Server Down

by J. M. Hayes

  “Is Sheriff English there?”

  Mrs. Kraus turned back to her computer screen. Sure enough, her warrior was dead and the bloodknight was dancing on her corpse. “Screw you,” she muttered to the bloodknight.

  “What’s that? What did you say?” The guy on the phone had gone from testy to belligerent.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you,” Mrs. Kraus said. “I’m a little busy here. You want Sheriff English? He don’t stay in this office around the clock. It’s damn near three a.m.”

  “The sheriff guaranteed me he’d be in his office to answer this phone by…well, less than five minutes from now.”

  She didn’t believe him. Englishman would be home in bed, or dealing with his own insomnia in his own way. He shared her problem, what with the pain he was in from that gunshot wound and the loss he still felt over watching his wife’s losing battle with cancer. And, since his daughters had gone off to college, it had to be damn lonely in the sheriff’s house these days.

  “Then maybe you should call back,” Mrs. Kraus said. “Until you do, you have yourself a real nice morning, you hear?”

  “This is Captain….” She didn’t catch the rest. She wasn’t much interested in dealing with some wacko with an attitude when she wasn’t getting paid for it. Besides, surely that bloodknight would tire of killing her over and over before long. And she knew where she could maybe get at a treasure chest over the other side of that camp of life-sucking dust bunnies. She reached for the mouse to begin the process of resurrecting her corpse when the door flew open and Englishman came gimping in on his walker.

  “Mrs. Kraus,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  She was in a foul mood, and embarrassed at getting caught. “I’m playing a computer game,” she said, “if it’s any of your business. Which, since this is the sheriff’s department’s computer in your office, I suppose it is.”

  “I thought you….” That’s all he managed when the phone rang again. She had a pretty good idea what he would have said, though. She mostly refused to do computers. Didn’t have one of her own, nor a cell phone. Hell, she still changed the channels on her TV by hand. People thought of her as a technophobe, and she supposed she was. But boredom and curiosity had lured her into this massive-multiplayer-online-role-playing game Mad Dog had gotten so involved with. And, while it drove her nuts lots of the time, she had to admit she was hooked. Hard to claim otherwise when she’d come down to the office to play it at this ungodly hour.

  “Sheriff English,” he said into the phone. And after a moment, “That would be my office manager, Mrs. Kraus. And if she was rude to you, I don’t doubt you deserved it.”

  Mrs. Kraus smiled and her mood improved. Especially when it occurred to her she might be able to lure that bloodknight into getting ambushed by a host of dust bunnies.

  ***

  Captain Matus was exasperated. “What do you mean you won’t hold these women?”

  They were an hour into Saturday morning and he’d been up since before the previous dawn. Worse, this was the first time he’d lost an officer in the line of duty. Matus wanted this Mad Dog guy now.

  “I mean we’re not going to hold them,” said the Tucson detective, the one with the dandruff all over his sports coat.

  Matus sighed. “Explain it to me.”

  “Okay.” The detective rubbed a hand through the stubble of his crew cut, adding to the drifts of flakes covering his shoulders. “This Deputy English, she’s attending law school at Kansas University. She gets invited to a symposium at the University of Arizona presented by Sandra Day O’Connor—who, from what we’re told, might personally come down to file a writ of habeas corpus if we take these ladies in. Deputy English’s story holds water. The law student who was her host at the seminar confirmed it. Says the woman Ms. English is staying with suggested they visit these Easter ceremonies. Says the girl was so blown away by what she saw that she tried to call her uncle. Never got him, but left an email message.

  “Now we’ve talked to her dad. We know he really is a sheriff, even if it’s just of some podunk county in the middle of nowhere. And we know your suspect’s house was destroyed by a grenade launcher tonight. The man’s not there and his car is gone, so he could be here in Tucson. Probably is, since your witnesses’ descriptions match the ones these ladies and the sheriff gave us.

