Stolen

by Daniel Palmer

  “They better,” Clegg said, “or I just might end up paying back the debt I owe you.”

  I flashed Clegg a troubled look. “What are you saying?” I asked him.

  He put a finger to his lips and signaled quiet. “Detective Brewer is about to speak.”

  Detective Aidan Brewer carried all the telltale signs of someone who had spent the past twentysomething hours working at his desk, gazing into a computer monitor’s hypnotic glow. Dark puffy circles surrounded his raccoon eyes, marring a plump and boyish face. His brown hair appeared windswept, suggesting that he’d been in a storm of a different sort. He wore his black polo shirt tucked inside a pair of food-stained chinos, and his ample belly looked extra stuffed with fast food.

  Brewer pressed a remote control device, and the monitors behind him flickered to show a screen shot of a computer transaction log. Written in green font on a black background, the transaction log provided a detailed accounting of all the Web sites and applications a particular computer had accessed—in this case presumably Uretsky’s—including date and time stamps and the amount of computer processing power and megabytes used to complete various tasks.

  “We’ve been dissecting Elliot Uretsky’s computer and looking at the various Web sites he visited,” Brewer said. He pronounced the word computer “compu-tah,” a Boston native no doubt. “We were especially interested in games and found evidence that he was a big-time online game fanatic. He’s a fan of the game One World, owned and operated by one of our suspects, John Bodine.”

  Clegg cleared his throat loudly. “John is in the room with us, Aidan,” he said. “He’s not a suspect anymore. In fact, he’s the one who suggested you look closely at the games Uretsky was playing.”

  Heads turned and eyes fell on me, even though most were already aware of my presence.

  “Okay, news to me,” Brewer said. “Computer guys are always the last to know these things.”

  I could see Higgins fidgeting in his chair. We were both impatient. I wanted to shout, “Get to the damn point!” but knew that would be counterproductive. Instead, I opened my mind, allowing some positive energy to flow in.

  I will find you, Ruby. . . . I will find you . . . and I will find you alive. . . .

  “So Uretsky was a big gamer,” Brewer went on to say. “He played a bunch of games. Some we’ve heard of, like FarmVille and Kingdom Age. Some we hadn’t. Like the flash-based game Streetwise, in which you play a pimp with a vendetta to kill all your hos. A lot of these online games can be sickeningly violent, full of profanity and sex, and easy to access. Parents give their kids gaming consoles for Christmas, not realizing they can be used to play games that are a heck of a lot more violent than most of the titles rated mature.”

  “So what other game was Uretsky playing?” Detective Kaminski asked.

  “Has anybody ever heard of a game called See Evil?”

  No hands went up, including my own.

  “We’ve contacted Sick World, the game’s manufacturer. We’re going to try to get a database dump of all the registered players, as well as anybody who has chatted or messaged Uretsky’s game account.”

  “What’s this game all about?” Clegg asked.

  The projection behind Brewer flickered and flashed. The screen refreshed with an animated street scene, a cartoon drawing of some nondescript city corner. A hokey-looking cartoon character appeared on-screen, oversize head on a smallish body, animated to enter from screen left. The character, dressed in a nice dress shirt and jeans, had been drawn to have a high forehead, wavy brown hair neatly parted to the side, close-set eyes, and a handsome nose—a handsome face, in fact. He stood on the street corner, looking bored. A woman, animated as well, her breasts overexaggerated, waist impossibly narrow, hips seductively swaying—well, as seductive as a cartoon can be—materialized from the right side of the screen. Cartoon balloons appeared above the man’s head.

  “Hello,” the balloon read. “My name is Ted Bundy. What’s your name?”

  Detective Brewer must have hit something on his remote to pause the game.

  “See Evil allows the game player to pick from a preset list of notorious serial killers. You can be Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader—that’s the BTK killer—Dahmer, Gacy, and the list goes on.”

  “What’s the point of the game?” someone asked.

  “Basically, it’s about torture and torment,” Brewer said. “I’ll show you.”

