“You let one of the bad guys go.”
“Did I? Maybe. Dispatch never has all the answers. Even if he was part of the problem, as you can see, I couldn’t go past the woman on the ground until she’d been secured. She still had a gun and wasn’t out of play.”
“You make it sound like a game.”
“It’s got similarities, but what happens on the street isn’t a game.”
Wyatt stripped the gun belt from her waist and held it out to Quinn.
“Nope. I’m good.”
“You sure?”
As the daughter of a cop, Quinn had learned how to shoot and all the gun safety shit that went along with it. But a gun hadn’t done diddly to save her mother. It had still been in her holster when she was shot. Too busy dealing with her stoned daughter to hear the real danger approaching.
Quinn plunged her hands into her pockets to keep from reaching out for the gun belt. “Platypus.”
Wyatt gave her a funny look, but didn’t press. “Tell me about your capstone project.”
The change of subject was a relief. Maybe that was the point of the question, because the detective had a softer look in her eyes than normal. Quinn didn’t know whether to be grateful or pissed.
“The whole idea of a team project was to prepare us for the real world of game design. We had to create a game prototype. Picture all the people it takes to make a movie. Same concept, smaller scale. But there’s a whole crew of creatives, coders, and coffee fetchers contributing to the final product. I designed the story and world-building. Tye did most of the heavy lifting when it came to coding. Ronny played it, which was about all he was good for.”
She hadn’t wanted him on the team, but Tye and Ronny had worked out an agreement. He’d stayed away from her, so it really hadn’t mattered.
His death mattered. She kept seeing his face. The explosion of snow when his car hit the berm. The darkness after he left the road.
“Sounds complicated,” Wyatt said. “But Tye knew how to do it all, right? I mean, he’d created a video game before.”
“True. None of us was worried about acing the project.” At least not originally.
“What was it about Tye’s first game that made it so special?”
It still caught her by surprise that she was the only one of their group still alive. “Some of the lessons games teach aren’t all that useful anymore. A lot of games don’t reward players for breaking the rules, instead inspiring a type of blind obedience. War games in particular use force to overcome obstacles in order to advance. Enemies are offed without ever getting to tell their side of the story.”
“The terrorist versus freedom-fighter argument.”
“Exactly. How one is viewed in one country can be way different in another. It’s called othering. The more different a character is perceived to be from the player, the more dangerous it becomes in our mind.”
“Where did Tye’s game fall in all that?”
“He made the mistake of designing a game that addressed social responsibility. He managed to erase the othering component. It was brilliant, really.”
Wyatt returned the gun and belt to the rack. “How’d he do that?”
“The characters were gender-fluid. Alliances were based on mutual good, not personal gain. Winning could only happen when the survival of the group was obtained even if it came at the expense of the individual. It focused on cooperation, not control.”
“Sounds like the kind of game the trolls were worried about.”
“Yeah. It checked all the boxes.”
“What was the challenge?”
“It was an explorer game. You traveled through scenarios. Unlock enough secrets or complete enough tasks, and you leveled up to an entirely different gamescape. It drew on memory of established patterns and then threw in new patterns or shortened allowable time to keep things fresh.”
“Would something like that have been profitable? I mean, it strikes me as an indie film, when I’d have thought all the gaming companies would be eager for a blockbuster.”
“Not everyone likes chocolate. Why else would Baskin-Robbins have fifty-two flavors?”
The detective zipped her jacket up to her throat. “Any guess why Tye shelved the project?”
She didn’t have to guess. “Tye had created an email group for the game’s beta testers and sent us all a kind of evaluation sheet. Derek returned his to me by accident.”
She strode into the center of the screens, stood where Wyatt had stood. The woman on the screen pointed the gun straight at Quinn’s chest. It wasn’t a game in this room. Officers confronted their monsters on these screens. Some figured out how to slay them. But like Wyatt had pointed out, sometimes the lesson was how to let the monsters go.
“I read the email before I forwarded it to Tye. Derek didn’t know anything about jump times or other technical aspects of the game, but the game touched him in a different way. Something way more significant.” Quinn recalled the email. The goofy enthusiasm. The hope she’d read between the lines. “Tye’s game gave Derek the courage to come out.”
Wyatt pointed the remote toward each projector, and one by one the screens darkened. “Do you know if he told his folks?”
“No clue. Two days later he was dead.”
Part Four
JO
38
Jo entered the police building at zero six thirty. Day shift was in briefing, and the likelihood of bumping into someone in the hallway was remote. Cowardly, maybe. She’d have to face the guys at some point, but for now, she charged up the stairs, eager to start working all the new angles that had cropped up over the weekend.
The detective bureau door at the top of the stairs stood open, but the office was dark. Detectives had keys; otherwise one had to be a sergeant or higher to access the investigative office. Squint must have come in early and gone downstairs to the patrol briefing. She flipped on the light.
