Reset

by Kirk Dougal

  “I’ll bet the landlord would have plenty to say about that,” Jim said.

  Rick blew smoke toward the opening but never turned his head. “His dad packed up and left one day when we were kids. Just went off for work and never came back. Ghost always felt bad because of the EPP he couldn’t get a job to help out. After The Kindred was released and the money started rolling in, he bought his mom a house. She never had to work another day. A good son.” He flicked the butt out the window and looked at his former partner. “She died during one of the times that I disappeared inside the games. Never even made it to the funeral.”

  “Yeah, well we all have things we’d like to go back and change in our past.”

  Rick laughed but the sound was raw and grating to his ears. “He had a sister, Kailin. She always hated me when we were kids but when you find her I’d like to talk to her.”

  “No problem, Slugger.”

  The sound of feet on the worn carpet caught their attention and they turned to see Strick, Talbot, and the lead forensic tech walking toward them.

  “We’ve got something,” Strick said as held out a tablet. For the first time since Rick met the agent, the man hesitated, his veneer of confidence dropping for an instant. “But we don’t know what it is.”

  Rick activated the screen and stared at the photo. The image had been pulled out until all he could see was part of his friend’s arm and a glowing blue smudge. He reminded himself the figure had been drawn by Ghost in his own blood.

  “What is it?” asked Jim. “It looks like my granddaughter’s finger paintings. They're usually supposed to be some kind of animal but I can never figure them out until she tells me.”

  Something tickled at the back of Rick’s thoughts as Jim spoke but it flitted away just as fast as it appeared. He continued to stare at the backward “c” with a triangle on the closed side. “Was there anything else that showed up?”

  “Just a few drops of splatter and the marks where he was pulling himself across the floor,” answered the tech. “The blood wasn’t visible so he must have wiped it away. It smudged too much for us to be able to tell what was left. We still have not located his bracetech.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective Dowland,” Strick said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to have you come into our command center tomorrow and help us go over the evidence one more time. I'll clear it with your captain. Until then, Detective Boulden can take you back to the station house.”

  Rick nodded and walked down the hall. He tried not to notice how Agent Talbot stared at him as he moved by.

  *****

  Jim attempted to make conversation on the drive but after the third attempt, when Rick only grunted in return, the man gave up. He began humming a song and tapping out the beat on the steering wheel at stop lights.

  Rick dropped into his thoughts, willing the world to retreat. He brought up everything he could remember about Ghost—like the time he and a couple of other guys walked in on him in college when he was getting busy with a girl who was almost as pale.

  Tap, tap—tap, tap.

  He remembered the first time they all got drunk. They were still in high school and Mrs. Shafer made them stay until the next day so they were not out driving.

  Tap, tap, tap—tap, tap, tap.

  He remembered the first time the two of them had played a virtual reality program, the way they had been drawn in until they realized they could make the game even more intense.

  Tap, tap, tap—tap, tap.

  He remembered the late nights when he tried to make Ghost understand the changes needed to The Kindred so the game played more realistically, more challenging, more terrifying.

  Tap—tap, tap—tap— tap, tap, tap.

  Rick remembered the look on Ghost’s face as he stared down at him on the hospital bathroom floor: the disgusted curl of his lip and the dark bloom of anger in his cheeks. He also remembered the pain in his friend’s eyes and the tears.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Rick opened his mouth to scream at Jim, punch him in the cheek, anything to make him stop the incessant noise.

  But another memory popped into his mind. The night he, Ghost, and that bastard, Gardener, had laughed themselves silly after he killed a pesky player inside The Kindred. The one who tried to shadow him everywhere, learn his secrets—the secrets of the game—so he could beat The Beast. Rick had annihilated the character, embarrassing him in front of the thousands of players that had been inside at the time. But the story of the thrashing reverberated through the game players for months, adding to Rick’s growing legend until the kid changed his name to get away from the ridicule.

  That hadn’t stopped Rick, though. He found the kid under his new name and went out of his way to make his life inside the game hell. But the kid kept coming back, taking each death, resetting, and coming back to learn more. Rick eventually lost track of how many times he killed the player, sent him packing home from the game.

  Gardener finally gave the kid his nickname, the one that spread through the game with the speed only humiliation could fuel. Gardener was the highbrow artist of the trio and he had gone through all of the phases when he was in school, including the one where poetry played a part in how he saw the world.

  It was Gardener who said Rick caused the kid to die more times than Edgar Allan Poe had murdered his characters, giving rise to the nickname that stuck. Meant to be an insult, the player surprised them by embracing the idea, using Poe character names for all his resets.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping”

  “Turn the car around!” Rick said. “I know what Ghost was trying to tell me.” He braced himself against the door as Jim jerked over the wheel and turned on the lights.

  *****

  Strick and Talbot walked down the steps of the apartment building as Jim slammed on the brakes, sliding the car to a stop. Rick was already moving when the sound echoed off the nearby buildings. He sprinted past the two agents who stared, their mouths open, as he ran between them.

  “He figured it out!” Jim yelled.

  Rick ran through the lobby, leaping up the stairs two at a time. There were still a few agents in the second floor hallway when he burst off the landing and Rick startled them, earning some names that would not be polite in mixed company. He never slowed until he reached Ghost’s apartment door, elbowing the only remaining tech out of the way.

  “Hey! You need gloves!”

  Rick stopped long enough to grab a set of the purple gloves and continued into the apartment. By then, the pounding of more footsteps echoed in the hall.

  Ghost’s body was gone and Rick stared at the floor where it had been earlier. All that remained now was a stain on the beat-up wood floor and some of the drying agent the techs had used to clean up the blood.

  “What have you got, Dowland?” Strick panted as he ran into the room.

  Rick continued to stare until he heard the other steps die in the room. “Ghost was trying to leave a message for me, one only I would understand. He was lying in bed, playing a game when the killer arrived. He tried to get away but the killer stabbed him and Ghost dropped to the floor. He’s scared,” Rick paused and took a deep breath, “but all he can think about is warning me. His only thought is to leave me a message. His bracetech is gone so he tries to drag himself across the floor to his tablet. But the killer was still here so he had to improvise. Ghost drew the picture onto his arm and then blotted off the blood so the killer wouldn’t see it.”

  “So what did he want you to know?” Jim asked. “What was that thing on his arm?”

  Rick took a deep breath. “It was a bird.” He looked at Jim. “An animal, just like your granddaughter’s finger paintings.”

  “So the little triangle was the beak,” Talbot said, her head cocked to one side. “But what does that tell us?”

  Rick slipped a glove on his hand and walked past the desk. He reached down to the bottom shelf and grabbed a book out o
f the case. “This is what he wanted me to see.” He walked back to the trio and handed the book to Strick.

  “The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe,” he said.

  “The bird on his arm was a raven,” Rick said. “Ghost's killer is the gamer we used to call the Raven.”

  The trio stared at him. “The Kindred was a long time ago,” Strick finally said, forehead wrinkled in either disbelief or concern. “How do we catch him?”

  “You won’t.” Rick ripped off the glove and walked to the doorway. “But I will.”

  Chapter 8

  Rick leaned back from the table and ran a hand over his chin. In front of him were seven folders, the thinnest on the far right with Ghost’s name on the cover. He was afraid to look at his watch to see how long he had been going through the files from the connected murders but the dark sky outside the window told him several hours had disappeared.

  “Did you make it all the way through or just give up?”

  Rick turned to look at Talbot leaning on the doorpost, arms folded over her cream-colored blouse. He noticed the way the fluorescent glare played off the shiny material, accenting her curves with lights and shadows.

  “I lasted longer than Jim.” Soft snoring rose from the detective stretched out on the couch on the far side of the room. “But I could use a drink, Agent Talbot,” Rick added.

  She smiled and walked over to the coffee pot, one of the big industrial urns that may not produce anything tasty but would pump out a lot of caffeine-loaded liquid. Talbot filled two mugs and moved to the opposite side of the table, sliding one of the cups over to him. “This is the best I can do for you right now, Detective. Besides you’re going to need to call me Gwen for anything stronger. Do you prefer RJ or Rick?”

  He winced at the nickname from his youth. “Rick is fine.”

  “You really must hate tech now. All of those files can be shown on the e-boards. I can only name a handful of old-timers who still examine the paper copies.” Gwen’s smile took any sting out of her words.

  He shrugged in reply.

  “Okay, Rick, what did you see in the files?”

  He gulped some coffee before he started. “The first six are obviously part of the killer’s string. The money is the giveaway. Almost twenty million, if those figures are correct, all in cash.”

  “But four of the victims were men, two were women,” Gwen said. “Two were in their seventies, three in their sixties, and one was only forty-six years-old. There are no business ties that we have been able to find. Some of them belonged to the same charities but those ties are very weak. And as near as we can tell, none of your friend’s money has been touched.”

  “There is a connection some place because that is how they are being chosen,” Rick said. “If we cannot find a tie-in above the board, then it must be illegal.”

  “Two of them never even had a parking ticket,” Gwen said with a frown, “let alone a real charge.”

  “But they were all killed while they were breaking the law.” He paused to drink more coffee. The brew would have tasted a lot better laced with whiskey, but at least it kept him awake. “It all comes back to the games. They were sleepers—an illegal activity. Which means they were dealing with people and groups who were not afraid to break the law themselves. Maybe they were all using the same peeper. Maybe they were all using the same illegal feed. The games are the key.”

  Jim yawned and struggled into a sitting position, the old couch groaning under his shifting weight. “Personally, I never thought you could go wrong by following the money.” He rubbed his face with both hands before continuing. “Our killer is in it for the money.”

  Rick nodded. “The money is a goal and the end result. But my guess is the FBI hasn’t had a lot of luck searching down that trail.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Gwen said. “In each case the funds were electronically wired out of the victims’ accounts into banks that do not exist. Whoever did this is good enough to mask it from the Fed. That pocket money is gone.”

  “Pocket money?” Jim asked. “Twenty million dollars is pocket money?”

  “For these kinds of people,” Rick said, “it is. The financials in the files show all of the vics had millions, hundreds of millions, that were not touched. The killer only took what was the easiest to get to, quick in and out.”

  “So, unless we want to wait and hope the killer screws up on one of his future victims, then we need to figure out how he is finding them.” Jim shook his head and let out a sigh.

  “What’s our next move then?” All three of them turned to stare at Strick leaning against the door frame like Gwen had earlier.

  Rick sat back in his chair. He felt the weight of the question on his skin, pressing into the flesh, prodding him into action. But there was nowhere to herd him. He did not yet have a direction.

  “Any luck on finding what game Ghost was playing?” he asked.

  Gwen shook her head. “No. The techs are still working on his Becky but it appears he hacked into the system.”

  “Okay.” Rick leaned forward and slid his friend’s file away from the other six before letting his hand rest on the folder labeled Robert Tuttle, the victim he and Jim were called on. “For now, I am going to treat Ghost’s murder as an anomaly, either a warning or a calling card, but definitely done to catch my attention.

  “So let’s look at the other six. We don’t know if they were killed by one person or multiple people. We don’t know what games the victims were playing or if the game even makes any difference. But more than anything else, we don’t know how the victims are being found. These people were recluses, sheltered away from the world for any number of reasons, but hiding where only their people could find them. Unless we get damn lucky, I don’t think we’ll ever catch him until we figure that out.”

  “Stumbling into the killer is not an option I want to resort to.” Strick said. “Who knows how many people could die in the meantime.”

  Rick stood and tugged his jacket sleeves to make sure they covered all his arms. “It’s time to talk to the only people who have as much to lose with this killer on the loose as the victims. I’m going to talk to one of the people who manage peepers.”

  “A sandman?” Talbot asked. “Can you even find one?”

  “Watch me.” He took a step toward the door.

  Strick held up his hand. Rick opened his mouth to protest but the agent spoke first.

  “Wait, I agree. It’s time to hear what others know.” Strick dropped his hand. “But you were also right about not knowing if there was more than one killer out there. The sandmen live on the wrong side of the law where money is the only thing that matters. They could be just as dangerous as the killer if they think you are going to shut them down. I don’t want you or anyone else going out and investigating alone.”

  Jim groaned as he lurched to his feet, fighting his way up from the depths of the couch. “Sounds like you and me, Slugger. Let’s go do this.”

  Rick winced. Any sandman with eyes would make Jim as a cop from three blocks away. He did not have time to voice his complaint, however.

  “I’ll go.” Gwen rose from the other side of the table and grabbed her suit jacket from the back of the chair, beating him to the punch. “I’ve got a good idea of the places we’ll need to visit.”

  Rick tilted his head to the side and winced, trying to find a way to turn her down as well.

  “Don’t worry,” she said as she moved past Rick, “I’ll change clothes first.”

  Chapter 9

  Rick stole another glance out of the corner of his eye at Gwen and promptly stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. She grinned in response.

  “You haven’t said much since we left my apartment, Rick. Do you think I’ll fit in better than Jim?”

  He stared at the cars in the street, not needing to look at her again to know she would fit in at their destination just fine. The neon bright markings on her face and lips—a current nightlife fad also being worn by almost every othe
r woman they passed on the sidewalk—was the least of what he noticed about Gwen. Her barely buttoned short blouse revealed almost as much skin as her leather mini-skirt and, when they left her apartment, he had caught a glimpse of a tattoo high on her back. He had been so stunned by how different she appeared when she walked out of the apartment building, he coughed out his cigarette and nearly choked. She had grinned then as well.

  “You look damn good and you know it,” he said. “Have you ever been to a juicer before? A real one?” He chanced a look at her face and saw the smile melt.

  “Yes,” Gwen answered. “I handled a field case out of Philly last year on an Ice operation being run from a mobile juice club. They moved from warehouse to warehouse, setting up the sound systems, lights, and arc fields for a weekend before moving on. Is that where we’re headed?”

  Rick nodded. “The New York version. Here they front the real juice bar with one of those amped up techno clubs that most people believe are the real deal. Makes the stock traders and office lurks think they are doing something dangerous.” He nodded toward the flashing bright lights a block away. “There it is. Gwen, we may need to…”

  He stopped talking because he suddenly had trouble breathing. Gwen grabbed his arm and was now so close to his side, moving in easy rhythm to his steps, she felt like an extension of his body. Just thinking of his elbow riding between her breasts made his ears burn and wasn’t doing much good for other parts of his body, either.

  “Don’t worry, Rick.” Her voice was close to his neck, leaving her breath clinging to his skin. “I know how to blend in.”

  Rick ignored the line of people waiting outside the door and walked up to the two mammoth bouncers under the neon sign that read “Flip Switch.” The closest one held out his hand and opened his mouth but that was as far as he got before he stopped. Rick just stared at him, Gwen still hanging on the right side of his body like a sexy appendage while the lights and sound swirled around them. After about ten seconds of staring at each other, the bouncer leaned forward, his black skin standing out like the living night against his bright orange T-shirt.