Fantasy in Death (35 page)

“Can’t be,” Feeney disagreed. Absently, he took a cube of gum McNab offered him. “Screws the time line and the entry, and hell, the physical evidence on-scene. The attack went down in the holo-room.”

“I agree.” Eve stepped to the side of the wall screen to give the team an unobstructed view of the crime scene record. “So how does a woman incur injuries from a fall such as I’ve described on the smooth, flat surface of her holo-room? How does a man get his head cut off when all evidence concludes he was alone? The only logical explanation is Bart was killed and Cill attacked by their opponent in the game.”

“If they were alone, Dallas, they didn’t have a damn opponent.”

Eve shifted her glance toward Feeney. “But they did. Each would have to defeat or outwit that opponent to reach the next level. For Bart, the Black Knight. For Cill, the rival treasure hunter.”

“You’re saying some holo jumped out of a game and sliced off the vic’s head?” Feeney shook his own. “You’ve been working too hard, kid.”

“I’m saying the killer used the game,” Eve corrected. “I’m saying he used a new technology programmed into the game as the weapon. Enhanced wave fronts, increased power to beams and the haptic system, a refocus of laser angles and light, forming electrons and light source in the shape of the programmed images—replicating substance.”

Callendar tilted her head. “Wicked. Wicked freaky.”

21

“
T
hat’s science fiction shit.”

“It’s fiction until science catches up.” Eve rocked back on her heels. “Feeney, you work with science every day. Go back to your rookie days and compare them with now. This isn’t my area, so maybe it’s easier for me to consider the possibility. Nothing else fits. And this? Figuring the evidence, the time lines, the circumstances, the personalities, and the areas of interest? It fits like a fucking glove.”

“There’s always some rumbling and mumbling on the underground sites,” McNab commented. His eyes shone bright with the possibilities—what Eve thought of as a geek beam. “Way-out theories and applications.”

“We got sightings of Bigfoot and little green men on-sites, too,” Feeney countered, but he was frowning in a way that made Eve sure he was considering.

“Both vics had minute burns, internal burns, at the site of injuries. We’ve gone around chasing some charged-up sword. I think we weren’t far off. But it only exists within the program.

I believe Levar Hoyt killed one partner and attempted to kill another through his programming. Let’s take him for a minute.”

She shifted gears, back to the comfortable, and outlined her reasons and conclusions on the suspect.

“He looks good for it,” Feeney agreed. “You’ve got a nice pile of circumstantial. But say I came over to this idea of yours, how the hell do we prove it?”

“He’s going to tell me. He’s going to want to tell me.” She paused as Roarke walked in. “Got it?”

“It’s rough considering I was pressed for time—and your equipment is hardly cutting-edge—but I have it, yes.”

“Load it up. Display on screen two. What we’re going to see are reconstructions of the crimes, using the available data, images, medical findings, and applying the theory. The running time’s bottom right. For both, we’ve utilized the victims’ game pattern from records of their sessions.”

She watched as Roarke set the program, displayed it on-screen. “Bart Minnock enters his apartment,” she continued as the computerized images moved over the screen. “Interacts with the droid. He drinks the fizzy she serves him, orders her to shut down for the night. He leaves the glass on the table, goes to the third floor, and enters the holo-room, secures it.”

She watched it play out, keeping an eye on the elapsed time. It fit, she thought again. The image moved through the steps, the pattern previously established. Maybe he’d done something different this time, but it didn’t matter. He’d ended up, as he did now, facing off with the figure of the Black Knight.

Swords clashed, horses reared, smoke plumed. Then the tip of the blade scored Bart’s arm, and the knight followed through with the coup de grace.

“You’ll note the positions, the height, reach of the victim and the holo-image, the blow result in the exact positioning of the victim, head and body, as we have on record at the time of discovery. For the second victim, we’ll move straight to level three.”

“I put considerable time into the lead up,” Roarke complained.

“Which is appreciated, and will be of interest to the PA’s office. But for now, let’s save time. Her character’s after this artifact, and up against obstacles, puzzles, and opponents. She needs to reach the top of this rise, gain entrance to a cave in order to complete the level. Note the path is muddy.”

