“Well, I had no idea,” said Kyle. “I walked over to this part of the room backward.”
I admired the even tone that Kyle was able to deliver this line in, which was honestly offhanded and sort of inviting. He looked at me then, a bit searchingly, and shared a look with Undine.
I expected Tricia to say something like “I think she’s got us,” but then Tricia said, simply: “Check your phone to make sure she’s not streaming.”
I panicked—seriously panicked—because I was streaming. But then I remembered: I wasn’t streaming. Reynard was. I’d kidnapped someone else’s stream.
Kyle looked at his phone, and after a moment said: “Nope. She’s clean.”
“Of course I’m not streaming,” I said nervously. “How could I be streaming? You guys stole my computer and phone. That’s why I came down here. I want them back.”
“I’m sorry I asked you to watch my kid while I may have murdered a guy,” said Tricia. This was as close to a confession as I would ever get, and so I’m just going to imagine that she didn’t say “may have.” Actually, I’m just going to imagine that she started weeping and saying, “Yes, yes, Dahlia Moss, your clever deductions have found me out.” Why go small?
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
“He cut us,” said Tricia. “Right before the tournament. And replaced us with fucking Chul-Moo. We’re living hand to mouth here, Dahlia. You can’t cut us! We cut you!”
“Okay,” I said, accepting this in the limited way I would accept any reason for murder. “I get why you would have been upset with Karou, but what did Chul-Moo do wrong?”
“We maybe got a little carried away with Chul-Moo,” said Kyle.
“HE SHOULDN’T HAVE TAKEN THE JOB,” said Tricia. “IT WAS OUR JOB.”
I did not think it wise to press this point any further. So I asked: “And Detective Maddocks there?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Kyle.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Jesus Christ, guys.”
“He’s not dead,” said Tricia. “He just wandered in here, and we knocked him out. We wanted to just knock you out,” said Tricia.
“It’s so hard to find good sitters for Undine,” said Kyle.
“Okay,” I said uncertainly. “Anybody else you guys kill?”
“No,” said Tricia, moving toward me. “At least, not yet.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
There was a moment, a brief euphoric moment, when I felt invincible. That I could do anything. I had deduced the identity of my attacker, and Karou’s murderer—even if the confession was a little wobbly, and I was still decidedly hazy on the details of why exactly Kyle and Tricia had had Karou meet his end—you know, I was doing pretty good work for a beginner. I’d maybe even saved Detective Maddocks from certain death, and he was going to be pissed about that later.
But the moment faded when Tricia started lunging for me. I was taken aback—even given that I had a plan, and I had broadly been suspecting it. It was like a monster movie where the zombies suddenly moved fast. You’re: Wait—we’ve got fast zombies in this lore, do we? You can compensate, but that initial lunge? Scary. Freaky scary.
As an aside, can I mention that I am not a fan of the fast zombie? They’re ridiculous. And why are dead people all of a sudden in such great shape? It really cheapens the point of working out if there are just decaying zombies who are more fit than you. I imagine them at the gym, in a huddle, wondering why I am taking so long on the StairMaster.
But I digress.
Tricia was lunging at me, which was good, because it meant she didn’t have a firearm. I had kind of assumed that had been the case, given the rash of bludgeonings, but even so: lucky me. I turned, yanked down to grab the computer, and I really wanted to see what the computer said. I imagined it was filled with amazing things about how clever I was, and also, how obstinate Tricia and Kyle were, but I didn’t have time. It was probably just as well, because now that I consider it with a little distance, it was probably just a lot of Kappas interspersed with the occasional “show us your tits.”
“All right, Twitch chatters—we established that those guys killed Karou, right? The camera caught that?”
I couldn’t really read the screen with all the motion, but I was sure that it was filled with “UMmmm, NO,” and “Not Really!” and more sarcastic responses to that effect, along with additional Kappas and requests for tits. But I was in the mood for optimism, and I was in no mood to read the comments, even if I had the time and the steady hands.
