Game of Death (26 page)

Yvette is watching one of the hookers flirt with a uniformed officer as she leaves. ‘You weren’t with her?’ she asks.

I look up at the hooker as she walks out, and for a moment I think Yvette is talking about her. Then I grasp that she’s asking about Kendra. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I told you, I
left the bar alone.’

‘You also told me you were meeting your mother’s doctor.’

It’s a fair point. Trust, once lost, is hard to reclaim. ‘I wasn’t with her.’

‘She’s beautiful, though.’

‘Yeah,’ I agree unenthusiastically. Denying that she’s attractive would only destroy what’s left of my credibility. I’ve had women set that trap for me before.

‘No one would blame you if you were with her.’ There is no right response to that, so I keep my mouth shut. ‘You remember Tim Murphy?’ It feels like she’s digging
deep to protect herself now.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Your first.’

‘My first,’ she agrees. She watches as two cops bring a struggling suspect in through the doors. ‘I knew how you still felt about me back then. Even after we weren’t
together anymore and we were just trying to be friends.’

I nod. ‘I was never subtle.’

‘Yeah, well, I just wanted you to know that I didn’t do that to hurt you. That wasn’t the purpose.’

‘I never thought it was.’

‘Yeah,’ she says hesitantly. ‘Here’s the thing, though: I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I knew I was. I knew how you’d feel when you found out, and I knew
you’d find out because you were still a friend, so I knew I was going to tell you.’

‘Yup.’ I remember that conversation as if it were yesterday. It’s not easy to keep the supportive smile on your face when your heart is being ripped apart, but I did it. I sat
there and relived her first time with her, even as every word from her lips was like a knife to my gut.

‘And even with all that, I did it anyway. There was something about him, and about me at that moment, that made it something I had to do, and you understood that.’

‘That might be an overstatement.’ I smile at her, and she smiles back.

‘Fair enough. But you dealt with it, and you were there for me when I needed you.’ We both look up and see Killkenny coming through the door. She stands. ‘Anyway, I just wanted
you to know that I get it. I get why you’ve never come for me again. It makes sense.’

Before I can respond, Killkenny is walking toward us. ‘What are you two here for?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘About what?’

‘There have been developments.’

‘Since yesterday?’

‘Is there a place where we can talk?’

‘We know who it is.’

Yvette spits it out even before anyone has taken a seat in the interview room in the back of the station house.

Killkenny takes a deep breath and sits in one of the chairs. ‘You do,’ he says. The skepticism in his voice is hard to miss. ‘Just like that, you’ve figured it
out.’

‘I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true,’ I say. ‘We have the proof.’

‘Proof, too? This I can’t wait for.’

‘I traced the programming for the LifeScenes back to the computer they were made on,’ Yvette says. ‘We know whose computer it is.’

That gets Killkenny’s attention as he realizes that we are not merely speculating. He sits forward in his chair. ‘You told me there was no way to track the LifeScene back to the
user,’ he says. ‘I asked you whether it was possible to do that, and you were clear – you said it couldn’t be done.’

‘And that’s generally true,’ Yvette says. ‘Because the data for a specific LifeScene resides on the user’s computer, our system can’t access it. But
there’s one exception.’

‘Which is?’

‘If the LifeScene was created on a computer that is tied into the system in the first place – if it is a NextLife computer – then we can access it.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Killkenny says. ‘How would it be created on the company’s computer.’

‘There’s only one way,’ I say. ‘It can only happen if it’s created by someone at the company.’

‘And you’ve already run these searches,’ Killkenny asks.

‘We have.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’

The question catches me off-guard. ‘We didn’t know whether it would work.’

He shakes his head. ‘That’s not it,’ he says. ‘You wanted to keep control over the process. You didn’t want me running the whole thing, right?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s not right. What does it matter, anyway?’

‘It matters only because it will make it more difficult to make the evidence stick, because there was no police oversight. There’s a chain-of-custody issue.’

‘Are you serious? We tell you we can prove who this guy is, and you want to second-guess our methods?’

Killkenny stares at us, still angry. Eventually, though, his curiosity overcomes his annoyance. ‘So, who is it?’

