The dining room clamor flooded back into my consciousness.
I looked up at Winterholz again. “Do we have any idea who he hooked up with?”
He shook his head. “I reached out to Pläegroünd.”
“And?”
“Dragging their feet.”
The expected corporate response. Especially in TechWorld.
Know everything; divulge nothing.
OpenHeart was the exception — more out of cowardice than decency, I assumed. And there was something terribly pathetic about Linus Hao, privacy zealot, surrendering his innermost thoughts to strangers who would sell him out in a heartbeat.
He must have known. He must have read the terms of service. That he’d accepted spoke to an unbearable loneliness.
“What does Pettit think?” I asked.
Winterholz shook his head. “Skeptical.” A beat. “You really got under his skin.”
“Seriously? He’d throw away a good lead ’cause of that?”
“He doesn’t think it’s that good. He thinks Linus could’ve met someone anywhere, with all the sites out there. I’ll see if I can bring him around.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Leave it to me, please.”
I squared the corners of the chat transcripts. “I can keep these?”
“Not a chance,” he said, extending his hand. “But I salute the effort.”
He slid the pages back into the envelope. “Should we get some dessert?”
My phone rang: Regina.
“It’s my partner.” I picked up: “Hello?”
“I’m at the restaurant,” she said. “Where are you? Never mind. There you are.”
She was weaving her way toward us, dodging carts.
She commandeered a free chair and plopped down, mussing her hair, ignoring Winterholz.
“I get to the marina, pull the beleaguered-wife act, wind up talking to the front-desk manager. She’s going into the thousand-yard stare. I say, ‘You know just what I’m talking about, don’t you.’ Sure enough, her husband cheated on her. With their kid’s preschool teacher. The fucking gall. So now we’re comrades, she’s tasting blood. She brings me to her office, finds every Haven Harbor member who’s docked there in the past five years. Not her club, right? She don’t give a shit about these rich pricks. Lemme get a sip of that? I’m fuckin parched.”
Winterholz passed her his water glass.
She took two gulps. “Shelby Fuller the Fourth exercised his reciprocal docking privileges once and only once: February 8 through 16, 2025.”
It took me a second to contextualize that. “Five weeks before John Doe surfaced.”
“Oui oui, Poirot.”
Winterholz’s eyebrows rose.
Regina said, “Another thing: Security at this place sucks. There’s hardly any cameras and I got onto the pier by waiting for someone to exit. Anyway. I’d give my left nut to see the cell tower data on Shel’s phone that week.”
Winterholz smiled.
She turned to him, cheeks flushed. “I’m Regina. I know who you are. What’d I miss?”
Chapter 33
Pläegroünd, “a community of open-minded individuals exploring life beyond labels,” offered membership tiers. Nonpaying users could browse and send messages; un-blurred galleries were available only to those who joined at the Pläemäte level and above.
Winterholz had come across amiable — maybe good cop to Pettit’s bad — but he’d gotten what he wanted from me, and I wasn’t about to bank on his continued generosity.
Dim sum was one thing, evidence another.
I might not have a warrant, but I had paying clients and a strong stomach for monotony.
I entered my business credit card, unleashing a tsunami of dick pics. My subscription further entitled me to Advanced Search and SexyStats™.
The last time I’d tried this, I’d been on the lookout for Adam Valois and Denny Kudelka. Now I had four additional targets: John Doe #57, Linus Hao, Damian Roby, and Shelby Fuller IV. It made for slow going. Pläegroünd had twenty-three thousand Bay Area members. Given that the primary demographic was folks seeking no-strings-attached sex, those who chose to show their faces were the exception rather than the rule.
Some described themselves in detail — hobbies, fave books and shows, wish lists for a partner. Others blasted political slogans or linked to OnlyFans. Many accounts contained no information whatsoever: throwaways, created on a whim and left to molder after a titillating hour of window shopping. Even active users’ bios tended to be short, if not sweet.
turn ons tats good convo big arms, turn offs pubes and toxic narcissism
INTJ slow burner six years sober / 420 friendly
ORAL ONLY! NO BOOTY ACCESS!! HARD NO!! DO NOT ASK OR I WILL BLOCK U
I tackled them a hundred at a time, breaking them up with sets of push-ups or jumping jacks. By late Wednesday my head was splitting. Closing my eyes brought no peace, as phantom genitalia drifted across my visual field.
I paused to revisit Dennis Kudelka’s profile, inactive since 2024. He’d died that spring.
hmu i will get u wet
For someone exploring life beyond labels, Denny hadn’t skimped on them, tagging interest in males, females, trans, queer, nonbinary, fluid, pansexual, couples, poly, swinger, casual, kink, bottom, top, switch, dom, sub, GGG, primal, hedonist, bull... His SexyStats™ indicated the same never-say-never attitude: He responded to 96 percent of messages within twenty-four hours, matching most often with males (74 percent), but also females (19 percent), trans (6 percent), and couples (1 percent).
I thought back to Linus’s Hao’s final chat with Sophie the AI.
my date is tomorrow
Oh wow! Exciting, XXXXX! 
Did you decide what to do?
im meeting them at a bar
Them.
Plural or gender-neutral pronoun?
I opened the Advanced Search tab.
I am looking for...
Other than filtering by location, I’d checked every box. Now I unchecked all except couples.
The number of results plummeted to 596.
I began scrolling.
Thirteen pages of nothing.
Page fourteen: user CaliRoyal247.
We are a couple (M30, F31) ISO M for MMF full bi NSA play. She: 5'4" natural 36B, Queen, top. He: 6'1" athletic, 7" cut, switch. You: hung, chill, clean. Shibari, TPE, CBT, breathplay, CNC. 420+ friendly. Serious offers only, please!
Their profile pic was grainy and blown out with flash. She wore a black lace teddy and was embracing him tightly, her head laid against his bare chest, nails digging into his shoulder. As far as he went, the word athletic reflected that rarest online quality: modesty. Shredded was more like it. Abdomen ridged like a topographical map; veins bulging in his forearm as he extended the phone, angling it to exclude their faces. The height disparity made it tricky. I could make out her jawline, the dimpled chin, a stray ash-blond lock. With his free hand he clutched her raised thigh.
Insofar as one could glean emotion from body language, they adored each other.
They matched exclusively with males, responding to 9 percent of messages within twenty-four hours. They hadn’t logged on in over a year.
The full gallery contained eight photos.
Limbs artfully tangled, flesh strapped with ropes. Shadows and curves. No faces.
Her: boudoir shoot, solo. No face. A reverse angle showed dark roots and a tattoo on the small of her back. 24/7.
Him, lifting a stringer tank top to flaunt his physique. Weight racks in the background; devil emoji over his face. He had a tattoo, as well, hidden in the profile pic. Right pectoral, a triple spiral.