Con Job (17 page)

Jacob picked up an energy drink, turning the can to occupy his hands, and tried to seriously consider it. “She… She would own it. Use it to point out how far she’s come, and how it can help her relate to them. We’ve all got stuff we need to get past, and she’s gotten past hers, and let her help you past yours.” He paused. “I hadn’t thought about it, but yeah, that’s what she’d do. Own it.”

“Hm.” Daniel nodded once. “Smart lady, your aunt.”

Jacob didn’t answer.

A moment passed, and then Daniel stood. “Okay, let’s get back to Ops and see what else is on fire now. And oh, how I hope that’s not literal.”

Daniel’s encouragement made Jacob feel a little better, until they reached the lobby and he saw a hotel screen and the rotating
Happy Birthday Little Jakey Tarston
message.

His steps slowed, and Daniel gave him an understanding look. “I’ll go ask the front desk to take it down,” he said.

Jacob nodded, and the officer walked away.

This was it. Everything he’d tried to leave behind, to bury, had come to threaten what he had and nearly had. If Daniel was right, if there was some chance he could survive this thing, he could afford no misstep at this moment. Stay focused, move forward, ride it out.

Someone who wanted to get into police work for the right reasons, who wouldn’t endanger or embarrass the department? That façade of normality was pretty much blown out of the water now. He wanted to do the work — but now he would have to prove he was capable.

And he had a chance to do so right now. He was in the center of a multiple-homicide investigation which had stymied the force thus far. If he found the killer now, they would have to recognize his potential. No, not potential, not after that — his skill.

He’d worked toward this for years, taken specialized classes and trained physically all with the goal of entering the Academy and eventually making Detective. He wasn’t going to lose that, wasn’t going to let it be taken from him by a single cruel prank at a gathering of what was supposed to be like-minded enthusiasts and friends.

“It’s gone,” Daniel said, returning. “I’m going to bed. Again. You going to be okay?”

Jacob nodded. “Nothing rash, I promise.”

“Good. Hang in there, give me an update tomorrow morning.” Daniel headed for the elevators.

Jacob took the folded sheet with his mind map from his pocket and spread it flat. He had notes, he had local insight. One of Jessica’s classic mystery sleuths would have said he had everything he needed to uncover the killer. Now he just had to do it.

And it would be a helluva lot easier on his mind than thinking of everyone staring up at the
Cougars and Cold Ones
screen.

He threw himself into a chair and stared at the mind map. The scarcity of lines connecting events and facts mocked him. He knew nothing.

A man in hotel livery was fumbling with the pass-through’s security grate; the staff was tired, too. Jacob saw Paul leaving the Con Ops room. “Are we locking up?”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “Vince wanted someone here all night, but I’m done. It’s been a long and crazy day, as if you didn’t know, and I’m toast.”

Jacob nodded. “I hear ya.” He glanced at the energy drink in his hand and then held it up. “I’m not going to bed anytime soon. You want me to cover the graveyard shift?”

“Would you?” Paul looked grateful. “I can’t imagine there would be much, just if the overnight panels or viewing rooms had a problem. Anything major, drunks at the dance or something, you can call hotel security. Thanks, thanks a lot. I know you’ve gone way beyond the call of duty this weekend.”

“Not a problem.” Jacob gave him a little salute. “I’m not exactly in a sleeping mood.” And staying overnight would let him browse the computer and the submitted photos.

The hotel employee put the grate back up. “If you decide to close up,” he said, “have the front desk call maintenance, and they’ll get someone here with a key.”

“Got it.” Jacob settled himself again into the chair and took a drink. It had been a long day, but maybe the caffeine would kick his brain into a higher gear. Surely there would be a clue in the photos, something to suggest the killer or even just the motive.

He turned to the computer and alt-tabbed to the Twitter feed. Time to scan.

Several hundred con-goers had tweeted pictures of the conservatory and lobby, and Jacob downloaded each of the hashtagged photos into a folder. The police would be gathering the photos submitted through Flickr, and those probably wouldn’t be shared, but he could browse the Twitter photos with the #ConJobPhotoReq hashtag.

