Fantasy in Death (20 page)

Eve aimed a cool look. “Of course.”

“But they had their additional security, which would have sent out alarms at an attempted hack. Assuming the hacker hadn’t already bypassed those. The discs themselves, at least the one in Bart’s home unit and the copy we have here, are imprinted to jam if any of these steps are missed or the ID process fails. An attempt to remove the disc, as we learned, results in self-destruct.”

“I know all of this.”

“Laying the groundwork, Lieutenant. They were careful, clever, vigilant. But certainly not absolutely hackproof as nothing is. In any case, those precautions make it tricky to ascertain absolutely who played what and when. So we have to extrapolate.”

“Meaning guess.”

“A reasoned and educated guess based on probability. Bart used a variety of user names and codes between his home and office, but as with most people, he has a pattern, and he repeats. To simplify, I’ve had the computer cull him out and label him User 1 in both locations.”

He ordered the data on-screen. “Here you see the dates and times he logged in on their PSX, by location, and whether it was solo or multi-player. We’ve crossed that with the other players, going alpha last name, you have Cill Allen as User 2, Var Hoyt as User 3, and Benny Leman as User 4. We have a separate data run on every employee who worked on the game, when, how long, in what capacity. You’ll want to run an analysis on those, I expect.”

“Who’s particular pals with who, sleeping with who, how long they’ve worked there. I know the drill.”

Roarke smiled at her. “It’s taken us this long to get here simply because the log-ins for this game alone are legion, and between the four of them they used several dozen user names and codes. Next problem.”

“Would be?”

“The infinite variety of scenarios. They all have plenty of play on the defaults, but the bulk of the log-ins are off that menu. Some are saved either to play again with exactly the same elements, or discarded, or saved and replayed with alternate elements. Or two scenarios might be merged.”

“Doesn’t it keep a record? What’s the fun of playing if you can’t keep score?”

“It does, and the holo-unit would hard drive it. The problem is the data on Bart’s holo doesn’t match any of the scenario names or codes from prior uses.”

“A new scenario?”

“Possibly. It’s listed as K2BK—BM.”

“Bart Minnock,” Eve concluded. “His particular game? Or did they routinely label them with initials?”

“No, they didn’t. There’s no coordinating listing on the copy U-Play messengered over today. The scenario isn’t on disc under that name or code. There’s nothing on his holo-unit that shows him creating it on the day he was killed, or any other day. He put the other copy in, the one we’re trying to reconstruct, and called for that game, with a request to begin at level four.”

“You don’t start on level four if you’ve never played it before. You want to start at the beginning.”

“Yes, you would. Or certainly the probability is high.”

“So he played it before, but on the copy he used it had been given a name or code not previously used.” She walked and thought. “He had a date, so he had limited time. He didn’t want to waste it on the early stages. He pushed it forward. A section he wanted to work on, or one he particularly enjoyed, or one he had trouble beating before. But he’d played it before. There’s no question it was solo play?”

“None,” Callendar told her.

“The killer might have started the game, logged it that way to cover.”

“Then he should’ve been logged as observer or audience. The room only registered one player, one occupant. If someone else was in there, he found a way around it.”

“Murder takes at least two players,” Eve murmured. “He plays. He gets bruised up some, wrenches his shoulder. How?” She thought of Benny, smooth and graceful with his katas. “He knows how to fight, how to defend. He takes gaming seriously, so he’s studied, practiced, but there’s no sign he put up a fight. No trace, no blood, no fiber, no nothing from the killer in that room. And every reconstruct tells me he just stood there while the sword came down on him.

“Someone else’s scenario,” she considered. “The killer creates the disc, adding defaults or elements or openings, and recodes it. Something that could override the system long enough to pull this off. That’s what these guys do, right? Find new ways. New ways to play the game. What did he play the most?”

“There are four scenarios he favored,” Roarke told her. “He’d mix up and alter elements here and there, but usually stuck with the same basic story line and character grid. He named them Quest-1, Usurper, Crusader, and Showdown.”

