Deadly Web (18 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Hannah sat down at her kitchen counter, a bowl of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese in her hand. It was after one in the morning. They had scanned Frank’s online history thoroughly, collecting a vast pile of information, most of which was probably completely useless. Mitchell was the only one who’d found anything worthwhile—an indication that Jerome Piet was trolling his ex-girlfriend. Not very enlightening by itself, but it did lead to some theories.

Bernard thought it was possible Frank had threatened to blow the whistle on Jerome, and Jerome decided to kill him. Hannah didn’t think that was likely; they hadn’t found the murder weapon, and she didn’t think he’d had enough time to hide it. Besides, Frank had bigger skeletons in his own closet. But it merited further inspection, and Bernard and Hannah had decided to interrogate Jerome more thoroughly in the station the following day.

She shoveled some pasta into her mouth and chewed it, staring at the counter, thinking. Shifting the macaroni in her bowl a bit, she frowned, then set one piece on the counter. Say this was Frank. The salt shaker was his door. One theory was that someone had hidden in the corridor, waiting for Jerome to leave.

She positioned another piece of macaroni on the opposite side of the salt shaker. Jerome left the apartment… She stuck her fork in another piece of pasta, and started marching it past the salt shaker and along the counter. The lurking pasta knocked on the door…

With her finger, she moved the mystery macaroni attacker toward the salt shaker door. Frank opened the door… she prodded Frank toward the salt shaker as well.Then she grabbed her knife. Stab stab stab! The mystery pasta ran away across the counter, past Jerome, outside, where the taxi driver—a blob of cheese—saw him enter a red Toyota Corolla. Jerome, assisted by the fork, ran back up, opened the salt shaker door, and screamed.

The other option was that there was no lurking pasta. She popped the escaping macaroni into her mouth. Jerome decided to kill Frank. He’d probably gone out just as he said he did, and then returned, as it was unlikely Frank would change into a bathrobe in front of his friend. Or maybe he would—who knew? In any case, he stabbed Frank to death—

She stuck her knife in the unhappy Frank macaroni several more times.

Then Jerome hid the knife somewhere, maybe even under his shirt. He screamed, and Petal ran out to meet him. Hannah located a spoon to represent Petal.

Petal took him to her apartment… and maybe he got rid of the knife there? Hannah made a mental note to call Petal in the morning, ask if she’d encountered an unknown knife. Maybe ask for permission to look for it there. And in that case, who was it that the cheese—the taxi driver—had seen running out of the building? Just some random guy? Maybe.

So what was more likely? She looked at the counter. It was a mess. Cheese everywhere, macaroni Frank shredded to bits, the salt shaker sticky…

Hannah sighed. Normal people did not reenact murders with their Kraft dinners. A traditional Jewish dinner, such as the one she had eaten with her mother on Friday, would have fit this purpose much better. The slices of challah would have left less of a mess everywhere.

She finished the bowl of pasta amidst the carnage, then cleaned the counter. She considered going for a drink, maybe finding someone to have some fun with. Then she glanced at her watch. It was almost two o’clock.

Too late for fun. It was time to sleep.

The city was quiet when Mitchell reached his home; the roads were mostly empty, the dog walkers and the joggers in their beds, the restaurants and coffee shops closed. But he was not misled. As a young patrol cop, he had spent more than a year on the graveyard shift, between midnight and eight, and he knew well that this silence hid the worst types of violence, the most heinous crimes. Rapes, pointless drug-induced murders, assaults fueled by rage and alcohol in equal amounts. The city wasn’t peaceful. It was merely less noisy.

He unlocked the door, walked inside, locked the door behind him, and latched it for good measure. He put his wallet, keys and gun on the table, a small wooden thing his brother and sister had bought for him after Pauline left and took the previous table with her. It was one of the furniture pieces she’d originally owned, as about two thirds of the apartment’s contents had been.