  “But then we run into a problem. You’ve lost the guy who identified this Mad Dog as the killer. The rest of your witnesses saw something happen and the knife has your suspect’s name on it. But the only guy who actually saw your officer getting stabbed has disappeared.”

  “He’s some big deal Sioux medicine man we weren’t expecting,” Matus said. “Lots of people in our community have heard of him, though. We’ve got his home address as well as the hotel room where he’s staying. He’s for real.”

  “But, right now, you don’t know where he is. And these ladies and your suspect’s brother all say Mad Dog is a pacifist who would never own a switchblade, let alone harm anyone—except to prevent them from harming someone else. Even then, they say, he’d probably just try to talk them out of it.”

  “Of course they’d say that.” Matus banged a fist on the table. “They’re trying to protect him.”

  “Could be, but we’ve already got word this Sheriff English has a reputation for honesty,” the younger Tucson detective said. “His daughter does too. This other lady seems like a bit of a loon, but she checks out as a local business woman. We don’t think there’s more to get out of either of them. Maybe if you had that missing witness and he tied them in somehow….”

  “He’s probably consulting with some Yaqui Maestros,” Matus said. “We’ll turn him up soon.”

  “Good,” Dandruff said. “Meanwhile, there’s no reason to detain these ladies any longer.”

  Matus opened his mouth for another protest but the detectives were on their feet and going through the door to the room where the women waited.

  “You’re both free to go,” Dandruff told them, “as long as you head straight home, Ms. Jardine. You’re to continue staying with her, Ms. English. And don’t leave town before we tell you it’s okay.”

  “Fine,” Heather said.

  “But her uncle may try to contact them,” Matus whispered to Dandruff.

  “Gee,” Dandruff said, “I wish that had occurred to me.”

  “We expect to have Mr. Mad Dog in custody before dawn,” Dandruff’s partner said. “See if you can’t match that with his accuser.”

  “Come on,” Dandruff told the women. “Let me arrange for an escort.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Heather said.

  The officer shrugged and flakes fell again, but Matus was relieved by his response. “Actually, it is.”

  ***

  He didn’t look Sioux anymore. Now he looked like someone whose family had come from the eastern Mediterranean. The wig with the braids, the beaded headband, and all his silver jewelry had been stuffed in a greasy bag under a partially eaten burger and fries and deposited in a foul-smelling dumpster behind a fast food restaurant near the sprawling university. The moccasins he’d been wearing and the IDs he’d been carrying had accompanied them. After donning a pair of loafers and a sports coat, and smoothing his own close-cropped hair, he looked nothing like the Indian Medicine Man he’d been earlier in the evening.

  Walking out the back exit to Pasqua Village had been simple in the midst of all that confusion. No one had seen him climb into his rental car and drive away. Just in case, though, he’d swapped it for the backup he’d left on a residential street several neighborhoods closer to the university, and several levels up the income ladder. He didn’t bother dusting his prints from the car he abandoned. He didn’t have fingerprints anymore. And he’d borrowed some items from the rooms of several hotels to confuse any DNA trail. He was good at this. He was a professional and he took pride in his work. Pleasure, too.

  He was on Kino Boulevard, heading for the airport when his cell rang. It surpri
sed him. He’d just activated this one. No one should know its number yet. Not even his client for tonight’s job. That was how you protected yourself. You left no trail. If the money he was owed didn’t appear in his numbered account in that Caribbean bank when it should, he was the one who would reestablish contact.

  He answered without saying anything. A voice he’d come to recognize, deep and heavy with authority, said, “Nice job at Pascua. But Mad Dog got away.”

  How had the man gotten his new number? This was a security breach he couldn’t live with. Or, more precisely, that this client couldn’t be allowed to live with. But he couldn’t fix that now. For the moment, all he could do was decide how to minimize this new risk.

  “You didn’t instruct me to see that he was caught or captured. Only to make him appear to be the cold-blooded killer of that officer during the ceremony.”

