Fantasy in Death (In Death #30)(9)

She tended him, Eve thought. Not like a lover but a doting sister.

Cill went back to Vending, ordered up a coffee. “For Var,” she said. “He’ll want coffee.”

He came in fast, a stocky man of about thirty wearing the maxi-cargos McNab favored in an eye-friendly khaki, but his well-worn skids were the same stoplight red as his shirt. His brown hair capped short around a face hovering between pleasant and homely.

“Jeez, Cill, I told you I’m buried today. No time for breaks. And with Bart still off-line I’ve got five shitloads to shovel before I—”

“Var.” Cill passed him the coffee. “You need to sit down.”

“I need to move. Seriously. So make it quick and...” He noticed Eve and Peabody for the first time. “Sorry.” His face edged slightly closer to pleasant with his smile. “Didn’t know we had company. Are you the reps from Gameland? I wasn’t expecting you until this afternoon. I’d have been a little more organized by then. Probably.”

“This is Lieutenant Dallas and...”

“Detective Peabody.”

“Yeah.” Cill took a deep breath, then closed the glass door. “They’re here about Bart.”

“Bart?” A quick laugh exploded. “What’d he do? Get drunk and jaywalk? Do we need to post bail?”

“Sit down, Var,” Cill murmured.

“Why? What?” Amusement faded. “Oh hell, oh shit, did he get mugged or something? Is he hurt? Is he okay?”

“We’re Homicide,” Eve said. “Bart Minnock’s been murdered.”

The coffee slipped out of Var’s hand and splashed over his bright red shoes. “What do you mean? What does that mean?”

“Sit down, Var.” Cill pulled him to a chair. “Just sit down. We’ll clean that up later.”

“But this is crazy. Bart can’t be... When? How?”

“Sometime between four-thirty and five yesterday afternoon, in his apartment a few blocks from here. He was found by CeeCee Rove earlier this morning, in his holo-room. He’d been decapitated.”

After Benny’s strangled gasp, there was utter silence. Beside him, Cill went deathly white. Her hand flayed out, and Var gripped it.

“Someone cut his head off?” As Cill began to shake, Benny put an arm around her so the three of them sat on the sofa as one unit. “Someone cut Bart’s head off?”

“That’s correct. It appears he was in the holo-room at the time of the attack, and had programmed a game by disc. EDD is working on removing the disc from the holo-unit. I’m going to need to verify the whereabouts of all of you from three to six yesterday.”

“We were here,” Cill said quietly. “We were all here. Well, I left just before six. I had a yoga class, and it starts at six. It’s just down the street at Blossom. Benny and Var were still here when I left.”

“I think I was here until about six-thirty.” Var cleared his throat. “I-I went home. My group’s got a game—a virtual game—of Warlord going, and we played from about seven to ten. Benny was still here when I left, and he was already in when I got here at eight-thirty this morning.”

“I worked late and bunked here. Some of us were around until seven or eight—I don’t remember, but we can check the logs. I shut the place up, and worked until about one, then I crashed. None of us would hurt Bart. We’re family. We’re family.”

“They have to know.” Cill leaned her head on his shoulder a moment. “It’s one of the steps. You have to take the steps to get to the next level. If Bart let somebody into his holo, he trusted them, or...”

“Or,” Eve prompted.

“He was showing off.” Var’s voice broke, and once again he cleared his throat.

“What might he want to show off? What was he working on he’d want to take home, play with, show off?”

“We’ve got a lot of things in development,” Var told her. “A lot ready to roll out, others we’re fine-tuning. Bart took hard copies home a lot, to play them out, look for kinks and glitches and ways to pump it up. We all did.”

“Then he’d have logged it out?”

“He should have, yeah.” Var stared blankly. “Oh, I could check. I can go check.”

“I’ll go with you. Peabody,” Eve said with a nod, then followed Var out while her partner continued to interview.

They took one of the elevators down, with Var waving people off. His pockets sent out chirps and beeps and buzzes. She saw him start to reach in—an instinctive move—then let his hand drop away. “They’ll know something’s up, something’s wrong,” he said to Eve.

“What do we tell them? I don’t know what to tell them.”

“We’ll need to interview all the employees. How many are there?”

“On-site? Seventy or so. We have a couple dozen nationally who work virtually—in sales, in testing, that kind of thing.” He gestured her into an office that looked like the bridge of a starship.

“This is Bart’s space. It’s, ah, a replica of Galactica’s CIC. Bart works—worked—best when he had fun with it.”

“Okay. We’ll need to go through his things here, and take his comps and com units in.”