Land of the Blind

by Jess Walter

  Michael and Charley didn’t seem to notice Dave’s delivery, which struck me as over-the-top. They watched intently as the two ships engaged in a rousing sea battle, firing cannons and—anachronistically—lasers at one another, the angles and views shifting back and forth as Louis pounded the keyboard and leaned back and forth as if learning to ride a bike.

  “The player controls the camera angles, everything,” I whispered. “We’re having some trouble with the sound.”

  Michael edged closer, an odd look on his face, as if he were trying to connect Louis’s frantic typing with the carnage he was seeing on the screen. Blasts hit Dave’s ship and sailors were blown off left and right, until corpses littered the water. That’s when another ship appeared.

  “Damn it!” Louis said right on cue. “He’s made a deal with another player. Samantha!”

  “Ha!” yelled Samantha. “I got you, Louis!”

  On the screen, a beautiful, Asian-looking woman commanded a roundish, pink ship that looked a little bit like an animated panty shield and fired lasers and cannons across the bow of Louis’s ship.

  “Jesus Christ,” Charley said.

  Michael’s mouth was wide open; he stepped even closer to get a better look.

  That’s when all the computer screens flashed, hummed with static, and went black.

  “Ah, shoot,” I said. “We did it again. We blew up the network.”

  “Damn it, Clark!” yelled Eli from the front of the room, on cue. “I told you it was too soon. I need more time.”

  “This is why he hasn’t wanted to get any investors,” I whispered. “He’s such a perfectionist. He takes it personally. He’s been working on this game for years.”

  “It shows,” said Charley.

  Eli stomped to the back of the room and turned off the computers. “We’re not ready, Clark. I need six more months.” And he stormed out of the room.

  I apologized and we sat in the room for a few more minutes, talking to some of the real players about how much they loved Empire. “We’ll get these bugs worked out,” I said. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see the other realms, the land and the mountains, and all of it.” That night I had dinner with Michael, Dana, and Charley and we talked generally and specifically about the game and its potential. Afterward, I drove them back to their hotel. In the hotel lobby Dana hugged me again, and Charley pumped my hand as if my arm might bring oil. Michael patted me on the shoulder. “Nicely done,” he said flatly; then he took Dana by the hand and dragged her toward the elevator.

  There was a message waiting for me in my hotel room. Dana, I thought, and my nerve ends felt alight. I hit play. It was from my mentor and best friend, Richard Stanton.

  “Clark? It’s Dick Stanton. Look, I don’t know how else to tell you this, but Max died this morning. He took some pills. The pain—” Dr. Stanton sighed. “They found him in his office. I just thought you’d want to know. You meant a lot to him.”

  I tried to call Dr. Stanton, but there was no answer. I could imagine the bar stool where he was sitting. I left the hotel and stood outside, tried to measure the depth in the night sky. I’d been home for ten days and hadn’t been out to see my parents. It had been about four months since I’d seen them. They didn’t even know I was in town. I started my rental car and drove east on the freeway, through industrial areas and down Trent to my old neighborhood. My parents still lived in the house on Empire Road and I parked across the street, watching Mom and Dad through the front picture window. She brought him a beer. They watched TV together. I hadn’t seen much of my parents in the last few years, in part because I believed that they blamed me somehow for Ben dying. I might’ve convinced them they were being irrational if I didn’t believe it so strongly myself.

  After a few minutes of watching them watch TV, I drove downtown and went back to my hotel room. I didn’t sleep. The next morning, I drove Michael, Dana, and Charley to the airport. Charley said he was going to think about it, talk to his partners, and then we’d have a conference call in a week. “Very impressive,” he said. “Top-notch.”

  Every time he said something like that, Dana smiled at me.

  At the airport bar Charley bought us all a drink, and then excused himself to go to the bathroom. He and Michael made eye contact before he left. Then Michael asked Dana to give us a few minutes alone. When she was gone, Michael reached in his suit pocket and came out with a slip of paper.