Now that she’d left, taking her things with her, the apartment was abysmally empty. Mitchell hadn’t found the will to go buy new things. His living room had one couch, the aforementioned table, and a television set. His laptop stood on the floor, by the couch. The rest was vacant, the floor bare. He told himself it made cleaning easier.

He got his mobile phone from his pocket and called Tanessa.

She answered almost immediately. “Hey, why are you calling me during my shift?”

“When else can I call you?” he asked. “You’re asleep during the day.”

“God forbid you call me in the evening,” she said. “Maybe buy your sister dinner once in a while.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said. “How’s your shift?”

“Quiet so far. I heard you got that guy, Grimes.”

“Yeah, Bernard arrested him.”

“Noel told me it got violent,” Tanessa said.

“Yeah. Grimes was packing, and fried out of his mind. I’m glad he didn’t show up when you were watching the house.”

There was a moment of silence. “I would have been fine,” Tanessa finally said. “This is my job, Mitchell.”

“I know.”

“You can’t protect me from—”

“I know, Tanessa, okay?” he said. It was becoming an old argument.

“Yeah, okay. Go to sleep, Mitchell. It’s really late for regular people.”

“Hang on. You used to date a guy who played Dragonworld, right?” Mitchell asked. He vaguely remembered making fun of Tanessa about it.

“This is what you called to ask me after one o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“You’re weird, Mitchy. Yeah, I did, but only for a few weeks.”

“Any chance you can introduce us tomorrow morning after your shift?”

“Well… you do realize that we broke up, right? I wasn’t really into him. And he has a job, and I’ll be really tired—”

“It’s for a murder investigation, Tanessa.”

“Who was murdered? A goblin?”

“No. A young woman.”

“Seriously? Yeah, okay, sure, I’ll talk to him in the morning, see what I can do. I can’t promise anything, though.”

“Thanks, sis.”

“Goodnight, Mitchell.”

He hung up, got a beer from the fridge and sat on the couch, lifting the laptop from the floor. He browsed to his Facebook page, read some bland posts about politics and babies, telling himself he’d just shut off the thing, go to sleep.

He didn’t. Instead, he browsed to Pauline’s Instagram profile.

She was an avid Instagram user, and she posted two or three times every day. Lately, those images contained a lot of pictures of a man named Paul.
Paul!
This made them “Pauline and Paul.” Hadn’t she thought about that when she’d hooked up with this guy?

Pauline and Paul had posed for a selfie in a pub today as well. They looked disgustingly happy. Paul was so clearly not Pauline’s type. Mitchell realized he was grinding his teeth, his fist clenching the beer can hard enough to dent it. He felt angry and lonely.

He glanced at his phone, wavering. For a crazy minute he considered calling Hannah, asking if she wanted to go for a late-night drink. But no, that would be dumb in epic proportions. They worked together all the time. Making things weird between them because he felt momentarily lonely was probably the stupidest thing he could possibly do.

Eventually he turned off the laptop, his nightly self-torture complete. He went to bed promising himself he wouldn’t check Pauline’s profile ever again, knowing already that his resolve wouldn’t hold.

Chapter Fifteen

Brian Hale was surprised when Tanessa called. He hadn’t heard from her in more than eight months. He was embarrassed at how flustered he was when he answered the phone, stuttering, fumbling at the most basic small talk, his voice high-pitched. She quickly explained that the police needed his help with a murder investigation. It flattered him, though he knew it made sense. He had recently finished his Geology bachelor of science degree and his expertise could be of great use to—

They wanted him because he played Dragonworld, Tanessa explained.

An hour later he was at the police station. In the room with him were Tanessa, who was even more stunning than he had remembered, her brother, who was a detective, and some old bald guy, who seemed a bit dumb and introduced himself as Detective Jacob Cooper.

“This is the computer belonging to the murder victim,” Mitchell explained. “We know she played Dragonworld, and we want to talk to some people she played with. Can we do that?”

“Was she in a guild?” Brian asked.

“We don’t know,” Mitchell said.

“They’re completely clueless,” Tanessa told him. “They could really use your help.”

