The Desperate Game: (InterMix) (14 page)

“Did you tell anyone why you were asking the questions?”

“Of course not. I just said I was making some inquiries on behalf of some friends who were concerned.” Zac grimaced. “It’s tough setting up new contacts in the right places, Russ. It’s a whole new game here in the States. One has to establish a ‘professional’ relationship with the authorities. It was easier when the ‘professional relationship’ consisted of a fistful of U.S. currency handed over in some dark alley.”

“That tried-and-true method would probably work fairly well in a lot of places here at home.” Russ arched one shaggy brow as he put down his burger and reached for the cigarette. He looked cynical.

Zac thought of the men he had talked to this morning. They had been serious, intelligent, and highly professional in their attitude toward their work. They had been polite but not overly helpful. They were more concerned with getting their jobs done than with accommodating him. Zac tried to imagine what would have happened if he’d offered one of them a bribe for more information. He had a hunch the offer wouldn’t have gone down well at all. “I don’t think so. At least not with the kind of people I talked to today.”

“Well, you found out what you needed to know. Everyone is sure Bender met his death while climbing some rocks.”

“Gwen said she’d never heard of Cal Bender’s doing any rock climbing,” Zac said slowly. “And she said Larry was his closest friend. If Cal had taken off to do some serious hiking, why didn’t he mention it to Larry?”

“Or ask Larry to go with him?” Elfstrom screwed up his face in the way he always did when he was thinking. The constant, underlying urgency in the man seemed always to need some outlet. “She’s right, you know. Bender and Hixon were buddies. They did a lot of things together. And they know the StarrTech computers inside out.”

“You think Bender was involved in the missing shipments, don’t you?”

Elfstrom’s small mouth crooked wryly. “Yeah. It fits with the facts. He could have manipulated the shipping programs easily enough, and he disappeared about the time I realized something was going on.”

“But he’s dead, Russ. In a climbing accident. Why would a man on the run take the time to go rock climbing?”

Elfstrom looked at Zac. “No good reason I can think of. If it were me and I thought things were getting uncomfortably hot, I would have headed for Mexico.”

“Unless, of course, you had a partner who didn’t want you skipping town.” Zac thought of all the directions his mind had gone last night when he’d been sitting in Guinevere’s apartment, trying to get the pieces of the puzzle in place.

“Yeah, a partner who didn’t appreciate his business associate’s getting cold feet could be a problem.”

“He might take his friend on a little rock-climbing expedition and leave him behind in a ravine. One guy told me this morning that it was just a fluke they found Bender’s body. No one had reported him missing, and no one knew he had gone climbing. This time of year one could expect snow almost any day. Once the snow starts in those mountains, it will last all season. That body might not have appeared until next summer.”

“What are you getting at, Zac?” Elfstrom waited with the patience of a man who had waited more than once for his friend’s conclusions.

“Everyone keeps saying Hixon was Bender’s best friend, his only friend.”

Elfstrom shrugged. “It’s the truth as far as I know.”

Zac thought about Elf Hunt. “If Bender and Hixon had been involved with something illegal, they’d manage everything through a computer, wouldn’t they?”

“It would be logical. It’s the kind of thing they would know best. Guinevere Jones hasn’t given you any information about Larry Hixon?”

“Not much,” Zac said.

“I’m not surprised. She liked Bender and Hixon, Zac. And they liked her.”

“Everyone in the office seems to have liked her.”

“Yeah, but I’ll tell you something. I don’t think she could have pulled off her little scam with StarrTech’s benefits program without someone’s help. And I think Bender and Hixon liked her well enough to help her.”

Zac felt a coldness in his stomach. He tried to ignore it. “Even if they did, what’s that got to do with the missing shipments?”

“You tell me, Zac.” Elfstrom shook his head sadly. “I suppose you’re sleeping with her?”

Zac forced a smile. “You think my judgment might be impaired if I were?”

