In reality, Allen Roberts had actually managed to type something into the keyboard. He’d even managed to hit ENTER. Truth be known, he’d succeeded in typing the “something” three separate times before Ben and Agent Mandalay had stopped him. Our only saving grace was apparently his haste-induced clumsiness. At each glowing prompt on the screen was a short string of characters that in another situation would appear to be the daily jumble from the feature section of the newspaper. In this particular case, however, it was obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of computers that the unintentional anagram “KLLIFLIE” was supposed to have spelled out the command “KILLFILE.” Had he been successful in executing the utility, Roberts would have effectively erased all of the data from the machine.
Ben hadn’t really exaggerated about the wires and other gadgetry in the room, although what appeared to him as an intimidating monstrosity of electronics was to me simply a computer technician’s playroom. Of course, I was in the business, and my own home office wasn’t much different in appearance from this one. My friend, on the other hand, disdained the thought of using a computer and did so only when it was an absolute necessity. Taking that fact into consideration, I could understand his finding the flashing lights and purring boxes a bit intimidating.
“It looks like some kind of network to me,” Agent Mandalay offered as I stood surveying the contents of the room. “Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you.”
Allen Roberts was sitting in a wheeled desk chair, hands cuffed behind his back, watching quietly as I nodded and continued my cursory inspection. A sudden attack of bravado overcame him when I stepped closer to a humming machine mounted in what appeared to be a recycled mini-computer peripheral’s cabinet.
“Leave that alone!” he demanded angrily as he started up from the chair. “You still haven’t shown me a warrant!”
Constance, who was positioned behind him, snapped her arm out in a blur of motion and twisted her hand into the collar of his sweatshirt as he rose. Leverage and balance being fully on her side, she jerked him back down and unceremoniously planted him hard in the seat before he could take a single step.
“Don’t do that again,” she ordered sternly, “or one of us is going to get hurt, and it won’t be me.”
“Buy a vowel, Roberts,” Ben shot back. “All we wanted ta’ do was ask ya’ a few questions. You wouldn’t even be wearin’ those bracelets right now if ya’ hadn’t acted like a damn fruitcake.”
“Screw you!” the man spat. “You still need a warrant.”
“Cool it, Roberts,” Constance instructed him evenly. “Keep it up and I’ll add assaulting a federal officer to the report.”
“Assaulting a… What assault?” he asked incredulously, “I didn’t assault anyone!”
“I don’t know about that,” she chided, “I seem to recall you hurling a coffee cup at me.”
“I did not! That’s a lie! I just dropped it and you know it!”
“Ya’know, it looked ta’ me like ya’ threw it at ‘er,” Ben volunteered with a thoughtful nod. “Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I’d definitely hafta say ya’ threw it. Yep, wingin’ a full coffee cup at an FBI agent’s not a real bright move. ‘Specially Mandalay here. She’s kinda got a reputation for bein’ a real hardass if ya’ know what I mean. Sure am glad I’m not you.”
“This is crazy!” the man sputtered. “You know I didn’t throw that cup. You’re lying.”
“Which one of us do ya’ think a judge is gonna believe?”
My friend’s sarcastic query was met only with angry silence.
“Of course, I might be willing to forget about that little indiscretion if you were to stop acting like a jerk and cooperate instead,” Agent Mandalay suggested. “You know… answer a few questions. Maybe explain what was so important in here that made you run like a scared rabbit?”
“I’d give that one some thought,” Ben expressed. “Just between you an’ me she’s not usually this forgivin’. She must think you’re okay lookin’ or somethin’, although I really can’t see why.”
“I want my lawyer,” Roberts grumbled.
“Fine with me,” Constance replied in a stoic voice.
“Not ‘zactly the choice that I woulda made.” Ben shrugged then turned and spoke to me in a clipped tone as he gestured at the rack of equipment, “Go ahead, Chief. What is all this shit?”
