The Murder Prophet

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  "Not the business deal, then?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. There doesn't seem to be much there. And would you really kill someone over something like that?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I've never thought about what might make me want to kill someone."

  "Well, nothing, I hope," he said with a grin.

  "You're probably right. Except for self-defence," I said, considering the man with the gun in that dark basement. If I'd still had the .368 in my hand, and had the option of killing him or transmuting him, which one would I have chosen? I shuddered. I honestly didn't know.

  "So you think there might be answers inside Coro's company, then," I prodded.

  "Maybe. I doubt you can run a business that large, for as long as he has, without getting some people mad at you."

  Diamanta sashayed over to see if we'd like anything else, although I think it was a ruse to get another close-up look at Lemur. She managed to talk us into a couple of fresh Danish, apple-walnut for me and chocolate for LemurCandy. She threw me another wink and an approving smile as she turned away.

  "It would be great if you could even pinpoint someone we should talk to," I said. "The company's too big to question everyone in the time we have."

  "Does Coro get along okay with the Board of Directors?" LemurCandy asked. "That's who he has the closest contact with, I guess, and the most opportunities to butt heads."

  "I think so. I asked him about that, and I didn't think he was lying when he said there was no conflict there."

  "How does that work, anyway?" he asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. "Your talent, I mean." His hands were square and tanned and strong, not what you might expect from someone who spent that much time at the computer. I knew they were strong because of the way he'd held my arms outside on the street earlier.

  "It's not an 'always on' thing," I said, fiddling with some grains of spilled sugar that had escaped Diamanta's cleaning cloth. "I have to concentrate on what the person is saying and deliberately try to analyze it. And if I haven't taken Maginox® it makes me kind of sick. Usually nothing serious, but uncomfortable."

  He nodded as if he knew exactly what I meant. I itched to ask him if he had any magic, but it wasn't a polite question, and I didn't get the chance anyway.

  Diamanta brought the pastries. LemurCandy bit into his and chewed reflectively.

  "I think by tomorrow I'll have the results for Clarice Valencia's usernames."

  "I guess a search like that isn't easy if she doesn't want one to be found," I said.

  He shook his head. "No, but it's easier to trace from a person to a username than from a username to a person. Most of the blocks work better one-way."

  "Really?" I tried the apple-walnut. It was delectable, although pastry flakes showered the table.

  "Oh, yes. If I just met someone named Kitano Kick-ass online, it would be pretty much impossible to find the real you from that. But knowing Kit Stablefield, I can go in the other direction pretty easily."

  "I thought you had checked Clarice Valencia out already, though," I said.

  "Well, I did, but now I'm digging deeper. There are levels. I set up a matrix of Coro's usernames and all the ones he's had contact with, then started working outward along the grid. At the same time, I started with her name and set the 'bots tracing the grid in that direction, too. Then when they start hitting convergent nexus traces—"

  I put a hand to my temple and shook my head. "Never mind, I'm not going to understand it. I'm sure whatever you're doing will work." I grinned. "Just watch out for those harmonized divination whatchamacallits."

  Lemur stopped with his chocolate Danish halfway to his mouth, looking suddenly grave, his green eyes darkening. "You haven't had any more messages, have you?"

  "Of course not." He seemed so downcast that I hated myself for mentioning it.

  "I still feel terrible about that," he said in a low voice.

  "Oh, forget it. I'm not worried about it, so you shouldn't be, either."

  What followed that was an awkward silence, and I finished the last few sips of my coffee and nibbles of Danish to cover it up.

  "I'd better get you home," Lemur said, and drained the dregs of his Mocha Insanity. I shuddered again. He stood up. "It's been a long day."

  I couldn't argue with that. Lemur adroitly picked up the tab and we left the coffee shop and walked back to my building in relative silence, although it wasn't uncomfortable. He didn't hesitate outside the door. "I'll be in touch tomorrow, Kit" he said, smiling and turning away almost immediately.

  "Sure," I said, trying to act just as nonchalant. "Good hunting!" I went into the building without a backward glance, then raced up the stairs and unlocked my door in a rush to see if I could catch a glimpse of him from one of my windows before he disappeared into the night. I couldn't. He was gone without a trace.

  "Kit, where have you been?" Phoebe asked in a voice that sounded strangely breathless, for an AI. "You left the office hours ago!"

  I rounded on her. Well, I would have rounded on her if she'd actually had a physical presence. As it was, I sort of whirled around ineffectually. "Do not tell me that you told anyone from the office I wasn't home yet!"

  "No," she admitted, "But I was about to! You know that your well-being and security—"

  "I know, I know, it's in your programming. Well, if you must know, I was with LemurCandy, so I was perfectly safe," I told her, shucking my jacket and shoulder holster.

