Fantasy in Death

7

On the way home she checked in with members of the team, logged the updates. She sent copies of all reports to her commander, then requested a consult with Mira for the next day.

“Two arrests today,” she said, thinking of DuVaugne and Dubrosky. “Both deserve the cage time, but neither of them killed my vic. Someone closer than that. Someone more fun.”

She remembered Peabody’s angle. “These conventions-cons-where people get all dressed up in weird outfits, play games, have contests, take seminars. I bet you’d meet a lot of fun people at those, if that’s what you’re into.”

“Shared interests, like minds. That’s what you’re after.”

“And the weapons. Fancy magic sword. Maybe it was a bribe, or some sort of payment. Let me play the game, let me be-what did Bart call it with the Sing kids-your test study-and you can have the sword.”

“Most auctions and shops have records of that sort of sale. I can try to find it.” Roarke maneuvered around a maxibus, threaded the needle between a couple of Rapid Cabs while evening traffic spurted, snarled, or stalled. “But it’s just as likely it was private, and no record exists.”

“Worth a shot. Tie the sale to someone at U-Play. Someone he met at a con, and maybe hired. For the warehouse spot, for consulting. Someone he used before in test studies.” She stared out the window where the warmth had tourists flooding the sidewalks, but she saw a secured holo-room where her victim died in shoes wet from a whistling walk in the rain.

“He knew his killer,” she stated, “or whoever set him up for the kill.”

She thought of DuVaugne again as they drove through the gates of home. Not in the killing sense, but in taste, in scope. The steel and glass box, she thought, so cold, so hard, so desperately trendy. And here was Roarke’s taste and scope in the strong and graceful lines of home, the towers and turrets adding a little fancy, the streams and rivers of flowers, the warmth and color.

Yet the man who’d built it had lived in the cold and the hard for so long, as she had. When given the choice, he’d taken the strong and the warm.

And, in turn, had given them to her.

“We should eat.”

He turned to look at her as he stopped the car. “Now you’re stepping on my lines.”

“You could start the search for the weapon, and I’ll put something together.”

“Will you now?”

She couldn’t really fault his skepticism. “I won’t program pizza.”

He got out of the car, waited for her, took her hand. “What’s the occasion?”

“You have good taste in houses.”

“I have good taste in all manner of things. Especially wives.” He lifted her hand to his lips as they walked up the steps and into the house.

She gave Summerset a good, long study as he stood exactly where she’d expected, like a harbinger of doom in the foyer with the chub of cat at his feet.

“I saw your evil twin today,” she told him. “Wait, you’re the evil twin. I think he has the same tailor, too. I. M. Funereal.”

“Well, that was clever,” Roarke said and pinched the hand he’d just kissed. “We’ll be eating upstairs tonight,” he told Summerset.

“Hardly breaking news. There’s some very nice grilled swordfish, if the pair of you choose to eat like adults.”

“Swordfish,” Eve considered. “Might be lucky, considering. You didn’t have to pinch me,” she added as they continued up and the cat, his mind very likely on food, raced ahead of them. “I really did see his evil twin today. You can ask Peabody. Of the droid variety, and it had one of those fake-sounding upper-class Brit accents, but it was a ringer. I bet you could buy it cheap if you ever want to replace dour with droid.”

“You’re asking for another pinch.”

“Probably a bad idea, about the switch. As much as I hate to say it, I think the droid’s worse. Did Summerset ever tell you not to drink too many fizzies because they’re not really good for you?”

“Possibly. Probably,” Roarke said as they turned into the bedroom. “I want to change out of this suit.”

“And while he was doing that, he taught you how to steal.”

“I already knew how to steal. He taught me how to steal with a bit more finesse. Dinner,” he said as she shed her own jacket. “And if it’s the swordfish, open a ’fifty-seven Lautrec. It should be a nice complement.”

“No pointers,” she told him and changed her boots for skids. “Otherwise it doesn’t count in my column.”

She strolled out, still wearing her weapon harness, which he assumed she’d forgotten she had on as it was as much a part of her as the shallow dent in her chin.

