Con Job (19 page)

“It’s not a very good system,” Jacob said. He wrote in the extra visemes and frowned at the paper. Blue….

“Good thing I’m the Terra Vista Ranger, and not the Ranger Vista Terra. That would be awkward.” Christopher frowned. “What happens if those initials get out and people start going crazy looking for matches? That could get ugly.”

“They’re not out,” Jacob said. “And don’t say anything about them, please. I wouldn’t even know them except I’m the one who asked the guy.”

Mickey’s expression softened. “That must have been terrible.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad. A dying statement can be admitted in court only if you ask the victim if he knows he’s dying. There’s no way for it not to be rough.”

“Ouch. Man.”

“It can be used in court even if the victim himself is no longer alive to testify?” asked Christopher.

“It’s the only time hearsay evidence can be admitted. The theory is, someone who knows he’s dying has no reason to lie.”

“But only the guy who heard it, or else it’s just hearsay again.”

“Right.”

“Weird. I’d never heard of that.” Christopher took another drink. “So who was he? The dying statement victim?”

“We haven’t heard yet,” Jacob said.

“You wrote here that he’s a Fierce Burger employee.”

“I don’t actually know that, it’s just my hunch at the moment.” Jacob thought of the conservatory photos. “Actually, do you know a Fierce Burger guy?”

“What? I mean, I eat there, but I don’t know if I know anyone who works there….” Christopher’s mouth twisted. “Well, maybe. I mean, I don’t know.”

Mickey frowned at him. “It’s not a hard question.”

Christopher turned. “It’s a hard question if a burger employee has just been murdered and you don’t want to accidentally implicate yourself.”

“Sorry, man.” Mickey held up his hands in appeasement. “Don’t get snippy about it. We’re all in this together, wanting this guy caught.”

“Anyway, yeah, I talked to a Fierce Burger guy for a while, but it’s not like we’re friends or anything.” Christopher took another drink. “Sorry. It’s just — this has been a really freaky weekend.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Mickey held out his cup for a refill.

They were silent for a while, but it wasn’t a comfortable silence. Jacob wondered how to ask what Christopher and the Fierce Burger employee had talked about without sounding suspicious.

Mickey stared at the easel and Jacob’s mind map. “Red seems kind of brutal,” he said after a while. “I mean, yeah, maybe the most important, but a bit brutal.”

“Huh?” Jacob followed his eyes to the easel.

“In the middle, the victims’ names, in red. Just kinda, you know, hurts to look at them.”

“I wasn’t thinking that hard about it. I mean, I was using different colors, but they didn’t have any particular color meaning other than different layers.”

“They should be, I don’t know, green or blue or something.”

Blue….
The feathery whisper brushed against Jacob’s mind again, like a finger tracing his skin, and he grasped after it. But Mickey was still talking, and it slipped away.

“Or maybe not green, because that’s all about life and growing and — sorry, my girlfriend’s big into color symbolism. Uses it in all her work, though I don’t think most people get what she’s thinking. Maybe it still works subconsciously, I don’t know. Don’t tell her I said that, though.” He smiled faintly. “You and Sam, are you…?”

Jacob shook his head. “Just friends.”

“Bitch,” said Christopher.

Jacob’s head jerked toward him. “What?”

“Friend-zoned,” Christopher said. “Sorry, man.”

Jacob couldn’t formulate a coherent reply. “I’m not — she didn’t friend-zone me. We’re just friends.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize — I didn’t know you were gay. Sorry.”

Jacob stared at him, and Mickey cut in. “You got a girlfriend, Christopher?”

“Used to.” Christopher took another drink from his flask.

Mickey traded glances with Jacob. Well, that explained it.

Christopher drew out his phone and began to scroll. “Looks like you’re getting a lot of photos coming in.”

“Yeah, people have been sending hundreds. A few fakes — seriously, who pranks a homicide investigation? — but mostly legit.”

“Anything useful?”

“Well, that’s hard to say. There’s a reason these things usually take a long time to investigate.”

Christopher held up his phone. “There’s a request for pictures of the Fierce Burger guy. You said that was just your theory.”

“Yeah, I tweeted that. Hope I don’t get in trouble for it. But he looks kind of like the zombie who was killed, if you try to look past all the makeup and special effects.”

“Huh. And you got photos of him in the conservatory?”

“I haven’t checked yet. Do you see anything new?” Jacob turned to the computer on the desk, wondering if Christopher would mention again his contact with the employee.

“Nothing yet. Why the conservatory?”

Christopher might be afraid of association; a lot of people did that, didn’t volunteer information because they thought it might make them a suspect. He could be feeling Jacob out to know whether it was safe to mention that he’d been there, too. Or he might not be mentioning it because he had something more significant to hide. “Um, I saw a photo of him there. In the background of another shot. I thought someone else’s photo might show more of what he was doing there.”

Christopher shrugged. “A guy can walk through a hotel public space, right?”

“Yeah, but in the photo, he was looking kind of funny at Laser — from Laser Focus Photography, you know her? And a little later she was assaulted and robbed.”

Mickey swore. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s okay. Scary, though.”

“Obviously.”

“So you think he did it?” asked Christopher.

“I don’t think anything solid yet,” Jacob said. “And I’m just a wannabe detective killing time in the middle of the night with theories.”

Christopher took another drink. “I think you’re selling yourself short,” he said. “I think you’ve got a lot more you’re working with.”

“Oh?”

“All those photos you’ve been looking at on Twitter,” Christopher said, “I’ve been looking at them, too. Everyone can see them, following the hashtag. So you already know that I was in the photo with the Fierce Burger guy.”

Jacob’s pulse quickened. “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t really clear. And I didn’t want to sound like I was saying anything about you.”