  She sounded immediately more cheerful. "I thought that was him waiting outside earlier. Did you have a date?"

  "No, I wasn't expecting him at all. We just went for coffee on the spur of the moment." No way was I going to tell Phoebe about the guy who'd jumped me. Then I realized what she'd said. "And how do you know what he even looks like?"

  "I've seen his avatar, Kit," Phoebe said patiently, as if I were a little kid.

  Again I questioned whether all these software upgrades and integrated Netz access had been such a good idea after all. However, I wasn't going to fight about it right now.

  I sat down on my bed, then kicked off my shoes and flopped back on the colorful quilt Nana Nina had made for me when I was a little girl. I hovered on some weird emotional balance board between elation and depression. On the up side, I'd finally met LemurCandy, and he was just as, well, wonderful as I thought he'd be. He'd been concerned about my safety. He'd come to my rescue. He was handsome and sweet and who cared if he liked to drink Mocha Insanity? I was definitely in love with the guy.

  On the down side, his feelings about me were...ambiguous, to say the least. He hadn't sent any clear signals that I'd picked up on, in either real life or the virtual one.

  I fought down a sudden urge to smack myself in the head. I hadn't even found out what his real name was. And really, I couldn't imagine kissing someone I knew only as LemurCandy. I'm as modern as the next girl, but that would be asking just a bit much.

  I crawled into bed and swore that I'd ask him the next time I saw him.

  Unfortunately, it didn't turn out quite that way.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Family Ties and Netz Lies

  In the morning I caught a bus down to the police station to file a formal account of the attack on me the night before and see what they'd found out about the guy. Turned out I just missed LemurCandy, which was a huge disappointment, because I'd spent some time lying in bed picturing how we'd meet up at the station and I'd ask him his real name and then we'd go for coffee again and spend the day walking in the park...

  Okay, okay. I have a healthy imagination. At this point in my imaginings I realized that he was already committed to a lot of Netz research today and if I wanted to run into him at all I'd better get my butt down to the station. I missed him anyway.

  The thug who'd attacked me was not a fount of information. All the police could squeeze out of him was that he'd been approached online by an anonymous "client" to "terrorize" me a bit. He'd been paid through an untraceable cash-based
PayMate® account. They'd sent him all my relevant information and he was not to really hurt me, just, well, terrorize me. Apparently this kind of activity was his main source of income.

  Wow, the career choices that my high school counsellors had never mentioned.

  I asked the police to forward any data they confiscated from the guy's computer over to LemurCandy, and surprisingly, they agreed. I think they were just as happy to hand off the scutwork, but that was fine with me. I knew Lemur would do a better job than any police hacker.

  Lemur, Lemur. I felt much freer knowing that the thug was behind bars, so I walked the rest of the way to work, even whistling erratically in the fresh morning air. The scheduled overnight rain had scoured everything clean, and I noticed trees furred with the first pale hints of green. Spring was drawing closer.

  I shuddered and turned my thoughts back to Lemur and my stupidity in not asking him his real name. Yes, I was obsessing over it. But I really hate it when I do something that stupid. Could I ask him over the Netz, I wondered? I didn't think it was proper etiquette, for some reason. I mean, he had his reasons for dealing with everyone (or practically everyone) from behind the shadow of his usernames. Granted, he was using an avatar that looked exactly like him, so how zealous was he really about guarding his identity?

  This debate wound around and around in my head and brought me all the way to work. I'd come to the decision, regretfully, that I couldn't ask him over the Netz. It wasn't much, but at least I felt better for having answered one question.

  Kikufaax was stationed at the reception desk when I arrived at the office, fingers skimming in a blur over the keyboard. Her outfit today was oddly subdued for the time of year, a navy sleeveless shell and plain gold chains. I wondered if she was deliberately not dressing in her usual bright spring colors out of consideration for my feelings. That would be nice of her. Not that I wasn't already acutely aware of just how close we were to the first day of spring.

  At any rate, she didn't bark at me as I stepped in the door this morning, which was also nice. She didn't ask me anything about the night before, like "How was your night?" so that I could tell her all the exciting and wonderful things that had happened, which was disappointing. Instead she said, "Morning, Kit. LemurCandy wants you to contact him right away, okay?"

  "Okay," I said. I felt kind of disappointed at not having anyone to sit and chat about it with, but then I remembered Kiku's absolute truth rule and that I couldn't trust her to cover me if she knew how I felt about Lemur. Yeah, best to keep that one close to my chest. And although I knew I'd have to tell everyone in the office all about the attack eventually since it might be important to the case, I didn't mind putting it off a little. It was probably only going to trigger a whole new round of be-careful admonitions. And hadn't I done just that? Sure, LemurCandy had helped, but as I'd so ungraciously told him, I could have taken the guy myself.