He was outwardly showing signs of fatigue, and I’d seen him like this before. His biggest problem, or perhaps asset, depending on your point of view, was that he often cared too much. It wasn’t unusual for him to run on little to no sleep along with inordinate amounts of coffee whenever he was working a case. Considering the previous night’s events, I knew he was running on pure caffeine-we all were. The sharp bite that now permeated my friend’s voice told me he was riding on the edge and that Allen Roberts’ attitude wasn’t helping his overall demeanor.
The simple fact of the matter was that we were all on edge. Constance had, for all intents and purposes, threatened Roberts with the assault charge. Such a tactic coming from her was overtly uncharacteristic of her by-the-book persona we all knew so well. Even Carl Deckert looked like he had aged ten years in the matter of a week.
And then there was me.
I had become so unbalanced by my own rabid fears of the history this killer was re-kindling that I was breaking one of my own cardinal rules. I wasn’t keeping myself properly grounded. While my ethereal senses continued to work in overdrive, there was no proper outlet for the by-products of those supernormal energies. Like a transformer with a short circuit, I was almost literally burning myself out. And as evidenced by the episodes Felicity had experienced, I wasn’t doing her any good either.
At this moment my gut instinct was telling me that this whole avenue was an exercise in futility that would get us no closer to solving these murders. Though I certainly understood that every lead needed to be followed, I couldn’t shake the growing impatience that was even now tickling the base of my brain.
With a sigh I moved in closer to the rack and gave the blinking lights, humming machines, and tangled wires a once over, slowly nodding my head and muttering to myself as I identified the individual components.
“It’s definitely a network,” I acknowledged Mandalay’s assessment. “But it looks like it’s also an internet domain server, which is pretty much what we expected.” I began pointing to various pieces as I named them off, struggling to keep apathy from seeping into my voice. “This is the hub, this is a router, and unless I missed my guess, this box here is the server itself. Is it okay if I touch the keyboard?”
“Hold on a minute,” Ben answered flatly. “I’ll be right back.” He returned in just over a minute and handed me a packet containing a pair of surgical gloves adding the comment, “Just in case.”
I nodded as I pulled the thin latex sheaths over my hands and inspected the black, rack-mounted unit a bit closer. On the small pullout keyboard stowed beneath it, I backspaced the misspelled “killfile” command into non-existence and tapped in my own instructions for a directory listing.
“Yeah…” I muttered and nodded as I scanned the listing that streamed across the monitor. “Yeah, looks like it’s the web server all right. Some kind of proprietary turnkey box running under a network shell program. Not the most sophisticated web host on the block, but they’re popular. A lot of small businesses and Mom ‘n’ Pop ISP’s use them.”
“Is it where the message came from?” Ben pressed.
“Probably. It’s a web server and considering that the domain the mail came from is registered to Mister Roberts here…” I allowed my answer to trail off and punctuated it with a shrug.
“Message?” Roberts blurted and tossed a puzzled glance between us. “What message? What are you talking about?”
“Whaddaya mean ‘prob’ly?’” Ben ignored him and spat back at me with heated annoyance. “Can’t you tell?”
“I mean exactly what I said!” I barked, my own voice an open wound bleeding tension into the room. “Probably! I don’t know for sure, and I’m not experienced with this particular piece of software. It’s highly likely based on the facts we have at our disposal that this is the server that the mail originated from. Beyond that, I can’t say for sure just yet. Contrary to what you’ve seen in the movies, Ben, you can’t just type in ‘give me the secret information’ and have it automatically pop up on the screen!”
My friend caught himself as he began to snarl an angry retort and left the vitriolic words unspoken. Silence rang through the atmosphere filling the room with its thickness. Almost simultaneously we grinned sheepishly at one another and shook our heads.
“Smartass,” Ben replied with a slight chuckle as he reached up to massage the back of his neck. “Sorry, white man. Can ya’ figure it out?”
