by Michael Omer
Lyla collapsed on the floor, sobbing. Hannah helped her up, led her away, outside.
“He came back with a friend, and I hid. I decided to wait a bit longer. The friend left. I waited a few more seconds, then I knocked on the door. He opened it almost immediately. He must have thought it was his friend, who forgot something.” Bill sighed and shook his head. “There was no talking. I did not tell him that this was for hurting my daughter. I did not wait for him to realize that he brought it upon himself. If there’s anything I regret, Detective, it’s not doing that. He should have known.” He fell silent.
“And then?” Bernard asked, prodding the man to get over the final hurdle, to confess to the murder.
“The knife was in my hand. I stabbed him. He screamed. I stabbed him more. Then I took off. I ran downstairs, got into my car and drove away. I drove to the park and threw the knife into the lake. Then I drove back home. My wife was already asleep. I tied my clothes in a garbage bag and threw them away. Then I went to bed.”
Bill and Bernard looked at each other for a few seconds.
“I would do it again,” Bill said.
“Yeah.” Bernard said.
“That man deserved to die.”
“Maybe.”
“So what now?”
“Now you come with us,” Bernard said, and reached for his handcuffs.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jacob and Mitchell entered the police department in Georgetown, Kentucky, looking around them. Whenever he visited a strange police station, Jacob was always struck by how different things were from their own station. This station’s clearly brand-new metal detector, which made an angry buzz whenever someone with metal passed through, was completely different from their own ages-old metal detector and its high-pitched beeping. The bathroom near the entrance, on the opposite side of where it should have been—different door, different sign. The reception desk, mahogany-colored, fancy-looking, but behind it one could spot a jumble of paperwork, unlike their own plain, worn, white counter, immaculately clean and orderly.
Jacob always reached the same conclusion: their station was better. Why would anyone want to work in this place, where the soft drink vending machine was clearly in the wrong place, and completely lacking in Sprite?
“Excuse me,” Mitchell said to the receptionist. “We’re here to see Detective Vern? We’re Mitchell Lonnie and Jacob Cooper from the Glenmore Park police department.”
The receptionist, a bald, busy-looking cop, asked Mitchell to wait a moment, and made a call. He repeated the information given to him, then hung up.
“He’ll be right over,” he told the detectives, and resumed staring at his monitor. Jacob thought Officer McLure, their own receptionist, would have asked them if they wanted to sit down, maybe offered them a drink of water. Their receptionist was much better, no doubt about it.
“Cooper and Lonnie, right?” A dark man in a gray suit approached them. He had a pair of large glasses that struck Jacob as hipstery, and clearly clashed with his suit. “I’m Detective Vern. I guess you had quite a long drive, huh?”
“You bet,” Jacob said, shaking Vern’s hand. “Over thirteen hours.”
“I’d have let the guy off the hook,” Vern said, grinning. “Thirteen hours! Damn.”
It had indeed been a very long drive. They’d driven late into the night, stopping at a motel around two A.M., then woken up around eight and been back in the car by nine. Mitchell had suggested they fly, but Jacob said it would be much easier if they drove in their car. He didn’t mention the fact that he was deathly afraid of flying. Why would anyone fly anywhere if he could drive there? He had managed to get hold of Detective Vern on the way, with the help of their own dispatcher, and had filled him in on the details of the case.
“When is Konner getting here?” Jacob asked Vern as they walked down a crowded corridor.
“Oh, he’s already here. Been here for the past half hour,” Vern said.
“Seriously?” Jacob felt annoyed. “I thought you’d wait.”
“Well, we knew you were about to get here, and we wanted to make sure that he didn’t disappear. Besides, I thought you’d be happy if we let him cook a bit first.”
Vern pushed open a door labeled Interrogation Room 2 and walked inside. Jacob and Mitchell followed him. Jacob quickly realized that when Vern had said they let Konner cook, he meant it very literally. The room was stiflingly hot. Konner, a young blond man with a pale face, sat next to the gray interrogation table, drinking from a cup of water. He was clearly sweating, the bright light in the room emphasizing the droplets on his brow and neck. Jacob and Mitchell sat down on the other side of the table. Vern stood behind them, folding his hands.
“Henry Konner?” Jacob said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“It’s okay,” Konner said, sounding as if it wasn’t okay at all.
“I’m Detective Jacob Cooper. This is my partner, Mitchell Lonnie, to whom you’ve talked on the phone.”
“Hi,” Konner said. “So, do you want to get my statement about Blayze? That’s what Detective Vern here said. That you need a written statement?”
“Sure,” Jacob said, “But first some questions, if you don’t mind. Just to get some of our details straight.”
“Okay.”
Jacob glanced at his notebook. “I understand that you play a character called… Brother Florentius, in Dragonworld, is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a… priest?”
“Yeah, but what has that got to do with—”
“Help me for a second, because all those terms get me confused. A priest is considered a healer in Dragonworld, right?”
“I guess…”
“Did you know that when we talked to your guildmaster about the raid your guild did the night that Dona was killed, your guildmaster told us that the healer was drunk?”
