The next morning Rachel was home again, but she was finishing up some graphic design projects—her job before getting her psych degree. She was tapering off that part of her career, but she wanted to keep a few clients she liked. Sometimes she put on noise-canceling headphones so my phone calls wouldn’t bother her, but today she just played music at a low volume on her phone.
Coffee mug in front of me, I sent the trivia team photo to my client and then called her. Cristin Ward recognized a few of the names from the photo caption, but knew nothing about them. “I didn’t meet Jeremy until after he graduated,” she told me. “He wasn’t really the type to relive his college glory days or anything like that.”
I thanked her and started hunting for the trivia crew.
They were a lot easier to find. I got contact information on three of them through the Northwestern alumni site. The only one I didn’t find immediately was Dan Getty, so I left him for last.
I left messages on their social media sites and sent emails to two of them I had addresses for, although sending emails made me uneasy after what had happened to Ward. I didn’t mention him, just Tyner. Then I waited, eventually going on to other cases I was working on.
At 11:30 I got an email from Matt Arreguin. “Haven’t seen Chad since 2010. I don’t know where he is today. He majored in computers, if that helps. Sorry. Good luck!”
I got another message from Albert Miller a few minutes later:
Mr. Jurgen,
I do recall knowing Chad Tyner at college. He was part of a group of friends, although I didn’t know him well. I remember him as quiet, very intelligent, and somewhat arrogant and temperamental. He lived in the same dorm as Jeremy Ward, but not as roommates, IIRC. I haven’t had any contact with him since 2011 or 2012.
Okay, then. Maybe the next response would be more informative. As a detective, sometimes all you can do is hope.
At 1:30 my phone buzzed. “Hello, Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Hello, my name is—my name is Emily Larsen. I just saw your email on my husband’s phone. The thing is, uh—he died.”
Was it—I forced myself not to jump to any conclusions. “I’m so sorry. May I ask what happened?”
“I don’t, uh, really know. I came home from work, and he was sitting at the kitchen table with his phone, and he was just—gone. The paramedics said it was his heart. At the hospital they said something about an aneurysm. Even though he exercised and everything.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m afraid I can’t help you, I never heard of this Chad Tyner.”
Oh wow. “You said he had his phone out?”
“Y-yeah. His email was open, like he was checking his messages. Why?”
“Did he ever mention Chad Tyner? From college? At the University of Michigan?”
“I—I don’t think so. I don’t remember that name.”
“What about Jeremy Ward? Albert Miller? Or Matt Arreguin? Dan Getty?”
“Wait, wait!” She was gasping, and I bit my lip, angry at myself. “I’m sorry, I just—give me a minute.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Larsen. I shouldn’t have asked like that. Take your time. If you don’t remember any of them, that’s all right.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m just still getting used to—getting used to the new things. Yeah, I remember Matt whatever. And Danny Getty. The other ones? Maybe. I don’t know. But I couldn’t tell you anything about them, they were just names to me.”
“All right. Can I ask, when did your husband die?”
“It was a week ago. Wednesday. I’ll never forget.”
Wednesday. The same day Jeremy Ward had died. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Thanks for your help.” We hung up.
Rachel turned in her chair. “What was that?”
“Nothing, just made a widow cry. You know, doing the Lord’s work.”
“You bastard. Everything okay?”
“Not really. One of Ward’s friends also died last week while reading his email. There’s no way to tell if it was from Tyner, but with my luck, it’s not just a coincidence.” I started typing emails. “Anything on the laptop?”
“I can have Derek come by and pick it up.” She swung around and started texting.
“Derek, he’s the guy who’s fighting—wait, I don’t want to know.” I’d met him once before. He and his friends were fighting some kind of secret war against witches and warlocks, and that was more than I wanted to know. “Okay, thanks.” I went back to typing.
Rachel went to microwave some soup for her lunch. I sent a group email to everyone on the trivia team, advising them not to open any emails from Chad Tyner. I implied that they might have a virus, because I didn’t want to panic anyone or have them decide I was crazy. Enough people think that already.
Then I called my client. “It looks as if one other person in that photo got an email and died right away. I can’t confirm that it’s from Tyner, but it’s a little suspicious.”
“Okay.” She sounded tired, but a little nervous. “By the way, I showed that picture to my kids. My son didn’t recognize anybody, but my daughter Kylie—she said it reminded her of one time when Jeremy told her to, what was it? Watch out for guys who thought they were geniuses. She’s 14. Ben is 11.”
“She didn’t recognize any of the names?”
“No, there was just something about it. She doesn’t remember when he said it. I’m sorry, it’s probably nothing—”
“That’s fine. You never know what might be important. I’ll get back to you.”
