The In Death Collection, Books 30-32 Page 5

  “What happened to him?”

  “I can’t get into all the details now, but I just found out you knew him. I didn’t want you to hear about it on a media report.”

  “Has it to do with his work or was it personal?”

  “It’s too soon to say, but his work’s involved.”

  “Where are you?”

  “U-Play.”

  “I’ll be landing in about twenty minutes. I’ll be there within forty.”

  “Roarke—”

  “If it’s to do with his work, I’ll be helpful. If it doesn’t ... We’ll see. He was a sweet boy, Eve. A sweet, brilliant, and harmless boy. I want to do what I can for him.”

  She’d expected as much. “Find Feeney when you get here. I’m sorry, Roarke.”

  “So am I. How did he die?” When she said nothing, sorrow clouded over the anger. “That bad, was it?”

  “I’ll talk to you when you get here. It’s complicated.”

  “All right then. It’s good he has you. I’ll be there soon.”

  Eve took a breath. He would be helpful, she thought as she stared at the blank screen of her ’link. Not only with the e-work, but with the business. Feeney and his crew knew their e, but they didn’t know the business. Roarke would.

  She checked the time, then tried for Morris.

  “Dallas.”

  “Give me what you can,” she asked. “I don’t know when I’m going to get in there.”

  “My house is always open for you. I can tell you he had no drugs or alcohol in his system. Your vic was a healthy twenty-nine-despite, it seems, an appetite for cheese and onion soy chips and orange fizzies. There’s some minor bruising, and the more serious gash on his arm, all peri-mortem. His head was severed with one blow, with a broad, sharp blade.” Morris used the flat of his hand to demonstrate.

  “Like an axe?”

  “I don’t think so. An axe is generally thicker on the backside. A wedge shape. I’d say a sword—a very large, very strong sword used with considerable force, and from slightly above. A clean stroke.” Again he demonstrated, fisting his hands as if on a hilt, then swinging like a batter at the plate, and cleaving forward. “The anomaly—”

  “Other than some guy getting his head cut off with a sword?”

  “Yes, other than. There are slight burns in all the wounds. I’m still working on it, but my feeling is electrical. Even the bruising shows them.”

  “An electrified sword?”

  Humor warmed his eyes. “Our jobs are never tedious, are they? I’ll be with him for a while yet. He’s a very interesting young man.”

  “Yeah. I’ll get back to you.”

  She pocketed her ’link and began to pace.

  A victim secured, alone, in his own holo-room, beheaded by a sword, potentially with electric properties.

  Which made no sense.

  He couldn’t have been alone because it took two—murderer and victim. So there’d been a breach in his security. Or he’d paused the game, opened up, and let his killer inside. It would have to be someone he trusted with his big secret project.

  Which meant his three best pals were top of the suspect list. All alibied, she mused, but how hard was it for an e-geek to slip through building security, head over a few blocks, slip through apartment security, and ask their good pal Bart to open up and play?

  Which didn’t explain how they’d managed to get the weapon inside, but again, it could be done.

  It had been done.

  Reset everything, go back to work.

  Less than an hour, even with cleanup time.

  Someone at U-Play or someone outside who’d earned the vic’s trust.

  Possibly a side dish. Someone he snuck in himself, after he’d told his droid to shut down. He liked to show off. Guys tended to show off for sex, especially illicit sex.

  The murder wasn’t about sex, but part of the means might be.

  She shuffled the thoughts back at the timid knock on the glass door. Overall Girl, she thought as she came in, who’d added red, weepy eyes to her ensemble.

  “They said I had to come up and talk with you ’cause somebody killed Bart. I wanna go home.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Sit down.”

  Halfway through her complement of interviews, Eve got her first buzz

  Twenty-three-year-old Roland Chadwick couldn’t keep still—but e-jocks were notoriously jittery. His wet hazel eyes kept skittering away from hers. But it was a hard day, and some in the e-game had very limited social skills.

  Still, most of them didn’t have guilt rolling off their skin in thick, smelly waves.

  “How long have you worked here, Roland?”

  He scratched the long blade of his noise, bounced his knees. “Like I said, I interned for two summers in college, then I came on the roll when I graduated. So, like, a year on the roll, then the two summers before that. Altogether.”

  “And what do you do, exactly?”

  “Mostly research, like Benny. Like what’s out there, how can we twist it, jump it up. Or, like, if somebody’s got a zip on something, I cruise before we step so, like, we’re not hitting somebody else’s deal.”

  “So you see everything in development, or on the slate for development.”

  “Mostly, yeah.” He jiggled his shoulders, tapped both feet. “Bits and bytes anyhow, or, like, outlines. And you gotta check the titles, the character and place names and that jazz ‘cause you don’t want repeats or crossovers. Unless you do, ’cause you’re, like, homage or sequel or series.”

  “And yesterday? Where were you?”

  “I was, like, here. Clocked at nine-three-oh, out at five. Or close. Maybe five-thirty? ’Cause I was buzzing with Jingle for a while after outs.”

  “Did you go out, for a break, for lunch, leave the building before you finished for the day?”