Vacuum tracks lined the carpet, and a collection of her hair ties was stacked on the corner of her desk. A magazine leaned against her computer, left open to a photograph of a naked woman on her hands and knees giving a blow job to one man while a second man entered her from behind. Angry red ink crawled across the top of the page.
She knows her place.
Jo dropped her backpack. For a moment all she could see was the image, but that wasn’t the point. The message was. Her jaw clenched so tight, she heard her teeth grind. Then she heard another sound. A vacuum.
She found Cody in the chief’s office.
As soon as he saw Jo, he ducked his head and increased the speed of his vacuuming to a furious pace, banging into the base of the knickknack-filled bookcase that lined one wall of the office.
She stepped in front of the vacuum, forcing him to stop, and he turned it off.
“You sh-shouldn’t be in here, Mrs. Wyatt. No one is allowed in the chief’s office when he isn’t here.”
“Cody, did you let someone in the detective office?”
“I’m not allowed to do that. I go in. I clean. That’s it. Otherwise I’d be breaking the rules. Like now. Please, Mrs. Wyatt. You need to go so I don’t get in trouble.”
“Cody, you’re not in trouble, but someone put something on my desk that isn’t mine. Did you see the magazine on my desk?”
A bright red flush climbed his neck, and he blinked several times behind his thick glasses. He pressed the switch, and the industrial vacuum whirred back to life. “I have to finish, Mrs. Wyatt.”
She yanked the plug from the wall socket. “I don’t care if you looked at it. Do you know who put it there?”
He studied his toes and shook his head. “Please, don’t be mad at me, Mrs. Wyatt.” His chin quivered.
There was no way Cody was responsible for the magazine, and his distress tore at her heart. Jo wiped her face of the rage growing inside her—not at him, but the person who’d placed him in the cross fire. She touched his forearm. “We’re friends, Cody. I have no reason to be mad at you.”
“Did you see who left it there? I’d like to give it back to him.” More to the point, she’d like to shove it up his ass.
He shook his head again. “I understand if you have to report me. I should have shut the door behind me.”
“I’m not going to report you, Cody. Please don’t worry about that.”
“Why would someone give you a magazine full of dirty pictures?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
“I heard a new joke, Mrs. Wyatt.”
She forced herself to smile. “It’s not another computer joke, is it?”
“Even better,” he said with his normal enthusiasm. “Why can’t you trust the king of the jungle?”
“I don’t know, why?”
“’Cause he’s always lion.” He laughed. “Get it?”
“That was pretty corny.”
“I know. I have to finish now, Mrs. Wyatt. I’m sorry I left your door open.”
He bent over and plugged the vacuum into the wall.
The roar followed her down the hall, and she was almost to the property room before she realized the roar was in her ears, seething with each beat of her heart. One of her brothers in blue—a person she’d give her life for—held her in such low esteem that he thought it was okay to drop a filthy magazine on her desk. All because he didn’t have the balls to talk to her face-to-face. The only thing she knew for certain was that she’d be damned if Cody took the fall when someone else deserved the blame. She’d hold on to the magazine. Fingerprint it at some later time. Today she had too much on her plate to get sidetracked over some officer’s puerile idea of a joke. She trudged toward the property room.
“Anybody home?” She peered through the welded steel mesh that partitioned the secured portion of the police department property room like a cage. Row upon row of deep floor-to-ceiling bookshelves held evidence from past murders, current cases, found property, and all manner of minutiae awaiting forensic processing or court requests. Behind the shelving, refrigerators held perishable items. One entire section held nothing but firearms.
Officially, the property tech started at seven, but Reginald was old school. Anything less than ten minutes early was late.
“Hello?” she called into the abyss again, half expecting to hear an echo.
Reginald bustled toward the front as fast as a seventy-two-year-old with a bad hip could bustle. He wasn’t swift, but he was precise. Exactly what liability-concerned administrators and attorneys wanted in a property room technician.
“Detective Wyatt. What can I do you for?”
Jo wove her fingers through the mesh. “I need to review the Tye Horton evidence.”
Reginald sat down at his desk and nudged the glasses on his head over his eyes like a warrior closing his helm. “Case number?”
She rattled off the number, and his fingers methodically tapped his keyboard.
“Let’s see. Seven boxes, multiple items. Do you want anything specific or the whole kit and caboodle?”
“The full monty, please.” Which, in light of the recent reading material placed on her desk, was a poor choice of words. “But one box at a time. I’ll swap for a new one when I bring the first one back.”
“Give me a minute.”
A minute stretched into nine while Reginald plumbed the depths of the locker. Finally, he emerged from the bowels of the storage room holding a banker’s box. He set it down on his desk and slid open the pass-through window and had Jo sign the custody log.
“Thanks, Reggie.”
The heft of the box felt deceptively light, considering the gravitas of its contents. But it would take only one piece of evidence to lend credence to her theory that Tye Horton had been murdered. It was in there, she knew it. All she had to do was recognize it.
The scent of fresh coffee greeted her as she returned to the office, and Squint sat behind his desk.
“Need a hand?” he asked.