For any clues. He felt like such an idiot, working outside the official investigation and not even as a proper investigator. Despite the pink- and green-clad costumed characters with their plush Great Dane in the hall, meddling kids didn’t solve real crimes while the police bumbled through comedy. But Jacob’s secret was out, and he was never going to be a proper investigator in an official investigation if he didn’t somehow prove that he was capable despite his humiliating background.

There were hundreds of pictures of group photoshoots in the conservatory, often a dozen or more of nearly the identical shot.
Star Trek, My Little Ponies, Naruto, Doctor Who,
Batman and assorted villains and colleagues,
Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Avengers
and friends….

Jacob sighed. The photos were mostly obligatory line-ups, group hugs, mock battles, shipping of paired characters or the occasional threesome, and other pictures which seemed to have nothing at all to do with any of the three murders. This was a waste of time and computer memory.

Others had tweeted photos they’d taken of individual cosplayers or small groups. Here was a complete crew of the
Serenity
, here were just Wash and Zoë with their arms comfortably about one another, and then another picture of Wash crouching wide-eyed behind Zoë as she brandished an enormous gun. Here was a picture of Darth Vader force-choking a Mandalorian. Here was Pyramid Head threatening a Nurse. Here was one of Sailor Moon with Sailors Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, with Sailor Pluto off a few steps sobbing into her hands. Jacob smiled at that one.

There were photos of the zombie apocalypse now, too, even though no request had actually gone out yet. It was good to know that people wanted to be helpful, but it meant several hundred more photos to sort through, most of which didn’t include the zombie victim. Jacob decided to skip them for the moment and concentrate on what Laser might have inadvertently captured in the conservatory.

He found more photos of
Supernatural
and
Once Upon A Time
characters, Sherlock, John Watson, and Mycroft all facing down a defiant Moriarty, a large gold ballgown resembling a Dalek and a large blue one clearly meant to represent the TARDIS. And then there was a photo of the CLUTCH cosplayer, all white and flowing silks, before her grey-green encounter with the Mole. She was kneeling, one arm outstretched to display the embroidery. The photo’s edge showed a shoulder and arm which probably belonged to Laser, so the photo had been shot alongside her as she was working. It was a different angle than Laser’s, as she would not have set up a shot to include the service door which broke up the beautiful conservatory background, even half-hidden behind a potted topiary.

The user had tweeted several photos, taken in sequence, of the gorgeous costume. The second showed the service door half open, with a figure coming through. The figure’s face and torso were shielded by the door. More of Laser was visible in this photo as well, looking down at the settings on her camera.

The third photo was blurred, and Jacob couldn’t see much more than Laser holding her camera with one hand and pointing across the frame, probably at someone holding an off-camera flash. Jacob had seen enough of her shoots, some of Sam, to imagine that she was calling instructions to change the angle of the flash or adjust the speed.

The fourth photo showed Laser slightly out of focus, still calling instructions to her flash assistant. The cosplayer was also out of focus, not selected by the camera’s auto-focus. The service door was more fully open, showing a second man entering behind the first, not really visible. The second was in some sort of
sentai
costume. The first could now be seen more clearly, dressed in the red and orange uniform of the Fierce Burger franchise. He was in front of the door, captured mid-stride past the topiary, and he was looking straight at Laser.

Jacob stopped and looked at the photo, just staring. It meant nothing, really. Anyone might have stopped to look at the photographer crouching in the middle of the floor and calling instructions. The fact that a fast food worker was curious about the photographer meant nothing.

Why was a fast food worker coming out of the service corridor? The conservatory didn’t link to the food court, where the Fierce Burger counter was. Again, it meant nothing on its own, but he was curious.

Jacob looked at the second man, but the door obscured too much. It might have been the Terra Vista Ranger, but there was no shortage of
sentai
sources, and even if it were it could have been either Christopher Adams or someone doing a version in homage of the Big Name Fan, which happened occasionally.

He moused down to the zoom selection and blew up the picture, but it didn’t help much. The first man was clearly looking right at Laser, pixelated eyes right on her.

Jacob made a note of the file name. The police would see them all eventually, but it would be good to point this one out first. Laser hadn’t been a murder victim, but it would be good to find her assailant as well.

