Game of Death (16 page)

‘I said why,’ I point out. ‘We need to know what’s happening. If they have any questions that they want to ask the company, then we need someone there to know that those
questions are addressed. NextLife hired these girls, after all.’

‘That’s it?’ she asks. ‘It’s not so that if you find out that someone connected to the company is contacting these people, you can warn the company and protect
whoever it is that’s doing this?’

‘It’s not so I can protect the company.’ That much is absolutely the truth.

‘Really?’

‘How can you ask me that?’

She makes a face. ‘What do you mean: how? I know how much stock you have in this company. I know how much that’s worth if we go public. It’s millions. Tens of millions,
probably. Greater men have been tempted by less.’

‘I’ve never been a greater man,’ I point out.

‘You know what I mean,’ she says. ‘I don’t care how aloof you are, that’s a lot of money. I couldn’t blame you for wanting to balance the need to catch
De
Sade
against your own interests. No one would.’

‘Yes, you would. And you know me better than that.’

‘I thought I did,’ she says. ‘Once I really thought I did.’ She’s looking me right in the eyes and I find it difficult to meet her gaze. I force myself to,
though.

‘I haven’t changed.’

‘No? I’m not sure.’

‘You worry too much.’

‘And there’s no other reason you want to hear what these women have to say?’

‘None.’ I hold her look with all the effort I can muster.

‘Okay,’ she says. We stand there for a moment, looking at each other. It’s the first time I can ever remember being with her when I felt uncomfortable. I’ve felt other
things with her – amused, frustrated, angry, annoyed, turned on, happy – but there’s always been a level of comfort that sat as the bedrock of our relationship. Then again,
I’ve never lied to her before. Now it feels as though a tremor is running through that bedrock and, as slight as the shift is, it still feels as though it could tear a building down.

‘Are you going home?’ I ask. ‘I could give you a ride.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m not tired, and I want to get started hacking. It’s quiet now, not a bad time to begin.’

‘Okay. I’m gonna try to get a little bit of sleep.’

‘I understand.’

I grab the handle to my office door, turn it. Before I can open it, though, she says, ‘Nick?’ I turn around to look at her. She is a beautiful creature, I’m reminded. Even now
– at two in the morning, with her hair wild and streaked, in the same clothes she’s been wearing for close to a day, no makeup, no pretense – she is beautiful and strong and hard.
For the first time, though, I can see a softer side. A sadder side. Perhaps, even, a damaged side.

‘What?’

‘I’m here,’ she says. ‘I’m a friend, and nothing can change that.’ Her face is, as it so often is, set against emotion. And yet there’s something else
there, tugging at the corners of her eyes.

‘I appreciate that,’ I say. ‘I really do.’

I open the door and step out onto the floor. I look around the strange invented world in which I spend my life and, for the first time in twenty years, I wonder how well Yvette and I really know
each other.

My car is parked on the street, two blocks north of the warehouse. It’s a clear night and the moon is in its ascendancy, just a few evenings from being full. With the
stars, it casts a light that makes it feel as though it’s not really nighttime. I think this must be what it’s like up in Alaska or Greenland during the summer, when it never really
gets dark, but only dims a bit.

There’s no one around as the hour approaches three. It is the heart of the night, when the latest partiers have stumbled home and the earliest risers are still more than an hour from
dragging their weary asses out of bed. I think of it as
the quiet time
, when only the night shift and the lonely are conscious. Many of the lonely are on our website now, strapped in,
exploring who they might be in a different reality; looking for loves lost and hoping that they might, too, be looking for them; seeking out the random and the strange and the dangerous. It’s
a relatively high-traffic time of the day for NextLife, which is why we still have nearly a full complement of Walkers active. In Bombay it’s early afternoon, and our outsourced support staff
are taking technical calls. Here, the vampires of our emerging online world are crawling over the World Wide Web, looking for others like them, or others to prey upon.

I hear the noise, and it takes a moment for it to register. I assume it’s merely some college kid getting an early start on the day’s walk of shame, getting home from some random,
ill-advised hook-up. Stumbling, head down, muttering to himself . . .

