The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  “Nathan,” I said. “I think I’m going to need as many hands on deck here as I can get. You didn’t, by any chance, come here with Masako, did you?” Masako was Nathan’s ex-girlfriend and current apartment-mate, of whom I had grown inexplicably fond. She had the soul of a Goth but the clothes of someone who belonged in a Monet painting.

  “She had a study date,” Nathan said. “Although honestly, I don’t think this sort of thing would have been her scene regardless.”

  “Is there anyone else on the boat you trust?”

  “Nope,” said Nathan. “I don’t even trust you.”

  This was undoubtedly a reference to the fact that I had harbored some, perhaps unfounded, suspicions that Nathan had planned to murder me on my last case, a fact which he continued to be amused by and bring up.

  “We have to find Charice and Daniel,” I said.

  “This isn’t just some plan to interrupt their wedding proposal?”

  “No,” I said. “Besides which, what better way to celebrate their new life together than to embark on some stealth and surveillance?”

  “I can think of some ways,” said Nathan.

  “Hush, you,” I told him.

  Finding Charice and Daniel was remarkably easy, because they were wearing costumes, which meant that everyone knew who they were, at least on a boat filled with fighting-game players.

  “Have you seen Balrog?” I’d ask strangers. “How about Vega? Was he with her?”

  As it happened, they were on the other end of the ship, almost as far away from us as they could possibly get, at least without hurling themselves into the river. There was a crowd around them, and people were having their pictures taken with them.

  “Congratulations,” I said, at which point, Daniel—still masked—somehow still managed to give me a death glare. I don’t even know how that worked. Acting, I suppose.

  “Congratulations for what?” asked Charice.

  “Uh,” I said. “For attracting this wonderful crowd of onlookers!”

  “Oh, onlookers,” said Charice, as though onlookers were a nuisance she constantly had to deal with. Actually, considering Charice, this was possibly true.

  “Listen,” I said. “I need you guys for some skullduggery.”

  “I’m in,” said Daniel. “I’m even masked.”

  Nathan at this point had already heard the plan, and took to dealing with the scattered group of folks who had been posing with Daniel and Charice. Apparently he intended to do some detective work of his own.

  “I’m running a little survey,” said Nathan. “What are your three favorite conurbations?” Which really is a sort of question that will drive any group into boredom or silence. Even so, it made me feel better about my skills to watch Nathan fail.

  “I love skullduggery,” said Charice. “It’s my very favorite of the duggeries.”

  I explained my plan, as softly as I could, to Charice and Daniel, who seemed quietly interested by the idea. But I continued to be distracted by Nathan’s interviewing, which could not be said to be going very well.

  “Summon Water?” ventured one of the crowd members, a kid in a Trixie Mattel tank top.

  “That’s a conjuration, not a conurbation,” I explained to Nathan, who I figured would never have made the connection otherwise. I also wanted to ask questions of the guy who had named “Summon Water” as his favorite conjuration—because that’s a mind-blowingly boring answer. It’s so boring as to almost be interesting again. But I resisted this noble impulse and kept my eyes on the prize.

  “So we’re going to need you guys on the most populated parts of the ship. So, the auditorium, the bar, the main deck.”

  “I’ll take the bar,” said Daniel. And I wondered, briefly, why he hadn’t popped the question yet. Because clearly that hadn’t happened. In the unlikely event Charice turned him down, she wouldn’t have been sheepish about it afterward. She would have said something like: “Oh, are you congratulating me on my being engaged? No, I’m sorry. I turned Daniel down—I’m just not ready yet.” Which sounds awful, but she would have managed it in a warm and inviting way that would have made it seem natural and human, and just one of those things. It was a real talent of Charice’s, actually, making unnatural situations feel as though they were no big whoop. I had the opposite talent, which was to make ordinary and non-stressful events feel like a terrible pressure cooker.

  But I digress.

  “Charice can take the auditorium—I know you love a crowd. Nathan,” I yelled, “you can stay over here.”

  “And you?” asked Charice. “Where will you go?”

  “I think I’m just going to walk around.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  People took their places, and I started pacing along the side of the ship. I thought it was better to stay a little out of sight, because if Doctor XXX saw me and realized what I was up to, they might just turn their notification off. I wasn’t sure what the best way to manage this was. I could either just start a stream, and then leave it running, with the hopes that Doctor XXX would watch me—and that one of my spies might catch him or her in the act. Or, alternatively, I could start and stop streaming many times in succession, which would make the notification go off a lot but may make our Doctor suspicious. Still, if I absolutely knew he wasn’t going to watch me, this was my best option.

  I waited five minutes for everyone to get into positions, which was sheer optimism on my part, because for all I knew, Charice had run off to join the gypsies. But I took my chances and started my stream.

  “Hi, everyone! Guess where am I now?”

  Murdered, said Twitch chat. Is it murdered?

  “It’s not murdered,” I told them.

  “Buried alive,” someone guessed. “Like in that old Twilight Zone episode.”

  “That was the Outer Limits,” said another Twitch chatter, and then a flame war began, as it obviously would, given that we were on the Internet.

