Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  EROS cannot hear.

  But it does talk. Its voice can take on any pitch between twenty and twenty thousand hertz, which is slightly superfluous since my multimedia speakers bottom out at around one hundred, and my rock-and-roll-damaged eardrums probably top out at ten thousand. Also, the pitch versatility is misleading. EROS’s voice is not unlike Drewe’s when she is dictating charts. Whether I select a baritone or tenor frequency, the words will be repeated at that single pitch-a perfect monotone-until the listener believes he is trapped inside the tin-can robot from Lost in Space. And vocal monotony is not conducive to sexual fantasy unless your idea of hot sex is having an inter-species relationship with a machine.

  EROS’s voice program does have what’s called a “lexical stress” feature, but it sucks. It makes the voice sound like a saxophone played by a drunk who accents all the wrong notes. A couple of months ago Miles sent me a package containing circuit boards he claimed would give my computer not only a better voice, but also the Holy Grail: voice-recognition capability. Naturally, those circuit boards are still sealed inside their antistatic bags in the box they came in. For my purpose-listening to lengthy e-mail messages-the droning digital voice EROS already has is good enough.

  Scanning Miles’s messages, I set the frequency to a medium baritone-Miles’s register-and lie down on the twin bed to listen.

  Hello, snitch. Here’s an update from Serial Killer Central. I’ve finally met the elusive Dr. Arthur Lenz, and I am impressed (though not as impressed as he is with himself).

  If you don’t already know (and how could you?) there is a massive bureaucratic battle afoot between the FBI and the various police departments involved in what they are vulgarly calling the “EROS murders.” (Is “vulgarly” a word? I defer to the grammarians on that.) The instinct of the police (I use “police” collectively for Houston, San Francisco, New Orleans, Minneapolis, et al.) is to shut down EROS for the foreseeable future. This is obviously short-term thinking. They apparently believe that shutting us down will keep “Strobekker” (whoever he really is) off the playing field. The FBI (read Lenz) quite rightly understands that shutting down EROS will only send our predator to greener pastures-or at least different ones. I give Lenz credit for understanding that the digital fields of the Lord are quite expansive, and that our beast at play is well versed in traveling them.

  Segue: while writing this I have recalled a bit of high school Emerson.

  If the red slayer thinks he slays

  Or if the slain thinks he is slain

  They know not well the subtle paths

  I keep, and pass, and turn again

  From “Brahma” I believe. Come to think of it, from now on, when I refer to the killer, I shall call him Brahma. “Strobekker” makes me picture a pasty-faced Minnesotan of Swedish descent, killing with the same knife he uses during the graveyard shift at the meat-packing plant.

  I think Lenz plans to lure Brahma to his destruction by somehow manipulating our network. The police argue the obvious: that every minute EROS is up and running is another minute women are at risk. But Lenz has used your session printouts to good advantage. He points out that Brahma not only has a recognizable prose style on-line, but also that his messages, which are error-free for eighty-five percent of the exchanges with his victims, become full of errors as the dates of the murders approach. Lenz didn’t know why that might be, so I decided to throw him a bone. I think Brahma is using an advanced voice-recognition unit, which allows him to simply speak his words rather than type them. Maybe he works for a computer company and has access to prototype equipment. A unit like that might not be easily portable, and he probably couldn’t use it remotely because of cellular dropouts. So when he takes his show on the road, he’s got to type like everybody else.

  Anyway, Lenz realized that the FBI can use this “error-rate flag” as an early-warning system to know when Brahma is on the move and women are in imminent danger. He also points out that except for Karin Wheat, only women on the blind-draft billing system have been killed so far. This group represents a significant but minority number of total female subscribers, approximately twenty-three percent. Five hundred seventy-eight women.

