V.
ON MY RIDE BACK from Midtown East to Gowanus my wrist begins to ache in a steady pay attention to me way, which at least serves as a distraction from my latest failure to solve Sarah’s murder. I have to carry my bike up the four flights of stairs to my apartment, and by the time I reach my landing I feel ready to amputate the limb. Why is this not getting better? Should I go to a doctor? They’ll just order me to stay off a bicycle for some unacceptably long period of time. I unlock the front door and nudge it open with the wheel of my bike. Maybe I can try biking one-handed?
“Jesus Christ!” I say.
Becks, Max, and some guy I’ve never seen before all turn around like I’ve gate-crashed their party. Becks is dressed in her usual monochromatic chic, blond hair shining like it has its own power source. In my dump of a living room, the cold hard shell of her glamour, intimidating enough in Tribeca, makes her seem like a member of some impossibly advanced alien race looking in to see if this backwater is even worth their while to colonize.
“Not quite,” she says.
Max says, “There she is!”
“What are you…” I say. “How did you…”
Becks says, “Max was telling me about his artistic process for Brief Encounters.”
I realize the three of them are standing in front of the painting that hangs on the wall above the couch. It’s my favorite of Max’s literary portraits, Holly Golightly (a version that owes a debt to Audrey Hepburn, Most Beautiful Woman Ever) with Jay Gatsby. I’m starting to feel like the one character in a Marvel-DC crossover story line who knows the two worlds are supposed to be separate, except in this alternate combined universe everyone just thinks he’s crazy.
Max says, “Becks had a brilliant suggestion. Anna Karenina and Ellen Olenska.”
That is a good one. I wish I’d thought of that.
Becks says to him, “You should be showing at galleries.”
“That’s what I keep telling him,” says Unknown Dude.
Max says, like the veteran of an enduring siege, “You need to know the people who run them.”
Becks says, “How many galleries have you approached?”
Max mutters something I can’t catch. The distance between us widens like our living room rug just experienced an adolescent growth spurt. Why didn’t he tell me he’d submitted his work? Or is the question: Why did I assume he’d abandoned his art because he was having too much fun with his own brief encounters?
“You millennials are unbelievable,” says Becks. “All laziness and instant gratification. You should expect at least three times that number of rejections before you start to get anywhere. You’re talented, but it’s not like you’re fucking Picasso. Think of a better title for the series first, though.”
That galvanizes me out of my soul-searching and also my shock at witnessing the Blonde Assassin play life coach in my apartment to my roommate. “I came up with that!” I say.
“I figured.” Becks barely glances over at me. “It has all your hallmarks of sloppiness.”
“It’s a reference to—”
“I know, and it’s wrong. The whole point here is that these are characters who never encounter each other even though we wish they had. You can’t just plug in senseless catchphrases because you think they sound good.”
“Um, we’ll let you guys catch up on your work stuff now,” says Max. “Nice meeting you.” He grabs his companion’s hand—I belatedly comprehend that this must be Greenpoint; I haven’t registered anything about him except that his voice is sort of whiny—and they hustle away.
I wait for the door of Max’s room to click shut. “Work stuff?”
“Let’s speak in your room.” Becks pauses. “Assuming you have a room.”
“I’m not squatting here,” I say as I wheel my bike the rest of the way into the apartment, kicking off my sneakers as I go. It sounds defensive instead of sarcastic like I intended. I lean the bike against the window ledge. When I turn around I see that Becks has removed her knee-high boots as well, lining them up by the door. The display of cultural sensitivity stuns me, as does how quickly and quietly she did it. She would make an ace assassin. Not a comforting thought to have right now.
Becks glances around when she enters my room, and I can tell she’s logging each detail as corroboration of her existing opinion of me. The twin bed, chronically unmade, sheets so frayed you can see the mattress underneath in places. The pile of laundry at the foot of the bed. The Ikea desk and chair that look only marginally more solid than cardboard. The inexorably withering plant by the window that Coraline gave me and that, I swear, I’ve been doing my damnedest to keep alive. The walls empty except for the photos Blu Tack–ed above my desk. Socks everywhere, like a plague has befallen some tiny, crumpled species of wild creature. I feel the need to say, pointing to the heap of clothes, “Those are clean.”
Becks drapes her coat over the back of my desk chair. She’s surprisingly at ease, like she regularly pays unannounced visits to dinky apartments in Gowanus. “How’s the wrist?”
