Deadly Web (17 page)

“The blade used was sharp and uncommonly clean. There were no particles from it left in the body, not even where it hit the bone. No rust either. The stab marks are quite wide, making me believe the blade was about two inches wide, but it’s hard to be accurate. One of the stabs, the one that punctured the liver, went about seven inches deep, so this knife was pretty long as well. Judging from the slice wound on the fingers, and the edges of the stab wounds, it was sharp on one edge, blunt on the other.”

“A bread knife?” Bernard suggested, trying not to inhale too much.

“Not likely. A bread knife has a serrated edge. This one was completely smooth.”

“Okay. Do you have an accurate time of death?” Hannah asked.

“I got it right the first time,” Annie said. “Twenty past midnight, give or take five minutes.”

“What else?” Hannah asked.

Bernard thought she sounded a bit strained. Perhaps she was affected by the smell after all, and wanted to leave as well?

“Toxicology report is not back yet,” Annie said. “But his blood alcohol level was pretty high. I’d say that if he hadn’t been killed, he’d have had a wicked hangover the morning after. Small blessings, huh?”

“Right,” Bernard said.

“Stomach contents indicated a small dinner, not much more. He had no foreign matter under his fingernails, unfortunately, so I doubt we’ll get a DNA sample from there.”

“We have DNA samples from the crime scene that we’re pretty sure belong to the killer,” Hannah said.

“Good luck convincing the jury with that,” Annie said contemptuously. “As far as DNA samples go, nothing is better than cells under the fingernails. Matt can’t get you incriminating evidence like that.”

“Nor can you,” Bernard pointed out.

“Not this time,” Annie said, her voice sharp. “However, I’ve collected hair samples from the rest of the body, so maybe there’s something there. I’ll send it to DNA analysis if necessary. That’s pretty much it.”

“Thanks, Annie,” Hannah said, then turned and briskly went out the door.

“Weak stomach,” Bernard said, indicating the door. “Not everyone can stay cool in a morgue.”

He stood there for ten seconds more, just to make a point, then left the room as fast as his feet could carry him.

Chapter Thirteen

Hannah sat in Captain Bailey’s office with the rest of the detectives, filling the captain in on their progress on the murder cases.

“We got Chad Grimes on multiple possession charges, not to mention shooting police officers, so he’s not getting back to the street anytime soon,” Hannah said, summing up. She craned her neck, trying to see Captain Bailey’s face, which hid behind a pile of paperwork. Fred Bailey’s desk had once been named the Desk of Chaos, and the name had stuck. Mounds of papers always covered every inch, the piles tumbling into each other and creating a strange mountain range with peaks, valleys, and the occasional canyon. Hannah was shorter than most, and when the paper wall divided them it was hard to actually be sure the captain was there. She shifted a bit to the left, managing to position herself so she could see most of him through the small crack between two piles of paper. “But we don’t think Grimes is the murderer,” she added.

“Okay,” Captain Bailey said. “Let’s recap. We have one case with one suspect, and one case with about a gazillion suspects, right? Let’s start with the simpler case. This Blayze guy. Do we have enough to give the district attorney?”

“Not really,” Jacob said. “It’s all very circumstantial. The victim had no other contacts beyond her family and her boyfriend. That, and his criminal record, are currently the only things we have.”

“My dad would say that what we have amounts to an old man’s drool in a beer mug,” Bailey said. “That’s not even enough to get a search warrant. Hell, I wouldn’t even know what to search for. The woman was choked by someone. It’s not like we can search for the murder weapon in her boyfriend’s house. What are we looking for?”

“Dona had a Buffy memorabilia collection worth more than seven thousand dollars,” Mitchell said. “We think she was considering selling it. Maybe Blayze was after the money.”

“You think he killed her for seven thousand dollars?” Captain Bailey rubbed his chin. “Well, we’ve seen people kill for less. But why didn’t he wait for her to sell the stuff? And why didn’t he take some of it to sell himself?”

“Maybe they had an argument about it and he got angry,” Mitchell suggested.

It was a half-assed thing to say, far from typical. Mitchell seemed weary, and Hannah wondered if something was wrong.

