The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

  “I almost died. A couple of times. Had nine surgeries. In the hospital and housebound for a year and two weeks. Video games were the only things that kept me from killing myself. See, for me, Colter, the Never After Club is real. It’s not a commitment thing. There is no ‘after’ for me. Literally. I died four years ago.

  “Look me up. It was all over the press in southern California. Maddie Gibson was my name then. I changed back to my maiden name because that asshole kept sending me love letters from prison.” She shook her head. “I got back a half hour ago and saw the video. What the hell were you up to? I was thinking, maybe doing this reward stuff, the people you go after—like the kidnapper here—maybe that pushed you over the edge. Maybe you were a killer, a thief. It wasn’t logical. But you go through what I did, it makes you a little paranoid, Colt.

  “So. I had to find out. I moved my car around the corner and grabbed that”—she glanced to the floor where the knife lay—“and waited for you to come back.” Some tears now.

  “Look . . .” Shaw began. He stopped when she lifted a brow. Now her eyes were the cold green of a dull emerald.

  He fell silent. What was there to say?

  That his restless mind sometimes took over and drove him to find the answers no matter what the cost?

  That fragments of his father’s paranoia and suspicion were lodged in his genes?

  That he couldn’t quite eradicate the images of Kyle Butler’s and Henry Thompson’s bodies, still and bloody?

  Those were all true. They were also excuses.

  He offered a faint nod—a flag signifying both his crime and the utter inadequacy of any remedies.

  Colter Shaw walked to the door and, without a look back, let himself out.

  At his car, he was startled by the squeal of tires coming his way. His hand dropping toward his weapon, he glanced to his left. It was the unmarked car that had accompanied him, speeding forward, now with its blue-and-white grille lights flashing. It skidded to a stop abruptly, directly beside him, the passenger window coming down.

  The uniformed woman officer said, “Mr. Shaw, Detective Standish just radioed. There’s been another kidnapping. Can you follow us to the Task Force?”

  54.

  The conference room was populated with fifteen or so men and women from various law enforcement agencies. Shaw saw the uniforms of deputies and police and the plainclothes suits and ensembles of agents and detectives. They stood in clusters, looking at a whiteboard on which were written details of the recent kidnapping.

  Shaw walked up to LaDonna Standish, who said, “What’d you find? About Maddie?”

  Without expression Shaw said, “I was wrong.”

  As soon he arrived at the Task Force headquarters he’d confirmed Maddie’s story. The picture accompanying one article was an image of the woman, younger, on top of a mountain with her husband, both in ski gear, both smiling, taken a few months before the murders.

  He nodded at the new bodies present. “FBI?”

  “California Bureau. Not the feds.”

  Heading the show was a tall, chiseled B of I agent, dark-haired and wearing a gray suit a shade darker than his partner’s—a man who was not tall, not thin, not good-looking. The name of the tall one was Anthony Prescott. Shaw had missed the other’s.

  Prescott said, “Detective Standish, could you brief us on the latest taking?”

  She explained how the vic was kidnapped in a parking lot in Mountain View about an hour ago on her way to work. “Municipal lot. No video. We canvassed and a wit saw a person in gray sweats and a gray stocking cap. Like on the Quick Byte Café security cam.”

  Standish had created a file and made copies for everyone on the case. She handed Shaw one. Inside was a bio of the victim, which Shaw read through. There were pictures too.

  The detective fired off other facts—the absence of fingerprints, the lack of DNA for tracing through the CODIS database, every piece of physical evidence the Gamer’d left behind being untraceable, the homemade knockout potion, his weapons, the inability to identify his vehicle because he drove on grass or other ground cover and left no tread marks.

  “In the files I gave you are security webcam shots of the suspect that Mr. Shaw here obtained at the Quick Byte. It doesn’t show much but it might be helpful.”

  Prescott asked, “And who are you?” Then to Standish, “And who is he?”