  Lenz also argues that allowing Brahma to continue on EROS will give the FBI time to track him through the phone lines, which Agent Baxter assures both Jan and myself will be but a matter of a day or two. The local police departments seem to have a lot of faith in this argument and will probably relent. Bureaucratic panic always gives weight to the quick-fix solution. But I don’t share Baxter’s faith in the phone-trace strategy. Brahma has been killing women for some time. He had enough forethought to murder a man for his on-line identity. Surely he realized that the day would come when the police would attempt to trace him to his lair by phone. N’est-ce pas?

  I have my own theories about Brahma’s modus operandi, but I choose not to share them with Lenz at this point. The time may come when I need bargaining chips with this man.

  Ciao.

  Hearing Miles’s flamboyant e-mail style repeated by a mindless android voice is singularly unsettling. Yet even through the insectile drone, I heard one thing distinctly: Miles Turner is having fun.

  His second message is much briefer.

  The Strobekker account went active under the alias “Shiva” at 7:42P.M. Baxter’s techs traced the call from our office through a couple of Internet nodes in the Midwest to New Jersey, through a transatlantic satellite to London, then back into New Jersey. By that time he’d dropped off. They’re pulling out the stops, and they’re faster at it than I thought possible, but they don’t know much more than they did before they started. The atmosphere is like Mission Impossible-a bunch of guys in suits and ties playing with gadgets. Do you think Brahma wears a tie?

  Ciao.

  I roll off the bed and sit down at the EROS computer. Feeling more than a little paranoid, I print out hard copies of Miles’s messages, then delete them from the computer’s memory. Part of me wants to log onto Level Three and lurk in the background, searching for traces of Strobekker or Shiva or Brahma or whoever he is. But something has been itching at the back of my brain since I talked to the FBI. Ever since I realized Baxter and Lenz might leave EROS up and running despite the fact that women are in danger. I have friends on EROS. More than friends. And no matter what Miles or Jan or the FBI think is prudent, I have a duty to warn those people.

  My closest friend on EROS is a woman who calls herself Eleanor Rigby. Her choice of alias was probably influenced by one of the stranger informal customs that has developed on EROS. For some reason, wild or obscure code names like “Electric Blue” or “Leather Bitch” or “Phiber Phreak”-so common on other networks-were absent on EROS from the beginning. It wasn’t company policy to discourage them, but somehow a loose convention evolved and was enforced by community consensus, more a matter of style than anything else. Apparently EROS subscribers prefer their correspondents to possess actual names for aliases, rather than surreal quasi-identities. All in all I think this has benefited the network; it has kept things more human.

  The interesting thing is that while outlandish noms de plume are discouraged, the practice of assuming names made famous by literary, musical, or film works is very popular. I frequently see messages addressed from Holden Caulfield to Smilla Jaspersen, from the Marquis de Sade to Oscar Wilde, or from Elvis Presley to Polythene Pam. Moreover, it seems that at least some of the subscribers choose their famous (or infamous) pseudonyms to fit their own personalities. In the case of “Eleanor Rigby”-an alias that belongs to a woman named Eleanor Caine Markham-I’m positive the name was chosen out of a deep affinity for the character in the Beatles song. Eleanor Markham is a moderately successful mystery writer from Los Angeles who, except for a second job, rarely leaves her house. The same melancholy sense of loneliness that pervades the Lennon-McCartney tune shadows more than a few of her messages.

  Yet Eleanor’s second job seems wholly out of character with this first image. To supplemen
t her income, she sometimes works as a body double for major actresses who have reached that exalted status where they do not have to agree to remove their clothes on-screen to win roles. I know it’s sexist, but I always imagined women who had these jobs as airheaded blondes with exquisite bodies but common faces who spent their days at the spa working on their legs and abs or at their plastic surgeon’s getting their boobs reinflated. I have never seen Eleanor Markham’s face-her mystery novels carry no jacket photos-but everything I have learned about her confirms an opposite truth. When Eleanor is not exposing her derriere or breasts or whatever for the camera, she is sitting in her Santa Monica beach house writing very literate, wry whodunits or talking to anonymous friends via her computer.