Something about it, though, raises an alarm in the back of my head. I think there’s something about growing up on the streets of a rough neighborhood. Of necessity you develop an
inexplicable instinct about the world around you: what fits, and what doesn’t; which movements are harmless, and which could be a threat.

I turn quickly and see a shadow duck into an alleyway ten yards up the street. ‘Who’s there?’ I call, but there’s no answer. I hear a bottle being kicked down the alley,
rolling and bouncing loudly off the uneven bricks before it cracks. Against my better instincts I walk toward the alley, keeping my footsteps soft, creeping up on the corner as quietly as I can. I
can feel my heart beating in my throat as I move.

When I get to the corner I plaster myself against the building, just out of sight from the alleyway. I stand there for a moment, listening. The silence is so overwhelming that it starts to wear
on me, so I take a deep breath and stick my head around the corner, looking down the narrow passage. At the far end, I see a movement – running – and, without thinking, I take off after
it.

There’s a bend in the alley twenty yards down, and by the time I reach it, whoever is fleeing from me has reached the far end of the alley and has disappeared. I sprint to the end of the
alley and stand on the intersecting street, looking both ways, searching for any movement, but there is nothing. The shadows are still, and the night is quiet again. I have no idea for how long I
stand there, wondering whether I’m letting my imagination get the better of me. The images of the dead girls from the autopsy photos run through my head, and there is a buzzing in my ears as
it dawns on me that this is no longer a game.

An explosion sends my heart nearly through my chest. It is a thunderous crash – a popping sound combined with a sprinkling of broken glass, coming from back up the alley in the other
direction. I am frozen for a moment, unsure whether to follow the sound or to run in the other direction. Then a second explosion sounds, louder than the first, coming from the same direction, and
I am moving back up the alley. It’s not in my nature to flee.

I reach the far end of the alley, and everything is still and silent again. I look around, searching for any indication of where the explosion came from. It takes a moment, but then I see my car
and I can tell something is wrong.

I walk over slowly, looking around me with each step, waiting for someone to emerge from a darkened doorway, or from behind another car, or from out of the sewer. Nothing happens, though, and as
I come closer to my car I can see where the noises came from. My rear windshield and back passenger window have been smashed. The shards of glass are spread across the street and cover the back
seat, sparkling blue-green at the edges in the moonlight, looking like rough diamonds or polished crystal meth.

‘Shit,’ I mutter to myself. The fear I had a few moments before is gone at this point – I’m angry now. I turn to the empty street. ‘Who are you?’ I shout. I
wait a moment, almost as though I’m expecting a response. ‘Who are you?’ I shout again. In the distance, a woken dog barks an alarm.

I stand there for another few moments, looking around. I have the feeling that I am being watched by someone very close by. ‘We’re coming for you!’ I yell out. ‘We will
find you!’

I think I hear some rustling, like a phantom shrinking back into the night, but I can’t get a fix on the direction from which it is coming.

At last I open the driver’s side door to the car and climb in. There is some glass on my seat, but I don’t even bother to wipe it away. I turn the starter and put the car in gear,
taking one last look around before I pull away.

‘We’re coming for you,’ I say quietly again.

I step on the gas and head toward home.

The next morning I pull up in front of Killkenny’s apartment building. It’s a renovated brownstone in an upscale section of the South End, close in toward the Back
Bay. It’s quarter after seven. I’m early, but that’s just because I had trouble sleeping. My mind is in turmoil and I feel lost, but there’s little I can do about it at this
point.

I sit in my car as a warm morning breeze blows through my shattered car windows. The area is just starting to come to life, with people leaving early for work or heading out for a run before
breakfast. Posh coffee shops and bistros dot the storefronts along the neighborhood. The residents are a combination of younger professionals and wealthy retirees, from the look of the people on
the street. I know that apartments in the area start at seven figures, and I wonder how someone can afford to live in this area on a cop’s salary.

Killkenny’s SS is parked in front of a hydrant near his building, and I’m not surprised that there is no ticket on the windshield. I’m sure that the police department’s
parking cop for this area has been warned off messing with that particular car.