“Yeah,” I nodded and smiled back. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be able to tell you for sure.”
“Are either of you going to answer me?” Roberts spouted once again. “What are you talking about? What message?”
“I thought you wanted your attorney?” Constance posed, her voice tightly wrapped in sarcasm.
Roberts shook his head and tried to look back at the petite federal agent then appealed to Ben once more, “What is this all about? Why are you guys here?”
My friend stared him down for a moment then pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and huffed out a tired sigh. “A threatening e-mail message was apparently sent from here to a Miz Kendra Miller. Last week, Miz Miller turned up dead. We came here to ask ya’ a few questions about it.”
The three of us shared an incredulous, slack jawed gaze at the man when he opened his mouth and replied with a note of bitter calm, “Dead, huh? Well, I warned her.”
“At first, I really didn’t mind the ‘bi’ thing,” Roberts explained across the small table in the interview room at the MCS command post. “In fact, it was… well… you know, kind of a turn on.”
By the time we had arrived downtown, the earlier fits of bravado had taken hold, and his attitude had morphed from the original sudden panic to a self-righteous cockiness. For the moment however, even with his current disposition, he was at least talking. Unfortunately, what was coming out of his mouth so far was not only less than helpful but instead, appeared to be acting more as a caustic irritant for Agent Mandalay.
Constance was leaning with her back against the wall a few feet away. Upon hearing the comment, she looked at the man with a disgusted smirk and raised an eyebrow but kept silent.
“Do us all a favor, Roberts, and spare us your little sex fantasies.” Ben shook his head then thrust his chin toward the man. “Get back to the e-mail.”
“Well, like I said, at first it was no big deal, but when she started spending all her time with ‘queen lesbo the lawyer and her dyke club’ it was pretty obvious that she had to have a thing for one of them.” He paused and looked at us as if we should feel sorry for him. As though we should view him as an emotionally damaged victim of a soured love affair. “And then, well she started screwing around with all that WitchCraft shit… That was just plain weird, okay? Hell, for all I know they were having some kind of lesbian orgies or something. Of course, that would have been fine if I was invited, you know.”
“What did I just say, Roberts?”
“Yeah, okay. So finally I just told her she had to make a choice. It was either them or me.”
“So as long as her sexuality was entertaining for you, then it was okay,” Agent Mandalay spat, still glaring at him from across the room. She stood rigidly postured, pressed against the dull institution grey wall as if she were seeking to disappear into its face. Her arms were entwined in a tight fold across her chest, and her body language loudly broadcast the fact that this man had definitely gotten under her skin in a bad way.
“Look,” he returned, obviously enjoying himself, “her hanging out with them all the time was no different than if she’d been hanging out with a bunch of men. They were just as big a threat to our relationship, so of course I was going to be jealous. But yeah, I got off on it for a while. You know, a couple of babes getting all wild on each other. It’s every guy’s fantasy.”
Constance quietly seethed at the comment. She was almost visibly trembling with bright crimson anger.
“Not necessarily every guy, Roberts,” Ben interjected, taking mute notice of the Federal Agent’s swelling ire. “Now get on with it.”
“Anyhow, that’s not why I told her she had to make a choice. That Wicker crap or whatever she was involved in was way too weird. I didn’t find out about it until she started in with that group, or I may not have started dating her in the first place. It’s like some kind of cult or something. If you ask me, they’re the ones you should be talking to. They probably sacrificed her or something.”
“Yeah, well nobody asked ya’,” Ben replied.
“It’s not very likely that her coven had anything to do with it, Mister Roberts,” I stated evenly. “And it’s called Wicca, not wicker. Wicca is a religion. Wicker is furniture.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he retorted. “I still think it’s some kind of cult.”
“So your solution to all this was to harass ‘er by sendin’ threatening e-mails?” Ben steered the conversation back onto course with a sardonic query.
