Fantasy in Death

  “And what do you do, exactly?”

  “Mostly research, like Benny. Like what’s out there, how can we twist it, jump it up. Or, like, if somebody’s got a zip on something, I cruise before we step so, like, we’re not hitting somebody else’s deal.”

  “So you see everything in development, or on the slate for development.”

  “Mostly, yeah.” He jiggled his shoulders, tapped both feet. “Bits and bytes anyhow, or, like, outlines. And you gotta check the titles, the character and place names and that jazz ’cause you don’t want repeats or crossovers. Unless you do, ’cause you’re, like, homage or sequel or series.”

  “And yesterday? Where were you?”

  “I was, like, here. Clocked at nine-three-oh, out at five. Or close. Maybe five-thirty? ’Cause I was buzzing with Jingle for a while after outs.”

  “Did you go out, for a break, for lunch, leave the building before you finished for the day?”

  “Not yesterday. Full plate. Yeah, full plate with second helpings.”

  “But you took breaks, had some lunch?”

  “Yeah, sure. Sure. Gotta fuel it up, charge it up. Sure.”

  “So, did you contact anybody? Tag a pal to pass the time with on a break?”

  “Ah . . .” His gaze skidded left. “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. And you can tell me or I’ll just find out when we check your comp, your ’links.”

  “Maybe I tagged Milt a couple times.”

  “And Milt is?”

  “Milt’s my . . . you know.”

  “Okay. Does Milt your You Know have a last name?”

  “Dubrosky. He’s Milton Dubrosky. It’s no big.” A little sweat popped out above his upper lip. “We’re allowed.”

  “Uh-huh.” She pulled out her PPC and started a run on Milton Dubrosky. “So you and Milt live together?”

  “Kinda. I mean, he still has a place but we’re mostly at mine. Mostly.”

  “And what does Milt do?”

  “He’s an actor. He’s really good. He’s working on his big break.”

  “I bet you help him with that? Help him study lines.”

  “Sure.” Shoulders jiggled again; toes tapped. “It’s fun. Kinda like working up a game.”

  “Being an actor, he probably has some good ideas, too. Does he help you out there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Been together long?”

  “Nine months. Almost ten.”

  “How much have you told him about Fantastical?”

  Every ounce of color dropped out of his face, and for an instant, he was absolutely still. “What?”

  “How much, Roland? Those little bits and bytes, or more than that?”

  “I don’t know about anything like that.”

  “The new project? The big top secret? I think you know something about it. You’re in research.”

  “I just know what they tell me. We’re not allowed to talk about it. We had to sign the gag.”

  Eve kept an easy smile on her face, and a hard hammer in her heart. “But you and Milt are, you know, and you help each other out. He’s interested in what you do, right?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “And a big project like this, it’s exciting. Anybody’d mention it to their partner.”

  “He doesn’t understand e-work.”

  “Really? That’s odd, seeing as he’s done time, twice, for e-theft.”

  “No, he hasn’t!”

  “You’re either an idiot, Roland, or a very slick operator.” She angled her head. “I vote idiot.”

  She had the protesting and now actively weeping Roland escorted to Central, then sent a team of officers to scoop up Dubrosky and take him in.

  His criminal didn’t show any violent crimes, she mused, but there was always a first time.

  She finished her interviews, calculating it would give Roland time to stop crying and Dubrosky time to stew. She found two more who admitted they’d talked about the project to a friend or spouse or cohab, but the Chadwick-Dubrosky connection seemed the best angle.

  She broke open a tube of Pepsi while she checked in with the sweepers and added to her notes. She looked up as the door opened, and Roarke stepped in.

  He changed the room, she thought, just by being in it. Not just for her, but she imagined for most. The change came from the look of him, certainly, long and lean with that sweep of dark hair, the laser blue eyes that could smolder or frost. But the control, the power under it demanded attention be paid.

  Even now, she thought, when she could see the sorrow on that wonderful face, he changed the room.

  “They said you’d finished with your share of the interviews. Do you have a minute now?”

  He wouldn’t have always asked, she remembered. And she wouldn’t have always known to get up, to go to him, to offer a moment of comfort.

  “Sorry about your friend,” she said when her arms were around him.

  She kept the embrace brief—after all, the walls were glass—but she felt some of the tension seep out of him before she drew back.

  “I didn’t know him well, not really. I can’t say we were friends, though we were friendly. It’s such a bloody waste.”

  He paced away to the wall, looked out through the glass. “He and his mates were building something here. Too many holes in it yet, but they’ve done well for themselves. Creative and bright, and young enough to pour it all in.”

  “What kind of holes?”

  He glanced back, smiled a little. “You’d pull that one thing out of the rest. And I imagine though e-work’s not your strongest suit, you’ve seen some of those holes already.”

  “More than one person knows a secret, it’s not a secret anymore.”

  “There’s that. Electronically it looks as though he covered the bases, and very well. It’ll take some doing to get through all of it, and I’m told you’ve already lost a key piece of evidence.”

  “Self-destructed, but they got enough to give me the spring-board. How much do you know about this game, this Fantastical?”