  “A consultant.”

  “Consultant?” the shorter CBI agent asked.

  “Hmm,” Standish confirmed.

  “Wait. The bounty hunter?” Prescott asked.

  Shaw said, “Frank Mulliner offered a reward to find his missing daughter.”

  “Which he did,” Standish offered.

  “Is there a fee to us involved?” Prescott’s partner asked Shaw.

  Shaw said, “No.”

  Perhaps Prescott wanted an explanation about why Shaw was doing this. He didn’t indulge.

  Standish touched her copy of the folder. She continued: “Another fact you need to know. The victim—her name’s Elizabeth Chabelle—is seven and a half months pregnant.”

  “Jesus!” from somebody. Gasps too. An obscenity.

  “And one more thing: the unsub hid her on a ship. A sinking ship.”

  Colter Shaw took over.

  “It appears that the unsub is basing the crimes on a video game.”

  Void reaction from the room.

  “It’s called The Whispering Man. That’s the villain in the game. He hides his victims in an abandoned place. They have to escape—before other players, or the character himself, kill them.”

  Someone in the back—an older male uniformed officer—called, “That’s pretty bizarre. You sure?”

  “His kidnapping M.O. lines up with the gameplay. And he’s left graffiti or printouts of the character at the scenes.”

  “Photos are in the file,” Standish said.

  Shaw: “Any of you know how levels work in video games?”

  Some nodded. Others shook their heads. The majority simply gazed at him the way they’d observe, with more or less interest, a lizard in a pet shop terrarium.

  Shaw said, “A video game’s about meeting increasing challenges. You start out on the simple level, saving some settlers, trekking to a certain place, killing X number of aliens. If you’re successful you move to a more difficult level. The Gamer’s placed his victims in the first two levels of The Whispering Man.”

  Standish added, “The Abandoned Factory. That was Sophie Mulliner. Henry Thompson’s was The Dark Forest. The third level is The Sinking Ship.”

  The last level, the tenth, Shaw had learned, was hell itself—where the Whispering Man lives. No player in the history of the game had ever made it that far.

  Prescott said slowly, “An interesting theory.” Slowly and uncertainly.

  There was enough corroboration that Shaw could accept theory over hypothesis in this case.

  One officer, a uniform from Santa Clara, pointed to the whiteboard. “That’s why he’s the Gamer?”

  Shaw said, “Correct.”

  Prescott’s partner said, “Supervisor Cummings said you’re profiling him as a sociopath.”

  Standish cleared her throat. “I said the likelihood of that diagnosis was about seventy percent.” She glanced at Shaw, who nodded.

  “But no sado-sexual activity?” someone pointed out. “Which you almost always see in the case of a male unsub.”

  “No,” Standish said.

  Shaw continued: “We’ve been working with the company that publishes The Whispering Man—they’re cooperating. The CEO is trying to track down suspects in the customer database. He’ll call Detective Standish as soon as he finds some likely names.”

  Standish said, “All this is in the file.”

  Prescott said, the fiber of doubt in his voice, “If it is
a ship, you know where?”

  Shaw said he did not. Then added, “He’ll’ve left five objects she can use to save herself. One is food or water. Another will probably let her signal for help. Maybe a mirror or—”

  One of the other suited agents said, “We gotta lot of boats here. We don’t have the resources to send drones and choppers over anything that floats.”

  Ignoring the obvious, as usual, Shaw said, “Or start a signal fire.”

  Standish: “We need to tell all the public safety offices to let us know if there’re any fires or smoke on docks or boats themselves. It’ll be a deserted place too.”

  Prescott stepped forward. “All right, Detective, Supervisor Cummings. We appreciate your work,” he said. “We’ll keep you posted on the developments.”

  Two sentences that Shaw guessed were patently false.

  Standish’s face was emotionless, though her eyes settled. She was mad at the downgrading. But the CBI was state, the JMCTF was local. And if the FBI were here, they’d rule the roost. The way of the world.