I realize that I’m cradling it with my other hand. I let my arms swing free by my sides. “It could be worse.”
“I see you couldn’t wait to get into more unnecessary danger.”
Is she referring to the cycling or to something else? I say, “I’ve read that it helps put life in perspective.”
“Not very useful if you no longer have the life.”
The air thins out around me the way it did when I was pancaked under Sarah Reaves’s bed, thinking about her sister poisoning her. Deep breath. I look straight at Becks, except I can’t quite meet the force of her stare so I aim for those fjord-steep cheekbones, and say, “Is that a threat or a warning?”
She appraises me like I’m a monkey who has scrawled out my first word in the sand after years of tutoring. “Neither,” she says. “Do you know why I’m here?”
And the thing is, once she says that—maybe even before she says it—I do know, and it confirms my theory. One of them, anyway. “You are trying to find out the truth about Sarah!” My relief feels like a long-lost friend coming in for a hug so heartfelt it lifts me off the ground. I’m not doing this alone after all. Veracity hasn’t let me down.
“Among other things. What did you learn from Michael Lindenberg and Iris Lettriste?”
I open my mouth—so much!—and then reconsider. “Am I still fired?”
“I suppose. Not my call.”
And I land, hard, like I’ve been drop-kicked. All right then. I say, trying to sound aggrieved, “You’ve been tracking me on Finders Keepers.” As I’d hoped they would, so they could appreciate all this excellent detective work I’ve been doing.
“To monitor your compliance with our agreement,” she says. “Which has been abysmal.”
“But I never gave my consent.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I repeat what Komla told me, that we are legally permitted to follow our targets on Finders Keepers only because they consent to the collection of their location data when they set up a matchmaker account. “I’ve never signed up with a matchmaker.”
She says, sounding almost amused, “How long did it take you to think up that one?”
“I don’t see any reason why I should talk to you about Michael Lindenberg or Iris.” I pause. “Or Dispatch.”
She blinks, once. “What about to the NYPD?”
“You wouldn’t go to the cops.”
“I would,” she says, “to stop you from behaving like a fucking idiot.”
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
“If someone did murder her, all this running around you’re doing is like holding up a big sign saying Come After Me Next.”
Again that oxygen-deprivation sensation, like I’ve been launched into the cold black reaches of space. Then it occurs to me. Is it possible? “You’ve dealt with this before.”
“Of course I have. The world is full of fucking idiots.”
“I meant something like Sarah’s death.”
“Death?” She says it the way Emily Dickinson might, the invocation of a mutual acquaintance. “No. But it’s a problem. I’ve dealt with problems.”
I look at her leaning against my door, arms and ankles crossed. “Becks,” I hear myself say, “why did you join Veracity?”
“If I tell you I’ll have to get rid of you.”
I dredge a sound up from my throat. I was going for a chuckle, but its edges emerge a tad whimpery.
“That was a joke.”
“I knew that.”
“It was a second chance.” She presses one black-stockinged foot against the door and cants herself upright, which draws my attention to the narrow, elegant shapes of her feet. She takes two steps toward where I’m standing, which is in front of my bed in a half-assed effort to block the mess of it. I smell her perfume, faint but unmistakable. Something pops in my mind like a balloon has belatedly burst and spattered incredulity everywhere. Becks Rittel is in my bedroom? If I were an entirely different person altogether, I would consider making a move.
“This is bigger than you know,” she says. “And it’s a fucking mess. If you go any deeper, forget about getting out. You’re staying in until it’s cleaned up.”
I think of the line I drew for myself in Sarah’s apartment, and I have a premonition: where I’m going, that line doesn’t even count. It’s a scary thought. Also an absolutely thrilling one. “Of course I’m in!” I say.
She looks at me; I can’t tell if she’s glad or disappointed by my response. Then she says, “Is there anywhere to eat in this wasteland of a neighborhood?”
Ten minutes later, we’re sitting in a booth at Groucho’s. Becks scowls at the laminated sheet of the menu while I replay our earlier conversation in my head. Why do I feel like I’ve missed something of significance? Becks asking if I knew why she was here, saying she would go to the police if she had to—
“This place looks like it failed a health safety inspection.”
“Probably,” I say. “That’s why only the strong can eat here.”
She puts down the menu. “I guess I survived Laos.”
Of all the random places in the world to have visited. I find myself wondering if she went there alone or with someone, and then I realize: “You’re here on your own.”
