Mind-Altering Murder

by William Rabkin

  "You know there's a killer at this company," Shawn said.

  "I know there isn't," Gus said.

  "Think about what you're saying," Shawn said. "Because if we don't stop this guy before he kills again, the next victim could be you."

  Gus had known that. He'd accepted it at the same time he decided that the killer was a phantom of his own logic. "I'll be really careful if I go skiing," he said.

  Shawn studied his friend closely, as if looking for the smallest chink in his armor of denial. Then he let out a sigh, got up from the couch, and headed for the door. "If that's the way you want it ..."

  "It's the way it is," Gus said. "Thanks for all your help."

  "Don't thank me now," Shawn said as he opened the door. "I haven't caught this guy yet."

  "What do you mean 'yet'?" Gus said. "There is no killer. I forbid you to look for a murderer in this company!"

  But Gus was yelling at a closed door. Shawn was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  There was an obstacle in level six of Criminal Genius that had taken Shawn a few lives to figure out. It didn't look complicated. At the beginning of the level you were approached by a beautiful young woman who begged you to save her from her abusive husband, and in return she would introduce you to Morton, the game's evil kingpin. This could be a shortcut to winning the entire game, since the ultimate goal was to kill Morton and take over his crime syndicate; you spent much of your game play trying to inflict enough damage on Darksyde City that he'd invite you to join his organization.

  Every time Shawn'd played this level, however, he could never get past the brutal husband. No matter what kind of ambush he'd planned, the husband always spotted it and killed him. Shawn tried attacking him directly, but was overpowered and killed yet again no matter what weapons he used. One time he'd managed to infiltrate the abandoned warehouse the husband used as a headquarters--the game designers alternated between abandoned warehouses and deserted amusement parks for their criminal lairs, apparently having learned everything they knew about the underworld from watching the same '80s cop movies Shawn had grown up on--he was immediately captured, hung by his feet from a chain that dangled from the ceiling, and dissolved in a hailstorm of machine-gun bullets.

  This was still before Shawn had discovered the mysterious librarian, and he had thought the clue to Macklin Tanner's disappearance would lie with Morton, so he believed he couldn't move forward with his own investigation until he'd beaten this level. Still, no matter what he tried he couldn't get past the woman's brutal husband.

  It was after he'd died for the eighth time on this level that he finally came up with a plan. This time he asked the victimized wife to come along with him to the abandoned warehouse. He'd expected they'd be captured or killed along the way, but she seemed to work like a magic charm, and they were able to walk right in.

  The husband was waiting for them inside, surrounded by at least a dozen armed goons. "What do you want?" he growled, with no memory that he'd asked that question eight times before, often emphasized with jolts from a stun gun or blasts from a flamethrower.

  "Your wife has been complaining," Shawn said. "She says you've been hurting her."

  The husband didn't kill him right away, which Shawn took as a positive sin. "What business is that of yours?"

  "Absolutely none," Shawn said. "Except that I don't like people who complain."

  Before any of the thugs could move, Shawn yanked down on the chain that dangled from the ceiling. There was a rumbling Shawn could feel in his feet, then a trapdoor opened in front of him. Shawn gave the woman a shove and watched her fall in.

  There was one moment where nobody moved. Then the husband jumped forward, threw his arms around Shawn's avatar, and gave him a hug. "I should have done that years ago," he said. "Because I don't like complaining, either. And, say, you know who else doesn't like complaining? My boss Morton. He's going to like you, my boy."

  That was it. End of level six, move on to seven and the next test to prove if he was indeed brutal, vicious, and sick enough to merit a meeting with the great man of Darksyde City. And all it took was the will to betray the one person in the world who trusted you.

  Even though it had moved him up a level Shawn hadn't felt good about that particular play for a couple of days. It had left him feeling soiled in a way that all the game's massacres and murders never could.

  But no matter how dirty he'd felt afterward Shawn couldn't argue that the simple act of betrayal hadn't propelled him further and led him closer to the clue he was searching for. In the end wasn't that really what was important?

  He wasn't searching for a hidden message in a computer game anymore. He was trying to solve a string of murders. More important than that--much more than that--he was trying to save Gus' life. If Gus refused to acknowledge that a killer was stalking his company he would never see the ax before it fell.

  Which meant that Shawn couldn't afford to worry about his own feelings. If the only way to protect Gus was to commit an act of personal betrayal, he'd do it and he'd take the consequences.

  The question, Shawn thought as he walked down the corridor away from Gus' office, was what kind of betrayal would work for him now? Obviously he'd need to keep his position in the company for a little while and continue to investigate while he was here, but that might not be fast enough. That would make Gus mad enough, since he'd explicitly asked Shawn to go back to Santa Barbara and leave him alone. But Shawn knew he'd need to do a lot more than simply hang around. The killer had been too careful up until now to allow himself to believe it would be easy to spot him setting up his next murder.

  No, Shawn had to do something active. Or even proactive, if that word had any meaning at all, something he'd doubted for a long time.

  Shawn was so deep in thought he barely noticed he'd started down the steep stairs to the lobby until he was passing the receptionist's desk.

