"Wh-what? Who told you that?" Caren said, glancing nervously from her biology teacher back to Stake. She looked like a deer poised to bolt. Bup Be turned its head ever so slightly, as if it were wary itself.
"Please sit down, Caren," Stake said, while he got off the edge of the desk and stood over her to be more physically assertive. She did as he requested, lowering herself into the nearest desk at hand. While he spoke, he tried not to look at the girl for too unbroken a stretch or with too much engrossment, lest he begin to bear a resemblance to Punktown's Prince of Porn himself, indirectly. "Caren, you know this matter is of the greatest importance; a matter of life and death. Krimson is your friend, and we need to do what we can to-"
"She's already dead," Caren interrupted him.
Stake stopped. Then asked, "So why do you say that?"
"Because of what you just said!" Caren whined. "Because I've heard her on my Ouija phone! Of course she's dead!" Tears began to cap her eyes.
"You recognize her voice?"
"She was my best friend! I know it's her!"
"And what kinds of things has she said to you?"
"Look, I really don't feel comfortable talking about this, okay? Krimson was scared of her father. She said he's a very scary guy. So if she was scared of him, then I'm scared of him, too. If this stuff gets back to him, he'll be mad at me for the things I know. The stuff Krimson didn't want him to know!"
"This won't get back to her father. I'm not working for her father. I promise not to involve your name in this, no matter what you tell me." Stake glanced at Janice. "You promise too, don't you, Miss Poole?"
"Of course! Caren," Janice said, leaning forward emphatically, "we only have Krimson's best interests at heart. If she is dead, then we have to establish that officially, don't we? Doesn't she deserve that? And if someone hurt her, doesn't she deserve to be avenged? The person who hurt her punished?"
Caren dabbed at her eyes. "Yes."
"So tell me, dear," Stake said, compassionate but firm. "What is it you've heard on your Ouija phone?"
"Oh God," Caren moaned, dropping her face into her hands. "The first time, I just heard her say my name. 'Caren. Caren.' Maybe that time I wasn't sure it was her, yet. But the next time I heard her, I definitely recognized her. She said something like, 'I'm in the void.'" Caren Bistro looked up, red-eyed. "They say creepy stuff like that. All of them."
"But did she say anything else that only Krimson might say?"
"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.