The detective emerges from his building at seven thirty-five, stands on his stoop and looks around. I climb out of my car and he sees me, comes my way. ‘You ready for this?’ he
asks.

‘Yeah,’ I answer with more confidence than I feel.

He looks at my car windows. ‘You had some work done, I see.’

‘Cheaper than air conditioning.’

‘What happened?’

I shrug. ‘Not sure. Happened on the street last night.’ For some reason I’m not eager to relay the entire story to him at the moment. Perhaps later, but not now.

‘That’s two bad nights for you in a row,’ he comments.

‘Bad luck.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘I try to stay away from people with bad luck,’ he says. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t come today.’

‘It only seems to come out at night,’ I point out. ‘We should be fine.’

He nods. ‘Okay, but we’re taking my car.’

‘I don’t have a parking sticker for this neighborhood,’ I say.

‘Good thing you know a cop who can take care of any parking tickets then,’ he says with a crooked smile.

‘I guess.’ I look over my car, hesitating.

‘What, are you worried it’ll get stolen?’

‘There are no windows,’ I say. ‘I can’t lock it very effectively.’

He laughs. ‘Trust me, no one’s gonna steal that car. And if they did, I’m guessing you’ll be better off. Insurance’ll probably pay off more than it’s
worth.’

Sadly, he’s probably right about that, but I’ve had the car for a long time, so I still feel like I’m leaving a wounded comrade to die on the battlefield.

‘It’s a good neighborhood,’ he says, clearly sensing my hesitation. ‘Not like Chucktown. It’ll still be here when we get back.’

I nod. ‘Okay.’ We walk over and get into his SS. It has a black leather interior and every extra feature you can imagine: rearview camera, Internet connectivity, Bluetooth,
tricked-out stereo with satellite . . . the works. ‘Nice,’ I say.

‘I told you, people judge a man by his car,’ Killkenny says.

‘You’ve done well for yourself.’ I wonder whether he’ll catch the implication in my voice, and regret having made the comment as the words tumble from my mouth.
Fortunately Killkenny isn’t self-aware enough to catch my drift. Either that, or he chooses to ignore it.

‘Not as well as you’ll do for yourself, when your company goes public,’ he says simply. ‘I just like to show it a bit.’

I leave it there; there’s no point in pursuing it any further. He turns the ignition and the car roars into life. A few of the people on the street turn to look as Killkenny revs the
engine. ‘Where to first?’ I ask.

Killkenny takes out a folder that contains the photos and information printouts of the seven models we’ve identified as having been the prototypes for
De Sade
’s LifeScenes.
He flips it open. ‘Jennifer Quincy,’ he says. ‘She lives relatively nearby.’

‘South End?’

‘Washington Street. Out by Mass. Ave.’

‘That’s still South End.’

He snorts. ‘Barely.’

We pull up to the apartment at the address in Jennifer Quincy’s file, on Worcester Square, just off Washington Street. It’s three-story brick bow-front, probably
built in the first half of the twentieth century. All of the buildings around the square are identical, facing out on a tiny patch of grass in the center that divides the traffic that flows to the
northwest on one side and the southeast on the other. It’s a mixed lower-middle class neighborhood a block from City Hospital. There are some young professionals trying to save money who have
moved in, but the area hasn’t given in to gentrification yet, and the people on the street stare at Killkenny’s car with distrust as it glides to the curb in a no-parking zone.

I look back and forth between the photo in the file on my lap and the second-floor windows, which, from the address in the file, likely look out from Jennifer Quincy’s apartment. Closing
the file, I open the door and get out. Killkenny climbs out as well. We walk up the steps of the stoop and look at the list of names by the series of buzzers next to the front door. Killkenny
reaches out and presses the button next to the names ‘Quincy/Kimball’ identified as living in Apartment 2A. We stand there for a while waiting. Nothing happens and Killkenny reaches out
and presses the button again.

It takes twenty seconds or so, but eventually a woman’s voice comes over the intercom. ‘Yeah?’ She sounds annoyed.

‘Is this Jennifer Quincy?’ Killkenny says, pressing the intercom button and speaking into the grille.