Krim Times Revisited: Chapters 37 and 38

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Chapter 37: A murder at the post office

Now that the initial panic had died down, Banking Street traffic picked up again and Trask was nearly run over by a wagon from Krim Shipping and Logistics trying to make up for lost time. But he made it to the other side.

Inside the post office, a group of patrons was huddled on one side of the main hall, near the mailboxes, watched over by postmaster Lettice Posting-Wynter.

Trask held his badge up as he walked towards the counter and asked her for a status update.

“Visitors all accounted for!” Lettice barked. Her back was straight and shoulder square and she looked like she was on the verge of saluting. 

Finally, someone who respected the authority of the badge.

Lettice had previously been a general in one of the armies. Trask didn’t remember which one. He couldn’t be expected to keep track of all of them. No, wait, it was for one of the cities up north–Garthram.

“Are you sure none of these people is the griefer?” Trask asked.

“I’m certain,” said Lettice. “None of them left my sight since your guard came in and the service door to the rest of the building is locked.” She pointed to the heavy wooden door on the other side of the main counter, far behind rows of wooden shelving stacked with packages and wire baskets full of smaller items and envelopes. “I let Joe through a couple of minutes ago, but that’s the only time it’s been open in the past two hours.”

“May I?” Trask gestured at the latched divider set into the counter.

Lettice cast a stern glance at the huddled customers. “Stay,” she ordered and they immediately stopped fidgeting. Then she unlatched the divider, lifted it up, and let Trask through.

The service door opened. “The roof and upper floor are clear,” Joe said, standing in the doorway. “But there are two locked doors on this floor. Can you open them in case the griefer is hiding inside?”

“They can’t possibly be inside the building,” Lettice said.

“Well, we know they got to the roof somehow,” said Trask. “I saw them up there. They shot multiple arrows into a crowd of civilians.”

Lettice drew a sharp breath. “That’s a gross violation of the Krim military code of conduct,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean that they got inside the building. They could have left the roof the same way they got there. However it was.”

Trask had a mental image of a griefer swinging onto the post office roof from a nearby building. Except… the post office was taller than the structures immediately around it.

“No, they were definitely inside. I found Brunhilde,” Joe said. “I’m sorry, it’s not good news.”

“Bernie’s dead?”

“Yes. Throat slit. Did she normally carry keys to the doors in this building?”

Lettice nodded and her eyes got a cold hard look in them. If Trask were the griefer, he wouldn’t be coming back to the post office anytime in the near future.

“Well, her keys are missing,” said Joe. “It looks like the griefer took them.”

Lettice pulled out a notepad and made a note. The same brand Trask carried, he noticed. Well, he was also a general too, in a way, though his army was probably a lot smaller than that of the Grand Duke Nigel Percheval in Garthram.

Lettice went to the front door, ordered all the patrons out, and hung a sign that said “back in 15 minutes.” Then she came over to the service exit and Joe took her and Trask through the hall to a couple of locked doors. They were located near the stairway, where Matilda was standing guard.

“Nobody went out, boss,” she told Trask.

“I let her in through the back door,” Joe said. “It was barred from the inside. If the griefer had left that way, they couldn’t have bolted the door behind them.”

Lettice gave Matilda a short nod of recognition then went to the back door herself and lifted the heavy bar and let it fall back into place.

“That’s how it was when I got here,” Joe said. “Solid. I checked all the rooms here and on the second floor. That’s where I found Bernie. The door to the roof was open, but there was nobody up there.”

“Maybe they rappelled down from the roof?” Trask asked. “Or used ropes somehow to get to a neighboring building?”

“They couldn’t have,” said Joe.

“Why not?” said Matilda. “I could do it. And there’s a roof-running course at the community center, so anyone can learn how.”

“The griefer left footprints,” Joe said. “I’ll show you after we check these rooms.” He gestured at the doors.

Lettice walked up to the first one. “This is just a storage closet. We keep the good stuff in here.”