  “Virtual/holo combo, fantasy role-playing, varied scenarios at player’s choice. Heightened sensory levels, keyed through readouts of the player’s nervous system and brain waves.”

  That pretty much summed up the big top secret project, she thought. “And when did you know that much?”

  “Oh, some time ago. Which is one of the holes here. Too many of his people knew too much, and people will talk.”

  “Do you know Milt Dubrosky?”

  “No, should I?”

  “No. It just erases a possible complication. If the technology developed for this game is so cutting-edge, why don’t you have it?”

  “Actually, we’ve something I suspect is quite similar in development.” He wandered over to Vending, scanned, walked away again. “But my people don’t talk.”

  “Because they’re paid very well, and because they’re afraid of you.”

  “Yes. I’m sure Bart paid his people as well as he could, but there wouldn’t have been any fear.” He touched her arm, just a brush of fingertips, as he wandered the room. “They’d like him, and quite a bit. He’d be one of them. It’s a mistake to be too much one of your own as they’ll never see you as fully in charge.”

  “When did you last see or speak with him?”

  “Oh, four or five months back anyway. I was down this way for a meeting and ran into him on the street. I bought him a beer, and we caught up a bit.”

  Restless, Eve thought. Pacing was normally her deal. Then he sighed once, and seemed to settle.

  “One of my scouts brought him to my attention when Bart was still in college. After I’d read the report and done a little checking myself, I arranged a meeting. I guess he was twenty. God. So fresh, so earnest. I offered him a job, a paid internship until he got his degree, and a full-time position thereafter.”

  “That’s a hell of an offer,” Eve commented.

  “He’d have been a hell of a recruit. But he told
me he had plans to start up his own company, with three friends. He outlined his business model for me there and then, and asked for my advice.” Roarke smiled a little, just a slight curve of those wonderfully carved lips. “He disarmed me, I have to say. I ended up meeting with the four of them a few times, and doing what I could to help them avoid some pitfalls. I don’t suppose this one any of us could have anticipated.”

  “If he was that open with you, right off the jump, he might have been equally talkative with others.”

  “Possibly, though that was one of the pitfalls I warned them of. He—they—wanted their own, and I know what it is, that want, that need. That, and well, the boy appealed to me, so it was easy to give them a little boost.”

  “Money?”

  “No.” His shoulder lifted, a careless gesture. “I might have done so if they’d asked. But they had some seed money, and you’ll work harder if it doesn’t come too easy. I had this property—”

  “This? This is your building?”

  “Was, so relax yourself,” he told her with the slightest hint of impatience. “I’m not involved here. I rented them space here for a time, and when they’d gotten off the ground, he asked me to sell it to them. As I said, the boy appealed to me, so I did. I made mine; they had theirs. Good business all around.”

  “And the business is worth considerable.”

  “Relatively.”

  “Compared to you it’s a nit on a grizzly, but the money’s a motive, as is the technology they’re working on. Can they keep this place afloat without Bart?”

  “No one’s indispensable. Except you to me.”

  “Aww.” But she rolled her eyes with the sound and made him laugh a little. “They’ll split three ways instead of four.”

  “And take a hit for the loss of the fourth. From a business standpoint, eliminating Bart’s a foolish move. He was the point man,” Roarke explained, “the public face, the big picture man. And he was good at it.”

  “This kind of murder? Sensational, and tied in with the business. It’s going to get whopping truckloads of media. Free media of the sort that generates sales out of sheer curiosity.”

  “You’re right about that.” He considered. “Yes, but that’s a temporary boost, and still poor business sense. Added to it, unless their dynamics have changed, it’s hard to see any of the other three hurting Bart.”

  “People do the damnedest things. I have another angle to check out. Feeney will keep you busy if you want to be. I need a copy of the game disc. They’ll hand it over, but they’re going to drag their feet some. If they trust you, you might be able to nudge that along.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll be in the field.”

  He took her hand as she walked to the door. “Take care of my wife.”

  “She takes care of herself.”

  “When she remembers.”

  She went out, started down. She glanced back once to see him at that glass wall, hands in his pockets, and that sorrow that perhaps only she could see, still shadowing his face.

  4

  Back in the busy hive of Cop Central, Eve studied Roland Chadwick through the glass of Observation. He continued to sweat, just a bit, and his tear-swollen eyes tended to dart and dash around the room, as if he expected something to materialize in a corner and take a nice big bite out of him.

  Perfect.

  “We’ll take him together to start,” Eve told Peabody. “I’m going hard. He expects it from me now.”

  “And you’d give him herbal tea and a fluffy pillow otherwise.”

  “I’ll leave the fluffy to you, after I storm out of the room in disgust, leaving dire threats in my wake.”

  “And I ‘there-there’ him until he spills his guts.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Eve watched as Roland laid his head on the table as if to sleep. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least if he’d popped his thumb in his mouth.

  “While you’re doing that, I’ll start on Dubrosky. He’s been around the block a few times, and he has to know his dupe in there is a very weak sister. I believe his guts will also spill.”

  Peabody smiled as Roland cushioned his face on his folded arms. “My guy will spill first.”

