J. Robb - Fantasy in Death

“Stop it.” Var laid a hand on his shoulder. “Stop. It’s not your fault. We need to go be with her,” he told Eve.

“Nearly done. How did you get into the building, into her apartment?”

“I have a swipe and her codes,” Benny said. “I live the closest, and if she’s got to go somewhere for a few days, I water the plants. She’s got a couple of nice plants. Plus, I just make sure her place is secure. It’s important to Cill her place is secure.”

“Why, especially?” Eve demanded. “Why is she so focused on security and privacy?”

“I…” Benny glanced over at Var.

“Go ahead. Maybe it’ll help.”

“It’s just her mother and stepfather never gave her any privacy, any peace. They used to search her room all the time, pry into all her stuff. They even put a cam in there once, to spy on her. Like she was a freaking criminal. She just… she just wants her private space private. That’s all. It’s why she got so upset with the searches. I guess…” He let out a long breath. “I guess it’s why I did, too. I know how it made her feel so it pissed me off.”

“Okay. Was her security in place when you got here?”

“Yeah, it was.” Var gave Benny’s shoulder a bolstering rub, then nodded. “We thought she’d maybe taken a sleeper and was just conked. We checked the bedroom and the office, then we… we looked in the holo and found her. We-I-did the nine-one-one right off.”

“And checked her pulse.”

“I did.” Benny pressed his lips together tight. “I couldn’t find it at first, but it was there. Barely there. She was cut up and banged up. All torn and bloody. Can you at least check again? For God’s sake.”

“Peabody, check with the hospital. We’re nearly done. Was the holoroom secured?”

Benny frowned a moment. “No. It wasn’t locked. But we’ve holo’d here a lot of times. I don’t think she usually secures the room. I don’t in my place most of the time. That was Bart’s thing. Super Spy Minnock,” he murmured, then squeezed his eyes tight.

“Okay. There’s a disc in the holo-program as I told you. Can you remove it?”

Benny shook his head. “I don’t have the code or sequence.” He glanced at Var.

“No, me neither. We could make a best guess, but if we’re wrong, it’ll hit destruct.”

“All right. We’ll deal with it.”

“She’s in surgery,” Peabody announced. “Indications are she’ll be several hours.”

“Is there family who should be notified?” Eve asked.

“Just her mother.” Var passed a weary hand over his face. “They’re not close, as I guess you could figure, but I guess she should know.”

“We’re her family,” Benny said fiercely. “We are.”

“I’ll have the officers take you to the hospital. Detective Peabody and I will be there shortly.”

She gave the uniforms instructions, secured the door behind them. “We’re going to want eyes on those two, softclothes.”

“Their alibis are easy to check out. EDD can confirm or dispute the online activity. If they’re in this together, they’re both good at the masks, but it would slide in with Mira’s two conspirators theory.”

“How do you see it going down, if they’re in it together?”

“They walk her home, just the way they said, but they come up, talk her into distracting herself with the holo-game. I don’t get that because the place is pretty well soundproofed, but the holo-area would be the more secure and soundproofed section in the space. And, she would be distracted. They attack her, or one attacks, one keeps watch. They leave her for dead, go home. Pull the ‘We were worried about her’ this morning so they can be the ones to find her.”

“Alive. Why not finish her off then?”

“We’d have TOD to coincide with their presence. They have to think fast, decide on calling it in, getting to the hospital. She’s a mess, Dallas, and her chances aren’t good. Either one of them could finish her there. Or could if we didn’t have a man on her.”

“It’s not a bad theory. Run some probabilities on it.”

“You don’t like it.”

“It’s not in my top five.” She gestured to the power drink tube. “That wasn’t there yesterday, and she didn’t come home until last night.”

“Okay. And?”

“If she has company, why does she have an open drink-just one drink and one it doesn’t look like she touched? We’ll check the supply, and the recycler, but I don’t think you’re going to find a couple more drinks of any sort taken out last night. Just here, standing by the window, deciding she doesn’t want the damn drink after all. She did the same thing the day we notified them Bart was dead. Got the drink, opened it, set it aside.”

“Too upset from the memorial,” Peabody concurred. “Yeah, that plays.”

Eve gestured to the shoes. “What do you do when you get home and your new shoes hurt your feet?”

“Take them off.”

“But if you’ve got company you’re probably not going to leave them in the middle of the room, right in the traffic flow.” She shrugged. “Neither may mean anything, but there are little details that give me a different picture.”

“She doesn’t secure the holo-room, so they could’ve come in while she was in game.”

“How did they know she’d be in game?”

“Because… one or both of them knew she’d logged out the disc.”

Now Eve nodded. “Yeah, and I’ll go one up from that. One of them gave her the disc to take home. The game, under it all? That’s the murder weapon. The killer likes the weapon.”

She walked to the door herself to let the sweepers in. While Eve showed them the holo-room, gave them the setup, Peabody chewed over theories.

“They give her time to come up,” Peabody said when Eve came back. “Time to settle in a little, to start the game. They come in. She’s distracted, into the game. And the rest follows my previous theory.”

“Also possible. You should run all variations.”

“I’m asking why. Why Cill, why now? Right on top of Bart, it’s absolute we’re going to be looking at the last partners standing. So, did she become a threat? Find something out? Was she asking the wrong questions?”

“Could be. Yesterday Roarke told her his people have been working on a similar game, similar technology, and have been for months.”

“That had to be crap news for them.”

“Yeah. And she’d have passed it to the others. She’d have told them. Maybe somebody was pissed enough to kill the messenger. And that one’s between you and me. I don’t want Roarke going there.”

“Understood.”

“I’ve got other reasons that’s not my number one. You play a game, you make decisions, and one leads to the next. You face off with different obstacles and opponents. It’s a good strategy to throw a new problem at your current opponent.”

“Which would be us. She was a ploy? Beating her half-and a good chance all the way-to death is a ploy?”

“And it ups the stakes. Yeah, we’ll be looking at the last two standing. And isn’t that exciting? Especially when you think you’re so fucking smart, so much better than the rest of the field. And now? There’s one less person who knows him, in and out. Intimately. Or thinks he does. It’s a calculated risk, but a good move.”

“If she comes out of it, she’ll ID him.”

“Yeah, that’s the sticking point. I’m working on it.” She went to the door again, this time for Feeney and McNab.

“Holo-room. I need whatever you can get me. But before you start, I want to talk to you about a setup I have in mind.”

Cill was still in surgery when Eve arrived at the hospital. “Go check on the partners. Be sympathetic, and try to get them to talk.”