'Let's hope they remain so,' said Bohwanox.
'I have my own way of doing things,' said Colt.
Janet's contact list wasn't proving very enlightening. Several of the names therein were obviously shorthand. A few were even just a single letter. He checked her recent call history next.
She'd talked to "Mom," "Aunt Beth," "Lil Bro," "Leon," and finally "R"--whoever that was.
Hmm. Leon wouldn't happen to be short for Leonard, would it? He checked the text logs.
Ah. One conversation, two weeks ago.
Leon: how's brick?Colt's eyes shot up from the phone as he realized. Where was the fucking dog? He'd been through the whole house and hadn't seen that mutt anywhere.
Me: he eats a lot more than i expected
Leon: haha
Me: he makes me feel safe, tho
Me: so thx
Leon: glad to hear it
'Boh, do you sense a dog around here? In the house?'
'Hmm? No, why?'
'Janet has a giant Dantean Shepherd. Police trained. Name's Brick. I saw her walking him in the park today. He should be here.'
'Well, he's not. I would be able to sense him.'
A thought occurred to Colt, and he scowled inside his makeshift mask. 'The goons didn't kill him, did they? When they first entered the house.'
'No, I was watching the whole time.'
He looked at the reaper hard. 'You would've told me if they were killing a fucking dog in here, right?'
'Of course I would have. Colt, if there was a corpse in this house somewhere, I would be able to sense the severed soul hanging around.'
And abruptly, Colt couldn't conceal his curiosity. 'Dogs have souls, too?'
'Yeah, of course. They're not as strong as humans souls are, but yeah.'
He wanted to know more, but he shook his head slightly, trying to stay on task. 'Well, why isn't he here, then?'
'You can keep asking that all you like. I still don't know.'
Colt thought back. He was sure that he'd seen Janet with Brick in the park. When had he lost sight of the two of them?
Well, technically... he hadn't actually seen Brick get in Janet's car. The parking lot had been atop a slope, and once Janet had passed out of view, Colt had really just been following the two thugs who were in turn following her.
But she must've brought him home with her in her car, right? She wouldn't have just left him in the parking lot. Or... she handed him over to someone else. But that could've happened in the parking lot or here at the house. When the thugs left to go eat dinner, anything could've happened.
Maybe he was worrying over nothing. Honestly, it was probably for the best that Brick wasn't here, right now. Colt doubted that the dog could've taken down two armed intruders by himself.
But this was a significant detail, Colt felt. Who might Janet have entrusted Brick to? It must've been someone important.
Colt kept going through her messages.
Ugh, she seemed to be quite the avid texter. He sat back down on the floor to continue reading.
Most of it looked pretty innocuous. Making plans with friends to go out. Talking about food. Talking about... television, probably? Living without electricity for months, Colt was reduced to making an educated guess about that one. Then again, electricity probably wouldn't have helped him there. He'd never really understood the appeal of television shows or movies, even as a teenager. Everything out of Bellvine always felt like the same mindless drivel--with only the occasional exception managing to catch his interest.
But hold on here. All these texts, and no messages about work? What did Janet do for a living?
Could be that she had a separate work phone, he supposed. He got up and checked around the house again while he kept sifting through text messages. He asked Boh to help him look, but after another ten minutes or so, they didn't find anything.
She could've been carrying her other phone on her, though. He went back and checked her pockets, eliciting more vocal protests than ever from her. He stuffed the cloth back in her mouth and checked the others' pockets as well.
He didn't find a second phone for Janet, but he did find one phone each from the other two hostages. Thankfully, theirs didn't require passwords and just needed thumbprints and face IDs. Easy solutions with them both tied up.
He sat down again, laid all three phones down next to each other, and started going through them together.
It was a lot to go through. He wasn't the most technologically savvy person in the world, to say the least, but his time as a cop had taught him what to look for. Text messages, call logs, contact lists, search histories, emails, schedules, app downloads--ah, and banking information.
Yep. This was why he didn't trust mobile banking. Phones were way too much of a security liability for him to ever consider signing up for that shit himself.
Of course, at the moment, he was keeping all of his savings in a hole in the ground, so maybe he was a little biased.
It looked like Janet had quite the little nest egg stashed away. Maybe she didn't even have to work. Where had that money come from?
Hold on, there was a monthly income. Not enough to account for that enormous amount of savings she had, but it was something. Hmm. He checked her email again.
Aha.
Alimony. Divorced, huh? He wouldn't have guessed that, considering she didn't even look thirty, but there it was.
Still didn't explain why she had so much in savings, though. If her only income was alimony, then those savings, mathematically speaking, belonged to someone twice her age.
