Virtually Dead

by Peter May

  But as it was, she had reluctantly agreed, and lay now in the missionary position beneath a humping, grunting AV called Axel Corvale, who fancied himself as one of SL’s great lovers. She had muted him, in order not to be distracted by his muttered sexual inanities, and had her head turned to one side, looking from the window out over the lagoon.

  She thought about Chas and how she had lain with him in this very bed only a few hours earlier. Only then it had been different. He had awakened feelings in her that had been long dormant, and the little seed of regret he had sown in her during their unfulfilled lovemaking had grown to a terrible ache. An ache she knew she could never satisfy. A relationship she knew she could never realise.

  She opened her Friends List to send him another IM and saw with a shock that stung her, that he was no longer on the list. There had to be some mistake. She closed the box and opened it again. Scrolled down the list and back again. He was gone.

  In a panic she opened her Search window and tapped in his name. Not Found was the response. Chas Chesnokov no longer existed in Second Life. She closed her eyes and knew with a terrible certainty what had happened. Which meant that Michael Kapinsky was now in grave RL danger. And she was trapped in this virtual world without any way of helping him. She thought about logging off and calling the police. But what could she tell them? It was an impossible story. And she had no idea where he might be, or who the killer was. An AV called Dark Daley. But beyond his SL name, she knew nothing about him.

  She put the name into the Search Engine and brought up his Profile. It was blank, apart from the date he had been Born. Just four weeks ago. Which meant, in all probability, he was the second or third AV of someone else. Her mind was racing, and she forced herself to slow it down. To think her way through the problem as she would a game of chess.

  What other information did she have?

  She remembered the photographs Chas had taken at the Maximillian Thrust crime scene, at the house where she had discovered his body. She went into her Texture folder and pulled the pictures up on screen one by one. They brought back to her a vivid recollection of the shambles inside the house. Floors, ceilings, walls buckled and canted at odd angles. The detritus of a panicked battle that had ended in Thrust’s murder. She looked at the body, wedged between two sections of dislodged floor, the blood pooling beneath it, and had a sudden thought.

  The doors had been locked and there had been no furniture in the house with poseballs to latch on to. So how had the killer got in? She remembered very clearly, how she herself had got in and out, by shifting her POV to the inside and the outside, rezzing poseballs to latch on to. The oldest griefers’ trick in SL. So the killer must have had to rez a poseball inside the house in order to get in. And in all the ensuing confusion and disruption, wasn’t it just possible that the killer had lost sight of it, and might have forgotten to take it back again?

  Doobie scrutinised every picture. There was no sign of a poseball, and the hope that had flared briefly died again, like a match that never quite caught. But there was only one way to be certain. And that was to go and look for herself.

  She opened up her Landmark folder and found the LM she had taken inside Thrust’s house. She double-clicked it and teleported out of her own home in a scattering of fairy dust, leaving her grunting client humping fresh air.

  It took him a moment to realised she was gone, and even then he was unable to assimilate it. The hooker had run out on the virtual world’s greatest lover.

  Axel Corvale: Huh?!!

  ***

  Doobie rezzed inside Maximillian Thrust’s Asian home, sunlight streaming across his tropical island paradise outside to slant in through the window and cast deep shadows amongst the chaos. Thrust was still there, where they had found him. Nothing had changed, and Doobie began a meticulous search of every hidden corner and crevice, switching POV when she could to look beneath sections of upturned floor. Nothing. It was still possible, she thought, that it was there somewhere, and that she just wasn’t finding it. If Thrust had possessed terraforming rights for the island, then the very sand beneath the house could have been churned and deformed, hiding forever any poseball that might be down there.

  But then, like that moment of revelation during a game of chess, when you see the route to checkmate with unparalleled clarity, she had an epiphany. The Land Window!

  She clicked on the name of the land, written in blue across the top of the screen, and opened up the Land Window. Then she clicked on the Objects tab. The information that filled the window told her how many prims the land would support. There were 1265 primitives, with 681 still available. Then the crucial piece of information. Primitives Owned by Parcel Owner: 582. Doobie did the math. There were two prims unaccounted for.

  At the foot of the Land Window was an option to refresh the list of object owners. Doobie clicked on it, and two names appeared. The first was Maximillian Thrust, who was the owner of objects accounting for 582 prims. The second was the owner of an object worth 2 prims. The missing poseball, Doobie was virtually sure. And her eyes opened wide in confusion and disbelief as she took on board the name, and knew now with an absolute certainty who the killer really was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Michael left the door open behind him as he moved step by careful step into the profound darkness that smothered the interior of Angela’s house. He placed a hand against the wall to his right and used it to guide himself the seven or eight feet to the long hallway that transected the house lengthwise.

  To the left, he knew, were the kitchen, bathroom, and utility rooms. To the right, a couple of bedrooms, Angela’s office, and at the far end of the hall, the sitting room where she conducted her sessions with clients, blinds drawn against the glare of the beach and the ocean beyond. A narrow staircase led up to a guest apartment with its own kitchen and sitting room.

