Still nothing from Juliette. I began to wonder if I was in internet range but not messaging reception—I’m not really sure if that theory holds up technologically, but it succeeded in making me feel momentarily better until my phone dinged and disproved it. Disappointingly, it was a text from Andy.
“I’ve got my list of suspects. Statistically speaking, it’s most likely to be the ex-husband.”
I sent one back: “Yes, that sounds reasonable. Jealousy. Anger. All good motives.”
Andy messaged quickly. “Great. Problem is she doesn’t have an ex-husband. She does have a husband though.”
I replied: “If she doesn’t have an ex-husband, why is one on your list of suspects?”
There was a pause while Andy, bless him, tried to think.
“Apparently it’s likely,” he replied.
I texted: “Apparently?”
“I fed in all the details here”—he sent me a link—“and that’s the most probable.”
I clicked the link, which took me to ChatGPT, the open-source AI software that had taken the world by storm, much to the consternation of universities everywhere whose students were using it to write their essays. While it was indeed an impressive piece of software, it was quite a scary proposition for both those whose careers were typing words and those who’d seen The Terminator. You could put anything to it, and it would spit you out a response, from “Write me a five-hundred-word essay on ancient Egypt” to, in Andy’s case, writing the bio on his website or “Who robbed the old lady’s flower shop?” Of course Andy was into AI; he’s able to maintain a straight face while using the word fungible, plus he can declare that crypto is the future while arguing he’s been shortchanged coins at a café. I was tempted to type in “How do I call my uncle an idiot but make it sound constructive?” But I didn’t think AI would have the plethora of curse words I required.
I texted him back: “AI is no replacement for the human brain, Andy. But humor me. What are Skynet’s other suspects?”
The good thing about insulting Andy is that sometimes all you have to do is set him up to do it to himself. He replied: “Undercover FBI agent . . . And then a satanic death cult.”
There was a pause, then Andy texted again. “Okay, point taken. Night.”
My internet lagged out, then blipped in. I turned my attention back to my research. This time I went to the Morbund’s Mongrels forum on Reddit. The most recent post was titled The Dawn Rises—Spoiler Discussion. I had half expected the news of McTavish’s death to break, but evidently it hadn’t filtered out yet.
I scrolled through the thread. People were discussing the latest release, and many were anguished about the end of Detective Morbund. One post drew my attention:
MongrelWrangler22 (admin):
Oh no, you guys. Morbund is my LIFE. I’m actually literally lying here screaming. I’ll have to get another copy, because this one’s stained with tears. If this is the end . . . I don’t know what I’ll do . . .
The user was an administrator, which would fit someone involved with the Mongrels in an organizational role: president, perhaps. It did sound an awful lot like Brooke to me. I scrolled through the replies, a mix of commiserating with MongrelWrangler22, outright denials that Morbund could be dead and one alarming post saying All we need to do is get to McTavish. I’m sure we can . . . convince him . . . with the right motivation, next to a little emoji of a hammer.
I got tired of the deluge of comments and instead clicked on MongrelWrangler22’s profile. The avatar was a cartoon version of Morbund himself, I assumed, given his rugged Scottish appearance, and the location was listed as Australia, but other than that it was anonymous. All of MongrelWrangler22’s recent comments were neatly listed below though. I clicked one at random:
Can I just say something? I love these books because I feel like he’s speaking to me. You know? Like they are written just for me. A bedtime story or a special treat. I know you guys all love the books as much as I do, but that’s how it feels when I’m reading them. Like it’s me and him. Let me know why you read the Morbund books. Would love to hear from everyone else ☺
What had Majors said about obsession? That it’s the ability to center another’s experience on yourself? This matched it to a T.
I clicked back to MongrelWrangler22’s profile page and opened the most recent comment, just to see if it mentioned the Ghan. The comment had been posted three days ago in the Dawn Rises—Spoiler Discussion thread:
Stand down. I repeat. Stand down. I can breathe again.
Archie fucking Bench!
The comments that followed were variations of Who’s Archie Bench? and I don’t get it, what’s the big deal? but MongrelWrangler22 hadn’t posted since then. Conveniently, the timing of the post fit neatly with stepping onto an outback train with limited phone reception. I couldn’t see how it would be anyone but Brooke.
Stand down. Was that a figure of speech, or literal? Everything’s literal on the internet these days, like literally everything, so it was hard to tell. Stand down from what?
On a whim, I tried “Wolfgang art project.” But the search was too vague, and I was subjected to pages and pages about his namesake: the famous Austrian musician. I wondered if Wolfgang spoke German, and if he could help me with Reich. Next I tried all combinations of Wolfgang’s name and the words writer, art, interactive and experience. All I got were hits like this very festival, with the same line repeated at the end of every bio: His next project is an interactive art project titled The Death of Literature.
A fleeting thought whisked across my mind—Just how interactive is your project, Wolfgang?—and was gone.
My phone was struggling. I typed in one last Hail Mary search, which took five minutes to load and so I knew it was the last bit of twenty-first-century help I was going to get. But this one wasn’t clue-hunting, it was simply pure curiosity. The article was from the New York Times in 2009 and was titled “Crime Debutant Jasper Murdoch Can’t Match It with Crime Fiction’s Best” by Harriet Sykes, freelance writer from Melbourne, Australia.
Honestly, on reading it, I was surprised he’d married her. It was an absolute pasting. Although the review didn’t have too much to say about the book, it was dogged in comparing Jasper to the literary heavyweights of the genre—career authors, multimillionaires. Harriet couldn’t quite accept that he wasn’t up to their level, and she razed him for it. Murdoch wishes he could write like McTavish, and there are glimmers of potential in his work, but alas, he falls short of the high mark set by the Scottish favorite.