  The voice on the phone chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m not faulting my assassin. The final payment for this project has already been transferred to the account you specified. If there’s fault here, it’s mine for not anticipating the possibility that Mad Dog would try to escape. It’s out of character for him. Unusual in any innocent man.”

  “Which begs the question of why you’ve contacted me,” the professional said, and thought, to say nothing of how.

  “I’d like to arrange a new contract. There’s someone in Tucson Mad Dog may try to get in touch with who might help him clear himself. I’d like you to convince that person he’s dangerous. And then I’d like you to see to it that Mad Dog isn’t taken alive. Shall we say double your original fee? And double that if you can manage to wrap this up before noon today.”

  The man who had penetrated his security would have to be eliminated, but it was going to take time to determine what had gone wrong and what changes of procedure he needed to make. And finding a client who could pierce his defenses might not be easy, or cheap. The extra money would help.

  “Half now? The rest on completion?”

  “The moment you agree I’ll make the first transfer.”

  “Do it,” the professional said, turning off Kino to head back into town. “Then tell me who you want convinced and just how thoroughly.”

  “How, I’ll leave to your imagination. It shouldn’t be difficult for a man of your skills—one who has demonstrated them so recently.”

  “Who and where?”

  He didn’t have to write down the information his troublesome client supplied. He had a perfect memory—total recall. That was excellent, because he could remember every detail of the suffering of every victim he’d ever killed. And enjoy them over and over again at his leisure.

  ***

  English maneuvered his walker over behind Mrs. Kraus’ chair. “Are you playing War of Worldcraft?” he asked.

  “Don’t you go making fun of me,” she said. “Ain’t nothing worth watching on television anymore, ’specially this time of morning. I realize this is the county’s computer, but I ain’t hurting it none and besides, I’m on my own time and….”

  “Whoa,” Englishman said. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just wondering if you and Mad Dog have been playing the same game.”

  Mrs. Kraus took a deep breath. She hadn’t realized how guilty she felt about what she was doing. It was county property and she didn’t have permission to be here or to use it. And she was using electricity. But the county was still a couple of months behind on the paychecks they owed her. That had made her late-night adventures in the courthouse seem like reasonable interest on what she was owed, until her boss caught her in the act.

  “Yes,” she said. “This is War of Worldcraft.”

  “What Mad Dog plays?” the sheriff continued.

  “Yes sir, this is the copy he gave you once he commenced to get interested. Only you never tried it. Besides, I pay the monthly access fees myself. They bill it to my credit card and….”

  “No, really, Mrs. Kraus. I don’t care what you do down here with the computer on your own time. It’s just…Mad Dog said some strange things to me when he called. He seemed to think he could identify the man who killed that officer in Arizona tonight. Or, not the man exactly, the character—somebody who’s been causing havoc for him whenever he plays this game. I don’t suppose you’ve ever run into a, what was it, a vampire wizard, I think? A real powerful character named Fig Zit?”

  “That’d probably be a seventy,” Mrs. Kraus said. “I’m too lowly for a seventy to bother with. I may not even be playing on the same server as Mad Dog. Still, I don’t see how some character from this silly game could have anything to do with a real-life murder.”

  “Mad Dog said, once he thought on it, that this guy who knifed a cop to death looked like the Fig Zit character from the game. It’s not much to go on, but we’re half a country away from Mad Dog and Heather, and it’s the wee hours of the morning when the little I can do from here gets even smaller. But maybe we could track down this Fig Zit.”

  Mrs. Kraus shook her head. “Not gonna be that easy. There’s millions of players, and lots of security on internet programs like this. We got to know Mad Dog’s log-in and his password. He give that to you?”

  “No,” the sheriff admitted. “He didn’t. He hung up on me after I told him his house was destroyed.”

  Mrs. Kraus only knew the little she’d overheard during his phone call, so she made him stop and give her the details, as well as an outline of Mad Dog’s adventures in Arizona.

