AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

from the speakers. McCracken jumped slightly. Without Yamaguchi there, Munroe’s voice seemed even more disembodied.
    She came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and saw McCracken waiting. “I have a cold,” she explained unnecessarily. He nodded. She disconnected the speakers from the terminal, put it back in the armband and reconnected the ear buds.
    “This was neat, Alex,” she said. “We should do this more often.”
    “I know. If we get to do more investigations, we should get some speakers.”
    McCracken asked, “Ready to go down?” and after she nodded, led them downstairs.
    He opened the left-hand door at the base of the stairs. It was a single floor-length glass door, three feet wide, and Yamaguchi thought “fire code violation.” It wouldn’t be sufficient to empty the space in the event of a fire.
    He flicked on overhead fluorescent lights and Yamaguchi saw the ceilings on this floor were even higher, at least 14 or 15 feet. The room was about 40 feet wide by 80 feet long and wide open except for some support pillars. Yamaguchi also noted a double set of doors with push bars and a much larger roll-up door that probably opened onto a loading dock. She revised her fire code suspicion. With the fire sprinklers overhead, emergency lighting, two fire extinguishers and the push bar doors with lighted exit signs, the room probably met the fire code, although she suspected the space often exceeded capacity.
    The room was painted flat black and showed many strips of masking tape used for posters. A grid of pipes overhead probably was used to hang lights, and two doors that opened under the stairway were labeled as restrooms. Finally, a low platform would make a very small stage or more likely a place for the DJ.
    “It’s pretty bare,” she said.
    “They’ve got to bring all their own stuff, and they got to take it with them or the owner just trashes it.”
    “What kind of stuff did they bring?”
    “All kinds of stuff, the usual AV equipment and posters and banners. They also brought in a lot of monitors and a lot of computer equipment. Actually, that was kind of weird.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “Well, they bring in a lot of monitors, even a server, but they wanted to make sure there was no Internet access. Wanted us to turn it off.”
    “There’s Internet access in here?”
    He pointed to a small box hanging from the ceiling in a corner of room. “Wireless. This floor can access our DSL router upstairs.”
    “So you turned it off?”
    “Sure, we were leaving for the weekend anyway, so we just turned off the router rather than try to get up there to turn that off.”
    Yamaguchi had seen enough. “OK, Sean, thanks a lot for letting us in and … ”
    “I’m not done yet,” Munroe said. She was surprised. He hadn’t said anything for a while and she figured he’d realized it was a waste of time.
    “Hey anytime, officer, you should come by …” She held up her hand to stop him and pointed to her ear buds.
    “What is it Alex?” she asked.
    Munroe had been studying the space while they talked. He didn’t know what triggered it, but he’d started thinking of it as a crime scene. “Give me a minute,” he told her and left her side.
    She noticed that her terminal displayed “No user connected.” She asked the young man to wait. Two minutes later, Munroe spoke in her ear.
    She addressed McCracken, “He wants to know if anyone else has rented this space.”
    “No, there’s some kind of steampunk thing this weekend, but nothing since the 11th.”
    “Um, were they building anything in here?” she asked for Munroe.
    “No, I don’t think so. Unless they did after we left.”
    “Did you see them bringing in … plywood?” she asked, wondering what Munroe was thinking.
    “Not as such. But they did bring in a lot of backdrops. You know, like a stage set. They were on wheels. They might have been made of plywood.”
    “Linda, get up on the stage,” Munroe said.
    “What? Sorry, Sean, he’s asking me something.”
    “Get up on the stage, get up higher, get something to stand on,” Munroe said.
    “Uh, Sean? Do you have a ladder or something I could stand on?”
    “Huh? Got a little stepladder,” McCracken said.
    “That’ll do,” she said. He went back upstairs.
    “Alex, why do I need a stepladder?”
    “You’ll see.”
    McCracken came back, carrying a stepladder. She asked him to put it on the stage.
    “Now what?” she asked Munroe.
    “Get up and see if you