“Do you see anyone else?”
“I mean—Komla didn’t ask you to come talk to me.”
Right then our hitherto MIA server decides to come over and inquire about our well-being. Instead of responding like a regular person, Becks tells him she wants an egg-white omelette. “We’re doing great,” I say. “Could I have the gingerbread pancakes?”
The server ambles off, and Becks says, “What makes you think that?”
“You used the singular subject in everything you said to me back at my apartment. Why you were here, going to the—” Do I want to remind her about the telling-the-NYPD option? “What I mean is, it was all I. Not we, the way it should have been if you were speaking on behalf of Veracity.”
“Did the English major make you such an annoying pedant, or were you always that way?”
That’s probably as much of an admission that I’m right as I’m going to get from Becks. “Does Komla even know?”
Her gaze skews past me. “He might. He seems to know…many things.”
My intuition twinges: she had been about to say something else. Too many things, maybe?
A man appears at our table. For a moment I think it’s one of Groucho’s servers, and then I register that he’s dressed in baggy gym clothes and carrying a folded electric scooter in one hand, suitcase style. An employee might be able to get away with either of those actions, but combining both seems egregious even by Groucho’s standards.
“Did you have to bring that filthy thing in here?” says Becks.
“Of course,” says the man. “Look at it. It would get stolen in a heartbeat.”
He sets the scooter on the floor and sits next to Becks, across from me. Becks pretzels her mouth and shifts away from him. He’s a small guy, a couple of inches taller than me, late twenties to early thirties. Most people probably assume he’s white, but I’m guessing he’s hapa from the shape of his eyes and the beigy tint to his complexion. He also seems passingly familiar, like I clicked across his profile during one of my verifications, maybe.
“Hi?” I say.
He picks up the menu, effectively screening his face from me. I say, utilizing the principles of Occam’s razor and my experience with Aurum Financial’s IT department, “You must be Squirrel.”
The frayed edge of the menu lowers to the bridge of his nose. He glances sideways at Becks. “That’s the Miss Marple thing you were talking about?”
A pantheon of fictional detectives to choose from and Becks has been comparing me to Miss Marple? I say, “It’s not very respectful to talk about someone like they’re not in the room when they’re right there.”
“You see what I’m dealing with,” Becks says to him.
Our server arrives with our food. I enjoy the way both Becks and Squirrel boggle at my discus-size pancakes, stacked high in a moat of toffee sauce.
Becks wipes down her cutlery with her napkin. “Before we get any further,” she says to me, “there are some things you should know.”
#1. There is no arrangement between Veracity and Match Insights. In fact, there is no Match Insights.
“The information on profiles that Veracity gets comes directly from the matchmakers,” says Becks. “They just don’t know it.”
“We’re hacking into the matchmakers?” I say.
Squirrel says, measured yet emphatic, deepening his voice and adopting a hybrid British-African accent, “We commissioned an independent contractor”—he points at himself—“to build a search engine that can locate and extract historical data for a particular dating profile across matchmakers, leveraging on known idiosyncrasies in the matchmakers’ security protocols.”
I say, impressed, “If I closed my eyes I’d think Komla was here.”
He inclines his head like an actor graciously acknowledging the audience’s adulation.
This would explain the institutional obsession with secrecy. What I’m surprised at, actually, is how unsurprised I am. But I always knew Veracity was different, including in ways I didn’t know about. I say, “So, looking at our targets’ chat records, following them around on Finders Keepers…we don’t actually have their consent to do any of that.”
“Consent is bullshit,” says Becks. “Ninety-nine percent of people have no idea what they’re agreeing to. The remaining one percent don’t like it but say yes anyway.”
“Why does Veracity do this?” I ask.
“Because we go above and beyond for our clients.”
“You hate our clients.”
“Off base as usual,” says Becks. “I just mildly despise them.” She draws her knife across the half-moon of her omelette in a manner I would describe as the antithesis of mild. “And there’s something else.”
#2. Veracity was set up to keep the matchmakers honest as much as their users.
“If not more,” says Becks. “Users lie all the time, obviously. But the damage they can do is limited, and most of it is to themselves.”
I feel a bit like I’m in a game of Snakes and Ladders where I thought I was a few squares away from payoff and instead I’m spiraling down the back of some humongous python, toward the beginning once again, except the board I’m on now is larger and even more exciting than I could have hoped for. I lean forward. So ready! “What nefarious things are the matchmakers doing?” And part two: How are we going to take them down?
