I waved to her and she finally gave up.

  Once inside, I locked the door and made sure all the shades were drawn. I didn’t like to advertise occupancy, especially on a night when I was the only one in our trailer camp. The instant coffee was a novelty that has long lost its appeal but it’s all I had. The trailer’s electrical system would probably not be able to handle an appliance like the office percolator, much less something from the twenty-first century like the Keurig coffee machine. Boiling water on a hot plate was going to be the highlight of my evening. I could just feel it.

  The small TV on the ribbon-strip of kitchen counter came with the trailer. I’m sure it was the trailer’s number one selling point. There were four channels I could watch. None carried global news. I wasn’t ready yet for watching local news; maybe I’ll never be. TV was going to get a time-out tonight.

  I fired up my laptop but did not open my email. Plotting the murder-of-the-week had already started to feel like a chore and I was only into my fourth week. Doubt started to erode my confidence that I would be able to last the full two years of my contract. I could do literature review on any topic, apply principles of critical analysis to any subject and my review would place in the top five in my class. On any subject—but murder. I was well read…just not in murder, murderers and their motives.

  “I should have chosen assassination,” I said out loud. Most assassinations had political roots and politics were my forte…and wasn’t assassination a form of murder; a particular form usually defined by the victims’ milieu?

  It wouldn’t be against the rules to make my fourth blog post a particular form of murder—an assassination. That would be something I’d feel qualified to write about; I wouldn’t even have to research old cases where a prominent public figure was assassinated. I knew enough about political assassination to just pick a victim and then apply all the knowledge that sat in my mental backpack, just waiting to be accessed. But first I had to run it by Dad.

  It was past nine o’clock which meant it would be after eleven on the east coast. Mom and Dad were night owls but it was a weekend. They might have gone out or might even have gone to bed to get a good night’s rest. After all, a beekeeper’s life was not easy. I chuckled, thinking of my mother and how she coped with Dad’s retirement projects.

  “Dad?” I said when he picked up.

  “Honey, we didn’t expect to hear from you on a Friday night.” It was my mother who answered my father’s cell phone. Was that something worrisome?

  “Is Dad okay, Mom?”

  “Oh, honey, he’s fine, just fine…just tuckered out. Beekeeping is not for the faint of heart…or for a retired shrink, as he mumbled just as he fell asleep. He didn’t even manage to stay awake through his favorite TV show. He’s at the stage where he’s still chasing after his bees because he wants to see the ‘wonder of their collective work,’ as he keeps saying. He’ll re-think his sentiments when the bees start chasing after him. Patrick called two days ago. Caitlyn’s expecting again. They might come back before his contract’s over.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, making a mental note to email my brother and his wife and congratulate them. It would also be good if my brother and his family came back because his company was in Maine. He’d be able to keep an eye on our father, the intrepid beekeeper.

  “Are you working on your next blog post?” Mom asked.

  I told her what I was thinking.

  “It’s a bit different than murder,” my mother said. “You will be shrinking the victim and motive pool because assassination is generally for political reasons and to a lesser degree for money. Murder can have any number of motives, and any number of reasons so the pool of victims is…well, bottomless.”

  Now there was something I haven’t thought about.

  “So you don’t think an assassination is a good idea?”

  “It’s your blog, honey. Make up something that interests you. Or the opposite. Write about something that is very new to you.”

  “Like a roller derby,” I mumbled. Was my subscriber trying to motivate me into rising above the hum-drum murder and spin something out of the ordinary?

  “That was a shame, but it’s almost the nature of the sport itself. Your father said there is no such thing anymore as a healthy sport—just violent interactions.”

  “Mom, what are you talking about?” Mom never rambled but it sure sounded like that to me.

  “The accident, honey. Angel Duckies, the local girls’ roller team, from Hampden. Amateur League but your father said they were worth watching. These days he watches community channels, you know. A girl was checked or blocked, I don’t know the terminology, and her helmet strap broke right off. She spun out and crashed over the railing. Seemed to be okay, picked herself up and all and went to sit down and rest; five minutes later, when a teammate went to check on her, she found her dead. Just sat there on the bench, back to her teammates, bend over like she was taking a breather. It was in the Hampden Community News.”

  “When, Mom?” I asked, trying to control my shivering hand that wanted to keep scrolling even past the bottom of the page.

  “When what, Honey?”

  “When did the accident happen?”

  “Oh, about a week ago or so. Your father would remember. I didn’t pay much attention to it.”

  “Are the police investigating?”

  “No, Honey. There’s nothing to investigate, except maybe the helmet manufacturer on account of that broken strap. It was an accident. She hit her head. Aneurism. Happens even to the young ones, you know. I hope you’re taking care of yourself.”

  “Yes, Mom, always. Kiss Dad for me when he wakes up. I know it’s late where you are so good night,” I said and made the obligatory kissing noise into the cell phone then hung up.