He moved back to the filtered tweets with hashtags and found the next photo. And he realized his efforts on the previous one had been superfluous, because this was the photo they needed.

The photo was another of the CLUTCH cosplayer, who filled most of the frame. But the inexpert photographer had caught Laser at the side of the photo, still looking at her off-camera assistant. Her camera was pointing off as she gestured elsewhere, and Jacob knew from watching Sam’s shoots that she was firing disposable photos as she tested the flashes. The camera was angled toward the service door, and while Laser wasn’t even looking in that direction, it was likely she had captured a couple of photos of it.

At the door, the Fierce Burger employee had turned back in apparent protest. The second man’s eyes were fixed on Laser, dark and hard. And his face, caught in the camera’s auto-focus, was sharp enough to identify as Christopher Adams.

It probably meant nothing. It certainly proved nothing. Laser, and at least one other con attendee, had photographed Christopher Adams in the background during the photoshoot of Achenar from
Crooked Running Water
by CLUTCH, the Heavenly Wedding arc, artbook version.

There were a hundred reasons why Christopher might be looking directly at Laser, ranging from the fact that she was crouching on the open floor and making noise to the fact that she was calling instructions to the fact that she was a pretty girl who might draw a man’s eyes. None of that suggested any acts of violence.

There were probably perfectly good reasons why Christopher might be emerging from a service corridor as well. Laser herself had said that she liked to shoot some costumes in such places for the claustrophobic atmosphere. And Christopher was wearing his trademark Terra Vista Ranger costume, so he might have been working with another photographer. Jacob could ask him. It seemed unlikely, anyway, that he would have been doing a photoshoot with the Fierce Burger employee.

Maybe the Fierce Burger guy wasn’t really a Fierce Burger employee, or at least wasn’t from the conference food court. Jacob might have missed an advertising campaign which had become a sort of meme or gained an underground following. Stranger things had happened, and Jacob had seen cosplayers of insurance spokespeople, fast food mascots, and even retail products themselves.

The Fierce Burger guy didn’t seem to be simply holding the door for Christopher but was looking directly at him. Jacob squinted. Was he gesturing at Laser? It was hard to say. But he had been looking at her in the previous photo, so perhaps he was.

Jacob enlarged each of the photos, scrolling and adjusting the frames so that he could look at just the two men, both photos displayed side by side. Christopher looked serious, far more intense than a shortcut through a service corridor should warrant. And the Fierce Burger worker also looked serious and a bit alarmed.

Jacob studied the first photo, in which the fast food worker faced the camera. The employee in the red and orange shirt looked vaguely familiar, though Jacob couldn’t place him. He hadn’t eaten at the Fierce Burger, so perhaps that meant he was a cosplayer?

The police would determine if the photos were further reason to interview Christopher again. Jacob made a note of the filename and saved the second picture as well.

The man in the Fierce Burger shirt…. His face nagged at Jacob. Surely there was something significant about him. Was he another BNF?

After a moment, Jacob alt-tabbed back to the Twitter window. He considered a moment, and then typed and edited to fit the character limit.
Does anyone have photos of the Fierce Burger guy in conservatory? Behind Achenar. (This is not an official police request.) #ConJobPhotoReq

The parenthetical disclaimer should keep him out of trouble, and should keep the fast food worker out of trouble too by emphasizing that he wasn’t a police suspect. Jacob wasn’t wholly sure of the legal niceties, but he hoped that was enough to protect anyone. But maybe another photo or two would jog his Fierce Burger memory.

He leaned back and stretched, and then he rubbed his eyes. They burned, dry with indoor air and stress. It had been a long, long day, and he should feel sleepy — but it was difficult to feel sleepy after the mortally-wounded zombie had slumped in his arms.

Music started playing in the lobby down the corridor, a theme from a classic video game Jacob couldn’t quite remember. The Spork Minstrels were playing another set. Jacob closed his eyes and listened through the end of the song, when a scattering of applause indicated the remaining group of con attendees still in the lobby area.

You can do this, Jacob. You have knowledge-local
. Lydia’s words echoed through his mind. Jacob wasn’t so sure. If witnesses had reported a figure in red and blue Spandex fleeing from a falling corpse, he could use his comics knowledge and con savvy to narrow down the list of possible characters and then what groups might contain such a cosplayer. But this was beyond his con attendee abilities. This was a police investigation, not a geek endeavor.

