Read No Hope for Gomez! for Free Online Page B

considered doing before, that didn’t mean I still wasn’t a raging cliché.
     
    Blog entry: Was about to excuse myself to the officer at the desk and flee, when a well-dressed man came from the back and blocked my escape. He asked me if I was Mr. Porter, then introduced himself as Detective Norton. He walked me to his desk.
     
    Blog entry: Detective Norton donned a grave expression and I braced myself for the ‘You’re not twelve years old anymore’ speech.
    “I’ll be honest with you, Gomez,” he said. “There’s been quite some pressure on me to put this case to bed.”
    I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he expected, so I said, “I see.”
    He nodded. “It looks like an unfortunate accident, and that’s what they want the report to say.”
    “Ah.”
    He leaned in closer. “But,” he said, lowering his voice, “between you and me, I’m not liking it. There’s something odd about this case. Something that doesn’t feel right.” He shot me a knowing look. “So, if you have anything I could use to keep this one open a little longer, I’d be grateful.”
    “Really?” That was a surprise, but it didn’t make me feel much better. My insecurity had helped me realize that what I’d found was only a shadow of a hint of a nothing. 
    Detective Norton cleared his throat. “Well?”
    “There are some irregularities in Joseph’s meatpacking blog.” I said. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.” I wasn’t sure how much of that sentence he’d understood, so I added, “A blog is an internet page of sorts. Joseph wrote stories on it about his days as a meatpacker.”
    Detective Norton frowned. He shift-pressed his computer out of screen saver mode and opened a site from his browser-history. It was the blog. “You sure?” he said. “I’ve read this drivel over and over and I couldn’t find anything remotely useful.”
    “May I?” I reached for the mouse. Detective Norton indicated for me to go ahead. I scrolled to the top of the blog, highlighted the time and date of the latest entry, and began to explain. He cut me off. “That’s almost a full twelve hours after Mr. Miller lost consciousness,” he said. He rubbed his chin. “I can’t believe I didn’t catch that.”
    “It took the insane ramblings of a multi-phobic for me to spot it,” I said. “But I’m not entirely sure what it means.”
    Norton made a note on a pad next to his keyboard. “I’ll get the tech boys to have a look, make sure there hasn’t been any date tampering, but, from what I can tell…”
    “Yes?”
    “It appears someone added an entry after Joseph passed out. That means we’re probably looking at foul play after all.”
     
    Blog entry: Detective Norton gave me his card and asked me to contact him if I discovered anything else. He even promised to keep me up to date on the investigation as much as he was allowed to.
    Returned home and flipped channels on the TV. My mind stayed on the Miller case. Who would update his blog and why? Whoever it was, they knew more about Joseph’s condition than I did, had probably contributed to it. But how?
    One thing was clear: No way was Dr. Hargrove devious enough to create a cover-up like this. And no way would she continue to dispense lethal trial drugs to the rest of the unsuspecting participants.
    No way.
     
    Blog entry: Thinking about Dr. Hargrove, I decided it was time for my love test. I lay down on the floor and relaxed. Slowed my breathing and ran over the scenarios I’d come up with earlier. I reiterated all the little details and mentally put myself in the different situations, then gauged my emotional reactions. When I was done, I repeated the entire exercise from the beginning, just to be sure.
     
    Blog entry: Passed the love test with flying colors!

11.
     
     
     
    Blog entry: Next morning Warren came over to play a game of ludo.
    I asked him not to.
    I told him at the door that it would probably be a bad idea, what with me not really liking him