“Why not?” Christopher turned to look hard at him. “Because you were worried about my reputation?”

“Well, no, there’s no one here to talk about your reputation,” Jacob said awkwardly. “I was just being polite.”

“Just being polite,” Christopher repeated, “or you were just keeping your mouth shut because you were suspicious of me.”

Jacob held up his hands. “Calm down, man. It’s just a picture of you and a guy together. There’s probably a couple hundred pictures of people with that guy just on his Facebook page. It doesn’t mean anything on its own.”

“But you thought it meant something, or you wouldn’t have tweeted about more photos.”

“Hey,” Mickey said, “go easy, Christopher. You’re kind of over-reacting to this.”

“Shut up, Mickey.”

Mickey’s face darkened but his voice remained steady. “There’s no call to be this way. It’s been a hard weekend on everybody, but we don’t want to leave with nasty impressions of each other. People are stressed, but when we get back to—”

“Get back to what? I’ve got nothing to go back to. You’ve got a bunch of shows and games and I don’t know, commercials and whatever. I’ve got no show at all, thanks to that freakin’ bitch and her bitch sister.”

Mickey stiffened, and Jacob remembered his clandestine relationship. Jacob glanced at Mickey, but the voice actor gave a minute shake of his head, without looking at Jacob.

Christopher’s jaw clenched. “I thought for a bit that maybe now that she’s dead, maybe the rest of MEGAN!ME would pick up the show again.”

Jacob made a show of pushing the alcohol away from him. “Time to slow down, I think.”

“We all think privately of how things will change when something happens to someone and whether or not we’ll get called as a result,” Mickey said quietly. “Like I got brought in once when Rob Paulsen got strep throat. Just, most of us have the decency to keep it to ourselves.”

“Yeah, but you got called in for Rob freaking Paulsen! He’s a legend. I just need to get paid for the show I was promised.” Christopher gestured sharply. “Is that so much to ask? Just get paid for my work? But no, some tarted-up slut in a powersuit decides to cut me for a
chibi
mascot to nepotism, and I’m out of luck.”

Mickey frowned. “Are you saying Valerie dropped your show idea because she wanted to use a
chibi
?”

Jacob stopped listening, because Christopher’s rant had finally anchored the drifting, nagging thought in his head.
Blue.

Girls noticed these things, right? He pulled out his phone and texted Sam, wondering if she were still awake.
What was MEGAN!ME Valerie wearing when we saw her? Be specific if you can.

Mickey and Christopher were still arguing about the
chibi
character. Jacob rotated in his chair and opened Google on the computer. It was easy to find: Shadow’s wife Laura was buried in a blue suit, and that’s how she appeared through the book. Dead-Laura would have been wearing a blue suit.

His phone buzzed.
She was in a navy blue suit with skirt on Friday. Saturday she was in a green pantsuit. Emerald, not kelly or lime. Why is that important in the middle of the night?

Blue. Powersuit. That was the connection between the two seemingly-random poisonings; both victims had been wearing blue suits on Friday. By Saturday, when Valerie had died, the connection had vanished, but it had been there on Friday.

And there was the motivation for Tasha/Dead-Laura’s death — it had been a mistake. The murderer had intended to kill Valerie.

Jacob closed the tab and turned slowly back to Christopher and Mickey. The poison had been meant for Valerie and had gone to the wrong person, but it hadn’t gone to just any wrong person. Someone had gotten directions to put the powder into Valerie’s food, and no one had supposed there would be two women in blue suits at a con, where business dress was decidedly out of the usual.

That meant there were two murderers, or at least a murderer and an uncomprehending accomplice who had access to the victims’ food. Someone like a kitchen worker, or a fast food employee….

Oh.

He looked up to see Christopher staring hard at Mickey. “You don’t get it, man. I put a lot into that show.”

“A lot of money?” Jacob asked quietly.

Christopher looked at him. “Well, yeah.”

Something else clicked for Jacob. “Did you produce episodes already? Did you hire Rick Yoshinaga?”

Christopher’s eyebrows lowered. “Yes, I did. I did a whole season, once FunFilms gave me the go-ahead. We rented a studio, built sets, got lights, the whole works. It looks fabulous! Not that anyone’s going to see it.”

“You could release it online yourself,” Mickey said.

Christopher snorted. “It’s never going to recoup the cost that went into it. Even if it got decent ad revenues, I’m still going to have to declare bankruptcy. Rick’s in trouble too, since you already know about him. I was going to pay him out of what FunFilms and then MEGAN!ME were supposed to pay me.”

“And since Valerie shut down your show before you got paid,” Jacob said, “you needed her out of the way so you could try to get it back again.”

Christopher seemed to go still. “I just said I wondered if that would happen now, yes.”

Mickey’s mouth opened, but it was a second or so before he spoke. “Oh, no. Christopher.”

Christopher looked between them, and then he seemed to decide. “I came by after you tweeted about the conservatory photos, just to see what exactly you were looking for. The fact that you didn’t mention me in them got me worried.” He drew a box-cutter from his pocket and extended the blade. “That’s not the kind of thing you leave out unless you think you might be talking to a murderer.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jacob said. The metal chair seemed very tight against his back. The pass-through was open, and if they shouted someone down in the lobby might hear, but that wouldn’t save them. At best, someone would call police to confirm that yes, they’d been murdered in the same way the zombie had been.

Christopher couldn’t reach them both. He had to decide which of them to attack first.

“And then you were kind enough to explain that this was your suspicion and not the police line. And it’s an easy enough thing to explain away, now that Ken isn’t talking.”

“Ken is the Fierce Burger zombie,” Jacob said numbly. His phone was still in his hand, resting on the chair by his leg.

“‘Fierce Burger zombie’ isn’t a phrase you get to say very often,” Christopher mused. “But yes, you’re right.”