“Are they on the copy?”

“They are.”

“Stats?”

“We’re pulling and collating them now.”

“Good. And when you run the games, prioritize anything with swords. It’s pizza and a pipe wrench.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Feeney demanded. “You’re losing it, kid.”

“No point in wasting a good pie. No point bringing a sword to a blaster battle. You want to make use of what you’ve got, and take what’s useful with you. He took the sword, but he left the disc. The disc would be useless to us after self-destruct, and incriminating to him if found in his possession.”

She stuck her hand in her pocket. “A woman says to the husband she wants dead,
Hey, honey, I’ve just got to have a pizza. Be a sweetheart and run down and get us a large veggie.
Now he’ll probably say,
We’ll just have it delivered,
but she’s ready for that.
Oh, they take too long and I’m just starving for a pizza. Please, baby? I’ll open some wine, and maybe I’ll change into something you’ll like. We’ll have a little pizza party.
”

“What the hell does that have to do with this?”

She glanced at Feeney. Cynical and rough-edged he might be, but he was a blusher. “Working it out. The guy goes for pizza—going to get lucky, so hey, it’s worth the walk. The wife who wants him dead has her lover waiting with the pipe wrench. Smack, bang. No need for a divorce and all that bother, no point losing the nice chunk of life insurance—and hey, there’s a nice fresh pizza, too. It’s mean, just a little mean, but efficient and practical, too, to take the pie, leave the wrench.”

“‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli,’” Roarke said, and Feeney grinned.

“Okay, that I get.”

“It’s mean,” Roarke echoed Eve, “just a little mean, but efficient and practical, too, to murder Bart during a game he enjoys, and to do so by means that play into one of his fantasies. Mean, efficient, and practical to do it in his own home—and it’s another game added to that. How will the cops figure it out? He’ll have played that scenario, your killer, tried the elements out until he was confident of the win.”

“I just bet he has,” Eve agreed.

“But a good game always tosses in an unknown, a bigger challenge. That would be you.”

“Crib’s still up there,” Feeney muttered and earned a sour look from Eve.

“Copy the copy. I’m going to want to work at home. They’re not going to give us a search warrant for private residences with what we’ve got. Everybody’s alibied, no clear motive, no physical evidence. Barely any circumstantial at this point. We need more.”

“Whose residence?” Callendar asked her.

“Partnership’s like marriage. It’s a freaking minefield. And one of Bart’s partners decided on that pizza and pipe wrench.”

Back in her office, she deemed it time to dig deeper, a lot deeper on the three remaining partners of U-Play.

She needed something, just a little something she could turn, twist, or tweak to convince the PA to go after a search warrant.

The killer’s home comps would certainly have been doctored by now. She wasn’t dealing with an idiot. But EDD had its ways, as did her expert consultant, civilian.

While her own computer dug, she rearranged her murder board. Studied it, rearranged it again.

She thought she understood, at least partially, the why. It was small and it was shallow, but murder had been done for much, much less. Without Reineke’s nose, a man’s death might very well have been put down to the contents of his wallet and a veggie pizza.

There’d be bigger under the small, and deeper under the shallow, but it was enough for now. Enough to help her create her own scenario.

“I’m back! Did you miss me?” Peabody bounced in, then flopped in the visitor’s chair. “Jeez, do you know what the shuttle’s like this time of day? It’s a zoo—animal ferocity and smells. Plus, the air unit fizzled twenty minutes out of the station. Add jungle heat to that. I want a two-hour shower.”

“You had sex.”

“What? What? Why do you say that? You can’t have sex on the shuttle! You’d die of heat prostration, then be arrested.”

“You had sex before you got on the shuttle. There better not be an expense chip for some cheap by-the-hour flop on my desk tomorrow.”

“We didn’t use some cheap by-the-hour flop. We...” Peabody cleared her throat as Eve simply kept up the long, steady stare. “Played games. As ordered.”