Wanting the ease and comfort, he changed into jeans and a T-shirt before making the ’link calls he preferred to address in private. There had been too many eyes and ears on him throughout the day, he thought now. Cops’ eyes, cops’ ears. They might have been his wife’s, his friends’, but there were some matters easier done without the weight of the law on his shoulders.

Eve’s law, he thought, could be particularly heavy at times, so he programmed a series of runs, scans, and searches by remote before continuing on to his office, which intersected with hers.

He could hear her talking to the cat, ordering her computer to run a variety of probabilities, then her movements around the room.

Setting up her murder board, he concluded while he programmed searches from different angles and apexes for a sword that may or may not exist.

A fairly typical evening for them, Roarke supposed, and he had no complaints. He would have to devote several hours of what might have been free time to his own business due to the interruption of the day-and likely days more. But he liked his work, so that wasn’t a true sacrifice.

In any case, the interruption had been his call, his choice.

The boy had sparked something in him in life-all that enthusiasm and discovery. And the boy had touched something in him in death-the waste, the cruelty of the waste.

It had touched deep because Bart had trusted him-a competitor-and one with the means and experience to betray that trust and crush a young company like a hatching egg under a boot.

Perhaps that explained why he felt obligated to help find out who’d do so. Not to the company, but to the boy himself.

Eve had called Bart simple, Roarke recalled. He wasn’t sure he agreed entirely, but certainly Bart had been uncomplicated. Open, eager, honest, brilliant, and making a mark doing what he loved with people he loved.

Life should be so uncomplicated for everyone, Roarke thought.

Maybe, at the base of it, Bart had sparked something in him due to their differences rather than their similarities. No one, Roarke admitted, would ever consider him open or honest. And he’d never, even as a boy, held that fresh eagerness or casual brilliance.

Still, he’d made his mark while Bart had only begun to scratch the surface of his own potential.

He left the search on auto and walked through the shared doorway to see Eve finishing her murder board. As they often did, he thought, they’d have the dead as company for dinner.

The cat watched her, sprawled over the back of her sleep chair like a fat, furry blanket. Galahad switched his tail as a casual wave of greeting as Roarke crossed over. He ran a hand over the cat, head to switching tail, and got a low, murmuring purr in response.

“You took a while, so I figured I’d set up. I already fed the cat,” she added. “Don’t let him tell you different.”

Roarke picked up the wine she’d set on the table by the window-she’d taken his advice there-and poured two glasses. “The searches are running.” He lifted one of the hot lids and noted she’d chosen the swordfish, married it with asparagus, and fries.

“The fries are a compromise since I’m eating fish.” She turned from the completed board to take the wine he offered. “I thought about making yours with one of the rice deals you seem to like for no good reason I can think of. But then it’s more like going out to a restaurant than fixing a meal at home. So you get what I get.”

“You have the oddest thought patterns at times.” Because what she’d done, how and why she’d done it, chased off some of the shadows, he touched his glass to hers. “It looks good.”

“It ought to. I slaved over a cool AutoChef for a full five minutes.” She sat, smiled at him. “Why does a fish have a sword?”

“Is this a riddle?”

“No, it’s a question. Do they do the en guard, touché thing or just go around stabbing unarmed fish because they can?”

“Maybe they do battle with the hammerheads.”

“Sword’s got a longer reach than a hammer, but a hammer could break a sword. It might be interesting, but I think it’s stupid to bring a hammer to a swordfight, unless it’s all you’ve got.”

“Use whatever weapon comes to hand, and anything that comes to hand is a potential weapon.”

“Yeah. If Bart was gaming a swordfight, he wouldn’t have brought a hammer.”

Easier, Roarke realized, to consider the details of death than to sink into the philosophy of it. “Depending on the game, the level, the programming, he might have had to earn his weapons. They can also be lost or broken, jammed or simply run out of charge or ammunition, again depending.”

“Did you ever play with him?”

“A couple of times. We never did holo, as it generally takes more time, and the facilities. But we played some VR, and some straight comp. He was very good, quick reflexes, and though he tended to take unnecessary risks, he made up for that with enthusiasm. But for the most part we talked technology, the business, marketing. We only had contact a handful of times the past two or three years.”

“Did you ever have him over here?”

“No. I’m not as trusting, and there was never any reason or purpose to it. We didn’t actively socialize, or have anything in common really but a common interest. He was very young, on several levels, and as many in their twenties do, he considered someone in their thirties as another generation.”

