Play To Kill

Chapter Fourteen

The rising sun was just beginning to paint the sky and waken the city, but the Monkeewrench office lights were still burning, as they had been all night. Annie and Grace had finally crashed in guest rooms at five a.m., but Harley and Roadrunner kept working, fueled by a steady intake of overcaffeinated beverages and chocolate.

Harley pushed back from his computer and rubbed his burning eyes. 'Roadrunner, dump the programming work and give me a hand here.'

'What are you doing?'

'Well, I was thinking that if our bride drowning was pre-advertised, maybe there were pre-posts for the other five murders.'

'Not a bad idea, but I can't do it, Harley. We're way behind on programming'

Harley rolled his chair over to Roadrunner's station and spun his friend around to face him. 'Listen, we can get the new program up and running within a week, and what's the prize for that? Verifying that what look like dead people are really dead people, instead of some asshole teenager's idea of a video prank. But if we find other posts forecasting the murders we know about, then maybe we find a pattern, maybe we find some new posts in time to save some lives.'

Roadrunner tugged at the denim creases bunching around the backs of his knees. 'Well. No contest, then, is there?'

Harley shook his big head. 'Not to my way of thinking.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at where Agent Smith was sleeping on a couch. 'Don't know how he's going to feel about it, though.'

Smith rolled his supposedly sleeping head and opened his eyes. 'Go for the posts,' he said, then turned over.

'It might delay the new software.'

'Go for the posts,' Smith repeated.

An hour later Roadrunner entered the last command with a single push of the enter button, and text started scrolling up his screen. 'Holy mackerel, Harley. They just popped up. Every one of them.'

Harley's motorcycle boots pounding across the wooden floor startled Smith awake. What's going on?'

Harley was staring at Roadrunner's monitor, rocking on his heels, slab arms folded across his chest, grinning. 'Holy shit. Holy rosy shit. I'll tell you what's going on. My little buddy here found forecast postings for the city murders. Every goddamned one of them. Even our river bride is on the list.' He gave Smith a hearty slap on the shoulder when he came over to read. 'How about that?'

'How the hell did you find them?'

'Oh, man, this was so cool. I kept trying these broad search programs on words and syllables and anything else I could dream up an algorithm for, and all the time I was so pissed at this idiot because he couldn't even type. Kept hitting the shift key in the wrong places, capping letters that shouldn't be capitalized, missing ones that should. And then

I noticed that "city of lakes" was the only part of the header with typos. Every other word was perfect, and that seemed weird. Take a look.' He enlarged the Minneapolis post on the screen.

CiTy oF laKes. Bride in the water. Or would that be a groom? Near beer.

'See? The first, third, sixth, and ninth characters are capped. So I did a search on that specific pattern of caps and lower-case and this one popped: "CiTy oF anGels. No home. Near pier."

'That's the L.A. murder,' Smith said. 'The victim was a homeless man found under the Santa Monica Pier on June 4th.'

Roadrunner looked up at him. 'This was posted June 2nd.'

Smith pulled up a chair. 'Let me look at the rest of them.'

'It's all right there.' Roadrunner rolled aside to make room for him while Harley hovered behind his shoulder.

'City of Rock?' Smith read.

'Gotta be Cleveland,' Harley said. 'The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there. And look at that - City of Longhorns. That's Austin.'

Smith nodded. 'And here's Chicago - City of Broad Shoulders. And City of Starbucks is obviously Seattle. My God. That's all of our five, plus the Minneapolis river murder.'

'Jesus,' Harley muttered. 'What kind of a sick game is this guy playing?'

'It gets worse. Take a look at this.' Roadrunner punched the page down key and Smith's face went a little gray 'Page two. This is an old post, from January. "City of Big Water. Hole in one. North Shore." Same typo pattern, same general format, but I don't know if it's a pre-post for a real murder. Any chance your guys in Cyber Crimes missed one?'

Smith closed his eyes briefly. 'That's been a concern since we received the first video. Remember, the only reason we found five was because the sites sent us the murder films when they were posted.'

Harley grumbled. 'If that's a real one, the vic's toast by now. What about the last one?'

"City of Roses. Bert's barmaid. Near deer."

'When was it posted?'

'Let me check.' Roadrunner fiddled on his keyboard for a few seconds and pulled up a new screen. 'Okay, here it is. Posted on… oh, Jesus.'

'What is it?' Harley leaned closer to the monitor.

'It was posted last night. This one may not have happened yet.'