Konner stared at Jacob, confused.
“Is there another healer in your… guild?” Jacob asked.
“No.”
“Were you drunk that night?”
“Maybe. Just a bit. I don’t know.”
“In fact, we called her again last night, and she said you were completely trashed… Her words, not mine, and that it wasn’t very typical of you.”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“Okay, never mind then. Let’s talk about something different. I think congratulations are in order.”
“What?” Konner asked, clearly confused.
“Well, I understand you were accepted to Glenmore Park Community College, and will probably start there next year. I assume you’re very excited.”
Konner didn’t answer, but Jacob noticed the shift in his eyes. Fight or flight, they said, and Konner wasn’t the fight type. He wasn’t under arrest yet; he had come here voluntarily. Would he ask to leave?
Jacob pressed on. “It’s an… odd decision. I mean… I love our college, I think it’s the best in the world, but I’m from Glenmore Park. Why did you choose to study there?”
“It… it seemed nice,” Konner said, stammering a bit.
“It is nice!” Jacob smiled warmly. “I hope that my daughter will go there, but she wants to study somewhere else. Anywhere else, in her own words. So, tell me… did you go visit?”
“I don’t… what has got to do with—”
“Did you maybe visit there three days ago? To check out the swimming pool and the dormitories?”
“What are you talking about?”
“If we scan the security footage from three or four days ago, will we see your face there?” Jacob’s voice became harder.
Konner’s eyes were becoming frantic. “I don’t know what you mean…”
“What was your IP address the night that Dona Aliysa was murdered?” Mitchell suddenly asked.
“What?”
“I don’t know about those things,” Jacob said. “But my partner tells me that computers have a sort of unique identification when they go on the web. It’s called an
IP address. Apparently, you can find out where someone is according to his IP address. Is that right, Mitchell?”
“More or less,” Mitchell said.
“And do you know where that IP address is registered when you log in to Dragonworld? In Tornado’s server logs. Isn’t that useful? Now I think what my partner was asking is… If we get those logs—which I promise you we will—what will your IP address be?”
Konner got up. “I’m leaving,” he said.
Ah. Game over. Jacob sighed. “No, you’re not,” he said.
“Henry Konner,” Detective Vern said. “You are under arrest for the murder of Dona Aliysa.”
“Sit down,” Jacob said gently.
Konner sat down, shaking.
“Detective Vern, back in our own police station we have those handy forms that we call Miranda right forms,” Jacob said. “Do you have them?”
“Sure,” Vern said. “We call them Miranda slips.”
“Can you get us one, please? I would have done so myself if I knew where it was.”
“Sure,” Vern said, and left the room.
“What that form basically explains,” Jacob said, “Is your rights. It tells you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. That you have the right to an attorney, and if you can’t afford one, you will be supplied one. You must have heard it a thousand times on cop shows.”
“I don’t watch cop shows,” Konner said, his voice croaking.
“Really?” Jacob said, his eyebrows raising in surprise. “I don’t either. I thought I was the only one.”
“You have to understand—” Konner began.
Jacob raised a hand. “Konner,” he said. “No offense, but until you sign that Miranda slip, I really don’t want to talk to you about anything in particular.”
They sat in silence. Detective Vern walked back in, holding a slip of paper and a pen. He gave the form to Konner, who signed it with a shaking hand.
“I was just visiting the college, that’s all,” Konner said, pushing the form and pen over to Jacob. “I got back the very next day.”
“Of course you did,” Jacob said. “But I don’t care where you were the following day. What interests me is where you were that night.”
“In a motel.”
“Uh-huh. And at no point did you visit Dona Aliysa’s home?”
“Of course not!”
“Yes. You wiped the fingerprints very carefully, but let me ask you something: did you wipe the DNA as well?”
“What?”
“If I get a warrant for your DNA,” Jacob said. “Will it match samples taken in her home? Taken from the body?”
“You don’t need a warrant,” Detective Vern said gruffly. “You have the cup with his DNA on the table.”
Jacob turned his head and smiled thinly. He was very much aware what the point of the hot interrogation room and the cup of water was. But it was a low technique, and he knew there was no need for it. “Oh, I’m sure we can get a warrant,” he said. “We have very compelling evidence.”
Detective Vern narrowed his eyes and said nothing. Jacob turned back to Konner, and folded his hands.
“You know what tipped us off?” he said. “The list you gave us, of the memorabilia. It was very clearly a list that someone made after being in Dona’s room, without searching in her dresser and closet.”
Konner stared at Jacob, tears in his eyes. “It was an accident,” he said.
Jacob nodded.
“We were in love. She knew that. And I was moving to live next to her. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“And then you found out she had a boyfriend?”
“He wasn’t a boyfriend!” Konner shouted. “He was just some random guy! He didn’t understand her the way that I did! What could that… that… criminal know about Dona?”
Jacob refrained from mentioning that Konner was now a criminal himself.
“When I told her I was moving to Glenmore Park, she started saying that we were just good friends. Just good friends. That she was in love with someone else. And then we argued a bit. I said some things… things I shouldn’t have said, and she walked over to the door. She wanted me to leave.”