  “Guys,” I said, “this is not the important thing here.”

  What’s the important thing? asked Twitch chat.

  “The important thing is that I think I’ve figured out who killed Karou.” And then I shut the stream down, just like that.

  I hadn’t planned on being quite so melodramatic. I hadn’t planned on saying that at all—I had figured I’d go with something like—uh-oh—the Wi-Fi here is getting a little wobbly—but this worked. My goal was to smoke someone out, after all. Why go small?

  I stood around a little, waiting to see if anyone called me. I hoped that I’d get a ring from Daniel or Charice saying, “I saw a guy watching your stream” but that didn’t immediately happen. I probably should have started streaming again, but now I needed to say something, because Twitch chat was going to want to know who the killer was. It’s not the sort of thing they would easily let drop.

  But I noticed a figure running at me, full force. It was a kid, hightailing it as fast as he could. I wondered who was chasing him, when I realized: that’s Remy, and he’s not running from anyone. He’s running toward me.

  “Dahlia, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Why do you ask?”

  “I was watching your stream,” said Remy. “You said that you knew who Karou’s killer was, and then there was a noise, and the stream went black. It was very scary.”

  “Oh,” I said. “No, I’m okay.”

  “I nearly called the police,” said Remy. “It was literally like one of those notes where someone is writing a confession and their hand gives out before they’re able to complete the message.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t call the police,” I said, which was true, because I wouldn’t want to have to explain this gambit to Detective Maddocks. “But why were you watching my stream?”

  “I don’t know,” said Remy. “I was waiting for my match, and Kyle and Tricia have been really busy. And people don’t want to talk to a fourteen-year-old.”

  “But why my stream?”

  “Why not your s
tream?”

  “How did you find me?”

  Remy had actually been pretty amenable, all things considered, but fourteen-year-olds are uniquely suited to giving eye-rolling disgusted responses to questions they regard as unnecessary. Such as “How was school?” or “What’s this song on the radio?” or “Why does this bottle of white wine taste like it has been largely replaced with water?” Remy, without using any words to get the idea across, made it pretty clear that he thought this line of questioning was incomprehensibly stupid.

  “I met you,” said Remy. “Yesterday. And Tricia said you had a stream, so I checked it out. I also followed you on Twitter.”

  “You’re not Doctor XXX, are you?”

  I didn’t get an eyeball for this, but it was at least as dumb a question. If I truly were confronting the Doctor, I wouldn’t want to go about it in such a mealymouthed uncertain way. But things don’t always go perfectly.

  “No,” said Remy. “But it’s a cool name. What do the Xs stand for?”

  “What’s your favorite conurbation?” I asked Remy, which is truly the work of the desperate.

  “Banana cream,” said Remy.

  “What’s your favorite part of England?”

  “Hogwarts?”

  “Okay, kid,” I said. “I guess you’re all right.”

  “Yeah,” said Remy. “Of course I’m all right. You’re the person I was worried about. I thought you had been murdered or attacked or something.”

  “Everyone on Twitch seems to think I’m constantly on the cusp of death,” I said. “Where did they get this idea?” I mean, aside from agreeing to meet strangers in hotels and also on vessels of the river. But no matter—I wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten a phone call about Remy. “Hey, what room were you in when you got the notification that I was streaming?”

  “The auditorium,” said Remy, with slowly dawning interest. “Why?”

  Charice’s territory. I should have guessed. I decided that, for better or ill, I was going to trust Remy completely here. Certainly fourteen-year-olds are capable of serious mischief making, but I didn’t think this one was, or at least, this particular fourteen-year-old was not responsible for this particular mischief.

  “I’m trying to smoke out this Doctor XXX,” I told Remy.

  “I don’t know who that is,” said Remy.

  “Doesn’t matter. Go back to the auditorium, and watch to see if anyone either watches my stream or gets a notification about it.”

  “How will I know about a notification? There could just be like a little ding or something. Or it could be silent. My notification was.”

  It could be silent. I hadn’t thought about that at all.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to start streaming over and over again, for like thirty seconds a pop. Watch the crowd and see if anyone looks at their phone. And if anyone seems to check out my stream, or gets up to leave after checking their phone, follow them and find me.”

  Remy eyes were the size of saucers.

  “Wow,” he said. “Okay, I’m in.”

  I decided that I wasn’t going to remain stationery this time, especially since I wasn’t really going to stream so much as just start and stop over and over. And I wanted to cover more ground, since apparently my spies weren’t doing well enough. Where else could someone go?

  There was an entire upper deck to the boat that was off-limits, and I could have taken my chances up there, but this seemed like a bridge too far. I decided to try for the opposite direction—checking out the belowdecks area, both because it was sort of great-looking down there—squint and you could imagine yourself as the heroine in a steampunk novel—and because it’s where the bathrooms were. And that was a reasonable place to check, right? I mean, if you wanted to surreptitiously watch a video, a stall in the ladies’ or gents’ room is probably the best you could hope for, in terms of privacy.