‘The LifeScenes were created on a system laptop that is assigned to Dr Santar Gunta,’ Yvette says.

Killkenny smiles. ‘You see? I told you that guy was hiding something. I fuckin’ knew it.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Now we know it. So what do we do about it?’

Killkenny loses his smile. ‘I’ll tell you what we do about it; we take the asshole down.’

‘Quietly,’ I respond.

‘What?’

‘We take him down quietly. We had a deal; you’re not looking to embarrass the company, remember?’

‘Fuck that!’ Killkenny says. ‘I’m going in with a fuckin’ SWAT team if I can get authorization.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘You really want to protect this guy?’

‘If I wanted to protect this guy, I wouldn’t have brought this to you.’ I look at Yvette. ‘We wouldn’t have brought this to you. Neither of us has any interest in
protecting Gunta. But I do have an interest in protecting the company. I also have an interest in knowing whether anyone else at the company had any idea this was going on.’

That suggestion stops Killkenny in his tracks. ‘You think that’s a possibility?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘All I know is that if you go in with automatic weapons and haul him out in handcuffs in front of everyone, anyone who might know something is
gonna disappear. If you take him quietly and interrogate him, you may get more than you expect.’

He considers this. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘How do you want to do it?’

We arrive at NextLife’s headquarters at a little after one o’clock. Killkenny brings two uniformed officers with him, and I install the three of them in a
conference room on the third floor, near the Human Resources offices. I tell no one what is going on, and I leave Yvette with the police and head to the lab.

‘He runs, I’ll shoot him,’ Killkenny says to me as I head out the door. ‘Then I’ll shoot you.’

‘This will work,’ I assure him. ‘If I get any sense that he’s not cooperating, I’ll phone you immediately. I don’t think it’s going to be a
problem.’

I go up to the lab and step inside. Gunta’s there, at his raised desk, his nose nearly pressed against one of the gigantic computer screens, scrutinizing some line of code or obscure
algorithm. His chief assistant programmer, Michael, is standing next to him. They seem to be discussing a programming problem. I walk over to him. ‘Hey, Doc,’ I say.

He looks up, but only for a split second before his attention returns to his computer screen. ‘Hello, Nick,’ he says. Michael continues to regard me with hostility. ‘Are you
here for more mischief?’

‘Trying to prevent any more mischief, actually.’ He tears his eyes away from his work and looks at me again. ‘We need to talk again,’ I say. ‘Not here; someplace
quieter.’

I get the feeling that he’s thinking about telling me to fuck off, but he sees the seriousness in my expression and I think he understands that I’m not going away. ‘My
office?’

I shake my head. ‘Not here. I’ve got a conference room down on the third floor. We can talk there.’

‘Why not here?’ I can hear the tension in his voice.

‘You don’t want to do this in front of the people who work with you. It may be a long conversation.’

He’s looking at me the way a poker player evaluates an opponent who has just raised the pot, trying to figure out what I’ve got in my hand. It takes a moment, but eventually he
folds. ‘Michael, why don’t you print this out and bring it down to the conference room? We can figure it out then.’

‘Very well, Doctor,’ Michael says. He’s never taken his eyes off me, and I get the distinct feeling that, if he had the resources, he would try to do me serious harm.
It’s clear how loyal he is to the doctor.

Gunta gets out of his chair and steps down off the raised platform. He and I walk out of the lab and over to the elevators. As we stand there, waiting for the doors to open, he says,
‘What’s this about now?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Those girls?’

The elevator doors open.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Those girls.’ I feel like punching him as we get in the elevator.

‘Has there been another killing?’ The question strikes me as odd. After all, he should know whether there has been another killing. My blood goes cold as it occurs to me that he may
have killed more, and he is just waiting for us to find the bodies.

‘Not that we are aware of,’ I say. I watch his reaction, and he seems genuinely relieved.

We get out of the elevator at the third floor and walk over to the conference room. I open the door and step back to let Gunta in first. He takes a step in before he sees Killkenny and the two
other cops. Yvette is sitting on a chair at the far end of the room. Gunta stops, and I feel his momentum shift backwards, almost as though he’s going to duck out of the room and make a run
for it. I’ve positioned myself behind him, though, and I give his back a soft push. There is little resistance; I think he knows running would be futile at this point anyway.