Brian nodded, his throat dry. He noticed that Tanessa seemed a bit tired. Perhaps police work was wearing her thin.

The computer was already on, the Dragonworld shortcut on the desktop. He double-clicked it, and they waited together for the game to load.

“So… How have you been?” he asked Tanessa.

“Oh, you know,” she said, shrugging. “Really busy. The graveyard shifts are a killer.”

“I can imagine,” Brian said, having no idea what she was talking about. “What are you doing later?”

“The game’s up,” Mitchell said.

Brian began to dislike him. He glanced at the screen. The login prompt said the character’s name was Willow Hannigan. Brian smiled.

“Willow Hannigan,” he said. “Clever.”

“Why is that clever?” Jacob asked.

“Well, because she used the first name of Willow from Buffy and the last name of…” Brian realized the three cops were staring at him. “Anyway, it’s a nice name,” he ended lamely.

“So she played under a different name? Was she hiding her identity?” Jacob asked, frowning.

“No, no. That’s just her character’s name,” Brian said.

“So why didn’t she name her character Dona?”

“Most people don’t name their characters after their own name,” Brian said. “It’s kind of tacky.”

“Why?”

“That’s just the way it is,” Brian said, curbing his impatience. “Okay, do you know her password?”

“Doesn’t the game remember her password?” Jacob asked.

“Uh… You see the checkbox that says
Remember Password
?” Brian asked.

“Yes,” Jacob said after a second.

“It’s unchecked.”

“So it doesn’t remember her password?”

Brian decided the detective was an absolute moron. How had he been promoted to detective? Could Brian himself become a detective? Well, if this guy was, probably anyone could.

“Without her password, we can’t log into her account,” Brian said, talking a bit more slowly.

“So there’s no way to find the people she was playing with?” Mitchell asked.

“Well, if she’s in a guild, it’s in her public profile,” Brian explained. He opened the browser and entered the URL of the Dragonworld home page, then browsed to the Characters page, and searched for Willow Hannigan.

“There,” he said, as her character appeared on screen. She was a human witch, and was listed in a guild. “See? The Black Arrow guild.”

“So how do we talk to these guys? Do you have their e-mails here?” Mitchell asked.

“Of course not,” Brian said. “But you can talk to them in the game.”

“But we don’t have the password.”

Brian stared at them in pity. “You can create new characters to enter the game.”

“Oh,” Mitchell said. “Right. How stupid of me.”

Brian held his tongue.

“Can you help us with it?”

“Sure.” Brian said.

They spent the next half-hour setting up two computers side by side, and installing the game on both of them. Tanessa fell asleep, her head on one of the desks, a strand of her lovely hair lying carelessly on her cheek. Mitchell explained that she’d just finished a graveyard shift, and Brian finally realized that it meant that she’d been patrolling all night long. He asked if she did that often. Mitchell told him rookie cops did the graveyard shift every night. Brian was aghast. It sounded incredibly unfair.

He created two characters for them. An elf ranger for Mitchell, and a dwarf fighter for Jacob. He almost set Jacob’s character’s intelligence to three, just to amuse himself, but decided it was petty and unlike him to do so. Then he explained the basics: how to walk, and how to chat. He didn’t bother explaining how to fight. He doubted they’d need it—and if they did, God help those two level one characters if they met anything worse than rats.

“Okay,” he said. “Now you just need to fast travel to the guild headquarters. If any of them is online, they’ll get a notification, and hopefully will come and talk to you.”

“Good,” Mitchell said. “Just show us how to do that.”

Jacob the Mighty and Mitchell Forest Lover walked slowly on the old trail, the dark forest surrounding them. The only noises to be heard were the methodical sound of their feet on the gravel, and the wind rustling the tree leaves. Their progress was slow, much slower than they had originally planned. This was mostly because their pace was dictated by Jacob the Mighty’s insistence of zig-zagging left and right instead of walking straight. Forest Lover tried to control his temper, telling himself repeatedly that it wasn’t Jacob the Mighty’s fault. He simply wasn’t used to… walking.