“I’m glad we agree. So, I’m running for my life right now. I’m hoping some of you called the police while I was down there. Right? Tell me one of you did that.”
I had apparently gotten confused in the snaking hallways of the “belowdecks” area—or was it a bilge, did we ever establish that?—because I was fully expecting to arrive at a stairwell, and I did not exactly do that. Instead, I arrived at a dead end, in which there was a nothing but a nice oaken little coffee table—tiny, just large enough for a bowl of fruit, and a largish frowning picture of a white-bearded man in a military outfit. I would later learn that this was Major Redding himself, although I did not take the time to observe that now.
There were two numbered doors here, which presumably led to cabins, but I assumed they were locked. I didn’t have time to make a lot of choices here, so I put down the laptop, and I picked up the end table.
When Tricia came around the corner, I hit her in the head with it, which I felt, reasonably, would knock her down. At best it dazed her a tiny amount. Kyle was running down the hall, carrying Undine, which presumably was the reason he had been traveling more slowly. But with Tricia tottering there, there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go. I was boxed in.
“She’s got another computer,” Tricia said. “She’s recording this.”
“It’s okay, honey,” said Kyle agreeably. “We’ll just kill her.”
Kyle was gingerly putting Undine down—he seemed like a great dad, honestly—aside from him being very weird and also the murders—and unstoppable zombie Tricia just came walking toward me. I saw now that she had a spade in her hand, which is probably what she had hit me with earlier.
And then Nathan, shirtless, ridiculous Nathan, dove on top of her.
Nathan had never looked more ridiculous or perfect or wonderful than he did in that moment. He looked like a Fraggle who was trying to pilot a rhinoceros, which is apparently exactly what was needed.
“Dahlia,” he gasped. “I’ve come to save you.”
He was also wearing pink sweatpants that did not stay on his body very well. I later learned, that while I was busy acquiring a confession from Tricia and Kyle—which I totally acquired—he had been on an odyssey of pants. The thing was, Nathan is very thin—almost impossibly thin, and so finding pants that I, a normal person, could wear—involved multiple trades. Not only had Nathan charmed the pants off a woman for me, he had charmed the pants off two women. And a guy.
If that’s not a relationship with a future, I don’t know what is.
Of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time. I just saw his flailing Muppet hands and his ridiculous oversized sweats, and I observed that if this boy was ready for my jelly, as they said in the aughts, so be it.
Tricia charged forward as if she were some sort of wild animal, like a wildebeest or a kodo, and smashed Nathan’s head into the wall. Nathan was holding on to her neck, and it struck me that he was trying to apply some sort of sleeper hold on her, but was doing so very ineffectually. In the meantime, Kyle had carefully unpacked Undine from her carrier—she was sleeping nicely—placed her on the ground in the corner and safely out of the fray, and then thwacked Nathan with the carrier. It would have hit him in the head, had Tricia not twisted, and I wondered if this is what had concussed me, because that spade would have done the job a lot more thoroughly.
I had to do something, and I was being briefly ignored, so I took the picture of Major Redding off the
wall, and I hit Kyle in the face with it. This did a lot more damage than I expected it would, in part because it was a really nice wooden frame, and was both nicer and heavier than the coffee table. This suddenly concerned me, because I began to consider that this was probably a very Valuable Painting, but then Tricia started screaming, so I swung the painting at her and hit her—hard—in the back of the knee.
The stream loved this part, and typed the words “FRAME TRAP!!!” hundreds of thousands of times, which is a joke so stupid that I refuse to explain it. They are probably still typing it now.
And then everyone sort of went tumbling. Kyle had fallen to the ground but had picked up a piece of coffee table and hit me in the leg with it. Tricia seemed to go over all at once, almost like she had fallen on the ice. Nathan, of course, went down with her, and someone grabbed at my leg and there I went as well.