She quickly sorted through the keys on her own ring and unlocked the door. A little bit of light came from a small window. Too small for a person to squeeze through, thought Trask. And it had metal bars. It took a second for his eyes to adjust and then he saw that the small space had shelves on all three sides, except for a gap where mops and brooms hung from hooks. The shelves themselves were filled with bags and jars with poison warning labels. He looked closer. Lettice had a lot of arsenic and strychnine in this closet.

“The poison is for the rats,” Lettice explained. “People send food through the mail,and seeds, flour, sugar, spices, everything wrapped in paper.”

“I guess the griefer’s not in here, then.” Trask backed away from the door and Lettice locked it back up.

The other locked door was further down the hall, right next to the stairs. 

“I don’t think the griefer came this way, either,” said Lettice. “Even if they’d had a key, only grid employees can go through. Even I can’t go in.” She opened the door and, about a foot in the way was blocked by a shimmering purple portal. “It’s the mail delivery gate,” she said. “Every morning, the off-world mail comes in on carts. They roll through, we unload them, and send the carts back.”

Trask raised a hand towards the gate. It glowed slightly and swirled with purple colors, like a pool of plasma. He pulled his hand back before he touched it.

“Oh, it’s harmless,” Lettice said. She stepped around Trask and patted the gate’s surface. “See? Feels like glass.”

Trask hesitantly reached for the surface, paused, then touched it. It was solid and cool to the touch.

“It does feel like glass,” he said. “Could someone break it?”

“Probably not,” said Lettice. “It’s a teleportation gate. But even if they could, it’s not broken now.”

“Ah, right,” said Trask. “So why keep the door locked, then?”

“If a tourist somehow wanders in here, we don’t want to ruin the illusion of being in a medieval setting.”

As she locked the door again, Joe said, “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll show you why I think the griefer didn’t go back out via the roof.”

Trask, Lettice and Matilda followed Joe to the second floor, where the body of Brunhilde Stormcaller, the assistant clerk, was partly visible half-way down the hall. Her head was in the middle of the corridor, lying on top of a faded hallway runner, facing in their direction.

Trask could smell the faint tang of copper in the air and it made him slightly queasy, even after all these weeks on Krim.

Joe stopped them a few feet after they left the stairwell and pointed at the floor. There were footprints going away from Bernie’s body in both directions.

“I’m thinking the griefer came in, killed her, took her keys, and then went to the far end of the hall.”

“To the roof access,” said Lettice. “During nice weather, we sometimes have lunch up there. We’ve got a little table set up and everything. It’s good for morale.”

There were no footprints coming back from the roof access door.

“So he did leave by the roof,” said Trask.

“No,” said Joe. “Footprints get fainter as they go. The blood was getting wiped off on the rug. And drying out. They went out, shot at the crowd, came back. The boots were completely dry by then, but then they stepped in the pool of blood.”

Trask could see that. A large pool of blood would take longer to dry, especially if blood continued to seep out of Bernie’s body.

Joe pointed to a spot on the rug just in front of them. “That’s where they noticed that they were leaving footprints and wiped off their shoes.”

“Or took them off,” added Matilda. 

“Then they went back down the stairs,” Joe added.

“And somehow got past you and Matilda? And Lettice?” Trask shook his head. But how else could the griefer have escaped? “We’ll need to check all the windows,” he said.

They approached the body, staying to the sides of the hallway to avoid stepping on the footprints.

Bernie was sprawled halfway across the hallway, legs still inside the file room, a knocked-over chair just inside the doorway. 

“This is where we keep our records,” said Lettice. “Bernie was just finishing up the morning’s reports.”

“She got taken by surprise,” Matilda said.

“The griefer snuck up the stairs, came up behind her and tried to slit her throat,” Joe said. “She fought back and the chair was knocked over.”

Matilda put a hand on a spot on the wall that was clear of blood splatter so she didn’t have to step in the pool of congealed blood, and leaned down over the body. “Looks like they tried to choke her,” she said. “Look at those marks at the sides of her neck. Maybe they dropped the knife when Bernie fought back. Then when she was unconscious, they cut her carotid.” She peered closer. “Took a couple of tries.”

