Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1)

by BG Archer

  Later Gideon had gone and Tiffany had returned, a strange glow about her.

  Katie tilted her head to the side and examined her friend, until she realized precisely what that glow was.

  "Were you just naughty?"

  Tiffany looked at her for a long moment and batted her eyes. "More than a little."

  Katie laughed and hugged her friend, before returning to the paper she was outlining for her physics class.

  Tiffany took a seat on her bed and lay back, the glow not subduing in the slightest.

  "And I'll tell you what, it was absolutely the best straight sex I've had pretty much ever. He was just … It was amazing."

  "Oh really?"

  "Yeah, hands down. So nice to be out and not being watched by the family either. Ugh."

  "That's what college is about. Freedom to do what you want."

  Tiffany propped herself up on her elbows and looked at her friend carefully.

  "Something's different about you."

  "I have no clue what you're talking about."

  "You totally banged in here." The Southern accent came out for full effect when she said the word “banged” and Katie, not for the first time was so attracted to Tiffany she wanted to jump her friend, but restrained herself.

  "Well, you said you were out…"

  “No, no, I’m happy for you. Gideon?”

  Katie sighed. “Gideon. And it was the best yet.”

  "Well done us!" Tiffany bounced up off the bed and hi-fived her friend.

  "Well, considering the glumness going around campus, it's nice to have a little warmth in our personal lives.”

  "Oh I do, darling,” Tiffany said as she examined her hair in her dresser’s mirror.

  "It looks like I need another shower," she said winking at Katie before grabbing her bag and heading back out the door.

  26

  11:37AM Friday, November 2nd

  "Are you sure about this?" Arthur asked.

  Fields and Tapscott both nodded.

  "The video was taken on her phone, there's no question about it."

  "So Seaborn had a partner."

  "Or Seaborn was simply set up," Arthur said.

  "He had motive," Tapscott said.

  “Did he actually have motive? Or was it more he fit a typical profile?” Arthur asked. “The thing we have to remember is these kills were modeled loosely on Snow. Martin Snow was not a typical psychopath. If he truly has an admirer, it's safe to assume that they will not be typical as well. Martin took trophies, and it's clear whoever's doing this is doing the same."

  Fields and Tapscott exchanged looks.

  "What makes you say that?” Fields asked.

  "Two items are missing from both crime scenes, two things that are important to the victims. Tori lived on that phone. She was a social drinker who had to constantly be having a good time. That device was one of her most important possessions. Maria Rivas always wore a gold cross. Despite her profession she was deeply religious, and it was missing from the crime scene. William Seaborn was a control freak and loved his pen. The ink from his note was from the pen, but it's missing. I don't think a maid took it. Whoever's doing this is proud of what they are doing."

  "But why hide it and then frame the third victim? Snow always did the hanging thing. It was important to him, important to the ritual.”

  It was Tapscott who spoke this time, though Fields nodded in agreement.

  "Because this is someone who admires what he did, but it's more of an homage rather than an exact copycat. One thing is for certain, whoever does this isn't planning on stopping anytime soon, and they want us to know that. Us being aware of the game is important to them."

  "So what now?" Fields again.

  Arthur clasped his hands together and rested them on the desk. "Now you two do what you do, open up both files and do the usual leg work, go over everything again. Find me something we've missed. There has to be something. I'm going to go have a chat with the boss and tell her we aren’t closing anything.”

  3:28PM

  "So you managed to recover it?"

  "Yes, I did," Stacy said.

  They had met in her dorm room, a single room for sophomores that was about the same size as Katie’s. Stacy's bed was larger than Tiffany’s or her's, and she had larger desk facing the white shade-covered windows. On one wall there was a giant poster for The Lord of The Rings and on the other a picture of a couple of ballet dancers leaping through the air. On her desk was a giant computer monitor, with various cables running down to a desktop computer that lived below the desk. The computer had a sleek black and red case with a glass window that showed the inner workings that looked more like the inside of a spaceship than a PC. Katie wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if Stacy had built it herself.

  There was a good desk chair, the kind with expensive ergonomic things with plenty of lumbar support like Arthur had back at the house office. There was also a school piece of crap chair like the one Katie had in her dorm.

  Stacy took a seat in the nice chair and indicated the other for her client.

  Katie took a seat and watched as Stacy's fingers flew over the keyboard, quickly punching in a series of keys to just access her desktop.

  Stacy glanced at Katie and shrugged. “A bit paranoid. In my line of work it comes in handy. Anyway, here's what I found."

  She opened the disk image of the thumb drive and Katie saw a dozen files pop up. One was a video file, and the rest looked like image files with one being a text document.

  Katie glanced at the taller women. "Have you looked at any of these?"

  Stacy shook her head. "I'd offer to just leave the room, but no offense I don't know you and I don't leave my computer unsupervised. The disk encryption is tight enough that I have to leave it actually in my computer to look at it too. Whoever you got it from knew what they were doing."

  "Okay, well then let's start with the document shall we?"

