Set to Kill: A Sean AP Ryan Novel (Convention Killings Book 2)

by Declan Finn

  “Like I said,” Athena interrupted, “is there any way that this isn't a Puppy-Punter?”

  Sean started out of his revere. “Of course. There's no reason for it not to be.”

  Athena cocked her head. “You sure? They've been screaming, shouting, carrying on cranky for over a year online, and for days while we've been here. You know: 'Tearful Puppies are Evil!' or 'Mormon white males,' and 'White Supremacists!' Or some such nonsense.”

  “Heh. Athena, if they believed one word of how threatened they were, they'd have insisted that they had personal bodyguards for the entire duration of the convention. It's very … how do I put this? Yes. Very Hollywood.” He looked at the streaks on the bed again, then looked over at the tetsubo. “The killer isn't short. If he stood right about Jerry Friedman's feet, he'd have been about five-ten or so. That excludes some of the shorter possibles. It definitely excludes Moshevsky. Even without the hunch, I don't think he's any taller than I am.”

  “Gotcha.” Athena studied the weapon. “Where do you think he she or it got this? It's not exactly something that you can check onto an airplane.”

  Sean smiled. “You didn't hang out with me at the last con all that much, did you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it's time for us to go shopping.”

  “Shouldn't we call the cops?”

  Sean pouted. “Oh, all right. If we have to.”

  * * * *

  On the one hand, the vendors' area of WyvernCon was impressively stocked with all manner of adult toys—swords, model guns. Guns which didn't look like models, but were. Swords that may or may not have had an edge, depending on what vendor you went to, and which kind you wanted.

  However, the vendors' area was a complete and total mess of stores. None of the aisles were straight, continuous, or well organized. It wasn't the fault of anyone except the person who chose the venue, and the person who drew up the blueprints. Walls were placed almost at random, forcing vendors to adapt to strange geography and making guesses.

  Unfortunately for Sean, every vendor was already at his stores, peddling wares.

  “This is why I wanted to skip the cops,” Sean told Athena, over his shoulder. “I wanted to be here before the vendors, and get them on the way into the building, so they'd come to us. Now look at it. We're going to be here forever.”

  “Want me to boost you up so you can see over the crowd?”

  Sean looked up at his taller colleague and gave her a mock laugh. “Cute. No. We're going to have to walk through.”

  “Why not just let the cops do that? Or if we have to do it, we can just page them on the PA system.”

  Sean arched a brow. “You really think that calling in the vendors of one specific type of weapon will get everybody to come in? Come on, that's gonna raise all kinds of suspicions.”

  “And being questioned by two security people won't?”

  “How can they tell we're security?”

  Athena looked down at her outfit, then at his, arching a brow. In her case, she wore Secret Service chic—black business suit and pants with blouse, complete with shoulder holster under her left arm, and a combat dagger under her right, and that's just what people could see. Sean was ridiculous, wearing a John Wick costume, carrying dual guns on his hip and in shoulder holsters, and God knew what else, where else.

  And of course, there were the conference tags that said SECURITY in bright orange letters along the bottom.

  “Don't worry,” Sean said, ignoring her look. “This is just the backup plan.”

  Athena cocked her head. “So, what's the real plan?”

  A text went off. Sean smiled, then pulled out his phone. “Mitch.”

  Athena smiled. Mitchell Scholl was Sean's weapons master—an old Hollywood pro who had been in charge of more prop rooms than any three studios put together.

  Sean flipped to his texts. “I sent him a photo of the tetsubo before we called the cops. That and the rest of the crime scene, actually.” He read the text and smiled. “We have a name. Jack Heavey, of the store Heavey Metal. He specializes in medieval weaponry from all countries.”

  “Now all we have to do is find him.”

  Sean started tapping away at his phone, thumbing through the WyvernCon app. “Doing that now. I think I have a location. Thankfully, we're here before opening. I don't want to imagine what this would look like with people.”

  They headed straight towards the Heavey Metal table … and then made two rights, a left, another left, two more rights, another right, an immediate left, and a circle, cutting through a bookstore, a costume shop, and a comic book place with remaindered comics.