“Left carotid,” Joe added. “So the griefer could be right-handed?”

“Depends on whether they did it from the front or the back,” Matilda said. She pushed herself away from the wall and stepped back from the pool of blood. “Hard to tell without a forensic analysis. Or we could just ask Bernie.”

“He was right-handed,” said Bernie, and Trask jumped. 

He turned around and saw Bernie standing behind him, even though she was also lying on the floor at his feet.

“I do look a sight,” she said, her eyes on her own dead body. “Makes you think.”

“Where… how…” Trask sputtered, and grabbed at his chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“I’m not a local hire,” Bernie said. “I’m a grid employee. Well, intern, technically. Still, the two-week exclusion rules don’t apply to me.”

“Did you see who killed you?” Trask asked.

“It was a noob,” said Bernie. “He snuck up behind me and got me good. I tried to stand up, but he pulled me down, then leaned over me to finish me off, and I broke his nose. But then he got me after all.” She shook her head. “I’m so embarrassed. A noob! I blame that chair. It was in the way.” She glared at the offending piece of office furniture.

“I’m so sorry,” Trask said. “It must have been awful for you.” 

Lettice glanced down at the body. “Was it at least quick?” she asked.

Bernie shrugged. “I turned down my pain sensors the first time I stubbed a toe,” she said. “I didn’t feel the knife at all.”

“He was pretty lucky to pick just the right time,” said Lettice. “He got past me and snuck up on you, and nobody heard him or saw him.”

“Like a ninja,” said Joe. “With the ability to see through walls.”

“Or an employee,” said Trask. “With access to traffic data.” He looked at Bernie. “Do employees have access to user locations? Well, not individual users, because of privacy, but how many people there are in different places?”

Bernie shrugged. “I’ve only been here a week, but probably, yeah. But I don’t think it was another employee because, first, why would one of them want to kill me? Also, killing people sounds like something players would do. None of the employees care at all about what happens in-world.”

She looked down at the body again and then poked it with the toe of her boot.

“So creepy,” she said. “You know what? I’m done. They told me that as long as I didn’t leave the building, I’d be safe. Sorry, Lettice, but I’m going to go back and ask for another assignment. Maybe see if anybody needs me to fetch any coffee.”

“That’s my third assistant this month,” said Lettice.

As they watched her walk away, Trask had a thought. If the griefer was also an intern like Bernie, or someone else with admin privileges…

“I’ve got a thought,” said Joe. “A Krim resident has a problem with other people on the grid. They get themselves a job with Gully Labs. Now they have admin powers and can come and go as they like, and can settle all their old scores.”

“That works,” said Matilda. “They come in through the employee gate after checking traffic data. They know that one person is busy up front with a large crowd and that there’s just one other person upstairs in the file room. They kill Bernie, go to the roof, do their thing, come back here…”

“Clean off their boots,” said Joe.

“… or take them off,” said Matilda. “Then they go back down to the ground floor and leave through the employee gate.”

“But your idea is good, too, boss,” Joe told Trask. “I’ll go check all the windows now.”

“They’re all barred,” said Lettice. “But maybe the griefer found a weak spot.”

Trask pulled out his own notepad. “Grid staffer” just moved to the top of the suspect list. There should be records, and they wouldn’t be protected. Employees had no privacy rights where their jobs were concerned. Not from their employers, at least.

Trask patted Joe on the shoulder. “You might have just cracked the case. I’ll go talk to Binkie. Or Willie. Someone in administration.” And maybe grab a cheese pie from a vendor at the Central Plaza. It had been a while since breakfast.

Chapter 38: Trask looks at staff comings and goings

“Gully Labs has seventy-four employees and contractors,” said Geraldine “Binkie” Dickson. “Is that it? I’ve got work to get back to.”

“I told you,” Wanda mouthed silently at Trask. She’d warned him that Binkie was busy and didn’t want to be interrupted but Trask had puled out his badge and insisted that he needed to see the Krim World grid manager right away. Instead of telling Wanda to send Trask to her office, Binkie had come out to the City Hall lobby.

