The Dunbar Effect by Jason Taverner

Author:Jason Taverner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jason Taverner

16

September 16, 7:48 PM

Dante’s eyes were drawn to the left when a bug spattered his windshield. The sign for Lake Oaks Crossing was dead ahead, confirmed by the GPS on his dashboard.

He hadn’t found a connection between Meyer Spaulding/Calvin Rhodes and Norman Piper or Clermont Owens, which fit expectations. If Piper or Owens served as Prowler sensei, they wouldn’t advertise it on social media. Difficulty detecting a connection wasn’t a surprise. Prowlers had a penchant for using burner phones and acting like a bunch of Cold War spies. It was secrecy born of fearing Feds more than local police, fueled by the concept of a “Final Lockdown” when the government suddenly curtailed all KZ access and went after Prowlers with the full vengeance of the law.

A lot of information on Spaulding was readily available on the web because you didn’t have to be his friend to get at his social media stuff. Nothing about Prowling, but with everything else the guy lived with full transparency, proud beyond reason of all aspects of his life: what he ate, what he drank, where he went. Dante half-expected to see a timeline picture of his toilet with the caption “I just took a monster shit.”

The burning desire to make a spectacle have lighted fools forever. And now it’s at the tip of one’s finger.

Dead-eyed Calvin “Cal” Rhodes didn’t have his own online presence, yet he was in enough of Meyer’s pictures it left the impression he was the closest friend. Currently, the best bros were on opposite sides of the state. Meyer had been banished to the coast since mid-April, perhaps exiled so he didn’t embarrass his brother Jeremiah’s mayoral campaign.

Lineage complicated things. Meyer was the son of millionaire Taylor Spaulding, a former Sandalwood mayor and a Marshallville councilman until a prostitution scandal killed his reelection prospects a decade earlier. Taylor might be out of the public spotlight, but he retained connections, as did Jeremiah.

With Spaulding and Piper/Owens, no proof of connection was not disproof and Dante had left a question mark as a placeholder. Norman Piper trended in Dante’s gut, though.

Dante pulled into the Lake Oaks Crossing lot and found an empty parking slot. The landlord didn’t keep a tight ship with a car on blocks, a drooping gutter, a boarded window and other eyesores marring the landscape. Across the lot, a couple argued loudly. Someone’s music boomed relentlessly. Still, this place wasn’t as bad as the nearby Village.

Soon after Piper’s death, his half-brother came to Marshallville. Off and on during a six-month period, he’d hounded the police to reopen the investigation, claiming, with no proof, Piper was murdered. Eventually, he’d left the police alone, but stayed in Marshallville.

Dante’s third knock on the door for Apartment Three brought a sluggish opening of the door. A slowly extending chain drew Dante’s eyes. The smell of stale pot wafted through the crack, a smell that took him back to his junior high days. His bro Laterius Steele lived with his pothead brother and their place smelled just like this.

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