Elfstrom stared at him thoughtfully. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think it would be. Not for long at any rate. You never let anything distract you for long, not when you’ve got a job to do. You know what they used to say about you in-house back when we worked for the company?”

“I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“They called you the Glacier.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Slow-moving at times but unstoppable. And in the end everything gets covered.”

“Not the most flattering image in the world.” Maybe it was the unpleasantness of the glacier image. Whatever the cause, Zac’s stomach felt even colder.

“I’ve got to tell you, Zac, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure Jones must have had help on her trip through the computer. And if she got that help from either Hixon or Bender, she must have been pretty close to one or both of them. Maybe she was sleeping with one of them.”

Zac had a sudden, sickening memory of Guinevere’s head bent intently near Larry Hixon’s the afternoon he’d walked into the little pub. “Close enough for them to have told her what they were doing with missing shipments of StarrTech equipment? I doubt it, Russ.” But she’d been close enough to one or both of them to be told about Elf Hunt. But she’d said that was no big deal. Everyone else in the office, except management, knew about Elf Hunt. Or so she’d said.

Zac forced himself to consider the possibility that Gwen had lied to him. People who lied about one thing tended to lie about others. He had to remember that she’d fleeced StarrTech to the tune of ten thousand dollars.

But she’d had her reasons, he told himself violently. She’d been seeking retribution on behalf of her sister. The motive had been revenge, a kind of freelance justice, not larceny. That thought led to another. He shook off his uncertainties and looked at Russ Elfstrom.

“Any chance of reaching Hampton Starr? I think he ought to know what’s happening.”

Elfstrom dismissed the possibility with a grimace. “Afraid not. According to what I heard, he left last night for another of his not-so-secret rendezvous on the coast. He didn’t tell anyone which resort he’d chosen. That man goes through women like they were chocolates. Gobble one up and throw away the wrapper.”

Zac remembered the figure of the king in Elf Hunt. It was the king who had been guarding the treasure in the new version of the game. Why had Cal Bender decided to change that key player’s role? Larry Hixon hadn’t wanted to rest until he’d figured out the answer to that question. Because the answer might provide information on something more crucial than a game?

It always came back to Elf Hunt. There was no reason why it should, but there was also no denying that the damn game seemed to appear at every corner Zac turned in this investigation. The game and Guinevere Jones.

Zac stood up and scrounged in his pocket for some change. Russ Elfstrom looked up inquiringly. “Going someplace?”

“There are some more people to see. I’d better be on my way. We glaciers move exceedingly slowly, but we try to keep going. I’ll call you later, Russ, and update you.”

“Going back to your office?”

Zac shook his head. “No, I’ll be out of touch for the next few hours. If you find out anything or if you figure out where Starr is, leave a message on my cell phone.”

“Right.” Elfstrom smiled grimly. “Good hunting, Zac.”

Zac nodded shortly, remembering how many times Russ Elfstrom had said those same words during the years they’d been together at the company. Making certain he’d left enough for a minimal tip, Zac turned and walked out through the café.

His car was parked at the curb. The red violation flag in the meter popped up as he walked toward the Buick. A cruising meter attendant several yards down the street saw the flag at the same time. Zac told himself he would not run. He had time. All he had to do was lengthen his stride a bit in order to beat the meter attendant, who was gunning her three-wheeled motorized cart. He could hear the little engine straining mightily. The thought of having to pay the fine out of Free Enterprise’s petty cash fund inspired Zac. His pace quickened into something suspiciously close to a trot. He reached the Buick and had the door open three seconds before the meter attendant braked to a halt. Quickly Zac turned the key in the ignition and waved briefly before pulling out onto the street.

The meter attendant glared after him, a small shark deprived of the whale on which it had intended to prey.

The small victory did nothing to lighten Zac’s mood. He cruised slowly toward Pioneer Square. It seemed important to see Guinevere and ask his questions face to face.

What good would that do? he wondered. She could easily lie to him. How would he know? If she’d been lying all along and he’d been unable to detect it, what would cue him into the truth today? How badly would his judgment be affected by the fact that he’d shared her bed last night?