  I made my way down the stairs, which were carpeted in this variegated brown swirly thing that managed to be swank and also a little ominous. Coming down the stairs, I was reminded of an old text-based game that my brother Alden used to play. They really don’t make games like that anymore—by which I don’t mean text-based, although that’s also true, but games where you can make one wrong decision and permanently lose. It was a game called Ballyhoo, and if you made an irrevocable choice and were doomed forever, the game wouldn’t even tell you. It would just give you a clue—like “You have a terrible sinking feeling, and your mind is struck with the image of a burning bridge.”

  Anyway, I mention all of that now not to plug games of yore, but because I had a terrible sinking feeling, and my mind was struck with the image of a burning bridge. Admittedly, I’m writing this all down after the fact, so I may be creatively remembering the moment, but I don’t think I am. Going down those stairs, I had the sense that I was making a considerable error. Not so considerable that it slowed me down in the slightest, but there was certainly a feeling of unease.

  Also, it was dim down here. Not “likely to be eaten by a grue” dark, but dim. To continue with our steampunk metaphor, the airship that we were traveling on was running very low on power.

  Despite all this, I was blithely starting up and shutting down the stream, although I did at least take enough care as to not fall down the stairs to my death. When I made it to the bottom of the stairs, and faced a long plain hallway that ran along the middle of the ship, I noticed a snippet of music. By snippet I mean snippet—it was about three bars long, and lasted maybe five seconds, if that.

  It was also vaguely familiar.

  I stopped moving and listened some more. No music. No sound whatsoever.

  I started my stream.

  Music again. Very faint music. It was so familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Dum, ditty dummm, ditty dum-dum-dum.”

  I stopped my stream. I’m sure my twelve viewers were getting furious with me. I moved a little farther down the hall and tried it again.

  This time it was a little louder. “Dum, ditty dummm, ditty dum-dum-dum.” I could place it this time, now that I’d heard it a little louder—it was Dhalsim’s theme, from Street Fighter II. Of all the mysteries I could have solved, resolving this tiny one was obviously the least-important thing I could have put together, but it gave me a boost of confidence nonetheless. If someone’s phone alert sound was Dhalsim’s theme song, they were probably a pretty serious player.

  I moved farther down the hall and started and stopped my stream again. It was only because it was so completely empty down here than I was able to pinpoint, or even hear the sound. Apparently there were also restrooms in the bar, which was where most of the gamers had taken to going.

  There were three restrooms down here—a men’s, a women’s, and a family restroom, which struck me as a lot of bathrooms for a steamboat, but then they were probably doing gangbusters in the bar and all that liquor’s got to go somewhere. I had just assumed, naturally, that the sound would be coming from the men’s room, but to my surprise and frustration, I found that it wasn’t. I started and stopped my stream and, again, found that the sound was coming from the family room.

  This was frustrating, not because I had any particular gender-based ideas about who my stalker should be, but because the family room restroom was locked. In fact, of the three restrooms—I checked—it was the only door in the bunch that could lock at all.

  I knocked.

  “Hello,” I said. “Is anyone in there?”

  No response.

  I decided to lie. “I’ve got a small toddler that needs to poo really badly.” This was a little strange, sure, but it sounds better than “I’m stalking someone who possibly had a British man pose as themselves on the Internet; by any chance, is that you?”

  But no response, regardless.

  It was probably a little strange that this person had been getting alerts for my stream over and over again, and was doing nothing about it. Why do nothing? After two alerts I would have shut the thing off, actually, especially
with the frequency I’d been sending them. But they hadn’t.

  A few possibilities, right?

  1. No one was in the bathroom. Just an abandoned phone. I really liked this idea, because I could still probably figure out who Doctor XXX was—assuming there wasn’t a passcode on the thing—and I could also be a Good Samaritan and return his or her phone.

  2. Someone was in the bathroom, passed out, asleep, drunk. This was less likely, but hey, I’ve been to some wild parties before, and it wouldn’t be the first time. At least it wasn’t my toilet that the drunk guy had passed out on.

  3. Violently murdered corpse, obviously.

  Now, now, I know you’re leaping to number three, but let’s pace ourselves. Or that’s what I was saying to myself. I was suddenly getting anxious about being alone down here, and as I had started to stream like twenty times now, I decided to put it on for good now. At least this way I wouldn’t be alone.

  “Hello there, Twitch. How’s everybody?”

  What the fuck is wrong with your stream? asked Twitch chat.

  That’s lending the message a lot more coherence than their version, incidentally, which was pure salt.

  “Just having a little technical difficulties,” I said, “but it’s resolved now.”

  Are you going to play some Hearthstone or what? asked chat. Or is this another almost-get-murdered thing?

  “Not right away,” I said. “I’m just belowdecks at the Major Redding.”

  It’s dark down there, said Twitch chat.

  “It is, actually,” I said. “It’s a little creepy.”

  I don’t like this place, said chat.

  “It’s fine. It’s fine,” I told the crowd. “I just am down here because I think I’ve tracked down the person who is Doctor XXX.”

  Who’s that? asked Twitch chat. It’s important to remember that not everyone was watching me yesterday, so they weren’t necessarily filled in on the business. I was going to explain, but the rest of Twitch chat explained the business to themselves.