  While this ping-pong discussion had been going on, Shaw was wondering how much time Elizabeth Chabelle had until she perished from exposure. Or drowned.

  Or until the Gamer, playing The Whispering Man with relish, returned to pursue her through the vessel or on the dock and shoot or stab her.

  Prescott said, “We’ll consider what Detective Standish and her consultant have suggested. Somebody perverted by these video games.”

  Which wasn’t the theory at all.

  The agent continued: “Though, you ask me, I think anyone who plays them is a bit off.”

  Shaw noted several of the officers staring at him without any reaction. The gamers in the room, he figured.

  “We’ll pursue that lead. We’ll also follow standard protocol for an abduction. Get taps on all Ms. Chabelle’s phones. She have a boyfriend, husband?”

  Standish said, “Boyfriend. George Hanover.”

  “Taps on his too and her parents’, if they’re alive.”

  “They are,” Shaw said. “They live in Miami. All in the report.”

  “Look at financial resources of the boyfriend and her parents to see if they might be ransom targets. Get a list of registered sex offenders in the area. See if she has any stalkers.” The Bureau of Investigation agent kept talking, but Shaw had stopped listening. He was watching a man in the corridor approach the glass-walled conference room.

  It was Dan Wiley, now in a green uniform. The man still looked like a cop right out of a movie.

  The detective—or whatever he was now that he’d been rotated to Liaison—was holding a large envelope. He knocked and, when nodded in by Prescott, spotted Detective Standish and walked over to her.

  Prescott said, “Officer, is that related to the Chabelle kidnappings?”

  “Well, it’s the ME’s report on the latest vic. Henry Thompson.”

  “I’ll take it. BI’s running the case.”

  With a glance to Standish, Wiley handed the envelope to the tall agent and left.

  Nearly to the door, he paused, looking back toward Shaw. A rueful smile crossed his face and, if Shaw’s translation was correct, its meaning was that the cop was offering an apology.

  Shaw nodded in return.

  Never waste time on anger.

  Prescott opened the envelope and read to himself. Then he announced to the room: “Nothing new here. Henry Thompson died of a single gunshot, a nine-millimeter, determined to be from the same gun used in the Kyle Butler murder, a Glock 17. TOD was between ten p.m. and eleven p.m. Friday. He had also suffered blunt force trauma to the skull, resulting in a bone fracture and brain concussion. This was prior to the gunshot and prior to the fall from the cliff. He—”

  Shaw asked, “Where was the fracture?”

  Prescott looked up, his head askew. “I’m sorry?”

  Standish asked, “Where was the fracture?”

  “Why?”

  Standish added, “We’d like to know.”

  Prescott skimmed the report. “Left sphenoid.” He glanced up. “Anything else?”

  Standish looked at Shaw, who shook his head. She said, “Nope. We’re good.”

  Prescott kept his eyes on her for a moment longer. He continued: “He’d been injected with OxyContin suspended in water. Nonlethal, just enough to sedate him temporarily.” He handed the report to one of the two uniformed women officers. “Make copies for the team, would you? Then transcribe it on the board. You probably have better handwriting than the boys.”

  The officer took the report with a faint tightening of her lips.

  Standish said to Shaw in a soft voice, “So, why did I want to know where he got hit?”

  “Can we leave?” Shaw whispered.

  She looked over the room. “Don’t see why not. We’re invisible anyway.”

  As they walked to the door they happened to pass Cummings. He held up a hand. Standish and Shaw paused.

  Was an issue looming?

  Keeping his eyes on Prescott and the whiteboards, the supervisor whispered, “I do not want to know what you two have in mind. But get to it. And get to it fast. Good luck.”

  55.

  They were back in the Quick Byte.