In the past he would have agreed with Russ. He was capable of separating his passion from his logic. But after spending the night with Guinevere Jones, he was no longer so certain. She had been the essence of feminine warmth and softness last night, taking him into her with an eagerness that had made him feel like a conqueror. She had been real and vital in his arms. There had been an intrinsic honesty in her passion. He couldn’t believe now that her excitement had been anything but genuine. Or was it that his ego wanted to believe in her response?

The fact that he had to ask the question at all alarmed him. He should have known; in the old days he
would
have known whether it was his ego rather than logic dictating his reactions.

He needed to see her, Zac realized. He had to pin her down and get some answers. In the beginning he had promised himself that he could ride the tiger that was Guinevere Jones. Now he had to admit he may have been overconfident.

It took him several trips around the block to find a parking place near Guinevere’s apartment. It was early afternoon, and the Pioneer Square shops and restaurants were doing a brisk business. There was a home show in the Kingdome just down the street that was drawing even more people than usual into the area. He had been lucky to find any place at all in which to park.

At the locked apartment building entrance Zac pressed the button for Guinevere’s apartment and waited in suspended silence for the response. When there was no answer, he frowned and tried again.

The apartment building door swung open at that moment, and two laughing young women stepped out onto the sidewalk. They paid no attention to Zac, who was standing with his finger pressed on the intercom button. Surreptitiously he stuck out his foot and caught the door just before it closed again. He stayed where he was, pretending to listen to the intercom until the two young women were out of sight. Then he opened the door and let himself inside the lobby.

Having taken the stairs two at a time, he arrived a few seconds later at Guinevere’s door. Knocking got no more response than the intercom had gotten, however. Zac forced himself to face the fact that she wasn’t home.

Then he began to wonder just where she had gone. He pulled out his cell phone and called the offices of Camelot Services. When there was no answer there, he dug Carla Jones’s number out of information and tried it.

Carla answered almost at once. “Oh, hello, Zac . . . Yes, of course, I remember you. You were with Guinevere the other evening at the pub.”

“I’m trying to find her, Carla. We were supposed to have lunch together. Any idea where she might have gone?”

“She called me from the office just a few minutes ago.”

“Well, she’s not there now.”

“I think she said something about trying to get hold of Larry. She was worried about how he’d take the news of his friend’s death. She’d been trying to call him all morning and hadn’t been able to reach him. I wonder if she would have just tried driving out to Wallingford,” Carla said musingly.

“Thanks, Carla. I’ll check.” Zac had to unclench his fingers from the receiver as he replaced the phone. Wallingford and Larry Hixon and Elf Hunt. And Guinevere.

A muttered oath slipped between his teeth as he reached the Buick. The tense coldness in his stomach was worse than ever. He wondered if small businesspeople kept supplies of antacid tablets on hand and whether or not they could be charged off as legitimate business expenses.

The Laser was parked on the street in front of Hixon’s house. Zac found a place behind it, switched off the engine, and sat for a moment behind the wheel. One question was answered. Guinevere was here. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answers to the rest of his questions.

It took an effort of will to climb out of the Buick and walk up the front steps. His fist hesitated for an instant, and then he knocked loudly on the door. Glaciers just kept moving and dogs just kept gnawing on their bones. It was the way his world worked. The only way he knew how to work.

She opened the door on his second knock, and it seemed to Zac as he stood staring down at her that her eyes had never seemed so wide or so nearly green. She stood there, silent and still, looking up at him. And then she stepped forward and threw her arms around his waist, burying her face against his shirt.

“Zac, thank God you’re here. I’ve been so scared.”

He couldn’t keep his arms from going around her, but his voice seemed harsh, even to his own ears as he answered. “Yeah, that’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, Gwen.”

Chapter Eight

Guinevere stepped back a pace, the rough edge on his words cutting through her fear and the relief she had felt when she’d opened the door and found Zac standing there.