  Finally, when Sean and Athena were three rooms away from the entrance, they found Heavey Metal jammed into a corner, taking up the whole wall … which was about 20 feet long before stopping, shooting out into another three-foot width of wall, before continuing along that side of the building.

  The vendor, Jack Heavey, was a solid, six-foot man with iron gray hair, and enough smile lines to be a mid-1990s Tommy Lee Jones, with a bone structure of an Easter Island statue.

  And he made them the moment they were in his line of sight.

  Sean smiled. Ex-cop. I love these guys. They make the best witnesses ever.

  “None of this is illegal here,” Heavey said, “I just want to say that up front.”

  Sean held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, not a problem, bud. In fact, we're not here about that. In fact, all we really want is to know who may have bought a tetsubo from you yesterday.”

  Heavy looked at him a moment, then laughed. “Oh, that's a good one. Trying to track my purchases? Good luck with that. Half the people here pay cash, and the other half show me their IDs with their card.”

  Sean nodded. “I know. You guys get burned a lot with credit cards. But listen, if you could keep it under your hat…” Sean saw the look from Heavey, and quickly said, “Withdrawn. Sorry, dumb statement. It was the murder weapon.”

  Heavey blinked, then looked over Sean and his convention pass again. “Uh huh. I'm guessing you're the hotshot security guy that they brought in this year. Do a lot of murder investigations?”

  “Usually while I'm being shot at. If you could at least ID all the tetsubos you sold yesterday? Can't have been that many, right?”

  Heavey smiled reflexively. “You realize that with all of the Gary Castelo fans here, I moved dozens of them. Not bad for a Friday at one of these things.”

  Sean groaned. “Great. Just great. Pity. It's not like someone said that they were going to use it to kill Jerry Friedman.”

  Heavey cocked his head. “The writer? The Hairballs ripoff guy?”

  Sean flinched. “Yes,” he drawled. “Why?”

  “Jerry Friedman bought one. And unless you found a second one kicking around his apartment, I'm going to lay money that he was killed with his own purchase.”

  Sean and Athena exchanged a glance. “Why the hell would he do that?” she asked.

  * * * *

  “He probably wanted to do a comedy routine with it,” His Tankness Tom Knighton explained at his breakfast table.

  Sean held his head, rubbing the temple. “A what? With a tetsubo? Are you kidding?”

  Knighton shook his head. “Not at all. Last year at the Hubbles, Jerry emceed the event, and made it into a sad, pathetic little mockery of, well, good taste.” He brushed some bread crumbs from his mustache, and leaned back in his chair.

  Sean sighed, and pressed his back up against the wall. He liked the Hilton's dining room. It had plenty of walls, sight lines all over the place, several escape routes, and an optional escape route through a wall of windows looking out onto the street if he so desired. The only thing he didn't like about it was that the wait staff encouraged everybody to eat at the breakfast buffet, causing constant traffic of civilians to get in the way in case a shootout started.

  A convention goer walked past, half of his face seemingly ruined to reveal a Terminator endoskeleton behind the f
lesh.

  “Should I ask?” Sean inquired. “About the award last year?”

  “Oh, last year, they had a Dalek come out to present the award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short form)—”

  “What?”

  “Television episode,” Knighton elaborated. “The Dalek announces that it was a fan of Johnny Prada, CHUD-in-Chief…”

  “Okaaayyy,” Sean drawled. “Explain that to me? What's the problem?”

  Knighton laughed. “How many people do you know who would want their spokes-critter to be a genocidal alien Space Nazi?”

  Sean blinked. Ouch. This is like atheists getting a personal endorsement by Satan. This is Planned Parenthood getting a quote from Moloch. I'd really rather not get an endorsement by Adolf Hitler, thank you. “Oy.”

  “Yup,” Knighton continued. “And they have the audacity to call themselves 'True fans,' but they thought it was a good idea to get an endorsement from one of the most famously evil creatures in science fiction. Hell, if they had said 'Agnes O'Day' of the Hydrophobic Puppies, that would have at least fit the theme they had going of O'Day as Supreme Dark Lord. Since Daleks run on hate, it would have even fit Gary's joke of being the Intergalactic Lord thereof.”

