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The pink drops at Mira’s ears danced a little at the shake of her head. “But the extent of the other injuries don’t jibe with that, nor does the care in accessing the victim and leaving the scene. Those are organized, layered details, studied and complex. Severing the head from the body may be symbolic as the weapon used, and the method. A game. The victim lived and breathed games, and used his head, if you will, to build his business from them.”
“Which points to a competitor, or even some wack job who didn’t like his score on the games. Wack job rings truer because there are easier ways, and less publicity generating ways, to off a rival. Or, more crazy, somebody who has some sort of violent objections to the games themselves. However whacked, he had to have superior e-skills to get in and out undetected. Unless he lives or works in the building. We’re not getting a bump there, so far.”
“The victim’s company would hire those with superior e-skills.”
“Yeah. Added to that whoever did this had to know the vic, the setup, had to know he’d be home and ready to play the game. The game disc itself would’ve been worth a considerable amount to a competitor, a rival. If that was the case, why not kill Bart before he’d locked in the disc? You do that, you’ve got it all—dead guy and the development disc for his next big thing. But he leaves it behind, which tells me either he didn’t need or want it, or it wasn’t any part of the motive. And I don’t like the second option. I think he just didn’t need it.”
“You’re looking at his associates and employees.”
“Top of the list,” Eve confirmed. “He sure as hell wouldn’t have played the game with someone who wasn’t involved in it, who didn’t know about it, and couldn’t be trusted to keep it quiet. He used those kids for test studies on games, and my impression is he enjoyed playing with them. But he wasn’t ready to take it to them yet.”
“Because, at this point, it wasn’t only a game. It was a project. An important one.”
“Yeah. He told them he had something coming up, gave them a few vague details because, I think, he was too juiced not to. But they routinely play and test games in all stages of development at the U-Play offices.”
“Where the details wouldn’t have been so vague, even to those outside the inner circle.”
“According to the log the vic played this one often—solo and multi. Various partners when he went multi. EDD’s working on digging
through that to see which fantasy scenarios, if any, he might’ve played repeatedly. And against whom. I’m going to push for a copy of the disc. The partners are being fairly cooperative, but they’re dragging their heels on that.”
Mira nodded, apparently enjoying her tea. “You have an organized, detail-oriented, e-skilled killer, one I believe, as you do, the victim knew and trusted. However, the method of the murder is violent and brutal—fast, efficient, and with a warrior’s weapon. A fanciful one perhaps, but an old method. The decapitation is also warriorlike—the total defeat of an enemy, the severing of his head from his body. An execution method, and one that would take focus, skill, and strength.”
“Not your typical e-geek.”
“Not at all, the pathology diverges sharply. You may have two.”
“Yeah, I thought of that. One to plan, one to execute the plan. I’ve even considered a droid. Someone who can reprogram, avoid alerting CompuGuard, and could convince Bart to try out the game against a droid. But how did he get the droid in there, and when? How did he get the weapon in, and when?”
“A droid? That’s interesting.” Mira sat back, recrossed her fine legs as she considered. “Certainly you’d have that quick efficiency, the necessary strength. And if programmed for warrior, for sword skills, very effective. It would suit the killer’s—speaking of the human element—pathology. The use of those clever e-skills. In a way, in his way, he would have pitted himself against the victim, thereby winning the game by his proxy, and eliminating his opponent with a method that spotlighted those skills. Droids have been used in combat and in assassinations before, which is why the laws and safeguards are so stringent. It would be a challenge to subvert those laws and safeguards. The killer enjoys a challenge.”
“Maybe we need to take another look at the vic’s house droid. It’s had the once-over in EDD, and there was no sign of tampering or reprogramming. But it was already inside, already trusted, and there was more than enough time between the murder and discovery to reprogram, dispose of the weapon. Leave her just where she’s supposed to be. Or . . . maybe she was replaced earlier with a duplicate.”
The idea added another angle, more complications, and thinking of them Eve drank tea without realizing it. “Detail-oriented, organized, sure. But it’s a kind of showing off. Plus, it’s childishly risky. All of it. If Bart doesn’t do precisely what he did, it falls apart. He doesn’t go home early, doesn’t take the disc home, isn’t able to take the time to play the game then and there, it doesn’t work.”
“Calculated risks. Most game players take them, as do killers.”
“Especially if the player knows his opponent’s habits and style.” It just kept circling back to that. To knowledge and to trust. “There’s a lot of ego involved in game playing, especially if you take it seriously. A whole lot of ego. Nobody likes to lose. Some people practice obsessively, some cheat, some go off and sulk after a loss—and that can turn to festering obsession.”
“The more seriously one takes the game,” Mira commented, “the more real the game is to the player, the more frustrating the loss.”
Eve nodded. “Fights break out in arcades regularly. This wasn’t like that, not that passion and pissed at the moment. But it might have had its roots there, and what grew out of them turned entertainment and fantasy into something real.”
“Some have difficulty separating the violence in a game from actual violent behavior. Most use it as a release, as a way to play hero or villain without crossing lines. But for some, gaming stirs up violent tendencies already in place, held back, controlled.”
“If it wasn’t games it would be something else. But yeah, I’d say the line’s blurred between fantasy and reality. The killer’s crossed it. Maybe he’s done, he got what he wanted. He won. But it seems to me when the line’s that blurred, and it get
s crossed, it’s easy to cross it again.”
“Winning can be addictive,” Mira agreed.
“So can murder.”
Going from Mira’s to EDD was something like leaving an elegant home where people engaged in quiet, intellectual discussion and being flung into an amusement park run by teenagers on a sugar rush.
Eve didn’t suffer from culture shock; she was too used to it. But both her ears and eyes began to throb when she was still ten feet outside the division.
Those who walked and worked here favored colors and patterns that stunned the system and spoke in incomprehensible codes that jumbled in the mind like hieroglyphic tiles. No one stayed still in EDD. The techs, officers, detectives all pranced, paced, or paraded to some inner music that always seemed to be on maximum speed.