“How many of them can use the employee gates to Krim?” Trask asked.

“All of them,” said Binkie. “We have mandatory quarterly on-sites where we bring all the employees in to experience the world and meet with key members of the user base.”

“Do you keep logs of… hold on, quarterly on-sites? Why wasn’t I informed? There are certainly security implications! And the Chamber should certainly be involved with arranging visits with all the movers and shakers.”

“Well, ah, the mandatory quarterly thing is more aspirational,” Binkie said. “The last one was…” She glanced at Wanda, who shrugged. “Maybe three years ago? For the next one, we’ll definitely contact the Chamber to organize events and security.”

“All right, then,” Trask said. Three years ago was long before he started working for the Chamber. Back to the logs, then. “Do you keep records of who goes in and out through the post office gate?”

“We keep logs of everything,” said Binkie. “Why do you need to know?”

Trask touched his badge. “I suspect that someone with employee gate access entered the post office, killed one of your interns, Bernie, then went up to the roof and shot at a crowd of innocent civilians in front of the Krim Chamber of Commerce building.”

Binkie raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like something that one of our employees would do.”

“Can you check the logs anyway?”

“Fine. Is that it?” She began turning away from Trask.

“Can you please do it now? Before the griefer strikes again?” 

She paused.

“If we can rule out grid staffers, we can focus on other suspects,” Trask added. “And the griefing is disrupting commerce and hurting Krim’s bottom line.”

The appeal to the bottom line seemed to have worked.

Binkie waved her hand in the air at something only she could see then looked back at Trask. “I’ve only got a minimal interface while in-world. I’d have to go back to central offices to access the historic logs. It’s a security measure, to keep unauthorized people from logging into our records remotely.”

“We really need the records,” said Trask. “Starting with this Monday morning.”

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I’ll send someone to get them.” She headed down the hall and Trask followed her. She glanced back at him with a sour expression on her face, but Trask pretended he didn’t see it, and she didn’t say anything.

They walked past Willie’s office, then past Binkie’s office, all the way to a larger conference room which was a hive of activity. There were charts on the walls and three grid employees were busy correlating data. William Lockton, the assistant grid manager, was one of them. He was the guy who didn’t notice when his hand was accidentally stabbed, Trask thought. That was suspicious. But then he remembered that Bernie had her pain dialed down as well. Maybe everyone did that. It would certainly be a lot easier to slice your own throat if you couldn’t feel the knife. He was getting close to the griefer. He could feel it.

“We’re a little busy right now because the board wanted to know why our internal survey results were so different from that conducted by the chamber,” Binkie told Trask, then cast a critical eye towards Lockton. “You know, the survey about the two-week suspensions.”

“But we hired local subject matter experts to do the interviews,” Lockton said. “Experts. It’s not our fault if…”

“And their handwriting was atrocious,” Binkie told him. “Half the time, you can’t even tell what the subject’s name or answer was. And we’re going to have to do something about the way we word the questions.”

“It was proper Krimmish,” Lockton said. “If players can’t understand it, they shouldn’t be…”

Binkie picked up a piece of paper, cleared her throat and read: “Dost thou hold it unmeet that carles suffering mortal bale within these our purlieus shouldst not be unbarred from re-entry until such time as one fortnight hath not yet failed to pass?” She looked up from the paper. “I don’t even know what some of those words mean. What’s a ‘purlieus’?”

“I believe that means territory or domain,” said Lockton. “It’s a commonly used term on Krim.”

Trask had never heard that word before, either. But then again, he’d only been on Krim for a few weeks.

“And whose signature is this on the bottom here?” Binkie poked her finger at the offending scrawl.

Lockton took the paper from her and squinted at it, then handed it to one of the other staffers.

“Bee something,” said the staffer. “Beechy Scup?”

“Beauchamp Scrope?” Trask asked.

“No, that’s not it,” said the staffer. “Beach Soup?”

“Boozy Beau isn’t a subject matter expert unless the subject is the relative softness of the mud in the gutters in the vicinity of the local pubs,” said Trask.