Arrows flew. Cill’s image dodged, weaved, slipped, scrambled up. Then came face-to-face with her opponent.

“The time line, considering her average pace and movements, indicates she found the holo-image here, on the muddy path, leading up the rise to the cave, with the cliff dropping on to the rocks and water at her right. There! Pause program.”

The images froze as the knife sliced Cill’s arm.

“She sustained this injury—one Morris states was the result of insult with a smooth, sharp object. Knife or sword. Resume program. She’s shocked, hurt, and off balance on the slippery path, falls before her opponent can follow through. Or, he gives her a nice shove. She hits the rocks, and is knocked unconscious. Game over. Since she loses consciousness, the program no longer reads her, and ends.”

She turned away from the screen. “Meanwhile the son of a bitch who arranged it is sitting at home with his fucking feet up entertaining himself, establishing his alibi, probably practicing his shock and grief. He eliminates two of his partners—two of his obstacles—and never gets his hands bloody.”

Feeney scratched his chin. “I’ll give you the timing works, and I’m not going to argue with Morris if he says that girl fell. But if this bastard figured out how to manipulate holo to this level, I’d sure like a look inside his head. Running that hot, hot enough to do this should’ve toasted the system.”

“Maybe not the first time,” Roarke put in. “He may have found a way to shield it. I don’t think a standard system would hold up to multiple plays.”

“He only needed one,” Eve pointed out.

“That’s what’s so screwy about the disc, the one we’ve been working to reconstruct.” McNab shifted to Callendar. “The high intensity of focused light, the concentration of nanos.”

“Cloak that in tri-gees to keep the system from snapping.”

“I’d use blue tone.”

“That’d gunk it inside of six UPH.”

“Not if you layered it with a wave filter.” Feeney joined in, and Eve turned back to her board as the geek team argued and theorized.

Peabody came over to join her. “I speak some basic geek, but I don’t understand a word they’re saying. I guess I’ll go back to Callendar’s first comment. It’s wicked freaky.”

“It’s science. People have been using science to kill since some cave guy set some other poor bastard’s hair on fire.”

She turned again, studied Cill’s broken body on the holo-room floor.

“The underlying’s the same, but sometimes the methods get fancier. He’s a cold, egotistical son of a bitch. He used friendship, partnership, trust, relationships, and affection built over years to kill a man who would never have done him any harm. He put another friend into the hospital where one more friend has to suffer, has to watch her fight to live. And he’s enjoyed every minute of it. Every minute of being the focus of our attention, absolutely confident in his ability to beat us. And that’s how we’ll bring him down. Hang him with his own ego, his need to win.”

She glanced over as the monitor began to beep.

“McNab!” The snap in her voice cut McNab off in the middle of a passionate argument over hard versus soft light.

“Sir.”

She jabbed a finger at the equipment. He sprang up, rushed over. “We got a breach on the outer layer. He’s testing it.”

“Track the signal.”

“Working on it. He’s got shields up, and feelers out. See that? See that?”

Eve saw a bunch of lights and lines.

“Two can play,” McNab muttered.

“Three.” Callendar put on a headset, began to snap her fingers, shift her hips. “He bounced.”

“Yeah yeah, he’s careful. There, that’s... No, no, that’s a fish.”

“I’ll run a line on it anyway. Maybe he’ll wiggle it back.”

“Try a lateral, Ian,” Roarke suggested. “Then go under. He’s just skimming now.”

“Let that fish swim,” Feeney told Callendar. “It’s not... There, see, there, he’s sent out a ghost. Go hunting.”

Eve paced away, circled, paced back as for the next twenty minutes the e-team followed squiggles and wiggles, flashes and bursts.

“He’s nipped through the next layer,” Roarke pointed out. “He’s taking his time about it.”

“Maybe we made it too easy for him.” Feeney puffed out his cheeks. “We’re scaring him off.”

“I don’t care how many layers he gets through. What he’s going to find is bogus anyway. I want his location.”

McNab glanced back at Eve. “He’s a pogo stick on Zeus, Dallas. He’s bouncing, then switching off, banking back. The bastard’s good.”

“Better than you?”

“I didn’t say that. We’ve got echoes, we’ve got cross and junctions, so he’s in New York. Probably.”

