Chapter 18 #2
“Here we are.” My voice sounds strange to me.
I bolt out and head through the InovaSpire office, which is beautiful at night, all tastefully lit exposed brick walls and the giant photos Serena took on her travels.
We pass reception and then the break room where a row of pizza boxes is set out.
We continue on through to the main area with its huge windows and sweeping views of the starry night sky over the Silverton River Valley.
“This is my old office,” I say as we pass a corner office.
A voice. “Can I help you?”
I spin around. Varla stands in the doorway. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just showing Alexandru my old stomping ground.”
“Okayyyy.” Varla doesn’t seem to like the idea of us even looking at her door.
“Serena knows we’re coming. I just have to hop on the southeast workstation for a bit. Is everyone in conference room two?”
“Yup,” Varla says tightly. She retreats back into her office, closing the door.
“That’s one of the people who replaced me,” I mumble under my breath, leading Alexandru down the hall to the far side of the space. “Not my fan.”
“Certainly not,” Alexandru agrees.
I poke my head into conference room two. I spot Serena and Malik up at the whiteboard speaking in low tones. Some of my other former coworkers are hunched over laptops at the conference table and the couch. The huge screen at the far end shows the Sacramento team, also heads down.
“Hey, guys,” I say in a loud whisper. “Just wanted to let you know I’m on site.”
“Harriet!” Serena caps her marker and comes over to us, eyes on Alexandru. “Come on in and say hi. This must be Alexandru.”
“Yes,” I say nervously. “This is Alexandru. My new boss.”
“The man who stole the best thing that ever happened to my company,” Serena says, offering her hand for a handshake. “I hope you know how lucky you are.”
“Serena!” I exclaim, nervous about the praise and also about whatever weird thing Alexandru might say back to her. “I’ve watched you make your own luck for years.”
Alexandru shakes her hand with his usual aplomb. “The value that she has brought cannot be overstated. She sees what others cannot. She has a nearly mystical connection with the data.”
Serena smiles. “Indeed she does.”
“The prince of Kingston Manor.” Malik comes up to meet Alexandru, followed by KC, who says, “There’s nobody who can do what Harriet does. Though I’m giving it a go.”
A few other people come to be introduced. Varla strolls in with a sheaf of papers and proceeds to ignore us as she hands them out.
I glance over at the whiteboard. “Is everything under control here? Let me know if…”
“We have it well under control,” Varla says. “We got it.”
Serena gives her a strange look, as does KC.
I thank Serena for letting me pop in and we get out of there.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I’m finally in the driver’s seat at the southeast workstation. “So you met the office. I think that went well.”
Alexandru leans on one of the large wooden beams that separates the massive windows overlooking the river.
His eyes gleam in the moonlight. “It hardly went well,” he says casually.
“Serena is an excellent actress, but she does not trust me whatsoever. She is a panther in the grass, biding her time until she can take you back or, so she thinks. Varla feels extremely threatened by you—she wishes you would leave and never come back. KC is obsessed with you in a way I find I do not like. But the rest of them seemed genuine enough.”
I twist around in my chair. “You think Serena doesn’t like you?”
“She does not trust our situation. She does not understand why you are working for me.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t make sense unless you know the truth, and it’s not like we can tell her that.”
“I don’t care if you tell her,” Alexandru says.
I roll my eyes and turn back to the workstation, tapping a few buttons.
“Yeah, so Serena: I’ve taken my hereditary place as a Renfield at the side of a centuries-old vampire, and I would’ve said no to his job offer, but sadly, he’ll go on a killing spree of my neighbors and friends if I don’t manage things over there, so what’s a girl to do? ” I tap a few more buttons extra hard.
Alexandru watches me, still as a mountain. Does he even feel bad that he made me leave my awesome job?
I build my analysis methodically, scouring every nook and cranny of public and private databases, social media sites, and everything in between, looking for any kind of overlap between Dooley Brogan and Milo Cirillo.
The data begins to populate across my screens in cascading networks.
Red for Dooley. Blue for Milo. I’m looking for purple.
“You really think Varla feels threatened by me?” I ask.
“No doubt about it. I sense fear from her, along with a territorial aggression.”
I look up at him. “Aggression is a pretty strong word.”
“Yet it is precisely the correct one.”
“I feel like she’s just a little frosty.”