“How did you know where I was?”

“Carla said there was a possibility you’d driven out here.” He glanced past her into the darkened living room. “Where’s Hixon?”

Guinevere shook her head, her anxiety evident in the new huskiness in her voice. “I don’t know, Zac, and I’m worried sick. There’s blood on his desk and I—”

“Blood! Are you sure?” He put his hands on her shoulders and forced her firmly out of the way. Then he stepped into the living room. “Have you been through the house?”

“Yes. He’s not here, and there’s no indication of where he might have gone. You can see for yourself everything looks in order except for the desk. What if the same thing’s happening to him that happened to Cal Bender?”

“We still don’t know for sure how Bender died.” Zac stood by the desk, gazing down at the small dark stains. “The authorities are convinced so far that it was just what it looks like: a climbing accident.” He glanced at the dried drops on the floor. “There’s not a lot of blood. Whatever happened, no one bled to death here. Assuming this is blood.”

“What else could it be?” Guinevere decided it must be her tension that was causing her to get defensive with Zac. She was reading too much into what was probably only his “professional” attitude on the job.

“There aren’t too many other possibilities,” Zac said in agreement. Absently he glanced at the small disarray of magazines on the desk.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” He knew it was blood, she realized. Why was he being so cool and calculated?

“I’m slow enough as it is. Get the police involved at this point, and things will grind to a complete halt. We’ll never get any answers.”

“Zac, I don’t understand. What are you looking for now?”

“I just told you. Answers.” He turned to look at her, his expression more remote than she had ever seen it. “And we might as well start with you. How well did you know Bender and Hixon, Gwen?”

“How well did I know them! I’ve told you, I worked with them for a while a few months ago. That’s all. What is this?”

“Did they help you set up the benefits plan scam?”

“Zac, they had nothing to do with that!” She was really getting frightened now. “What are you trying to get at?”

“You’ve said yourself your skills in an office are limited mostly to typing and answering phones. You don’t even have a computer in your own office. Where did you learn enough about computers to think you could get away with modifying StarrTech’s benefits plan?”

“Zac, I don’t understand any of this!”

“Neither do I.” He stood like a wall of granite in front of her. “That’s why I’m asking questions. If you want to get this over with fast, all you have to do is answer them.”

“Why should I bother?” Good Lord, she mustn’t get hysterical. Not with Larry Hixon’s dried blood all over the place. She had to stay calm. “You don’t sound as if you’re in a mood to believe anything I say anyway!”

“Try me, Gwen. Just try giving me some straight answers.”

“I’ve told you, I played with that benefits plan myself. It wasn’t hard. When I landed the contract with StarrTech, I didn’t have any clear idea of how I was going to make Hampton Starr pay for what he’d done to my sister. I took the job hoping to learn something useful. I was put into the IT department. It was a friendly crowd of people, and everyone was more than happy to talk about what he or she did. Larry and Cal and Jackson and Liz were more than willing to answer any question I asked. I was assigned to do the inputting on a daily basis, and that covers a lot of territory. I saw all sorts of possibilities. But when I got the job of inputting some new names and addresses into the benefits program, I decided that was the easiest method. StarrTech is a big company. Who was going to notice a few checks going out to a Miss Jones? I even put in a cutoff date. I didn’t take any more than what I thought it would cost to pay Dr. Estabrook.”

“You don’t have to sound so goddamned noble about it. In a lot of places they’d label that sort of thing outright theft!”

“I got the feeling you understood why I’d done it. Last night you gave me the impression you might have done something similar under the circumstances.”

He rubbed the back of his neck as if trying to massage away tension. “What I said last night might not mean a whole lot today.”

“Oh, that’s just wonderful!” She was on the edge, Guinevere realized dimly. Both her temper and her nerves were frayed to the breaking point. “That’s terrific. Vastly reassuring. Just what a woman needs to hear the morning after. I thought you were different, Zac. If there’s a lack of nobility around here, you can lay first claim to it. You were right about one thing: You’re no prince.”