“Next time, let’s delegate the surveys to the guilds,” said Binkie.

“And the Chamber of Commerce,” said Trask.

“Yes, I applaud your efforts,” Binkie told him. “Gully and I were very impressed by the handwriting on your reports.”

That was Osgar, Trask thought.

“Elegant, yet completely legible,” Binkie continued. “I’m sorry it took us so long to get to your survey.”

“We get a lot of petitions from grid residents.” Lockton pointed at a foot-high stack of papers in a basket labeled “user communications” then spread his hands. “We’re doing our best to get through them given the resources we have.”

“Well, all the grid residents are grateful for considering the reversal of the two-week exclusion,” said Trask.

“It’s on the agenda for the next board meeting,” said Binkie. “Some people thought that the matter needed more research but I said, ‘Just look at the handwriting on this report! Clearly, this group knows what they’re doing. Let’s take action quickly and settle the matter once and for all.’”

“I’ll tell Osgar,” said Trask. “Meanwhile, about the gate logs…”

“You said you want access to the records of everybody who went through the post office gate today?”

Trask nodded, then remembered the other griefing attacks. “Actually, would it be possible to find out if any employees were on Krim from Monday morning on? That’s when it all started.”

Binkie looked at the three staffers and was about to point at one of them when Lockton spoke up.

“I’ll go get them,” he said. “I need to upload the Chamber survey, anyway.”

“And all the petitions,” said Trask, pointedly looking at the stack of papers.

“Those haven’t been vetted yet,” said Lockton. “And the provenance hasn’t been confirmed.”

Provenance and vetting were important, Trask thought. 

But Binkie disagreed. “We can do that after they’re uploaded,” she said.

Trask didn’t know how to feel about that.

Lockton sighed, went to Binkie’s desk and got the Chamber survey report, then placed it on top of the stack of petitions and lifted the entire basket with an exaggerated grunt of effort.

Trask wondered how long it would take Lockton to get the logs, and if he had time to get another cheese pie, when loud voices came from the direction of the lobby. Seconds later, they heard the sound of multiple boots echoing down the hall.

Everyone stopped and turned to look, there was the sound of struggle from the hallway, then Matilda appeared in the doorway, pushing two ragged, tired, and dirty men in front of her.

“Look who we found!” she said. “Process servers!” She had a grip on Jordan Rex Crewe’s collar in one hand, and Ellison Davo’s in the other. Crewe was struggling vainly in her grip but she gave them a good shake and they stopped wriggling. 

Joe came in right behind her, not holding anybody.

“We were in the plaza, boss, grabbing lunch,” Matilda said. 

“And watching for griefers,” Joe added.

“And guess who we saw trying to sneak out through the gate?”

“They must have walked all the way back to the city,” said Joe.

“They got away from the Baron? I’m surprised.” The two process servers didn’t look like people who could evade the Baron’s soldiers, Trask thought.

“We had to hide in the bushes anytime anyone drove past us,” said Crewe. “I was bitten by a snake.” They held up their hand, which was red and swollen. 

“And you brought these two here because…?” Binkie asked.

“They’re process servers,” said Trask. “We suspect them of hiring griefers to flush out their targets. They’re our other main suspects.”

“We wouldn’t,” said Crewe. “That would just make them hide better. The trick is to find your target quietly, then serve papers right away, before they have time to run and create a whole new identity.”

“I thought you suspected one of our employees,” said Binkie.

“Maybe they’ve bribed one of your staff to help them.” That would explain how they were able to find people, Trask thought. 

“A staffer wouldn’t be able to violate user privacy like that.” Crewe sounded disappointed, as if they’d already tried that. “Can you let us go? You have no reason to hold us. A process server has the legal right to deliver official documents in any online venue without interference from the venue’s owners and operators.”

“Technically, he’s right,” said Binkie. “If these guys are who they say they are, then they’re acting as officers of the court.”

“If they are who they say they are,” Trask echoed. “But anybody can say anything.”

“My company is registered with the courts, licensed, and bonded,” Crewe said.