We were on the floor, weird and half-naked, and it was now like a terrible murderous game of Twister. We were just wrestling, and it was all sort of awful.
We were dazed—we were all dazed, me from my concussion, Tricia and Kyle from their murder spree, Nathan from his pantsapalooza, Undine from not being able to work her arms or legs, the Twitch chat from having to watch all this plus repeated commercials for Disney hotels.
This stage of the chase, the half-naked dazed portion in which no one was moving particularly, lasted altogether longer than it should. We were tired and getting hit with pieces of wood. No one said so, but in retrospect, I think we all welcomed the break.
It ended suddenly, though, when Tricia managed to pick up my computer, which she probably imagined held incriminating evidence, and ran off, leaving behind her husband, her daughter, and me. This made it the third time she left her child with me.
“Bring back my viewers!” I shouted after her. Or technically, Reynard’s viewers. He was going to make so much money off this. Like, a hundred dollars, maybe two! (This is a dig on Twitch’s profit sharing. Hi, Twitch Overlords!)
Anyway, it was perhaps indicative of my mental state that I chased after her. Technically, of course, the computer had no files, no hard-coded anything that could serve as evidence, and Tricia leaving with the stream was doing nothing but incriminating her further. “Let her go; it’s her own funeral.” That’s what a rational person would say. That’s what I would say later, with the benefit of a non-concussive state. But what I said then was: “Stop her—she’s getting away.”
Nathan, who was squaring off against Kyle in what could have been (affectionately) billed as the battle of the wimps, did nothing to accomplish this goal. Nor did Undine, who was resting comfortably, respond to my call.
So I got up and chased her myself.
Tricia was running through the corridors of the Major Redding like she was a crazy woman, which I suppose, she was. I still hadn’t quite figured out if she had been doing the killing or Kyle, but they both seemed really unruffled by the idea. Say what you will about them, they had a very solid relationship. Anyway, I couldn’t tell if she knew where she was going, or if she was just making random decisions at each intersection. I never figured that out, actually.
But we eventually came to a rickety black spiral staircase that she hastily ascended, still holding my laptop. Okay, yes, Reynard’s laptop, but I had come to think of it as my own. Besides, seven thousand helpless dude-bros on Twitch chat had been abducted, and it was up to me to save them. So up the stairs I went. Won’t someone think of the Kappas?
And hello, non-OSHA compliance, can I just mention these stairs? They were beyond wheelchair inaccessible. They were the antithesis of wheelchairs. It seemed designed to break the spirits of people with disabilities, if not actually their chairs as well. (Or alternatively, this was a very old section of the boat.)
I headed up the stairs and quickly realized why the stairs had been so antiquated. This was a strange portion of the ship that wasn’t meant for general use. Probably why it had never been upgraded.
We were backstage, I thought—a wooden area with a white fabric wall. Again, that’s really something I noticed more of later. Mostly I was thinking: Destroy Tricia.
“Tricia,” I said. “Give it up.”
“No,” she said. “I can destroy the evidence. I can kill you. I can solve all of this.”
“You can’t,” I told her. “There’s nothing to destroy. You’re not being recorded, you’re being streamed. There are seven thousand witnesses.” Probably more now, when you got to it.
I didn’t need to explain what that meant to Tricia, who stared at me, bug-eyed. I felt certain that she was not going to go down without a fight, however, and I was not a girl that could put up a fight at this point. What was I thinking? Why did I come up here?
“I will kill you,” said Tricia. “It may not solve anything, but I can still kill you.”
And then a crowd went, “Awwwww!” just like that. Awwwww! Which is not what you want to hear when someone says, “I will kill you.” And yet, it wasn’t so bad, because all of a sudden, I knew where we were.
I heroically burst through the screen and was back in the auditorium, onstage in front of an army of gamers. [Editor’s note: This is not what happened.]