“I don’t want to know what kind of games.”

“Really, really good games. Ones that call for excellent reflexes and superior physical stamina.” She grinned, unrepentant. “We’re going to save up and buy a new, juicy game system for each other for Christmas.”

“Is this your report?”

“No, this is the shuttle-boiled-my-brain babble. Whew.”

“What’s on your tit? What the hell is that?”

“Oh.” Peabody ducked her chin to glance down. “It’s my love dragon. It’s a temp.”

“A love dragon? You’re wearing a love dragon on your tit, most of which is spilling out of whatever that is you’re not covered up with.”

“It’s a look—and it works. Trueheart nearly choked on his tongue when I walked through the bullpen.” Peabody sighed. “It’s pretty satisfying.”

“It may be you confused undercover with undercovered. Either way, I don’t want to see your love dragon tomorrow. Now if you’ve rested and recovered from your arduous assignment, I’d like that report.”

“Sure. The contact, Razor, the King of All Weaponry, hasn’t heard of a sword like we’re after—not a real. Props, toys of a similar and nonlethal nature, but nothing that could decapitate or leave those burns.”

“Could’ve been made custom.”

“We thought of that after... after a little gaming inspired us. We went back, discussed. After a little persuasion he gave us the names of a couple of sources who might be able to make something along the lines, for a price. A really, really whopping-ass price. Out of those, there was maybe one who might do it off the grid, unregistered. But that ups the price to about double whopping-ass. I know we looked at the financials, and nobody on our radar had an expenditure that comes close.”

“I’m doing deeper runs right now. Maybe it’ll pop. Some people game for money,” Eve considered. “Some game for money off the grid. So, we might have somebody who had a double whopping-ass pile of unreported cash.”

“Well, meanwhile, we did some poking around on the underground game sites on the way back. Razor’s already putting out feelers. We left it like we’d be willing to pay, and how we’d heard one of these swords was out there. Now he’s looking, and we’re watching him while he’s looking. McNab’s going to keep tabs. If Razor gets a hit, we’ll get it, too.”

“That’s good thinking. Go home and take that shower. I can smell you from here.”

“It’s not my fault. Plus, with the sweating I think I might’ve lost a pound or two just sitting there trying not to breathe.” She pushed herself up. “Oh, nearly forgot. We got you a present.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She unzipped one of her pockets and pulled out a very small gun.

“What is it?”

“It’s a toy gun. A derringer—like cardsharps and saloon girls carry in western vids. It’s like a clutch piece.”

“Hmmm.”

“And check it.” Peabody cocked it, and a sultry female voice purred out of the barrel.
Put those hands where I can see them, cowboy.

“It has all sorts of audio streams—male, female. I figured you’d want the female. Plus—”

She aimed it at Eve, pulled the trigger even as Eve said: “Hey!”

The little gun let out a brave little bang.
Next one goes lower, and you won’t be poking a woman with that stick of yours for the rest of your miserable life.

“Isn’t it cute? You could play saloon girl and Roarke could be high-stakes gambler, then... and that’s entirely none of my never mind.” Peabody offered a big smile.

“Yes, it’s cute, no, it’s none of your never mind.” Eve took the derringer, recocked it.
You’d better hightail it before that tail’s sporting another hole.

“It could use better dialogue, but it’s apt enough. Hightail it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Peabody? Thanks.” Eve studied the gun, shook her head. Unable to resist, she shot her

computer, her AutoChef, amused by the lame insults that followed. That was another thing about partners, she decided. They knew what would make you laugh, often before you did.

12

T
here’d been a time, Roarke thought, not so long ago in the bigger scheme, when a few hours in a cop shop would’ve been something to be carefully and ruthlessly avoided. Now, he spent so much time in one he knew which Vending areas to avoid, which glides tended to drag or crowd up, and just how filthy cop coffee could be by the end of a tour.