  The game came to life again, as the blond bombshell with a heaving bosom said via her cartoon bubble, “My name is Sugar. Do you want to hang out?”

  “Sure,” the Bundy avatar said, his eyes bulging and going watery with lust. “We can go back to my place.”

  “Not so fast,” Sugar said, holding up an animated finger. “Can you tell me what year you were arrested?”

  A box appeared on the screen containing several options.

  a) 1972

  b) 1974

  c) 1976

  d) 1977

  Brewer selected answer C, 1976, and Sugar cooed delightedly, her animated body doing the equivalent of a shimmy.

  “So this is like serial killer Jeopardy?” Chief Higgins asked.

  “Yes, in a way,” Brewer said. He pointed to a status bar on the screen, above which were written the words Trust Index. The index was currently at 10 percent trust. Brewer continued, “Players have to answer trivia questions about the serial killer they’ve chosen to play. Right now the game offers about twenty to choose from. The trust status bar goes up the more questions a player gets right.”

  “Can’t they just go to Google for the answers?” Gant asked.

  “I don’t think the sickos who made this game care if you use first source material,” Kaminski said.

  “What happens when the status bar reaches a hundred percent?” Clegg asked.

  “That’s where things get really interesting,” Brewer said. “I could tell you, but it’s better if I show you.”

  CHAPTER 57

  It took about a minute for Brewer to go through a dozen questions that virtual Sugar asked virtual Ted. As soon as that bar filled in completely, the city scene faded to black and a new scene took its place. I felt my stomach drop.

  Sugar, animated to be wide-eyed and terrified, was tied to a sturdy oak chair, trapped in a grimy animated cellar. On the bottom of the screen were graphics depicting implements of torture: pliers, blowtorches, knives, thumbscrews, nails, to list a few. There were also selectable items of the living variety, like snakes and bugs. A new status bar replaced the trust one I’d seen on the previous screen.

  This bar was titled Fear Index.

  “The game play here is pretty simple,” Brewer said. “You have to find the right mix of torture implements, applied in the proper sequence and for the correct duration, to raise the Fear Index.”

  Brewer clicked on the blowtorch graphic. Animation made the blowtorch appear lit. Using the remote as a mouse, Brewer maneuvered the blowtorch close to Sugar, her animated eyes popping out of their sockets while sweat sprouted from her forehead like a sprinkler. Her terrified noises sounded very realistic. The closer the blowtorch icon got to Sugar, the wider her eyes grew, the more she struggled to break free, the louder her moans, and the more cartoon sweat she secreted. When Brewer touched the blowtorch to Sugar’s leg, her character shrieked in pain—again very realistic sounding—and her face contorted to display her agony. The color of her skin in that one spot went from peach to black, while the Fear Index increased by 5 percent.

  “It’s easy to play the game, but hard to find the right sequence,” Brewer said. “In other words, it’s easier to kill your victim than it is to keep her alive and increasingly afraid. You’ve got to keep track of a lot of variables to find the right combination that will make the fear factor complete. I’m sure there are hard-core gamers who have written code to help them solve the puzzle.”

  “This is all very fascinating and rather disturbing, Detective Brewer,” Higgins said, “but how is this
going to help us catch the SHS Killer?”

  “I think that Uretsky was playing this game and became friends with another player. I think this other player might have gotten bored with all the cartoon violence. They arranged a little face-to-face meeting, but Uretsky didn’t realize what was in store for him. It’s fitting with what he’s done to John,” Brewer said, motioning with the remote control in hand. “This guy is all about playing games and creating an environment of fear.”

  Agent Brenner stood, her agitation apparent.

  “While I appreciate your behavioral analysis, Detective, pardon me for saying so, but you’re a computer jock. You’re not qualified to make that sort of judgment.”

  “You’re right,” Brewer said, shrugging off her rebuke. “Maybe I am way off base here. But I haven’t shown you what happens when you torture your victim to death before the fear factor is complete.”

