J. Robb - Fantasy in Death

“I don’t need an excuse. They’re my people. But the fact is once I have the data, and-whatever the results-pass it to you, you’d be able to contract or expand your suspect list.”

“All you had to do was tell me.”

“And the reverse holds just as true, so there’s no point in you getting pissed off.”

“I’m not pissed off. I’m… aggravated.”

“You’re aggravated? Consider, Eve, how aggravated I might be if it turns out that someone I trust, someone I pay had anything whatsoever to do with that.”

He gestured to the board.

“You can’t be or feel responsible for every person who pulls a check from Roarke Industries.” She threw up her hands. “It’s half the fucking world.”

More than one hot thread of anger wound through him now. “Oh yes, I bloody well can, and it’s nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with being in charge. You are and feel exactly the same about every cop in your division, in the whole shagging department come to that.”

She started to argue, then stopped because he was right about that much. “Any data from your run has to coincide with mine, and officially come from mine whether it clears your whole crew or somebody bobs to the surface.”

“I know how it works, Lieutenant. I’ll just get back to it then, so you can have what you need and shift it back to your side of the line.”

“That was low,” she mumbled as he walked out.

“Maybe it was.”

She sat, brooding into her wine. She didn’t know, exactly, why they were at odds. They were doing basically the same thing for basically the same reason.

Basically.

But he should’ve let her do it, or waited until she’d assigned him to do it. And that probably grated. The assign portion. Couldn’t be helped. She was the LT, she was the primary, she gave the damn orders.

Now she was passing aggravated and heading toward pissed, she realized.

She’d just been trying to shield him a little. Wasn’t that her job, too? she thought in disgust as she rose. Part of the marriage deal? So why were they fighting when she’d done her job?

And now she had to do the damn dishes, which she’d fully intended to dump on him.

She gathered them up as she scowled at the door he’d closed between their offices, and the red light above it that indicated he’d gone private.

That was pattern, she thought as she carted the dishes into the kitchen. When he was seriously peeved he walked away, closed up until he cooled off. Which was probably for the best as it saved a serious bout. But it was… aggravating.

She wondered why two people who loved each other to the point of stupid managed to aggravate each other as often as they seemed to.

She couldn’t think about it now, she decided as she dumped the dishes in the washer. She had work to do.

She programmed coffee and took it back to her desk.

Since he was doing the runs, whether she wanted him to or not, she’d let that part slide for now. No point in doubling the work.

Instead she studied the probabilities she’d set up before dinner. With the available data, the computer calculated a more than ninety-two percent probability Bart Minnock had known his killer. It gave her just under sixty on premeditation, high nineties on the killer working in or involved in the gaming business, which dropped to middle seventies on personnel from U-Play.

“If it wasn’t premeditated, how’d he manage to clean up and walk out without his clothes full of blood? Dammit.”

Had the killer taken some of Bart’s clothes? she wondered. Take a shirt, take some pants-Bart wasn’t in a position to complain. That increased the possibility of accidental or violent impulse.

“Need the weapon. Need to ID the weapon. Who owned it.” She brought up Bart’s financials again, scouring them for any sign of a major purchase from an individual or a vendor who might deal in gaming weapons.

She cross-referenced the financials with the inventory list of weapons, toys, props found in his apartment and his office.

“Light saber. That’s a kind of electrified sword. Not a blade though, more like… a tube? Not a broad straight edge, not the weapon.”

She picked her way through U-Play’s financial records. Steady, she thought, gradual and healthy up-ticks since inception, with a lot of the profit rolled back in. That showed partners in for the long haul.

The four of them attended a lot of cons-individually or as a group, and sometimes sent other employees. The business picked up the freight, and paid the hefty fee for display and demo space, often sponsored contests and events.

A lot of money for that, she noted. Was that usual, practical, smart? She glanced toward the closed door. She’d just have to ask her expert consultant, civilian, when he was in a better mood.

Using the crime scene images, Morris’s findings, the sweeper’s reports she programmed a reconstruction of the murder. Eyes narrowed, she watched the two comp images stand face-to-face, watched the sword slice down so the tip ripped open the victim’s forearm, then swing up, back before making that slightly downward and powerful beheading stroke.

“That had to hurt-the first gash. It had to hurt as well as shock.

What does someone usually do when something hurts, when they’ve been cut, when they’re bleeding? Why didn’t you, Bart?” she asked aloud. “Why didn’t you press your hand to the wound? No blood on your palm, and there would’ve been. It cut, it burned, it bled, but you don’t attempt to staunch it, feel it. It’s instinctive. But you couldn’t if you had something in your hand, like the hilt of a sword. Couldn’t if you tried to defend, or if the killing blow came too fast.”

She ran it again, changing variables, then dragged a hand through her hair. “What was the game? Why would you play with a fake sword if your opponent had a real one?

“Because you didn’t know. But you damn well should have.”

She rose, paced, then gave in and rapped a fist smartly on the closed door.

It took a moment. Did he do that on purpose? Make her wait? Then the light flipped green, and the door opened.

“I need to use the holo-room,” she said. “I need a game that approximates what Bart might have been into at the time of the murder. I need you to set it up and go through it with me.”

“All right. I’ll meet you there.”

“I don’t suppose you have a couple of swords, of the nonlethal variety.”

“Everything in the weapons room is authentic, so no. You’ll have to make do with holo-weapons.”

“Okay.” She tried to think of something else, then simply shrugged and started to the holo-room.

Roarke’s was bigger than the one in Bart’s apartment-big surprise, she thought sourly. It probably met or exceeded the specs of anything Roarke had in any of his R &D operations.

But the size didn’t matter.

A holo-reconstruct of a murder that took place during a holo-game would give her a better feel, she hoped, for what had happened. What often led to why and why to who.

She walked around the large, empty space, listening to her own footsteps echo. She wasn’t much for games, not really. Training exercises, now, that was different, and she found the holo-room handy there.

More than once Roarke had used it to take her somewhere fantastic-a rainy night in Paris, a drifting boat on an empty sea. Romantic, seductive-well, the holo was handy there, too, though at the moment she doubted either of them felt particularly romantic.

He came in with a disc. “You’re still wearing your weapon.”

She’d forgotten, and now stripped off the harness to lay it and the weapon by the door.

“You wanted something close to U-Play’s Fantastical. We’ve been dissecting what we have of it in EDD, but I don’t have the data or components here. It seemed… a gray area to bring any of that home to continue the work here.”