“Jamie’s younger,” she pointed out, speaking of Feeney’s godson and another e-wiz. “He’s been around a lot. You’ve worked with him. So have I.”

“Bart was nothing like Jamie. He hadn’t that edge, the street savvy, and certainly not any aspirations to turn his considerable e-skills toward a career in EDD. Jamie’s the next thing to family.”

Roarke paused, sipped some wine. “And does this conversation help you justify bringing me, a competitor of your victim, into the investigation as a consultant?”

“I don’t have to justify your participation, but it doesn’t hurt given the business interests, and the fact you told me you have a similar project under development, to keep it all open.”

“It’s always pleasant not to be a suspect.” He watched irritation cross her face, and honestly couldn’t say why he’d pushed that particular button.

“Look, from a strictly objective view, you could have smashed U-Play before it ever got off the ground, and at any point since then. They don’t threaten you. Hell, you’ve got the hammer and the sword, plus a couple of blasters and a pocketful of boomers. If you want to take down a company, and effectively, its brain, you use money, strategy, and guile, not a magic sword.”

She stabbed a piece of fish. “You have another perspective on the victim-not a partner, not exactly a friend, not an enemy, and a competitor only in the most technical sense. So you add to my picture of him while laying out the basics and the extent of your association.”

“That’s a lot of explanation,” he said mildly.

“Maybe.”

“Then I suppose I should add my own, in the interest of full disclosure and openness. I’ve implemented level-three runs on any of my people involved in the development of the holo-game project, and those on the fringes of it. Their associations, financials, communications.”

“That’s not your job.”

“I disagree. They’re my people, and I will be bloody well sure no one in my employ is involved in this, on any level, in any way.”

“The Privacy Act-”

“Be damned.” And a hot thread of anger, he admitted, felt more comfortable than this inexplicable sorrow. “Anyone employed by me or seeking to be is routinely screened, and signs a waiver.”

“Not for a level three, not without cause. That’s cop or government level.”

“Murder would be cause on my gauge.” His tone was as crisp and chilly as the wine.

“It’s a gray area.”

“Your gray is broader and darker than mine. There are incentives attached to a project like this, bonuses that could be very lucrative.” He stopped again, angled his head. “Which you know very well already as you’ve done or are doing your own level three, on my people.”

“It’s my job.”

“You might have told me. You might have trusted me enough to get the information for you.”

“You might have told me,” she countered. “Trusted me enough to do my job. Dammit. I didn’t tell you because you had a personal attachment to the victim, and I didn’t see the point in adding to the upset by telling you or asking you to get the data. What’s your excuse?”

“I don’t need an excuse. They’re my people. But the fact is once I have the data, and-whatever the results-pass it to you, you’d be able to contract or expand your suspect list.”

“All you had to do was tell me.”

“And the reverse holds just as true, so there’s no point in you getting pissed off.”

“I’m not pissed off. I’m… aggravated.”

“You’re aggravated? Consider, Eve, how aggravated I might be if it turns out that someone I trust, someone I pay had anything whatsoever to do with that.”

He gestured to the board.

“You can’t be or feel responsible for every person who pulls a check from Roarke Industries.” She threw up her hands. “It’s half the fucking world.”

More than one hot thread of anger wound through him now. “Oh yes, I bloody well can, and it’s nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with being in charge. You are and feel exactly the same about every cop in your division, in the whole shagging department come to that.”

She started to argue, then stopped because he was right about that much. “Any data from your run has to coincide with mine, and officially come from mine whether it clears your whole crew or somebody bobs to the surface.”

“I know how it works, Lieutenant. I’ll just get back to it then, so you can have what you need and shift it back to your side of the line.”

“That was low,” she mumbled as he walked out.

“Maybe it was.”

She sat, brooding into her wine. She didn’t know, exactly, why they were at odds. They were doing basically the same thing for basically the same reason.

Basically.

But he should’ve let her do it, or waited until she’d assigned him to do it. And that probably grated. The assign portion. Couldn’t be helped. She was the LT, she was the primary, she gave the damn orders.

Now she was passing aggravated and heading toward pissed, she realized.