  “Not yesterday. Full plate. Yeah, full plate with second helpings.”

  “But you took breaks, had some lunch?”

  “Yeah, sure. Sure. Gotta fuel it up, charge it up. Sure.”

  “So, did you contact anybody? Tag a pal to pass the time with on a break?”

  “Ah ...” His gaze skidded left. “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. And you can tell me or I’ll just find out when we check your comp, your ’links.”

  “Maybe I tagged Milt a couple times.”

  “And Milt is?”

  “Milt’s my ... you know.”

  “Okay. Does Milt your You Know have a last name?”

  “Dubrosky. He’s Milton Dubrosky. It’s no big.” A little sweat popped out above his upper lip. “We’re allowed.”

  “Uh-huh.” She pulled out her PPC and started a run on Milton Dubrosky. “So you and Milt live together?”

  “Kinda. I mean, he still has a place but we’re mostly at mine. Mostly.”

  “And what does Milt do?”

  “He’s an actor. He’s really good. He’s working on his big break.”

  “I bet you help him with that? Help him study lines.”

  “Sure.” Shoulders jiggled again; toes tapped. “It’s fun. Kinda like working up a game.”

  “Being an actor, he probably has some good ideas, too. Does he help you out there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Been together long?”

  “Nine months. Almost ten.”

  “How much have you told him about Fantastical?”

  Every ounce of color dropped out of his face, and for an instant, he was absolutely still. “What?”

  “How much, Roland? Those little bits and bytes, or more than that?”

  “I don’t know about anything like that.”

  “The new project? The big top secret? I think you know something about it. You’re in research.”

  “I just know what they tell me. We’re not allowed to talk about it. We had to sign the gag.”

  Eve kept an easy smile on her face, and a hard hammer in her heart. “But you and Milt are, you know, and you help each other out. He�
��s interested in what you do, right?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “And a big project like this, it’s exciting. Anybody’d mention it to their partner.”

  “He doesn’t understand e-work.”

  “Really? That’s odd, seeing as he’s done time, twice, for e-theft.”

  “No, he hasn’t!”

  “You’re either an idiot, Roland, or a very slick operator.” She angled her head. “I vote idiot.”

  She had the protesting and now actively weeping Roland escorted to Central, then sent a team of officers to scoop up Dubrosky and take him in.

  His criminal didn’t show any violent crimes, she mused, but there was always a first time.

  She finished her interviews, calculating it would give Roland time to stop crying and Dubrosky time to stew. She found two more who admitted they’d talked about the project to a friend or spouse or cohab, but the Chadwick-Dubrosky connection seemed the best angle.

  She broke open a tube of Pepsi while she checked in with the sweepers and added to her notes. She looked up as the door opened, and Roarke stepped in.

  He changed the room, she thought, just by being in it. Not just for her, but she imagined for most. The change came from the look of him, certainly, long and lean with that sweep of dark hair, the laser blue eyes that could smolder or frost. But the control, the power under it demanded attention be paid.

  Even now, she thought, when she could see the sorrow on that wonderful face, he changed the room.

  “They said you’d finished with your share of the interviews. Do you have a minute now?”

  He wouldn’t have always asked, she remembered. And she wouldn’t have always known to get up, to go to him, to offer a moment of comfort.

  “Sorry about your friend,” she said when her arms were around him.

  She kept the embrace brief—after all, the walls were glass—but she felt some of the tension seep out of him before she drew back.

  “I didn’t know him well, not really. I can’t say we were friends, though we were friendly. It’s such a bloody waste.”

  He paced away to the wall, looked out through the glass. “He and his mates were building something here. Too many holes in it yet, but they’ve done well for themselves. Creative and bright, and young enough to pour it all in.”

  “What kind of holes?”

  He glanced back, smiled a little. “You’d pull that one thing out of the rest. And I imagine though e-work’s not your strongest suit, you’ve seen some of those holes already.”

  “More than one person knows a secret, it’s not a secret anymore.”

  “There’s that. Electronically it looks as though he covered the bases, and very well. It’ll take some doing to get through all of it, and I’m told you’ve already lost a key piece of evidence.”

  “Self-destructed, but they got enough to give me the springboard. How much do you know about this game, this Fantastical?”

  “Virtual/holo combo, fantasy role-playing, varied scenarios at player’s choice. Heightened sensory levels, keyed through readouts of the player’s nervous system and brain waves.”

  That pretty much summed up the big top secret project, she thought. “And when did you know that much?”

  “Oh, some time ago. Which is one of the holes here. Too many of his people knew too much, and people will talk.”

  “Do you know Milt Dubrosky?”

  “No, should I?”

  “No. It just erases a possible complication. If the technology developed for this game is so cutting-edge, why don’t you have it?”

  “Actually, we’ve something I suspect is quite similar in development.” He wandered over to Vending, scanned, walked away again. “But my people don’t talk.”

  “Because they’re paid very well, and because they’re afraid of you.”