“E-MAIL,” Roberts stressed the singularity. “I just sent the one, and besides, I was drunk.” He continued on as if being inebriated was a valid excuse that should easily explain the behavior away. “I barely remembered sending it until I got a notice from her ISP about it. And yeah, I was pissed. It’s bad enough to lose your girlfriend to another guy, but to another woman? And then all that weird Witch crap on top of it.”
“But you took the time to set up the domain,” I interjected.
“Yeah, so?” he countered. “Ten minutes and a credit card gets you a domain name. Seemed like the way to go at the time.”
“So if you’re completely innocent here, why is it ya’ bolted when Agent Mandalay showed ya’ her ID?” Ben posed.
“Look, I’ll talk to you about all this other shit, but I’d rather not get into that part until I speak to my lawyer.”
“Of course not,” Constance huffed.
“Is there somethin’ on that computer that ya’ don’t want anyone to see?” my friend pushed. “From what I understand you were tryin’ to erase the data when we stopped you.”
“Lawyer” came his one word response.
“Somethin’ on there that might connect ya’ with the murder?”
“LAW-YER.”
“Okay then. Fine.” Ben sighed. “How about tellin’ us what ya’ meant back at your house when ya’ said you had warned Miz Miller?”
“I meant I warned her. I told her if she kept messing around with that WitchCraft shit something was going to happen,” he answered matter-of-factly.
“Ya’ mean ya’ warned ‘er or do ya’ mean ya’ threatened ta’ kill ‘er?” Ben chided.
“Warned, Detective. And it looks like I was right.”
“Were ya’ right or did ya’ make it into a self-fulfillin’ prophecy?”
“You just don’t give up, do you? I was right, that’s all.”
“Did you kill Kendra Miller, Mister Roberts?” Agent Mandalay had pushed away from the wall and now slammed the blunt question into his face, driving it home with a cold stare.
“HELL NO!” he shot back. “How many times do I have to tell you people this? All I did was send that one e-mail. Shit, I hadn’t even seen her for three months!”
“So why did you bother with the e-mail then?” she pressed as she drew closer to the small table. “Why wait three months to send it?”
“I dunno. Like I said, I was drunk. And I think that night I was surfing some lesbo sites on the web.”
“Excuse me?” she barked angrily.
“You know, checkin’ out the lez fetish websites,” he answered, taking great relish in the fact that he was annoying her. “That’s probably what got me thinking about her, so I sent the e-mail.”
With no warning whatsoever, Constance strode quickly forward, her hands outstretched as she drove her inertia bearing weight into the edge of the small table. A loud moan escaped from its four legs as they scraped across the tiled floor, and the opposite side of the piece of furniture slammed hard into Allen Roberts’ midsection. The air in his lungs vented from his mouth in a raspy huff, and he wheezed as he fought against the pressure to replace the escaped breath.
Both Ben and I stood frozen, completely dumbfounded by what we were witnessing. We had all seen Agent Mandalay display an almost frightfully hard edge in the past but always with an even temperament. Explosive anger of this order was something entirely new.
“You putrid little bastard!” she spat as she held him pinned against the wall with the edge of the wooden table. “You make me sick!”
“Whoa, Mandalay!” Ben quickly stepped forward and grasped her shoulder with a large paw. “Back off.”
Still brimming with a full head of steam, she twisted away from his grasp and gave the table a furious shove before letting go. One side lifted slightly, and the legs made a dull clack as they bounced down against the floor. Wheeling around, the red-faced FBI special agent exited the interview room in a tempest of wordless emotion, making certain to slam the door on the way out.
“What the hell ya’ think that was all about?” Ben asked me as he looked after her.
“Did you see that?” Allen Roberts coughed as he finally regained his breath. “She assaulted me! You’re my witnesses!”
“I didn’t see anything,” Ben spat back without turning.
“That bitch assaulted me! I’m pressing charges!”
“Shut up, Roberts,” Ben instructed in no uncertain terms.