She’d just been trying to shield him a little. Wasn’t that her job, too? she thought in disgust as she rose. Part of the marriage deal? So why were they fighting when she’d done her job?

And now she had to do the damn dishes, which she’d fully intended to dump on him.

She gathered them up as she scowled at the door he’d closed between their offices, and the red light above it that indicated he’d gone private.

That was pattern, she thought as she carted the dishes into the kitchen. When he was seriously peeved he walked away, closed up until he cooled off. Which was probably for the best as it saved a serious bout. But it was… aggravating.

She wondered why two people who loved each other to the point of stupid managed to aggravate each other as often as they seemed to.

She couldn’t think about it now, she decided as she dumped the dishes in the washer. She had work to do.

She programmed coffee and took it back to her desk.

Since he was doing the runs, whether she wanted him to or not, she’d let that part slide for now. No point in doubling the work.

Instead she studied the probabilities she’d set up before dinner. With the available data, the computer calculated a more than ninety-two percent probability Bart Minnock had known his killer. It gave her just under sixty on premeditation, high nineties on the killer working in or involved in the gaming business, which dropped to middle seventies on personnel from U-Play.

“If it wasn’t premeditated, how’d he manage to clean up and walk out without his clothes full of blood? Dammit.”

Had the killer taken some of Bart’s clothes? she wondered. Take a shirt, take some pants-Bart wasn’t in a position to complain. That increased the possibility of accidental or violent impulse.

“Need the weapon. Need to ID the weapon. Who owned it.” She brought up Bart’s financials again, scouring them for any sign of a major purchase from an individual or a vendor who might deal in gaming weapons.

She cross-referenced the financials with the inventory list of weapons, toys, props found in his apartment and his office.

“Light saber. That’s a kind of electrified sword. Not a blade though, more like… a tube? Not a broad straight edge, not the weapon.”

She picked her way through U-Play’s financial records. Steady, she thought, gradual and healthy up-ticks since inception, with a lot of the profit rolled back in. That showed partners in for the long haul.

The four of them attended a lot of cons-individually or as a group, and sometimes sent other employees. The business picked up the freight, and paid the hefty fee for display and demo space, often sponsored contests and events.

A lot of money for that, she noted. Was that usual, practical, smart? She glanced toward the closed door. She’d just have to ask her expert consultant, civilian, when he was in a better mood.

Using the crime scene images, Morris’s findings, the sweeper’s reports she programmed a reconstruction of the murder. Eyes narrowed, she watched the two comp images stand face-to-face, watched the sword slice down so the tip ripped open the victim’s forearm, then swing up, back before making that slightly downward and powerful beheading stroke.

“That had to hurt-the first gash. It had to hurt as well as shock.

What does someone usually do when something hurts, when they’ve been cut, when they’re bleeding? Why didn’t you, Bart?” she asked aloud. “Why didn’t you press your hand to the wound? No blood on your palm, and there would’ve been. It cut, it burned, it bled, but you don’t attempt to staunch it, feel it. It’s instinctive. But you couldn’t if you had something in your hand, like the hilt of a sword. Couldn’t if you tried to defend, or if the killing blow came too fast.”

She ran it again, changing variables, then dragged a hand through her hair. “What was the game? Why would you play with a fake sword if your opponent had a real one?

“Because you didn’t know. But you damn well should have.”

She rose, paced, then gave in and rapped a fist smartly on the closed door.

It took a moment. Did he do that on purpose? Make her wait? Then the light flipped green, and the door opened.

“I need to use the holo-room,” she said. “I need a game that approximates what Bart might have been into at the time of the murder. I need you to set it up and go through it with me.”

“All right. I’ll meet you there.”

“I don’t suppose you have a couple of swords, of the nonlethal variety.”

“Everything in the weapons room is authentic, so no. You’ll have to make do with holo-weapons.”

“Okay.” She tried to think of something else, then simply shrugged and started to the holo-room.

Roarke’s was bigger than the one in Bart’s apartment-big surprise, she thought sourly. It probably met or exceeded the specs of anything Roarke had in any of his R &D operations.

But the size didn’t matter.

A holo-reconstruct of a murder that took place during a holo-game would give her a better feel, she hoped, for what had happened. What often led to why and why to who.

