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He glanced at her. “You enjoy weapons.”
“I like knowing I’ve got one. One that does what it needs to do when I need it to do it.”
“You’ve played the games. You’re a competitive soul.”
“What’s the point of playing if winning isn’t the goal?”
“We stand on the same side there.”
“But a game’s still a game,” she pointed out. “A toy’s a toy. I don’t understand the compulsion to live the fantasy. To outfit your office like the command center of some fictional starship.”
“Well, for the fun or the escape, though no doubt some take it too far. We should go to an auction some time, just so you can experience it. Gaming and the collecting that’s attached to it, it’s an interesting world.”
“I like toys.” She shrugged. “What I don’t get is why anyone would spend millions on some play sword wielded by some play warrior in a vid or interactive.”
“Some might say the same about art. It’s all a matter of interest. In any case, some pieces of interest to collectors would be based on those vid props, and used in various games, or simply displayed. Depending on the accessibility, the age, the use, the base, they can be valuable to collectors. We routinely issue special limited editions of some weapons and accessories, just for that reason.”
“How about an electrified sword?”
He braked for a red light, then smiled at her. “You’d have your fire sword, your charged-by-lightning, your stunner sword and so on. They’d give off a light show, appropriate sound effects—glow, sizzle, vibrate, that sort of thing. But no game prop would do more than give an opponent a bit of a buzz. They’re harmless.”
“You could doctor one?”
“I could, and bottom out its value on any legitimate market. There are regulations, Eve, safety requirements—and very strict ones. You’d never get anything capable of being turned into an actual weapon through screening. It wasn’t a game prop that killed Bart.”
“A replica then, made specifically for the purpose. A killing blade that carries enough of an electric current to burn.”
He cruised through the green, said nothing for a moment as he swung toward the curb in front of Bart’s building. “Is that what did him?”
“That’s what we have at this point.” She got out after Roarke parked. “That tells me it wasn’t enough to kill. There had to be gamesmanship, too. It had to be fun or exciting for the killer. Whoever did it had to be part of it, part of the game. And he played to win. I have to figure out what he took home as his prize.”
“Lieutenant.” The doorman stepped away from his post. “Is there any progress? Do you know who killed Bart—Mr. Minnock?”
“The investigation’s ongoing. We’re pursuing all leads. Has anyone tried to gain access to his apartment?”
“No. No one’s been up there since your people left. He was a nice guy. Hardly older than my son.”
“You were on duty when he got home yesterday.” It had all been asked before, she knew, but sometimes details shook out in the repetition. “How was his mood?”
“He was whistling. Grinning. I remember how it made me grin right back. He looked so damn happy.”
“And no one came in after him, or before him, who might have access to his apartment?”
“No one. Quiet yesterday. You remember the weather we had? People stayed in, mostly, if they didn’t have to go anywhere. Hardly anyone in or out all day, and I knew all of them.”
“Did he have any trouble with anyone in the building? Any complaints?”
“He was a friendly guy, easygoing, but maybe a little shy, a little quiet. I never heard him complain about anybody, or anybody complain about him.”
She shifted angles. “Maybe he was particularly friendly with one of the other tenants?”
“Well, the kids, sure.”
And there, she thought, a new detail. “What kids?”
“The Sing kids, and the Trevor boy. We don’t have a lot of kids in the building. Couple of teenage girls, but they’re not so into the game scene. But the younger boys, they were big for Bart.”
“Is that so?”