  Stacy nodded and double clicked the text document.

  It was a short letter, only a paragraph long, with a scanned signature.

  I agree, as a new member to the brotherhood as those who have come before me, that if I give up on this most holy of paths I will disavow all knowledge of my membership, and if do break my sacred pledge all information given here will be free to be used under any circumstance.

  Sincerely, Dan Reedman.

  Katie and Stacy looked at each other.

  "Picture time or video?" Stacy asked.

  "Pictures first."

  The pictures were all basically identical. The first half were all Dan in various inappropriate positions with about half a dozen women, all time stamped for the period of time he was in a relationship with Amelia Wood. One of the women appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties and looked vaguely familiar to Katie.

  Stacy pointed to the screen on that image. “I’m pretty sure that’s the football coach’s wife."

  Some of the photos were blurry and out of focus, but a few were sharper and were obviously taken in Dan Reedman’s bedroom.

  The video came next, and showed Dan sitting in a completely white room in a white metal chair facing what appeared to be a desk where the camera was, and he was talking over the desk at someone, whoever was holding the camera.

  "You understand that by agreeing to do this there are certain expectations. Certain … requirements.“

  Dan nodded. "I understand. But I have to do this, there is no other way."

  "I know you are reluctant, but rest assured that becoming part of this means it is all suddenly far more important than it being just about you. However of course there are personal upsides to it. For instance, an offering of goodwill from us."

  The cameraman's hand came into view, holding the small glass bottle of clear liquid. There was a white label on the vial, with a dozen numbers and five black diagonal lines of a barcode underneath it.

  Dan looked at the bottle and shook his head. "I'm no doper."

  "This
isn't dope. And it won't show up on any drug test.”

  Dan seemed unsure, but still reached out and took the bottle, pocketing it.

  The video ended.

  Stacy looked at Katie.

  "So how exactly did you come across this thumb drive?"

  Katie shrugged, uncomfortable. "I found it."

  "You found it."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Where exactly?"

  Katie paused, unsure what to say to Stacy. She was entering unknown territory, and was unsure how to proceed.

  "Can I trust you?"

  Stacy smiled at the question and shook her head. "If I said yes, does that make me more trustworthy? Usually the people that say ‘you can trust me’ are the least trustworthy. I mean, at least in my experience I’ve found that to be the case.”

  Katie laughed. "True. Well then here's a leap of faith."

  Katie told Stacy everything she could remember about the party, including the strange man and how she had found the thumb drive in the shirt coat pocket.

  Stacy listened with an almost uncomfortable focus on Katie.

  When Katie finished Stacy was silent and leaned back in her chair. "There is more going on here then it appears, that much is for certain."

  "I kinda already got that from the files."

  "But whoever murdered him wasn't looking for that thumb drive."

  Katie folded her arms across her chest. "Why do you say that?"

  "Look at the crime scene, and look at the actual crime. They were able to stab him, burn him alive and still get out scot-free, but weren't able to find a thumb drive in his fuel soaked shirt when you did in what? Ninety seconds? I doubt it. The murder was about something else, and if these pictures are any indication, there's plenty of a lot else that somebody could be pissed off at Dan Reedman bad enough to kill him over. Not to mention the backpack you saw.”

  Katie said, “I agree that the chances that this mysterious man killed him are less likely, given the context of everything."

  "Right. Which leads me to my current theory about the whole murder."

  "Which is?"

  "Whoever killed Dan was still at the party when the cops showed up."

  "Maybe his girlfriend? Amelia Wood?“

  “Didn’t your roommate tell you Amelia was in the kitchen at the time though? Other’s have said the same I believe. There's no way she magically teleported down another set of stairs that aren't there."

  Katie nodded, thinking back to that night. "You've been researching this haven't you?"

  "I'm a net rat. And who doesn’t love a good mystery?”

  “So what do you think is going on here?”

  Stacy spread her arms out. “I don’t know. I’m just guessing there's far more going on here than meets the eye. There always has been about this school. You know, whispers in the dark.”

  "Of what exactly?"

  "That's the thing, it's never just one thing. Vampires, secret cults, this place being a recruitment camp for the CIA. The usual, kooky and unbelievable. It's never the same thing and yet…"

  "Where there's smoke…"

  Stacy snapped her fingers, bouncing up in her chair excitedly, happy that Katie got it. "Exactly."

  Katie thought about it. "Well, maybe it's time for someone to poke at that smoke and see what’s causing it.”

  "Want some help?"

  27

  1:36 PM Saturday, November 17th

  Katie was bent over Tiffany's shoulder. After another paragraph, Tiffany’s fingers stopped their motion and she looked up at Katie.

  “What do you think?"

  Katie read over the last bit again and nodded.

  "That's better."

  "See, if you move the intent of your last point to the end, it just delivers a more of a one, two, punch. And the reader retains the concept better."

  Katie nodded her head. "You are in fact right. Is this what you want to do?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Write. You're clearly good at it."

