Olivia’s lips closed tightly.
“What?” Abbott demanded.
“She called me, too,” Olivia said. “Earlier this
afternoon. She left a message on my phone at my desk. I was just about to call
her back. How does she know the victim?”
“Vic
tims
,” Abbott said. “She knew Martha and
Christy. From Siren Song.”
“No way. No how. Eve is not mixed up with sex ops. Let
me talk to her.”
“That’s her lawyer,” Jack said. “Good luck.”
Olivia knocked on the window and Matthew Nillson came
out to the observation room. “I’m a family friend. I’m going to talk to her.”
Olivia started to push past, but Nillson stopped her.
“My client wants to talk to you all, too, but she’s afraid of the impact it
will have on her work.”
“What impact?” Jack asked. “Guys call, get off, she
gets paid. Where’s the impact?”
Nillson stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Your client,” Abbott said. “She works for a company
called Siren Song. They provide phone sex services.”
Nillson was still staring. “And you think Eve works
for them?”
“She knew Martha Brisbane from work,” Noah said.
“Martha worked for Siren Song.”
“We have epic misunderstanding here,” Nillson said.
“Eve’s a grad student working on her master’s in psychology. She knows Martha
and Christy through her duties there. She thought it was strange that you asked
for a personnel list. Now that makes sense.”
“So Eve doesn’t work for Siren Song?” Abbott asked
carefully.
Thank God
.
When Noah saw her at Martha’s, he’d thought it was fate.
Maybe it was
.
Nillson shook his head. “Um, no. She does not work for
Siren Song.”
“Told you,” Olivia said with satisfaction. “So why did
she want a lawyer?”
“Because she’s found herself in a corner. She’s seen
information she shouldn’t have seen. Information that led her to two of the
victims. She’s worried that if her role in helping you comes out, she’ll be
expelled. She’d like to be a confidential informant.”
“A CI?” She was staring into the mirror, but Noah got
the impression she wasn’t looking at them, but at herself. He’d watched her
tending bar, watching everyone else so cautiously. Knowing about her background,
her innate caution made perfect sense.
He’d watched her, wishing he was a different man,
wanting to shield her from himself. Now she needed shielding from whatever
danger she’d stumbled into.
Noah cleared his throat. “We can proceed on a CI
basis, right, Bruce?”
Abbott was also watching Eve, thoughtfully. He nodded.
“Okay. For now.”
“Then, let’s begin,” Matthew said. “She has a hell of
a story for you.”
Monday, February 22, 7:20 p.m.
Eve was relieved when Olivia came through the door.
Webster and Phelps followed, along with Abbott, their captain. Matt closed the
door as Olivia took the seat next to her.
“They’ve agreed to keep your role confidential,” Matt
said taking his seat.
Eve nodded, still guarded. “I appreciate that.”
Webster sat across from her. Again, something was
different. Where she’d seen anger and compassion, now his eyes flickered with
relief. Matt looked almost amused.
Abbott reached across the table to shake her hand.
“I’m Captain Abbott.”
“I know. Vodka, straight up.”
“We’re very interested to hear your story,” Abbott
said.
Jack Phelps hadn’t said anything at all, which was
highly uncharacteristic. He stood off to the side, back against the wall,
watching. He seemed… disappointed.
Eve glanced at Olivia. “What just happened?”
Olivia’s lips twitched. “I’ll tell you later. It’ll
make your day.”
Webster looked uncomfortable. “We’re ready to listen.”
Eve met his eyes, again sensing she could trust him.
Six years had taught her a great deal about who she could trust. Webster was
the real deal. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but I wasn’t sure you’d believe
me. I’m not sure I believe me. I’m a grad student. I’ve wanted to become a
therapist for a long time. To help victims of violent crime.”
Webster nodded. “I understand.”
She was certain that he now did. “I’ll tell you what I
know. But first, can you tell me when Christy died?”
Please say it was
before I met you on Martha’s doorstep.
She’d been rehashing that moment in
her mind, hoping her selfish desire to keep her secret hadn’t cost Christy
Lewis her life.
“The ME thinks it was sometime early this morning,”
Webster said kindly.
Relief had her shoulders slumping. “Thank you. All
right. My thesis is on the use of the virtual world to improve self-esteem.”
“Virtual world?” Abbott asked with a frown.
“RPG. Role play games,” Eve added when he still
frowned. “Like Shadowland.”
“It’s a computer game,” Olivia said.
“It’s more than a game,” Eve said. “It’s a community.
You can meet people, have a job, buy property. All with complete anonymity. At
least that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Their motto is ‘Sometimes you want to go where no one
knows your name,’ ” Jack said. “I’ve played. A little.”
“Well, a lot of people can’t play ‘a little.’ Martha
couldn’t. That’s why we picked her for my study. I wanted to tap the potential
of the virtual world as a teaching tool. Like a big flight simulator, only to
teach life skills, socialization. I wanted to help people who couldn’t function
in the real world to… practice in the virtual world.”
“So a person who was socially clueless could learn to
interact without the fear of rejection,” Webster said.
“Yes. I want to help these people leave the virtual
world and make lives for themselves in the real one. This is important to me.
I’ve worked hard to get here, to get into grad school, and I didn’t want to
lose it. Which is why I didn’t tell you earlier.”
“All right,” Webster said. “So where do Martha and
Christy fit in?”
“We recruited subjects for my study. People who’d
never played before, like Christy Lewis. People who dabbled, like Detective
Phelps. And what we called our ‘ultra-users,’ like Martha Brisbane. Martha
averaged eighteen hours a day in Shadowland.”
“Eighteen hours?” Abbott said, shaking his head. “How
did she have a life?”
