CHAPTER 56
I didn’t need a badge or credentials to qualify me for inclusion in the big discovery. I was a major stakeholder in this affair—the guy who had played an integral part in the Fiend’s twisted game, the only one related by marriage to his potential next victim, close friend of a lead detective, and not to mention the man with a plan. Those were qualifications enough, I suppose. Which must have been why nobody questioned my presence as I followed Clegg up a dingy staircase, through a warren of cubicles, and then along a maze of corridors that called for a bread-crumb trail. A parade of people followed, with Special Agent Brenner close on my heels.
Brenner gripped my arm gently as she pulled up alongside. She spoke softly, the tense quiet of the processional necessitating a hushed voice. “Just so you know, I think your plan is a good one,” she said. “He’s going to kill her if you don’t give him a victim.”
“Every second counts,” I said, matching her whisper. “I hope what we’re about to see isn’t a waste of time.” Assuming my frayed nerves didn’t send me into cardiac arrest, I’d soon find out.
We came to a stop at a shuttered metal door secured by a keypad entry mechanism. On the frosted glass windowpane I read the stenciled words BOSTON POLICE COMPUTER FORENSICS LAB. With the locking mechanism engaged, the door popped open with a swoosh. Our group, a dozen or so strong, shuffled inside in an orderly fashion.
The open floor plan of the carpeted room featured four rows of workstations, none of which had been cordoned off into cubes, with storage space above and file cabinets underneath. Computers and monitors occupied virtually every inch of available work space. Their persistent hum and artificial glow gave me the feeling of being trapped inside some sort of living organism. Two fifty-inch monitors took up most of the front wall, while whiteboards scribbled with obtuse algorithms and equally cryptic notes occupied the two adjacent walls.
People settled themselves into plush seats, swiveling their chairs to direct their attention toward the oversize screens, as if about to watch a movie. Clegg knew I couldn’t sit, so he stood with me. His composure contrasted sharply with my churned-up anxiety.
“You’re doing great, John,” Clegg said, quietly enough so only I could hear.
The buzz of electronics thrummed in my ears and seemed to grow louder, while the powerful air conditioners keeping the room meat-locker cool set bumps upon my skin. “Do you think they’re going to do it?” I asked. “Will they help me pull this off?”
“They better,” Clegg said, “or I just might end up paying back the debt I owe you.”
I flashed Clegg a troubled look. “What are you saying?” I asked him.
He put a finger to his lips and signaled quiet. “Detective Brewer is about to speak.”
Detective Aidan Brewer carried all the telltale signs of someone who had spent the past twentysomething hours working at his desk, gazing into a computer monitor’s hypnotic glow. Dark puffy circles surrounded his raccoon eyes, marring a plump and boyish face. His brown hair appeared windswept, suggesting that he’d been in a storm of a different sort. He wore his black polo shirt tucked inside a pair of food-stained chinos, and his ample belly looked extra stuffed with fast food.
Brewer pressed a remote control device, and the monitors behind him flickered to show a screen shot of a computer transaction log. Written in green font on a black background, the transaction log provided a detailed accounting of all the Web sites and applications a particular computer had accessed—in this case presumably Uretsky’s—including date and time stamps and the amount of computer processing power and megabytes used to complete various tasks.
“We’ve been dissecting Elliot Uretsky’s computer and looking at the various Web sites he visited,” Brewer said. He pronounced the word computer “compu-tah,” a Boston native no doubt. “We were especially interested in games and found evidence that he was a big-time online game fanatic. He’s a fan of the game One World, owned and operated by one of our suspects, John Bodine.”
Clegg cleared his throat loudly. “John is in the room with us, Aidan,” he said. “He’s not a suspect anymore. In fact, he’s the one who suggested you look closely at the games Uretsky was playing.”
Heads turned and eyes fell on me, even though most were already aware of my presence.
“Okay, news to me,” Brewer said. “Computer guys are always the last to know these things.”
I could see Higgins fidgeting in his chair. We were both impatient. I wanted to shout, “Get to the damn point!” but knew that would be counterproductive. Instead, I opened my mind, allowing some positive energy to flow in.
I will find you, Ruby. . . . I will find you . . . and I will find you alive. . . .
“So Uretsky was a big gamer,” Brewer went on to say. “He played a bunch of games. Some we’ve heard of, like FarmVille and Kingdom Age. Some we hadn’t. Like the flash-based game Streetwise, in which you play a pimp with a vendetta to kill all your hos. A lot of these online games can be sickeningly violent, full of profanity and sex, and easy to access. Parents give their kids gaming consoles for Christmas, not realizing they can be used to play games that are a heck of a lot more violent than most of the titles rated mature.”
“So what other game was Uretsky playing?” Detective Kaminski asked.
“Has anybody ever heard of a game called See Evil?”
No hands went up, including my own.
“We’ve contacted Sick World, the game’s manufacturer. We’re going to try to get a database dump of all the registered players, as well as anybody who has chatted or messaged Uretsky’s game account.”
“What’s this game all about?” Clegg asked.
The projection behind Brewer flickered and flashed. The screen refreshed with an animated street scene, a cartoon drawing of some nondescript city corner. A hokey-looking cartoon character appeared on-screen, oversize head on a smallish body, animated to enter from screen left. The character, dressed in a nice dress shirt and jeans, had been drawn to have a high forehead, wavy brown hair neatly parted to the side, close-set eyes, and a handsome nose—a handsome face, in fact. He stood on the street corner, looking bored. A woman, animated as well, her breasts overexaggerated, waist impossibly narrow, hips seductively swaying—well, as seductive as a cartoon can be—materialized from the right side of the screen. Cartoon balloons appeared above the man’s head.
“Hello,” the balloon read. “My name is Ted Bundy. What’s your name?”
Detective Brewer must have hit something on his remote to pause the game.
“See Evil allows the game player to pick from a preset list of notorious serial killers. You can be Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader—that’s the BTK killer—Dahmer, Gacy, and the list goes on.”
“What’s the point of the game?” someone asked.
“Basically, it’s about torture and torment,” Brewer said. “I’ll show you.”
The game came to life again, as the blond bombshell with a heaving bosom said via her cartoon bubble, “My name is Sugar. Do you want to hang out?”
“Sure,” the Bundy avatar said, his eyes bulging and going watery with lust. “We can go back to my place.”
“Not so fast,” Sugar said, holding up an animated finger. “Can you tell me what year you were arrested?”
A box appeared on the screen containing several options.
a) 1972
b) 1974
c) 1976
d) 1977
Brewer selected answer C, 1976, and Sugar cooed delightedly, her animated body doing the equivalent of a shimmy.
“So this is like serial killer Jeopardy?” Chief Higgins asked.
“Yes, in a way,” Brewer said. He pointed to a status bar on the screen, above which were written the words Trust Index. The index was currently at 10 percent trust. Brewer continued, “Players have to answer trivia questions about the serial killer they’ve chosen to play. Right now the game offers about twenty to choose from. The trust status bar goes up the more questions a player gets right.”
“Can’t they just go to Google for the answers?” Gant asked.
“I don’t think the sickos who made this game care if you use first source material,” Kaminski said.
“What happens when the status bar reaches a hundred percent?” Clegg asked.
“That’s where things get really interesting,” Brewer said. “I could tell you, but it’s better if I show you.”