  Her explanation for these seemingly contradictory lifestyles is that she has a sister who is confined to a wheelchair for life by spinal injuries received in a traffic accident. Eleanor feels her sacred duty is to take care of this sister as her parents would have, were they still alive. I cannot fault her reasoning.

  All that said, let me confess the obvious: Eleanor Rigby is my on-line lover. My digital squeeze. What do I know about her other than what I’ve already revealed? She is thirty years old. She has never had plastic surgery. She describes her face not as plain but as “real”-more Audrey Hepburn than Michelle Pfeiffer, but not as ethereal as Audrey. She has a wit like a razor and she is uniquely gifted at describing sex in words.

  She is also generous. Eleanor knows that two-way conversations are fine for foreplay but that typing requires the use of at least one hand. Thus, when she is getting me off, she is quite willing to type endless lines of charged erotica until the moment that I signal her with a relieved and heartfelt banality such as: Wow.

  I return the favor in a different way.

  Eleanor does not usually stimulate herself while on-line. She prefers that I compose lengthy e-mail messages that she can print out and peruse free from any constraints on time or dexterity. I’m sure the proximity of her disabled sister has something to do with this. This is also why Eleanor is registered to EROS on a blind-draft account. She apparently reads many of my printed messages while locked in the bath.

  Tonight I query her the moment I log on. Eleanor frequently lurks in silence, eavesdropping on the conversations of others (searching for material for her novels, she tells me) and so is often present when I send out my usual query. I type:

  HARPER› Father MacKenzie calling.

  Eleanor is the only EROS client with whom I use my real name. There is a delay of thirty seconds or so, then:

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Hello, Harper dear. What are you in the mood for?

  HARPER› I need to talk to you.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Talk as in _talk_? ‹g›

  (The ‹g› symbol stands for “grin.” The lines preceding and following a word indicate emphasis, in place of italics.)

  HARPER› Yes, just talk. Meet me in Room 64.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Hmm. I guess the little woman talked you into it this week, eh?

  Yes, like a corporeal mistress, Eleanor knows my marital situation. Some of it, anyway. With a twinge of guilt I mouse into the private room designated Room 64 and type:

  HARPER› No present erection, thank you.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Too bad. Should I sharpen up my pencil?

  HARPER› No. This is serious.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› How ominous. Is this a Dear John letter?

  HARPER› No.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Well, then?

  HARPER› You must keep what I am about to tell you absolutely between us.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› My lips are sealed. And if you make a horrid male pun I shall disconnect.

  HARPER› You’re in danger, Eleanor.

  She doesn’t respond for several beats.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› What kind of danger?

  HARPER› Physical danger. There’s been

  I am typing, but suddenly nothing is going through to Eleanor. I stare at the screen in puzzlement until this message appears in large block letters:

  SHAME ON YOU, SNITCH

  My puzzlement turns to fury. This message can only be from Miles, and its sudden insertion into my private chat with Eleanor tells me something that makes my blood boil. Miles has the ability to read my private communications whenever he pleases. I blink as further characters appear.

  SORRY TO INTRUDE

  BUT WE CAN’T HAVE YOU

  SCARING THE PAYING CUSTOMERS

  LOOSE CANNON AND ALL THAT

  PLEASE FIND SOME OTHER WAY TO GET

  ELEANOR

  OFF THE NET

  IF YOU MUST

  CIAO

  The next words that appear are:

  ELEANOR RIGBY› What just happened?

  She must not have seen Miles’s message. I type:

  HARPER› A glitch in my modem.

  What now? Do I ignore Miles? Go ahead and warn Eleanor and a few others? My anger says yes. But what will be the result? A network-wide panic, probably. Eleanor and I are very close, but she has a writer’s imagination and love of drama. Could she really keep secret the possibility that there is a murderer stalking the female clients of EROS?

  ELEANOR RIGBY› You said I was in danger. Physical danger. What were you talking about?