  “Charley likes your game very much,” Michael said. “We’re going to talk more about it when we get back, but he wanted me to tell you his initial reaction.”

  He slid the paper across the table to me. It said, simply, $1.5.

  “Is that—?”

  “Million,” Michael said. “Seed money. You draw up the papers.”

  “Jesus.”

  Then Michael leaned forward and his lips slid back over his teeth. “Look, you can cut your fuckin’ hair and put in your phony eye, but I know what you are. I’ve always known what you were. Portugal. Land mines.” He sneered. “You’re a fuckin’ low-rent bottom-feeder lawyer. You work for the biggest drug lawyer in Seattle. You don’t think I check out the people we work with?”

  He took the slip of paper back. “And I know Japanese animation when I see it.”

  I took a drink. It had been Louis’s idea to pretend that a Japanese cartoon was, in fact, the graphics to Empire. We used one of his favorites, Samurai Sea Battle Number 9, and Louis practiced until he could simulate the action in the cartoon. The VCR out in the hallway wired in to Louis’s computer, the TV encased in the computer screen, the phony players, Bryan cutting the power before they got too good a look, Eli’s creative fit—the whole drama had worked. Or so I’d thought. But Michael had seen through all of it.

  “Are you going to tell him?” I asked.

  Michael’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he said. “Dana likes you. And Charley likes your weird-looking friend. A million-five is a million-five. And even though you’re two years away from having anything worthwhile, there’s something there.”

  He reached out and finished his bourbon.

  “Anyway, it’s always better to have the crooks working for you.” He waved his drink to the bartender and turned to face me full on. “But I want in. I want shares. And if you ever pull something like that again and I’m not in on it, I will make sure you go to jail and I will feed your law license to my fucking dog. Do we have an agreement?”

  Dana and Charley were walking back together.

  “Do we have an agreement?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  They arrived and Charley picked up his drink. “To Empire!” he said.

  Dana squeezed my arm.

  “To Empire,” said Michael, and he put his arm around Dana’s waist, pulling her away from me.

  He nuzzled her neck and she blushed and turned in to him. And it was at that moment that I first pictured it. It only takes one thought like that, the door opening a crack, and you start imagining how it would work, what you would do, how you might get away with it. It was at that precise moment that it first occurred to me that the world would be a simpler and better place if Michael Langford were not in it.

  Everyone dreams the thing he is.

  —Calderon de la Barca, Life Is a Dream

  VII

  EVEN ASSHOLES DESERVE A BREAK

  1 | THE DEAD GUY

  The dead guy is lying on his side, as if he’s just fallen out of his chair. He is heavyset, with a round face and wire-frame glasses that are still hooked over one of his ears. His thinning red hair is furrowed with perfect comb lines, except around the ears and back, where it curls like a clown’s hair. He is wearing blue jeans, the cuffs rolled up, and a gray T-shirt, and he is barefoot, his legs crossed at the ankle, one of his feet wedged into the carpet—toes down. The room is quiet, and lit only by the humming computer above the corpse, its screen saver alternating pictures of Napoleonic soldiers with idyllic sketches of forested lands and two scrolling messages
in big bold letters: EMPIRE. MORE THAN A GAME and EMPIRE. MAKE YOUR OWN RULES. She breathes heavy, through her mouth, and the room seems to close around her and the body—a forced, sad intimacy.

  Caroline reaches for the light switch but stops herself before disturbing any prints. She removes her flashlight from her belt and shines it down on the body and the carpet. It’s a tight weave, so footprints are unlikely unless the killer—who is she kidding—unless Clark tramped through blood on his way out.

  Blood. From the doorway she can see it spattered everywhere that her flashlight lands: on the computer keyboard, on the ceiling, on a coffee cup on the desk. The main current of blood is on the floor, and it’s been here long enough to have its own history, of flow and desiccation, soaking outward from the body, flooding the forest of carpeting, and finally lapping onto the linoleum in the kitchen, where it dried brown and hard like taffy.