  In my office, I logged in and messaged Lemur, and he answered almost immediately.

  Now, those were words that I didn't get to hear nearly often enough. I sent back.

  he said.

 

 

  I stared at the screen for a minute.

  he typed, and an icon flashed on the screen. I slipped on my faceskin and clicked the icon, and the Netz whisked me into LemurCandy's "office."

  I'd been here a couple of times before, reviewing data for one case or another. He had recreated an old hard-boiled detective's office, from the wood and black leather desk chair to the pinup girl calendar on the wall and green-shaded banker's lamp on the desk. Dust motes sparkled as they drifted lazily through the beam of lamplight. He sat in the chair wearing his brown-haired, green-eyed avatar, a black fedora tipped low over one twinkling eye.

  I laughed and sat in the "client's" chair, a wing-backed, red leather affair. I teased.

  he said.

  I shook my avatar's head.

  He shrugged.

  To say that LemurCandy was confident about his Netz skills was a vast understatement. Was he really that good, I wondered?

 

  I said.

  LemurCandy's avatar leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, lacing those square, strong hands behind his head.

  I pursed my lips and thought for a minute.

  he said.

  I leaned back in my chair, and my avatar did the same in the big red leather one. I said,

  he said.

  I said, putting the thoughts together as I typed them.

 

  I told him with a grin.

  He nodded.

  I told him.

  ***

  Saga and Anna were definitely interested in the news, and they didn't buy Clarice as the Murder Prophet, either. Anna got through to her at home and told her we had obtained some information and wanted her to speak with a registered Psych on the line (at this point Anna raised her eyebrows at me and I ducked into the bathroom to wash down a couple of Maginox®). Clarice protested a little, but Anna reminded her, with the quiet authority that Anna does so well, that if she refused she could be obstructing an investigation into the misuse of magic, which was the one thing international law had finally gotten right and penalized stringently. Not surprisingly, the ex-Mrs. Coro eventually gave in.

  Besides the threat of prosecution, I knew what would be going through her mind. Refusing to talk to me would make her look guilty, without providing any information about what she was guilty of. We'd jump to our own conclusions then, and likely they'd be worse than the truth, and we'd start digging—really digging—into her life, and only she knew what was there to be found. So in the end she showed up on my vid, blonde hair dark and wet and slicked back from the pool or the beach or the shower. She looked pouty, bundled up in an expensive-looking white robe.

  "Hello again, Ms. Valencia, I'll make this brief," I said, as pleasantly as I could. "Are you connected to an online Netz avatar known as SereneQueen?"

  She pressed her lips together in a thin line for a moment, then said, "Yes."

  "And that avatar has in recent months been meeting regularly with an avatar whose username is PsychoticMuslinCrayon?"

  Again, just the "Yes." Her washed-out eyes had gone steely, but
they never flickered away from the vid.

  "And you are aware that PsychoticMuslinCrayon is a username registered to and used by your ex-husband, Aleshu Coro?"

  She nodded.

  "Verbally, please," I said cheerfully.

  "Yes."

  So far she'd been totally up-front. "Ms. Valencia," I said, "Does Mr. Coro know that SereneQueen is you?"

  She pursed her lips, then couldn't seem to stop them pulling back into a self-satisfied smirk. "No, not to my knowledge" she admitted. "Are you going to tell him?"

  "One more question, first. Are you, or are you in any way associated with, the person known as the Murder Prophet, or anyone sending the messages that have been associated with someone known as the Murder Prophet?"

  "NO!" She looked horrified. "No," she repeated in a calmer tone. "I don't really wish Aleshu any harm. I just..." She shrugged her shoulders under the soft white terrycloth robe and ran a hand over her wet hair. "I just wanted something else. I can't really put a name on it."

  If she was lying, she was good, and had some magic talent we didn't know about that allowed her to trump mine. As far as my magic was concerned, she was telling the absolute truth. "Thank you, Ms. Valencia. I don't think we'll need to tell Mr. Coro about this, unless it comes to have a bearing on his case, which I don't anticipate."

  She sighed. I thought probably it wouldn't be an issue after this anyway. The fun would have gone out of it for her now. "Well, thank you for that. Goodbye, Miss Stablefield," she said, and closed the connection.

  "One lead down the tubes," I said to Saga and Anna, who'd been watching and listening from the other side of the room.

  Anna rose from her chair, the clutch of gold bangles on her wrist clanging like wind chimes. Today she looked serene in a pale, leaf-green pantsuit that shimmered faintly when the light caught it just right. "Thank you, Kit. Nicely done, as usual."

  Saga sighed deeply and shifted in his chair. "It is always both satisfying, and a heavy disappointment, when a suspect is exonerated," he said with a wry smile.

  "Truer words," I agreed. "We'll have to see if LemurCandy comes up with anything else."