[Death,Revenge,Persuasion,Escape,Innocence]

  “So let me get this straight, you caught her shoplifting, so you hired her on the spot.”

  “No Anais, I didn’t hire her, I gave her a three week unpaid internship, it’s punishment.”

  “Well don’t let her near the register.”

  “Why not, she picked it up quicker than I did.”

  “So you already trained her on the register.”

  “Yes, it was the first thing I did. We are a store, she wouldn’t be much use if she couldn’t use the register.”

  “She’ll rob you blind.”

  “No she absolutely will not.”

  “Laura, how do you know that she won’t rob you blind.”

  “Because Anais, I asked her and I quote Are you going to rob me if I show you how to use the register. And she said "No.”

  “Of course Laura, a thief would never lie.”

  “Maybe Lachlan stole something and that’s why he was killed.”

  “What could he steal here, a book, you’d just turn around and give him a job.”

  “No Anais, maybe he stole an idea, and someone got mad and killed him for it. His manuscript is awful all the way till chapter ten when suddenly it’s not a science fiction sex fest anymore. It's a realistic psychological horror set in Tupper Lake. How did he go from polling reddit for sub par ideas to an actual gripping story set right here in the Adirondacks.”

  “So are we back to looking for a reddit killer do you reckon?”

  “I’m afraid not, we have a mystery writer and a techno thriller author in residence right now. From what I’ve read so far it could have been a scene from either of their novels. But how to go about asking if Lachlan stole the story idea from them, without making them suspicious. Hmm, I think I have it. I’ll just ask if Lachlan asked for either of their help plotting out his mystery / thriller.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  “No, that would look like I was trying to ambush them. That would put their guard up. I very much just want a conversation, not a confrontation.”

  “Well then come out to my car and help me.”

  “I’m not vacuuming your car again, I wasn’t even eating anything when we went to the firehouse.”

  “No, that’s not what I want help with, I have a whiteboard in the back seat, but it’s too unwieldy to move on my own.”

  “I have a whiteboard on my laptop, there is one built into Obsidian.”

  “That’s your note taking app, I still don’t understand why a person with a photographic memory has a note taking app.”

  “Zettelkasten.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “Funny Anais, Zettelkasten it’s a method of linking notes that can help give you a creative leap. It’s not the notes, it's the connections that are important. Well I guess if the person using it doesn’t have perfect recall then the notes are important as well.”

  So we went out and grabbed the huge whiteboard and hauled it up to my bedroom / study. Then Anais went back to work, with a promise to be back by eight so we could go down to the pub and hopefully find more of the girls that dated Lachlan. If we could find a jealous boyfriend along the way that would be ideal as well. Then I called out to Lucy, who I’d sent out to explore the store and learn where the various book genres were located.

  “Lucy, you’re in charge, I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

  “Wait, you’re not leaving me down here on my own are you?” She came running to the counter. She should sign up for track, with sheer speed like that.

  “Yes, you’ll be fine. If someone comes in just wait on them. If it gets crowded, don’t worry it never does, but if it does just yell up the stairway here, and I’ll come help out. If you have multiple people in the store, and someone comes in asking for a particular genre, just point them in the direction of the genre. If they are the only customer, lead them to the aisle. Customers like personalized service, but only do that if the story is empty. Because customers also like it when there is a clerk at the register, so they can checkout when they are ready too. Do you have a pretty good idea where the different genres are located?”

  She showed me a hand drawn map of the store, complete with bookshelves, each shelf labeled with the corresponding genre. She showed real initiative, I liked that.

  “That is very smart thinking, Lucy. I’m glad I hired you.”

  “Technicnally you didn’t hire me, you blackmailed me.”

  “Potatoe, Pataytoe. Plus don’t think of it as a negative, think of it as a positive. You now are a bookstore clerk and have access to a vast sea of knowledge, what you do with that knowledge is up to you. But if you think of it as a negative, that knowledge will become a detriment. I have discovered in my life, it’s better to know a fact and not need it than it is to need a fact and not know it. So drink deep of the waters of knowledge, not to worry, even though we have a vast sea of it here, it is freshwater not salt water so it is quite palatable."

  So I went upstairs to question a very sharp mind indeed. Clara is a former investigator for NCIS, she retired to write after a seven year career. She found the whole military discipline regime to be too much for her independent nature. She writes great mysteries, with complex constantly keep them guessing plots that always end with a twist. I knocked on her door.