Captain Bailey narrowed his eyes. Hannah could usually tell how pissed off he was by how narrow his eyes became. Almond-sized meant he was content. Paper-thin slits meant people should update their resume. Currently his eyes were somewhere between pencil-thin and shoelace-thin.

“I’m not convinced,” he said. “Find us something to give the DA. You think that this was about money? We can try to get a search warrant for Blayze’s finances. But we need a bit of proof to get it. What about her relatives? Maybe she told one of them that her boyfriend threatened to kill her? That could be helpful.”

“The sister likes the guy, thinks that he’s reformed,” Jacob said. “The parents didn’t even know he existed.”

“What about the forum they met in?” Bernard asked. “Maybe one of the members—”

“She hasn’t been to the forum in four months,” Mitchell interrupted. “Matt could find no e-mails or personal messages sent by Dona to anyone in the forum. I doubt anyone there knows anything.”

“There’s a neighbor,” Jacob said doubtfully. “We could question her. But I didn’t get the feeling that she knew Dona all that well.”

“What about the other Dragonworld players?” Hannah asked.

The rest of the detectives stared at her.

“What?” she said, irritated. “Look, Dragonworld is a multi-player game. They have a name for it. A… Morpeg or something.”

“MMORPG,” Mitchell said.

“Right. Anyway, she must have played with other players, right? Don’t they have like… groups, or something?”

“Guilds,” Mitchell said after a second. “You’re right. It’s likely she has friends in the game. I’ll check it out. Maybe one of them can give us some dirt on Blayze.”

He smiled at her. She felt her face grow warm and looked away.

“Good.” Bailey said. “See? We’re closer to closing this case already. Now for the real nightmare. Okay, we have this fantastic standup guy, who sexually harassed at least a dozen women online. He also bought drugs from a trigger-happy drug dealer the night he was killed. And we have at least one very angry husband, a Mr.…”

“Tarp,” Bernard said.

“So, we have suspects galore. Like my dad used to say, we have more cocoons than we could use in a lifetime. Let’s sit down with the list, narrow it down. We have a car model, right?”

“Two, actually,” Hannah said. “The sister said she saw a blue Ford Fiesta several times lately when her brother came to visit. The cab driver saw a red Toyota Corolla driving away from the scene of the crime.”

“Well, the Ford Fiesta that the sister saw is probably Frank’s,” Bailey said.

“It isn’t,” Jacob said shortly. “Frank’s car is an Audi.”

“Look,” Bailey said tiredly, “we have a thousand leads we can follow, right? Let’s try to narrow them down. So a red Toyota Corolla was seen fleeing the scene?”

“Driving away from the scene,” Hannah said, “I asked for some info from the DMV. It’ll take some time.”

“Okay, how else can we narrow our suspect list? Let’s comb through the victim’s e-mail account and social media. Try to find some stronger motives than a few mean comments on Twitter. Figure out who was harassed more frequently and maliciously, like that Tarp woman. Who could have figured out Frank’s identity? Try to see if any of them has a criminal record. Yeah, we have a lot of work to do.”

The four detectives sat in front of him, blinking.

“Well?” Bailey said. “What are you waiting for?”

“What… now?” Jacob asked.

“Of course now!”

“Fred, it’s kinda late—”

“Leads are getting cold! Witnesses are forgetting what they saw!” Captain Bailey said loudly. “Evidence is being destroyed and criminals are making their escape! The least we can do is sit down and read some e-mails, right?”

The mood in the room dampened considerably.

“I’ll buy us all pizza,” Bailey said in a cheerful voice. “And I’ll make some coffee.”

Searching a crime scene, as far as Mitchell’s experience went, was a finite endeavor. One knew when and where it started, and where it ended. Sure, you could be more diligent when searching for fingerprints, and it always seemed like there were more fibers to collect, but generally you knew that in an hour or two, or four, you’d be done.

Searching a man’s online history was different. For one, it was potentially endless. Did you search the profiles of the man’s friends? Did you check out their shared friends? Reconstruct the social network structure completely? How far back do you check his browsing history, or his e-mail archive? Is the image of him drunk at a party waving a bottle of beer evidence or a distraction? Should you check who the other guys in the image are? Two of them are tagged, the third isn’t. Why not?