“I think I’d better go see if Constance is okay,” I offered.
“Yeah, that’s prob’ly a good idea,” my friend agreed.
“Fuckin’ dyke bitch” came a muttering voice from behind us.
“I thought I told ya’ ta’ shut up, Roberts.”
Another disparaging epithet exited the man’s lips just as I was leaving the interview room. Before the door had fully closed, I caught a calm query from my friend that managed to do what the earlier no-nonsense instructions had failed to accomplish.
“Look asshole, do ya’ want me ta’ cuff ya’ to the chair and let ‘er back in here with ya’ for a while? ‘Cause I’ll be happy to arrange it…”
Outside the interview room, at the far end of the hallway, a low wooden bench lined the wall. Tucked neatly into the corner, Constance Mandalay now occupied a small section of the worn real estate. She was pitched forward, elbows resting on her knees and her forehead cupped in her hands. The distance between us was short enough that I could clearly see that she was trembling.
A uniformed officer with an armload of file folders rounded the corner and shot the young woman a cursory look as he passed. He did a double take then threw his gaze back and forth between the two of us. As I made my way steadily toward her, I simply nodded then gave him a thin-lipped smile when we met and then passed one another in the chilly corridor.
While the cop continued on his way, I paused for a moment before a dented vending machine and thrust my hand into my pants pocket. After rummaging around for a moment, I extracted a small handful of loose change along with my car keys. After picking out the quarters, I shoved the keys and remaining silver back into my pocket.
A quick once over of the large blue and white appliance told me what my options were as I dropped a trio of coins into the slot. An electric hum followed by a hollow cardboard thunk elicited from the device as I held my fingers splayed out against the round buttons labeled double cream and double sugar. After a moment or two of steamy hissing and watery sputtering, the paper cup overflowed onto the stainless steel grill where it sat. I slid back the splattered Plexiglas door and tilted the cup to pour off some of the excess then placed it carefully atop the machine and repeated the entire process.
On the second go around, I was forced to prematurely open the translucent shield and straighten out the cup before the coffee began to dispense. The hot liquid barely missed my fingers.
Drinks in hand, I continued the few steps down the corridor to the bench and placed one of the cups next to Constance before taking a seat a respectful distance away. Remaining silent, I took a cautious sip of the instant java and found much to my satisfaction that it was just as bad as I thought it would be. Even so, it was a cut or so above the tar I’d had in the Homicide squad room earlier in the day, so that was a plus.
“Looks like I’ve got a pair of Kings, Queen high,” I finally announced while holding the paper receptacle at eye level and inspecting the dull image of a poker hand that graced it. “I didn’t look at yours. Wouldn’t have been fair.”
After a moment, Constance leaned back with a sigh, picked up the coffee I’d set next to her, and peered into the muddy brown liquid. “I usually take mine black.”
“Me too,” I said as I nodded. “But it’s been my experience that coffee from one of those machines tastes like something on the order of hot water poured over pencil shavings, so I figured the cream and sugar might help. Just pretend it’s a cheap latte.”
“Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
We continued to sit in silence as she sipped at the coffee and absently picked at the rim of the paper cup with her thumb and forefinger. I could still feel a flow of anger coming from the federal agent, though it had greatly subsided and was still decreasing. The waves of emotion appeared now as a dull aura enveloping her petite frame. This was, at the very least, an improvement over the fiery-eyed, vermilion monster that had been gnashing its teeth in the interview room earlier.
“Three aces,” she eventually muttered.
“Guess I should have looked,” I answered.
Again, a less than peaceful quiet embroidered the atmosphere of the hallway. I held my own voice, allowing the stillness to work in my favor.
“Well, I guess I blew that one,” she sighed when the desire to express herself finally surfaced. “I’ll probably be up in front of Bartlett before the evening is out.”
“Your word against Roberts,” I replied calmly.
