Game of Death (38 page)

As the last of the spasms quiet, I am able to breathe again and I lift my head to look at her. I realize to my horror that my fingers are still at her throat, still strangling her. ‘Oh my
God!’ I yell, taking my hand away. ‘Kendra, are you okay?’

Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t move, and I pull away, feeling like I may throw up. ‘Kendra!’ I scream.

It takes a moment, but she jerks and coughs and takes a labored breath.

‘I’m sorry!’ I say. ‘Please, are you okay?’

The color is returning to her face. She gives me a weak smile. ‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘That was perfect.’

Looking at her as her breathing evens out, an expression of satisfaction on her face, I am even more sure I’ll vomit. She reaches up and slips her wrists out of the restraints, and I
realize for the first time that she was fully in control throughout the encounter. She could have released herself at any moment. I’m on my elbow, looking down at her face, my mind stuck in a
feedback loop, unable to compute – unable to fully understand what has just happened.

She looks up at me, and her eyes are different. They aren’t dead, the way they were in the LifeScene, but they lack the sparkle that was always at the heart of my desire. ‘Are you
okay?’ she asks.

It takes a moment for me to answer. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m alright.’

She smiles again. ‘How was it?’

I lie back next to her, looking up at the canopy. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure what to think.’

‘You’re not supposed to think,’ she says. ‘That’s the point.’ She puts a hand on my chest and strokes my skin. ‘It’s there in all of us,’
she says. ‘It’s okay to let it out every once in a while. It doesn’t make you a bad person.’

I put my hand on hers. ‘I know.’

She leans up on her elbow now, so that she’s looking down at me. ‘Do you?’

I don’t answer. The truth is, I don’t know.

It’s four in the morning, and I’m in the shower in the room at the Liberty Hotel. Like everything else in the place, it has a prison theme, with high-end steel sink
and toilet made to be reminiscent of the accommodation afforded to the former residents. The shower water comes straight from the ceiling, hitting the top of my head, running down my entire body. I
stand there, feeling numb even against the scalding water.

I get out and dry myself off, put my clothes on. I turn off the bathroom light before I open the door, trying not to wake Kendra. As I make my way quietly to the hotel room door, I hear her
voice.

‘You’re leaving.’

I’m caught off-guard. ‘I have something I need to do at the office, and I need to check in with my mother first. She’s been sick.’

‘There’s nothing for you at the office,’ she says. She knows the truth. I suppose that kind of wisdom is an unavoidable by-product of professional experience.

‘It’s just something I need to take care of,’ I say. ‘I’ll call you later today. Maybe we can do something tonight.’

I hear her shift under the covers. ‘You won’t call,’ she says. ‘It’s okay. I’ll be fine. I’m resourceful.’

‘Why do you say that?’

She sighs. ‘Because men who leave quietly at four in the morning don’t call. It’s something every girl knows in her heart, even when she doesn’t want to believe
it.’

I don’t go home. Ma is the last person I want to see at the moment. In truth, the only person I want to see is Yvette. I’m not even sure why, but it’s a need
that I can’t ignore. I consider going over to her house, knocking on the door, waking her up, but even I’m not that stupid. First of all, I have no idea what I would say to her.
I’m not going to lie, I know that, but I have no idea how to tell the truth. The truth seems like an enemy, and I haven’t figured out how to wrestle it to the ground yet.

There’s only one place I can go at the moment: the NextLife offices in Cambridge. I feel a little like a traitor as I enter the place, like an informer stopping by to see the slaughter his
betrayal has wrought.

It’s not as bad as I thought it would be when I arrive, though. It’s five o’clock in the morning, one of the quieter times in the office. There are fewer than forty
GhostWalkers in their chairs, mining the darkness of our customers’ imaginations for useful information that the company can turn into profit centers. I think I see one or two of them look up
and glare at me, but I can’t tell whether it’s my paranoia. By this point everyone at the company has read something about Michael François and Dr Gunta in the papers, but
it’s had a lower profile than one might expect, thanks to the fact that Killkenny has kept his word and tamped down the sensationalism. As a result, it’s still not clear what ultimate
impact the whole episode will have on the company.