“I know he’s in New York.”

“I’m verifying it,” he said, testy now.

Roarke laid a hand on McNab’s shoulder. “I doubt you want chapter and verse here, Lieutenant. But imagine you were in a foot chase with a suspect who could, at any given time, pop ten blocks over, or take a jump to London, zip over to the Ukraine, then land again a block behind you. It might take you some time to catch the bloody bastard.”

“Okay, all right. How much time?”

“If he keeps at this pace, and we’re able to track those echoes, extrapolate the junctions, it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours. Maybe three.”

She didn’t curse. Var might have been bouncing all over hell and back in cyberspace, but as long as they had him on the monitor, he was in one place in reality.

“Can you run one of these at home?” she asked Roarke.

“I can, yes.”

“Do you have any problems with that?”

Feeney gave her an absent wave. “A secondary setup at another source might help flank the bastard.”

“Okay then, I’m going to work from home. In the quiet. I need to put this all down in a way that Whitney doesn’t have me committed when I report to him tomorrow. You can save me a lot of trouble by locating the murdering fuckhead.”

“If he keeps up the hack, we’ll have him. Yeah, yeah, he’s in New York. See there. Now let’s start scraping away sectors.”

“I’ll hang here,” Peabody said. “Keep them supplied with liquids.”

“Be ready for a go tonight.” Eve looked back at the team. It came down to trust again. If they said they’d pin him, they’d pin him.

“Maybe I should just take it to my office,” Eve considered as they headed out.

“Feeney’s right about the value of a secondary source. I can do more at home, and I have better equipment. Added to that, I’d like my hands in it, and here I’d just step on Ian’s toes.”

“All right. Set up at home, and I’ll spend the next hour or two trying to find a way to write a report that doesn’t make me sound like a lunatic.”

“You came off quite sane when you ran it by me, and then the rest. Push the science. I’ll help you with it,” he added when she didn’t quite muffle the groan. “We’ll dazzle the commander with your in-depth knowledge of advance holonetics.”

“I feel a headache coming on.”

He brushed his lips over the top of her head as they stepped into the garage. “There now.”

“One way or the other, he’s in the box with me tomorrow. My turf, my area. And then we’ll see who... Shit,
shit
, could it be that simple?”

“Could what?”

“Turf. Area.”
Shit!
she thought again and pulled up short. “I have to figure he’s got his hole within the basic parameters of his place, the partners, the warehouse. He’s efficient, careful, meticulous. Why would he risk being seen—and maybe even by his so-called friends—going in or out of another building?”

Roarke uncoded the doors, pulled hers open, then leaned on it. “His own building. He’d want his special equipment close, wouldn’t he? Easier to secure, to monitor that security, to use whenever he has the whim.”

“Not his apartment. There’s nothing in there. But there are other spaces in that building. Including the other half of his floor.”

“Let’s go have a look.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ll run the address while you drive, see who rents or owns it.”

He got behind the wheel. “Backup?”

“I’ll let them know we’re taking the detour, but I don’t want to call out the troops then have this turn out to be a bust. Anyway, I think we can handle a cyber geek who kills by remote control. He’s a coward on top of... Stuben, Harry and Tilda, ages eighty-six and eighty-five respectively. Owners, in residence for eighteen years. Three children, five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren.”

“It could be a blind.”

“Yeah.” She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “There was good security on that apartment. Two doors, both with monitors, cams, palm plates. The inside setup is probably a mirror image of Var’s. It’s worth a knock. I’ll run the other units. Maybe something will pop, but this one feels right.”

When he parked, she pulled out her communicator. “Peabody, we’re going to take a look at Var’s across-the-hall neighbors. Following a hunch.”

“Do you want me to meet you?”

“No. We’ll take our look-see. If I don’t tag you back in fifteen, send backup.”

“Copy that. Across the hall from his own place. That would be smart, now that I think of it. Dallas, why don’t you just leave the com open? I can monitor, and if I hear any trouble, I’ll release the hounds.”

“All right. While you’re babysitting us, go ahead and run the other occupants of the building. And put your com on mute. I don’t want to hear your voice coming out of my ass.” She stuck the communicator in her back pocket as Roarke chuckled.