  “So he’s without his cell phone? You can’t call him back?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “Well, that don’t mean we can’t discover his log-in. Might take us a few tries, but I’d bet Mad Dog ain’t been too subtle.” She turned back to the computer and hit the button that took her out of the game and to the log-in screen. She typed in “maddog,” explaining, “You can’t use spaces.” For the password, she typed “hailey.” The log-in failed and Mrs. Kraus changed the password to “haileymarie,” the wolf’s more formal name. It failed again.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” she said. “Cheyenne, maybe, or he might use the Cheyenne’s name for themselves. You remember what that is?”

  “Tsistsistas,” Englishman said.

  Mrs. Kraus asked him how to spell it.

  “No,” Englishman said. “That would be too obvious to anyone who knows him. Hailey’s name probably was, too.”

  “What, then?”

  “Try Pam, or Pam Epperson.”

  “That girl he’s involved with? She gave him this game, didn’t she? I remember now. It sure never seemed like something he’d buy for himself.”

  Pam Epperson was way too young for Mad Dog, but they’d developed a surprisingly stable relationship, and she’d breathed some youth back into the sheriff’s brother.

  Englishman smiled. “He said she didn’t want him having any adventures without her unless they were the virtual kind.”

  Mrs. Kraus harrumphed—something between disapproval and jealousy—but she entered the girl’s name and the screen changed. “Log-in successful,” it said. “Loading characters.”

  There was only one character—Madwulf, a level fifty-two League human shaman.

  “If I’d been betting,” Mrs. Kraus said, “I’d’ve put money on him being a shaman. But I sure would’ve bet against him rising this high so fast.”

  “Fifty-two, that’s good?”

  “More’n double me, and it gets harder each level you climb.”

  “Can we get in the game? Can we look for this Fig Zit?”

  “Oh sure. That’s easy now. “ Mrs. Kraus pushed a couple of buttons and a few moments later a bald, robed figure that looked a little like Mad Dog stood beneath an angelic shape amidst a collection of tombstones on a screen that had gone black and white.

  “Funny,” Mrs. Kraus said. “He left his character dead. I always heal mine and find an inn to hole up in ’cause then you advance faster the next time you play.”

  “You can heal when you’re dead?” Engl
ishman obviously didn’t have much experience with computer games where death was only a temporary inconvenience.

  “Just got to find his body,” Mrs. Kraus said, maneuvering Madwulf around a tree and through a gate.

  “What’s that, then?” the sheriff asked, pointing at the figure on the screen.

  “His spirit. We’ll put some color in his cheeks when we resurrect him.”

  “How do you do that?” Englishman had been a cop too long not to ask for explanations of everything he didn’t understand. She liked that about him.

  “Just get near his body and the program will give us the option. See that little circle up in the corner? That’s a map. That tombstone, that’s his body. The arrow, that’s his spirit. Shows us which way we’re heading and which way we need to go, though sometimes the terrain doesn’t cooperate.”

  A huge chasm opened directly in their path but Mrs. Kraus maneuvered neatly around it.

  “This is a little more elaborate than Pong.” That was probably the last computer game the sheriff had played. Likely, the only one.

  The land fell away below them into rolling hills with, here and there, trees big enough to put sequoias to shame. Waterfalls cascaded from the larger ones.

  “Here he is.” A little box appeared on the screen. “Resurrect,” it said. Not far beyond, a body lay sprawled on lush grass.

  Mrs. Kraus hit the button and the world turned more magical as color flooded the moonlit sward and birds and butterflies swooped among the trees. Mrs. Kraus clicked on another button and a container opened that held all sorts of unlikely objects. She picked the peanutberry jam sandwich and Madwulf sat in the grass and began eating. “Up in the left corner,” she said. “That’s his health and his spell casting ability. See how both are getting stronger as he eats? We’ll have him going in a….”

  “You can’t be here,” a voice roared at them. It sounded like it should come from a burning bush. Or maybe James Earl Jones trying to mimic Orson Welles. “How’d you get to a computer? You should be on the run.”