His life had taken a sharp and strange turn the first instant he’d laid eyes on a cop, his cop, in an ill-fitting coat and a truly ugly gray suit.

He fingered the button from that suit, one he kept for luck and sentiment in his pocket.

She’d been a first for him at a time when he’d come to believe he’d done nearly everything worth doing at least once. Had he been bored? he wondered as he angled his way onto a down glide. No, not bored, but perhaps a bit unsettled, restless, certainly dissatisfied in ways he hadn’t been able to put his finger on at the time.

Then, there she’d been, and everything shifted, everything sharpened. He couldn’t say what fell into place. Nothing with Eve was quite that easy, but pieces had begun to fit together. Some of them, on both sides, had required a bit of reshaping, and likely still would as more and more of their picture emerged.

As he rode down, a pair of uniforms rode up. The rattail-thin man between them protested loudly and continually.

“Somebody musta planted that wallet on me. I got enemies. I was only running ’cause I had a bus to catch. Do I look like a pickpocket? Do I? Do I?”

You do indeed, Roarke thought, and if you can’t lift a wallet without fumbling the snatch, you deserve your ninety-day stretch.

Eve wouldn’t think quite that way, he mused. It wasn’t the getting caught, but the act itself that earned the stretch. Most of the time he agreed with her, and in fact had edged over to her side of that line more and more as time went by. But a bit of quick fingers? Well, everyone had to make a living, didn’t they? Even a street thief.

He ought to know.

He crossed into Homicide where the sounds, the sights, the smells had come to be as familiar to him as those in his own head-quarters.

Detective Baxter stood by his desk, straightening his tie. He paused, tapped a finger to his temple in salute.

“LT’s in her office. Trying to get a head.”

Roarke acknowledged the black humor with a quirked brow. “You’ve had all day, and that’s the best you’ve got?”

“Already used up all the good ones. Anyway, I’ve been off shift for, hey, look at that, an hour. So my brain’s a little... detached.”

“Better, marginally. Where’s your boy?”

“Sent him home, and stayed back to finish the Fours and other crap. He’s got a date.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, our Trueheart’s finally worked it up to ask out the little redheaded cutie in Records. He was seeing somebody else, but it fizzled. Civilians can have a harder time working it out with cops. Present company excepted.”

“Understood.”

“Anyway, he’s trying out the dinner and a vid routine, after which, they’ll likely exchange a friendly handshake. Kid moves like a glacier when it comes to the female persuasion. Otherwise, he’s a quick study.”

“You suit each other.”

“Yeah, who’d’ve thought? Anyway, I’m gone. I’ve got a date myself, and I expect to be shaking more than her hand at the end of the night.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Friend, it ain’t about luck.” He gave Roarke another salute and sauntered off.

Amused, and considering the concept of dates, Roarke walked into Eve’s office.

She stood in front of her murder board, hands on her hips. “Computer,” she said, “save and copy all data to my home unit.”

“This is good timing.”

“I need some mulling time.”

“I’ve your copy. Sealed and logged.”

She took it from him. “Aren’t you all official?”

“I certainly hope not. You can have your mulling time on the way.”

“I’ve got a couple more things—”

“That can wait,” he interrupted. “I want dinner.”

She pulled a derringer out of her pocket. Obligingly, he lifted his hands in surrender. “Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed.”

“Bet you’re not.”

He only smiled. “You can search me later. Clever little thing there. Where’d you get it?”

“Souvenir from Peabody and McNab.” She cocked it.
It’s small, but it’s mean. Just like me.

He laughed and stepped forward to take a better look at it. “There was this screen show—television,” he corrected, “as it was about a century ago. What was it? In any case, it was in the American West, and the hero was a mercenary—a gun for hire. He carried one of these.”

“I hope he didn’t charge much.”

“He had the full-size as well, but this was his—”

“Clutch piece.”

“There you are. We’ll have to watch some of them the next time we’re free. Now, Lieutenant, as Baxter would say, we’re gone.”