‘Detective,’ Gunta says quietly. ‘How good to see you again. And you’ve brought friends,’ he nods to the two men in uniform. ‘How nice.’

‘Dr Gunta,’ Killkenny says. ‘We need to talk to you again, I’m sorry for any inconvenience. We just have a few questions that have come up, which you may be able to help
us with.’

‘No inconvenience at all.’ He sits down. ‘Fire away.’

The mock civility between the two of them is fascinating to watch – the homicide detective and the murderer, playing out a chess match, each trying to get into the other’s head; each
waiting for the other to show his strategy, to make a mistake.

Killkenny takes out a sheet of paper. ‘This is a list of all the computers owned by NextLife and given to employees for their use,’ he begins. He puts it on the conference table
before Gunta. ‘If you look midway down the page, you’ll see there was an HP notebook that was given to you a year and a half ago.’

Gunta glances at the list, but I don’t have the impression he’s examined it closely enough to have actually seen the entry. ‘That appears to be correct,’ Gunta says.

‘Do you know where that computer is?’

Gunta shakes his head. ‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t?’ Killkenny looks at me. He wasn’t expecting this answer.

‘It was lost shortly after I received it,’ Gunta says calmly.

Killkenny now glances back and forth between me and Yvette. Neither of us can give him any help. ‘Did you report it lost to anyone at the company?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ Gunta says.

‘Why not?’

‘I was embarrassed at having been so irresponsible. I was planning on simply replacing the machine myself, but I must have forgotten.’ He looks at me. ‘Nick, what is this all
about?’

I say nothing, and Killkenny pulls out the printouts Yvette has prepared for him. ‘The person who has been killing these girls has been practicing the murders on the NextLife platform
before he actually does the murders,’ he says. ‘He goes by the name
De Sade
. Does that mean anything to you, Doc?’

Gunta is visibly shaken for the first time. His head drops and he says, ‘No’ so quietly I can barely hear it. It comes out less like an answer to the question and more like a
lament.

‘What was that, Doc?’ Killkenny asks, pleased that he’s finally made a dent in the doctor’s facade.

Gunta picks his head up. ‘No,’ he says more clearly. ‘It means nothing to me.’

‘Really? Can you explain why the company’s server records show that the LifeScenes where this man,
De Sade
, practiced these murders were created on the computer that the
company gave to you?’

His face drains of blood. ‘It’s not possible!’ he says indignantly.

‘Why?’ Killkenny asks, laughing. ‘Because you used a fragging program to destroy any traces?’ Gunta says nothing. ‘Fortunately, others at the company are even
better with computers than you are.’ He nods at Yvette, and Gunta looks over at her. For a moment it seems like he’s almost giving her a grudging look of respect. ‘Well,
Doc?’ Killkenny says. ‘Do you have anything to say to all of that?’

Gunta starts to open his mouth, then stops. ‘I think I would prefer to talk to a lawyer, Detective.’

Killkenny nods. ‘I expected that. We’ll take you down to the station house and get you booked. Then you can call all the lawyers you want. You’re going to need them.’

As agreed, we take Gunta out the back, where Killkenny and his boys have parked their cars. We walk out of the conference room, Gunta’s hands cuffed behind his back, a
jacket thrown over them to make the scene less conspicuous – as though a man walking with his hands behind his back, flanked by two uniformed cops, could ever be inconspicuous. It’s the
best Killkenny is willing to offer, though, and I can understand it. Gunta is, after all, a murder suspect.

We’re coming out of the conference room when we run into Michael, carrying a set of printouts. He looks at the two police officers holding Gunta by the elbows. ‘What is going on
here?’ he demands.

‘Don’t worry, Michael,’ Gunta says before anyone else can speak. ‘It’s all a misunderstanding.’

‘You can’t take him!’ Michael protests. He drops his papers and gets in front of the group. ‘You can’t!’

‘Get out of the way,’ Killkenny says sharply. ‘Or we’ll make room in the cells for you.’

‘Please, Michael,’ Gunta says. ‘Don’t get involved. I will be fine.’