Mrs. Altman’s eyes filled with tears. “No. I won’t
allow it. It’s a desecration.”
“I won’t say I understand how you feel,” Noah said
gently, “because there is no way that I can. But please know we’d never take
this action if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. If someone killed your daughter,
he needs to be caught. Stopped. Punished.”
She was rocking pitifully, tears streaming down her
face. “You can’t do this to her.”
“Mrs. Altman,” Noah said, his voice still gentle,
“there’s nothing stopping the person who killed your Samantha from killing
someone else’s daughter. I know you don’t want that. You don’t want another
family to go through the pain you’ve endured.”
“No,” she whispered. “We don’t.” She looked away,
closed her eyes. “All right.”
“Thank you,” Noah said. “If you tell us where you put
her things, we’ll be going.”
She stood up, still crying. “In the spare bedroom
closet.”
“I’ll get it,” Jack said while Mrs. Altman covered her
face with her hands and wept.
Exhumation was like waiting until a wound had almost
healed, then ripping it open again in the vilest of ways. “Sit down, ma’am,”
Noah said, patting her back as she cried.
Jack returned and Mrs. Altman stood uncertainly as
Noah and Jack put on their hats.
“Detective Phelps and I will update you on the
investigation ourselves. And don’t worry. We’ll make sure they put the ground
back the way it was.”
Mrs. Altman shook her head. “She’s not in the ground
yet.”
Noah’s brows lifted. “Excuse me?”
“Our family has been buried in the same cemetery for
generations. They don’t have a backhoe so they can’t dig yet. The ground’s
still frozen. We’d planned to bury her in the spring.” Her chin lifted, her
eyes now sharp as they met Noah’s. “That will make it faster, won’t it,
Detective? That way you can find the monster that did this to my child.”
“Yes, ma’am. This will speed things up considerably.
Thank you.”
Neither Jack nor Noah spoke until they reached the
car. Jack cleared his throat, no humor in his eyes. “I’m glad you lost the
toss. I never know what to say.”
“She reminded me of my mom.” Who worried about him
constantly. She was a cop’s widow. Noah supposed she was entitled to worry
about her son.
“All the old ladies remind you of your mom.”
“I always hoped somebody would be kind to her if
something happened to me first.”
Jack frowned. “Don’t talk like that.”
“We all gotta go sometime, Jack,” Noah said, as he
always did.
“I’m not anxious to go today,” Jack replied, as he
always did. “Let’s find that stool.”
“And then to Brisbane’s apartment, see if Mrs.
Kobrecki has returned.”
“And with her, the panty fiend grandson, Taylor.”
“Exactly.”
Monday, February 22, 11:15 a.m.
Eve stood outside her advisor’s office, her heart
beating way too fast. For an hour she’d sat through her Abnormal seminar,
unable to concentrate.
Martha’s dead.
You have to do something.
But what? Martha’s suicide might not have been
related to her participation in Eve’s study.
But I don’t know that it
wasn’t.
She had five more red-zones, whose game time had
skyrocketed in recent weeks. None had been ultra-users before. They’d never
played a role play game before. But when they’d been introduced to Shadow-land,
they’d been sucked in, just the same.
Lightly she rapped her knuckles on her grad advisor’s
office door. “Dr. Donner?”
Donner looked up. “Miss Wilson. I thought our meeting
wasn’t until Thursday.”
“It’s not. But something has come up.”
“Then come in,” he said, looking back at the journal
he had been reading.
Eve had never liked him, not in the two years she’d
been a grad student at Marshall. He’d asked to be her advisor, citing interest
in her thesis concept. He thought it was publishable, critical in the “publish
or perish” academic world. Everyone said he was overdue. He wouldn’t be pleased
with what she was about to say.
“Well.” He tossed the journal onto a tall stack. “What
did you need, Miss Wilson?”
“I’m having some concerns about a few of the test
subjects, Dr. Donner.” She opened her notebook where she’d written the subjects’
ID numbers, as if she didn’t know them by heart. None of whose real names she
was supposed to know.
“Well?” he asked impatiently. “What about them?”
“They’ve posted increases in game time of more than
three hundred percent. I’m concerned they’re endangering quality of life and in
some cases, their livelihood.”
Donner fixed his gaze upon Eve’s face and part of her
wanted to back away. But of course she did not. She’d faced monsters far
scarier than Donald Donner in her lifetime.
“Miss Wilson, how do you know how much time they’ve
spent in game play?”
She was prepared for the question. “I can run a search
to find out who’s in Shadowland at any given time. I’ve programmed my computer
to run these searches multiple times every day and these numbers represent an
average.” Which was no lie.
“Clever,” he murmured. “But can you prove these
subjects are engaged in active play versus, perhaps, just forgetting to log
out?”
Yes. Because I’m in there, too
. Talking, interacting with them.
Watching them
.
His eyes narrowed when she didn’t answer. “Miss
Wilson? Does your search differentiate active play time versus just forgetting
to log out?”
“No, it doesn’t,” she murmured.
“Are they doing their self-esteem charts?”
“Yes, and the data is promising. Twenty percent indicate
they are more confident in the real world after self-actualization exercises in
the virtual world. But I’m concerned that the line between reality and
imagination is blurring for some.”
He frowned. “They’ve exhibited quantifiable depression
or personality changes?”
“No. But they haven’t been required to test for
depression or personality changes in the last month. Most of these subjects
aren’t due for testing for another few weeks.”
He relaxed. “Then in another few weeks we’ll find out
if they have a problem.”
Not soon enough for Martha Brisbane. She’s already
dead.