  “Yes. I’m sure Bart paid his people as well as he could, but there wouldn’t have been any fear.” He touched her arm, just a brush of fingertips, as he wandered the room. “They’d like him, and quite a bit. He’d be one of them. It’s a mistake to be too much one of your own as they’ll never see you as fully in charge.”

  “When did you last see or speak with him?”

  “Oh, four or five months back anyway. I was down this way for a meeting and ran into him on the street. I bought him a beer, and we caught up a bit.”

  Restless, Eve thought. Pacing was normally her deal. Then he sighed once, and seemed to settle.

  “One of my scouts brought him to my attention when Bart was still in college. After I’d read the report and done a little checking myself, I arranged a meeting. I guess he was twenty. God. So fresh, so earnest. I offered him a job, a paid internship until he got his degree, and a full-time position thereafter.”

  “That’s a hell of an offer,” Eve commented.

  “He’d have been a hell of a recruit. But he told me he had plans to start up his own company, with three friends. He outlined his business model for me there and then, and asked for my advice.” Roarke smiled a little, just a slight curve of those wonderfully carved lips. “He disarmed me, I have to say. I ended up meeting with the four of them a few times, and doing what I could to help them avoid some pitfalls. I don’t suppose this one any of us could have anticipated.”

  “If he was that open with you, right off the jump, he might have been equally talkative with others.”

  “Possibly, though that was one of the pitfalls I warned them of. He—they—wanted their own, and I know what it is, that want, that need. That, and well, the boy appealed to me, so it was easy to give them a little boost.”

  “Money?”

  “No.” His shoulder lifted, a careless gesture. “I might have done so if they’d asked. But they had some seed money, and you’ll work harder if it doesn’t come too easy. I had this property—”

  “This? This is your building?”

  “Was, so relax yourself,” he told her with the slightest hint of impatience. “I’m not involved here. I rented them space here for a time, and when they’d gotten off the ground, he asked me to sell it to them. As I said, the boy appealed to me, so I did. I made mine; they had theirs. Good business all around.”

  “And the business is worth considerable.”

  “Relatively.”

  “Compared to you it’s a nit on a grizzly, but the money’s a motive, as is the technology they’re working on. Can they keep this place afloat without Bart?”

  “No one’s indispensable. Except you to me.”

  “Aww.” But she rolled her eyes with the sound and made him laugh a little. “They’ll split three ways instead of four.”

  “And take a hit for the loss of the fourth. From a business standpoint, eliminating Bart’s a foolish move. He was the point man,” Roarke explained, “the public face, the big picture man. And he was good at it.”

  “This kind of murder? Sensational, and tied in with the business. It’s going to get whopping truckloads of media. Free media of the sort that generates sales out of sheer curiosity.”

  “You’re right about that.” He considered. “Yes, but that’s a temporary boost, and still poor business sense. Added to it, unless their dynamics have changed, it’s hard to see any of the other three hurting Bart.”

  “People do the damnedest things. I have another angle to check out. Feeney will keep you busy if you want to be. I need a copy of the game disc. They’ll hand it over, but they’re going to drag their feet some. If they trust you, you might be able to nudge that along.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll be in the field.”

  He took her hand as she walked to the door. “Take care of my wife.”

  “She takes care of herself.”

  “When she remembers.”

  She went out, started down. She glanced back once to see him at that glass wall, hands in his pockets, and that sorrow that perhaps only she could see, still shadowing his face.

  4

  BACK IN THE BUSY HIVE OF
COP CENTRAL, Eve studied Roland Chadwick through the glass of Observation. He continued to sweat, just a bit, and his tear-swollen eyes tended to dart and dash around the room, as if he expected something to materialize in a corner and take a nice big bite out of him.

  Perfect.

  “We’ll take him together to start,” Eve told Peabody. “I’m going hard. He expects it from me now.”

  “And you’d give him herbal tea and a fluffy pillow otherwise.”

  “I’ll leave the fluffy to you, after I storm out of the room in disgust, leaving dire threats in my wake.”

  “And I ‘there-there’ him until he spills his guts.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Eve watched as Roland laid his head on the table as if to sleep. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least if he’d popped his thumb in his mouth.

  “While you’re doing that, I’ll start on Dubrosky. He’s been around the block a few times, and he has to know his dupe in there is a very weak sister. I believe his guts will also spill.”

  Peabody smiled as Roland cushioned his face on his folded arms. “My guy will spill first.”

  “Maybe. Let’s find out.”

  She strode in, a tough, impatient woman who seemed capable of taking that nice big bite and enjoying it. Roland’s head popped up even as he shrank in his chair.

  “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, in Interview with Chadwick, Roland, on the matter of the murder of Minnock, Bart. Roland Chadwick,” she continued, using both names to add a little more intimidation, “have you been read your rights?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Do you understand your rights and obligations in this matter?”

  “Okay, yeah, but—”

  She dropped her file on the table between them with a force that echoed like a slap. It shut him up.

  “You worked for Bart Minnock, correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I told you how I—”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday?”

  “I was at home, I mean, I was at work, and then—”

  “Which is it?” She snapped the words out, leaned on the table, deep into his space. “Home or work? It’s an easy question, Roland.”