  “That's about as tone deaf as being unable to tell the difference between Mozart and banging garbage can lids together,” Sean noted. “Are they that tone-deaf, or just moronic?”

  “Take your pick.” Knighton shrugged, and sipped some coffee. “After all, you're talking about people who made last year 'The year of the asterisk' at the awards.”

  “The what-now?”

  “Don't you play sports?” Knighton asked.

  Sean gave an amused scoff. “Do Krav Maga and parkour count as sports?”

  Knighton's brown eyes lit with amusement. “Not a team player, huh?”

  “Sure I am. When you're trapped in a burning orc suit, you really want your team to be there to put you out.”

  “Uh huh … right.” Knighton looked at Sean, trying to tell if he was joking. He dismissed the question, and said, “Anyway, in sports terminology, that's usually what they put next to a win that's invalid. So calling it the 'year of the asterisk', and even handing out wooden asterisks … you see where I'm going.”

  “Indeed.” Sean restrained himself from drawing down on four men in camouflage gear and rifles over their shoulders as they walked past. “And this was Jerry Friedman's entire routine last year? It makes me wonder what he was going to do with a real tetsubo. Was he going to be a part of any staged performances?”

  Knighton shook his head. “I think the biggest thing they had was the costume contest. I don't think he was going to emcee that. He could have done it at any panel he was at, really. He's a total douche.”

  “Heh. He was.” Sean frowned for a moment, looking over Knighton. He liked the fellow—nothing wrong with someone who chauffeurs people around in a tank—but had to ask: “So, got an alibi for last night?”

  Knighton didn't even blink. “I wondered when you were going to ask. He was killed last night, right? After the keynote? I left the keynote and had to drive the tank back where I got it from. That gives me an alibi from 11, when I left, to two, when I finally parked.”

  Sean nodded slowly, then thought it over. If the keynote ended at 11pm, Jerry Friedman couldn't have been killed much before midnight, at the outside. Old crotchety bastard like that is going to get his beauty sleep. And the best guess I heard from the cops was between 11 pm and 1 am. But figure that he's going to head straight to bed, start getting undressed, or at least start winding down. Figure it takes him until 11:15 to get to his room, and loosens the belt, undoes a few buttons. Normally, probably would have just dropped to the bed and fallen asleep. Yeah, there's no way Knighton could have done it.

  “Okay,” Sean concluded. “I'm sure the cops will ask and check on your alibi.”

  “And if they don't, you will?” Knighton asked, amused.

  “I've got a check running on everyone—Puppy Punter and Morose Puppy alike.”

  “Tearful … It's Tearful Puppy,” he corrected.

  Sean smiled. “Yeah, I'll get it right eventually.”

  His Tankness leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “You think that he could have been killed by one of his friends?”

  “Why not?” Sean asked. “Most people are murdered by their nearest and dearest between two and three in the morning. And we checked the hotel records. No one used a card to open the door after him, so either he brought someone to the bedroom with him, or let someone in. That would imply one of his fellow Punters did him in, but I'm not leaving anything out.” A six-foot, 300 pound man in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit walked past, and Sean considered pouring bleach in his eyes. “Let's face it, I don't really think any of these SMURFs are actually scared of the Puppies.”

  Knighton nodded. “He might have been more scared of the Hydrophobic Puppies than anything else.”

  Sean sighed, not wanting to get into this, but he had to. “You want to explain to me what the hell the problem is with them, and … who's the one in charge of them?”

  “Agnes O'Day. She's mostly an American ex-pat who lives in Europe. Most of her comments are race-based, with a lot of sociology on top of that.”

  Sean blinked, nodded, pretending as though he had some idea of what Knighton was talking about, and said, “Uh huh … such as?”

  “Well, simple concept: That every culture goes through stages of development. And that every culture develops at a different rate. Sounds okay, right?”

  “Sure,” Sean agreed. “Heck, when the Conquistadors met the Aztecs, they didn't even have the wheel or understand sailing vessels, but they had multistory buildings. What's so controversial about that?”