  As he turned into the hall, he saw a faint glow of ghostly light spilling from the open door of what he knew to be the office. He waited for a moment, listening intently for the slightest sound. But the silence was so deep it was almost suffocating. All he could hear was the sound of the rain that still fell outside, the tattoo of it on the roof and the veranda. He started moving carefully down the hall, eyes now fully adjusted to the small amount of available light.

  He pushed open the first door he reached and could just make out the dark shape of a bed, a wardrobe, a dresser. He reached inside for a light switch. But its dull click produced no light, and the apprehension in him rose like the acid reflux in his digestive system.

  Further along the hall, he found a panel of switches, none of which brought light to his darkness, and he wondered what was powering the light source he saw emanating from the office. He was driven on now by a sense of dread, of a growing certainty that he was going to find Angela dead, and of wanting to get it over with. But there was, too, the very real sense that the killer might still be here. Waiting for him. The fact that there seemed to be power in the office put the thought in his head that perhaps someone had deliberately disabled the lighting circuits. Simple enough to throw a few switches in the fuse box.

  He passed a second bedroom and hesitated for just a few seconds before moving into the ghost light from the office. The door was only partially open. He reached out to push it gently inwards to reveal an arc of computer monitors ranged around the inside curve of a long, semicircular office desk. Six of them. Each one illuminated by a scene from Second Life, an AV in each, heads dropped, arms hanging at their sides, all with the Away text next to their names.

  Michael realised with a shock who each of them was, as his eyes jumped from screen to screen. Laffa Minit, Demetrius Smith, Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, Dark Daley. All of Angel’s patients from his group therapy session at The Blackhouse. The sixth and final screen displayed the Second Life welcome page that Michael had seen for the very first time at Arnold Smitts’ home the night of his murder. There were keyboards in front of each monitor, and a single office chair on castors. Spea
kers set behind the screens hummed with the familiar ambient sound of the virtual world.

  Michael stood rooted to the spot, mesmerised, confused, until a sound from along the hall filtered through the myriad thoughts that choked his brain and reignited his fear. It was just a small sound, as if the leg of a chair had scraped on a carpet. But it crashed into his thoughts like the discordant percussion of a Peking opera. He wheeled around toward the source of it, eyes straining in the gloom. He listened carefully to try to catch it again. Nothing. But there was somebody there. Of that he was certain.

  He resisted an urge to turn tail and run. The adrenalin pumping through his body was readying him for fight or flight. But he had come too far to run away now, into the arms of the mob who would kill him or the police who wouldn’t believe him. And so he prepared himself for the fight, tensed and ready, as he inched forward toward the sitting room.

  Double doors stood wide. An electric clock display on the far wall cast the only light around the room and confirmed Michael’s worst fears that someone had deliberately disabled the lights. The drapes on the side windows were drawn against the night, thick velvet curtains that fell luxuriantly to gather on the carpet. And as he passed them, he caught a tiny movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned in time to see the faintest reflection of light catching the blade as it plunged into his neck.

  The pain of it seared through his body, the knife cutting through sinew and muscle, missing vital arteries, but penetrating deep into the flesh of his left shoulder. He felt a disabling weakness surge through his body, and his legs buckled under him. As he fell to the floor, his head hit the carpet with a sickening thud. He felt the blade sliding out of the wound it had made, followed by a rush of his blood, warm and sticky, spreading over his neck and shoulder, soaking into the floor. A sense of panic almost crippled him entirely. It felt like his very life was flowing out of him.

  A dark figure emerged from the folds of the drapes and stepped over him, moving across the room to switch on a table lamp. The sudden light hurt like hell, and Michael screwed up his eyes against it. He put a hand to his neck and felt his blood wet on his fingers. He rolled over on to his side, opening his eyes to peer into the light to get a look at his attacker.

  “Get up, Michael.”

  The shock of hearing her voice made his eyes open wide. He struggled to his knees, clutching at his shoulder, steadying himself against the wall with his other hand. “Angela?”

  “Surprised?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to. For a clever man you’re pretty stupid, Michael. Weak. Driven by your emotions rather than your intelligence. Which made you perfect, really, for what I had in mind.”

  She slid open a drawer in her writing bureau and brought out a small handgun. She waved it at him, casually, almost relaxed.

  “I said get up.”

  So Detective Luis Angeloz was not, after all, Dark Daley or any of the others. They were all Angela. With a great effort of will, Michael managed to get to his feet. He felt the blood oozing between his fingers, and the pain was spreading down his back and across his chest. He felt giddy and took several staggering steps forward before dropping again to his knees. A bloody hand stopped him falling on his face.

  “Good. That’s going to look very convincing. You see, after I heard the side door being forced I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find. A kitchen knife. When you attacked me I stabbed you with it. But you were only wounded and came after me. I ran in here, where I took my gun from the bureau and…well, I think you can guess the rest.” She sat down, perched on the edge of an armchair, and he saw how pale she was. For for all her superficial confidence, there was a tremor in her voice. “Oh, and you should know. When you broke into my house you triggered a silent alarm system. The police are on their way, even as we speak. Too bad they won’t get here on time. You’ll be dead, and I will be distraught. Attacked by one of my own patients. Of course, I’ll tell them I didn’t realise it was you until after I’d shot you. Not that it would have made any difference. You don’t stop defending yourself from an attacker just because you know who he is.”

