Chapter 61

LATER THAT NIGHT, Sci sat in the shadow of the fearsome, wondrous shark, his fingers on the keyboard, his eyes on the screen.

Since signing off with Kit-Kat, he'd run the name Morbid through his browser, coming up with trash bands Morbid Angel and Morbid Death, and morbidity in every absurd category imaginable.

When he'd exhausted Google and Bing, he signed on to one geek message board after another, searching for references to a spy-bot that cloned cell phones wirelessly and to a programmer called Morbid.

He ransacked every board he subscribed to and came up dry. So Sci e-mailed his good friend Darren in India. Darren worked for a major Internet provider and he responded to Sci's e-mail with links to exclusive websites that were restricted to high-level tech professionals. Darren also sent Sci his IDs and passwords.

Sci made coffee and then prowled the back corridors of the Internet. He struck gold on a supergeek board he hadn't even known existed, and that in itself was news. He plucked the name Morbid from a recent thread and read a post saying: "Morbid-the-great has taken to the streets. Rumor has it he's a key player in a combat game IRL called Freek Night."

Sci was virtually bolted to his chair, both excited and afraid that this lead might run into a wall. This was why Private was the best-they had the best resources, and they weren't constrained in ways the police were. They operated with their own sense of justice.

Using his friend's ID, Sci posted a query about Freek Night, and he got an instant message from a member who believed Sci to be Darren.

"Darren, dude. What I can tell you. Freek Night is so sick, it's transcendent. It takes fantasy to a new level-real life."

"How do you know about this?"

"A gamer named Scylla posted a couple of times on Extreme Combat. He said he was recruited into the game. Could be bullshit tho. I tried to get in myself. Never got a reply."

"First I've heard of it," Sci replied as Darren.

"Because you live in a dungeon in Mumbai. LOL. In most places, murder is not a game. Even so, Scylla must've been high when he wrote that post."

Sci bookmarked the site, guessing that yes, Scylla was high. Like many addicted gamers, he no longer separated his real life from his virtual one-or even knew the difference. He'd become his screen name, invisible and invincible.

Sci searched the gamer board Extreme Combat until he found a post from Scylla: "Our game is warriors vs. sluts," he had written. "Come Saturday night, think of me!"

A new thread was later started by a member called Trojan: "Saturday plays. Sunday pays. Scylla flew off his own terrace. Flying is easy. It's hitting the pavement that's hard."

Sci opened the site's user profile pages and found that Scylla had listed his name as Jason, his address as Los Angeles.

It was four a.m. in Los Angeles when a board administrator noticed that "Darren" was using an unapproved IP address and blocked Sci from the board.

Sci made fresh coffee. His fingers were stiff, and his hands were shaking.

He cupped his mug until his fingers relaxed, then he trawled a legitimate news blog for a man named Jason who had fallen from a terrace in Los Angeles the night Marguerite Esperanza was killed.

He found an article in the Times online, read it twice, then he called Mo-bot.

She growled at him, "Late-night phone calls are one of my least favorite things, Sci. Right behind having my tits in a mammogram sandwich."

Sci told her what he'd found, and she listened to all of it before saying, "So who is this Morbid? I'm out of rocks to turn over. I'm calling Jack."

"Let him sleep. I guess this will hold until morning."

Chapter 62

I PICKED UP the phone, yelled into it, "Not yet!" then I chucked it back onto the nightstand.

I'd been dreaming, actually peering into the downed CH-46, looking into the cargo bay. I could almost see my subconscious, and I'd made a decision about what to do next.

Now the dream was gone.

What was the question?

What had I decided?

The phone rang again. My annoying death threat caller had never called back once I'd answered and hung up.

This time, I looked at the faceplate. It was Sci.

He said, "I've got a lead on Schoolgirl."

Chapter 63

A HALF HOUR LATER, I was at Starbucks, drinking an orange-mango Vivanno with Sci. He was wearing blue pajama bottoms with smiley faces and a Life Is Good T-shirt with a pink heart in the center of his chest. His hair was flattened into a bowl shape from his motorcycle helmet. I would've ribbed him about his wardrobe, but I was still tired and he was so intensely, deadly serious.

I stirred my smoothie with a straw and tried to focus on what he had on his mind.

Sci said to me, "The thing is, some guy named Jason did go off his terrace right after the Esperanza girl was found dead. It was a suicide, according to LAPD."

"Jason is a programmer?"

"He's in public relations. Was."

"I don't get it. Explain the connection to me again."

Sci sighed. He knew that I wasn't like him. I know my way around a computer, but I'm no geek.

"Look," Sci said, trying again. He grabbed a shaker of cinnamon and a shaker of chocolate powder, one in each hand.

"The cinnamon is a wireless program that can clone phones and send and receive messages, okay? The chocolate is a combat game-in real life. It's called Freek Night."

He clinked the two shakers together, said, "What these two items have in common is a gamer who uses the screen ID Morbid."

I said, "Explain to me the part about the computer games again."

"Most of the really popular ones are war games. Mo-bot plays one of them. World of Warcraft. It's an MMORPG, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, that is ongoing twenty-four hours a day around the planet. It has eleven million players a month."

"War games on the computer. Trust me, that has to be better than the real thing."

"Most of these games concern big wars with armies. The gamers play to take over countries or planets, past, present, or future. It's addictive, seriously addictive. It feels real. Get that? You with me so far?"

"Yep," I said.

"A few games are one-on-one, where the players fight like old-time samurai or Roman warriors. Sometimes they have teammates or allies, like war buddies."

"I know this is going somewhere, Sci, or you wouldn't have called me at five thirty in the morning."

"Hang in, okay, Jack? I haven't slept at all."

"I'm with you. I'm here."

"Okay. Imagine a player whose screen name is Scylla bragging about playing a real live combat game called Freek Night. He describes it as 'warriors versus sluts.' "

"In real life."

"Bravo, Jack. And the night Marguerite Esperanza was killed, Scylla-who's actual name is Jason-took a swan dive off his terrace. I found a story in the Times online. A man named Jason Pilser suicided that night."

"To review," I said, "a programmer using the name Morbid created a wireless clone program to get into people's cell phones."

"Evidence suggests."

"And he is also a player in this offline combat game called Freek Night?"

"Offline. Very good," said Sci.

I picked up the cinnamon shaker and said, "And a guy going by the name of Scylla, actually Jason Pilser, the PR guy, was a player in this game. And he killed himself Saturday night-"

"That's what I've got, Jack. It hasn't all come together yet, but it's jellin'. There are too many connections to be coincidental. Even dead, Jason Pilser is a lead with legs. I think we're getting very close."