“More heat than frost, Renfield.”
I scribble a few ideas for my next query on a bit of scratch paper.
“And I don’t think KC is obsessed with me, FYI.
He was an intern, and then when I left, he got promoted to junior analyst. He’s smart and ambitious and he likes to show off his skills to me.
I bet you anything he’s gonna come by and tell me something to tweak. ”
“It is more than showing off. It is obsession. Pointed at you.”
“You think every man is obsessed with me. Maverick and now KC? And last week you said the UPS guy—”
“Take heed, Renfield,” Alexandru says in a warning voice.
“Well, luckily you’re here to protect me.”
The data has finished populating. There’s nothing. No intersections whatsoever.
“Two men, both killed with a crossbow. What links them?”
“Death by crossbow links them. Being in the same vicinity with Dooley Brogan links them. Why do you resist concluding it is Dooley Brogan?”
“Asked and answered. I’m gonna try to see if there is anything between Milo and Razor Johnny. Maybe they have something in common.”
“More on the crossbow case?” I look up to see KC ambling over, soda in hand. “There’s still pizza out there if you want some.”
“We ate,” I say, tapping a few buttons. “But thank you. How’s it going in there?”
“Winding down. A few integration issues on the West Coast. Are you here because of that killing downtown?”
“You know it,” I say. “Just looking at connections.”
“You know, I actually built a link analysis tool for some historical network mapping for Topco Logistics. Want to try it? Might speed things up.”
“I’m halfway in on this one,” I say. “But thanks. It sounds cool.”
I am highly aware of Alexandru focusing on KC—that odd stillness he gets when he’s cataloging someone.
KC says, “If you tell me your parameters, I could run alongside and you wouldn’t lose time over there.”
“I don’t want you to have to waste your time duplicating our efforts.”
“Fair,” KC says. “No, that’s fair. Fair fair fair.”
My results pop up slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. It’s a lot of data.
I turn to KC. “So...do people in the office talk like I’m going to come back to my old job here?”
He looks surprised. “Are you coming back to your old job here?”
“She is not,” Alexandru says in a low voice.
I snort. “For the benefits package at Alexandru’s place, I’d have to be half crazy to leave. But I was just wondering if maybe Varla thinks it.”
KC’s eyebrows shoot up practically to his hairline. “That might explain a few things.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“She’s just an odd duck.”
“In what way?” Alexandru asks.
KC furrows his brow, as if he’s struggling to formulate a way to describe Varla’s odd-duckness, or maybe how to be nice about it. One of the techs comes to bring him back to the conference room, and he mumbles his goodbyes.
“He was not happy that you rejected his way,” Alexandru observes.
“What?” I ask.
“His offer of help. He did not like that you rejected it.”
“I didn’t reject it.”
“He felt it as a rejection.”
“I’m starting to see the downside of reading everybody’s emotions. Like everybody has emotions about things!” Purple on the screen. “Look! A hit!”
The first hit is nothing—parking tickets from the same waterfront festival, thousands of people.
And then something even more interesting: a name. Jerome Goodwin.
“What is it?” Alexandru asks.
“This is odd.” I tap a few keys and pull up the details.
“Milo wrote a piece for the Great Lakes Dispatch. Look at this comment.
Alexandru leans in and reads: “‘This story was more interesting the first time, when Silverton Uncovered covered it days ago. Why not cite that journalist? Either do your own work or cite who you’re stealing from.’ This from Horatio57@.”
“Silverton Uncovered is Jerome’s Substack.”
“Jerome thought Milo stole his work.”
“Exactly. And here’s Jerome as Horatio57 commenting on a couple other stories that Milo seems to have lifted from his Substack.”
“Interesting.”
“A legit journalist would say ‘as reported in Silverton Uncovered,’ at the very least. Troubling,” I say, transferring the key findings to my tablet. “but it’s not something to kill over.”
Alexandru says, “We do not know when Milo was killed, but the body was discovered while we were speaking with Jerome. Though Jerome did seem significantly distressed when we appeared at his door.”
“Everybody’s distressed when they get a visitor out of nowhere. It’s a weird thing to do.”
“Perhaps his distress had nothing to do with unexpected visitors at the door.”
“Jerome going around killing for things like this? I just can’t see it.”
“You trust too easily, Ms. Renfield.”