“Also,” said Chul-Moo, “the winners get to pick a character to add to the game. That’s maybe the bigger deal.”
“You mean you design your own character?”
“No,” said Chul-Moo. “There’s a list of fighters the developers are thinking of adding as DLC. You just pick one of those.”
Cool, actually, but still not worth bludgeoning someone in the head. And I had another problem with Chul-Moo’s theory, although it admittedly was sounding more plausible the more secondhand smoke I inhaled.
“Assuming you’re right,” I said, “aren’t you in the clear now? I mean, your partner has been killed, so you’re out of the tournament, regardless. Who’d want to kill you now?”
“I’m not out,” said Chul-Moo. “I spoke to the folks running the tournament, and, given the extremely unusual circumstances, they’re letting me enter late. That was the pressing appointment, incidentally, that you claimed did not exist.”
“But you have no teammate. It’s a partner-based game.”
“I’m teaming up with Swan. He got disqualified because of the chair thing. It’s a lucky break for me, actually, because he’s really good. We actually used to be teammates, once upon a time. We could actually win this thing, especially with everyone leaving.”
Maybe it was the induced paranoia from the haze of marijuana smoke, but I was getting awfully suspicious of Swan. I mean, I didn’t exactly think that he murdered Karou and then stripped and handcuffed himself to a chair on the off chance he could be re-paired with his old teamie, but I certainly noticed that things were breaking his way.
“Did you speak to the police already?”
“Yes,” said Chul-Moo, but not before taking another hit. “At great length.”
“Did you tell them about this theory of yours?”
“Nah,” said Chul-Moo. “I didn’t think of it then.”
You thought of it now, I observed. After smoking up. Noted.
“Well,” I said, “what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to Mike3000,” said Chul-Moo. “And tell him not to kill me.”
Daniel, who’d been very quiet and actorly, at this point actually gasped, which made me feel better about my own reaction, which was a stifled laugh. Mike was a teddy bear.
“I’m not telling him that,” I told Chul-Moo.
“Actually it’s probably his partner, Imogen. She’s the one you have to watch out for. Mike might be her accessory, but she’s the one pulling the strings.”
I hadn’t met Imogen yet, and, who knows, maybe I would and think: “Yes, there goes a cold-blooded murderer,” but my reaction at the time was that absolutely no one named Imogen was going to bludgeon you in the head.
“I think,” I told Chul-Moo, trying to sound cool and reasonable and hip, and not at all like Nancy Reagan, “that maybe the smoking is making you a little paranoid. If you’re still in the tournament, maybe you should just be relaxing and focusing.”
“This is how I prepare,” said Chul-Moo. “It improves my reflexes.”
“Even so,” I told him.
“Please? At least go meet Imogen, and talk to her. I’m sure that if you spend any time with her at all you’ll take me seriously. It would really make me feel better.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s what I’m all about. Unpaid work that makes people feel better.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Are your days usually as full as all this?” asked Daniel on the way back down the stairs. It was a fair question.
“Alas, they are not,” I told Daniel. “Although I’ve had worse.”
“So, that guy was loony tunes, right?”
“Probably,” I said. And this was true. Well, perhaps paranoid more than crazy. I didn’t feel an overwhelming need to get involved here; I didn’t have a client paying me, after all. But apparently my sarcastic remark about helpful unpaid work being my scene wasn’t all that sarcastic; I already knew I was going downstairs to talk to Mike again. I just wanted to see what his reaction would be.
I shouldn’t have been worried about any of that. I mean, setting aside the moral implications of trying to solve a murder when there are actual police for that. What I should have been worried about was the Doctor XXX thing. This is hindsight talking, but I had let the gruesome business of Karou Minami’s death overtake the less-gruesome, but certainly irksome, business of an anonymous stranger jerking me around on the Internet. That’s what I should have been investigating. But I kept getting distracted.