She walked around the large, empty space, listening to her own footsteps echo. She wasn’t much for games, not really. Training exercises, now, that was different, and she found the holo-room handy there.

More than once Roarke had used it to take her somewhere fantastic-a rainy night in Paris, a drifting boat on an empty sea. Romantic, seductive-well, the holo was handy there, too, though at the moment she doubted either of them felt particularly romantic.

He came in with a disc. “You’re still wearing your weapon.”

She’d forgotten, and now stripped off the harness to lay it and the weapon by the door.

“You wanted something close to U-Play’s Fantastical. We’ve been dissecting what we have of it in EDD, but I don’t have the data or components here. It seemed… a gray area to bring any of that home to continue the work here.”

“Agreed.”

“But I have our most current version of our game-no title as titles can leak. It’s Program HC84-K.”

“You have that at home? Isn’t that shaky security?”

“First, someone would have to know it’s here, then get through house security, into my private office, and find the vault, get through that security, then get through the passcodes and fail-safes on the disc. If they managed all that, they’re likely good enough to have developed this themselves.”

He slid it into a slot as he spoke, used both palm plate and retinal scan, added a voice command and several manual ones.

“In any case,” he continued, “it’s something I’ve been fine-tuning myself, and I prefer to do that here. So…”

He stepped back, studied her. “You want sword play, but you don’t know the era, the setting, the mode, or the goal. We haven’t managed to get anything off the disc Bart used to give you any of that. You’ll have to pick.”

“I don’t know. Sword fight. Not foils,” she added. “Broad blade. Strong, straight.”

“Broadsword.” He tilted his head, smiled a little.

“Don’t put me in some dumbass girl costume.” She jabbed a finger at him. “I mean it. I’m not doing this half naked for your perverted amusement.”

“A shame, but fair enough. Let’s try a few.” He went manual again, she suspected to keep his little game a secret until she was sucked in.

The air shimmered, wavered, and in a moment she found herself standing in a shadowy forest-and dressed in some sort of ancient Asian garb. She had a sword in her hand and soft boots on her feet.

“When and where are…”

She broke off, eyes huge. While her thoughts were in English, her voice had come out in what she thought was Japanese.

“How the hell-”

“Translator feature. Adds to the realism,” he said in the same language. “It’s just slightly out of loop. We’re working on that.”

“I… No, it’s too weird. I don’t want to speak Japanese.”

“All right, let’s try another.”

With barely a shimmer this time, she stood on a green hill, her hair long and tied back. She wore, as Roarke did, some sort of leather top that hit mid-thigh and snug pants that slid into the tops of boots.

She hesitated, then gave it another try. “Okay, now where… Gaelic. It’s Gaelic, isn’t it? I get the accent.”

“Ireland, Tudor era.”

“It… it smells green, and there’s a hint of something earthy, smoky.”

“Peat fires. All the sensory features have been enhanced. In the real world scenarios, the language, the syntax, the clothing, well, every detail’s been meticulously researched and replicated. There are any number of fantasy options already programmed in, or the players can program their own, either from an option menu or by going manual. There’s no limit.”

“Okay, frosty, because I’m hearing you speak Gaelic, but I’m processing English. Did Fantastical have this?”

“I don’t know, but tend to doubt it from the data we have, from their setup at the warehouse. We’ll offer a cheaper version without the translator, but I project the translator feature-which will be steep-will be a main selling point. And there’s the added educational aspect.”

“Sure. Educational.” She tipped her head. “I hear…” She turned on the hill, and let out a stunned breath. A battle raged in the valley below. Hundreds of warriors, horses, fires. She was pretty sure she was watching a castle being sacked.

“More scope than I’ve seen in holo before, more range. It’s more like being in a vid. A really well-produced vid.”

“That’s only limited by your skill and imagination. The program will adjust, follow your choices, your strategy.”

“How do you stop it?”

“By simply telling the program to halt, pause, or change. In a multiplayer game, doing so would cost that player points or result in disqualification.”

“Yeah?” She turned back to him and didn’t he look amazing with all that black hair blowing in the wind, in that scarred leather and with a bright sword in his hand. “I won’t be calling time-out.” She lifted her sword. “Let’s play.”