Okay, fine, I ran into the screen—which despite being sort of fabric-y, was apparently too thick to just tear through like you’re a football team at homecoming. I just crashed into it with sort of a THWUMP, which surprised me, but was okay, I guess, because it also surprised Tricia, who felt that this dramatic gesture should have worked. It’s the sort of thing that’s supposed to work.
Then I was just dazed for a moment, and I lifted the screen and walked under it.
[Editor’s note: better.]
There was still the army of gamers, and everyone was looking at me. No game was being projected on the screen, however, which I thought was odd, but then I realized that Charice and Daniel were also on the stage, also looking at me.
Daniel—still in Vega garb—was down on one knee.
My detective brain, concussed as it may have been, was putting it together. Daniel’s engagement plan. One-kneed-ness. Crowd going “Aww!”
I looked, and Daniel was holding a ring. He had probably gotten that ring yesterday from Steve Buscemi, because Daniel was a Craigslist’s wedding ring sort of guy, I suddenly realized.
“Is this a bad moment?” I asked.
To Charice. To Daniel. To everyone.
Charice, who—despite all of her chaotic little ways, and frankly her chaotic medium-size ways, and okay, yes, her chaotic fucking humongous ways—possesses oceans of patience I lack, simply said: “Yes, Daniel, I will marry you.”
And the crowd cheered. I like to imagine that Daniel teared up, but who knows? He was wearing a mask.
It was a perfect little moment, aside from the fleeing a double murderer. Even so, it felt like it existed on its own separate plane. Charice looked so happy, and I felt happy, and it was like I had wandered onto this wonderful magical grotto of love. What was I ever afraid of? Of course I want Charice and Daniel to be together. That’s what was supposed to happen all along.
But then I heard Tricia fumbling with the screen, and the spell was broken.
“I’m so sorry, Charice,” I said. “I didn’t want to step on your moment. But there’s just this crazy woman behind this screen with a garden trowel, and she’s trying to kill me.”
“It’s no problem,” said Charice, who managed to impart this with a lot of emotion, although I may be projecting.
Then Tricia burst through the screen—okay, fine, lifted the screen and crawled under it—and was stunned to see everyone looking at her. Then Charice—and I may be editorializing a little, but if you don’t believe me, you can chalk it up to the concussion—spun around in the classic Balrog turn-punch, complete with the gust of wind sound effect, and punched Tricia in the face.
KO. Perfect Victory.
I mean, that’s what someone should have said.
Seriously, though—editorializing aside—Charice pu
nched Tricia in the face. It was sort of awesome. Later, when it was all over, Charice told me:
“See, Dahlia, you don’t need a bodyguard. You’ve got me.”
The rest of the day was a blur of chaos, headaches, and sworn statements to the police, who once we hit landfall, started swarming like ants. And I quite literally mean blur, because my head wound was definitely setting in at that point. Nathan completed his circle of pants bartering so that my thighs were at last protected from human view, as God intended. Charice appointed herself my guardian while Nathan was getting grilled by Weber and company.
I had gotten the feeling that folks were regarding me as the slightest bit manic, since it seemed to be everyone’s opinion that I should go somewhere dark and quiet and calming. Probably they were concerned about the concussion, in retrospect, but in the moment I thought perhaps I was being lumped in as an unhinged woman. So when I was assigned Charice as a chaperone, I took the opportunity as a chance to accomplish whatever the goddamned hell I wanted.
I was probably getting delirious, because what I really wanted to know was who had won the fucking tournament. Nathan and Charice didn’t know, and the police seemed not to even understand the question. So I fought my way above decks until I found Imogen, who judging from her air of resplendence, surely had taken the final round.
“Did you win?” I asked her.
Mike was with her—resplendent in his green cap, which I guess really was ocher, now that I looked at it in this light, and was grinning from tooth to tooth.
“Of course we won,” said Imogen.
“Obviously we were going to win,” said Mike. “We assumed that’s why you dropped out. You realized the inevitability of our victory.”
The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss Page 24