  Shaw was getting to recognize some of the regulars. Sitting nearby was the kid in the red-and-black-checked shirt whose potential romance with the beautiful young woman had been derailed either by her change of mind or as a cruel joke. He spotted a dozen others who seemed to treat the place as their home away from home. Some were talking to one another; some were on phones; most were communing with their laptops.

  Shaw was browsing the internet, looking through medical sites, on his mobile. He showed Standish a diagram. A picture of the human skull, each of the bones composing it named. The sphenoid was just behind the eye socket.

  “That’s the bone?” She was silent for a moment. “Okay. Next question: Is the Gamer right-handed?”

  “That’s exactly the next question. Because if he is, that means he hit Thompson from the front. And that’s probably what happened because lefties make up only ten percent of the population.”

  Standish’s eyes swept slowly through the café. “Let’s think about this. Thompson’s driving down the street, the Gamer’s following. He passes Thompson, parks and waits, then pitches a rock into his windshield. Thompson gets out. And up comes the Gamer, holding a gun on him. Thompson thinks it’s a carjacking. Rule one: Give up the keys. You can always get another car.”

  “But the Gamer slugs him with the gun, cracking his facial bone. Which means he didn’t care if Thompson saw him or not. Even if he was wearing the mask, Thompson would get some description. So the Gamer meant all along to kill him.”

  Standish said, “The time of death in the report Dan Wiley brought Prescott. That’s what tipped you.”

  Shaw nodded. “It was just an hour or so after Thompson was taken. The Gamer drove him to Redwoods Park, walked him out on the ledge and shot him right away. The Gamer’s the one who set the fire to get our attention so we’d find the body—and the Whispering Man graffiti.”

  “None of this is about playing a scary-ass game in real life.”

  “No,” Shaw said. “He was using the game to cover up murdering Thompson. That was my original idea. I thought that Tony Knight hired somebody to play a psycho to bring down Marty Avon. I got that wrong. That doesn’t mean the hypothesis in general is wrong.”

  “Sophie Mulliner was just part of the misdirection?” Standish asked.

  “I’d think so.”

  “And Elizabeth Chabelle?”

  “Probably the same.”

  “So she might be alive.”

  Shaw: “He’ll want to make sure the game plays out. So we’ll assume she is.”

  Standish: “The big question: Who’d want to kill Henry Thompson
?”

  “He was a gay rights activist. Was he controversial?”

  Standish said, “Karen and I are involved in the community, I never heard of him. Gay in the Bay Area? Unless you’re a cop, nobody cares.” She gave him a wry smile. “What was he blogging about? Bet he stumbled on somebody’s secret.”

  Shaw found the notebook in which he’d recorded Brian Byrd’s comments about his partner. He skimmed. “Henry was working on three stories at the moment. Two of them don’t seem very controversial—revenues in the software industry and the high price of real estate in Silicon Valley.”

  “Tell me about it.” Standish puffed air from her mouth.

  “But the third?” he said, reading. “It’s how gaming companies are illegally stealing gamers’ data and selling it.”

  Standish had not heard of this trend.

  “There must be hundreds of gaming companies that collect data.”

  “True. I have a place where we can start, though.”

  “You going to put one of your fancy percentages on it?”

  “Ten, I’d say.”

  “That’s ten percent better than anything else we’ve got. Let’s hear it.”

  “Hong-Sung Enterprises.”

  Shaw explained about the goggles and how the game turned your house and backyard into imaginary battlegrounds. “Most companies data-mine information from things you do actively: fill out forms, answer questionnaires, click on products to buy. Hong-Sung collects data without your knowing it. The goggles have cameras. They upload everything you look at when you play.”

  Standish was interested. “Products in your house, the clothes you wear, how many kids you’ve got, a sick or elderly relative, if you’ve got pets—they sell that to data-mining companies? Smart. And Henry Thompson was going to write about it . . . Is that really a reason to kill somebody, Shaw? Conspiracy to mail me coupons for diapers for Gem? Or oil changes for that fancy camper of yours?”