  HARPER› You misunderstood. That was the start of a fantasy file I wrote for you this morning. It was sort of a Mata Hari thing, spies and sex, with you in the lead role.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Well if that’s the case, send it through!

  HARPER› My modem’s on the blink. Pretty embarrassing for the sysop, isn’t it? I’ll have it fixed by tomorrow. I’ll put the file through then. Sorry to interrupt you for nothing.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Wait, Harper. I hate to confess this, but knowing you don’t need me right now makes me need you. Could you possibly conjure up some stimulating prose for a lonely 30-year-old spinster with an itch?

  HARPER› You mean realtime?

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Yes.

  HARPER› Unusual for you. How stimulating?

  ELEANOR RIGBY› My sister is at a film with her one friend. I have the house all to my selfish self. Please make it hot enough for an on-line conclusion; i.e. once we get to the good stuff, please don’t stop until I signal with a shriek of ecstasy.

  I pause, trying to rein in my thoughts. I honestly don’t feel like this tonight. Especially after Drewe and I had our actual-reality interlude in the Explorer. But Eleanor has done me this favor many nights.

  HARPER› Romantic or dangerous?

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Romantic _and_ dangerous.

  HARPER› All right. We are finally meeting face to face. Seeing each other for the first time.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Where?

  HARPER› The Peabody Hotel. Memphis, Tennessee. We’re in the lobby, a huge open room with a bar and a grand piano and ducks and tons of atmosphere.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› _Ducks_?

  HARPER› Symbol of the hotel. Trust me.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Oh, I do.

  HARPER› I’m not as handsome as you have imagined me, but you aren’t disappointed. I have a certain power over you that you didn’t expect. You want to please me, and this makes you a little angry. You understand?

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Perfectly. What do you think of me?

  HARPER› Mercy fuck.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Harper!

  HARPER› Sorry.;) You’re more beautiful than I imagined. Your body-double’s body was a given, but your symmetry still surprises me. Petite, and your face more feminine than I could envision.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Feminine how?

  HARPER› The blend of curve and angle. Softs and hards. Cheek and jaw. Defined brows, nebulous eyes. Dusk is falling on the Memphis streets, over the river. Yellow lamps come up inside and light you like a painter’s hand.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› What am I wearing?

  HARPER› White linen. Appropriate for a deflowering.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› You give me far too much credit. ‹g›


  HARPER› I intend to boldly go where no man has gone before.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Dare I ask?

  HARPER› No.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Yummy.

  HARPER› I see shadows of your nipples through the linen. They look more brown than pink.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› How do you like my breasts?

  HARPER› Champagne-glass size, exquisitely shaped.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› What do we talk about?

  HARPER› Inanities.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› How long do we talk?

  HARPER› Not very. We’ve said all we have to say on EROS, haven’t we?

  ELEANOR RIGBY› Do we diddle under the table? Victorian teasing?

  HARPER› No. I sign the suite number on the bill and lead you by the hand across the high-ceilinged lobby to the bank of elevators. In the elevator we kiss for the first time.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› A long kiss?

  HARPER› When the door opens, we’re still kissing. An older couple is staring at us like we are crazy.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› I’m already wet.

  HARPER› Not yet.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› I’m speaking in the present tense, dear. Off-line.

  HARPER› Fine, but we’re not going to rush. When the stupid credit card key finally works, I pull you inside the room but do not turn on the light.

  ELEANOR RIGBY› We haven’t been in the suite until now?

  HARPER› No. Before you can say anything, I close the door and slip past you in the darkness, pulling my shoes off as I walk. You call out to me, but I don’t answer. I hear you bang your foot into a chair. You curse. We’re going to play a game, I say. What kind of game? you ask.

  I stop typing for a few moments, letting the images flow freely in my head.

  HARPER› A hunting game, I reply. I’m going to hunt you in the dark suite. And the first rule is: we can’t talk to each other. Even when I find you, we cannot speak. And there’s another catch. I should have mentioned it earlier, but… well… there’s another person in the room.