And I continued to be distracted, because when we made it downstairs, there were Tricia and Undine, on that same sofa as before, only now Undine was naked on it. Tricia was changing her—having thrown down a cloth first—but there was a naked baby. And Undine wasn’t even the first naked body I’d seen that day.
“Dahlia,” said Tricia, who was adept at diaper changing and multitasking. “You find your barefoot man?” she asked.
“I found a barefoot man,” I said. “And even though he wasn’t the barefoot man I was seeking, it all worked out.”
I sort of love that Tricia did not feel the need to ask follow-up questions about why I was seeking out such a person. Maybe having Undine around kept her grounded? Or maybe she thought I was just a really desperate foot fetishist. Instead she asked me:
“Are you still in the tournament?”
“We are,” I said brightly, although Daniel spoiled my glow by explaining that all our opponents had been dropouts.
“Get out!” said Tricia, happily folding up Undine’s diaper and putting it in an enormous Ziploc bag. She was prepared, Tricia. “Kyle’s had to fight every damned round. We haven’t skipped one!”
As if on cue, Kyle showed up, scooping up the now-changed Undine one-handed. “Score another victory for Kyle,” said Kyle, apparently comfortable with the third person.
Another kid trailed behind him, a mop-headed boy who looked like he was twelve, thirteen. He was sort of a perfect model of awkward adolescence—unflattering Buster Brown haircut and the skin that was the “before” half of a Proactiv ad. I half expected him to speak with the creaky voice of a teenager on The Simpsons, but no dice.
“Good job, Kyle,” said the kid. His voice was actually improbably deep. Not quite Barry White deep, but not that far off either. Poor guy—it was going to be decades before his body caught up to that voice.
“This a groupie of yours?” I asked Kyle, who took the question graciously, although I caught Tricia wincing.
“No,” said Kyle. “This is my partner, Remy. Say hello, Remy.”
“Hello Remy,” said Remy.
I looked at Tricia, who shot me a look that said: “Don’t say anything.”
How the mighty had fallen. Kyle used to be the cool kid, the master of the scene. Now he was pairing up with a random deep-voiced fourteen-year-old.
“Oh, right,” I said to Remy. “You won some sort of online contest?”
“It was really more of an auction,” said Remy. “It was supercool of my dad to spring for this.”
“And money well spent,” said Kyle. “Because look at how well we’re doing!”
“Kyle’s teaching me all about the game,” said Remy. “We could actually win this thing. I mean, as long as my mom doesn’t find out about this murder. I’m hoping she doesn’t check the news, because if she does, she’s totally picking me up and taking me home.”
“I see,” I said. “Yeah, that would be bad.”
“Right?” said Remy. “So I’m not going to mention it to her until after. Nobody tell her when she picks me up today.”
I did not know Remy, and I was not sure why he thought I was going to bring up a randomly murdered stranger to his mother, although come to think of it, I had brought up the topic to a lot of strange people so far. But I told him that I would skirt this issue with her, in the unlikely circumstances of our meeting.
“I appreciate that,” said Remy. Seriously, he had the body of a piccolo and the voice of a euphonium. It was disquieting to h
ear him at all.
“We better be on our way,” I said, although we actually had nowhere to go, as our next match wasn’t for another forty minutes. Then, thinking of an activity—and changing the subject—I asked: “You guys hear of a player named Imogen?”
“Yeah,” answered Tricia. “Kinda creepy, isn’t she? I think she’s in the bar.”
“This hotel has a bar? This changes everything.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
So are you investigating a murder now?” asked Daniel. “Or just dicking around? Because I can’t really tell.”
“What do you want the answer to be?” I asked him.
“I feel the answer should be dicking around, but I want to say murder.”
I wanted to say murder too, honestly. But the police had interviewed everyone; I’m sure Weber and Maddocks had everything under control. Besides which, there was no actual reason to assume that Karou getting bumped off was related to the tournament in the first place. Unless he was Doctor XXX. Which, well, okay, then that would be a good reason.