  She pulls out her phone, punches in the number for the desk sergeant, but doesn’t hit the call button. Not yet. The first rule of a crime scene: Don’t do anything that might disrupt evidence. But she’s also supposed to check for a pulse, and even though the smell and the gallon of spewed blood don’t make that very likely, she can always say later that she wanted to make sure the stiff was…well, stiff.

  So she puts her gloves on, slides out of her shoes, and steps carefully into the room, letting the door close behind her.

  As she walks toward the dead guy, the beam from her flashlight moves across his body and gives the illusion that he is rolling over to face her. And even though she knows it’s a trick of light, of perception, she looks away, raising the flashlight to take in the carriage house apartment. It is so sparsely decorated as to feel temporary. Half the apartment is made up of this small office, which is maybe twelve by twelve. A desk is pushed against one wall. The other walls are lined with bookshelves, and these are covered with fantasy and historical novels, stacks of computer magazines and binders with the word EMPIRE written on them. There’s a file cabinet just to the left of the doorway, and she thumbs through some papers on top of it—financial documents, investment reports, quarterly statements. She finds a bottom line on one of them. Balance last period: $45,108.44. Balance this period: $2,062.05. There is also a computer-printed airline ticket for a flight Friday night: Spokane to Seattle, Seattle to Los Angeles, L.A. to Belize. The name on the ticket is Eli Boyle.

  Just beyond the desk is the door to the kitchen. The stiff fell to his left, pitching slightly forward, and since Caroline doesn’t want to step over the body, she shines the light over him, into the kitchen: boxes of sweetened cereal on the kitchen counter, a tower of dirty bowls in the sink. Next to the kitchen is a bedroom, with a futon and a television on the floor. Just to the left of that is a small bathroom.

  Looking around the cozy apartment, Caroline forgets, sniffs once through her nose, and almost vomits. She covers her mouth and nose with one hand, and with the other rummages through her bag until she finds a stick of flavored lip balm. She applies it to her upper lip, and the cherry smell under her nose helps calm her stomach.

  When the nausea has passed, she opens her eyes and looks down at the cell phone in her hand, the number for the desk sergeant still on the screen.

  She looks around the legs of the desk and the chair but doesn’t see the gun anywhere. One time in fifty the shooter will panic and drop the gun where he used it, but not this time. She looks down at the desk: two sips of coffee left in a cup, a brown apple core sitting on top of a book about Web design, sunglasses, another cup with pens and pencils in it. The chair has spun back and away from the desk, as if the stiff stood up too quickly. She tries to imagine how it happened:

  He’s sitting at the computer. Clark comes in and the stiff stands and turns.

  No. He fell facing away from the door. He didn’t turn. He was sitting, or standing, at the computer when he was shot. She shines the flashlight on the ceiling again, at a small hole in the drywall surrounded by spattered blood. Right above the desk. Why would he stay at his desk unless he knew the person coming in? Unless he was expecting him? Clark comes up behind the guy and—

  But the angle is wrong. According to the blood and the wound, the angle of the shot is almost straight through the head, from the right side up. That means the killer had to come in the door, step to the right, and shoot up. It’s more of a suicide angle.

  Unless…Clark wants something from the guy at the computer. He nudges the guy at the desk, jams the gun into his cheek, demanding, pressing the barrel into the side of his face. Naturally, the stiff tilts his head to the left, away from the gun. Caroline draws a line with one hand and uses the other to simulate the gun, lining it up to match the chair and the hole in the ceiling. Or maybe the stiff reaches over and knocks the shooter’s hand down and the gun points up and goes off. Yes, a struggle. The gun goes off accidentally.

  Great. She’s inventing scenarios in which Clark Mason is innocent.

  Finally, she crouches next to the body.

  In the past she’s had to search for fatal wounds, but this one is so obvious as to be gaudy: she traces with her flashlight a stark, bone-and-blood gorge running from the man’s teeth to the top of his head. The wound on-ramps through his cheek, leaving a ghastly sneer where it uncovers his upper molars, then tunnels behind his cheekbone, bursts forth and takes his right eye, then goes underground again, a thick, straight, dark bruise beneath the dull putty of his forehead until it exits—volcanic, meaty—at the seam of his thinning hairline.