  “Come in.”

  “Hi Clara, is this a bad time, I can come back later if you like?”

  “No, it’s fine, in fact it’s more than fine. Fancy a tea? I was just staring out the window, trying to figure out what to do with my killer, and nothing is coming to me, so a change of scene, a little caffeine and a chat with you might just knock a brilliant idea loose or at least a murky start.”

  We went down the backstairs to the kitchen, where I turned on the electric kettle, while Clara took out some mugs, tea and cookies.

  “What’s up, Laura, do you want advice on the case? I’m happy to help. I’ve meet a lot of jerks in my years in law enforcement, but Jones, He really takes the cake.”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry to interrupt you while you are working.”

  “You didn’t, I swear, I was thinking of tea and cookies when you knocked, not my stupid killer who just won’t do what I want.”

  “How so?”

  “Every scene I write with him in it, he comes off as charming and helpful to those around him. I don’t want the reader to like him as well as the hero, or even worse more than the hero.”

  “Ouch, that would be bad. Is there any way you could choose another character for the killer, find out all the evidence that points at him was planted by the real killer, the one who is trying to frame him.”

  “Laura, I love that, I think that is why I couldn’t come up with how to turn him awful in the eyes of the reader because I genuinely like him and don’t want him to be the killer. I had an entirely different twist in mind for the ending, but this will actually be much better. Plus then he’ll be available for the sequel. Why are you not a writer, you’d be good at it. I’m sure you are a great editor, but you should be plotting the novel out, not repairing it after the writer screws it up.”

  “Well to be honest, I enjoy the outlining phase, the character creation and the world building. Just one thing I hate, the actual writing.”

  “It is hard work, but so is editing, so is book selling for that matter. I left the military because I hated the mindless discipline. But I do like to discipline myself and to me that is what writing is. To put my mind into the setting that I’m writing about and keeping it there as long as possible. But also the discipline to know that you need a break, a cup of tea, a couple of cookies when you are banging your head against a wall. But Laura, I’m sorry, how can I help you?”

  “Well it’s about Lachlan, naturally did he ever ask for any mystery plotting advice. He knew I was an editor so he gave me his manuscript to read and it was horrendous up till chapter ten, when suddenly it shifted from a science fiction romantasy to a compelling psychological thriller or mystery, I’m not sure which.”

  “No he didn’t come to me, if it’s a thriller it’s possible he talked to Anna about it. But as far as I know, he has never talked to any of the writers about his work.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. I just don’t know how to reconcile the dramatic improvement of his writing from chapter nine to chapter ten. I know writers improve over time as they write more, learn more about the craft but it’s gradual improvement book to book, not chapter to chapter. Chapters one through nine were co-written with a bunch of reddit posters. I wonder if he found someone here in Placid, that was helping him with chapter ten. Clara thanks so much for your help.”

  “Are you kidding, you helped me, and saved my nice character from being a killer to being a red herring. I’m sure he’d rather be a fish, than a killer.”

  I stopped by the counter to see how Lucy was making out, but she was chatting with a customer, so I let her be and went to Anna’s room. Anna was a tech in the Air Force, before there was a Space Force, and the Air Force handled all the top secret space missions. After watching the drone war she decided not to reup when her tour was completed. She’s been writing tightly plotted cutting edge techno thrillers ever since becoming a civilian again.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I knocked on Anna’s door and a couple of seconds later she replied, come in. I did, she sat with her back to the door, typing frantically.

  “Just give me thirty seconds.”

  I stood there quietly, wishing I waited until after dinner, before disturbing her. But before the thirty seconds were up, or so it seemed to me.

  “Hi Laura, sorry about that, I just had to finish a thought and meet my word count for the day in one fell swoop. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m sorry I should have waited and talked to you after supper.”

  “No, not at all. I’m done writing for the day.I might work on my outline for a while but otherwise, I’m all yours.”

  “I was just wondering if you’d help out Lachlan with any plotting?”

  “No, not at all. I don’t think Lachlan spoke more than three words to me since he arrived. What makes you ask?”

  “It’s just he was writing a bad science fiction novel that in chapter ten morphed into a thriller or maybe a horror story. From the limited sampling of his writing that I have I don’t see how he got to where he was in chapter ten from the utter drek of nine and lower.”

  “Laura, maybe he wrote the early chapters years ago and decide to pick up the story at chapter ten before rewriting the early stuff. That’s what I’d do. I hate rewriting and I’d wait to see if chapters ten and up were working before I went back to rewrite.”