“I know what you’re thinking, and badly written techno-thriller aside, there is no scenario in which a random group of people trying to overthrow the matching industry will end in anything except total fucking failure.”
“I’m not sure what you think I’m thinking about.”
Becks sighs. “As you should know,” she says, “if you kept on top of Datebook like you were supposed to, one of the issues that matchmakers increasingly have to deal with is screening for bot profiles.”
I lapsed on my Datebook reading once work at Veracity picked up, so thank goodness for Charles’s industry reports. “Like those accounts on Let’s Meet that turned out to be from Russia’s Internet Research Agency.”
“Yes.” She sounds surprised that I have a clue after all. The vast majority of bot profiles, she continues, are created for the purpose of political interference or to execute some sort of financial scam. Their AI is rudimentary and they tend to push their agendas in obvious ways, which makes it relatively easy for the matchmakers to identify and block them. In the past year, however, Veracity has been recording the emergence of a new, distinct type of bot profile on the Big Three’s platforms. “And these…they’re in a different class. Squirrel can show you.”
Once I’ve swiped through a few of the profiles on Squirrel’s phone, I do start to see the indents of the mold. The same turns of phrase, the same format of self-description. The same types of pictures: one close-up, one outdoor, one activity-based. It would never occur to me, though, if I was looking at one of these profiles on its own. “How did you find these?”
“We built a filter,” he says. “It scans profiles for certain traits and flags them.”
Becks says, “We call them synths.”
I say, “And the matchmakers aren’t able to screen out the new bots?” If Squirrel’s one-man filter can catch them, surely a Soulmate or a Partnered Up could as well.
“They could,” she says. “Except they’re the ones generating them.”
I blink at her. “The matchmakers are coming up with these synths…and then putting them on their own platforms? Why?”
“We don’t know,” says Becks. “It improves their numbers, that’s for sure.” Somewhat counterintuitively, having a bunch of fake profiles around boosts a matchmaker’s business metrics. The company can report a higher number of profiles than there are actual users, and users remain active on the platform longer than they otherwise would, since in addition to all the legit profiles they also have to sift through the bot chaff.
Squirrel says, “But if that was it, the synths would be dumber. They’re too smart for that to be the only reason.”
Right then it comes to me that I’m in the information-asymmetry scene in every Inspector Yuan novel where one out-of-the-loop character keeps asking questions so everyone else can reveal important information in a vaguely naturalistic way. And, goddammit, that character is me! My curiosity and my pride tussle for a few seconds. Curiosity ends up on top, as it usually does. I say, “How do you know the matchmakers are behind this?”
“Komla.” There’s a curtness in the way Becks says his name, as if they had a disagreement and it remains unresolved. It reminds me that she and Squirrel are here, talking to me, without his blessing. Could it be that he still doesn’t want me back? The thought makes me feel as soggy as the bottom half of a hamburger bun. I tell myself to focus on what Becks is saying, which sounds like—
“Komla used to work at Soulmate?”
“That is what I literally just said. Yes.”
“Sorry.” So that’s what he was up to prior to Veracity. It’s hard to imagine him as a cog in the matching industry’s McMachine. “For how long?”
Seven years, according to Becks. He was the data scientist overseeing the analysis of step one data for the compatibility algorithms. When Soulmate’s management set up a so-called AI development unit, he was assigned to it. The group comprised big-data specialists, software engineers, and behavioral scientists, and their directive was to create a bot that could interact with human users in a sustained and sufficiently convincing manner. Komla’s role was to feed the information that subscribers gave to Soulmate, in their profiles and chats and background questionnaires, to the bots, in order to train them to recognize and emulate human behaviors and speech patterns.
“He said none of them knew what the company wanted the bots for. They were just ordered to do this thing, and so they were doing it.” A tiny, precise crease indents itself between Becks’s eyebrows. “And he never tried to find out.”
I picture cog-Komla turning in place, not in the least curious about what he was helping to assemble. It seems most unlike him. “Why did he leave Soulmate?”
He had growing misgivings about how subscribers’ data was being used, says Becks, and also what Soulmate might want to use the synths for. At the time he left, the first set of synths were being readied for beta testing. “He started Veracity and brought us”—Becks jabs her chin at Squirrel like the thought of them both being encapsulated in the same concept irks her—“in.” By then Komla had been musing for a while over the idea of a service that could provide people with some comfort—or not—that their matches were being honest. His stint at Soulmate had highlighted for him the issue of user deception, and after so long spent working with the abstractions of data, he wanted an opportunity to observe how well the matching process was actually serving individual daters.
