by David Hosp
‘Close call.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. I almost got into my car to pull him over for drunk driving, just to fuck with him. I was so pissed.’ He smiles and sips the drink the bartender has placed in front of him. ‘It was good to see Ma again, though. It’d been a while. And Theresa Pesci poked her head out on her porch to watch the whole scene. I got a smile from her.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say, closing my eyes. ‘Theresa Pesci. God, she was hot back in the day. How’s she looking now?’
‘Not bad. She’s got two kids, but I’d still throw a shot into her if I had the chance. She’s still got those tits.’ He takes another sip of his drink. ‘So, how’s your ma?’
I shake my head. ‘She’s not good.’
He’s silent for a moment. ‘Life’s a cold bitch. You got a sense of timing?’
I shake my head. ‘She’s a tough old broad.’
‘She is that,’ Killkenny agrees. ‘If anyone’s gonna tangle with death and come out on top, my money’s on her. If there’s anything I can do . . . ’
‘Thanks, we’re good.’
‘So what’s this all about?’ he asks directly. ‘You didn’t ask to meet me to reminisce about our childhood. You got another security gig for me?’
I shake my head. ‘Nothing in the immediate future, but I’ve got you on the list if anything comes up.’
‘Do that,’ he says. ‘That party you put me in charge of last year got me the down-payment on my car. Dealing with that prick Net-Minder, or whatever-the-fuck his name is, was a pain in the ass, but it’s hard to turn down that kind of money.’
‘NetMaster,’ I say.
‘Right, him. A real asshole, he is. But like I say, money’s money. So what’s this about, then?’
I decide to put my toe in the water. ‘You know that murder that happened the other day in West Roxbury?’ I ask. He frowns as he looks at me. ‘The one with the girl tied to the chair with the feathers?’
‘Yeah,’ Killkenny says noncommittally. ‘One of the guys in my unit caught that.’
‘I might have some information on it,’ I say hesitantly. ‘Off the record. I mean, it’s possible, but I don’t know for sure.’ All of a sudden, I feel a little foolish. After all, what do I really know?
‘What kind of information?’
‘It’s probably nothing, but there is a guy who goes on NextLife pretty regularly. You know how the site works?’
‘A little,’ he says. ‘I’m not big into computers, but I get the idea. It’s like all that fake fantasy shit, right?’
‘Right. Well, this guy goes on all the time. He’s someone we refer to as a High Use Member – we call them “Hummers”.’
Killkenny smiles. ‘Nice.’
‘Anyway, this guy, this Hummer, he’s got this one LifeScene he created where he’s with this girl – a fake girl, an avatar he created – and he ties her up and teases her with these feathers.’
‘And he lets people watch him?’
‘Not really,’ I say. This is where it’s going to get a little dicey. I knew that going into the conversation. I don’t want to say anything that’s going to cause a problem for the company. ‘It’s a private LifeScene, so it’s one that’s just for him, but we do some research on how people use our system. It’s to gather information to make the technology better, and offer more things that people would like. Things like that. It’s all harmless.’
‘And he knows you’re there?’
‘Probably not. But it’s in our Terms of Use, so technically he’s agreed to it.’
‘Yeah, in tiny letters at the end of forty pages of legal bullshit,’ Killkenny says skeptically.
‘Legally binding bullshit,’ I point out.
He raises his hands. ‘Like I care? People who want to go online and do freaky shit should know that someone’s watching, always. That’s my view.’
‘Yeah, but that’s why this is sensitive. This is all allowed under our Terms of Use, but we still don’t want people to focus on the fact that we’re doing this. It would cause a major public-relations hassle.’
‘Yeah, I get you,’ Killkenny says. ‘Still, it doesn’t sound like much. I mean, feathers are a little different, but not unheard of. It’s probably just a coincidence.’
‘That’s not it,’ I say. ‘He’s got her tied to a chair, and he’s whipping her and then using the feathers, on and off, and when he’s done, he kills her.’