“You and Storm were in there. You both saw me lose it.”
“Ben says he didn’t see anything.”
“What about you?” she asked in a dull voice.
“Me?” I paused and gathered my words. “I saw a friend in distress is about all.”
“Neither one of you need to be lying for me,” she admonished.
“Look…” I stared thoughtfully into my own coffee cup for a moment before continuing. “Roberts isn’t injured in any way, and I expect by the time Ben gets through talking to him, he won’t be pressing any charges. I’m not defending your actions mind you, but we all have a breaking point. For some reason you obviously hit yours.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “You’re probably right. Still, I shouldn’t have let him get to me.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“You’ve got enough to deal with without me dumping on you,” she contended.
“Truly good friends are a rarity, Constance,” I offered in return. “I count you among mine, and I always have time for my friends.”
She allowed a weak smile to play across her lips and shot me an embarrassed glance then brushed her hair back and sighed, “It was the whole lesbian thing.”
“I kind of picked that up.” I nodded then took a sip of the overly sweetened brew. It had now cooled enough to drink without fear of a scalded tongue, so I toned down my original caution. “Does homosexuality bother you?”
“What? No, no, nothing like that,” she explained. “Just assholes like Roberts that get off on watching two women together and make a big deal of it.”
I mulled over her comment before replying, “Okay.”
“That doesn’t make much sense to you, does it?”
“Not entirely. I’ll grant you it’s not my thing either, but I try to be open minded about that sort of stuff. Either way, it’s not my place to judge the feelings and opinions of others, so if it bothers you…”
She let out an exhausted sigh, and I could feel her reluctance to speak fading into the background. Her anger had quelled, leaving only a sad emptiness in its wake. It was a pain dulled by time but still in possession of sharp barbs that, if brushed against, could open the wound anew.
“This stays between us, right?” She stared at me with deadly serious concern glazing her eyes.
“Of course,” I answered.
There was a short interlude where she searched my face and found only truth behind my answer. She then stared at an unseen spot on the floor while nervously fidgeting the rim of the paper cup between her fingernails. Finally, whatever courage or imagined approval she sought within came into being and she spoke.
“I had an older brother, Rowan,” she began flatly. “His name was Brandon and he was gay.”
“Had?” I couldn’t help but notice the emphasis on the past tense. “Was it HIV?”
“No, not AIDS. I almost wish it had been.” She breathed the acronym as if it could have been a welcome friend. “I know that probably sounds insane but in a lot of ways that would have been much easier to cope with…to understand.”
Constance drew in a deep breath then, like taking a bitter dose of medicine, rushed headlong into the explanation. “Around four years ago Brandon was locking up the bookstore he managed. It was late and he was alone… Classic setting for something to happen I suppose-in fact, to this day when I talk about it, it doesn’t seem real. It sounds like a scene from a made-for-TV movie…
“Anyway, before he ever got his key out of the door, he was jumped from behind by a liquored up homophobe who beat him to death with an aluminum softball bat.”
Her pragmatic explanation poured into the quiet hallway, starkly revealing her personal tragedy for me to witness. A simple dissertation unblemished by the heavy emotions she had incarcerated deep within.
“I’m sorry,” I told her after a solemn pause, then as if to add to the surreal cliche of the stories fold, I automatically asked the obvious. “Did they ever find the guy who did it?”
“Oh yeah,” she replied with a quick nod. “They found him. He was too drunk to cover his tracks or even bother with getting rid of the bat. The police followed his bloody footprints right back to his apartment which, as it happens, was two doors down the hall from Brandon’s.”
She paused and looked over at me with the vacancy of cold grief in her eyes then continued, “The one thing that I’ll always remember is what the sonofabitch said when they arrested him. He said that if Brandon had been a gay woman instead of a gay man, then he wouldn’t have killed him. In his words it was because, ‘a couple of hot lesbos are a turn-on but two fags is just sick.’”