Now what? I took another stab at finding Dan Getty, the only name on the list I hadn’t tracked down, but after an hour I gave up. Maybe he was dead, or in prison somewhere, or transitioned, or just changed his name and moved to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
So I went back to looking for more info on Tyner. I couldn’t search the entire United States, so I concentrated on the Evanston area and expanded slowly around the state. Nothing showed up on any property listings in the area. His name didn’t appear in any newspapers or other media around in 2010 or a few years before or after. I actually tried calling the bar where they’d won the trivia contest, but it was under new ownership. Someone did give me the name of one of the previous owners, who now ran a restaurant in Skokie.
I managed to get him on the phone. His name was George Bowden, and his voice sounded hoarse and grumpy, but he tried to be helpful. “Yeah, I remember lots of those trivia nights, they were pretty popular with the college kids, but there’s just no way I can remember a name from that far back. Sorry.”
“It was a long shot,” I admitted.
He didn’t hang up, though. Maybe he wanted someone to talk to for a bit. “I mean, I remember lots of people and stuff that happened. We had one bartender who dated practically every girl who came in for six weeks, and then he just quit and joined the Army. Then there was—wait, you said March in 2010 or 2011, right? That was around the time that girl disappeared.”
“What girl?”
“I forget her name, but she was a student, and she just didn’t show up in class and wasn’t in her apartment, and they looked for her for a week, and when they found her, she was dead. Murdered.”
A chill rose up my neck. “Did they catch the killer?”
“I think so. I don’t remember much more about it. It was a big scandal for a couple of weeks, people were scared to go out at night. Hurt business until the end of the term.”
Maybe it wasn’t connected. But it was something to check out. “Thank you.”
The online search took less than five minutes, and scooped up lots more information than anything I’d been able to find on Chad Tyner or his friends. Miranda Sherman, 20, had disappeared on the night of March 22, 2011, somewhere between the University Library and her apartment eight blocks away. She’d been working on a project at the library with friends, left around 8:30, and never got home.
March 22. The picture of Ward and his teammates was in the newspaper on the 23rd, which meant the contest was probably the previous night The same night as the disappearance. Coincidence?
Her roommate reported her missing the next morning. Police searched the campus, students posted pictures, friends appeared on TV, and Miranda’s parents begged for answers. Six days later, two students spotted a body under some bushes on the edge of campus.
Miranda had been dead for several days, her body dumped sometime in the middle of the night. The media reported that her body had been sexually abused, without going into any gory details. A few days later the police arrested a student, Glen Delvecchio, for the murder. Case closed.
A call to my client confirmed that Cristin had never heard of Miranda Sherman. I debated sending another round of emails to Jeremy Ward’s friends asking about Miranda, but decided to hold off until I was sure there was a definite connection.
I realized it was almost three o’clock and I hadn’t eaten lunch. So I made myself a sandwich. My phone buzzed as I was eating it.
“Hi, this is Albert Miller.” He sounded nervous. “I just wanted to let you know, I, uh, I got an email from Chad Tyner. What should I do?”
The muscles in my neck tensed. “You just received it?”
“No, I missed it. Last week. I was cleaning out my email just now and found it there.”
“You didn’t read it?”
“No, not after I got that email from you. I don’t want any viruses. Should I delete it?”
My first instinct was to say yes. Then—“Can you forward it without opening it?”
“Uh, let me see . . . yeah, I can send it as an attachment.”
“Okay, hang on a moment.” I went to my office. Rachel looked up and I opened Jeremy Ward’s laptop. “Send it to this address.” I gave him Jeremy Ward’s email. Just to keep it contained and off my own network.
“Just a second. Okay, I just sent it.”
In a moment, a new email popped up on Ward’s screen. The subject line read only HELLO. The sender was CTY3456@intraX.com. “Okay, go ahead and delete it. You should be okay.” I hoped.
“All right. There. It’s gone.”
“Empty your trash, or clear your cache, or whatever you need to do to be sure it’s completely gone.” Or as far gone as possible. Nothing ever completely disappears from the internet, I knew.
“Okay, okay. It’s gone. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know yet.” I closed the laptop. “Do you remember a woman named Miranda Sherman?”
“I don’t think so. No, wait—I do remember her. She was the girl who was killed, wasn’t she?”
“The same night you guys won the trivia contest.”
“Really? I didn’t—wait, you’re not saying Chad had something to do with what happened to her, are you?”
“He has an alibi, obviously. You were all together.”
“Right. Right. That was terrible. I remember that.”
“You didn’t know her yourself? Or anyone else in the group?”
“I don’t think so. You know, it wasn’t like we were all best friends. We were just at the bar that night when they did trivia and we did pretty good, so we kept coming back for a couple of weeks. Eventually we broke up, probably when finals were coming.”
I nodded to myself. “Well, thank you for getting in touch with me.”
