were playing . . . where were they from?”
“My game.” Niles’s mouth quivered, and he drew a deep breath, meeting Tim’s eyes dead-on. “Issis and Gairi are my characters. I wrote them.”
Rosie looked up from the spreadsheet she was working on at the coffee table when her phone rang with Niles’s ringtone. She swiped the screen to answer, leaning back on the sofa, away from her laptop. “Hey, I thought you had a date tonight. What’s up?”
“Rosie . . .” Niles cleared his throat, and his voice was raspy. She sat upright, stiff and tense in an instant. “Rosie, those girls from the convention? Issis and Gairi? They’re . . . they’re dead.”
“What?” The breath shot from her lungs, leaving her chest aching.
“The girl in Forest Park they found this week—”
“Oh my God.” She closed her eyes, trying not to think of those bright, eager young women dead. Her pulse pounded in her ears, making it hard to hear Niles’s next words.
“The police want us to come down to the precinct, give a statement about when we saw them that day.”
“Of course.” She was standing, reaching for her coat and shoes before she even finished nodding. “Are you okay?”
Niles’s shuddering breath rattled the speaker of her phone with a staticky sound. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’m fine compared to those women, but God . . . Am I crazy for feeling a personal connection to this?”
“They were playing characters you created, Niles. Of course you feel you had a connection to them. I feel it too. You know how I identify with Issis.” That much was true, though it was Charity’s bravery in the face of being harassed at the convention that now haunted her. “It’ll be okay, honey. Call Jordan. He’ll take care of you. I’ll meet you down at the precinct.”
Niles had to take a deep breath before he turned the knob to enter his own house. The odor of the food he’d bought was now vaguely nauseating. Hell. He didn’t want to face Daniel still reeling like this.
Daniel was on the sofa, where he’d been when Niles had left, playing a first-person shooter on Niles’s Xbox. He smiled when Niles walked in and paused the game. “Hey there, how— Are you okay?”
Niles tried to return the smile, but he couldn’t manag
e it. “I’ll be fine. Look, there’s been a change of plans. I need to go down to the police precinct and talk to them awhile longer.” Damn it. He owed Daniel some sort of explanation, though Tim had cautioned him against sharing details with anyone else. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “The LEET News might be interested to know that the murder victims that have been in the news here in Portland this week were gamers.”
There. That should be safe. The murders were already on the news. Maybe LEET could do a memorial for them or something. Honor them specifically as members of the gaming community. Maybe Third Wave could find out what charities the girls supported and make a donation in their names.
“Are you kidding me?” Daniel, eyes wide, came to his feet as Niles set the bag of takeout on the counter. “Can you tell me anything else?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what is public information and what’s being kept under wraps for the police investigation, so let’s just assume there’s nothing else I can say.” He scrubbed his hands down his face. “I’m sorry about this. Just— Make yourself at home. You’re welcome to anything in the kitchen, any of the games. I don’t know when I’ll be home. I’m sorry.”
“Hey.” Daniel crossed the kitchen and reached for Niles, stroking his hands down Niles’s arms before pulling him into a soothing hug. “It’s okay. This is important. I get it. You do what you need to do. You’ve got an awesome game library. I’m good here.”
“Thanks.” He leaned his head against Daniel’s shoulder, accepting the embrace. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Don’t wait up if you need some sleep.”
Rosie watched Detective Payne jotting down notes. “What can you tell us about the guys who were making advances on Charity at the convention?”
“Assault.”
“What?”
“Assault. The word you’re looking for is assault.” She raised and lowered her shoulders, craning her neck from one side to the other to try to get rid of some of the tension. “On at least one occasion, a man touched her sexually without her consent. When you say making advances, you make it sound like she was the target of some harmless flirting.”
The detective narrowed her eyes for a moment—the expression thoughtful and considering, rather than annoyed. “Point taken. What can you tell us about the guys who assaulted Charity at the convention?”
“Which time?” The response came out more caustically than she had intended, but it felt like the walls were closing in on her, despite the wide-open space around the detective’s desk. At another desk, Jordan sat with Detective Wyatt, who was writing down notes based on Jordie’s statement just as his partner was doing with Rosie. She caught his eye and jerked her head minutely in the direction of the chairs on the outskirts of the large, chaotic room. Niles sat there with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together, and his head bowed almost prayerfully. She hadn’t seen him this upset since the day two years ago when she’d told him about the tumor in her skull.
“Ms. Candelaria?” Detective Payne prompted, and Rosie tore her attention back to the interview.
“Sorry,” she murmured, clamping down on her irritation. Niles looked devastated by the news that those young women were dead, but anger was boiling under the surface of Rosie’s composure, vibrating the lid she was trying to keep on it. “I’m taking my temper out on you, and I don’t mean to. I saw several incidents while Charity and Lakshmi stood in line when people wanted them to pose for pictures. The one where Jordan interfered was the most obvious, but I noticed several moments where Charity looked uncomfortable enough to make me suspect someone was being inappropriate with her.”
“Ms. Candelaria—”
“You can call me Rosie, Detective.”
“All right. I’m Angie.” The detective took a deep breath and met her eyes evenly. “Rosie, I’m not interested in downplaying the way those young women were treated that day at the convention. You were right to call me on my sugarcoated word choice. So if you think I’m trying to blame the victims or whatever, that’s not how I operate. Okay?”
