One by One
That, of course, is the $64,000 question.
We all look at one another. No one is sure what to say.
“Come on,” Tiger takes Topher gently by the hand. She leads him from the room. “Let’s go and splash your face with water.”
As they leave, a sigh of released tension ripples round the room.
“Jesus,” Carl says gruffly.
“But he’s right,” Rik says. “Why would anyone hurt Elliot? I mean, Eva, okay. But Elliot? It makes no sense at all. I know Topher doesn’t want to hear it, but maybe he did commit suicide, uncomfortable as it is for all of us to face? Eva’s disappearance and then on top of that the shock of the avalanche—he was quite a—” He stops. I think he is trying to work out how to phrase it without giving offense. “He was quite a quirky personality.”
“I think that’s a pretty offensive stretch, Rik,” Miranda says wearily. “Yes, he had his eccentricities—we all do. But to go from that to—”
“No,” Rik says defensively, “that’s not what I meant. Jesus, I liked him. We were at school together, for goodness’ sake. I’m just saying—look he was very hard to read. Still waters run deep and all that. There could have been a lot going on underneath.”
“And what do you mean, you could understand someone wanting to hurt Eva?” Carl says suddenly.
Rik winces. He knows that he has made a misstep, not once, but twice.
“I didn’t mean that either. Oh bloody hell, I’m putting my foot in it all over the fucking shop.”
“So what did you mean?” It is Inigo. His voice is bitter, almost accusing. His interjection is so uncharacteristic that we all turn and stare at him.
Rik flushes.
“All I meant,” he says carefully. I can tell he is picking his words now. “All I meant was Eva’s death… it changed stuff.”
“What stuff?”
Rik does not want to spell it out. I can see that he doesn’t.
It is Carl who says it for him.
“Eva’s death gave control of Snoop over to Topher, isn’t that what you mean, mate?”
Rik cannot bring himself to reply, but he gives a small, tight nod.
There is a moment’s long, shocked silence, as what he is saying sinks in around the circle.
Rik has joined the first two dots, but no one wants to go any further. They can already see the pattern that is forming.
Several people here had a powerful financial motive for Eva’s death. Specifically Topher, and Elliot. Plus anyone else who was opposed to the buyout for their own private reasons.
Which means…
It means—
I feel the blood rush to my face. Suddenly I can’t go on with this, can’t sit here thinking the thoughts that are threatening to overwhelm me. I have to get out—get away.
I stand, and I run out of the room.
ERIN
Snoop ID: LITTLEMY
Listening to: Offline
Snoopers: 5
Snoopscribers: 10
Danny and I are still standing outside Elliot’s room when I hear the sound of running feet, and I turn to see Liz hurrying along the corridor. For a minute I think she is running towards us, and I tense, bracing myself for whatever has happened, but she stops halfway along the corridor, opens her bedroom door, and slams it behind herself. I hear the key scrape in the lock from the inside, and then nothing.
“Jeez,” Danny says. He looks taken aback. “What’s eating her?”
“Do you need to ask?” I whisper it. The doors here are thick, but you can hear through them if your room is quiet.
“Do you think she heard?” Danny lowers his voice too. “You know. What we were saying before.” He doesn’t repeat it, but the words I uttered just before Liz came barreling towards us still hang in the air between us. Maybe Eva’s death wasn’t an accident.
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Let’s get out of here. We can’t talk here, and I need to think this through.”
As we make our way down the corridor to the staff part of the building, where Danny and I have our private rooms, my mind is racing, ticking through possibilities. But it’s only when we’re safely in my little bedroom, the door closed behind us, that I feel able to voice them.
“What I just said—”
“Eva’s death?” Danny looks troubled, but skeptical. “Yeah, how d’you make that out? Elliot, sure. There’s some kind of hanky-panky there. But Eva? She skied a black run in a fucking blizzard and fell off the edge. It’s a tragedy, but I can’t see how it’s anyone’s fault.”
“Listen,” I say. I’m speaking very low, even though we’re behind two sets of doors. Somehow it feels like I need to get these suspicions out in the open, like it might even be dangerous to keep quiet right now. Because if I’m right, it was Elliot’s silence that killed him. “Listen, we’re missing the important thing here. Whoever killed Elliot—”
“If he was killed,” Danny breaks in.
“If he was killed,” I echo impatiently, brushing his words away like irritating flies. “But the point is if he was killed, whoever killed him didn’t just get rid of him, they got rid of his computer. Why would they do that? It’s really hard work to destroy a hard drive—it takes a while, and they must have risked someone noticing their absence or hearing them do it.”
“So… you’re saying… he was killed for something on his computer?”
“Yes. He was killed for something he knew, but it must have been something he’d figured out from his computer data.”
“Something about Snoop?”
“Maybe. Kind of. Look at the timing. Elliot is coding this geolocation update, whatever they’re calling it. Then he realizes that the information he’s got can lead him to Eva. That much we know. But what if he began to track back from that? What if he was looking at her movements before she died? What if there was something fishy about them, like perhaps she didn’t shoot off the edge, but stopped for a chat with someone, and was pushed?”
“Holy fuck.” Danny’s face is stricken. “You’re saying… someone in that group got rid of Eva and then killed Elliot to cover their tracks?”
“I don’t want to believe it, but… I can’t see what else makes sense.” I feel sick even saying the words. “There is one other possibility, but I don’t know if it’s much better.”
“Which is?”
“Well, Elliot is the only person without any kind of alibi the day Eva died. He was supposed to be here, working on his code, but there’s no corroboration of that. It’s not impossible he had something to do with her death. Maybe… maybe he couldn’t live with that knowledge any longer.”
“You’re saying he topped himself out of guilt??”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility.”
“Okay, yeah, but even supposing he killed Eva to help Topher, then had an attack of conscience, why would he destroy his computer? If he’s dead, why would he care about the evidence?”
I swallow. This is why this possibility isn’t really any more comforting than the others.