“The problem is that she continues to be a
distraction.”
“She’s a target.”
“Then put her in a safe house. You know I’m right.”
Abbott was right. Then again, so was Eve. But Abbott’s
order would keep her safe.
“If you don’t, then I will,” Abbott said quietly. “I
mean it, Noah.”
Noah nodded. “Okay. I’ll take her back to Brock. Will
that work?”
“I’ll take her,” Abbott said, irritated. “I want you
focused. And I swear, if I have to tell you that one more time… Well, I won’t
tell you. I’ll just yank you from this case.”
“Okay,” Noah said, teeth clenched. “I hear you.”
Thursday, February 25, 10:45 a.m.
“I’m not going to Brock’s,” Eve said, putting her
laptop in her bag. “His kids can’t stay away forever and I will not put this
target I’m wearing on their heads.” She looked at Abbott, resigned. “I’ll take
the safe house.”
“Eve,” Noah started, but she lifted her hand to stop
him.
“Do safe houses have cable?” she asked Abbott, and to
Noah’s surprise, he smiled.
“All the channels you can surf,” Abbott said, “and
free wi-fi to boot.”
Her lips curved. “Can I order any takeout I want?”
“Don’t push it, Eve,” Abbott said dryly. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” she said. “Noah, what about David? Who’s going
to take care of him?”
“His brother Max,” Noah said. “He’ll stay with David
until he can go back to Chicago.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You called Max?”
Noah shook his head. “No, I called David. Apparently
Tom called his stepfather last night and told him the whole story. Max left
Chicago a few hours ago.”
She looked up with a forced smile and he knew how much
this pseudo-incarceration was costing her. “Will you come to see me?”
He kissed her brow, not caring who saw. “You bet. Now
go.” He helped her with her coat and watched her walk away, chin lifted in the
gesture he’d come to expect.
The phone on his desk rang and he picked up, his eyes
still on her. “Webster.”
“My name is Natalie Clooney. T-the officers l-last
night… Th-they said to call you.”
Noah cupped the phone, dread pooling at her hysterical
stutter. “Eve. Tell Abbott to come back.” Dropping his hand, he answered the
call. “What happened, Miss Clooney?”
“My f-friend. Virginia. She’s d-dead.”
Noah sank into his chair as Abbott approached grimly,
Eve following behind. “How?”
“Sh-she’s hanging.” Natalie was sobbing. “Her eyes…
They’re gone.”
Thursday, February 25, 11:10 a.m.
Noah had tried to mentally prepare himself for what
he’d find in Virginia Fox’s house, but there was no way he could have. He
looked up into her hollow eye sockets and it was all he could do to keep his
stomach in check.
“Donner didn’t do this,” he said hoarsely.
“No, he couldn’t have,” Abbott said, his voice dull.
“Why not?” The question came from Carleton Pierce, who
had just arrived behind Ian Gilles and the ME techs. Carleton stopped dead in
his tracks as he entered the room. “Holy God.”
Noah stepped back as Micki snapped pictures of the
scene. “Donald Donner committed suicide last night. Sometime around eight
o’clock.”
Carleton did a double take. “He did what?”
“He killed himself, okay?” Noah snarled, then forced
himself to calm. “I’m sorry. It’s been a bad day. Donner was dying. He shot
himself last night.”
“I don’t even know why I’m bothering to photograph
this scene,” Micki muttered. “It looks like all the others.”
“Except the victim,” Noah said. She was dressed like
the others. Same dress, same shoes, same makeup. Everything except the eyes.
“Virginia was not on Eve’s list.”
“What? How do you know?” Carleton asked.
“Because Eve just called me. She’s sitting at my desk,
checking the damn list, and this woman is not on it. And if we don’t find him,
she could be next.”
“She won’t be next,” Abbott said. “Kane’s taking her
to a safe house as we speak.”
Noah turned to Carleton. “Virginia wasn’t on the list,
but she was a close friend of Natalie, who’s been one of Eve’s red-zone cases
for weeks. Why did he change now? Every victim had been on that list. Why
choose one who was not?”
“I don’t know,” Carleton said tersely. “Maybe just to
throw us off.”
“Well it did.” Noah went to the living room where
Natalie sat on the sofa, rocking herself, her face dangerously pale. “Miss Clooney,
I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course,” Natalie said through bloodless lips.
“You said Miss Fox was a programmer.”
“Office assistant, actually, She and I started out at
the company together.”
“In the same office?”
“No. I got my certifications and was promoted a few
years ago. I’m the director of our department. Virginia reports… reported to
one of my people.”
“Did she mention any boyfriends, any new
relationships?”
“No. Well, yes, but not in the real world.”
“In Shadowland, then.”
“Yes. She met this guy at the poker table. Oh God.”
She started to cry again. “I told her about the warning I got from Captain
Abbott. She said that I was just trying to keep her from having a life. Now
she’s dead.” She covered her face and rocked.
“I know this is hard, but stay with me. You two played
in Shadow-land together?”
Natalie lowered her hands and drew a breath. “She
loved to gamble in Vegas, but she lost a lot when the market crashed so she
started virtual gambling. It was cheaper.”
“You’re doing great. Now, how did you come to be part
of the Shadowland study?”
“She saw the ad in the paper and said I’d enjoy the
game. I asked her if she was going to do the study, but she said she got enough
of shrinks in therapy. But it seemed important to her that I play, so I
joined.”
“I understand you’re a pretty good poker player.”
“I’d never played before. But I pick things up pretty
easily. We played poker together, every night. Last night we had a fight. A
terrible fight.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I was winning and she seemed happy for me. But a few
weeks ago she met this other gamer and she changed.”
Eve had mentioned this. “Dasich. He and your friend
were thrown out for cheating.”
