Page 21 of Killer Clone

Rohan looked up and down the hall again, the very picture of paranoid. “He’s a crook, you know? Like, a thief.”

Hagen’s interest was piqued. He took his notebook out of his pocket. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, he tried to steal from me.”

“What do you mean? How did he try?”

“Like, a month into the semester, I had a little party in my dorm. And Jake was there. He just showed up. Like, I didn’t invite him or anything. Anyway, the party ended, and as I was cleaning up, I realized my tablet was missing.”

Hagen was taking notes. “And why do you think it was Jake?”

“Well, at first, I didn’t. I thought I’d just lost it or something. But I went around asking the people who were there, including Jake. He gives me some shit about how I should be more careful with my things. Starts giving me some bull about being responsible.”

Ander snorted.

“Right?” Rohan rolled his eyes. All three of them were on the same page about Tripp. “And he goes on and says he’s made sure the tablet’s in a safe place. All I need to get it back is to pay a responsibility tax.”

What the hell?Heat rose up Hagen’s neck, and he resisted pulling on his collar. He also resisted the urge to go break down Tripp’s door. “What’d you do?”

“Demanded it back. He said for two hundred dollars I could have it back. I told him to fuck himself and that I was calling campus police.” Rohan’s jaw clenched. Hagen imagined that confrontation had been quite heated.

“Did you? Call campus police?”

Rohan blew out a deep breath. “No. Jake said if I told, I would find my tablet in the school’s fountain and there’d be no way to prove anything to anyone. I ignored him and went to call, but my friend told me not to do it. Jake had taken his laptop, and he’d called the campus police. The cops didn’t find anything in Jake’s room…and the laptop keys were found in the back of my friend’s toilet.”

“He’s stealing people’s valuables and holding them hostage.” This squared with Hagen’s impression of Jake Tripp.

Rohan nodded. “I was really pissed. I paid. He left it on my bed somehow. Apparently, he does it when he’s strapped for cash. Sometimes he’ll sell stuff I’m pretty sure is stolen on eBay or Craigslist. Everyone knows it. We all know his freaking username. We just don’t want our stuff destroyed.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “What’s his username?”

“It’s trippinballz12. Like, you can’t make this shit up.” Rohan spelled Jake’s username for him.

Hagen noted this in his notebook. “We’ll get somebody to monitor this account. Thanks for your help. How can we get in touch with you?

After Rohan gave him his number, Hagen only had one thing to add. “And Rohan?”

“Yes?”

Hagen held out his hand. “In the meantime, let’s just keep this conversation to ourselves. No need to let Jake know, for now.”

Rohan seemed deeply relieved. “You got it.”

9

Stella put her hand over her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth. It helped, but not by much. Lowering her hand, she stepped away from the alcove where Patrick Marrion’s body had been found.

The smell—a combination of old urine, decomposing garbage, and something sharp and acrid she couldn’t identify—stung the back of her throat.

Now she could taste it, which seemed worse.

Kerrick’s Alley was in the center of town, a few blocks from the Sheraton and a short walk from the Tennessee State Capitol. The wind added a whiff of the nearby Cumberland River to the toxic odor.

Piles of garbage lined both sides of the alley. Dumpsters stood with their flaps open in surrender. Green slime oozed out of deep puddles in the potholed concrete, spreading their slimy fingers up the wall. If police tape wasn’t still attached to the rail guarding an outlet pipe from careless drivers, Stella doubted she’d have found the place at all.

Stacy crouched in front of the spot where Marrion’s body had been propped. She pulled on a nitrile glove, lifted a sheetof damp cardboard that stood against the wall, sniffed one end, and let it drop. The cardboard landed with a soft squelch.

Stella was impressed at Stacy’s attention to detail. Digging around in dumpsters certainly wasn’t the most pleasant or glamorous aspect of their job. She knew that from personal experience. But nothing got in the way of a thorough investigation.

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