“Okay, okay.” She gathered up files. “You drive. I’ll mull.”

“You’re looking at his three friends, the partners,” Roarke said as they worked their way down to garage level.

“Easiest access to his personal space, most to gain, and most intimately acquainted with the vic’s habits, routines, the business itself, and the game at the center of it.”

“You’re leaning toward one.” With a regret and grim acceptance he thought they shared, they wormed their way onto a jammed elevator. “One more than the others,” he continued, jockeying for room in a space that smelled of boiled onions and stale sweat. “Which?”

“I’m still structuring the theory. Besides that’s not how the game’s played.” She shoved her way off again. “Which would you pick?”

“It’s difficult for me to think of any of them as capable of this. I don’t know them especially well, but what I do know just rejects the idea.”

“Why, particularly?”

“I suppose, in part, because of the way they came up together. Longtime mates.”

“And you had yours,” Eve commented. “In Dublin.”

“I did, and while none of us would’ve been above a bit of a cheat, as that’s a kind of game as well, we’d never have hurt each other, or caused hurt.”

“Yeah, it’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about today. Friendships, long-term, short-term, what clicks and why. Friendships can enhance, right, complete in a way. But they can also erode and scrape, and simmer under the surface. Add money or sex or ego to the mix, and it can boil right over.”

“I’m hardly one to look at things through rose-colored glasses, or for that matter to doubt your instincts.” Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the garage. “Still, I’ve watched the four of them together, listened to them, and listened to Bart speak of them.”

“You know, I bet when the pizza lady first hooked up with the husband she wanted dead, she had really nice things to say about him, too.”

He had to shake his head, half in amusement, half in resignation. “Back to that, are we?”

“I’m saying relationships change, people change, or sometimes an event, an action, or a series of them just pisses somebody off.” She slid into the passenger’s seat when they reached her vehicle, waited until he’d taken the wheel. “Play the game. Let’s call it
Deduction.
If you had to choose which murdered or arranged to have murdered the friend and partner, which? And why?”

“All right.” If nothing else, he thought, it might help him reach some level of objectivity. “First, if one of them did the murder, Cill doesn’t have the muscle for it.”

“Well, you might be wrong there. She, like the others, practices martial arts, combat fighting, street defense, weaponry, and so on regularly. In fact, she has a black belt in karate, and she’s working on one in tae kwon do.”

“Ah, well. It doesn’t pay to underestimate small packages.”

“She’d be agile, quick, stronger than she looks. And the weapon itself may have given her more heft. Being a female with a small build doesn’t rule her out.”

“The blow came from above, but I suppose it’s possible she stood on something, or used a leap or jump to give her height and momentum.”

“Now you’re thinking.”

He shot her a mild look. “I can’t see it, but will agree for now she can’t be ruled out. Var. The same stipulations apply on the physicality. He’d be as capable of it physically as the others—I assume.”

“Correct.”

“Otherwise, from my outside observer’s view, Var and Bart were like two parts of the same whole.”

“Some people get tired of being a part, and want the whole.”

“Such a cop,” he murmured. “They both enjoyed digging down into the business side of things, digging into the nuts and bolts of sales, distribution, marketing as much as the creative side. They enjoyed having each other for the checks and balances, fine-tuning each other’s concepts when it came to promotion, expansion, that sort of thing. Bart told me once when they met Var, it was like the last piece clicked on. I know what that’s like.”

Eve stretched out her legs, comfortable with the way he wound through irritable traffic. “And if they disagreed?”

“I can’t tell you how they worked things out as I wasn’t involved. But I never heard Bart express any sort of frustration on that score.”

“We’ll agree the victim was loyal and content with the status quo. That doesn’t mean Var, or any of the others were. Are.”

“There are considerably less messy ways of dissolving a partnership or changing the status quo.”

Her smile edged toward smirk. “Easier ways to get rid of a husband than cracking him open with a pipe wrench.”