She steered toward the break room and parked the box on the table. “I got it. You doing anything this morning? I’ve got a ton of new info I’d like to run by you.” Of all the people in the department, Squint’s opinion meant the most to her. She returned to her desk but remained standing. “First, though, the article.”
Squint rocked back in his chair. “I don’t much picture you talking with Cloud, so who was the source?”
A relief so profound it almost hurt washed through her, and she gripped the back of her desk chair. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Not everyone is going to think that way.”
“Oh, someone’s already made that abundantly clear.” She glanced down, then looked in the trash can. “Did you take the magazine off my desk?”
“I’m not in the habit of stealing other people’s ammo.”
“Not a gun magazine. Paper. Porn, to be exact. Someone left it on my desk, thoughtfully opened to their favorite page.”
“Only sergeants have keys to this office.”
“And Cody.” Even saying his name made her miserable, but Squint was her partner. He deserved to know the truth. If her father was correct, the department’s wrath against her could have repercussions for him too. “I spoke to him already. He took the trash down. When he came back, he noticed the magazine, but not who left it.”
“Other than timing, what makes you believe it was a response to the article?”
“It was personalized. The photo showed a woman servicing two guys at the same time. Someone titled it ‘She knows her place.’”
He set his mug down so hard that coffee splashed onto his blotter. “This is not okay.”
“Not even remotely, but let it go—at least for now. Quinn’s threats just ramped up, and that’s a helluva lot more important than me getting an unwanted skin magazine. Besides, it’s gone.”
“But not forgotten.”
“That would take a better person than me.” She pointed to his cup. “You want a refill? This is going to take a bit.” Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed the cup and disappeared into the break room.
When she returned, she set his coffee down and perched on the corner of his desk. There was so much to relay, she didn’t know where to start. Finally she settled on the obvious. “I’m convinced Tye was murdered and that Tye, Ronny, and Derek Walsenberg’s deaths are linked.”
“Why?” Squint asked.
Hitting the high notes required a half-hour briefing. By the time she’d finished recapping her Sunday, her coffee had cooled. “The DA surprised me the most. He flat out lied about knowing who Quinn was.”
“Could he have been telling the truth? The room was rented by his wife.”
“True, except I have Quinn’s statement and the surveillance tape that backs her up. By the way, did you ever notice the DA blinks funny when he lies?”
“I’ve never known him to lie.” A deep furrow formed on his forehead. “This is a serious accusation. One that will have definite repercussions.”
“I’m not accusing him of murder, but it doesn’t change the fact that he lied to me. Twice.” Her butt cheek was going to sleep, and she started pacing. “I think Tye’s original game is ground zero in this cluster.”
“And it’s been percolating for a whole year?”
“We already knew that Derek, Ronny, and Quinn were all linked to the game as beta testers. Derek was either so impressed by the game or by its designer that he had decided to come out as gay.” She held up her hand. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know if he actually did. The DA shut me down hard on that. But according to Quinn, he suicided a mere two days after announcing his intentions. Let’s say he didn’t get around to it. We know he’d found someone he cared about. He’d proclaimed in his email he was secure enough to acknowledge his orientation.”
“Do we have the email?”
“Not yet
. Quinn promised to send me all the latest missives and links this morning.”
“So we only have Miss Kirkwood’s word for it.”
“Funny thing about Quinn. She’s starting to grow on me. After you left Saturday, I called San Francisco PD to see if they had any background info on her. Her mom was Isabella Kirkwood.”
He drew his brows together. “Should I know that name?”
“She was the female sergeant killed in the line of duty a couple years back.” Jo paused. “Isabella was shot while trying to extract her daughter from a dealer’s house.”
“That doesn’t add to Miss Kirkwood’s credibility.”
“No.” Jo walked into the break room and grabbed a knife from the drawer. “But I no longer doubt the threats Quinn’s getting are real. SFPD hates her guts. I suspect she thought long and hard before asking a cop for help.”
For the first time, it struck Jo that she and Quinn were both the daughters of police officers, but the similarities seemed to end there. Jo had set her sights on being a cop from the first time her father plunked his police hat on her head. She’d never looked back. No one aspired to be a heroin addict.
“But back to Derek.” Jo slit the tape holding the box closed and folded back the flaps. “What if he had come out? Who would he tell first? Tye and Quinn knew. Ronny was his best friend. You’d think he’d know. Who’s left?”
“Family.”
“I bet he’d tell his sister before Mom and Dad.” Bag by bag, Jo placed the contents of the box on top of the table, then shifted the empty carton onto a dinette chair.
Squint entered and rinsed his mug, then leaned his back to the counter. “No one mentioned it during his death investigation.”
“Maybe his folks didn’t approve.” The evidence collected on the table was a mishmash of shapes and sizes. Plastic bags for dry items. Paper bags for anything that might have had blood rain down on it. All sealed with red evidence tape, initialed, and tagged with a litany of information to identify its provenance and the chain of custody. “Walsenberg went ballistic when I asked him if he knew Derek was gay.”
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