DEUX.
IN THE COMPUTER ROOM upstairs at Jordan's house they sat huddled close before Jordan's six-monitor display.
Spread out across the screens a Map of Los Valles and the surrounding forestland glittered 12K in brilliant topographical CGI.
A more than realistic godseye view of the city.
Jordan tapped a key and a document took over the top right-hand screen.
“This is the report my SLM produced,” he explained, referring to the proprietary Small Language Model used for The Jordan Project.
The one that said a single killer was responsible for all three murders.
The heading of the document read AFK, for April Fool’s Killer.
“Catchy name,” Mitch said, prompting a smirk from his mate.
Mitch watched intently as Jordan quickly navigated from file to file, showing him the dossier he’d compiled on the three victims.
The basic details were as follows—
Victim #1: Mark Hunter, 61, missing since 1 April. Mr Hunter was reported missing by his maid and is believed to have been kidnapped from his home located at the extreme south-central part of town. Time of abduction est. at ~6:45PM, or just before dusk.
“Wow,” Mitch commented, “‘Just before dusk’ huh? Your model is so literary.”
“It’s not ‘literary’,” Jordan piped back. “It just predicts letter shapes.”
“Right.”
Jordan clicked the mouse and Mark Hunter’s driver’s license ID photo (White, male) appeared on the map, at the location where he was last known to reside. He lived in a middle class neighborhood just within the confines of THE RING, the giant maglev rail system that encircled the developed areas of Los Valles and separated city from forest.
A bright neon-green dot made a continuous anti-clockwise circle along the track, emulating how The HyperRail™ transported LV’s citizens and tourists to work and leisure each day.
“But it says he was kidnapped," commented the detective.
"So?" said Jordan.
"So that’s a long ways off from murdered and found dead.”
Jordan chattered on the keyboard and a prompt came up that simply said: DECEASED.
“OK…”
Victim #2: Rita Kissinger, 58, was pronounced dead by physicians at the Yorke County Medical Complex B. TOD: 11:15PM. Supplementary note: Uniformed officer responsible for dropping Mrs Kissinger off at hospital later fled the scene before questioning.
Another click and Mrs Kissinger’s narrowed eyes and tight-lipped smile (African American, female) graced the screen. The YCMC B was located downtown, due north on the I-111 from Mr Hunter’s house.
On the map the Medical District was all but overwhelmed by Los Valles’ most Infamous part of town, the strip of land populated by the mega-casinos, the brothels and giant skyscraper hotels, and the constantly moving augmented reality advertisements, all of which were brightly lit and full of motion on Jordan’s computer screens—
THE ISLE.
Mrs Kissinger’s unhappy expression nestled within that profusion of neon looked a rather ominous advertisment, Mitch thought, for the city’s less talked about attractions.
“And what the fuck is this?” griped our friend the detective, “Cops don’t flee scenes. Perps do.”
“That’s just what it says,” said Jordan.
“Who says?”
“The program gets all its information from public sources. It was probably in the paper.”
Mitch’s sense of foreboding increased at hearing this. He read the papers religiously for just such articles, but had read nothing of this case.
“Many things about this trouble me,” he mumbled, more to himself than to his mate.
“We’re not done,” Jordan replied and clicked the mouse again.
Victim #3: Nelson Zemarkis, Psy.D., originally a John Doe, identified by one David Barnes, MD.s at or around 10:58PM. Body first reported as hit and run. Location: OTR District. Pos ID made by Barnes. Barnes subsequently taken into custody.
Photographs of both men, the deceased Mr Zemarkis, and Mr Barnes (both White, male) appeared toward the top of the map. Their grave faces were added to a charred section of forestland north of The Ring, where the remnants of a recent forest fire lay upon the screen like an open scab.
Originally, The Ring was made as a barrier to restrict rampant city expansion and conserve the forestland that had been cherished by local residents for millennia. Gradually at the turn of the century however, legislatures had relaxed the rules and allowed for more development and de-forestation. This spawned the relatively new jurisdiction known as Outside The Ring, or OTR.
The exposed raw skin of earth covered in ash where Mr Zemarkis’ corpse had been found was the former site of a large tech firm HQ.
“That’s it?” Mitch griped yet again.
“Heh?”
“This Barnes character was able to identify the guy he hit?”
“Whattaya mean?” asked Jordan.
“How often do people in a hit and run know each other?”
Jordan frowned. “Well, it’s definitely possible.”
“And Barnes was ‘taken into custody’? Why?”
“I’m sure there’s a reason,” Jordan protested. “I’m sure the police sorted it out straight away. And—and there’s a reason for them knowing each other! They’re both psychiatrists of some sort. Y’see! There! How’s that for ya?!”
“It stinks!” Mitch said without a nanosecond’s hesitation.
Jordan leaned back in his Secretlab EVO gaming chair, aghast.