  Brewer took the animated blowtorch to Sugar’s animated body, covering every pixel of skin until she looked like wood turned charcoal from a fire. Sugar screamed in horrible pain throughout her virtual ordeal, while I just cringed, unable to distinguish between the simulated violence on-screen and what I feared the Fiend could be doing to my wife at that very moment. A new status bar appeared, this one showing the victim’s health. It had started off at 100 percent but went down precipitously the longer Brewer applied the blowtorch.

  A warning flashed on screen: Ted, You’re Killing Your Victim Too Fast. When Sugar’s body went limp, it was obvious that she’d been rendered to appear dead. The fear factor was only at 50 percent complete. All-caps words materialized above her head: YOU KILLED YOUR VICTIM.

  That gruesome scene faded to black, and when a new image appeared, everybody in the room, myself included, released a collective gasp. The words Sorry, Ted Bundy! You See No Evil, the letters dripping blood, materialized above a cartoon drawing of a decapitated head. The lid of each shuttered eye was partially concealed by a severed finger dripping blood as well. Severed fingers protruded from the ears, and two more covered the lips. Below the bloody stump of a neck were the game’s credits, written in the same drippy blood font.

  “I may be just a lowly computer jock, and not a tried-and-true FBI agent,” Brewer said, “but I think the SHS Killer got tired of playing this game virtually and decided it would be a heck of a lot more fun to do it in real life.”

  Higgins rose to his feet with startling quickness.

  “Gant!” he said, barking out the name. “I want you working with Brewer on getting that user database from this game manufacturer. Pronto! Brewer, find out if Swain was playing this game as well. He might have been using an alias, so look hard. Kaminski, we’ve got to get the word out through the media about this game, too. I want anybody who has played it to get in touch with the Boston police. You know the drill. Work the media, get the press releases out there, and hit up the social networks, too. We might get something from that. We want to find people SHS has been trying to lure into a face-to-face meeting.

  “Clegg!” Higgins continued, turning his attention to my friend. “I want you to pull together a team and work the phones, calling every medical school within a two-hundred-mile radius. We’ll helicopter in a body if that’s what it takes.”

  “So we’re going through with John’s plan?” Clegg asked.

  “I’m not going to let this woman die.”

  Agent Brenner stood, hands glued to the back of the chair in front of her. “Chief Higgins,” she said, her face flushed. “May I remind you this investigation is still under the direction of the FBI.”

  Higgins glared at Brenner. “Then I suggest you get your team involved, because this is what we’re doing. I shouldn’t have to remind you that Carl Swain is still an official person of interest, and at this moment we have no idea of his whereabouts. If you want to run this show, how about helping us find and apprehend him? We’ve got a clock set on a woman’s life, and we don’t have time to argue jurisdiction!”

  “What about me?” I asked. The sound of my voice had a calming effect on the evident tension between the police and FBI.

  “You, Bodine, you need to go home and wait,” Higgins said.

  “Wait for what?”

  “Wait for this guy to contact you. I’ve got a very strong feeling that he’s not done playing games.”

  I nodded because I agreed. Then I checked the time.

  Twenty-one hours to go.

  CHAPTER 58

  I paced around the apartment—nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Two agents from the FBI, both male and both with short hair, one who went by Robert and the other who went by Bob, sat at my kitchen table, playing cards. They’d been here for hours. One of them, Bob, the taller of the two, apparently was a technician of some sort, who would come in handy should the Fiend made contact. Takeout wrappers from D’Angelo’s and McDonald’s—theirs, not mine—filled my wastebasket to the brim. I couldn’t eat.

  Once again I was back to the waiting game, which reminded me of the day—two lifetimes ago, it seemed—when Ruby and I sat nervously in Dr. Anna Lee’s medical office, waiting for our names to be called. Not our names, I remembered, but the Uretskys’ names—Elliot and Tanya, our stolen identities.

  I had my phone plugged in and charged. I moved my desktop computer out of the bedroom and into the living room. The FBI wanted me to keep my remaining computer, hoping the Fiend would initiate another video chat. I prayed that he would, not so that Bob, the computer savvy FBI agent, could try to track him down—I knew he couldn’t—but so I could see Ruby again.