Two options. One: Doctor XXX was Karou, who wanted to tell me something. Something that he thought a detective would be useful for—and he didn’t get the chance. But why me? And what sort of secret was worth getting killed over?
Option two: Doctor XXX had intended for me to find Swan. Maybe Doctor XXX wasn’t necessarily a guy at all. Maybe our good doctor was this implausible gal who had persuaded him into the chair. But why would she want me to find him? If you’re worrying about Swan starving to death in a closet, why not just call the hotel desk?
In neither situation was it clear how I was getting roped into the situation.
Actually there was a third option, which was always worth remembering. Maybe Doctor XXX was just making things up, yanking me around because he could. For all I knew, he was a forty-three-year-old IT guy in Spokane, who wasn’t even at the tournament, and was just another random troll. When we’re talking about the Internet, random troll is never an option that should be completely discounted.
“I’ll meet you in the bar in just a second,” I told Daniel. “I’ve got something private I want to deal with.”
“You won’t need any body guarding?” asked Daniel.
“I think I can manage a minute or two.”
Daniel went off without objection, which was another way that he was fundamentally not like Charice, who would have grilled me. This element of difference in his personality was a good thing, because by “something private” I actually meant “something unwisely broadcast on the Internet.”
I dug out my laptop, popped it open, and started up my stream.
Are you dead yet? asked Twitch chat.
“No, not yet,” I said. “So, guys, this tournament is totally fucked, right?”
Totally, said Twitch chat. Completely and totally fucked.
Twitch chat, incidentally, likes it when you curse, which is maybe not a good thing for me to be exposed to, because I like cursing enough as it is.
“Is anyone else streaming it?” I asked.
I learned that a guy named Reynard was supposed to deal the finals tomorrow, but the qualifiers today were deemed a little too penny-ante for coverage. If this were television, we’d be on ESPN 30.
“Does anybody follow the teams?” I asked Twitch chat. “There was a last-minute shifting around of players, as far as I could tell.”
Most of Twitch chat didn’t know a damned thing, which was to be expected. But if you ask enough people, someone is bound to have the details, and sure enough, one commenter knew plenty.
“Karou dropped Kyle about a week before the tournament,” the user said. “Replaced him with Chul-Moo. There’s a thread about it at EventHubs.”
EventHubs was a website, but I didn’t need to read the overblown details. The big picture was good enough. So: Karou dumps his teammate Kyle, who is forced to grovel for the affections of a rich fourteen-year-old. Swan loses his teammate and can’t play at all. Then, post murder—Swan is back with his old pal. And Kyle is still screwed. Was this enough of a motivation to kill someone? Financially speaking, certainly not, but maybe there was a personal element I had yet to uncover?
So Twitch chat hadn’t been a complete loss. See, I’m not insane for speaking to these clowns. But neither was it a smashing success, because I was hoping that I’d find a pressing and revealing message from Doctor XXX, which would say something like: “Meet me out in the gazebo; it is a matter of the utmost urgency,” which would really answer questions, but no dice.
“Do any of you guys know anything about Doctor XXX? What he looks like? If it’s even a he?”
Twitch knew nothing, at least on this front, but they had a lot of ridiculous speculation, which I will spare you, except that many of their theories inexplicably involved cat suits.
In retrospect, it’s strange that I should have trusted these guys at all. Because let’s face it, they’re a bunch of morons. But I also sort of felt—and still do—that they’re my morons. It’s sort of like spending Thanksgiving with your racist grandmother. Yes, she has a lot of problems. But it’s family, right?
Just testing the waters, I asked: “You guys know a player named Imogen?”
CREEPY, said Twitch chat, all at once, like it was a meme.
“Thanks, guys,” I told them. “You’re like my Synergy. Except, you know, not awesome.”