He ignored her accusation, nothing in his eyes wavering in the least. Gray granite. “You said the IT department at StarrTech was friendly, that Hixon and Bender and the others were only too happy to answer questions.”

“It’s the truth!”

“They even told you about that damned computer game.”

“It wasn’t that big a secret, except from management,” she replied.

“What else did they tell you? What other questions did you ask? Just how friendly did you get, Gwen? Were you sleeping with Larry Hixon?”

“Good grief, no!” She felt a wave of pressure pushing at her, threatening to swamp her. Grimly Guinevere hung on to her sense of logic. “You’ll have to be more specific. Tell me exactly what you want to know, Zac.”

He took a step forward. “I want to know if you knew anything about the missing shipments. You were involved in one little scam; maybe you knew something about the other. You said it was such a
friendly
department, Gwen. Did Hixon or Bender tell you anything about the disappearing equipment?”

“Oh, my God.” She stared at him, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. “You’ve decided that Cal or Larry is behind the shipment thefts? And you think I’m involved too?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet just what to believe.”

Guinevere felt dazed and a little sick to her stomach. “When I think about the way I so stupidly let you stay last night—”

“Last night has got nothing to do with this.”

“I can see that. A bad mistake on my part.”

He took another step forward, and Guinevere had the impression he was having to restrain himself from taking hold of her. Instinctively she stepped backward. Zac halted when he saw her hasty withdrawal.

“Did you think that everything was going to be nice and simple after you had allowed me into your bed? Did you think I would be a lot easier to manage afterward? Did you think you could keep me from asking certain questions by sleeping with me?”

“Damn it, Zac, don’t you dare accuse me of seducing you! You’re the one who wandered into my bedroom in the middle of the night. No one invited you!”

“And no one turned me away after I got there,” he said, reminding her.

Guinevere didn’t know if she could take any more. She wanted to strike him and she wanted to cry. She did neither. Instead, she faced him proudly. “There’s another way of looking at this, you know. From my side of the equation it looks as if you deliberately seduced me in order to get answers to your stupid questions. You used me, didn’t you, Zac?”

“No, damn it, I did not use you!” He looked furious at the accusation.

“I think you did. But you’re not handling this properly. You should have asked me all your questions last night when I was off guard.”

“You think I should believe you, don’t you? You’ve got the hurt, betrayed attitude of a woman scorned. Give me one good reason why I should trust you completely, Gwen. I had to blackmail you into this thing in the first place, remember? And I used your own little benefits scam to do it. You’ve hardly got an unimpeachable background.”

Her throat was too dry. Guinevere had to swallow a couple of times before she could answer. Then she said dully, “You’re absolutely right. Why should I bother to argue? You’ve made up your mind. All right, you’re entitled to your conclusions, but in the meantime, what are you going to do about that blood on the desk? What are you going to do about the fact that Larry Hixon might be lying in some ravine?”

Zac watched her the way a predator watches prey. “I’ll stand a much better chance of figuring out what’s happened to Hixon if you’ll answer my questions.”

“I’ve already answered them!”

“You swear you knew absolutely nothing about the shipping thefts?”

“I swear it. But what good does that do? Why should you believe me? All we’ve got between us is a quick roll in the sack.” She folded her arms tightly across her chest and stood stiffly in front of him.

A long, measureless pulse of time and tension passed between them, and then Zac seemed to shake off an invisible restraint. He moved, swinging around to open the box of computer disks that sat on the desk. “All right,” he said coolly. “We’ll take it from here.” He began thumbing through the disks.

Guinevere eyed him narrowly. “What do you mean, we’ll take it from here?”

“We’ll assume that you’re telling the truth.”

She was too astonished to say anything for an instant. Then she found her tongue. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.”

“Don’t try. Just help me find the game disk.”

“Elf Hunt? You want the game?”