  A week ago. My subscriber wanted me to fictionalize an accident to make it into a murder. That was all right. It’s what I was supposed to do—fictionalize murder to make it interesting. My hand shook because of where the accident occurred—back home, in my part of the country. He obviously knew who I was and where I was from. That part would have been child’s play to pull out. Heck, if he’d called the Times HR in New York they might have given him my particulars, if he spun the right story for them.

  Why did he choose this particular accident? Was it to motivate me into letting him participate in my blog or was it to frighten me? Or was it to threaten me, to show me that he could reach into any part of my life and twist it any way he liked…if I didn’t do as he wanted.

  My mother believed it was an accident. It’s what the news back home had reported. But what if…what if the Bangor police let the community think that’s what it was? What if it really was a murder?

  It was unlikely that my subscriber was in Bangor a week ago—but not improbable. It was unlikely that he had something to do with the young roller derby player’s death—but not out of the realm of possibilities. I desperately wanted to believe that I was dealing with an overzealous fan who wanted to force me into collaboration on my blog. My father, however, believed we were dealing with a criminal…a killer.

  I let go of the mouse and picked up my cell phone again. Melina answered just when I thought the call would go into voicemail. It was noisy. The music had to be coming from ten bands, not just one. I could barely hear her.

  “I’ll text you,” I shouted and ended the call. I texted her to come and get me, if her offer was still good. I was getting bored, researching my next murder.

  Ten seconds from giving up and shutting off my cell phone, Melina texted back.

  “Be there in ten minutes. Wear something nice.”

  A mask, I thought, to hide my fear.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I was ready when the knock on the door came. I’d put on a multicolor abstract floral hem tank that I wore the last time Cyril took me to DeMorado, a Brooklyn night club where everything was purple, including many of its mixed drinks. It was the night we broke up over something that now seemed very trivial to me. Cyril wanted to be a war correspondent. I said I wanted to live with someone who actually came home in person—not in a box. We took two taxi cabs home that night, even though we were going to the same place because Cyril lived in a flat above the one I shared with five flatmates.

  “Well, what do you think?” I threw the door open with those words and whatever else I may have wanted to say, stuck inside.

  “Very nice, but a little bit on the cool side. You might want to take a jacket or put a shirt over that top. Nights around here don’t get warm until we’re into July,” Ben said, measuring me with casual, even obligatory interest.

  “Where’s Melina?” I finally managed to ask. I felt trapped. Why would she do that to me?

  “She’s no longer in any shape to drive,” he said. “Since you prefer coffee to beer or liquor, you can drive back…when she’s ready to stop drinking and dancing.”

  “I didn’t see a dance floor…” I had to go with him, if only for Melina’s sake, but I needed time to pull myself together.

  “There isn’t one but that never stopped Melina from dancing before; not when her favorite band’s on stage. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Let me get my jacket,” I said and pocketed my cell phone.

  He came in the black SUV he’d said was a loaner. I must have looked startled when he opened the door for me and held it because he just motioned for me to get inside and then walked around the truck’s front to get to the driver’s side.

  These days no one opened the car doors for anyone, not even taxicab drivers. It was so out of synch with today’s world of rush-rush just get me there style of living—and moving. Maybe the doorman at the Waldorf Astoria did it for the well-established clients but no one has certainly done it for me…not that I could recall.

  “Seatbelt,” he said, starting the truck.

  I hurriedly put it on. Did I just trap myself?

  “Relax. I’m not going to drag race or anything. Just basic safety. How’s your blog going?”

  “Okay. I posted the third murder instalment yesterday.”

  “Didn’t get a chance to read it. Work’s been kind of busy. Tell me about it.”

  I did, very quickly, summarizing with so few words it felt like a brush off even to me.

  “Losing interest?” His tone of voice was no longer flat. He actually wanted to hear my answer.

  “I’m finding it somewhat difficult to make up murders that readers will find interesting,” I confessed and wondered why I was being so truthful.

  “Then maybe you should ask your readers what interests them; their input might help you structure your murder scenarios such that you’ll get more subscribers.”

  “I don’t think that’s what my boss back in New York had in mind when he gave me this assignment.”

  “Aren’t you a journalist? They’re supposed to have more freedom to choose what they present to their readership than just assignments.”

  “I’m an intern. I’m supposed to be learning…with a mentor.” I shook my head. “Well, that hasn’t really worked the way I was told it would. Actually, I didn’t know what I was getting into when I signed the contract. Plotting fictional murders was…it just sort of happened.”

  “Meaning you chose it, thinking it would be easy.”

  “I never thought it would be easy. I thought it would be fun...well, at least meaningful.”

  “How’s your hacker-subscriber?” Suddenly he changed the topic.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I lied.

  “Has he offered you more scenarios? Like I said, I haven’t read you last blog post so I haven’t seen any comments. Is he still bothering you?”

  My subscriber wasn’t bothering me, he was threatening me. “He sent me another email with a murder scenario. It involved sports…just like you suggested the last time I spoke with you.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I had a new email, still unopened.

  He made a huffing noise and out of the corner of my eyes I saw him shake his head. “I’ve told you many times. I’m not your subscriber, much less your hacker. If he gave you a sports scenario, then it was purely accidental; nothing to do with me. I think you should have let your corporate in New York know what’s going on here with your blog the moment he hacked your colleague’s email account. I still think you should.”