“I believe I’m going to see that any tools we might have around the house are locked away. On to Benny. He’d be, to my mind, the most intellectual of the four. He enjoys spending his hours in research, sifting through details, theorizing about the underlying meaning of a game, and the reasons they’re played. He’ll research myths, real crimes, historical figures, wars and battles and strategies to add other layers to a game.”

“Good with details, strategy, and the art of combat.”

“You don’t seriously believe—”

“Just pointing out the facts.” She pulled out her PPC, added something to her notes. “When it comes down to it, they all had the means and the motive, and all could easily have arranged the opportunity. In fact, they all, or any two of them, might have planned it out together.”

“To what end, really?” Roarke asked. “U-Play will likely get a quick boost in sales from curiosity and the public’s thirst for scandal. But without Bart, they’re going to be set back on their heels, at least for a bit. He was, and this is from a business standpoint, essentially the glue that held those four parts together into a productive whole.”

Nodding, she keyed in more, spared Roarke an absent glance. “I agree with that. But that doesn’t account for ego, and again, that deep, passionate fury that only people who are intimate in some way can feel for one another. These four were intimate.”

“Family.”

“Yeah. And nobody kills more often than family.”

“In fact I believe I’ll have the tools taken out of the house altogether.” He swung over to grab a parking spot, and watched her frown.

“What’s this? I thought we were going home.”

“I see for once you were caught up enough in a game not to pay attention to your surroundings. I didn’t say home,” he reminded her. “I said dinner.”

“I haven’t updated my reports, or finished with the analysis of the runs. I have to run a full series of—”

As he stepped out and shut the door of the car, that was all he heard. He came around, opened her door. “Come on, Lieutenant, put it away for an hour. It’s a pretty night. Time for a little walk and a meal.”

“See?” She poked a finger in his chest when she got out. “This is why people in intimate relationships bash each other over the head.”

He took her hand, kissed it. “An hour shouldn’t kill either one of us.”

“I have to go through the game scenarios on the disc.”

“I’ve eliminated half of them. You’re looking for one that uses a sword. There’s only the two. Quest-1 and Usurper. The others involve more modern weaponry.”

“Still...” She trailed off, and he saw when her annoyance faded enough for her to make the neighborhood. Just as he saw her smile bloom with surprise, and with pleasure, when she stopped in front of the hole-in-the-wall pizza joint.

“Polumbi’s. It’s been a while since I’ve been here. It hasn’t really changed at all.”

“It’s nice isn’t it, when some things remain constant? You told me you came here when you first got to the city. You had your first slice of New York pizza, watched the people walking by. And you were happy. You were free.”

“I felt like my life could finally begin when I sat at the counter at the window. Nobody knew me or cared. I had no friends, no lovers. Nobody but me. And it was incredible.”

She looked at him, those gilded eyes warm, so for a moment it seemed no one else walked the sidewalk, no one else breathed the air. Only the two of them.

“Things are different now. It’s good they changed. It’s good this is the same.” This time she took his hand, linked fingers firmly. “Let’s go have some pizza.”

They didn’t take the counter, but grabbed a narrow two-top and sat on squat, stingily cushioned stools.

He could have chosen anywhere, Eve thought. Snapped his fingers and scored them a table for two at the most exclusive restaurant in the city. Somewhere with snooty waiters, a superior wine cellar, and a temperamental chef who created complex dishes with an artist’s skill.

But he’d given her a crowded, noisy joint where the tables crammed so close together the patrons’ elbows bumped, where the scents of spices and onions and cheap wine in squat carafes stung the air.

More, he’d given her a memory.

When they’d ordered, she propped her chin on her hand. Yes, things were different now, she thought. She was hardly embarrassed at all that she went gooey over him. “Did you buy this place?”

“No. Some things should remain constant. But we’re keeping an eye on it, in the event the owners decide to retire or sell off.”

So it could stay as it was, for her, she thought, even if years passed before she came back.

“It seems to be the day for people to give me presents. I’ve got one for you.”