  “Yes, now if I say that every culture has been, as she puts it, 'savage,' is that a problem?” Knighton asked.

  Sean chuckled. “Last year, I went toe-to-toe with half of NATO because they wanted to break up everything in the Vatican and distribute the parts. I don't need a slide-rule for that.”

  “Now, what happens if she declares all of Africa as still in the savage stage of development?”

  Sean raised a brow. “It comes off as a little racist. Not even I would say the entire continent. I've got a friend who was shot to pieces saving my ass, and he was an Egyptian cop.”

  “Exactly,” Knighton concurred. “And now you see why there are problems with Agnes O'Day and, well, most of the association of SF&F writers. NKVD in particular. And that's when O'Day is being nuanced. There are days she just lets fly.”

  Sean smiled, happy that someone else preferred NKVD to Nikki K. Victoria Daalman. “I have to ask, were her parents communists?”

  “O'Day?”

  “No. NKVD.”

  “Probably.” Knighton looked at his watch. “Is there anything else? The con is about to start in earnest.”

  Sean spotted someone covered in knives walk past. He tensed before he realized they were plastic. “Just one more question.”

  Knighton smiled. “Yes, Columbo?”

  “Do you know of anyone who would want to kill Jerry Friedman? I mean actively carry a desire to kill him?”

  Knighton shook his head. “Nah. You know what the biggest problem with Friedman was? He was a hack. He ripped off Heinlein's flatcats with his 'Hairballs,' and proceeded to use that one thing to carry him throughout his entire career. He was an old, over-the-hill, overrated hack who hasn't done any quality work in his entire life that he didn't steal from someone else. But Heinlein is dead, and none of the people on our side of the debate think that Friedman was even worth talking to, to heck with killing.”

  “How many Heinlein fans would want to off him?”

  Knighton chuckled as he stood. “If they were going to do that, it would have happened decades ago.”

  Chapter 13: Magic

  Sean looked at the WyvernCon app on his phone, trying to figure out what would be the best use of his time and energy.

  Then he found
“The Physics of your Magic,” with Jesse James, Gary Castelo, Matthew Kovach, and Rachel Hartley. Well, I at least know where the greatest concentration of targets is right now. I guess I could look at the CHUDs, or SMURFs, or whatever the hell the Punters are called right now.

  He found one panel run by “N.K.V.D.” Daalman, and S. Typhoon Teacup on “White Supremacy among the Puppies,” with Prada and both Smith-Smithe-Smits discussing “ROT Books—Best SF Ever?”

  Two in each panel, doing panels on topics that I'd rather eat glass than listen to. I wonder when they're going to report on that boycott I heard about the other day. Oh well, magic it is, then.

  Sean stepped out of the Hilton restaurant, and the foyer part of the lobby (no chairs, brightly lit, and a wide-open space) had group Cosplayers parading around. There was some sort of alien quartet that involved a raccoon, a blue body builder, and a thin green woman. They were standing around, getting photos taken of them.

  Sean smiled and headed upstairs, for the skywalk leading to the Marriott.

  He knew that was a mistake the minute he hit the traffic. The hallway wasn't even six feet across, and five people tried to fit in the hallway at any one time. It was sort of annoying.

  And, of course, today was the day for costumes. Sean did his best to keep his hands in his pockets. There were some women walking around he was afraid to brush against, lest their clothing fall off—including one “slave” Princess Leia with obviously no underwear, a few women in tight spandex that was a little too tight, and one or two who looked like they were walking around in lingerie.

  When he got to the atrium level of the Marriott though, that's when things got even stranger.

  On the right side of the atrium were stores, a restaurant, and a bar. On the left side was a giant conference hall.

  In the middle was the revenge of the group Cosplayers. There was a group of Transformers, all of them wearing metal costumes, LED lights all over their bodies (especially the eyes). There was a collection of eight Batman villains blocking one of the routes to the elevators. There was a squad of power-armored orbital drop troops off to the right, in front of the bar. And they were all posing for pictures. That wasn't the problem.