“Frankly,” Mitch said, nudging his friend over so he could reach the keyboard and press CTRL+P, “I don’t see why you were so surprised your computer gave you this reading.”
Jordan blinked slowly, adjusting to this new wavelength.
“Heh?!”
“Yeah, it’s not so weird at all,” said Mitch. “Peep.”
The detective placed his finger on the lower-middle computer monitor, at the pin where Mark Hunter’s ID photo was stuck into the multicolor city-cushion.
He drew a line with his finger starting from the southernmost part (stem) and traced it upwards along the PHOLED screen, due north, riding parallel along the I-111.
He deviated slightly to the west as his fingerprint neared downtown and the second pin where Mrs Kissinger’s face sat next to the Medical Complex B and all the voracious ads of The Isle.
Then it was directly on up, all the way past the confines of The Ring, aligning with the highway once again and taking it past the known town to the third pin (stern) where Nelson Zemarkis’ body was found. In the dreaded wasteland that was Outside The Ring (OTR).
When he had done this he stepped away from the monitor and looked at the marking he had made.
A straight line with a kink in the middle.
Cut from stem to stern.
The feeling that had begun to announce itself at the coffee shop, the one that he always received when he was drawing near to a new case, had its confirmation in the blood-red neon line he’d drawn on the map.
The line glowed.
“A single killer,” Mitch whispered. “Like your computer says.”
And a wave of euphoria that terrified him seized his entire body in a fit of blissful anaphylaxis.
He was receiving
THE DETECTIVE INSTINCT.
Jordan was so taken aback at the entire display that all he could do was scoff. He’d previously been quite proud of his little report, the one he'd so cleverly named ‘The AFK File’, but Mitch’s gripes followed by his sudden full-scale acceptance had the effect of making him skeptical.
“That’s nuts,” he said, “Look at the times of death.”
He added his own finger to the pie and traced another line—this one neon green next to Mitch’s glowing red—hitting the pins in chronological order this time, from earliest (Hunter) to latest (Kissinger), based on the posted timestamp of their demise.
No particular elegance to that scribble, Mitch thought.
“The killer,” he went on to explain, ignoring Jordan’s neon abomination, “abducted—or whatever it is—Mark Hunter at 6:45, or thereabouts, at sunset anyway, and did something with him. This took time. A couple hours it seems.”
Jordan sat still, the scoff imprinted on his face, while Mitch continued.
“The later two murders were the result of a straight shot, done in quick succession. Three murders in total. One premeditated, the other two spree killings. There’s plenty of time for that. Time to spare even.”
“Pshhh,” spat Jordan, as automatic as Mitch’s rebuke had been. “The chronology is all wrong. 6:45, 10:58, 11:15. It’s not a ‘straight shot.’”
Jordan once again traced his clumsy line, dark purple this time.
“It is a straight shot,” Mitch almost growled, “Rita Kissinger was brought to the hospital and died at 11:15, but whatever happened to her happened before that. That is, depending on whenever this mystery cop arrived to find her.”
Jordan wrinkled his brow in frustration.
“So let’s say, theoretically,” he grumbled, “that thirty minutes before Kissinger is pronounced dead she is ‘attacked’, for lack of a better word. That’s when ‘whatever happened to her’ happened.”
He paused to make sure Mitch was with him. The detective’s refusal to blink assured him that he was.
“OK, so that’s 10:45, although it could be any time between 6:45 and 10:58, but if it was a ‘spree’ as you call it then the final two deaths would have to have been committed at roughly the same time. 10:45 to 10:58. We’re talking getting from downtown to OTR in mere minutes, while pulling off two random murders.”
Jordan dapped at the two pins again in his “chronological” way, Zemarkis first and Rita second, to illustrate his point (one electric tangerine smear and the other indigo blue). It made for a visually splendid motif but only added more confusion to the meaning.
Mitch gazed at the map. At his original red line.
From stem to stern it followed so closely the I-111, the city’s main artery.
With a kink right in the heart of downtown.
In the eye of The Isle.
The metaphor was clear as day.
“He moved fucking fast,” was the detective’s only rebuttal to all of Jordan’s concerns.
The timing on all three were fucked up, he agreed with that. But so was everything else. Each case, as provided by Jordan’s SLM, had at least one major discrepancy.
It wasn't the data.
It was the line that spoke to him.
The line was what pinged his detective instinct, and as always, he knew that this was where his work began. The discrepancies would sort themselves out, or not, based on the competence of his investigation.
He gathered up the printed sheets of letter-sized computer paper and secured them with two staples.
“Thanks for this,” he told his old friend.
And he left.
Jordan, left all alone and still reeling from the encounter, shook his head and laughed.
“Fuckin Mitch,” he said. “What a crazy bastard.”
But that’s why he loved him.