Lisa Black - Evidence of Murder

“Availability?”

“Software support?”

“Size?” suggested the waif in front of Theresa.

Evan pointed at her. “Exactly. The problem is Mom.”

Confused silence. Theresa noticed the venture capitalist standing on the other side of Rachael, waiting. He did not seem the least bit confused.

“Really,” Evan went on. “Would your mom let you install this thing in the middle of her family room? Or even your bedroom? Mrs. MacLean, you’re a mom. Would you want a gray sphere this size next to your coffee table?”

The heads around her swiveled in her direction. “No,” she admitted, with the trepidation of the outnumbered.

“Whose mom would? Or whose spouse? Or you yourself-would you want this blocking your big screen during playoffs?”

Murmured dissent.

“Of course not. So let me show you something new. Jerry, if you would tear yourself away from the treasures of the keep there…”

His partner hung up his gun and goggles, unstrapped his Nikes, and stepped out of the gyroscope.

“Jerry Graham, everybody, the inventor-no, not the inventor of the virtual-reality gyroscope, let’s say the perfector. Because Jerry has patented a way around both these obstacles. Jerry, show them what they haven’t seen before.”

The man touched no more than three spots on the frame, flipping small latches, and then pushed. The rings rotated to nest within each other, almost completely flat save for the various protrusions. In less time than it took to pick up a remote and change the channel, the sphere’s width went from nine feet to less than a foot.

The crowd sucked in its collective breath.

Jerry Graham demonstrated the movement again, expanding the gyroscope, locking the frame and climbing inside to show its stability, before hopping out and collapsing it into itself. It remained a nine-foot-in-diameter object, but the reduction in depth made it seem downright svelte.

Evan continued to delineate the sphere’s attributes. “Unlock the casters and you can wheel the sphere anywhere you want, up against the wall or into a hallway. It’s made of recycled plastics, so it’s environmentally sound as well as lightweight and durable. You, come here and try to move it.”

The tiny girl in front of Theresa placed both hands on the collapsed frame and gave a shove. It rolled easily. She asked if they were going to manufacture the spheres on-site.

“Exactly,” Evan told the crowd. “It will keep costs down since we’ll be doing both the software and the hardware. But it’s not just for Polizei-although it is the coolest game in existence, not that I’m biased or anything. No, you can play any PC or console game that lends itself to virtual reality in this sphere. I’m not going to make something that only takes my games-we’ve all been down that road before. You buy some cool piece of equipment and in two years you can’t get games for it, or you have to buy a new game for both your console and PC. Uh-uh. If you buy Polizei for your Nintendo, it will come with a version for the Graham sphere and a PC version. If you buy the version for Xbox, same deal.”

This seemed to impress the crowd even more than the collapsible aspect had.

Theresa leaned around her daughter. “This is his bigger idea, Mr. Cannon?”

The financier nodded. “It’s the next logical step for home entertainment. But it has to be affordable and convenient, the two most important things to an American household. In most families the second is becoming more vital than the first. It wasn’t only lower prices and more versatility that made people start buying home computers-it was that they didn’t take up half the room anymore. Once they fit on a desktop and had rounded edges, they became a necessity. Same with video games. Once consoles got small and light enough to be tossed in a cubbyhole when the kid went to school, sales shot up.”

A black woman with her hair twisted into spiky clumps and cheekbones to die for approached Jerry Graham and greeted him with a kiss. They exchanged a few words and parted with another kiss, and not a professional-colleagues one. A girlfriend or wife. She must have seen quite a lot of Jillian, since the two men were so close. She might be an interesting person to talk with.

“Say,” the financier went on, “are you single, by any chance?”

She still wore the engagement ring Paul had given her. “No.”

“How about you starting us off?” Evan said from beside the gyroscope, and Rachael moved forward without a glance at her mother. Theresa followed, watched her daughter step inside a globe with moving parts that resembled the inside of a blender, and tried to tamp down the nerves tightening around her throat. It’s a toy, she told herself. Just a toy. It couldn’t hurt anyone. They must have checked the design for every possible danger, certainly, before demonstrating it in front of a hundred or more potential customers.

Theresa took another step forward, and felt a tiny lump under the worn sole of her Reebok. At first she thought someone had dropped a coin, but it turned out to be a flat ring of gray plastic, similar to the one found with Jillian’s body, but not exactly the same diameter. Theresa picked it up.

Rachael slipped on the goggles. According to the monitor, she now faced a slowly advancing army of pale but sexily clad vampires. Using the weapon, she gleefully dispatched the front line. The crowd drew in closer to call out advice and encouragement.

Theresa felt Evan watching her, and caught his eye. Two young men had begun to ask questions as quickly as he could answer, and yet he seemed interested in Theresa’s reaction. Why?

If he thought he had a sure sale, he had another thought coming. Rachael would have to use her car fund if she wanted the circular monstrosity; hardly likely-games were fun, but wheels were a teen’s holy grail. “I thought vampires couldn’t die,” she said to Evan.

“The bullets are silver.”

“Must get expensive.”

“It’s only virtual silver,” he said, laughing.

She held out the piece of gray plastic. “What’s this?”

“Garbage.” He took it out of her palm and tossed it into a nearby can with one arc of his right arm, then appeared surprised by her surprise. “They’re just punch-outs from the sphere arms. We swept this room, but there’s still a ton scattered around, I’m sure.”

“What’s the holdup with Polizei Two?” one of the boys asked.

Evan bounced on his toes, his gaze darting between Rachael, Theresa, the boys in front of him, and the rest of the crowd. “Trying to get the fuzzy wings on the vultures just right. The graphics are killing me.”

“Seriously, dude. It was supposed to be out for Christmas.”

Evan bounced harder. “There are a lot of factors at play here. I wanted the sphere to be ready for preorder with the game.”

“You could have embedded an ad and order form in the higher levels. Why hold up the game?”

Theresa wondered if the boy, with his Chinese-symbol tattoo and peach-fuzz beard, felt the same urgency about his geometry homework.

His friend, thinner and pastier, came to Evan’s rescue. “Don’t hassle the guy, dude. His wife died, and all.”

The first young man remembered his manners. “Oh, yeah. That really sucked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Evan agreed, watching Rachael. The bouncing subsided.

But then the sympathetic one revealed his own area of curiosity. “But wasn’t it weird, like, being married to an escort?”

The first one perked up again. “Yeah, was that cool? Did she do all sorts of-stuff?”

“But didn’t it bug you what she was doing with, you know, other guys?” the second one ventured, cautious but persistent. “I would think that would be kind of-”