No matter what the impact, though, I’ve decided that I won’t be around to see it. I cannot bring myself to stay after all that has happened. I’ll never be able to troll our
customers’ fantasies again, and the thought of working for someone like Josh Pinkerton is too much to bear, no matter what the cost. I’ll lose some of my shares if I quit before the
company goes public, so I’ll take a hit, but if the IPO goes forward, I’ll still walk away with several million dollars. That’s more than I’ll ever need.

I’m at the office now for two reasons. First, I want to clean it out before anyone else has the chance to do it for me. There’s not much there; like I said, I never turned my office
into a personal homage to the person I wanted others to think I was. There are some correspondences and personal financial information in my desk, as well as a few personal items – pictures
and postcards.

I take a moment to flip through a packet of images from a trip Yvette and I took a couple of years ago. We went down to Hyannis Port on the Cape. We spent the day walking around the shops, then
caught a ferry over to the Nantucket, had dinner by the water. We stayed over in a little hotel – separate rooms – and spent the next day on the beach before returning. It was a good
time. We’re comfortable around each other, and there’s always been the hint of possibility that neither of us has pushed. I’m not sure why; maybe it’s just that our timing
has always been wrong.

She’s the second reason I’m at the office. I assume she’ll be here at work eventually, and it’s a more natural way to see her than just appearing at her house. I still
haven’t figured out what I’m going to say to her, but I know I’ll find my way through it. She’s my friend, above all else, and she’ll understand what I’ve been
through. She may not like it, but she’ll be there for me.

I’m sitting at my desk, keeping an eye out on the floor to see her when she comes in. She doesn’t keep anything approaching regular hours, but it’s not unusual for her to show
up around ten o’clock for a few hours of GhostWalking before lunch. By ten-thirty, though, there’s no sign of her. I’ve run out of things to clean in my office, and I’m
starting to think about leaving – biting the bullet and going over to see her at her house. I’ve just about made up my mind to get out of there, when the external door at the far end of
the floor opens and I see NetMaster walk through it. I feel a wince in my ribs at the memory of my last encounter with him. They’ve been bothering me less and less, but I’m not anxious
for another round with him. I figure it’s unlikely that he’ll do anything here in public, particularly now that François has been caught and the investigation is closed. Still, I
decide to stay in my office and wait to see if he leaves.

He comes down the steps from the door and walks around the floor. Halfway across, he looks at the window to my office and sees me. I’m looking back at him, and our eyes meet. A thin, evil
smile forms on his face. It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach, and I have little doubt that he is here to throw me out of the building in as humiliating a manner as possible. I don’t
really care; I’m beyond worrying about what those at the company think about me. But if he gets physical, I resolve not to back down. No matter how big he is, I know that if it’s a fair
fight, I’ve got a reasonable chance to take him out. I sit there, waiting for him to approach me.

He doesn’t head to my office, though. He stands there for a moment, smiling his sick grin at me, like there’s something he knows that I don’t. Then he turns and heads back out
the exterior door. His behavior is unsettling, and I’m curious about what he has planned, though I’m not willing to stay here just to find out. I stand and start heading for the
door.

Before I can leave my office, though, the exterior door opens again and NetMaster walks back in. This time he’s not alone. I’m relieved to see Paul Killkenny behind him, as well as
two other officers. I know NetMaster is not going to try anything as long as they are here. I sit back at my desk and wait for Killkenny to enter. He does, and Net Master follows him in.

‘Paul,’ I say. ‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘It’s complicated,’ he says. He looks at the box that I’ve packed with my belongings. ‘You going somewhere?’

‘Anywhere but here,’ I say. ‘I think I’ve stayed long enough.’

‘You have stayed too long,’ NetMaster says.

I look at him and give a derisive laugh. To Killkenny I say, ‘I may be stopping by the station house to file an assault claim against this guy. Two, in fact.’

‘He is a liar,’ NetMaster says. ‘We already know that. We know much about him now, don’t we?’

‘Shut up,’ Killkenny says.

I’m starting to get a queasy feeling. ‘What’s going on, Paul?’ I ask.

‘I’ve just got to ask you a couple of questions.’