‘Oh,’ Killkenny says. He sips his drink contemplatively. ‘Yeah, that’s a little more interesting,’ he says after a moment. He frowns and goes quiet again, considering the information. ‘Look, it’s still probably nothing. But I’m happy to pass the guy’s name on to my guy, and he can check the guy out. That’d be the best thing, just to make sure.’ He takes out a notebook and a pen and looks at me expectantly.
‘I don’t know his name,’ I say.
‘Can you get it?’
I shake my head. ‘There’s no way to find it out.’ I can see he looks puzzled. ‘The system’s designed for complete anonymity; that’s one of the things we offer.’
‘I thought you could track anything through computers,’ Killkenny says. ‘You have to be able to find something, right?’
I shake my head again. ‘When you log on, you are run through a series of dummy servers that hide the IP address. It uses algorithms that even we can’t crack. That’s the point. People need to know their identities are hidden, particularly with respect to the LifeScene part of the site. I mean, people are also using this for their email and their networking and their online shopping. Every aspect of their lives is in our system. If someone had the power to put all the pieces together, they could know literally everything about that person. And not just that person, but everyone they know. You could end up with a complete map of everyone on the system – what they buy, who they know, what they like – everything. Add in the LifeScenes, and you now have their deepest fantasies.’
Killkenny lets out a low whistle. ‘That’s a little frightening.’
‘That’s why the system is designed the way it is. No one – including the company – knows anything other than what a user wants to tell us about themselves, and there’s no way to match that up with anything else. It’s the safest way.’
‘So what good is this information you’ve got about this guy’s fantasy? We can’t even use it to find him.’
I shrug. ‘Maybe it’s no good at all, but I felt like I should tell someone. Like you say, it may just be a coincidence.’
‘Probably. Either way, without anything more, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do. I’ll mention it to my guy, and maybe if he gets desperate he’ll follow up.’
‘Thanks. I just wanted to make sure that someone had the information, in case it turns out to be important.’
He finishes his drink. I’d finished mine a few minutes before. I reach into my pocket to grab my wallet, but he stops me. ‘Don’t bother,’ he says.
‘I’ll expense it,’ I say. ‘I asked you to come here. I’m not gonna let you pay.’
He shakes his head. ‘You don’t understand. I don’t pay for drinks in here.’ I look up at the bartender and notice that he’s still casting furtive glances our way. Killkenny follows my gaze and nods at the bartender, who looks at the ground. ‘I helped him out with something a couple years back,’ Killkenny says. ‘He won’t let me pay now. It’s like that at a bunch of places around here.’
I look at him and I can see that he’s studying me, gauging my reaction. ‘Must be nice,’ I say.
‘One of the few perks.’ I put my wallet away and we start toward the door. ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘how’d he do her?’
‘What?’
‘The guy on the computer with the feathers. You said he killed the girl, but you didn’t say how? Did he shoot her? Stab her? What?’
I look at him. ‘Why?’
‘Professional curiosity.’
‘I didn’t see it; it was one of my employees watching. Sh
e said he wrapped her face in cellophane.’ I am walking through the door, headed out onto the street. Truth be told, I’d like to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. There’s a part of me that is sorry I decided to bring this up.
I feel Killkenny’s hand on my arm. He’s strong. I’m not a small guy, but his fingers feel like a vice-grip. I turn and look at him, and I can see the mixture of surprise and excitement in his eyes.
‘What the fuck did you say?’
‘He put cellophane over her face,’ I repeat. ‘Suffocated her.’
He looks like a shark with the taste of fresh blood in the water. ‘Are you serious?’ he demands.
‘Yeah. Why?’ I ask the question, but I already know the answer just from the look on his face, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. ‘It’s him,’ I say. ‘It’s the same guy, isn’t it?’
He holds my gaze for a moment. Then finally he says, ‘I’ll get back to you.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘He’s looking into it.’