I was profoundly disappointed by the time I met Imogen Morland. For someone whose appearance was presaged by “creepy creepy creepy” and “talk to her for a second and you’ll know I’m not crazy,” she looked like a real estate agent. She was dressed a little too nicely for the occasion, with a rose-colored blazer that honestly looked a little eighties secretary. But this was bizarrely offset by blond spiky hair, and the resulting creation was a little confounding. On top of all this, she looked profoundly bored.
I spotted her because she was next to Mike3000 at the bar. I was willing to bet that the clear glasses in front of them contained water and not alcohol, both because they were competitive and because of the annoyed look on the bartender’s face.
“Hey, Mike,” I said, sitting down next to the two of them.
“My lady,” said Mike. He still wasn’t exactly amiable toward me, but he was warming back up. He was also a polite guy, because I didn’t even have to ask for the introduction.
“This is my teammate, Imogen,” offered Mike. “For this tournament, anyway.”
Imogen, who continued to look more impassive than creepy, gave me a curt nod.
“Cool,” I said. “I’m Dahlia Moss. Online pugilist and private detective.”
Imogen cocked her blond head at me, but it was Mike who looked surprised.
“You didn’t tell me you were a detective,” said Mike. He sounded suspicious, and I was sliding back down the ladder of his good graces.
“I didn’t think it was important,” I told him. “I don’t know what either of you guys do.”
“I teach music theory,” said Imogen, who looked pleased to have broached the topic. There was a hungry look in her eyes, which I would describe as “let me tell you about twelve-tone composition,” but I may have been extrapolating this unjustly from my friend Steven Yang, who was a music librarian and is emphatically someone who you do not want to let get started on classical music as a conversation topic. I was quickly moving to head Imogen off but maybe Mike knew the same thing, because he cut in for me.
“Are you saying that your being a detective is important now?”
I still didn’t know what Mike did for a living. He had the physicality of a plumber or a roofer, but who knows? Maybe he was just a really slouchy florist.
“Sort of. I appreciate how quickly you’re coming to the point,” I told Mike, although I can’t begin to tell you why because I didn’t appreciate it at all. I was, if I really was going to follow Chul-Moo’s half-baked instructions, casually accusing him and his partner of murder. This was the sort of that thing that small talk is called for.
“Hello there, friend. How are you?”
“Excellent, yourself?”
“The same. Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“Yes, although I hear it’s supposed to rain next week!”
“Oh? Say, you didn’t bludgeon a man to death by chance, did you?”
And scene. See how nicely this imagined conversation went? That’s the sort of thing I was hoping for. But it did not appear to be the sort of conversation that Mike or impassive Imogen wanted to have, because she stared at me blankly and Mike clearly wanted me to bugger off.
“Then get to it,” said Mike.
Imogen drank from her water with a neon-green twisty straw, which I point out only to reiterate how utterly non-creepy she was. Hannibal Lecter may have made scary slurping sounds, but there were certainly no fun straws.
“So this is a sort of don’t-shoot-the-messenger scenario,” I ventured. This seemed like a good start because it immediately separated me from Chul-Moo’s message.
Mike seemed neutral about it, but Imogen suddenly looked ready to punch me. Not creepily, though. Just a straight-up whacking. I’m guessing she didn’t like Chul-Moo, because she just tensed up at the mention of his name.
“Yes,” I continued. “So I ran into Chul-Moo earlier.”
“He produced this message that we’re not supposed to shoot you for?” asked Mike3000.
“Yes, exactly,” I said. “So, he suggested that either you or Imogen murdered Karou.”
Imogen and Mike took this idea very, very neutrally. Surprisingly so. Imogen slurped a little, but she did not do it in a gasping or particularly offended manner.
It got so little response that I actually repeated it, because I thought maybe they didn’t understand.
There was more silence, and then Imogen said:
“Me or Mike? It’s an either/or situation, is it? We couldn’t have killed him together?”
I did not really have much of a read on Imogen, because she was a strange amalgamation of things that on their own did not make a lot of sense. But I had the impression that she was amused, and not taking this accusation very seriously.
The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss Page 10