  “You killed Janey.”

  “The stupid girl came here trying to pass herself off as a policewoman. Asking questions about patients any detective would know I couldn’t answer. And in any case, I knew who she was. You’d talked about her often enough during our sessions.”

  “Did I?” Michael had no recollection. He could only ever remember talking about Mora. All those hours of self-indulgent grief were a distant blur now.

  “So she had to go, I’m afraid.”

  “But why, Angela? What’s it all about?”

  She sighed and looked at her watch. “Well, I suppose we have a few minutes. I can wait until we hear the siren before I shoot you. That way I won’t have to sit too long with you bleeding on my floor.”

  “Jesus, Angela! You’re a cold-blooded bitch!”

  Her smile was strained. “Yes. I suppose I am.” She drew a deep breath. “Where to begin…With Roger Bloom, I guess. A patient. Very interested when I told him my idea of starting group therapy sessions in Second Life. I’d already been in for a while by that time. Knew what I was doing and how I wanted to set things up. Turned out Roger was a real expert on the subject. Had his own software company in RL, created and scripted weapons systems in SL.”

  “Wicked Wilson.”

  Angela cocked an eyebrow. “Yes…You got further down that road than I expected. Well, Roger just couldn’t resist telling me how clever he was. Always in therapy, so it was confidential. Like the confessional. Plus, I think, he wanted into my panties. He tried so hard to impress me. Which made him very malleable. So, anyway, he told me he’d created and scripted a weapon that would not only kill an AV, but wipe any record of its account off the database. And—this was the really clever bit—transfer any money out of that account into his own. An untraceable transaction. But the truth is, he never saw its financial potential, Michael. He was a mischief-maker. Enjoyed the sheer act of fucking with people’s lives. A great big kid. I saw immediately how damned lucrative it could be. I mean, let’s face it, you don’t practise psychotherapy in Newport Beach without having a lot of very wealthy clients. If I could drop the idea, in casual conversation, that an SL account was an ideal place to hide money from the taxman, a business partner, a spouse, then persuade them to join my virtual group therapy…”

  She stood up and wandered toward him. Michael’s breath was becoming stertorous, as he continued to lose blood.

  “A simple matter, to kill their AVs with an alt of my own, and suddenly all that secret money is in my account. Money that none of them could report missing, since it was there illicitly.” She looked at him. “You’re not going to pass out on me before I finish my story, are you? I’ve been just dying to tell someone. And I know you’re just dying to hear it.”

  “You killed Wicked Wilson for his gun?”

  “It was easy, Michael. I invited him over for drinks. Played on his fantasies. He’d shown me how it was possible to amend the script to pay the money into any account he chose. I persuaded him to give me a demonstration. We went online. On two different computers. But what he could never have guessed was that I’d slip a little sedative into his bourbon. And when he drifted off into his happy slumber, I took control of his AV, transferred the gun to mine, and amended the script to pay into my account. Then shot him. Simple.

  “When he came round, I told him that the grid had shut down for maintenance, and that he had drunk way too much. I offered to drive him home in his car. When we got there, I shot him for real. Walked around the corner and got a taxi home. The Super Gun was mine.” She smiled. “And that’s when I hit on the really clever bit of my plan. When I persuaded a wealthy client to join group therapy in SL, I used the group to introduce the idea of hiding money in the account. Which was easy, because each and every one of the group was me. A small investment. Six computers, six AVs.
Each one, in many ways, the personification of some part of me that I’d always had to keep under wraps.

  “If was such fun, Michael. Hard for you to imagine. Being able to tell these poor little rich fucks exactly what I thought of them. All those hours of having to keep a lid on my private thoughts, finally given an outlet through Laffa, and Demetrius, and Dark, and the Tweedles. I could say anything through them. And I did. As you found out.”

  “So you killed your patients in RL after you killed them in SL.”

  “Good God, no. No need. Until Arnold Smitts, damn him! I had no idea he worked for the mob until I killed his AV, and ended up with three million in my account. Which was much more than I’d ever bargained for. He called me. Told me everything, without the least idea that it was me who had done it to him. He was terrified his employers would think he had ripped them off. But I knew that if these people started digging, there was a chance the money trail could lead back to me.

  “Of course, none of the money ever paid directly into my account. I had created Green Goddess, another AV, especially for that, and to do the killing. Even so, I needed to divert attention as far away from me as possible. I had to go to Smitts place and kill him to stop him telling anyone else about his connection with me. Then I set you up to be the recipient of the mob money. Amended the script before I shot Green and sent the cash winging its way into your account. So now the trail led to you, rather than me.”

  “And Jennifer Mathews?”

  “A spoiled brat. But smart, Michael. Way too smart. She started getting suspicious. And when her AV got killed and the money her father had put into her account just vanished, she came to see me, asking some very awkward questions. And with the whole Smitts thing having just blown up in my face, I couldn’t afford to have her pointing any fingers at me.”

  Michael fell over on to his side. He was getting very faint now. He heard her words, but was having trouble making sense of them any more.