“But the other purpose of Veracity was as a means of monitoring Soulmate,” says Becks, “to see if the synths would actually start showing up. And now they have, and on the other Big Three platforms as well.”
I say, “What’s the point of Veracity knowing about this if we don’t…do something about it?”
“At the moment we don’t have enough to do anything.” Veracity might be able to show that the profiles are fake, but we still need proof of a link back to the matchmakers. “Without that, all this just sounds like one of those stories the Romantick love to get off on.”
“The Romantick!” I say. “They posted something about the matchmakers putting shell profiles on their platforms.” Why do I have that piece of trivia knocking around in my mind? “Are they onto something?”
“What? No. They truly are fucking lunatics.”
Then I remember: Sarah Reaves’s laptop. Sarah read that blog post. Maybe that was why she put the Romantick on her list. Because…“Sarah’s story.”
Becks’s gaze is blue like glacial ice. She doesn’t say anything.
“That’s what she was writing about, wasn’t she? These synths?” Now the pieces start falling like someone has hit play on a sped-up game of Tetris. “Charretter. He was a synth. I mean, it was.” Rotate, slide, click. “And…you knew.” I think back on our meetings with Sarah. Komla smiling, asking Sarah why it was important to find out about Charretter, and Becks shoving back, trying to shut Sarah down. “You and Komla. You both knew. All along.”
After a moment she says, “The filter picked it up. The patterns of engagement fit.” Focusing the conversation on Sarah, asking questions and making suggestions to elicit information about her preferences and opinions. The four-day hiatus in Charretter’s activity that we noted would have been for software maintenance; the inconsistency in the way it spoke likely represented an instance where the bot reached the limits of its conversational understanding and a human overseer had to intervene to maintain the dialogue. “I looked at its chat records with the other matches, and they’re all the same.”
Seeking information, as Sarah had said, and Michael as well. “Could the synths be a way for the matchmakers to collect more data about their customers?” I add, since I should give credit where credit is due, “That was Michael Lindenberg’s suggestion. I didn’t come up with it.”
“I didn’t think you had,” says Becks. “Obvious though it might be.”
Squirrel says, “It’s always about getting more data. But to set up something like this. I mean, these synths, they’re so fucking…real.” He sounds almost swoony with admiration. “The work that must have gone into it.”
Becks says, “The question is what’s worth all this trouble.”
“Maybe Sarah knew,” I say, “and it’s in her Dispatch account.”
“Maybe,” says Becks, like she wouldn’t count on Sarah Reaves knowing her right hand from her left.
I sit back in my seat. No wonder Sarah told Jude Kalman he would read about her exploits in the news. And no wonder she was antsy, schlepping around a secret like that. I remember how she looked when we told her what Jude was hiding from her: upset, but at the same time relieved. Also, what Jude told me she said to him, the joke that wasn’t a joke: Is that why you met me, because of what I know about the matchmakers? She must have feared that he was acting on behalf of the matchmakers, trying to find out what she had uncovered. He hadn’t been…but someone else had.
“It is a gun!” I say.
Across the table Becks and Squirrel glance at each other like they’ve known for a while that I was teetering on the edge but it’s really bad timing that I’ve plummeted over right now. Becks says, “Do not tell me you have a concealed weapon on you.”
“I mean the list. Sarah’s list. Chekhov—never mind. They killed her!”
Becks and Squirrel exchange another glance. “Who are you talking about?” she says.
“The matchmakers.” I mentally issue an apology to all the authors out there with penultimate-chapter evil-corporation conspiracy reveals. “To stop her from looking into the synths.”
Becks says, placing each word like she’s stepping stone by stone across a fast-flowing river, “There’s no evidence that Sarah Reaves was murdered.”
“There is!” I say, and explain what I learned about A Dose a Day.
“You can’t prove that,” says Becks.
I refrain from breaking out one of Inspector Yuan’s favorite phrases—That is where you are wrong, Constable—which even I have to admit is annoying, and explain the discrepancy between the A Dose a Day app offering Sarah a discount if she restarted her subscription and the police report documenting Sarah’s Strobinex packaging. “The murderer must have canceled her subscription for October,” I say, “and then dropped off a tampered box.”
