“Would be?”

“The infinite variety of scenarios. They all have plenty of play on the defaults, but the bulk of the log-ins are off that menu. Some are saved either to play again with exactly the same elements, or discarded, or saved and replayed with alternate elements. Or two scenarios might be merged.”

“Doesn’t it keep a record? What’s the fun of playing if you can’t keep score?”

“It does, and the holo-unit would hard drive it. The problem is the data on Bart’s holo doesn’t match any of the scenario names or codes from prior uses.”

“A new scenario?”

“Possibly. It’s listed as K2BK-BM.”

“Bart Minnock,” Eve concluded. “His particular game? Or did they routinely label them with initials?”

“No, they didn’t. There’s no coordinating listing on the copy U-Play messengered over today. The scenario isn’t on disc under that name or code. There’s nothing on his holo-unit that shows him creating it on the day he was killed, or any other day. He put the other copy in, the one we’re trying to reconstruct, and called for that game, with a request to begin at level four.”

“You don’t start on level four if you’ve never played it before. You want to start at the beginning.”

“Yes, you would. Or certainly the probability is high.”

“So he played it before, but on the copy he used it had been given a name or code not previously used.” She walked and thought. “He had a date, so he had limited time. He didn’t want to waste it on the early stages. He pushed it forward. A section he wanted to work on, or one he particularly enjoyed, or one he had trouble beating before. But he’d played it before. There’s no question it was solo play?”

“None,” Callendar told her.

“The killer might have started the game, logged it that way to cover.”

“Then he should’ve been logged as observer or audience. The room only registered one player, one occupant. If someone else was in there, he found a way around it.”

“Murder takes at least two players,” Eve murmured. “He plays. He gets bruised up some, wrenches his shoulder. How?” She thought of Benny, smooth and graceful with his katas. “He knows how to fight, how to defend. He takes gaming seriously, so he’s studied, practiced, but there’s no sign he put up a fight. No trace, no blood, no fiber, no nothing from the killer in that room. And every reconstruct tells me he just stood there while the sword came down on him.

“Someone else’s scenario,” she considered. “The killer creates the disc, adding defaults or elements or openings, and recodes it. Something that could override the system long enough to pull this off. That’s what these guys do, right? Find new ways. New ways to play the game. What did he play the most?”

“There are four scenarios he favored,” Roarke told her. “He’d mix up and alter elements here and there, but usually stuck with the same basic story line and character grid. He named them Quest-1, Usurper, Crusader, and Showdown.”

“Are they on the copy?”

“They are.”

“Stats?”

“We’re pulling and collating them now.”

“Good. And when you run the games, prioritize anything with swords. It’s pizza and a pipe wrench.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Feeney demanded. “You’re losing it, kid.”

“No point in wasting a good pie. No point bringing a sword to a blaster battle. You want to make use of what you’ve got, and take what’s useful with you. He took the sword, but he left the disc. The disc would be useless to us after self-destruct, and incriminating to him if found in his possession.”

She stuck her hand in her pocket. “A woman says to the husband she wants dead, Hey, honey, I’ve just got to have a pizza. Be a sweetheart and run down and get us a large veggie. Now he’ll probably say, We’ll just have it delivered, but she’s ready for that. Oh, they take too long and I’m just starving for a pizza. Please, baby? I’ll open some wine, and maybe I’ll change into something you’ll like. We’ll have a little pizza party.”

“What the hell does that have to do with this?”

She glanced at Feeney. Cynical and rough-edged he might be, but he was a blusher. “Working it out. The guy goes for pizza-going to get lucky, so hey, it’s worth the walk. The wife who wants him dead has her lover waiting with the pipe wrench. Smack, bang. No need for a divorce and all that bother, no point losing the nice chunk of life insurance-and hey, there’s a nice fresh pizza, too. It’s mean, just a little mean, but efficient and practical, too, to take the pie, leave the wrench.”

“‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli,’” Roarke said, and Feeney grinned.

“Okay, that I get.”

“It’s mean,” Roarke echoed Eve, “just a little mean, but efficient and practical, too, to murder Bart during a game he enjoys, and to do so by means that play into one of his fantasies. Mean, efficient, and practical to do it in his own home-and it’s another game added to that. How will the cops figure it out? He’ll have played that scenario, your killer, tried the elements out until he was confident of the win.”

“I just bet he has,” Eve agreed.

“But a good game always tosses in an unknown, a bigger challenge. That would be you.”

“Crib’s still up there,” Feeney muttered and earned a sour look from Eve.

“Copy the copy. I’m going to want to work at home. They’re not going to give us a search warrant for private residences with what we’ve got. Everybody’s alibied, no clear motive, no physical evidence. Barely any circumstantial at this point. We need more.”

“Whose residence?” Callendar asked her.

“Partnership’s like marriage. It’s a freaking minefield. And one of Bart’s partners decided on that pizza and pipe wrench.”

Back in her office, she deemed it time to dig deeper, a lot deeper on the three remaining partners of U-Play.

She needed something, just a little something she could turn, twist, or tweak to convince the PA to go after a search warrant.

The killer’s home comps would certainly have been doctored by now. She wasn’t dealing with an idiot. But EDD had its ways, as did her expert consultant, civilian.

While her own computer dug, she rearranged her murder board. Studied it, rearranged it again.

She thought she understood, at least partially, the why. It was small and it was shallow, but murder had been done for much, much less. Without Reineke’s nose, a man’s death might very well have been put down to the contents of his wallet and a veggie pizza.

There’d be bigger under the small, and deeper under the shallow, but it was enough for now. Enough to help her create her own scenario.

“I’m back! Did you miss me?” Peabody bounced in, then flopped in the visitor’s chair. “Jeez, do you know what the shuttle’s like this time of day? It’s a zoo-animal ferocity and smells. Plus, the air unit fizzled twenty minutes out of the station. Add jungle heat to that. I want a two-hour shower.”

“You had sex.”

“What? What? Why do you say that? You can’t have sex on the shuttle! You’d die of heat prostration, then be arrested.”

“You had sex before you got on the shuttle. There better not be an expense chip for some cheap by-the-hour flop on my desk tomorrow.”

“We didn’t use some cheap by-the-hour flop. We…” Peabody cleared her throat as Eve simply kept up the long, steady stare. “Played games. As ordered.”

“I don’t want to know what kind of games.”

“Really, really good games. Ones that call for excellent reflexes and superior physical stamina.” She grinned, unrepentant. “We’re going to save up and buy a new, juicy game system for each other for Christmas.”

“Is this your report?”

“No, this is the shuttle-boiled-my-brain babble. Whew.”

“What’s on your tit? What the hell is that?”

“Oh.” Peabody ducked her chin to glance down. “It’s my love dragon. It’s a temp.”

“A love dragon? You’re wearing a love dragon on your tit, most of which is spilling out of whatever that is you’re not covered up with.”