“I wondered how Martha made a living, because she was
in the game all the time.”
At that Webster actually blushed. Eve glanced around,
only to find everyone in the room casting their eyes everywhere but at her.
“Okay, what did I miss?”
Olivia sighed. “Martha was a phone sex operator, Eve.
When you told Detective Webster that you knew her from her work…”
Eve’s mouth fell open. “That explains a lot.” She felt
her own cheek heat and knew her face was aflame, leaving her scar starkly
white. “For the record, I don’t do… that.”
Webster cleared his throat. “I’m sorry we thought so.”
A hysterical giggle bubbled up and she shoved it back.
“Okay. Moving right along.”
“Your study,” Olivia prompted.
“Our subjects do exercises to increase self-awareness.
Like find three people with whom you have something in common. It started out
by them finding people that looked like them. Or their avatars. Later, they dug
deeper for hobbies and personal interests.”
“Avatars?” Abbott asked, then shrugged. “Sorry. I’m
old.”
Eve smiled at him. “No, you’re not. An avatar is like
a game piece. Like when you play Monopoly, you’re always the… ?”
“Shoe,” he said.
“I’m the iron,” she confided and Abbott smiled back.
“An avatar is what you look like in the virtual world. Martha was a sex goddess
named Desiree. Christy was a former Miss Universe and champion ballroom dancer
named Gwenivere.”
“Who are you?” Webster asked softly and she started,
not expecting the question.
“Me? Oh, lots of different people,” she evaded. “But
for the purposes of this study, I started as Pandora. I own a shop called
Façades Face Emporium. I sell avatars.”
“Sell?” Abbott leaned forward, interest in his eyes.
“You sell things in this world?”
“You can sell all kinds of things. When you enter the
game you can design your own avatar, but it’s from a template. If you want
anything more unique, you pay someone. I don’t charge a lot for my avatars,
which is why I get a lot of business, especially with people new to the World.”
“Like many of your test subjects,” Webster said.
“Exactly.”
“You were watching them,” Jack said. “As Pandora.”
Eve nodded. “Yes. That’s where I get into trouble.”
“Why were you watching them?” Webster asked.
“My concern was having subjects abuse Shadowland. The
ultra-users did, but they were our control. I worried that people who had full
lives in the real world would be sucked in, so I monitored usage. We also
measured personality changes. Mood swings, changes in sleep, missing work. And
suicidal tendencies.”
“Oh.” Webster leaned back, understanding in his eyes.
“You read Martha committed suicide. You thought it had something to do with
your study. With the game.”
“That was my fear. I’d wanted to test subjects monthly
for mood changes, but my advisor wouldn’t approve that frequency. We tested
every three months instead. I was, and still am, worried that that’s not often
enough.”
“So you monitored them from the inside,” Abbott said.
“Clever.”
“And against the rules, Captain. I was only supposed
to know these people by a number. I got worried when a few of them started
spending huge hours in the World. It was like recruiting people for a gambling
study and watching them become overnight addicts. It was taking over their
lives.”
“So you went undercover,” Olivia said.
Eve nodded. “I opened Façades and waited for people to
come to me. It was the least intrusive method I could conceive. I could chat
with them, gauge their moods, and they didn’t know who I was. Martha’s Desiree
was one of my best customers. She was an obsessive face upgrader. Then about a
week ago, Desiree disappeared.”
“What did you do?” Webster asked.
“Worried. Hoped Martha had gone on a real-world
vacation, but I knew she hadn’t. She was hard-core. And she’d been like that
for months before the study began.”
Webster frowned. “How long had she been a gamer, in
total?”
“I’d have to check my notes, but maybe a year?”
Webster looked over his shoulder at Phelps. “It’s when
everything changed for her.”
Phelps was nodding. “The mess in her apartment,
missing her bills. The fights with her mother. Makes sense. So Martha
disappeared. Then what?”
“I went looking for her. I didn’t find Martha, but I
did find Christy. Every single night Christy would go to the club. It’s called
The Ninth Circle.”
“Of hell?” Webster winced. “Lovely.”
“It’s a dance club, a social center. Christy’s
Gwenivere was a party girl. I’d use Greer—that’s another of my avatars—to check
on her and my other red-zones, the subjects I most worried about.”
“How many red-zones do you have?” Webster asked.
“Right now, five more, with another dozen brewing. I
just checked on Christy last night, when I got home from Sal’s. She was dancing
and flirting, same old.”
“So how did you know who these people were in real
life?” Jack asked.
“This is where I really get into trouble. I broke
double-blind.”
The detectives glanced at one another, their confusion
clear.
“Double-blind means I don’t know who they are and they
don’t know which group they’re in. It’s supposed to be sacrosanct.”
“But you peeked,” Olivia murmured.
“Big time.” Eve rubbed a tight cord in the back of her
neck. “I broke in, located the test numbers of the subjects I was most
concerned about, and their real-world names.”
“And real-world addresses?” Webster asked sharply.
Eve closed her eyes, trying to figure out how to keep
Ethan’s involvement secret. “Not until today. I needed to know where to find
Christy. I’d just come from Martha’s. You said she’d been murdered. And here’s
where it gets incredibly unbelievable.”
Eve looked at Webster. “I’d set a Google Alert for
Martha. This morning it popped up, with an article saying she’d committed
suicide. I didn’t know what to do. I ended up going to my advisor. I told him
about Martha.”
“You admitted you broke the double-blind?” Webster
asked. “That was brave.”
“It was the right thing to do,” she said and saw
respect in his eyes. “I couldn’t let anyone else’s life be ruined by this study.
But my advisor got angry. I gave him a printout of the article about Martha.
He… shredded it and told me I’d never seen it.”