Yvette and I are sitting in my office in the bunker in Cambridge. It’s a strictly utilitarian space with a steel desk and three chairs. There is nothing on the walls; I’ve never viewed the place as an extension of my personality, the way some do. It simply provides the privacy that is occasionally required by the responsibilities of management. Yvette is hunched over, her elbows on her knees, looking like she might get sick. I don’t blame her; I’ve been feeling the same since my conversation with Paul Killkenny.
‘When is he going to get back to you?’ she asks.
‘He didn’t say. It should be soon. It’s a murder investigation, after all.’
She is staring at the floor. ‘Do you think they’ll want to talk to me?’
‘I’d think so. I didn’t GhostWalk the Scene with the feathers. I can tell them about the other scene, but that doesn’t really help them with the murder of the girl.’ She sighs heavily and sits up, rubbing her neck as though all her muscles have stiffened. ‘What did you think was going to happen when I told him about this?’ I ask her. ‘You were the one who was so convinced these things were connected. Did you think they wouldn’t look into it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t sure they’d take it seriously. I don’t know that I was taking it seriously, but . . . shit!’
‘Yeah, well, for the moment they appear to be taking it seriously. Are you ready for that?’
She takes a deep breath. ‘Yeah, I guess I am.’
The beeper on my phone goes off, startling both of us. I take a look and see that it is the notification I set up to let me know when De Sade logs on to the system. I’m embarrassed. I set the notification because of the obsession I’d developed over the girl in the LifeScene, and I’m not sure how to explain this to Yvette.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘It’s him,’ I say. She looks at me with an expression of confusion. ‘De Sade. I set an administrative alert so I’d know when he was getting on the site.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘You did?’
‘Yeah, I figured it would make sense, if we were really interested in what was going on with the guy,’ I lie.
‘Oh.’ I can’t tell whether she’s buying it or not. ‘Okay. Well, let’s see what he’s up to.’ I have a full sensory-unit station set up in my office, though I never use it. There’s something that feels creepy and voyeuristic about trolling around in someone else’s fantasies when you’re in a private place. When I GhostWalk, I do it at a station out on the floor; it makes it feel more like legitimate business.
‘You want me to GhostWalk his Scene? Now?’
‘Either that or I can,’ she says. ‘Whichever. But if we’re really thinking that he’s connected to a murder and we’re gonna help the cops go after him, then I think we need to know as much as we can about him.’ She pushes the sensory unit toward me, and I take it reluctantly.
I sit in the comfortable chair by the computer and slip the headset on. It covers my entire face and I can hear my own breathing – like Darth Vader. She hands me the gloves and I slip them on. ‘Do you want anything else?’ Yvette asks with false lasciviousness. I realize that there is a prototype ‘personal stimulation’ unit on a nearby desk. I’ve never used it myself, but I helped collect the research for the development.
‘Thanks, I’m good,’ I say. I can hear her grunt a nervous laugh and I’m glad I have the mask on so that she can’t see the blood in my cheeks. I pull the keyboard onto my lap. The screen on the sensory unit is curved and provides three-dimensional feedback. At the moment a prompt hovers in front of my eyes. I type in my administrator’s code and start a search for De Sade. It takes less than two seconds for the system to access his ongoing LifeScene. Once located, it is highlighted, and two prompts hover below it, one reading OBSERVE and the other reading INTERVENE. When development on the system began, there was consideration given to whether the company wanted the power to unilaterally join a member’s LifeScene. We decided, though, that the practice would lead to too many questions, and members would inevitably learn that their fantasies were being observed. As a result, only GhostWalking – where the administrator is passive, and merely sees and feels what the member is feeling, without any control or possibility that the member will become aware – is permitted. Most of the sensory units in the lab don’t even have INTERVENE as an option.