  “It was real,” I said. I didn’t want to hear about New York and what I should have done. It was too late anyway. If I let Ganz know now, he’d want to know why I didn’t inform him right away and then the contract would become null and void.

  “What was?”

  “The sports scenario—just that it wasn’t a murder. It was an accident.”

  “Then he could have read about it somewhere and paraphrased it for you to make it look like murder.”

  “It seemed that way. I didn’t use it.”

  “Maybe you should have. What would be the consequences to you—your job—if you accepted a contribution from a reader and ran with it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know and the way things are, I don’t want to find out. This isn’t the job I thought I’d get when I graduated but now that I have it, it’s a paying job and I have student loans.”

  “If he sends you another scenario, why don’t you initiate a dialogue with him? You think he’s in one of your chat groups. Call him out. See if it is him and then talk to him. See what exactly is it that he wants.”

  “He might have sent me another email,” I mumbled.

  He drove in silence for a while then said, equally quietly, “So it’s like that. I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s not a game for you and it’s no longer just annoying you. He sent you an email but you haven’t opened it yet. You feel threatened. That’s not good.”

  “I don’t feel threatened,” I said sharply. No man had the right to psychoanalyze me—except my father and he had earned that right simply by virtue of being my father and raising me. Besides, he was a really good psychiatrist with a very low recidivist rate for his criminal clientele.

  “Yes you do and that’s how you felt when you opened the door and saw me standing there.”

  “I was expecting to see Melina. You startled me, that’s all.”

  “You need to talk about this with someone who’d have the authority to do something about it.”

  “No. I don’t need to talk to any authority.”

  “Then come to talk to me about it. We’ll work something out that won’t have you feeling trapped every time you hear a knock on your door.”

  “I don’t need therapy,” I said coldly.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you do but it’s coming to the point where you might be needing protection. Or advice, at the very least.”

  “From you? From someone who doesn’t exist?”

  I saw his hands gripping the wheel slide up and down as if he was debating something with himself. “We’re here,” he said and turned the wheel sharply to the right to come to the generous clearing that was the Paradigm’s parking lot.

  I reached for a handle but he was faster. He clicked the doors locked.

  “Let me out,” I said, fear squeezing my chest.

  “In a moment. You research, that’s your job, so it was only a matter of the time before you started asking your colleagues about me; about what they told you about me.”

  “I didn’t research you…I just wanted to see where you fit in your family in Boise, except you’re nowhere to be found in the Doublinth ranks.”

  “I’m not in any of the family pictures. I’m not on any company or corporate websites either. But that doesn’t mean I don’t exist or that I am not Ben Doublinth.”

  “Doublinths have a long-standing tradition of giving only certain names to their children. Benjamin or Ben isn’t one of them.”

  He shook his head. “No, but if you’ve gotten this far in your research you’d have noticed that Doublinths also have a tradition of giving more than one—or even two names to their children. That way the child has a choice of which name he or she wants to use.”

  He gave me a plausible explanation but from the moment I arrived in Kinematic Town, Idaho, plausible didn’t mean what it used to mean in New York or even in Maine.

  “Why did you distance yourself from your family?” I asked.

  “Many reasons,” he said and I heard a series of clicks as he unlocked the doors and got out. I jumped out too and hurried after him.

  “Does any of them have to do with that light band on your ring finger?” I asked as he was opening the door.

  He turned around so abruptly I didn’t get a chance to stop and ran into him. For a moment our faces were so close they were almost touching then he grabbed my arms and held me out, saying, “Curiosity can be a good thing…or a dangerous pursuit. You were right back there. Writing a blog in Kinematic is not your journalistic destination. Merely a bump in the road. Keep plugging until you get over it. You deserve to have the kind of job that gives you satisfaction—and puts your research and investigative talents to good use.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was eleven o’clock on Sunday night when I finally clicked on the email I should have opened on Friday. I might have saved Jake’s truck and a skunk family that someone released inside it when Noah parked it on a street in Southeast Boise, where he and Emilie went to visit her distant relatives.

  The message, once I read it, sent me outside, running for Jake’s trailer. He was already opening the door when I got there.

  He showed me his cell phone. “Just got off the phone with Noah. They won’t make it in tonight and probably not until tomorrow night. They went to the hospital to get checked out, just in case, but they’re okay. Emilie’s taking it kind of hard. She’s the one who opened the door first and startled the skunks so she was blasted. She screamed and Noah came running and got hosed too. He managed to open the other door and the animals scampered out. Unfortunate timing, that’s all. A truck was just passing by and ran them over, all four of them; parents and two young ones. Emilie is inconsolable. Her relatives went and got cans and cans of tomato juice and it’s helping, from what Noah said, but unfortunately the same can’t be said of my truck. Noah’s had it towed to some place in Avimor that specializes in decontamination of motor vehicles. I can’t even begin to guess what it’s going to cost me.”