“Anybody can pick a random company and claim they work for it,” Trask said. “And we can’t ask them for ID now, can we?”

“You can look up my identity in the grid’s user database,” said Crewe. “I know for sure that my real-world payment information is on file, because I had to provide it. So you must have a record of who I really am. It wouldn’t be a privacy violation if I give permission.”

“But how do we prove that it was really you who gave that permission if you later turn around and sue us?” Binkie asked.

“Well, that’s a tricky sticky wicket,” said Ellison and Crewe glared at him. 

Lockton came back into the room, followed by Gully and three other people Trask didn’t recognize. They looked like tourists. 

Ellison muttered something under his breath and Matilda jerked at his collar and he quieted down.

“I got the post office gate access logs for the whole week,” Lockton said and handed the printed pages to Binkie. “And the other gates. And all the other times a grid employee was in-world.” He glanced at Trask. “That should be more than enough.”

Binkie glanced at the printout. “Looks like regular mail delivery activity,” she said. “What’s the key time frame?”

“The last three hours,” Trask said.

“I don’t see anything suspicious,” said Binkie, then flipped through the other pages. “Nothing out of the ordinary on Monday or Tuesday, either.” She passed the pages to Trask.

The query at the top was clear—all post office gate activity for the past seven days. The logged events were coded by employee number, and the same numbers repeated over and over again, every morning and every night. There was no gate access in the middle of the day on any of the past seven days, including today, other than that one employee who arrived in the morning, then came back in shortly after Bernie died, and left again immediately after. “Who’s this?” Trask asked, pointing at it.

“That’s some intern,” Binkie said.  “She complained that the post office wasn’t safe.”

“Ah, hah!” said Trask. “She went up to the roof, shot at people, hid the bow somewhere, came back downstairs, killed herself…”

Matilda shook her head. “By faking a struggle and a choking?”

“And then leaving footprints in your own blood?” Joe added.

Trask flipped to the next page, which showed all in-world employee locations, not just post office gate access. There were several employees in-world right now, all at City Hall, and they were all in the room with him. He looked around and back at the page. Nobody was left out. He flipped slowly back to the beginning and couldn’t see anyone at any location other than City Hall over the past two days. Grid employees really didn’t like going out into the world.

“Well, technically, this report doesn’t include provenance or authentication,” Trask said. In the real world, with proper administrative procedures, electronic documents had metadata and digital signatures. “Or maybe someone tampered with the logs? Or maybe…” He ran out of ideas.

“We’ll do an audit,” Binkie said. “Satisfied?”

“Can I go back to work now?” Lockton asked.

“So we’re back to the griefer being a sneaky ninja who was able to get past Lettice,” Joe said.

“Or the griefer rappelled over from the next roof, and the footprints were there just to fake us out,” said Matilda. 

“Still counts as a ninja,” Joe said.

“I told you who it was,” said Crewe. “It’s that guy.” They pointed at Lockton, who was already halfway out the door. 

Lockton froze mid-step and glanced back.

“I don’t know his name, but I would testify in court that this was the same person I saw fleeing the crime scene, dressed as an assassin, carrying a crossbow,” Crewe said. 

Lockton rolled his eyes. “This is why reports need to be vetted first,” he grumbled. “Players say whatever pops into their heads.”

“Residents,” Binkie corrected, and Lockton rolled his eyes again.

“He looks nothing like the griefer,” Trask added. “The griefer was tall, muscular…” He glanced at Lockton, who was neither of those things. 

Lockton grimaced, then turned and walked out of the room. 

“It’s in the way he moves,” Crewe said. “I can tell its him. It’s my job. It’s what I do.”

“How does that work, exactly?” Matilda asked.

“Never mind that,” said Trask. “We’ve already established that we can’t trust anything these two say. I still recommend that we permanently ban them from Krim.”

“You know what? I don’t care. I was never planning to back here anyway,” Crewe said. 

“We have a process,” said Binkie. “Do you have any evidence of them violating the Krim terms of service?”