I reach out with a finger and tap OBSERVE. Immediately the visual field begins to shimmer, like the scales of a fish on a sunny day. It sparkles and shines, and begins to take shape. I can feel the sensory pads in the gloves coming to life, and it feels a little like insects crawling over my skin. I begin to get that claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. And then . . .
I am standing in the hallway again. It is the same hallway I was in before. The white walls . . . the red door at the end. He is breathing hard, but this time I’m breathing harder. I feel like I’m going to be sick. The walls look like paper – as though I could push a finger through them with no effort at all. Just out of his line of sight I feel like there are demons from which he is averting his eyes. I want to turn to look, but I see only what he sees, and he won’t look there. He is focused on the door at the end of the hall, and he is hurrying toward it. We are both sweating now and, when the door opens, I can see her. She is there, on the bed, exactly as she was before. She looks at him, and I feel like she sees me. Those eyes are as they were before, brilliant and burning and full of life. This time, though, the fear is there from the start. She moans, but now it seems a desperate charade.
As he moves toward her, I can hear the two of them breathing, but there is something else as well – something in a corner of the room where he refuses to look. It sounds like the whispering of a thousand ghouls, urging him on so softly that they can barely be heard. They are saying something, but I can’t make out the words.
Now we are on top of her. We are touching her, and their breathing swallows the sounds from the rest of the room.
She is perfect. As my hands caress her with him, I can feel her beauty – her human beauty. There’s something even more real about her now than before. I can tell that the avatar programming has been tweaked – improved in a way that is subtle, but central at the same time. I am looking into her eyes, and it is like she is looking through him to me. Her eyes don’t move; they bore into me. He is thrusting inside of her, and she meets his rhythm as before, but there is something different this time. There is a part of her that isn’t with him; there is a part of her that is with me. Behind me, the ghouls are audible again. They are hissing and spitting, their excitement approaching a crescendo as De Sade reaches the end. For a moment I think I can understand them. For just a moment it sounds as though they are saying, ‘Help her!’
And as I look down at her, our hands are still on her breasts, her hands above her head. He is moving his fingers up her arm, and I know eventually they will come to rest on her throat. As he touches her, I see the tear forming. It starts at the corner of he
r eyes and gathers quickly, spilling over and down the side of her face. At that moment, I am convinced that she knows. Even before he has reached her throat, she knows what is coming. I think: maybe not this time, but I know I’m wrong. Slowly, surely, our hand moves down her arm to her jaw. I see her take a deep breath, almost as though she knows it’s her last.
‘No!’ I scream. The sound echoes in my sensory unit, but goes unheard in the LifeScene. Our hands tighten on her throat, and I can feel him begin to spasm inside of her. She is looking at me, the tears rolling freely now.
‘No!’ I scream again. I flail my arms uselessly, as though there is something I can do. I scream out as the two of them climax and her eyes close – a wordless, guttural, primal scream of despair.
The sensory unit is ripped off my head and Yvette stands over me, looking down with genuine concern. I can feel myself shaking, and I am covered in sweat. I am breathing so fast it feels as though I’ve just run a marathon, and my heart is pounding in my ears.
‘Jesus!’ she says, her voice the breathless gasp of someone viewing a corpse for the first time. ‘What the fuck happened in there?’
I search for the words to explain. I can’t even understand it myself. The woman in the LifeScene is so real to me, so tender and perfect. How can I possibly make anyone comprehend, when it doesn’t even make sense to me? ‘We have to stop him,’ I whisper.
‘What?’
‘We have to stop him,’ I say again. ‘He’s still working on the programming. He won’t be satisfied until they’re real.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Yvette and I are sitting in the police station for Division 1-A in Boston’s Back Bay, in a barren, cement-walled room with a faux-wood laminate table and three plastic chairs that look like they were found at the edge of the highway. The cement is painted, I think, though any hint of what the original color was vanished years before. It’s streaked with the sweat of an endless parade of nervous innocence and squirmy guilt. The place is fetid and pocked with mildew – the kind that cannot be cleaned.