  “Yes, that makes a lot of sense, but it’s not what happened. The reason I know is because he used reddit posts as part of the novel, in large parts almost all sex scenes. He noted in the margins the dates and subreddits that the original poster had posted them, and none of them are more than a few months old.”

  “Hmm, if it’s horror the closest we have is Amelie, but they have spoken since their argument weeks ago, and that’s assuming it’s supernatural horror, what about Clara, did you check with her?”

  “Yes I just asked her and she suggested you. Maybe he got the idea from a book, or even from some story that a local told him. He’d set it in Tupper Lake, so maybe he overheard a story somewhere in town. But that doesn’t explain the jump in writing quality.”

  “Unless he plagiarized it or got lucky and an LLM produced a well written, coherent chapter. I hear it does happen. Or he had a LLM write it and then he just rewrote it.”

  “I’m surprised you’ll even say the word, the only other writer who will even mention that they exist is Ezra.”

  “Well I love tech, and I also see ways that they can help me be a better writer. I use Notebook LM, I upload my manuscript to it, then if I need to know if I mentioned a minor character’s age or something like that I just ask the LLM and it reads through all of my text and tells me. It’s not one hundred percent accurate but one good thing it does is it only uses the sources that you upload, and when it gives you the answer it displays where exactly in your text you mentioned it. If it made a mistake you can easily check it by checking the reference. Aside from that the general chatbots are good for research for a fictional story. Using one of them all stops me from falling down a rabbit hole of research when I’m supposed to be writing. The whole argument about if they are going to wreck the world seems moot. Certainly possible, if a super intelligence arises, it might save the world but not the men who used to rule it, then again it might cure cancer and global warming all in one day. It will be built if it is possible, either by one of our tech bro’s or China. At this point, I think we have a slim lead over the Chinese, but they are pouring people and money into it. Our engineers are better, but they have like ten times the number of engineers that we do. Are our engineers ten times better than theirs? No way. But I’ll tell you what it’s going to be the main subject in my next three thrillers, front and center.”

  “Anything that makes people afraid is always good fodder for fiction, Anna. I always gravitate to the more optimistic views, my favorite movie about aliens was How the Earth Stood Still. I loved how the aliens came down and solved our problem concerning nuclear war. If we didn’t get rid of the nuclear weapons they’d do it for us.”

  “Gort, Klaatu barada nikto”

  “Yep, I’ll bet Gort, could take down Sigourney Weaver’s Alien in under a minute.”

  “Yeah Laura, but that would ruin one of the best horror movies of all time.”

  Next I went to disturb Ezra. I found him in his room door open, typing away on his laptop. I knocked lightly. He looked up and stopped typing.

  “Hey Laura, what’s up?”

  “I just need some advice and I have a question, but it can wait, just holler when you are free and I’ll come back. I don’t want to interrupt your work, anymore than it already has been.”

  “No I can chat, I am always hoping for an interruption, that’s why I leave my door open.”

  “Well twice now I’ve seen a person standing across the street, watching the store, but as soon as they’ve seen me, they step back into the darkness. I can’t tell if they are male or female. I was just wondering, is there any kind of cheap camera that I could use to try and capture them on film, or you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I got you. If the light is really low what you need are telephoto lens and even with one of those, if it’s too dark. I have a small refractor telescope, if you just look out occasionally through it, you could at least be able to tell who the person is if you know them. One other thought would be to park your car in front or where you last so the person. Then just create a video, if the person is moving into the spot from the street, you’ll capture them, going into the spot. It’s also possible it will be light enough to produce an image. Plus you wanted cheap and it’s free because you already own it.”

  “You're a genius Ezra, now that was the advice, the question is did Lachlan ever ask you for any advice on a plotting a mystery or horror or maybe even a thriller novel.”

  “No, I’d probably be the last person to ask, I’ve never written a fictional book in my life. I’m sure he already knew more about plotting than I ever did.”

  “No he was not a great writer, until all of a sudden he was, which is very weird, that’s why I keep asking everyone about it.”

  “There’s a subreddit that believes that an LLM could write at a professional level if you give it the right prompts.”

  “Prompts?”