Her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
“We’ve been keeping an eye on you, in the virtual
world and the real one. But we didn’t know about Virginia. What was she afraid
of, Miss Clooney?”
“The dark,” she said thinly. “Virginia was terrified
of the dark.”
“Do you know why?”
“Yes. Her family lived in Japan in ’95 when they had
that big earthquake in Kobe. She was trapped in the dark for three days, dead
people all around. Ever since, she couldn’t stand the dark. Always kept a light
on in every room.”
So the sonofabitch takes her eyes
. “Thank you. I’ll have an officer take you home.”
Thursday, February 25, 11:10 a.m.
It’s that damn list,” Eve said, sitting at Noah’s
desk. Olivia and Kane stood ready to haul her off to the safe house at Abbott’s
command.
Not yet. I need to think
.
“But the Fox woman isn’t on the list,” Kane said.
“Exactly. It’s to throw us off,” Eve said. “He knew we
had the list.”
“There is no ‘we.’ ” Olivia frowned. “There is us, and
there is you. You are not part of this anymore, Eve. You’re in too much danger
already.”
“And I’ll continue to be until we catch him. Where is
Jeremy Lyons?”
“Still missing,” Kane said. “No credit card activity
or contact with family and friends.”
He could be dead. Or he could be a killer.
“You’ve checked the grad students’ alibis. Donner
didn’t do it, because you’ve got one more and he was dead when it happened.”
Olivia and Kane shared a look. “Eve, you’re leaving,”
Olivia said calmly. She pulled Eve to her feet but Eve yanked her arm away and
sat back down.
“Let me think. Virginia wasn’t on my list, but she and
Natalie were friends. Sit down, Olivia. Please. I need to do this. There is
something here.” Eve stared at the list on her laptop screen. But the answer
wasn’t here. She logged back in to Shadowland as Olivia gave in, pulling a
chair behind her with a frustrated sigh.
“Abbott’s gonna have my ass in a sling,” Olivia
grumbled.
Eve didn’t respond. She was pulling up user accounts.
“What are you doing?” Kane asked standing behind her.
Eve rubbed her forehead. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. I
hacked in, okay?”
“Cool,” Kane said, impressed.
“Don’t encourage her,” Olivia hissed, then sighed.
“What are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure. This here is Virginia Fox’s account.
And this is her poker avatar, Cicely.” She pointed to the screen. “Cicely used
to sit next to Natalie’s avatar at the poker table. But Virginia’s got other
avatars. This one she bought from Pandora. From me, I mean.” Eve’s eyes
narrowed and her heart started to beat harder. “No way.”
“No way what?” Kane demanded, hulking over her
shoulder.
Eve clicked on the Pandora avatar. “She changed the
face. She changed my code.”
“Like the killer did to his victims’ avatars,” Olivia
said.
“Is it like a fingerprint?” Kane asked. “The code
change?”
“No. I mean, I use software packages for design like
everybody else does, so my code’s not unique. But the pattern and placement of
the change is the same as what we saw with Martha and Christy’s avatars. Either
Virginia showed him how to change Pandora’s faces or he showed her.”
“How can you figure out which?” Kane asked.
Eve went to the messaging area. “You can talk in the
World, or you can send private messages, avatar to avatar. So nobody knows your
real name or account name.”
“Virginia sent messages to somebody?” Olivia asked,
leaning forward. “Please?”
“Yeah, she did.” Eve clicked through them. “We’re
lucky she kept them. Here’s the message where she sends him the text to cut and
paste to make the changes.” She looked over her shoulder, met Olivia’s eyes.
“Three weeks ago.”
“When all this started,” Olivia said. “Who did she
send the message to?”
Eve clicked the message header open and was
unsurprised. “What a shock. It went to Dasich. Damn it, I knew something was
wrong with that guy. Virginia’s Cicely and this Dasich were thrown out of the
casino last night for cheating.”
“So how do we find a live body for this Dasich
avatar?” Olivia asked.
“I access his account,” Eve said, already typing.
“How, if you don’t know who he is?” Kane asked.
Eve hesitated. “Accessing an account starting with the
avatar takes the highest authority. After all, sometimes you want to go where
no one knows your name.”
“Do you have this authority, Eve?” Olivia asked
quietly.
“Yes. I kept upping my privileges until I’m executive
level, but I haven’t used it yet. I didn’t need it before, because I knew the
victims’ real names from the study, and Virginia actually registered with her
real name. When I go backward, from the avatar to the account, I may raise
flags at ShadowCo.” She turned to look at Olivia again. “I don’t want this
coming back to hurt Noah or any of you.”
“What about you?” Olivia asked.
Eve shrugged. “They could prosecute. Then again, if we
save the day, who knows? At a minimum, I’ll be a goddess to hairy-palmed
hackers everywhere. But it’s too late. I already did the search, and… we have a
winner. The Dasich avatar is owned by the account of Irene Black.”
“So Irene Black is a man?” Kane asked.
“Irene Black could be anyone. I told Abbott that
nobody uses their real name when they register. That Virginia did is a
surprise. I didn’t.” She opened Irene Black’s file. “These are all the avatars
this gamer owns, five of them. Looks like he bought all but one from Pandora’s
shop. See, here is Dasich, the poker player.” Eve clicked on each one, then
abruptly sagged back in her chair. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Olivia leaned closer. “What?”
“That avatar. It’s Drink Guy. He trolls Ninth Circle,
asking females if he can buy them a drink. He hit on my Greer avatar every time
I went through the bar. That’s how he hunted.”
“All right,” Olivia said urgently. “If nobody uses
their real name, how do we find him?”
“Follow the money,” Kane murmured. “That’s what Web
was doing, when I went all over town tracing Axel Girard’s credit card. Can you
access Irene’s financial info?”