“Every time I turn around in this damn case I find that game somewhere in the vicinity. Cal was doing some serious modifications of the game before he disappeared. The last thing Hixon was working on as far as we know was that game. Now Hixon’s gone. That’s one coincidence too many. Ah, here it is.” He pulled a disk out of the box and held it under the desk lamp to study the label. “Hixon was keeping a notebook that listed the changes Bender had made, remember?”

“I remember.” Unwillingly, her anger and her hurt still in full sail, Guinevere walked toward the desk. “It’s still there. I saw it a few minutes ago. What are you going to do, Zac?”

“Try to play the game again, this time looking at it from a different point of view.”

“What point of view?”

“If we assume that Cal Bender got murdered, then we can assume he might have been killed because of the shipping thefts.”

“You think there’s a definite tie between the two?”

“It’s the best guess I can make at the moment.”

“You were making some guesses about me a little while ago. Maybe the conclusions you’ve come to about Bender are just as off base.”

“Forget it, Gwen.” He sat down in front of the computer and inserted the disk. “Pull up a chair, and help me get this thing started. Hixon showed us how to play the game up to a certain point the other day. We should at least be able to get that far this afternoon.”

Guinevere reluctantly found a chair and pulled it into place. “What about this?” She looked at the bloodstains.

“Nothing in those bloodstains is going to tell us where Larry Hixon is right now. Maybe something in this game will.”

“What did you mean when you said you were going to play the game from a different point of view?”

“Computer wizards tend to be sloppy in a lot of ways, but not when it comes to dealing with computers. If I’ve learned nothing else so far in this crazy investigation, I’ve learned that. You’ve seen the incredible detail Hixon and Bender have put into this game. And you’ve seen how hard Hixon’s been working to figure out every single change his pal made. Take a look at that notebook. He’s documented everything.”

Guinevere flipped open the notebook and scanned Larry’s notations. “So?”

“So if Bender was involved in the shipping thefts and if he was manipulating the thefts through the StarrTech computers the way Russ seems to think, then this game might have served as the documentation of the scam.”

“For someone who doesn’t know much about computers, that’s a pretty interesting conclusion,” Guinevere said.

“I don’t know much about computers, but I do know something about human motivations.”

“I remember. You knew exactly what to hold over my head in order to blackmail me, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer, his whole attention on the first steps of the game. “Read me Hixon’s notes one by one. We’re at the drawbridge, and we’ve got three possible choices.”

Guinevere glanced down at the notes. “Choose number three, the ax.”

Slowly, making several frustrating mistakes that sent them back to earlier stages of the game, Guinevere and Zac slogged their way through a fictional wonderland of monsters, dwarfs, giant spiders, and menacing ghosts. Time crawled past as the character representing the player made his way deep into the mountains in search of the treasure. He reached the treasure hall and stole a packful of gems and gold. Then he started back down out of the mountains.

“This is the stage of the game Larry was at the last time we were here,” Guinevere observed sometime later. “He was trying to figure out a way to get past the lady of the lake.” She ran her fingertip down the list of notes on her lap. “Looks like he decided to try answer number four.”

“Back up into the mountains? He just came from there. Why would he want to go back the way he had come? The king is pursuing him from that direction.”

“Who knows? A programmer’s logic perhaps.”

“If I wind up getting bounced all the way back to the drawbridge, I’m going to blame you,” Zac said mildly as he chose answer number four. “Damn, this thing is frustrating.”

But the player was not sent back to the earliest stage of the game. Instead, he started back up the path into the mountains, still carrying the treasure. He dodged the pursuing king by hiding (answer number two) and then continued back toward the treasure hall.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Guinevere leaned forward to study the screen. “The original point of the game was to escape the mountain stronghold and return to civilization with the treasure. Now Larry’s notes are taking us back into the mountains.”

“But the king went right by us and never saw a thing.” Zac swore disgustedly. “Listen to me. I sound as if that’s really us inside the computer trying to get away with the treasure. All right, what next?”