It never stopped. A detective could get lost for years, trying to find anything relevant in the muck. In the end, one had to guess how deep to dig. And when it came down to online data, Mitchell’s hunches were better than most.

He took a bite from his slice of pizza. Red’s Pizza was just across the street, and was probably the most popular pizza place among policemen. Red gave a twenty percent discount if you showed your badge, and on Fridays he’d give you free garlic bread with every order. Mitchell felt like he had to be glad for the small things in life, because the big things were an ex-girlfriend who’d broken his heart and a dead man who had angered a lot of people when he was alive.

“Coffee, anyone?” Jacob asked.

It was the third time he’d gone for coffee. Mitchell guessed that his partner suffered the most from this kind of work.

“I’ll have another cup, thanks,” Mitchell said.

Hannah grunted something as well. She was staring at her screen angrily, sifting through Frank’s e-mails. She would carry on until she dropped.

Mitchell looked at her for several seconds. She seemed to notice, and turned toward him. Their eyes locked for a second, then she abruptly broke eye contact and resumed scanning her screen.

He sighed and turned his stare back to his own monitor. He was looking at Frank’s Facebook profile, scanning his timeline, looking for anything interesting Frank might have posted. He was already six months back, and it seemed most of Frank’s posts were selfies with other people—mostly women—and terrible memes. There was nothing there. He clicked the
Friends
tab and started scanning the friends list, trying to find a link.

“Find anything?” Hannah asked. She was standing behind him, looking at his screen.

“Not really,” Mitchell muttered.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the chart on his screen.

“I’m trying to match Twitter and Facebook accounts of people Frank knew,” Mitchell explained. “See? This is Melanie’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. And these are Tarp’s accounts. But it’s tricky.”

“Why?”

“Well… sometimes it’s hard to figure out if someone doesn’t have a Twitter account, or if it’s just hidden well. And apparently Frank didn’t follow, on Twitter, all of the people who were his friends on Facebook. I’ve managed to match one hundred forty-six of his Facebook friends so far. Out of those, twelve were harassed on Twitter by Frank’s accounts…” Mitchell paused and frowned.

“What?” Hannah asked.

“Look here,” Mitchell pointed at his screen. Hannah bent a bit, looking closer at the screen. He could feel her warm breath by his ear. “Uh… see those twelve I marked? Those are Twitter accounts that have been harassed, and this column here shows the Twitter handles that harassed them. That way we can see who was targeted the most.”

“Right,” Hannah said softly.

“But this one here, Annie_Bardr, was targeted by only one handle: @youreugly12. Here’s the weird thing, though. I am absolutely certain this is not one of the Twitter handles we found in Frank’s e-mail account.”

“So… maybe he erased the e-mails?” Hannah suggested. “Does the handle harass anyone else?”

“Let’s see,” Mitchell said. He double clicked the Chrome shortcut on his desktop. While waiting for the slow computer to react, Mitchell turned to Hannah, suddenly realizing how close their faces were. They both froze for a moment and then Hannah drew back, clearing her throat. Mitchell turned to his computer, feeling his face flush, and browsed to the Twitter handle @youreugly12.

It had only three messages.

you’re fatter than a hippo, @Annie_Bardr

your breath stinks, @Annie_Bardr, it kills anyone who gets near you

how are your zits, @Annie_Bardr?

“Those don’t look like the rest of Frank’s messages,” Hannah said. “They aren’t sexual, and they’re kinda lame.”

“Right,” Mitchell agreed. “It’s like the kindergarten version of an internet troll.”

Mitchell opened Annie’s Facebook account. Her name was Annie Bardera, and she was friends with Frank. Mitchell checked their mutual friends. There were three. One of them was Jerome Piet. He entered Jerome’s profile, scanned backward. He didn’t have to look far.

A month before, Jerome had been photographed with Annie Bardera, hugging her waist tightly.

“Hey,” Mitchell said. “Does Jerome have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. Wait. No, he had just broken up with her. That’s why they went out. Frank was cheering him up or something.”

“I think Frank did more than just cheering Jerome up,” Mitchell said. “I think he was teaching him.”