“Okay.” Rosie inhaled and exhaled several times, deep and slow. “I’m not pissed at you. I’m pissed that someone killed them.”
Angie frowned. “Sounds personal. You just met them that day, right?”
“Yeah, but—” Rosie grimaced. “They stood out. I’ve actually been thinking about them a lot this week, particularly Charity Anspach. She was bright, and happy, and brave. She stood up for herself, you know. Not just against the guys who groped her, but even with Jordan. She told him to back off and let her handle it.”
“Really?” Angie tapped her pen on her pad, frowning even more deeply. “That doesn’t fit the description everyone else has given of a quiet, shy girl who never bothered anyone.”
“Why not? Quiet and shy doesn’t mean spineless. Especially if she was making a deliberate effort not to let that sort of thing slide, to confront misogyny when she came across it.”
“True, that,” Angie conceded. “So tell me about the guys. The specific guys from the incident you witnessed where Jordan intervened or about anyone else you saw with her that day.”
Unfortunately, the guys at the convention had all bled together into a faceless mass. After giving the world’s most useless eyewitness report, Rosie asked, “Can you tell me if you have any leads?”
“Not really.” Angie put down her pen with a sigh. “I can’t discuss the case in any detail. Right now we’re just trying to get a picture of who Charity and Lakshmi associated with. Their social lives were all online, maybe to do with those games, but we don’t have their computers or phones to begin working through that.”
Rosie tapped her fingers restlessly on the table, nodding. “If they had subscriptions to multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft, it would show up on their bank statements, unless they bought prepaid time cards. And if they were into other games like PF3, where the gameplay isn’t multiplayer, there might still be purchases for DLCs. That’s short for downloadable content, which is basically a bonus pack that can contain gear and weapons or even whole new story modules. Third Wave will cooperate fully if you need any of the records from our fan forums, but other gaming sites might not be as helpful.”
Angie nodded and made more notes. “All right, I’ll look into that. Thank you, Rosie.”
They came to their feet, Angie gesturing with an arm for Rosie to precede her to the edge of the room and the chairs where both Niles and Jordan were now waiting. Detective Wyatt was standing there not saying anything to them, looking awkward.
Niles rose at her approach and she slipped an arm around him, rubbing a hand up and down his back, then she turned to face Angie. “I’m sorry we didn’t see much. If there’s anything else we can do to help, please call us.”
The detectives nodded and escorted them out of the precinct into the dark and dreary drizzle. Once they had gone back inside, she hugged Niles fully, and he clung to her. “You okay, honey?”
“I’ll be fine.” After a moment, he shuddered and drew back, and she let him go. “I need to get back to my guest.”
“Want me to come with you?” Jordan asked, but Niles shook his head.
“No. I’ll see you in the morning.”
They started to follow as Niles walked down the street, but he whirled on them and huffed. “I promise you, I can get to my car unassisted.”
“Someone left a threatening note at your house earlier this week,” Jordan said gruffly. “Shut up and let us walk you to your car.”
He stared at them a moment as if he were going to fight, and then that look of wounded disillusionment was back in his soft eyes and his shoulders slumped. “Right. Okay.”
As they fell in step together again, this time with Rosie and Jordan flanking Niles, Jordan remarked, “I was thinking that we should try to find out the girls’ favorite charities and organize a donation drive in their names.”
Damn, she should have thought of that. As she chided herself
, Niles stumbled and stopped, turning to look at his brother.
“What?” Jordan shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not completely heartless.”
“No, you’re not.” Niles continued to stare at him, a gentle smile just pulling at the edges of his mouth. “That’s a great idea, Jordie. I love it.”
The downpour from the showerhead spattered Niles’s face as he tipped his head back, letting the torrent wash his guilt and confusion away. He sighed, then went still when a cool draft brushed his body, followed by warm skin that grew slick against his under the steaming water.
“Hey,” he murmured, pushing aside all his ambivalence to make his voice warm and welcoming. Whatever issues he had, he wasn’t going to treat Daniel awkwardly. He could beat himself up over it later, but there was no reason to make Daniel feel like they’d done something wrong.
“Morning,” Daniel greeted. Evidence of how good his morning was starting off was prodding the back of Niles’s thighs, and Niles felt an answering tug of arousal despite everything. His body didn’t seem to much care about his emotional turmoil, and Niles turned to wrap his arms around Daniel and hug him instead, willing his cock to cool it. He’d spent enough time last night using Daniel to erase the image of Charity Anspach and Lakshmi Agrawal out of his head. He wasn’t going to do it again this morning.
Daniel pulled away slightly, tipping his head back to look up at Niles. “I don’t have to be at the train station for another hour and a half.”
“Sounds nice, but I’m about to be late to my first meeting of the morning.” Niles stepped back, letting Daniel have the spray. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Daniel wiped away the water sluicing down his face, cracking an eye open to peer at Niles.
Niles rubbed at the grout between the tiles with his thumb. “I, um, I feel like I owe you an apology. I had a lot on my mind last night, and I feel like I sort of tried to get away from it by being with you. I’m not usually like that.”
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