Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖

CHLOE watched Paul drive off on her scooter for La Concha. He

drove it so much slower than she did. After he turned the corner, she dialed Bee, who picked up before the phone had a chance to ring.

“What’s going on?” asked Bee, anxious.

“Lots and lots,” said Chloe. “I need you to meet me at the place.”

“The place?” she asked. “You mean where you and Paul…”

“Yeah,” said Chloe. “And I need you to bring a forensics kit.”

There was a moment’s pause. “You need what now?”

“A forensics kit.”

“Like on ‘CSI’?”

“Yeah,” said Chloe.

“I don’t have a forensics kit.”

“Sure you do,” said Chloe. “You just haven’t put it together yet.”

Another pause. Chloe knew Bee was running through her mental catalog of all the gear and gadgets in the house. “I can do a fingerprint powder I think. Some graphite. Tweezers, plastic bags, magnifying glass, a black light…”

“What’s the black light for?” asked Chloe.

“I dunno. Don’t they always use a black light for finding fluids and stuff? And those special orange glasses.”

“Do you have special orange glasses?”

“No…” Bee admitted. “Ok, no black light.”

“Bring the good camera.”

“Video or still?”

“Both I guess. Still for sure. And anything else you might find useful.”

“Ok, ok…” She heard Bee typing in the background, making her list and no doubt checking it twice. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Hah! You’re kidding. I need you now,” said Chloe.

“Ten minutes then?” said Bee.

“Are you pulling a Scotty on me again?” Chloe asked.

“Moi? Never.”

“Ok,” said Chloe. “I need to pick up a bottle of whiskey, and I’ll see you there.”

CHLOE waited on the same street corner near where she’d found Paul a couple hours earlier. She called and gave San an update on what was going on. Sandee wanted to continue with party prep, and after a moment’s consideration, Chloe agreed. They might well need the party later, and San was the queen of organizing good times in Key West. More importantly, they needed the revenue.

She saw Bee come ambling up the street, a backpack slung over one shoulder and her ubiquitous laptop tucked under one arm. Chloe was momentarily surprised that she hadn’t driven and then realized that the guest house was indeed uncomfortably close to her own home. Fuck, this is a small town, she thought for the million-and-first time since she’d moved here last year.

Bee saw Chloe and hurried her pace, bouncing along the sidewalk as she trotted up to the corner. “Sorry I took so long,” said Bee. “But I couldn’t find the graphite powder for fingerprints.”

“No worries, hon,” said Chloe. She took the bottle of Jim Beam from its brown paper bag and unscrewed the top.

“Why’re we drinking?” asked Bee.

“We’re not,” said Chloe, even as she took a gulp from the bottle and sloshed the fiery liquid around in her mouth. She spat it out into the bushes and then poured half the bottle’s contents after it. “We’re having a party.”

“Gotcha,” said Bee, drawing in a deep breath and then another before taking the bottle from Chloe’s hand. She took a sip and sloshed it around in her mouth for a second before spitting it out with a grimace. “Yuck!”

Chloe reclaimed the bottle and then took Bee by the arm. “Come on honey, pretend like you’re having a good time, ok?”

“Ok!” said Bee, giving a fake, schoolgirlish giggle.

Arm in arm they staggered up the stairs of the guest house and through the door. The Frenchwoman was still behind the desk, still working on a crossword puzzle. She looked at them in mild astonishment, but smiled. Chloe figured that she’d already made her for a bit of a tramp when she checked in with Paul earlier. The whiskey and the way she held Bee close against her would help reinforce that idea in the woman’s mind and force out any other suspicions she might have.

“Hello again,” the woman said.

“Heya,” said Chloe with a wink and a leering smile. Bee giggled again, too loudly and, to Chloe’s ears, too fake but she didn’t think the receptionist would notice or care.

They walked right past the front desk without breaking stride and into the back of the building, heading for the stairs. Once they were out of sight from the lobby, Chloe motioned for Bee to stay still and quiet while she marched up the stairs, making enough noise that she was sure the Frenchwoman could hear her. Then she crept back down and led Bee back to Raquel’s room.

INSIDE, the room was just as she and Paul had left it. Chloe had only gone in far enough to check Raquel’s pulse and feel the cold, clammy skin. She’d known then and there that it was a murder scene, and that she was in no way prepared to investigate it. More importantly, she hadn’t wanted to leave any evidence that might connect her or Paul to the crime scene, so they’d left as quickly as they’d come in. Now, snapping on a pair of latex gloves that Bee had brought, she had no more excuses. It was time to investigate.

Unfortunately, she had absolutely no idea how to investigate a crime scene. She didn’t even like cop shows, and the few movies and books she’d read on the subject all glossed over the boring details of looking for clues. Sadly, no montage of thoughtful scenes and dramatic music was going to save her tonight. Hoping that Bee might have a better idea on how to proceed, she turned to her friend for support.

