A Game of Murder (7 page)

“I don’t think it’s out of the question.” Lorna paused, looked back at the field pretending to watch the soccer game. “I also don’t want to go to jail.”

* * *

John turned the Ranger into the driveway of his former home. He’d enjoyed the extra days with Luke and been pleasantly surprised at how well Faith had adapted to being a sort of substitute mother. And Luke had developed quite an attachment to Faith’s cat. Of course, he also was attached to Blue, John’s Springer spaniel. Luke was a born animal-lover, which was a good thing as far as John was concerned.

The boy had been quiet all the way on the drive across town, which probably was not a good thing. He couldn’t help but fear that Roni’s behavior had affected Luke. He could only hope the retreat had gotten her back on track.

He turned off the engine and leaned over to release Luke’s seatbelt. “Let’s go see Mama.”

Luke nodded, and John lifted him up and out of the cab, then followed behind. Usually, Roni was waiting at the door the minute she heard the sound of his truck engine. His chest tightened, fearing something was wrong. He knocked on the door, then tried the doorknob. It turned, so he opened the door and walked in, pulling Luke along beside him.

“No, Steve, it wasn’t anything like that,” Roni’s voice said from the direction of the kitchen. “But it was rather militant; you know, lots of rules about what we could and couldn’t do. I hated being confined to the building and a small area around it. I feel like I’ve gotten out of jail.” A tinkling laugh followed.

Her eyes looked up as John entered the kitchen, then widened at the sight of him. “I gotta go, Steve. I’ll call you later.”

“Hello, Roni.” He could feel Luke clinging to his pant leg. What had been going on before Roni’s retreat that caused the little boy, once so happy to see his mother, to fear coming home to her now?

“John.” A pause that seemed longer than it ostensibly was. “I wasn’t expecting you until later this afternoon.”

“Is there a problem?” His eyes darted around the kitchen, and he had the urge to look inside the stoneware canisters on the counter, the forest green cupboards, and the oven of the stainless steel stove, then go search the bedroom, pull out dresser drawers, open closets and go through the pockets of her clothes, even lifting the mattress to see if there was anything she was hiding.

A nervous laugh. “Oh, no. I’m just surprised, that’s all.” She licked her lips.

“How was the retreat?”

“Fine.”

“Did it help?” He examined her face, looking for any of the usual signs. He didn’t see them. Her hair was neatly arranged and her makeup—less than she’d worn when they were married, more than when she was using drugs—wasn’t smeared or applied in thick globs, so, sober. For now.

“Oh, sure.” Another nervous laugh. “I really think I’ll be okay now.” She glanced down at Luke. “Aren’t you going to come to Mommy?”

Luke regarded her with uncertainty, then peered up at John for approval.

“Go ahead, buddy.”

Luke tottered over to his mother, stopping a foot in front of her. “Hi, Mommy.”

Roni bent down and lifted him up. “Hi, my little man. Did you miss me?”

“Uh huh.”

“I missed you, too.” She looked over Luke’s shoulder and met John’s eyes. “Are you taking him again this weekend?”

John had been thinking of forgoing his regular visitation, letting Roni make up for the time she’d missed with Luke, but now he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t put his finger on anything in particular, but something wasn’t right. Making a decision, he said, “Yes. I think we should stick to our routine, don’t you?”

Roni let out a breath so deep the whoosh of it was audible from where John stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

John gave a brief nod and left. As he drove toward the church, he shifted in the seat of his truck, repositioned his hands on the steering wheel, ran a finger inside his collar, but the uneasiness he felt didn’t come from anything physical. It might not be a bad idea to drop in on Roni tonight. Or give her a call and ask to talk to Luke. Just to check and make sure everything was okay.

He also thought about calling his lawyer, finding out what it would take to get sole custody. For information, he told himself. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go there. Yet. Maybe he was overly suspicious. Or maybe he needed to pay closer attention to his instincts.

Faith paused in the doorway of the library’s meeting room, her insides twitching as if someone had attached an electrode to them and was flipping the switch on and off a million times a minute. Shy with new people and in new situations, she was sure the only person she’d know was Rok. She could manage when she was joining someone she knew, like Lorna at the gamer group, or could put on her professional personality to interview a new client or make a presentation. But even then she had a smidgen of self-doubt. Today she had more than a smidgen.