“I looked at her phone. There was no notification from anything called A Dose a Day.”
Is she accusing me of lying? “Then you must have missed it.”
“I don’t miss things.”
The disdain coats her voice like the congealed syrup on my plate. God, she’s infuriating. “Really?” I say. “You wouldn’t have her phone without me. You wouldn’t know her Dispatch password. You wouldn’t even know about the list.”
We glare at each other across the table. I can hear the ghosts of her Viking ancestors bashing their swords against their shields, howling for blood. I try to summon the smidge of Genghis Khan that must be in my DNA somewhere.
Squirrel coughs. “She’s got you there.”
She says without looking away from me, “Shut up.”
“We don’t need the phone notification,” I say. “We can call A Dose a Day to find out if the subscription was canceled and when.”
She lowers her fork. I was probably two seconds away from getting my eyeball punctured. I look from her to Squirrel. Neither of them strikes me as a particularly joyous person, but surely they should be pleased at the prospect of solving Sarah Reaves’s murder. And, hopefully, obtaining some evidence of the matchmakers’ shenanigans from Sarah’s Dispatch files. We might not be able to take them down, per se, but we could get some version of the truth out.
“So,” says Squirrel. “We keep going? Because what’s ahead looks and smells like a huge pile of shit.”
“We have to.” Becks says it like she’s a soldier in a war she never signed up for, but now that she’s on the front line she’ll keep shooting until she can get back home again. “What the fuck was he thinking?”
Squirrel snorts. “I stopped asking that question a few galaxies ago.”
“Wait,” I say. “You guys, you know who killed Sarah Reaves?”
There’s a set to Becks’s face that I’ve never seen before. She says, “Unfortunately.”
#3. And Sarah Reaves’s killer is…
Veracity should never have accepted Sarah’s case in the first place, says Becks. “Preliminary online contact, zero offline follow-up. There was nothing for us to verify.” And once they confirmed that Charretter was a synth, under Veracity’s policies, they should have ended the engagement. “Instead Komla continued to entertain her. When I asked him what he thought he was doing, he said he wanted to see how much Sarah knew.”
“Charretter was a bit different from the other synths,” says Squirrel. “Typically the synths ask users questions, get people to talk about themselves. They pull data out. Charretter pulled, but it also pushed.”
“That art show it wanted Sarah to see,” I say.
He nods. “More dimensionality.”
Then Sarah disappeared and Iris Lettriste turned up. “I talked to Komla right after Iris left,” says Becks. “He was a mess. For him. Still more put together than ninety percent of the slobs out there. He said to me, when I was leaving his office, If she hadn’t come to us she might still be alive.” At the time Becks thought what he meant was that Sarah’s suicide might have been related to her obsession with Charretter, and the information we gave her—or didn’t give her—might have contributed.
A few things were clear, though, from Iris’s visit. Sarah Reaves had been working on a story about the synths. She must have had a source at Soulmate. “I asked Komla at one point,” says Becks, “whether he had any sense as to who it might be. He said he didn’t, but I could tell he had been thinking about it as well. He just didn’t want to talk about it with me.”
Squirrel says, “My money is on someone trying to take out his rival at the company. I love that kind of backstabby shit.”
Becks says, “And now, we get to you.”
I say, “How I helped to solve the mystery?”
That neck-torque hair flick might be the most strenuous I’ve seen yet. Veracity was aware of what I was doing from the beginning, she says. Talking to Iris Lettriste and Jude Kalman. Tracking them on Finders Keepers.
Squirrel says, “Your location shows up for us on Finders Keepers. And we keep a log of everyone you look at on that app.”
So much for privacy. “I just—”
“Of all the risky, ridiculous things to do,” says Becks. “Playing Murder Most Foul does not qualify you to be a detective. Reading murder mysteries does not give you some special insight into how someone got themselves killed.”
Thinking of all the times in this investigation when Inspector Yuan has oriented me in the right direction, I say, “Actually—”
“The only thing you should have taken away from your murder mysteries, which of course is the one thing you didn’t, is how easy it is to get hurt. You’re not a fucking superhero. You’re not a two-hundred-pound guy. You’re a hundred-pound girl who the two-hundred-pound guy picks up and throws across the room. You’re lucky you didn’t seriously fuck yourself up when you fell off your bike.”
“Not lucky,” says Squirrel, “technically.”