“Look, let me know if anything else is going on, okay? This is making me nervous.”
“It’s okay. I’m sure everything’s fine.” I was lying. I wasn’t sure at all. But I didn’t want him to freak out on me.
Rachel was watching me as I ended the call. “I love it when I’m home and I can listen in on all the drama. What’s going on?”
I told her about Miller. “So we’d better tell Derek to be extra careful with this.” I patted the laptop.
“He’s coming by after dinner. Which it’s your turn to make, by the way.”
I looked at the time. “Fine. Tell him to join us, if he wants.”
Derek brought us oven mitts as a wedding gift. “Congratulations!” He kissed Rachel on the cheek and shook my hand. “I’m not at all offended that I wasn’t invited.” He pouted.
“It was a pretty small ceremony,” I told him. “Also, we don’t have your address.”
He winked. “Got to keep a low profile, you know?”
I’d made baked ziti for dinner, and Derek ate enough to make leftovers pretty sparse. He was Asian, late 30s, with a short beard and muscular shoulders in a black T-shirt. He was good company, though, and helped clean up with the dishes when we finished.
Then in the living we sat down with Jeremy Ward’s laptop, Rachel on one side and me on the other. As Derek opened it up, Rachel suddenly leaned back. “Whoa.”
“Yeah,” Derek breathed.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s some serious bad stuff there.” Rachel edged away from Derek. “Lots worse than yesterday.”
“The new email. Rachel told you all about this?”
“Yeah.” Derek carefully explored the laptop without opening the email. “Give me a few minutes.”
“Should we leave the room?” I asked. “In case things go boom?”
He grinned. “That’s what makes this fun.”
That didn’t answer my question, but it seemed rude to hide in the bedroom. So Rachel and I waited and watched. After a few minutes Rachel yawned and picked up the remote. “Mind if I watch TV?”
She found a reality show and kept it quiet while Derek worked. After a while he unzipped a leather pouch strapped to his belt and took out a feather, a small rock, and a dried rose petal. He placed them on the screen of an iPad he’d brought, opened an app, and rolled some dice. “Hmm.” He rolled again, shook his head, and repeated. On the fourth roll he nodded. “Okay.”
Rachel turned off the TV. “Just getting to the good part.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He opened the email application. “Let’s find out.” He moved the cursor arrow to the Tyner email, then turned the laptop so it was facing away from us, a finger over the Return key. “One, two, three—"
“Wait—" I reached over to grab his arm, but he tapped the button too fast. “Rachel!”
A flash of light blinked from the laptop screen. Derek flipped the laptop back around and pumped a fist in the air. “Yes!”
I looked at the screen, my heart pounding. In the message space was a symbol I didn’t recognize: a circle with a line thrusting diagonally through it. Like a dagger. “What’s that? What did you do?”
“I defused the curse. It was pretty simple, really.” Derek seemed proud of himself anyway. He pointed. “That’s all that’s left. It’s a symbol from ancient Egypt that was used on the tombs of the Pharaohs, wishing death on anyone who opened them.”
“It’s harmless now?”
“Yeah, there was some code around it that self-destructed when I opened it up. That was the flash. I wish I could have saved that, but it’s what kills the person who sees it.”
I rubbed my head. “What’s IntraX?”
“Must be some kind of private email app. It goes through a dozen different servers, and I can’t find where it originates.” He started gathering up the stuff from his pouch. “How many people did he send this to?”
“Five, I think. Two of them are already dead. Do you have any idea who it is? Or where?”
He scratched his face and then looked at the laptop. “Without something from him, something he’s touched, or maybe a piece of his hair, I can’t get a lock on someone.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”
We stood up. Derek kissed Rachel’s cheek again, and we shook hands. “Good luck!” He winked at me again. “Call me anytime. Rachel’s got my number.”
“I will. Or she will. Whatever. Thanks for helping.”
After he left and I’d locked the door, I sat next to Rachel, who was watching her show again. “How did you guys meet, anyway?”
She sighed. “A friend of mine was mixed up with a bunch of so-called Satanists, who turned out to be a collection of whackos who wanted to sacrifice her to some demon. I was trying to help her when Derek and his friends showed up and, well, killed them. The head guy, Leo, didn’t want to talk much, but Derek was friendly and we kept in touch.”
“Where was I?”
“This is before we were living together. I guess you were working.”
I shook my head. “And you never told me? During a long car trip or something?”
She laughed and kissed me. “Leo sort of wanted me to keep it a secret. And I think the next day you had a new crisis or something.”
I kissed her back. “Okay. I just don’t want to find out you have a secret life as a vigilante demon slayer or something that you never bothered to mention.”
“Oh, I’ve got secrets.” She winked. “Just give me time.”
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