Konner became silent. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffled. Jacob waited. Detective Vern cleared his throat, clearly impatient, but Jacob ignored him. Every detective had his own ways. Jacob was a sound believer in long silences.
“I don’t know what happened then,” Konner said. “I guess I was on top of her. I… and then suddenly I was sitting by her body, and she was dead.”
Jacob nodded.
“I wiped everything. Everything! I think I was there for a whole hour, just wiping. Then I got back to the motel. And… and the following day I called the police. I pre-recorded a message about Dona, and I played it to the woman on the other end of the line.”
“Why?” Jacob asked.
Konner shrugged. “I didn’t want her to just lie there.”
“After you killed her,” Jacob asked, curious, “why did you log into Dragonworld to play?”
“Well, I thought if I just joined the raid as if nothing happened, it would give me a good alibi.”
“But you got drunk,” Jacob said.
“I never got drunk,” Konner said. “I was just devastated. I didn’t really know what was the point. What was even the point of playing Dragonworld anymore? What was the point of playing it without Willow?”
“Well,” Jacob said, “her name was Dona, but I think I know what you mean.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was late in the evening of the following day when Detective Mitchell Lonnie finally sat down to write the report of the arrest of Henry Konner. There had been some complications, of the type that made Mitchell believe humanity had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the past. It had been understood that Henry Konner had to be extradited, so he could be charged for Dona Aliysa’s murder back in Glenmore Park. This required the district attorney to formally charge Henry Konner with murder. Fine, that was the easy part.
The difficult part was to schedule a rushed extradition hearing. No judge was available. Mitchell and Jacob had tried to explain to various secretaries, clerks, lawyers, and cops that they lived Really Far Away, and it was a long drive, and no, they wouldn’t be able to do it again in a week’s time. Someone had suggested they stay for the week. Things had started to get ugly.
Finally, Detective Vern had called his brother-in-law, who had a friend who played Settlers of Catan—whatever that was—with a judge every Friday. The judge had agreed to do the extradition hearing. The hearing had been incredibly fast, and the detectives could finally be on their way back. Except it was evening. Once again, they had driven late into the night, slept in a motel, and got back to Glenmore Park only late in the morning.
All they had to do was write up the report. Mitchell had told Jacob he could go home to his wife, volunteering to do the report himself. Jacob didn’t need to be told twice, and disappeared instantaneously, leaving an imaginary cloud of smoke in his wake.
Writing the report, of course, was no big deal. Mitchell had been writing truckloads of reports for the past nine years. Submitting it to the Glenmore Park’s police new and improved report management application was where things went awry. Apparently, the fact that the suspect was arrested in a different city was problematic. Mitchell stared at the error message, Err-87 City Name Malformed Please Insert, feeling tired and frustrated. He usually had no problem with the system, but the long drive seemed to have impaired his technical skills, and he could not fathom what the idiotic program was asking for.
A very angry female voice approached the squad room. Mitchell turned around, only to see Hannah storm in, yelling into her phone. Mitchell was always amused by the fact that while other people became red with rage, Hannah’s face became a cute pink.
“No, I will not hold!” she barked into the phone. “You tell me right now why
the hell this happened!”
The unfortunate person on the other end of the call said something, to which Hannah replied, “But that’s not his name, you idiot! His name is Mikey!” She blinked, then turned to Mitchell, confusion in her eyes. “He hung up,” she said.
“How very strange,” Mitchell said.
“They released my suspect,” Hannah said.
“Who? Frank’s murderer?”
“No, not him. Mikey.”
“Who’s Mikey?”
“The drug dealer I caught a few days ago. I caught him red-handed with fourteen rocks of crack. Damn it!” Hannah kicked a chair, and Mitchell watched it roll on its wheels across the room. Sometimes chairs with legs instead of wheels were better. You kicked a chair with legs, it fell down. Way more satisfying.
“Why did they release him?” he asked.
“There was something wrong with the paperwork. The Sheriff’s department got it into their heads that his name is Devin Derkins.”
“I know Devin Derkins,” Mitchell said. “He’s a drug dealer in Wellington Square. A real pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, I know that, Mitchell.”
“Why did the Sheriff think that it was Devin Derkins?”
“Because I told… Look, forget it, okay? They’re a bunch of morons, and my suspect was just released because his lawyer said we can’t hold him.”
“That sucks,” Mitchell said. He looked at the monitor. The hell with it. He inserted Glenmore Park in the city text-box and submitted. A satisfyingly green message informed Mitchell his report had been stored. Victory.
Hannah sat down in front of her computer, muttering. Mitchell rolled his chair next to hers. Sometimes chairs with wheels were much better.
“Congratulations on catching Frank’s killer,” he told Hannah.
“Yeah,” Hannah said, looking at him. “It’s one of those cases where I almost wish I didn’t, you know?”
“I know.”
“We found this revenge porn site, where people post nude photos and videos of their exes. We reported it to the Cyber Crime Division… They said they’d take care of it. But it’s still online.”