I assume he’s going to ask about some aspect of the investigation into François. ‘Fire away.’

‘Where were you last night?’

I frown at him. ‘Last night? Why do you want to know?’

He ignores my question. ‘Someone fitting your description was seen at the Liberty Hotel last night around ten. You know anything about that?’

‘Yeah, that was me. Why?’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Yes, it is our business!’ NetMaster yells. ‘You tell!’

Killkenny wheels on him. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ He stares at NetMaster until the huge man lowers his head in submission. Paul turns back to me. ‘Sorry about that. I do need to
know what you were doing there. It’s important to our investigation.’

I frown. I really don’t want my liaison with Kendra to become public knowledge, particularly if it means that Yvette will find out from anyone other than me. Still, I suppose there’s
nothing I can do. ‘I was there to see Kendra Madison,’ I admit.

‘Did you stay the night?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘What’s this about?’

‘You need to come down to the station house with me to answer some more questions,’ he says.

‘Why?’

‘Because a maid found Kendra Madison’s body in a room this morning. She was tied to the bed and strangled, just as you described in the LifeScene you saw.’

I feel like a building has fallen on me. I start to say something, but no words come out. I feel like I’m choking. ‘Dead?’ I finally manage to say.

He nods. ‘Raped and killed. We have a DNA sample.’

‘She wasn’t raped!’ I yell, getting to my feet.

‘Yes, raped! And then you kill her!’ NetMaster shouts.

‘Fuck you!’ I scream at him. My world is spinning out of control, and NetMaster is standing there with a sick smile on his gigantic, twisted face. It’s more than I can take,
and I step forward and hit him in the face as hard as I can, snapping his nose. He screams out in pain, and it feels good. I hit him again and again. The two cops who accompanied Killkenny rush
into my office to pull me off him. They pin my arms back and put handcuffs on me.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I scream. ‘Paul, tell them to take these fucking things off me!’

‘We’ll take them off at the station house,’ he says. NetMaster is standing again, his face a smear of blood, but with a smile on it.

A woman’s voice comes from the office door. ‘What’s going on?’

I look over and see Yvette there, and my heart drops. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I didn’t do anything!’

‘We’re taking him in for questioning,’ is all Killkenny says.

‘For what?’ Yvette asks.

‘He killed the whore!’ NetMaster yells. ‘He raped her and he killed her! What do you think of your boyfriend now?’

She turns to look at me, and I meet her eyes with mine. ‘It’s a lie,’ I say. ‘It’s not true.’

She says nothing as the two cops take me by the arms, practically lifting me off the ground as they drag me out of the office and toward the external door. ‘It’s not true, Yvette!
You have to believe me!’

I’m trying to look back over my shoulder, but it’s useless as they pull me away. I’m searching for something to say – something that will make her understand and believe,
but there is nothing. Suddenly I realize that I am all alone.

‘You see my problem, Nick, don’t you?’

I’m sitting in an interrogation room in the police station in the Back Bay. Paul Killkenny is sitting across from me. His boss, Detective Sergeant Tom Welker, stands against the far wall,
watching. There’s a mirror behind him, and I’m sure there are others observing through the glass. I’m still handcuffed and I sit uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair, leaning
slightly forward to keep my hands from pressing into the chair back. Not that it would matter, I suppose; the handcuffs are so tight that they’ve cut off the circulation, and my hands lost
feeling long ago.

I haven’t spoken since I saw Yvette. The full implications of my situation are just beginning to set in. If what they are telling me is true, Kendra is dead – found strapped to the
headboard on the bed in the hotel room where she and I spent the night before. There would be plenty of people who would testify that we were together the night before. The girl at the front desk
might even remember me leaving early that morning, and I have no alibi until I was seen at the office. Plus there’s the physical evidence, which will be overwhelming. My DNA will be all over
the room, and all over Kendra’s body. Hell, they’ll even have bruises on her neck that match my hands. Based on the evidence, there will be no question that I killed her. That puts me
in a difficult position, given that she was fully alive and talking when I left. I need time to think this through, and being handcuffed and interrogated by the police is hardly conducive to
rational contemplation.