Janet's homeowner friend was less of a question mark. Judging from her email, her name was Clara Holden, and she worked in real estate. That might explain the nice house, despite her youth. Above average finances. Nothing as suspicious as Janet. Seemed like a pretty wholesome young lady, for the most part. Oh, she was even a Cocoranite like Alice Ridgemont. That was surprising, considering how the rest of Orden seemed to feel about Cocora.
Janet's little brother, Jason, seemed squeaky clean as well--apart from all that porn in his search history. Not much money to his name, as one would expect. Lots of chat logs with girls. Lots of rejections, too. Poor bastard. Eh, he was probably better off in the long run. Going by his email, he was a pretty hardworking student when he wasn't busy jacking off.
Hmm.
The siblings both had Rex in their contact list. Apparently, they both talked to him on the day of his murder. Both had several text exchanges with him as well, mostly just asking for ETAs and food orders. They must've been meeting up a lot for dinner together.
But that was a little suspicious, too, actually. The calls and texts seemed to spike in the few days leading up to his death. Up until then, there wasn't much activity. A call or text once or twice a month.
Something had obviously changed.
Ah. Wait. One of the more recent texts from Rex to Janet. It was hidden among all the banal stuff.
Rex: is it safe?Hmm. Disagreement? Could they have been talking about the money that the goons came looking for? Had Rex been in on it, after all?
Me: y
Rex: pic
Me: no
Rex: show me where
Me: later
That didn't really track with what Colt knew about Rex's attitude toward corruption, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time that someone didn't practice what they preached, and the simplest explanation was often the right one.
This was taking a while, but Colt didn't want to rush. Boh was keeping a close eye on the thugs, in the unlikely case that they somehow managed to get free, and it wasn't too cold outside, so Colt wasn't too worried about the kids staying out in the car for a while longer. Boh was watching their souls for him as well, of course.
After maybe forty-five minutes or an hour, Colt felt like he'd gotten enough. He probably could've spent another two or three hours going through everything, but it seemed unwise to hang around a crime scene for so long, and the hostages were obviously getting antsy. On the bright side, they at least looked more uncomfortable and bored than terrified. Taking their phones with him was another option, but he wasn't looking to make these people hate him that much. Janet was suspicious, sure, but theft was theft, and he didn't want to worry about the GPS in the phones, anyway.
That still left the two thugs, though.
Colt stood up and stretched. The vigor coursing through him had worn off a while ago, and now he just felt exhausted and stiff all over, but there was no time for rest. He knew that he would have to make a decision and soon.
His decision was to put it off for a few more minutes and consult Boh again, who had been helping him read texts and emails in between keeping watch.
'I don't suppose Rex mentioned a stash of money to you before he passed on, eh? And that you just happened to forget to tell me about it?'
'No. Give me a little credit.'
'Seems like a significant detail for him to have left out. Cop like him should've at least suspected that it might be relevant to his murder. Why wouldn't he tell you about it? Did he not trust you?'
'Did you trust me when you first met me?'
'Bad comparison. I still don't trust you, even now.'
'Oh, that's right. For a second there, I forgot how much of a bastard you are.'
Colt made his way over to the thugs again in the other room.
The one who'd hit his head was still unconscious, it seemed, but the other stared at Colt as he approached. That wasn't fear in the his eyes. That was anger. Hatred. The gag muted his words, but Colt could hear his growling attempts to curse him out.
Hmph. Colt could almost respect the guy for being unafraid, even in this situation.
Almost, being the key word.
'What're you going to do with them?' asked Bohwanox privately.
Colt took a deep breath, unable to ignore the problem any longer. 'I'm still deciding. What do you think?'
'Well, I already gave you my permission to kill them.'
He eyed the reaper briefly, a little surprised. 'The situation has changed, you know.'
'Not that much,' said Boh.
'Really? Even though they're no longer an immediate threat to anyone?'
'They're part of a larger criminal organization. If we leave them alive, even in jail, they'll tell their boss about what happened here, and then they'll come back to Orden with more people.'
'Okay, but if they go missing, someone else from their organization will probably come looking for them.'
'Assuming they told anyone where they were going. They were trying to impress their boss, remember? That implies they were taking initiative. Doing something without prior approval.'
'That's wishful thinking,' said Colt. 'Any number of people could know they came here.'
'Okay, fine. So more of these assholes are going to show up, whether you kill them or not. Wouldn't it be better, then, if the new arrivals didn't also have the benefit of whatever these two currently know?'
Colt fell quiet.
The reaper had a point.
Plus, he still wanted to find out who these motherfuckers worked for. And from the stubborn look in the conscious thug's eyes, extracting that information wasn't going to be pretty. Boh might've been able to find out for him by just haunting them while they were in jail, but there was no telling how long that would take.
Fuck.
'It's your decision,' said Bohwanox, 'but in my opinion, the only reason you shouldn't kill them... is if you don't think you'd be able to get away with it.'
<<Page 19 || Side Story Table of Contents || Page 21>>
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