  She looks up and shakes her head in sympathy.

  The bottom side of the entry wound has a dark burn ring, meaning the gun was right against his head when Clark pulled the trigger. If it wasn’t an accident, it was vicious and angry, unimaginable.

  The phone number for the desk sergeant is still on her phone.

  “Damn,” she says aloud. This is all going to get away from her the minute she makes the call. The process will take over. It always does. The place will crawl with cops. The lieutenant will want a briefing, the public information officer will want something for the vultures, the deputy ME will pronounce death (Aren’t you being hasty? someone will joke), and the rubber-gloved evidence techs will come in like ants on a Popsicle, securing the crime scene, marking, collecting, and tagging evidence, dusting light switches and telephones and countertops and doorknobs, measuring indentations in the carpet, checking the driveway for tire tracks, the whole thing reduced to a series of photos and spatters and latent prints, too many people moving too fast, making misjudgments and bad decisions, disturbing Caroline’s quiet measure of this thing.

  Certainly the confession will become moot, a simple confirmation of what they already know, and not what Clark has promised. Meaning? Context? Forget it. There will only be one real question: Where’s the gun? Motivation is a nice bow, but that’s a package for someone else to wrap: reporters crafting stories, prosecutors choosing between first and second degree, judges reading mitigation reports. Cops don’t care what a thing means. Or, more accurately, they don’t believe it. They know there’s only one reason this shit happens: somebody wanted. Sex, money, revenge, drugs, what does it matter? It’s all the same. The first crime is the wanting.

  What did you want, Clark?

  The courts will need those details. What you wanted (motive), when you wanted it (premeditation), and how you went about getting it (mitigating factors) can make the difference between twenty years and life. And if you wanted something too much and too soon or too often, or went about getting it the wrong way, they might even put you to death. In Washington State, they used to be thoughtful enough to give you a choice: needle, juice, or rope. Needle would be harsh, confining, strapped down like that, a mockery of what that gurney is usually used for, medicated to a darkness that must feel nothing like sleep. But no matter how bad the needle, it’s better than the juice. The juice scares her. There is a picture they used to show tight-lipped suspects, a picture from the late fifties of a guy in Georgia whose chair mi
sfired, sparked, and caught, a guy who didn’t die until his nuts and armpits burst into flame and he burned from the inside out.

  Even so, for Caroline, nothing would be worse than the rope. And not for the reasons that death penalty opponents go on about—the pain and inhumanity of having your neck snap that way, the indignity of shitting and pissing your last moments away. No, what gets her is the fall. She hates those dreams, the ones in which her feet scramble for ground and it’s just not there. To have that be her last conscious thought, falling like that—Jesus. That would be unbearable.

  What did you want, Clark?

  She looks down once more at the phone in her hand. She goes through a mental list of all the rules she’s broken this weekend, from the minute Spivey told her to go home. Where does it lead? Finally she raises her thumb and hits the call button.

  The desk sergeant’s voice shakes her from her tired stupor. “Spokane Police Department. Sergeant Kaye.”

  “Dennis. It’s Caroline Mabry.”

  “I thought you were going home.”

  “Actually, I went to interview a potential witness first, and I, uh—” She looks down at the stiff. “I came across a DOA. Gunshot wound.”

  “No shit. Suicide?”

  “Not unless he ate the gun after.”

  “Got you a homo-cide?”

  “Looks like.”

  “Make and model?”

  “White male. Approximately thirty-five to forty. Headshot.”

  “I’ll get some units en route,” he asks. “You want me to call Spivey?”

  She shines her flashlight from the body to the chair and finally to the computer, where the screen saver has just shifted to a digital soldier holding out a sword, challenging her, preparing to run her through. The soldier fades, replaced by a drawing of pastureland, a rock fence, a flock of sheep, a castle in the distance, and the words EMPIRE: MORE THAN A GAME. Something about the screen saver sticks in her mind.