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“He goes in, alone or with a playmate. Alone doesn’t make sense. His pocket ’link was still on him, and shut off—downtime corresponds to the holo-log entry. He came in, shut down his coms so he wouldn’t be disturbed. Or someone shut them down for him. But alone would mean someone came in after him, which means that person or persons circumvented the security not only on the building, but the apartment and this room.”
Blowing out a breath, she shook her head. “It’s too much work, too much trouble. If you’re that good, you minimize the risks.”
“And come in with him.”
“He had to have company in here. Maybe he’d planned it that way, though there’s nothing on any of his ’links or comps to show he intended to meet anyone. An impulse. Someone from work, from the building, someone he ran into on the way home. And still an outsider had to get by the doorman unless they came in earlier or accessed another opening in the building. Delivery entrance, roof, an empty apartment. We know at least one apartment’s vacant with the Trevors on vacation. Probably others, or others just empty during the day.”
“They’d have to expect Bart to come home in order to cross paths.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “Which goes right back to someone from U-Play. All it takes is one tag. He’s on his way. Get in, arrange to run into him—knock on the door a couple minutes after he’s inside. Time to have him shut down the droid so he’s got everything set for game time. ‘Hey, how’s it going—I was just in the neighborhood, thought I saw you come in.’ Bart’s all whistling-a-tune happy, excited. He’s nearly ready to launch his baby, just wants to play with it first, fine-tune. Here’s someone he knows. Another game player. It virtually has to be or why bring them in?”
She paced the room, stopped, put her hands on her hips. “I don’t like it. Too loose, too many variables.” She closed her eyes a moment, tried to see another angle. “He takes the game disc, but doesn’t log it. Or he did and someone doctored the log. Either way, it’s a work thing. Someone from work, someone involved in the project, maybe someone he wants along to help with specifics. But on the down-low. They don’t come in together, so maybe the killer arranges to meet him. ‘I’ll be right behind you’ sort of thing. Gives him a chance to get in another way, before or after Bart leaves. Before’s better. Got a couple things to do first, so I’ll meet you. Access on the sly so nobody knows you’re there. Disc’s not logged out, and Bart’s place is a short walking distance from the warehouse. Busy place. Is anyone really going to notice if someone’s gone for an hour?
“It could work.” Complicated, she thought again, but doable. And didn’t gamers prefer the complex? “You’re in, and the only person who knows you’re in is going to be dead.”
“And the weapon?” Roarke asked.
“Big shiny toy. Look what I’ve got. Just had to show you. Game’s in, and they play because that’s got to be part of it. The competition, the game. It wasn’t a goddamn accident. It was premeditated. Otherwise there’s no need to avoid coming in through security. No need to time it just so. Some sort of war fantasy, fight, sports—something to explain the minor bruising. Fight. Sword fight? Knights in shining freaking armor or warlords or whatever the fucking hell boys play.”
She circled the room trying to see it, to get some sort of picture in her head. “Maybe Bart’s getting the upper hand, racking up points. That just pisses you off, helps wind you up for the kill. Give him a taste first or maybe you just missed. First blood with that arm wound. See the shock on his face, smell the blood—it’s like copper on the back of the throat. Then one vicious swing, and it’s done. End of game. The blood’s real though, so much of it now that copper taste is too strong. Clean up, change clothes, stuff the bloody ones in a bag. Get out the same way you got in.”
“And leave the game disc behind?”
“If he knew Bart well enough to get in, he kne
w him well enough to know the security. Anybody tries to eject without all the codes, it self-destructs. It’s just a copy. It’s not about the disc, it’s about the whole—the game, the company, the man, everything. Because to do what was done here, you were very, very pissed off. Passion,” she murmured. “Passion and ego more than money, I think. Money’ll play a part. It nearly always does, but it’s not leading this charge.”
She held up a hand as a new thought emerged. “He brought the disc home. Five-minute walk. I bet it’s not the first time. Did EDD download the full log?”
“It goes back to the beginning of the year. It’s archived prior. I only glanced at it as we’re working on getting into his comps and trying to piece together what we can from the disc. And don’t hope for much there. It’s hardly more than ashes.”
“But the log may give us a pattern. That, the building’s security discs, and the security discs and logs from U-Play.”
“It’s going to be a long night,” Roarke predicted.
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.