  “Maybe. Let’s find out.”

  She strode in, a tough, impatient woman who seemed capable of taking that nice big bite and enjoying it. Roland’s head popped up even as he shrank in his chair.

  “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, in Interview with Chadwick, Roland, on the matter of the murder of Minnock, Bart. Roland Chadwick,” she continued, using both names to add a little more intimidation, “have you been read your rights?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Do you understand your rights and obligations in this matter?”

  “Okay, yeah, but—”

  She dropped her file on the table between them with a force that echoed like a slap. It shut him up.

  “You worked for Bart Minnock, correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I told you how I—”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday?”

  “I was at home, I mean, I was at work, and then—”

  “Which is it?” She snapped the words out, leaned on the table, deep into his space. “Home or work? It’s an easy question, Roland.”

  “I-I-I-I was at work all day, until I went home.” Like the words off his tongue, color stammered in his face, pink then white, pink then white. “I logged out and everything. It was after five. You can check. You can see.”

  “And you log out, Roland, every time you leave the building? Every single time?”

  “Well, mostly. For sure at the end of the day. For sure then. I didn’t do anything. I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me.” His voice pitched into a whine threatening to reach dog-ears-only territory. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Is that so? Maybe Bart would disagree. Maybe he’d have a little something to say about that. If he wasn’t dead.” She flipped open the file, spilled the crime scene photos out. “But it’s a little hard to get the words out when your head’s across the room from the rest of you.”

  Roland took one look at the photos, went a very pale green. He said, fairly clearly: “Gah.” Then his eyes rolled up white as he slid to the floor.

  “Well, shit.” Eve blew out a breath and fisted her hands on her hips. “Better get him some water, Peabody.”

  “It was kind of graceful, the way he went down.” Peabody got a cup of water while Eve crouched down to pat Roland’s cheeks.

  “Out cold. He’s not faking. Okay, Roland, come on back. Better get a medic in case . . . wait, here he comes. Roland!” She spoke sharply as his eyes twitched, then blinked. Then she gave a head jerk to Peabody so her partner would be the one playing nursemaid.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Chadwick?” Peabody knelt down, eased his head up. “Try a little water. Take a sip, that’s the way. Take a breath. Do you need medical attention?”

  “I don’t . . . what happened?”

  “You fainted. Do you want me to call a medic?”

  “No. No, I don’t think . . . I just need to—” His eyes popped wide now, and he grabbed Peabody’s arm like a drowning man. “Don’t make me look again. Don’t make me look.”

  “Tougher to look than to be part of causing it?” Eve said coldly.

  “I didn’t. I swear.” He all but crawled into Peabody’s lap, and Eve knew her work was done. “I swear! Don’t make me look.”

  “Okay, it’s okay. You don’t have to look. Have some more water. We’ll wait until you’re feeling steady again.”

  “Fine, that’s fine.” Eve pushed the photos back in the file. “You want to coddle him, he’s all yours. I can’t stand being in the same room with him. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, exiting Interview.”

  She slammed the door behind her, but not before she heard Roland’s breathless thank-you to her partner.

  Satisfied with Part
A, she headed to the next interview room for Part B.

  Milt Dubrosky had the buffed and polished looks of a spa rat. She imagined he devoted a good part of his day to the gym, and a good part of his week to treatments. His hair—too perfectly streaked to be nature’s gift—lay in subtle waves around a smooth, fine-boned face. His eyes, a soft, shimmering blue flashed out of long, dark lashes as he beamed out a high-wattage smile.

  “Officer, I don’t know why I’m here, but at least the view just got a whole lot better.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  His smile flashed along with his eyes as he executed a snappy salute. “Sir, yes, sir.”

  “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in Interview with Dubrosky, Milton, on the matter of the murder of Minnock, Bart.”

  “What?” Those bold eyes widened as he sucked in a breath. “Bart’s been murdered? When? What happened?”

  “You’ve been in Interview before, Dubrosky.” She tapped the file that held his record. “So you know I’m the one who asks questions, and you’re the one who answers them. Have you been read your rights?”

  “Yeah, the cops who brought me in. But they didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Can you verify your whereabouts from between three p.m. and eight p.m. yesterday?”

  “Sure. Sure. I was at my salon—that’s Urban Meadows—from about one to three-thirty, then I met a friend for coffee. I did some shopping and went to another friend’s place about five-thirty. Roland, Roland Chadwick. He works for Bart at U-Play. He got in shortly after I did, and we stayed in the rest of the night. He can vouch.”

  “The name and contact information for your coffee date.”

  “No problem. Britt Casey.” He rattled off a ’link number and an Upper West Side address. “We’re in a workshop together. Acting workshop. So we get together now and then to discuss craft.”

  He was good, Eve decided, but not that good. Poor Roland, she thought, just how many ways can you be duped? “And what time did you leave your acting pal and head out on your own?”

  “Sometime around five, I guess.”

  “Coffee and shopping date. Where did you have coffee? Where did you shop? Do you have receipts?”

  “I don’t actually remember the name of the coffee shop. And I didn’t actually buy anything. It was more window-shopping.”