  “A set of instructions like write me the opening chapter of a romantic tragedy, with Romeo and Juliet vibes. Then you let it go and you see what it produces. You decide what you like about it and what you don’t and you find that info and the piece it produced back in and refine. At this point LLM’s can’t consistently write good chapters and each chapter would be very distinct from the previous chapters. Characters might be wildly different, or do something the swore in the previous chapter not to do. In the end you could probably cobble together a not very good novel. But it would take so much work, it would probably be easier to just write it yourself. Maybe he played with one chapter enough to get a really good output. What about the next chapter, is it as good? Is it consistent, with the previous chapters, that is usually the way to spot a LLM, through the inconsistencies.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to read more chapters with everything that’s going on. But I will tonight, and my best bet is to look for inconsistencies. Thanks for your help and advice. I’ll try that cell phone method, and maybe I could borrow your telescope if that doesn’t work.”

  “Absolutely Laura, anything you need. If there is anything else I can do please ask, I mean it. It’s been a godsend being here writing, really inspiring. I know fiction writers don’t really think highly of non-fiction writers. We don’t have to make up characters or plots or do any worldbuilding. All we do is research, write notes then tie those notes together. I mean it sounds easy on the surface, but I think a good non-fiction book also tells a story. It might be the story of an idea or a clock or a fish not a human. But the writers here have really helped me with both critiques and encouragement. I’m going to hate when my time here is up, I might never be as productive or just generally happy. It’s so hard being a lone writer. All the daily chores are yours, no writing sprints to spur you on, no one to tell you the parts you think are wonderful are just too dry for the average reader to enjoy. But the parts that I felt I struggled with were some of the parts my fellow writers liked the best. So I want this place to be here for others like it was for me and I hope to get the opportunity to come back again someday. That means we need to save you from that idiot cop, because you are the heart of the place.”

  “Ah, Ezra, thank you, really thank you so much.”

  I went downstairs to see how Lucy was doing, she was behind the counter, reading the graphic novel that brought her here. I hope that it helped the confusion she must be feeling about the world, herself, her place in it.

  “So is it worth it?”

  “Is what worth it?”

  “The graphic novel, do you like it?”

  “Yes, I like it a lot, but it is hard to read in places, the main character has been having a hard time. Have you read it?”

  “I’m sad to say that I have not, but after I get your full review when you’ve finished it and had a little time to process it, then I will if you think it’s worth my time. Because at my age, you realize that you have a limited amount of time left, so you want to read only the very best. Or re-read only the very best.”

  “You're still young.”

  “You are not getting out of your unpaid internship through flattery, Lucy.”

  “I don’t think I want to get out of it. I enjoyed myself today. The customers are really nice.”

  “Well of course they are nice, they are readers which means they are empathetic and questing to put themselves in another person's shoes, for a few hours. How could people like that fail to be nice? So did you actually sell any books?”

  “Yes, a woman came in and bought fifteen of those bodice rippers. She wasn’t embarrassed at all, she paid me the money and had a big smile. Then she said she couldn’t wait to get home and start reading.”

  “Do you know why she wasn’t embarrassed?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because a bookstore, at least a good bookstore, is a non-judgemental space, a person could come in here and buy just about any book and I’ll be happy, not because I made a few cents but because I feel like I’m giving the customer five, six, twenty hours of enjoyment. They might come back and tell me they loved the book or that it was meh but they got to live in another world for those hours and a lot of times that’s all a person needs.”

  “I think I’d like to own a bookstore when I grow up. What should I take in college English literature?”

  “Ah, sweetie, I’m old and cynical but I find it hard to believe that there will be bookstores by the time you are ready to buy one. Maybe aim to be a writer. I hope there will always be writers and readers but books themselves may go by the wayside. The physical books from the past will still exist and get more and more expensive as rich people snatch them up to fill a room in their house. It’ll be an impressive room with leather chairs to match the leather books. But no one will read them, they’ll be too valuable.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “Yeah it is, it’s already happened though to comic books. The original superman number one or action comics I forget, but it is so valuable it’s locked under glass. The kid it was meant for, will never touch it, no one will because it is too valuable. But thanks to Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive, it can still be read online and for free. Okay, you listened to me ramble on long enough, what time will you be here tomorrow?”

  “Ah, ten oClock we open right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then I’ll be here at ten.”

  “Okay good, take home the graphic novel if you like or leave it here behind the counter, it wouldn’t do, to sell it to someone, before you finish it.”

  “I’ll leave it right here. Even with the book sox, it might get taken away.”

  “I Understand, goodnight Lucy.”

  “Bye, Laura, I’m really glad you caught me.”