My wrist chooses this moment to throb, like a security system going off long after the burglars have fled with the diamonds. “But I didn’t,” I say, “and—” I blink at Squirrel. “What do you mean, not lucky?”
Becks says, “Komla did that to your bicycle.”
For a moment the seat crumbles away beneath me. I look at her and then at Squirrel. Neither of them meets my gaze. They truly believe…? Under the table my wrist throbs again; I squeeze it with my other hand.
“But…he likes me.” I feel like I’m scraping each word out from the inside of my throat. “Doesn’t he?”
“He does,” says Becks. “And that’s why what he did…” She pauses. “It’s all fucked up.”
Squirrel says, “If it makes you feel better, he didn’t want you to get too beat up. Just enough to scare you, get you to stop messing around.”
“And give up the phone,” says Becks.
“How the fuck would you know that?” I say. “Maybe he was hoping I would smash my head into the asphalt. It would have saved him the trouble of firing me.”
“The car that pulled out in front of you, before the light,” says Squirrel, “that was me. He told me to do that.”
And now I know where I’ve seen this man before. I close my eyes for a moment, to try to compose myself, and then open them again, because being shut in the dark right now, even just in my head, is pretty scary. Komla Atsina. What he said when he fired me was right. I have never known him.
Becks says, “I didn’t see the A Dose a Day notification on Sarah’s phone. And I didn’t miss it. I went through each of the items and logged them. Komla must have deleted it before he passed me the phone.”
“You’re saying he did it,” I say, and stop, so she can tell me I’ve missed her point yet again, all this was just the lead-up to introducing our master villain, the diabolical, depraved soul whom we’ll have to spend the rest of this story line hunting down.
“Why else,” she says. “Why the fuck else has he done every single fucking thing that he did.”
“But,” I say, “it’s Komla.”
She glances away. “I know.”
“And he’s against the synths. From everything the two of you have been telling me, that’s why he left Soulmate and started Veracity. So why would he…?”
Squirrel says, “He left Soulmate because they kicked him out.”
Becks scowls at him. “He resigned.”
“Technically.”
She turns back to me. “Komla has never been one hundred percent straight with us about how well he knows the synths. It’s possible…he was more involved than he’s told us.”
“Because he knows the synths very well,” says Squirrel. “No way we could have built that filter to catch them otherwise. Even with my ninja programming skills.”
“Right at the start,” says Becks, “Komla told us that exposing the matchmakers would not be an option. He didn’t want them to fail. Too messy, too many unintended consequences. And he believed in the idea they stood for. It’s his fucking mantra, how we should be using data and technology to help us make better choices.”
“Then what was his plan to stop them?” I ask.
“Get enough evidence that the matchmakers are the ones putting out the synths and cut a deal with them. They remove the synths and stop defrauding their customers, we keep quiet. From here on out they know someone is keeping an eye on them so they’ll think twice about doing anything else sketchy. Matching continues to make the world a better place. Everyone wins. The end.”
I say, “Do you think that could work?”
“The utopian bullshit, of course not. Cutting a deal…” She shrugs. “I figured it was worth a shot.” That tiny crease between her eyebrows again, before she says, “But he’s also said other things, a couple of times. Like how a lot of good work went into the synths. And the fact that the matchmakers are misusing them now doesn’t mean they should be discarded altogether.”
Squirrel says, “You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like someone who had his own ideas for the synths and hasn’t given up on getting his way.”
“For fuck’s sake,” says Becks. “It sounds like that because I said it to you.”
“You did?”
She flicks back her hair and says to me, “Then Sarah Reaves comes along, and she wants to blow this whole thing wide open. Exactly what Komla doesn’t want to happen. Villainize the matchmakers. Discredit the concept of matching. Destroy any chance of doing anything else with the synths. And maybe even more than that. Maybe she knows something we don’t about Komla’s real interest in the synths, or he’s afraid she’s on her way to finding out.” She takes a breath. “He weighed the costs and the benefits. He decided he couldn’t let Sarah write her story.”
I pick up my fork and draw circles through the toffee sauce pooled on my plate. Could this really be the answer: Komla? I think of my bicycle. He was ready to endanger me. Yet he also made sure Squirrel would intervene, as a safeguard.
And…murder. Komla might be a utilitarian, but the weight of a life. That’s fucking heavy.
I look up. “Do you really think that Komla could kill someone?”
“Anyone can,” says Becks. “Haven’t your murder mysteries taught you that?”