“Fine.” Trask turned to Matilda. “We don’t have to ban them. If Gully Labs isn’t allowed to do anything, it doesn’t mean that we can’t. Let’s just hand them back over to the Baron.”

“I’ll have to rent another carriage,” said Joe.

“I’ll authorize it,” said Trask.

“That might work…” Binkie tapped her chin.

“I’m here on official business,” Crewe said.

“But how do we know for sure that they’re process servers?” Binkie asked. “Anyone could make that claim to get out of trouble.”

“The briefcase with the subpoenas could belong to anyone,” Trask added.

“No, wait,” said Crewe. “I’m not lying.”

“I’ll prove it,” said Ellison. “I’ll tell you who everyone is.” He pointed at Binkie. “You’re Geraldine Dickson, Krim World grid manager at Gully Labs.”

“Everyone knows who I am,” said Binkie.

“I don’t,” Crewe said. “How do you know who she is?” they asked Ellison.

“I did my research on the company before coming to save you,” said Ellison. “She’s listed on the staff page.”

“And my Krim avatar looks just like my real one,” Binkie said.

“It doesn’t take special process serving skills to figure that out,” said Trask.

Ellison turned around and pointed at one of the remaining employees. “Priya Nakamura-O’Brien Lee. Administrative staff. Kwame Yoshida-Martinez Park-Williams. Also administrative staff. And their avatars don’t look anything like their staff photos.” He turned again and pointed at Gully. “Wilson Courtney Gully, owner and CEO of Gully Labs, the company behind Krim World.”

Then Ellison looked at the three tourists next to Gully, who’d been watching all this unfold while whispering back and forth to themselves. 

“They’re not on staff,” he said. “Those two, I saw online, but somewhere else. Not at the Krim World site.” He snapped his fingers. “Investment advisory services. The law firm of Green, Park, and Weiland.” He pointed at the woman dressed as a historically-inappropriate witch, wearing a default avatar face. “She’s Catherine Nakamura-Green-Park.” He pointed at the man standing next to her, dressed as a wizard, also not accurate to 1500s England. “He’s Mark Green-Park-Weiland.”

“They’re on our board,” said Gully.

“He got their names right?” asked Matilda. “How the hell…?”

“He must have heard someone mention them,” said Trask.

“I’ve been holding on to these two since I caught them by the gate,” said Matilda. “If they heard anything, I would have heard something, and I didn’t hear anything. And I have excellent hearing.”

“Maybe they’ve used the same avatars before?” Trask looked at Gully and the two directors.

“Mx. Makamura-Green Park, Mr, Green-Park Weiland,” Binkie said. “Is there any way this gentleman here could have known in advance the avatars you’d be using today?”

“I just picked a random one off the featured list,” said the witch. 

“I  picked the wizard because of the hat,” said Mark, taking the pointy hat off his head and holding it up to admire it. It had stars and lightning bolts appliqued to it.

“So, Ellison, you don’t recognize me?” asked the third tourist.

“No, I recognize you,” Ellison told her. “I’d just rather pretend you weren’t here.” He looked at Gully. “I hope you’re not planning to allow this woman anywhere near your grid. Elea Carlyle is the most toxic person I’ve ever met.”

“Now, is that any way to talk about your former boss?” Elea asked him, then glanced at Gully. “I also have a random avatar,” she said. “I would have preferred that nobody here recognized me. Not just yet, at least. I was hoping that my investment would come as a surprise to the media, and get some good publicity for both my foundation and the grid.”

“So you recognize this man?” Gully asked.

“Yes,” said Elea. “He never changes his appearance. You’d think, with his reputation, he might prefer to be anonymous.”

“My reputation?!” Ellison’s face reddened. “You’re a mass murderer!”

“That’s a bit of an overstatement,” Elea said calmly, examining her fingernails for added effect. “As everyone knows, there was no culpability. The trials proved that. Oh, wait, you were there, weren’t you?” She smiled slightly with just her lips and Trask felt a slight chill run up his spine.

“I’m very impressed,” said Nakamura-Green-Park, looking at the two process servers with interest. “And you go into privacy-enabled grids, like Krim, and find people who are trying to conceal their identities and avoid being served with subpoenas?”