  "Are you coming to the memorial service for Mr. Ecclesine tonight?" she asked. "I need to put together a list for the caterer."

  "Of course I'll be there," Shawn said. "Wherever there's a caterer serving hungry people, you'll find me. It's kind of like my motto."

  Chanterelle gave him a warm smile, then stood to grab a flyer announcing the reception from the far side of the desk. Shawn wondered briefly if there was a store that specialized in mourning clothes for the adult-film community, or if the receptionist simply shopped in the short girls' section to save money on her wardrobe and never noticed how little of her body she managed to cover. Before he could make a decision she handed him the flyer, which gave driving, biking, and public transportation directions to the San Francisco Bay Yacht Club, where the ceremony was going to be held.

  "I'm glad," she said with a smile that made Shawn think the San Francisco fog had been replaced by Santa Barbara sunshine. "People come and go so quickly here these days. Sometimes it feels like I never really get to know anyone."

  "Everyone certainly knows you," Shawn said, only half thinking of the way that the men in the company would find any excuse to learn more about the receptionist by following her up those steep stairs. "Although I'm a little surprised that you haven't gone off to run some other company."

  A faint blush colored her cheeks and her smile turned shy. "I'm not very ambitious," she said. "Everybody around here seems to be trying to fix the world or at the very least use their jobs here to climb to some better position. I'm more like my da. We're lifers here and we're happy about it."

  "Some of the people who've left recently were also lifers," Shawn said. "They just didn't know it."

  She gave him a blank smile as if to acknowledge that she realized he'd said something funny even if she didn't have the slightest idea what it could have been.

  "You father is Jerry Fellows, right?" Shawn said.

  "Since the day I was born," she said. "Or even longer, if you believe the biology books."

  "He must like the company, since he was willin
g to bring you in to work here," Shawn said, an idea beginning to percolate in his mind. "But all those years delivering mail must get kind of dull after a while."

  "Nothing's dull when your mind works the way his does," Chanterelle said.

  "And which way would that be?" Shawn said. The phrase would be equally appropriate for the kind of mind that could understand string theory or one that couldn't figure out how to untie a knotted string.

  "He delivers mail now, but that's just a temporary gig," Chanterelle said. "He can do almost anything he puts his mind to. As a little girl, I used to spend hours watching him as he taught himself whatever caught his interest, from electrical work to construction to hypnotism. He's going to do great things for this world. As soon as the time is right."

  "Glad to hear he's not rushing anything," Shawn said.

  "I used to urge him to take a better job. But he loves what he does. It's like he used to tell me: You don't have to be the king to help the country," she said.

  "That's what I say all the time," Shawn said.

  "Really?"

  "No," Shawn said, but when that lovely smile turned to a frown he was quick to amend his statement. "But it's a nice saying and I'm sure I would have said it if I'd ever thought of it."

  He was heading toward the elevator when the thought hit him. Hit him so hard and fast he almost gasped for breath. This was the moment he lived for, when everything became clear and bright. Out of habit he turned to Gus, meaning to give him some cryptic comment that would let him have a hint that he had figured everything out without actually giving him any information, only to remember just before the words left his mouth that Gus wasn't next to him anymore.

  That was going to change soon, though. It would have to. Gus was going to be a detective again or he was going to be dead. Shawn was going to make sure of that.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  This was her punishment, self-imposed and self-administered. Detective Juliet O'Hara had spent every night for the last weeks canvassing the homeless population of Santa Barbara's main business street, trying to get even one of them to say he'd seen a pedestrian knocked down by a speeding car.

  This was a nothing case, she knew. Walon O'Malley, the victim, hadn't been anyone important, just an older retiree who had stepped out of his adult living community late one night to grab a pack of smokes. His wife had died years ago, they'd never had any children, and if he'd had any friends in or outside of the home where he lived, none had materialized. He was apparently an unhappy old grouch, passing his final days waiting for the Reaper to swing his scythe.

  The department would never let her waste this much time on the case; there was no question of that. So she didn't ask them and she didn't use their time. She put in a full day at work, clocked out, and then hit the streets. No one had to know until she got results, and even then she wouldn't put in for the overtime. This was her own personal mission. Her penance.

  Even as she walked down State Street she knew she was wasting her time. She had talked to every homeless person on the street who was ever going to talk to her. At first she tried to tell herself the reason she kept going back was so that the street people would get used to her presence there and finally begin to trust her. She even started bringing them the occasional cup of coffee or box of cookies.

  Now most of them knew her by sight, and she was greeted as a friend almost every night. Which isn't all bad, she thought to herself as she set off for one more pointless patrol. Maybe one of them would see evidence in some other crime someday. At the very least she'd always have a place to go if she lost her job, her apartment, her savings, and her ability to function in society.

  But as the hit-and-run receded further into the past, she knew it was increasingly unlikely she'd find anyone here who had seen it or who would remember if they had. A couple more nights, she thought, and I can give this up for good.