He propped his face in his hands, letting his fingers cool his aching eyes. He thought of Jessica, rolling her eyes and breathing out irate indignation over inane rants about fake geek girls. Jacob wondered if he might now qualify as something like that himself:
Fake geek sleuth. Fake Academy potential.

“Don’t crash yet, man. Sunday’s not over.”

Jacob withdrew his hands and looked at Sergio, leaning over the pass-through. “Can you give me a nudge when it’s safe to wake up?”

“Hang in there. Drink some Red Bull or Monster.”

Jacob shook his head. “What do you want?”

Sergio came in the door. “First of all, I found these, and they seem like the kind of thing someone would want back.” He set two off-camera flashes on the table.

“Oh, wow,” Jacob said. “Yeah, everyone’s been looking for those. Where were they?”

“Men’s restroom, the back one way behind Main that no one uses. They were in the trash can under some paper towels, but it’s a short can and they showed a little bit.”

“Thanks. Definitely wanted these. They’re probably Laser’s.” He folded them into a spare Con Aid t-shirt and tucked them into a bin. Sergio had probably unknowingly compromised the fingerprints, but there still might be some recoverable evidence.

“No kidding? Somebody stole Laser’s flashes?”

“Somebody assaulted her and stole some equipment.”

“Laser got hurt?”

“She’s okay, just got banged up a little. But yeah, someone knocked her down and stole her gear bag. That’s why we were asking for pictures, wondering if maybe somebody was afraid of a photo she took.”

Sergio whistled. “Poor Laser. So it wasn’t just theft?”

“It could have been, if the thief’s stupid. Which is always possible. But it looked like he’d taken the camera and SD cards and some cheaper stuff, left some of the really expensive gear he could have resold. And now it looks like he ditched the flashes. So that implies some other purpose than resale — or, as we said, a stupid criminal.”

“I guess if he had brains or marketable skills, he wouldn’t be a criminal.” Sergio shrugged. “Well, maybe. Maybe he just got unlucky.” He hesitated. “Hey, about my money… I remember what you said about never ever spend what you don’t have, and you sounded pretty serious about that. And you said I should talk to my credit card company before it’s due, maybe work something out, and I thought maybe were you talking from experience, and I thought maybe you could tell me what kind of thing I could work out?”

Jacob stared at him. “Seriously? It’s, what, two am, and you’re asking me about negotiating your credit card debt?”

Sergio looked surprised. “You’re up anyway.”

Jacob sighed. “I wasn’t talking from that kind of experience, at least not like you’re thinking. But you should talk to them, yeah. They’d rather negotiate with you and get something than have you default and get nothing, and bill collectors are not as profitable as you just paying. It won’t be easy for you, and it probably won’t look great on your record, but it’ll look better than having some crazy debt hanging over your head forever.”

“So I can work something out? Pay it off a little at a time, at a reasonable interest?”

“I don’t know about reasonable, but it’ll probably be better than what you’ll pay on the card agreement. Or maybe you can borrow somewhere at a lower rate to pay off the card. Point is, do something in advance, or you’re going to hurt when that bill comes and interest starts stacking up.”

“Okay. I’ll call them on Monday.”

Jacob yawned. “See, not urgent. Could have waited.”

“What? I had to drop off the flashes. And I wasn’t going to sleep. Rough weekend, finding out Rick got burned and I’m getting stiffed.”

“It’s been a rough weekend for everybody. A lot of the con attendees are getting off pretty easy, nothing but the chaos about the food, but the hotel staff is getting pounded, the con staff are of course going crazy, and the police can’t take a break without another body showing up. Even the food court staff got burned, getting shut down for the weekend. That’s a lot of work they don’t have.”

“Yeah, I feel bad for the food court people. Bet the employees were expecting a lot of hours this weekend.”

Sergio would be feeling particularly sensitive to the plight of expecting money which wasn’t coming, after all. “Yeah, I don’t know what company policy would be on that. Not sure if the handbook has something on service suspended because of suspected poisonings.”

