JEFFREY THOMAS - DEADSTOCK

"Yes. The third time I heard her, she said, 'Caren. Tell Brat… love him. Caren. Tell Brat.'"

"And who is Brat? Is Brat her boyfriend? The older boyfriend she was rumored to be seeing?"

"Oh God," Caren groaned again, wagging her head, her hair falling about her face as if she might hide within it.

"Caren, please. Remember, your name will not come up, I swear it!"

"Yes," she sighed. "Brat was an older guy. Nineteen. She knew her father might hurt Brat if he found out about it. I'm the only one she trusted."

"And you've been a good friend, Caren. You kept your friend's secret like she asked. But if she's dead now, then there's no more reason to-"

"There is reason! I told you, her father will be furious if he knows I was protecting her like that! He already came to me and offered a reward if I knew anything! Do you know how tempted I was? But I don't trust him!"

"He won't find out about this. No one will. But please, Caren, what is this Brat's last name? Where might I find him?"

"I don't know where he went! I tried to phone him to ask him about Krimson, but his brother said he's disappeared, too!"

"Do you feel he could have been the one to hurt her?"

"Maybe. I only met him once, for a little bit. He seemed nice, but he was part of a gang, so I don't know."

"Part of a gang? Where'd she meet up with him?"

"Um, at the Canberra Mall." "Do you know where he's from? The name of his gang?"

"Oh, um, she said Folger Street. The B Level, in Subtown. They're the Folger Street Somethings."

"Huh."

She sniffled forlornly. "You want to know what I think?"

"What's that?"

"I think her father found them together. Maybe in bed. And he went so crazy that he killed them both. So now he's trying to look like he's grieving, hounding the forcers to find her, while all the time he's the one who really did it!"

Stake and Janice exchanged grave looks. Could such a scenario be possible?

Regretting that she'd shared her theory, Caren frantically begged him, "Please, please, you can't tell anyone I said that!"

"I told you, my dear," Stake reassured her. "Not a soul. But I have to know the boy's last name. Brat.?"

"Brat Gentile. She called him Brat Genitalia." She gave a rumpled smile. "And he called her Smirk. It's Krimson spelled backwards. Partly."

Stake nodded. "Very good, Caren. You've been very, very helpful. And a very good friend to Krimson. But in a way it wasn't fair of Krimson to put such a burden on you. Don't you feel better now, for letting it all out to someone?"

"I guess," Caren Bistro whimpered. She reached behind her for a packet of tissues she kept in a zip-pered pouch of her backpack. In so doing, she dislodged Bup Be, which fell out of the backpack to the floor. It lay there in a yellow silk Vietnamese ao dai with white pants. As Stake watched, the doll lifted its stubby arms in the air, waiting for Caren to stoop down and retrieve it. Caren did so, and pressed the doll to her chest as if to nurse it. Without meeting Stake's eyes, she muttered, "There was one more thing Krimson said to me. Just two nights ago."

"Yes? And what was that?"

"It sounded like she said, 'Yuki's mom is crying.'"

"Yuki's mom?" Stake stepped closer to her. "Look, Caren, do you have your phone on you right now? Do you think you could try to-"

The girl's eyes went wide. "No! No more! No more!" And before Stake could attempt to calm her, Caren Bistro fled from the room, clutching the little Asian-looking doll as if rescuing an infant child from danger.

Yuki Fukuda had changed into her "Hey Jelly!" pajamas, patterned with the popular big-eyed jellyfish image that had started the current jellyfish craze. She sat on her bed cross-legged watching her wall-sized VT, but her mind was on the man her father had hired to find Dai-oo-ika. Earlier that day he had asked her for Caren Bistro's name. Yuki wanted to call him now and ask him what mean little Caren had revealed, if anything, about having heard Krimson Tableau on her Ouija phone. But Yuki knew that her father would frown upon her contacting the detective on her own, and involving herself in the investigation unless Mr. Stake approached her for information directly.

Thoughts of Krimson Tableau speaking on Caren Bistro's Ouija phone put her in mind of her own Ouija phone.

Yuki unfolded her legs, got off the bed and padded barefoot across her sprawling bedroom's immaculate white carpet. She took the phone off her desk and then sat in the desk's chair, just swiveling back and forth and staring down at the toy-like little gadget in her lap. At last, swallowing, she activated it, depressed the button labeled SCAN, and slipped the phone through her glossy hair to press it to her ear.

Fizzing static: it was the constant background noise, no matter how much one fine-tuned and filtered with the controls. It could be diminished but not eradicated. Occasional crackles, brief louder spurts that sometimes made her flinch. Sometimes a voice emerged out of such a burst. A miserable wail. An angry inarticulate shout. But so far, nothing. Yuki let the scan feature run on. She would do her searching, and if they were willing, the essences that dwelt within that sea of static would come to meet her halfway.

She closed her eyes. She imagined herself in a bathysphere of sorts, a tiny one-person sub, lowering through the fathoms. Deeper, into an alien realm. With shadowy, amorphous forms like jellyfish floating just beyond the sub's piercing lights. Deeper.

" Yuki."

Garbled. A mouth full of sizzling, hissing static. Distorted. Muffled.

But she knew it was her mother. She knew it in the little hairs that rose on her arms. She knew it in her cells.

"Mom," she whispered into the mouthpiece. "Mom, please talk to me."

"Yuki."

As always, the tears that could not be locked out slipped from beneath the closed doors of her lids. "Mom," her own voice quavered, "please tell me how you are. Please, please, Mom, I love you."

Then, more words, but chopped into fragments by the crackles. Words beaming from so far away, like a sun ray scattered and diffused through the ocean depths. It sounded to Yuki as if the distant voice had said, " You are a… lone." Alone?

"Mom? Hello? Mom?" "Yuki."

This voice was not distant, unclear. Only too close, too loud, too firm. Her eyelids snapped open. Standing in her bedroom doorway was her father. His face immobile, though a demon's furious snarl seemed to be layered beneath its smooth mask.

"Daddy," she squeaked.

John Fukuda stepped into her room, tall and sharp-edged in the business suit he still wore. "I'm sorry I ever bought you that thing."

"Why, Daddy? What."

"I heard you. I heard what you were trying to do. You're trying to contact your mother."

"But I did!" she protested. "Daddy, she's spoken to me before! I was afraid to tell you, but she has! I know it's her!"

"How can you know?" he snapped. "You were only a baby when she died!"

"You've shown me vids of her; your wedding vid!" she reminded him, her tears flowing copiously now, face half-crumpled like the tissue she gripped in her free hand. "But I just know. I know it's her! She wants to tell me something."

"Tell you what?"

"I don't know. I can only hear her a little." He came nearer, held out his hand. "Give me that thing."

"Please, Daddy!"

"Give it to me!" he shouted.

With a sob, Yuki rose from her chair and handed the device to her father. He pocketed it without a glance, and said, "I was foolish to have bought you this. I don't want you playing with your friends', either. If I learn of it, you'll be sorry. Do you understand me?"

"But why? Why don't you want me to-"

"Enough!" he bellowed. He had never yelled at her this way before, and she almost staggered back as if struck. He turned toward the door. "Go to bed now."