Bee stood by the door, stiff and scared as she stared directly at Raquel’s corpse. Chloe had last seen that look on her face in a squalid little motel room in San Jose, and there had been a body there, too. She knew that Bee remained obsessed and on some deep level very disturbed by what had happened that night. Maybe bringing her to another murder scene hadn’t been the best plan Chloe ever had, but there was no one else.

“Are you ok?” she asked Bee.

The small woman clutched her laptop to her chest and nodded. “Yeah. It’s just so like…”

“I know, I know,” said Chloe, coming over and giving Bee a hug. “But it’s not the same. It’s not. We didn’t have anything to do with this. But now we have to find out what happened to her.”

“Got it,” said Bee, resolve returning to her voice. “Sure thing. Not a problem.”

“Good,” said Chloe, “Because I have not one fucking clue as to what we should do next.”

Bee stared around the dim room and then un-shouldered her backpack and placed it on the floor at her feet. She pulled out a flashlight and slowly, not moving from her spot by the door, started to scan every inch of the room. Chloe noticed that heavy curtains had been closed across the room’s sole window and decided to take a chance. They didn’t have that much time. She flipped the light switch.

Bee jumped as the room lit up. “Hey!” she said in an angry whisper.

“Sorry,” said Chloe.

“Ok, ok. But don’t do anything else yet. I want to preserve the scene.” She put the flashlight away and pulled out a small but very expensive digital video camera. Chloe watched as Bee walked from one side of the room to the other, panning slowly in every direction. She noticed that Bee avoided filming Raquel’s corpse until there was no more ignoring her.

Raquel lay face down on the bed, her head turned away from the door. Although it had been hard to see in the dim room when Chloe first found her, with the lights on it was easy to discern that there was in fact clotted blood in her hair on the back of her head. None on the bed itself, though. Chloe moved around to the other side of the bed, where Bee was squinting in discomfort as she videotaped Raquel’s face. It was a mass of bruising, with two black eyes and a badly bruised cheek. Her dead eyes stared back at the camera.

“Watch out there,” said Bee as Chloe approached the body. “There’s some powder or sand on the floor here.”

Chloe looked down and saw a scattering of white sand on the rug. She bent down and touched it with her finger. “Beach sand,” she told Bee.

Bee just nodded as she panned up and down the dead body. Raquel wore stylish red shorts and a tight black tube top. She didn’t have any shoes on. Chloe scanned the room, looking for signs of footwear that she might’ve worn to the beach. She saw a suitcase propped up against the bathroom door, but a quick check revealed a small padlock. Chloe estimated that she could pick it in under a minute, but she’d come back to that.

“Do you mind if I check inside the dresser?” she asked Bee, who had just finished videotaping Raquel and was now headed for the bathroom.

“Just be careful with prints,” she said without looking up from her camera’s display.

Chloe gingerly opened the armoire cabinet, revealing a TV that looked untouched. The drawers below were also empty. She hadn’t even had time to unpack, and there were no shoes, sandals or footwear of any kind in sight. And there was no closet. She bent down low and peered under the bed. “Any shoes in there?” she asked Bee.

“Uh-uh,” Bee replied as she walked back into the bedroom, closing the camera’s display. “Nothing in here at all.”

“She didn’t even unpack,” mused Chloe.

“Or the killer took her stuff,” said Bee.

“Why take her shoes though?”

“Some weird foot fetish thing?”

“Maybe,” said Chloe, although she didn’t think this was about sex. Raquel was a good-looking woman, and if the murderer had a thing for her, she doubted he’d have left her clothes on like that after he went to the trouble of beating her to death.

Chloe went back to the body and looked at Raquel again. Her knuckles on both hands were bruised, and there were scratches on her arms. “She fought back, whoever it was.” She bent forward for a closer look at the hands. She didn’t quite have the nerve to touch them yet. She smelled something then. Not rotting yet, but salt water. She touched the sheets around the body but couldn’t feel anything through the latex gloves. She pulled off one glove and touched the sheets. Damp. But only around the lower half of the body. Check that. Only around her shorts, which were soaked through. But her shirt was dry.

“Check this out, Bee,” she said, turning to see what her friend was doing. Bee was using her magnifying glass to look at the window frame. “What’re you doing?” she asked.

“I think somebody recently unscrewed this window,” said Bee. “And then screwed it back in again.”

“What’s out there?” Chloe asked as she came to see what Bee meant. She saw that all four screws had been undone recently, or at least since they’d been painted over. She inched the shade up a bit and peered outside. A back alley, dark, with a fence across the way. Bee had picked up a fleck of paint with her tweezers and showed it to her. Chloe nodded.

“Ok,” Chloe said, turning back toward the body. “No shoes. Shorts are wet. Sand on the floor. No signs of struggle when she was obviously in a hell of