“You got along well with his partners. His closest friends.”

“Sure. They’re great. Good thing,” she added with a smile that warmed her tired eyes. “I don’t think I’d’ve been Bart’s girl if I hadn’t liked his friends, and they hadn’t liked me back.”

“Oh?”

“Well, they’re like family. Some people have trouble with family. I could tell you about my sister.” She rolled her eyes now, and Eve began to see some of the charm and energy that must have attracted Bart eke through the grief. “But I guess, I don’t know, when you choose your family it’s different. You can still disagree or argue, but you’re always going to stand up for each other, too. I guess that’s true with my sister, even when I’m mad at her.”

“It’d be natural for Bart to get mad at his partners sometimes.”

“Maybe, but he really didn’t. It was more like he’d shake his head and go, Jeez, what’s Cill thinking about this, or What’s Benny doing that for, or Var’s out of orbit on this one.”

“He’d talk to you about them.”

“Sure. I’d be a kind of decompression chamber for him, if they’d had a rough few days. I know they’d been working really hard on a new project. Long hours and lots of testing stuff. Maybe they argued a little, the way you do over stuff like that, especially when you’re overdoing it.”

“Anything specific? Every detail helps,” Eve added when CeeCee bit her lip. “One thing can lead to another, give us a better picture.”

“Oh. Well. I know he was miffed at Cill a couple weeks ago. Nothing big, but he was upset that she’d gone overbudget for a marketing campaign proposal. And she was miffed because she put a lot of time into it and thought it was worth the extra. And he didn’t. She gets madder than he does. Did.”

She sighed, then shook it off.

“He said they yelled at each other, but he doesn’t-didn’t-really yell, so I’d say she did that part. But they made up, like always. He bought her flowers. He liked giving flowers. And he and Var got into it about the direction of this new game. It was technical, so Bart didn’t really say what. Just about how they weren’t going off mission statement, and not everything should reach its full potential. That’s a weird thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. What did he mean?”

“I don’t know. He just said U-Play was about play, and that was that. He could be a little stubborn. Not often, but when he was… It was kind of cute.”

“How about Bart and Benny? Any tension?”

“They go back so far. They’d tease each other a lot-that kind of ragging guys do on each other. Like I was over there last week, because we were going to catch a vid after work. He and Benny were testing one of the games, going one-on-one, and Bart just slaughtered him. And Bart rubbed his face in it. They do that all the time, but I guess all the work they’d been putting in was starting to tell, because Benny got steamed. I could see it. Benny said maybe they’d try it IRL-in real life-next time and stalked off. Bart just laughed. I told him when we left he’d hurt Benny’s feelings.”

She shrugged. “It was just guy stuff. Stupid guy stuff.”

“She’s a nice woman,” Peabody commented when they got back in the car. “I know it’s pointless to speculate, but I think they would’ve stuck. His history indicates he’s the sticking kind.”

“Yeah. And he feels a little more normal now. Gets irritated with friends, has some arguments.”

“None of them seemed murderous.”

“Not to him. We can’t be sure about the friend. Cill-questioning her authority and creativity. Var-shutting down an idea for change. Benny-skewering his ego and e-skills. It tells us he’s normal, that two of the partners wanted something he didn’t and were overruled, and the third got his ass kicked in front of others. It’s unlikely any of those incidents were the first of their kind, and very possible any of those incidents was, for one of them, a last straw.”

“You and I argue, and you’ve been known to shut me down and kick my ass. I’m not plotting your murder. At this time.”

“I bet you’ve imagined kicking my ass.”

Peabody cast her gaze up to the roof of the vehicle. “Imagination is not against the law or any departmental regulations.”

“That’s the point. It takes a certain type, or a flashpoint incident to cause someone to turn imagination into reality.” She drummed her fingers on the wheel, thinking it through as she drove. “They all fit the profile, in my opinion. And turning imagination into something as close as possible to reality is what they try to do every day. So, one step more, and it’s absolutely real.”

She glanced down at her dash ’link, smiled at the text on-screen. “Reo came through. Put three teams together,” she ordered Peabody.

“Me?”

“Is someone else here?”

“No, but-”

“An e-man with each team. We’ll circulate. I want all weapons confiscated, even the toys. I want all discs evaluated, all comps, all coms evaled on-site.” She ran down the list briskly while Peabody scrambled to key tasks into her PPC. “Any question on any of them, they come in. I want all sinks, tubs, showers, and drains tested for blood. I want any and all droids on any of the premises also evaled.”

“Okay.” Peabody swallowed, then nodded. “I follow you.”

“Good. Make it happen. You and I are going by U-Play to notify the partners. Tell the ranking officer on each team to secure the warrant for his or her area.”

“Copy that. Dallas, do you really think, if one of the partners killed Bart, they’d leave evidence in their own space?”

She thought of a simple pizza box. “It happens.”

15

While Peabody put the teams together via ’link, Eve con tacted the commander with an update.

“Are you looking at all three partners, acting in concert?”

“No, sir. I don’t believe they could’ve pulled it off, nor do I believe all three of them could or would have turned against the victim and toward murder. It’s possible, and it’s possible two of them conspired as Mira’s profile indicates a strong probability for two killers. But…”

How to explain?

“It doesn’t fit for two of them in a conspiracy. It’s too off-balance. If half the whole goes bad, how can the other half not notice? I believe they’ve all been under a lot of pressure to complete the project, and that caused some friction in the group. But to plan a murder like this takes time and thought, and goes deeper than friction between friends and partners. It may have been the excuse, the catalyst for one to act, but it was always under there.”

“Which one?”

She hesitated. “I’ll be better able to answer that after we see what the searches turn up. Having their personal space searched also adds pressure. I want to see the reactions.”

“Turn up the heat and see if one of them boils over?”

“Something like that, sir.”

When she completed her update, Eve glanced over to see Peabody staring at her with cool, narrowed eyes. “What?”

“You know.”

“Many things.”

“You know which one.”

Eve shook her head. “I lean toward one.”

“Which one?”

“You tell me.”

“That’s not fair.” The cool look edged into a pout. “We’re partners. You’re supposed to tell me.”

“You’re a detective. You’re supposed to figure it out.”

“Fine. Fine. Okay, I get the whole half of the whole, off-balance, how could two of them turn on their old pal. But I think it had to be two. Not just because of Mira’s profile, which plays out for me, but because logistically it’s more solid. One to slip out and do the job, the other to hang back and cover.”

“You’re right. It’s more solid.”

“And you still think it’s just one of them?”

“Yeah, I do. They’re a tight circle-square, whatever. A closely knit and tied group. One of them veers off on this. That individual could disguise the resentment, envy, hate, ambition. Whatever of those served as driving force or excuse. Bad mood, overwork, distracted. Now make the individual a pair, which first means the spearhead in this has to take on a partner, has to trust.”