  Of course she could have given up on it anytime in the past weeks. The case was technically still open, but no one in the department expected it to be solved, and realistically no one cared. There were bigger cases with more important victims. There were missing children and murdered wives and stolen life savings; there were people hurting whose pain could only be salved once the ones who had injured them were behind bars. There was no one pushing the chief to solve Walon O'Malley's killing; there were no anguished calls to members of the city council, no angry letters in the Santa Barbara Times. Even the homeless coalition people had moved on to more pressing issues. There was simply no reason for her to keep pursuing it.

  And so she hadn't. Not when it might have mattered; not back when it was still fresh. It was almost certainly true that it wouldn't have made any difference then, either, but that wasn't the point.

  She hadn't been focused on Walon O'Malley's case. She'd put in the hours, but her heart and mind were still with Mandy Jansen. She'd been convinced that the former cheerleader had been murdered and could not let that go. So she put in her obligatory hours on the hit-and-run, but she was always aware she was only going through the motions.

  Not that her focus on Mandy Jansen had done any good for that case. It was still sitting open on her desk, but she had given up any hopes of finding more evidence unless Mandy herself clawed her way out of the grave and explained exactly what had happened to her. The only reason O'Hara had left the case open was that there was no more pressure on her to do anything else with it. Mandy's mother had taken a serious turn for the worse in the last few weeks, and now she was in the hospital, slipping in and out of consciousness. O'Hara had been to visit Mrs. Jansen once, and the poor woman had thought she was Mandy and kept talking about how beautiful she looked in her cheerleader's outfit, as if she were still in high school.

  At least she'd been spared the Macklin Tanner case. That was the department's big black eye and everyone who'd touched it walked away badly burned. The detectives originally assigned to the case, Bookins and Danner, had been sure Tanner was a walk-away, and closed the case early on despite Brenda Varda's entreaties for them to keep looking. After the clue O'Hara and Shawn had found in the game led them to the abandoned barn and the chopped-up remains of Tanner's car, the case had been reopened. Chief Vick had threatened to put O'Hara and Lassiter on it, but Mickey Bookins begged her to give him and his partner a chance to redeem themselves, and she consented.

  Since then the detectives had come up with precisely nothing. They'd traced the ownership of the blacksmith workshop to some division of VirtuActive Software, as she and Shawn had done before, but the financial trails were so complicated and the holding companies so gnarled that even the forensic accountant the department hired from outside couldn't say with any certainty who had been responsible for the purchase, or even who might have known about it.

  Bookins and Danner had spent a week investigating Brenda Varda, who was not only Tanner's colleague and ex-wife, but also his primary beneficiary. They had a theory that she killed him but did too good a job of hiding the body and then couldn't collect her inheritance. That was why she'd been nagging the police to find him; if he was believed to be alive the company would never be hers.

  O'Hara never believed that for a second. She'd met Brenda Varda and seen that she was honestly worried about her ex-husband. And just to prove she hadn't lost all her instincts, she checked Varda's financials and confirmed that even with Tanner alive she had enough money to buy most of Central California. Bookins and Danner should have been able to figure that out, too, but they were blinded by the hope that the woman who'd made their professional lives hell would turn out to be a bad guy.

  Now the case was toxic. Bookins and Danner had been assigned to desk duty pending review and the FBI was investigating what everyone finally had to admit was a kidnapping. O'Hara had originally hoped that the department would bring Shawn in as a consultant on this one, since it was his clue that had provided the only break in the case. But Shawn had disappeared shortly after they'd found the remains of the Impala. He
hadn't shown up at the station, hinting around for the gig, and he hadn't even responded to any of her voice mails.

  As she got closer to the doorway she could see that her regular was there as usual. Frank was what he called himself, and over the weeks he'd let a few bits of information about his previous life slip out. None of it was unique or surprising: the standard story of youthful promise disappointed, middle-aged disappointment drowned in drink or drugs, drink or drugs destroying careers and relationships, and finally a home on the streets. But he still managed a twinkle in his eye and he seemed to enjoy the semblance of a life he'd made for himself on the streets. And, as Frank liked to say, if you had to be homeless Santa Barbara was where you wanted to be.

  Frank sat up in his sleeping bag as she got close. "Got a nip for old Frank, Detective?" he said with a gap-toothed smile.

  "If by nip you mean a doughnut, help yourself," she said, holding out a box.

  "Wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Frank said, helping himself to a glazed old-fashioned, "but it'll do. How's the patrolling going?"

  Since the first time they met Frank had thought of O'Hara as an officer walking her beat. The first time he'd made this mistake she pointed out that Santa Barbara didn't have beat cops, and even if they did, she wasn't wearing a blue uniform. But apparently in his mind she was, down to the nightstick on the Sam Browne she hadn't worn since her earliest days as a rookie in Florida. Since he seemed to like the idea that the local force was out looking after people like him, she stopped arguing early on.

  "Pretty quiet tonight," she said truthfully. "So I've got some time to look into that hit-and-run that happened here a few weeks back."

  "Seem to recall somebody talking about that just yesterday," Frank said, screwing up his eyes as he struggled to squeeze the memory out of his brain.

  O'Hara offered him the doughnut box again, and this time he plucked out a glazed jelly. "Do you remember who it was? Or what they said?" She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice.