He began to lift the cover when a voice called from behind her, "Agent Dance?"
She glanced back to see another officer in uniform walking up to her. He was holding something in his hand.
"Yes?"
"Do you know a Jonathan Boling?"
"Jon? Yes." She was staring at a business card in his hand. And recalled that somebody had taken the victim's wallet to verify ID.
A horrifying thought: Was the victim Jon?
Her mind did one of its leaps--A to B to X. Had the professor learned something from Travis's computer or in his search for victims and, with Dance away, decided to investigate by himself?
Please, no!
She glanced briefly at O'Neil, horror in her eyes, and lunged for the body.
"Hey!" the CS tech shouted. "You'll contaminate the scene!"
She ignored him and flung back the tarp.
And gasped.
With mixed relief and horror, she stared down.
It wasn't Boling.
The lean bearded man in slacks and a white shirt had been repeatedly stabbed. One glazed eye was half open. A cross was carved into his forehead. Rose petals, red ones, were scattered over his body.
"But where did that come from?" she asked the other deputy, nodding at Boling's business card, her voice shaking.
"I was trying to tell you--he's at the roadblock, over there. Just drove up. He wants to see you. It's urgent."
"I'll talk to him in a minute." Dance inhaled deeply, shaken.
Another deputy came up with the dead man's wallet in a plastic bag. "Got the ID. His name's Mark Watson. He's a retired engineer. Went out to the store a few hours ago. Never got home."
"Who is he?" O'Neil asked. "Why was he picked?"
Dance dug into her jacket pocket and retrieved the list of everyone mentioned in the blog who might be a potential target.
"He posted in the blog--a reply to the 'Power to the People' thread. About the nuclear plant. It doesn't agree or disagree with Chilton about the location of the plant. It's neutral."
"So anybody connected to the blog at all could be at risk now."
"I'd think so."
O'Neil looked her over. He touched her arm. "You okay?"
"Just . . . kind of a scare."
She found herself thumbing Jon Boling's card. She told O'Neil she was going to see what he wanted and began down the path, her heart only now returning to a normal beat from the fright.
At the roadside she found the professor standing beside his car, the door open. She frowned. In the passenger seat was a teenager with spiky hair. He was wearing an Aerosmith T-shirt under a dark brown jacket.
Boling waved to her. She was struck by the look of urgency on his face, unusual for him.
And by the intensity of the relief she felt that he was all right.
Which gave way to curiosity when she saw what was stuck in the waistband of his slacks; she couldn't tell for certain but it seemed to be the hilt of a large knife.
Chapter 31
DANCE, BOLING AND the teenager were in her office at the CBI. Jason Kepler was a seventeen-year-old student in Carmel South High, and he, not Travis, was Stryker.
Travis had created the avatar years ago, but he'd sold it online to Jason, along with "like, a shitload of Reputation, Life Points and Resources."
Whatever those were.
Dance recalled that Boling had told her that players could sell their avatars and other accoutrements of the game.
The professor explained about his finding a reference in Travis's data to the Lighthouse Arcade's hours of operation.
Dance was grateful for the man's brilliant detective work. (Though she was absolutely going to dress him down later for not calling 911 immediately upon learning that the boy was at the arcade and for going after him alone.) On her desk behind them, in an evidence envelope, was the kitchen knife that Jason had used to threaten Boling. It was a deadly weapon and he was technically guilty of assault and battery. Still, since Boling hadn't actually been injured and the boy had voluntarily handed over the blade to the professor, she was probably going to be satisfied with giving the kid a stern warning.
Boling now explained what had happened: he himself had been the victim of a sting, orchestrated by the young teen who sat before them now. "Tell her what you told me."
"What it is, I was worried about Travis," Jason told them wide-eyed. "You don't know what it's like seeing somebody who's in your family getting attacked like he was, in the blog."
"Your family?"
"Yeah. In the game, in DQ, we're brothers. I mean, we've never met or anything, but I know him real good."
"Never met?"
"Well, sure, but not in the real world, only in Aetheria. I wanted to help him. But I had to find him first. I tried calling and IM'ing and I couldn't get through. All I could think of was hanging out at the arcade. Maybe I could talk him into turning himself in."
"With a knife?" Dance asked.
His shoulders lifted, then sagged. "I figured it couldn't hurt."
The boy was skinny and unhealthily pale. Here it was summer vacation and, ironically, he probably got outside now far less often than in the fall and winter, when he'd have to go to school.
Boling took over the narrative. "Jason was in the Lighthouse Arcade when I got there. The manager was a friend of his and when I asked about Stryker he pretended to go check out something but instead he told Jason about me."
"Hey, I'm sorry, man. I wasn't going to stab you or anything. I just wanted to find out who you were and if you had any idea where Travis was. I didn't know you were with this Bureau of Investigation thing."
Boling gave a sheepish smile at the impersonation-of-an-officer part. He added that he knew she'd want to talk to Jason but he thought it best to take him directly to her, rather than wait for the city police to show up.
"We just jumped in the car and called TJ. He told us where you were."
It was a good decision, and only marginally illegal.
Dance now said, "Jason, we don't want Travis to get hurt either. And we don't want him to hurt anybody else. What can you tell us about where he might go?"
"He could be anywhere. He's really smart, you know. He knows how to live outside in the woods. He's an expert." The boy noted their confusion and said, "See, DQ's a game, but it's also real. I mean, you're in the Southern Mountains, it gets like fifty below zero, and you have to learn how to stay warm and if you don't you'll freeze to death. And you have to get food and water and everything. You learn what plants're safe and what animals you can eat. And how to cook and store food. I mean, they have real recipes. You have to cook them right in the game or they don't work." He laughed. "There've been newbies who've tried to play and they're like, 'All we want to do is fight trolls and demons,' and they end up starving to death because they couldn't take care of themselves."
"You play with other people, don't you? Could any of them know where Travis might be?"
"Like, I asked everybody in the family and nobody knows where he is."
"How many are in your family?"
"About twelve of us. But him and me are the only ones in California."
Dance was fascinated. "And you all live together? In Aetheria?"
"Yeah. I know them better than I know my real brothers." He gave a grim laugh. "And in Aetheria, they don't beat me up and steal money from me."
Dance was curious. "You have parents?"
"In the real world?" He shrugged, a gesture Dance interpreted as meaning "Sort of."
She said, "No, in the game."
"Some families do. We don't." He gave a wistful look. "We're happier that way."
She was smiling. "You know, you and I've met, Jason."
The boy looked down. "Yeah, I know. Mr. Boling told me. I kinda killed you. Sorry. I thought you were just some newb who was dissing us because of Trav. I mean our family--well, our whole guild order--has been totally dissed because of him and all the posts on that blog. It's happening a lot.
A raiding party from the north traveled all the way from Crystal Island to wipe us out. We made this allegiance and stopped them. But Morina was killed. She was our sister. She's come back but she lost all her Resources."
The skinny boy shrugged. "I get pushed around a lot, you know. At school. That's why I picked an avatar that's a Thunderer, a warrior. Kind of makes me feel better. Nobody fucks with me there."
"Jason, one thing that might be helpful: if you could give us the strategies Travis would use to attack people. How he'd stalk them. Weapons. Anything that might help us figure out how to outthink him."
But the boy seemed to be troubled. "You really don't know very much about Travis, do you?"
Dance was about to say they knew all too much. But interviewers know when to let the subject take over. With a glance at Boling, she said, "No, I guess we don't."
"I want to show you something," Jason said, standing up.
"Where?"
"In Aetheria."
KATHRYN DANCE ONCE again assumed the identity of the avatar Greenleaf, who was fully resurrected.
As Jason typed, the character appeared on the screen in a forest clearing. As before, the scenery was beautiful, the graphics astonishingly clear. Dozens of people were wandering around, some armed, some carrying bags or packs, some leading animals.
"This is Otovius, where Travis and me hang out a lot. It's a nice place. . . . You mind?"
He bent forward toward the keys.
"No," Dance told him. "Go ahead."
He typed, then received a message: "Kiaruya is not logged on."
"Bummer."
"Who's that?" Boling asked.
"My wife."
"Your what?" Dance asked the seventeen-year-old.
He blushed. "We got married a couple months ago."
She laughed in astonishment.
"Last year I met this girl in the game. She's totally cool. She's been all the way through the Southern Mountains. By herself! She didn't die once. And me and her hit it off. We went on some quests. I proposed. Well, sort of she did. But I wanted to too. And we got married."
"Who is she really?"
"Some girl in Korea. But she got a bad grade in a couple of her classes--"
"In the real world?" Boling asked.
"Yeah. So her parents took away her account."
"You're divorced?"
"Naw, just on hold for a while. Till she gets her math scores up to a B again." Jason added, "Funny. Most people who get married in DQ stay married. In the real world a lot of our parents're divorced. I hope she gets back online soon. I miss her." He jabbed a finger at the screen. "Anyway, let's go to the house."
Under Jason's direction, Dance's avatar maneuvered around the landscape, past dozens of people and creatures.
Jason led them to a cliff. "We could walk there, but that'd, you know, take a while. You can't pay for a Pegasus ride because you haven't earned any gold yet. But I can give you transport points." He began to type. "It's like my dad's frequent flier thing."
He keyboarded some more codes and then had the avatar climb on the winged horse and off they flew. The flight was breathtaking. They soared over the landscape, around thick clouds. Two suns burned in the azure sky and occasionally other flying creatures would cruise past, as did dirigibles and bizarre flying machines. Below, Dance saw cities and villages. And, in a few places, fires.
"Those're battles," Jason said. "Look pretty epic." He sounded as if he regretted missing the chance to lop off some heads.
A minute later they arrived at a seashore--the ocean was bright green--and slowly eased in for a landing on a rolling hillside overlooking the turbulent water.
Dance remembered Caitlin saying that Travis liked the shoreline because it reminded him of some place in a game he played.
Jason showed her how to dismount the horse. And, under her own controls, she navigated Greenleaf toward where Jason pointed, a cottage.
"That's the house. We all built it together."
Like a barn raising in the 1800s, Dance reflected.
"But Travis earned all the money and the supplies. He paid for it. We hired trolls to do the heavy work," he added without a bit of irony.
When her avatar was at the door, Jason gave her a verbal password. She spoke it into the computer's microphone and the door opened. They walked inside.
Dance was shocked. It was a beautiful, spacious house, filled with bizarre but cozy furniture, out of a Dr. Seuss book. There were walkways and stairs that led to various rooms, windows of odd shapes, a huge, burning fireplace, a fountain and a large pool.
A couple of pets--some goofy hybrid of a goat and salamander--walked around croaking.
"It's nice, Jason. Very nice."
"Yeah, well, we make cool homes in Aetheria 'cause where we live, I mean, in the real world, our places aren't so nice, you know. Okay, like, here's what I wanted to show you. Go there." He directed her past a small pond populated with shimmery green fish. Her avatar stopped at a large metal door. It was barred with several locks. Jason gave her another pass code and the door slowly opened--accompanied by creaking sound effects. She sent Greenleaf through the doorway, down a flight of stairs and into what looked like a drugstore combined with an emergency room.
Jason looked at Dance and noticed she was frowning.
He said, "Understand?"
"Not exactly."
"That's what I meant about knowing Travis. He's not about weapons and battle strategy or any of that. He's about this. It's his healing room."
"Healing room?" Dance asked.
The boy explained, "Travis hated fighting. He created Stryker as a warrior when he first started playing, but he didn't like that. That's why he sold him to me. He's a healer, not a fighter. And I mean a healer at the forty-ninth level. You know how good that makes him? He's the best. He's awesome."
"A healer?"
"That's his avatar's name. Medicus--it's some foreign language for 'doctor.'"
"Latin," Boling said.
"Ancient Rome?" Jason asked.
"Right."
"Sweet. Anyway, Travis's other professions are herb growing and potion making. This is where people come to be treated. It's like a doctor's office."
"Doctor?" Dance mused. She rose from her desk, found the stack of papers they'd taken from Travis's room and flipped through them. Rey Carraneo had been right--the pictures were of cut-up bodies. But they weren't the victims of crimes; they were of patients during surgery. They were very well done, technically accurate.
Jason continued, "Characters from all over Aetheria would come to see him. Even the game designers know about him. They asked him for advice in creating NPCs. He's a total legend. He's made thousands of dollars by making these healing potions, buffers, life regenerators and power spells."
"In real money?"
"Oh, yeah. He sells them on eBay. Like how I bought Stryker."
Dance recalled the strongbox they'd found under the boy's bed. So this was how he'd made the cash.
Jason tapped the screen. "Oh, and there?" He was indicating a glass case in which rested a crystal ball on the end of a gold stick. "That's the scepter of healing. It took him, like, fifty quests to earn it. Nobody ever got one before, in the whole history of DQ." Jason winced. "He almost lost it once. . . ." An awestruck expression washed over his face. "That was one messed-up night."
The boy sounded as if the event were a tragedy in real life.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, Medicus and me and some of us in the family were on this quest in the Southern Mountains, which're like three miles high and really dangerous places. We were looking for this magical tree. The Tree of Seeing, it's called. And, this was sweet, we found the home of Ianna, the Elvish queen, who everybody's heard of but never seen. She's way famous."
"She's an NPC, right?" Boling asked.
"Yeah."
He reminded Dance, "A nonplayer character. One that's created by the game itself."
Jason seemed offended at
the characterization. "But the algorithm is awesome! She's beyond any bot you've ever seen."
The professor nodded an apologetic concession.
"So we're there and just hanging and talking and she's telling us about the Tree of Seeing and how we can find it, and all of a sudden we're attacked by this raiding party from the Northern Forces. And everybody's fighting, and this asshole shoots the queen with a special arrow. She's going to die. Trav tries to save her but his healing isn't working. So he decides to Shift. We're like, no, man, don't do it! But he did anyway."
The boy was speaking with such reverence that Dance found herself leaning forward, her leg bobbing with tension. Boling too was staring at him.
"What's that, Jason? Go on."
"Okay, what it is, sometimes, if somebody's dying, you can submit your life to the Entities in the High Realm. It's called Shifting. And the Entities start taking your life force and giving it to the person who's dying. Maybe the person will come back before your life force is gone. But it might take all your life force and you'll die, and they'll die too. Only when you die because you've Shifted, you lose everything. I mean everything you've done and earned, all your points, all your Resources, all your Reputation, for as long as you've been playing the game. They all, like, just go away. If Travis'd died, he would've lost the scepter, his house, his gold, his flying horses. . . . He would have to start over like a newbie."
"He did that?"
Jason nodded. "It was, like, way close. He was almost out of life force, but the queen revived. She kissed him. That was, like, epic! And then the elves and us got together and kicked some Northern Force ass. Man, that night rocked. It was epic win. Everybody who plays the game still talks about it."
Dance was nodding. "Okay, Jason, thanks. You can log off."
"Like, you don't want to play anymore? You were kind of getting a feel for how to move."
"Maybe later."
The boy tapped the keys and the game closed.
Dance glanced at her watch. "Jon, could you take Jason back home? There's somebody I need to talk to."
A to B to X . . .
Chapter 32
"I'D LIKE TO see Caitlin, please."
"You're . . . ?" asked Virginia Gardner, the mother of the girl who'd survived the June 9 car crash.
Dance identified herself. "I spoke to your daughter the other day at summer school."
"Oh, you're the policewoman. You arranged for the guard for Cait at the hospital the other day, and out in front of our house."