In a few weeks Christy Lewis
might be unemployed. “We should be testing more frequently,” she said firmly.
“So you’ve noted many times,” he said,
condescendingly. “And as I’ve attempted to explain to you each time, we need to
use independent third-party testers to ensure our double-blind status. That
costs money for the university and time for the subjects.”
“There is surplus in the test budget. I’ve kept
careful track of spending.”
“You’d have subjects dropping like flies if they had
to come in more frequently.”
“But sir,” she started and Donner lifted his hand.
“Miss Wilson,” he said sharply, then smiled, but
somehow a smile never worked on his face. “Eve. Your graduate research could
help a lot of people. Role play in the real world has long been used to help
our patients improve self-esteem. It’s timely and relevant to explore using the
virtual world of the Internet to do the same.”
Timely, relevant, and publishable. She lifted her
chin. “I never intended our subjects to participate to the point of ignoring
their real lives. We’re responsible for them.”
His smile vanished. “Your subjects signed a release
indemnifying us from liability. We are not responsible. Don’t ever indicate that
we are, spoken or written. I don’t have time for this. I have a class to teach
at noon, so if you’ll excuse me.”
Eve didn’t move from her chair. “Dr. Donner, please.
What if our subjects show evidence of depression, even… suicidal thoughts? What
would we do then?”
“We’d ensure that subject was treated by an
independent third-party therapist.”
Eve looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap.
Too
late for Martha
. “What if, hypothetically speaking, I knew one of our
subjects was suicidal?”
“It’s moot,” he said coldly, warningly even. “You do
not have that information.”
She looked up. His eyes were narrowed, daring her to
continue. “But if I did?”
“Then you’d be facing discipline from the committee.
Perhaps worse.”
Eve wanted to close her eyes, wanted to retreat back
into the dark. But this was real. Martha was really dead. They might have seen
it had they tested more frequently.
I should have insisted
. A year ago
she’d been happy to have her research approved and funded. Rocking the boat
hadn’t seemed worthwhile. The situation had changed.
She took the copy she’d printed of Martha’s death
article from her notebook. “This was subject 92.” Keeping her hand perfectly
steady, she handed it to him over his desk.
He stared at the page, then grabbed it. His face
darkened and Eve’s throat closed. This was it. He’d throw her out of the
program. Cancel her research.
“I think that if we’d tested her more often, we might
have been able to get her help,” she said. “Her death is on my head, Dr.
Donner. I don’t want any more suicides.”
Deliberately he dropped the sheet onto his shredder
and hit the switch. Instantly the page was gone and with it any minute respect
she’d held for Donald Donner.
“I never saw that,” he said. “
You
never saw it.
Are we clear, Miss Wilson?”
Eve’s knees were shaking, but she’d be damned before
she’d let him see it. “Crystal.”
For a long time she sat at her desk, staring at
nothing, trying to figure out what to do.
What would Dana do?
Dana Dupinsky Buchanan, one of the women who’d all but raised her in
Hanover House, a Chicago shelter. Dana, who’d risked her freedom and her life
helping battered women find hope and safety.
Helping runaways like me
.
Dana would do whatever was necessary to keep those
people safe.
So should I.
Maybe no more bad things would happen. But if they
did…
I’ll do what I need to do.
She knew where every one of her subjects
resided in Shadowland. Now she’d seek them out in the real world, right here in
Minneapolis. Starting with Christy Lewis.
If Donner found out, she’d be finished.
But I’d
rather forfeit it all and be able to look in the mirror.
She’d do what she
needed to do, but smartly.
If I’m lucky, nobody will ever know.
Her
subjects would be safe and Donner would get his precious published study.
Then she’d get a new advisor. But first, Christy.
She’d watched Christy’s Gwenivere for weeks in the virtual world. It was time
to set Christy straight in the real one.
Monday, February 22, 2:10 p.m.
Noah had expected Mrs. Kobrecki to look meaner. So
when a sweet little old lady answered his knock, he had to swiftly control his
surprise. “Mrs. Kobrecki?”
“You must be the detectives.” She opened the door
wide. “Please, sit down.”
“Thank you,” Jack said with an engaging smile. “You’re
a hard woman to reach.”
“My cellular phone battery was dead. I was away for
the weekend and returned just this morning. I called you all as soon as I saw
the crime scene tape. Poor Martha.”
“How long had you known Ms. Brisbane, ma’am?” Noah
asked.
“Eight years. We had our differences, but I never
dreamed she’d do this.”
“What kind of differences?” Noah probed with a
sympathetic smile.
“Her apartment,” Mrs. Kobrecki said archly, as if it
were obvious. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but that woman lived in total
filth.”
Noah thought of Martha’s spotless apartment. “When did
you last see her?”
“Week ago, Saturday. She was going out, which was odd.
She didn’t go out often.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Jack asked.
“No.” Mrs. Kobrecki’s lips thinned.
“Did you have an argument, Mrs. Kobrecki?” Noah asked.
“Yes. I told her that if she didn’t clean her place,
I’d evict her. She just ignored me. That woman made me so mad.” Then she
sighed. “But I never would have wanted this.”
“Of course not,” Noah said soothingly. “Did you see
when Martha returned home?”
“No. I would have been too angry to talk to her
anyway.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“It’s routine, ma’am. We’re trying to establish a time
of death. For her family.”
“Her mother probably won’t care what time Martha
died.”
Noah feigned surprised concern. “Martha didn’t get
along with her mother?”
“No, and I don’t know why. I once went up to yell at
Martha about the mess. I heard her through the door, on the phone, yelling at
her mother. She came to the door crying.”