  Ginger moved cautiously about the apartment. She wanted food. She wanted her head scratched. She wanted her belly rubbed. She had become extra needy, her way of expressing knowledge that something was wrong. I sat with her on the futon, consoling her, tapping my foot nervously.

  And I waited . . . and waited. . . .

  “Do you mind if I make some coffee?” Agent Robert asked.

  “No,” I said.

  Clegg called. “Just want to tell you we’re still working but got nothing to report,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

  “I want to puke,” I said.

  “Do it,” he said. “You’ll feel better. I’ll be in touch.”

  He hung up before I could answer him.

  I turned on the TV, flipped through the channels, and saw every news station reporting the latest breakthrough in the SHS Killer case.

  They didn’t use the graphic from the See Evil game, just the logo from Sick World, the game’s producer. People who played the game were asked to call a special tip line splashed across the screen but weren’t given any specifics as to why. I wondered how many people would fess up to being avid gamers of the equivalent of torture porn. Then again, people plunked down a lot of money for films that were just as dark and twisted.

  I did a bit of research simply for the want of some distraction. Ruby, that was all I could think about. Where was my wife? What was happening to her? I wanted her back with me like I wanted air. To me, there was no difference.

  In my research explorations, I discovered that Sick World made a bunch of these games, but See Evil was by far their most popular. The head of Sick World was a twenty-nine-year-old California native named Peter Rosenheim. He had a Facebook page, set to private; a LinkedIn account, with fifty connections and no picture; and a Twitter feed with about a hundred tweets, all announcements for his games. A Google search didn’t turn up much on Rosenheim, but I figured he was an underground sort of guy, adept at communicating with his user base while keeping in the virtual shadows. We were both small-time game developers, but Rosenheim cultivated very a different sort of following from mine. Still, Elliot Uretsky played my game and his, so there was overlap. The Fiend could be a registered player of my game. In fact, he could be online playing it right now, using my servers and code for his enjoyment while holding my wife hostage.

  Who would play these games? Why would they play them? I dug up an article in WebMD about the att
raction of torture porn. I wanted to understand the Fiend better—figure out for myself why playing See Evil no longer satisfied his sick fantasies.

  The article discussed something called the “horror paradox.” By our very nature, we’re programmed to want to experience only pleasant emotions. As it turns out, when tension and fear get built up and released—the climax when good triumphs over evil—the brain produces lots of those pleasure sensations, hence the paradox. But games like See Evil? Well, I just didn’t see anything pleasant or pleasing about it. Evil wins no matter what.

  Maybe the Fiend played the game to cope with his own fears about violence but discovered within himself a hidden bloodlust. Or maybe he believed that he’d actually act out his fantasies, and hoped the game would serve as a release valve for his darkest impulses. Perhaps the game itself ignited a long-simmering sadistic streak—a deep desire for power and control. Whatever the cause, this psychopath had my wife, and I had just over eleven hours to get her back.

  A vibration pulled me back to the moment. My phone! It had buzzed. I jumped up, grabbing it with fumbling hands. I took a look at the display screen. The two-word message sent my heart racing again.

  Let’s chat.

  CHAPTER 59

  Agent Bob was doing something with my phone, but I didn’t care. I rushed to my workstation in the living room, knocking over a chair in the process. The mouse moved herky-jerky, imitating—in fact almost exaggerating—my shaky hand. Checking the admin e-mail queue for my One World game, I was not at all surprised to see an e-mail from Elliot Uretsky. He wasn’t speaking to me from beyond the grave. It was the Fiend, pretending to be someone he was not, just as I once had.

  I clicked the link in Uretsky’s e-mail, knowing it would open one of those live video chat sessions. A Web browser did come up, with a view window showing only a black rectangle—a precursor, I supposed, to a two-way video conference. I wasn’t asked to provide a password, as I’d been the last time. I guessed the Fiend knew he was communicating with a trusted computer—the computer at the Harvard Street apartment.