“Some of ‘em might have been okay with it, though. I knew some were waiting to get off so they could do the con, too, and I guess this just gave them more con time.”

“I guess statistically some of them would have to be fans.”

“Yeah. A burger guy yesterday was going to do the zombie crawl, was all excited about it. They had to make up fresh fries, and while I was waiting he told me all about his costume and the special makeup he had planned and everything.”

Something shifted sickeningly in Jacob’s mind. “Burger guy? Where?” He hoped his voice sounded casual.

“Oh, um, Fierce Burger. Yeah. I ate there last night. The fries are really good, worth waiting for even though they’re always running out.”

Jacob’s thoughts froze up for a moment. Was the Fierce Burger employee familiar because Jacob had met him at the zombie crawl? Was the memory unclear because his face had been obscured beneath the prosthetics and makeup? Jacob had a shiver of guilt that he couldn’t be certain of the young man who had practically died in his arms.

And if it were the murdered zombie, then that added another layer of suspicion to the picture of Laser’s photoshoot. He had been looking hard at Laser, and someone had attacked her.

“Do you think you could recognize the guy?” he asked.

Sergio looked at him. “Huh? I dunno, why?”

Jacob opened the photos and selected just the Fierce Burger employee’s face, cutting out the rest of the photo. “This. Can you tell me if it’s him?”

Sergio leaned toward the computer. “Maybe. I don’t know, I was just getting dinner, not really paying attention to people. But — yeah, I think it’s him. He had that big zit on the side of his nose, you can sort of see it there. Kind of nasty in a food service job, but what can you do?”

“So that’s him?”

“I think so.”

What if some vigilante type had learned it was the Fierce Burger zombie who had assaulted Laser, and so he had killed him in return? Laser was popular, she had a lot of fans. But no, vigilantism didn’t seem right, not when police were already on the scene and clearly taking the incident seriously — and investigating other deaths, making vigilante action even riskier than usual. Perhaps the murderer had hired the Fierce Burger zombie to rob Laser, so he could get the unknown evidence while establishing an alibi himself elsewhere.

Sergio was still looking at him expectantly. “Why? Is he the con killer?”

Jacob stared at him. “Does he have a nickname now?”

“It’s an easy phrase, nice and alliterative. Con killer. There’s a few tweets going around with that hashtag, offering girls escort services to their rooms, with both noble and prurient motivations.”

Jacob shook his head. “Oh, Jessica will have something to say about that, that’s for sure.”

“So, do you think it’s him?”

“What? No. No, I don’t.”

“But you wanted to know about him.”

“Because I have a picture of a Fierce Burger guy at a conservatory photoshoot, which seemed kind of weird. But that’s not any kind of illegal, or threatening, or anything else, and it makes perfectly decent sense if he’s a fan.” Jacob wrinkled his face. “If you thought his zit was nasty, you should just be glad he wasn’t in decomposing zombie makeup or anything while he was working.”

“Now that is disgusting.”

“Yeah, it is.” Jacob withdrew his phone and wrote a text to Daniel.
Hey, I know you’re asleep right now, but when you get this, can you check and see if the zombie victim was a Fierce Burger employee?

Sergio was still looking at him oddly, and Jacob thought he was probably still wondering about Jacob’s suspicion. “No, I really don’t think he’s a suspect. Actually, if you can keep it quiet, I think he might have been someone who got hurt. I don’t know that they have an ID on the guy who was killed last night.”

“Oh, the guy who had his throat cut at the zombie crawl?” Sergio’s mouth twisted. “That had to be rough, man. I wasn’t there, but from what I heard…. It’d be like some sort of nightmare, trying to get someone to help and everyone’s just laughing at your zany zombie antics. That’s true horror, man.”

“No argument there.” Jacob’s voice was sober. “We were even getting a little angry that he was leaving blood smears. It was Sam who realized it was real blood. I wish… I wish there was some way to apologize.”

“Who do you think killed him? Same guy who killed the other two?”

“I don’t know. That’s a pretty big jump in method, from poison to slashing a throat, and especially with the victim out and visible in a crowd. That’s not vanilla murder, that’s psycho look-at-me stuff.”

“I guess you learn that stuff in cop class.”