The thing is, Julia understands completely. She’s been there, after all. She’s experienced firsthand the irresistible charm that Marshall had. The way you knew, deep down inside, that he was no good, but still you couldn’t help but go along with it, you couldn’t help but let him get away with it. And when she looks around the room, at Sana’s and Riki’s expressions, she knows that they get it too. That they’d seen for themselves what Marshall had been like. They were all, despite themselves, feeling horribly sorry for Oliver. Because sure, she’d been married to Marshall, but Oliver had shared a womb with him, had gone through all of his childhood and formative years as his twin brother, tethered to him. What would that have been like, to have to be so close to someone whose shine dazzled everyone and be the only person who knew that the shine came from a poisonous radiation?
“So I met up with him. The day before he died, and I slipped the drugs into his bag when he wasn’t looking. I was going to call the cops on him, but then . . . I chickened out.” Oliver snorts. “I guess that’s what I do. I’m just a coward, after all. I thought of taking it back, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that without making him suspicious, so I did nothing. The next night, he died. I was scared shitless. I had no idea what had happened. I thought maybe Marshall had found the drugs in his bag and took them. Maybe he had an overdose. Maybe the drugs had been cut with something toxic? I don’t know! But then the autopsy report came out and, well, you all know the rest. Bird dander.” Oliver snorts again. “After all that, it was fucking bird dander that got him.”
Julia is staring at him, mouth agape, her mind on fire. The thing is, she believes him. She’s known Oliver since they were practically kids. She knows when he’s telling the truth. Slowly, she looks around the room. Everyone else is looking just as stunned as she feels.
“So you are not killer?” Vera muses, after the shocked silence becomes unbearable.
“No,” Oliver says. He turns to look at Julia, and his face falls. “Julia, I—I’m so sorry for writing about you like that. It wasn’t about us, it—”
Julia shakes her head. “I don’t wanna hear it. Just don’t talk to me.” He might not have killed Marshall, but it doesn’t make everything he’s done okay. And, in a way, she feels even worse now, because her emotions are all over the place. Does she get to be furious at Oliver still? Even though he didn’t kill Marshall? And who the hell did kill Marshall? It’s all too much, all of it boiling over. “I don’t understand. So who killed Marshall? Vera, you said you’d figured it out! Who was it? Who killed him? Who broke into your shop?”
“I don’t know who kill Marshall,” Vera says quietly, “but I know who break into my shop.”
“What?” they all say as one.
“I break into my shop,” Vera says.
“What?” they all say again.
Vera sighs. “I come down one morning and I see that things have been move around. Some jars go missing.”
“Which jars?” Riki asks. “I mean, are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I know how I arrange my shop, don’t be silly. But I think to myself, would the police take me seriously? They don’t take Marshall’s death seriously, why would they take me seriously when I tell them that someone steal into my shop? They will ask, how much did the thief take? Well, no money is missing. What was taken? I don’t know, I just know that my jars are moved. And I am sure it’s the killer come back to look for the flash drive. So I decide, okay, I will take control of situation. The killer is too cunning to make it obvious, so I will make it obvious. Make it clear that someone break in, keep all of us working on a common goal: solving Marshall murder. So I do that.”
“You smashed up your own shop to make it look more obvious that someone broke in?” Sana says, her eyes as round as dinner plates. “All those jars—”
“It hurt me to break them all like that,” Vera says, “but I am willing to do anything to find killer.”
“Wait,” Julia says, “hold on. What do you mean, the killer would come back to look for the flash drive? What flash drive?”
At this, Vera looks strangely guilty.
“Vera,” Julia says in a warning tone. “What flash drive?”
Vera releases a long, tired breath. “When I find Marshall’s body, he holding a flash drive in his hand.”
“What. The. Fuck?” Julia doesn’t even know who said it. It could’ve been her, it could’ve been any of the others.
“And you just took it?” Oliver says.
“My god, Vera,” Riki cries. “You—that’s tampering with a crime scene! You could go to prison for that.”
“I just know, you see, that police won’t take case seriously.” Vera looks so tiny and helpless, her cloud of hair waving this way and that as she shakes her head.
“Well, maybe they would’ve if you hadn’t taken away evidence!” Oliver says. He rakes his fingers through his hair. “So what was on the drive?”
“Well, it turns out the drive is a key to unlock his computer. And the computer has these NFT and, oh yes, the bot that Riki make.”
“Wait, what bot did you make?” Sana stares at Riki, who looks like he has half a mind to run away.
“Uh . . .” He glances guiltily at Sana. “Um. Marshall asked me to build a program. Um, and then he didn’t pay me.” For a moment, it seems like he’s done talking, but then he takes a breath and blurts out, “It was a scalping bot. He wanted me to make a bot to scam people on the NFT marketplace.” He turns to Sana, taking her hands. “I didn’t want to—I felt so shitty the whole time I did it, and I didn’t know he was stealing art at the time, I just thought—”
“You were part of his scam?” Sana says. Her words are hissed with such acidity that even Julia feels the sting.
“No!” Riki says. “No, I swear I didn’t—it was the first time I had met Marshall, I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t know because you chose not to know,” Sana says. “Did you ask him what his freaking NFTs were? No. Did you think about all the people being scammed by this bot you were building? No! People like you and Marshall are the reason I couldn’t even stand to look at a canvas!” With that, Sana wrenches her hands out of Riki’s and runs out, slamming the door behind her.
“Sana, wait!” Riki shouts, going after her.
Julia stares at the door, everything inside her a screaming mess. She makes an effort to sort through what she’s just learned. “Where’s the flash drive now? And the laptop? We should—ah, we should probably hand that over to the police—”