Book Six, Chapter 42: Autopsy of a Blackmailer

“She had just died when we found her,” Andrew said as he examined the body, using his flashlight combined with the light of the burners on the stove.

As strange of a situation as this was, stuck in a hotel/casino kitchen as floodwaters gradually poured in on the first floor, one of his friends dead in the walk-in fridge, and the lobby receptionist laid out on an area that was usually used to assemble salads, Andrew sure did make it look like it was just another day on the job.

“Here’s the cause of death,” he said. He lifted up her left arm and pointed to a small hole just under her armpit.

Bobby, Kimberly, and I gathered close.

“That little pinprick?” Kimberly asked.

“Judging from the entrance of the wound, it appears to have been something that’s pointed but without a sharp edge,” Andrew said. “Something small enough to go in between the ribs and pierce the heart. She would have been unconscious in seconds and dead in minutes.”

She had bled quite a bit from that little wound. It was incredibly precise.

“If you were to take a guess at what kind of weapon it might have been, what would you say?” I asked. Maybe it wasn’t in character for me to be so inquisitive just yet, but the fact that we had lost Antoine and didn’t know the whereabouts of Logan, Jules, or Ramona suddenly made me feel that we needed to step up our urgency.

“If I were to guess,” Andrew said, “it would be some sort of skewer or even, based on the slightly flat shape of the entry wound, a letter opener. She may not have even seen her attacker. This was quick and efficient.”

“I stared at the young woman who had been the receptionist. I could see all of her tropes now. There were several things to be concerned with, but the one that caught my attention was Thoroughly Dispersed.

We were On-Screen, so I couldn’t explain our dilemma just yet, not explicitly, and there was a real chance we wouldn’t go back Off-Screen before they needed this knowledge. If she had the Thoroughly Dispersed trope, that meant that she had allies and that enemies might very well surround us.

Before I could say anything, the door to the kitchen opened gently, just enough for someone to peek through.

Kimberly had her pot in hand, ready to smack whoever came through the door, and I quickly moved to a knife block and grabbed a cleaver, as it was the biggest handle I saw, and that’s where my instincts took me.

We were ready for whatever evil might try to come through the door, but it turned out it was only Daphne.

“Sweetheart,” she said as soon as she saw me. “I saw a trail of blood, and I feared the worst.”

She saw a trail of blood in the wet hallway. Sure, there wasn’t exactly a flood yet, but was there enough to wash away any trail of blood leading to the kitchens? I didn’t know. Strange. She must have just been acting to explain how she found us.

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “How were your parents?”

“They’re wonderful,” she said as she crossed the room, and we wrapped our arms around each other. “I have them locked up and safe. Is this another victim?” she asked, turning to the body of the blackmailer on the salad bar.

“A victim, maybe,” Andrew said. “Possibly a perpetrator as well.”

Daphne looked incredulous. “You don’t think that a little woman like this could possibly be the killer, do you?” she asked.

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“Not by herself,” Andrew said. “It might be that one of her partners decided she was dead weight.”

“Oh dear,” Daphne said.

“They killed Antoine for blackmail money,” Kimberly said, crying. “Maybe he tried to fight back. Maybe he didn’t want to give up the money.”

“Those monsters,” Daphne said.

It didn’t feel fair. Antoine had not been given enough time. We were just putting the pieces together that he was being blackmailed, and suddenly he was ambushed and his money stolen, or at least that’s what the narrative led us to believe.

Based on the blackmailers’ trope, We Go Way Back, it would appear that Antoine, and possibly the rest of us, were on a very short timer to figure out our characters’ backstories.

When Antoine didn’t figure out he was being blackmailed quickly enough, he was killed.

But still, what was he doing in that basement?

And how many more blackmailers were there?

“Well, we know she has partners,” I said. “They could be anywhere.”

I said it forcefully, perhaps even out of character. I needed my team to know we were in danger, and a lot more than we expected.

“They could be anyone,” Bobby said. “You know what dawns on me? Most of the employees who volunteered to stay on through the storm are relatively new. I wish I could vouch for them, but I cannot. Jules said I shouldn’t have kept them on, that they weren’t ready. If I had just listened to her…”

“We still don’t know that anything happened to her,” I said. “I don’t know her very well, but she seemed smart enough to stay hidden.”

Bobby nodded, but I saw a look of disbelief in his eyes. We had not yet had the opportunity to discuss this Off-Screen for longer than a few seconds, but I got the impression that Jules might have sacrificed herself.

He said she left him abruptly. She may have secretly drawn our enemies away from him, if only for a time.

And we weren’t even at Second Blood yet. Had we underestimated this story? Either our allies were in hiding, waiting for a signal to come out, or they were dead.

“Look at this,” Andrew said.

I did, but I almost immediately looked away.

He was rifling through her garments, looking for evidence, and he had gotten down to her pantyhose. Only a coroner could get away with that.