“Yes,” said Crewe. He tried to take a step forward but Matilda jerked him back. “The company is Crewe Investigations and that is, in fact, the service we perform. However, Ellison is not currently in our employ. We do not hire former prison inmates.”

“Wrongly accused,” Ellison said.

“And we only work with cases that don’t rise to the level of a court appearance order,” Crewe added. “Official appearance orders are served directly to grid operators, and privacy seals do not apply. But we work with a lot of civil law firms. I’ll send you our contact information once we’re off-world.”

“What’s your trick?” Matilda asked, giving Ellison a good shake. 

He staggered a bit, but managed to retain his footing. “Just a little skill I picked up in prison,” he said, then added, “but I was wrongly accused and, in any case, have since paid any alleged debt to society.”

“It has to be some kind of a trick,” said Trask. “Nobody can see people’s real identities just by looking at an avatar.” Maybe Ellison was one of those con men, he thought, or stage magicians, like those people who could look at a person and guess their age and what they had in their pockets.

“It’s not a trick,” Elea said. “It’s just a very rare, but very useful skill that some people have. Though I didn’t know that Ellison could do it when I hired him. I was more interested in his other… abilities.”

“Even if it is a trick, it’s a very useful one for process servers to have,” said Binkie. “I think we’re going to have to let them go.”

“Aww, are you sure?” Matilda said. “The Baron was looking forward to flaying them alive. He’d be very disappointed.”

“Well…” Gully said. Trask could see that he was wavering. After all, he was friends with the Baron.

“Let them go,” Nakamura-Green-Park ordered. “If they sue, the recording of this conversation will come up in discovery.”

“Darn it,” said Matilda. She let go of both men’s collars and they quickly backed away from her.

Joe stepped aside to let them go past and they marched out of the room with a stiff gait. By the sound of their boots, they’d started running as soon as they were out of sight, Trask thought.

“Well, that was a bust,” Joe said as they walked down the hall. “I guess we’re just down to the Clem Brana ninja theory.”

Matilda shook her head.

“Do you know something?” Trask asked her.

“I’ve got some friends on Clem Brana,” she said. “Unsavory kinds of friends. They haven’t heard of anybody hiring griefers to go into Krim and cause trouble. They’ve got their own stuff going on and don’t have time to worry about us.”

Trask walked in silence through the City Hall lobby and out onto the front steps of the building. It was already getting dark. Where had the day gone? Krim residents were bustling around. After all the beheadings, the threat of a poorly-aimed arrow from a griefer must have paled in comparison. Plus, people could get used to anything.

Even the merchants were acting as if things were back to normal. The night-time party tourists would start arriving soon, and they’d want cabs and directions to the bars and brothels and reasons to pick a fight. Other merchants were closing down for the day, ready to go home and light a fire and put their feet up and maybe have some hot soup.

He could see wisps of smoke already starting to rise from the direction of Krim’s residential areas. And a particularly large cloud from straight ahead, on the other side of the main gate and the wall that bounded the north side of the square. 

“I see flames,” said Matilda. 

“Some people are so careless…” Trask began, then stopped. “No, that’s the commercial district. That’s where the import-export companies are. Joe, can you go see what’s going on? Matilda and I will be over there in a few minutes.”

Trask wanted the fire to be well under control by the time he arrived. And, also, he wanted to get something to eat from the food vendors. All he’d had for lunch was a cheese pie. Time had just flown by.

“Get me some rat pies,” Joe said, then jumped down the stairs and ran towards the fire.

“They’re not actually made of rat,” Trask told Matilda as he started down. “I believe they’re a mixture of pork and chicken.”

“But not the good parts of pork and chicken,” Matilda said, then had to move out of the way as a messenger ran towards them.

“The scriptorium’s on fire!” the messenger yelled, then rushed up the City Hall steps.

“That’s full of paper, isn’t it?” Matilda asked Trask.

“Yes,” he said. “How many pies do you think Joe wants?”