Fantasy in Death (In Death #30)(5)

“What about you? Old boyfriends?”

Her eyes popped open. “Oh God, no. I mean, yes, I had boyfriends before Bart, but nobody who’d... I never had the kind of breakup that would... I wasn’t seeing anybody special or regular before I hooked up with Bart.”

“How about at his business? Did he have to let anyone go recently, or reprimand anyone?”

“I don’t think so.” She swiped at her cheeks now as her brow furrowed in thought. “He never said anything to me, and he would’ve. I think. He hated confrontations, except in a game. He’d have told me if he’d had trouble with anyone at work, I really think. He’s a happy guy, you know? He makes other people happy, too. How could it happen? I don’t know how this could happen. Do you?”

“Not yet.”

She had CeeCee escorted home, then began her own room-by-room. Plenty of them, she thought, and each designed so the occupants could play in comfort. Roomy chairs, oversized sofas shouted out in their bright colors. Nothing dull for Bart. The menus of the AutoChefs and Friggies ran to those adolescent tastes again—pizza, burgers, dogs, chips, candy. Fizzies and soft drinks outnumbered wine and beer and liquor. She found no illegals, and only the mildest of over-the-counter chemical aids. She’d nearly completed her initial search of the master bedroom when Peabody came in.

“No illegals that I’ve come across,” Eve began. “No sex toys either, though he’s got some  p**n  on vid and on game discs. Most of the comps throughout are passcoded, and those that aren’t are game-only. No data, no com.”

“The droid confirms the girlfriend’s statement to the first-on-scene,” Peabody told her. “The vic told her to shut down for the night after he got home, and her log confirms she did. She has an auto-wake for nine, which activated as the vic didn’t start her up prior. She’s a little spooky.”

“How?”

“Efficient. Plus she doesn’t look like a droid. She doesn’t have any of the tells, like the occasional stuttering, the blank stare while it processes data. Definitely cutting-edge there. I know she didn’t actually feel shock and grief, but it seemed like she did. It did. She asked me if someone would contact his parents. That’s active thinking. It’s not droid like.”

“Or it’s careful and thorough programming. Let’s find out more about U-Play. You don’t get a trilevel in this neighborhood for chump change. Let’s find out who gets the money, and who’s lined up to take over the company. We need to know what he was working on. And who was as good as he was.”

She paused, looked around the room again. “Somebody got in here, got past the droid, got into that holo-room without leaving a discernable trace.”

She only knew one person who’d be able to pull that off—and she was married to him. Maybe Roarke would know another.

“Priority is to get that disc out of the holo-room unit, run it.”

“E-team’s on the way, and so are the sweepers. One of the uniforms got all security discs for the last twenty-four.”

“You keep on the room-by-room. I’m going to notify next of kin via ’link. We’ll see what EDD can do for us, then we’ll pay a visit to U-Play.”

She took a few moments after the notification to let it all settle. She’d just crushed the lives of two people she hadn’t known existed less than an hour before, Eve thought as she sat on the side of Bart Minnock’s bed. They would never really be the same, nothing would ever be as it had been for them.

Murder did that. Took lives, crushed others, changed still others forever.

So why had someone needed or wanted to end Bart Minnock’s existence? And why had they chosen the method used?

Money. Jealousy. Revenge. Secrets. Passion.

From all appearances, he had money, she thought, and ran a quick, standard financial. Okay, he had money, and U-Play was a strong, young company. Her first instinct was to take CeeCee at her word. No jealous exes. But money often generated jealousy. Revenge might come through a competitor, or an employee who felt shafted or underappreciated. Secrets, everyone had a few. Passion? Gaming had certainly been the victim’s.

Method... Murder during game play. Kind of poetic in a sick way. Decapitation. Sever the head—the brain—and the body falls. Minnock was the brains of U-Play, it seemed from her quick run. Would the body fall without him? Or was someone ready and waiting to slip in and take over?

Whatever the answers, the method had been bold, purposeful, and complex. God knew there were easier ways to kill. It was very likely the killer was just as serious and devoted to gaming as his victim.

2

Eve heard McNab before she saw him. if he’d been a teenaged girl instead of a grown man she’d have called the sound he made a squeal.

“Holy jumping Jesus! This place is iced to the cube!”

“Settle down, boy. This is a crime scene.”

She caught Feeney’s reprimand, but she recognized the edge of excitement in his tone. The EDD captain and her former partner wasn’t just a grown man, she thought, but a freaking grandfather.

Still, maybe e-geeks were always kids under the skin.

“Somebody should say something. Like a prayer.”

And they’d brought Callendar. The reverential whisper made Eve shake her head. Maybe she’d expected more from that source as Callendar was female.