  Tiffany smiled. "Yes actually, I mean it would drive my parents nuts, but English has always been my biggest draw. Of course unless I promise to get like a masters in business they would never go for it."

  "I think you should do it."

  "We're only freshman."

  Katie didn't respond right away, instead her attention was still on the page at hand.

  "Will you email that to me? I want to use that as a jumping off point."

  "Sure."

  It had been a little over two weeks since Stacy had cracked the thumb drive and so far there had been no further information gathered. The term “brotherhood” was found nowhere online in relation to the school. The screenshot of the drug was also of no help. Katie had gone so far as to use some of her father's resources to do a search of the known drugs the FDA had approved of, and a general search of barcodes on Google and had come up with nothing. Katie did a general search of barcode label designs and still nothing.

  Finals for fall term were approaching quickly and for the most part were completely consuming Katie's time. This suited her just fine, considering she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to continue her independent investigation. As far as Katie was concerned, her best real option was to give the detectives the information she had, since Dan Reedman’s proclivity for having affairs with other woman included someone who was married to his coach. It also gave several people strong motive. The catch of course was not letting the detectives know how she had received the information.

  Stacy had become extremely helpful at research, and while Katie found her tall friend to be a bit on the odd side, she was also smart and found studying with her in the library had increased her ability to work for a long period of time (not that that had been a huge problem in the past, but she could focus even longer now).

  Between those long study sessions, Katie often found her mind wandering back to the case, and as hard as she tried the actual justification for Dan’s brutal murder just didn’t add up. What she would give to have an inside look at how the police investigation was going.

  It would have bothered Katie more, but fifteen credits were still fifteen credits and schoolwork took a great deal of her time. Not to mention Katie’s extra-curricular activities of hanging out with Tiffany and Gideon and running. She had managed to avoid hanging out with Luke. Katie had found herself spending more and more time with Gideon, even if it was only a couple of times each week. To keep the spirit of things … casual, Katie had refused to stay over, though to his credit Gideon had offered multiple times.

  Katie liked him a lot, but she was by no means ready for something serious.

  She was beginning to wonder if he was though, since he did not have a problem cuddling afterwards and actually seemed to enjoy hearing about her day and just talking. It wasn’t like as soon as she arrived at his apartment he wanted to get into her pants, though of course that was naturally where things ended up ninety-five percent of the time. They also watched a lot of movies together, and mentally Katie enjoyed the break.

  3:45PM

  Detective Brooke Levitt looked at her partner Lewis Powell and tossed a baseball at his head. His head was buried in a report, but he caught the white-red blur without looking up, and tossed it to himself. He threw it up again before setting it down on his desk and flipping to the next page of his report.

  "This is bullshit," he said, finishing the report.

  Levitt put her hands up in the air, as if to indicate that was all they had to work with. Which was true. It just didn't mean that what he said wasn't true too.

  "We made the best meal we could with the ingredients we had."

  Powell closed the folder and looked up at her. "I know that, but at least you didn't have to write such a crappy report."

  Levitt raised an eyebrow. "Who has an English degree again?"

  "So mine's in psychology. I had to write enough papers as it was, I didn't see a need to do that as a major."

  "Well, when the other
cook leaves the kitchen because he’s throwing a tantrum because he doesn't have better ingredients, I make do with what I have.”

  "What's up with cooking metaphors?"

  Levitt shrugged. "I think I'm hungry. You want a taco? I'm in the mood for a taco."

  He grinned. "Oh, you know I'm always in the mood for a taco."

  She groaned and pointed to the glass jar sitting in the middle of their two desks. On a yellow sticky it read bad lines. Inside was about twenty dollars in ones. It wasn’t unusual for either detective to end a week by putting a few dollars in it, though the ratio was often in Levitt’s favor in terms of who kept the bank “green.”

  Powell stood up, and fished his wallet out of his pocket before stuffing another dollar into the jar. He grabbed his navy blue sports coat off the back of his chair and slung it over his shoulder, ready to go.

  "Still better than the purple prose in this report."

  Levitt got up and they both headed out of the bullpen towards the elevator.

  "Are you bitter because some English professor’s TA you tried to sleep with in college rejected you?"

  “Who says she rejected me?"

  Levitt rolled her eyes as she pressed the elevator button. The doors chimed and opened and she found herself staring at Katie Bell.

  Bell had her arms crossed and a folder underneath her arm.

  "Ah, Detective Levitt, just who I wanted to see."

  "Hello, Miss Bell, what brings you to the department?”

  "I may have some further information on Reedman's murder, but I need to discuss it in a more private location. Is there an interview room where we could talk?"

  "Right now?"

  Katie nodded. "There's no time like the present."

  Levitt and Powell looked at each other.

  He spoke up first. "I'll prep integration two, one's being used to interview that gangbanger."

  "Right," Levitt said turning her attention back to Katie.

  "You want some coffee? I think they just brewed a fresh pot in the break room."

  "Sure."