Three tables were planted like rows of corn in the center of the room, facing a screen that had been pulled down from a cylinder mounted on the ceiling. A half-dozen teenaged boys, younger versions of the geeks in the gaming group, clustered at the center of the first table, whispering and punching one another in the arm as they pointed to things on their laptop screens and laughed at secret jokes.

In the second row, a little to the right of center, an elderly couple huddled together over a shared laptop. A young girl, wide-eyed and innocent, sat midway between the end of that table and the couple. The girl stared at Rok’s back with something resembling hero worship as he leaned over a desk.

Faith felt like a grandma. Other than the seniors, she was the oldest person in the room. Even Rok wasn’t that much older than the other males, perhaps twenty or twenty-one. His intensity as he fiddled with the projector hooked up to his computer lent him a maturity the younger boys lacked.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come to this class after all. She was tempted to turn around and leave.

Rok got the first slide of his PowerPoint presentation up on the screen, then turned to survey his class. He smiled when he saw Faith, and
 
a huge part of her uncertainty evaporated like rain on a Tucson sidewalk. She returned his smile and proceeded to claim the center location in the third row of tables. One hurdle passed.

 
“Good morning,” Rok said. The conversations hushed as all eyes focused on him. “This is going to be a four week introduction to game programming. I’ll spend the first hour each week showing you the tools and concepts of a gaming system, we’ll take a short break, then during the second hour you can install the software, play with it, and ask any questions you might have. Between classes, you’ll work on a game of your own using the techniques we cover in class.”

He pulled a plastic bag out of his computer case and passed it to the first boy. “Please take one and pass the bag on.” When it got to Faith , she saw the bag contained silver plastic flash drives with “Games That Rok” printed in black letters on the side. Clever.

“The flash drive contains all the software you’ll need for this class, plus example code,” Rok said.

One of the boys turned the drive over and over, as if examining all sides for some kind of clue. A couple of the others plugged the drive into the USB port on their computers. Faith held back. Although her MacBook was fairly secure, she was ever suspicious of loading strange software onto it. After all, her computer was her livelihood. If anything happened to it, she’d be unable to work.

“We’re going to start with a simple gaming system called Twine. With this system, you can create Choose Your Own Adventure style games.”

A couple of the boys groaned. The loudest one, a skinny kid in a black tee shirt that said “No, I will not fix your computer” on the front, started to close up his laptop.

Rok pierced him with a look. “You’re disappointed?”

The skinny kid nodded. “I don’t want to create kid games. I want to write
World of Warcraft
.”

Rok smiled. “So do I. But writing an MMRPG as huge and complex as
Warcraft
is hard. You have to learn the basics first, and writing a simple game will let us focus on what makes a game interesting, how to construct puzzles and challenges, how to develop scoring systems, player capabilities, and lots of other things without needing to worry about language syntax or graphic design or music.”

“You’re sure we have to write a Choose Your Own Adventure game first?”

“Very sure.” The tone of his voice permitted no argument.

The skinny kid lifted the lid of his laptop and sat back. Faith knew he wasn’t convinced when he folded his arms over his chest.

“Let’s look at a Twine game that was developed for the IFComp—short for Interactive Fiction Competition—which is held every year.” He switched from PowerPoint to a web browser displaying white letters on a black screen. Within the text, some of the words were blue, the standard convention for hyperlinks. “As you can see, turns in the game consist of clicking on one of the links. The game responds to your choice with the next turn.”

“How lame is that? No graphics at all?” A big kid, who reminded Faith of Dennis from the gamer group, only younger and not quite as far along the path to morbid obesity, let out a big sigh after his complaint.

Rok shook his head. “Not in this part of the game. Some text adventures start with splash screens at the beginning. We’ll cover images in a little while. With other game development systems for text adventures, there’s a way to incorporate more pictures and even sound, but they’re merely decoration and not part of the game itself.”

Seeing his audience still had doubts, Rok continued speaking. “Text adventures were some of the original games created for computers. In fact, the first one was simply called
Adventure
, and many of those who went on to create the games we play today cut their teeth on it, spending hours exploring virtual caves and collecting treasures. Like a novel, the pictures and sounds take place in your mind. A well-written game can keep you engaged for hours.”

The skinny kid scratched his head.

Rok tried again. “Let’s walk through a few moves of the game and see how it works.”

He clicked on the opening display. The screen now showed some simple text:

You are standing at the bottom of a rocky hillside. Nearby you can hear the tinkling of water. A path leads upwards. You can follow The Path or go back to the Start of the game.

The Path and Start were in blue, indicating they were hyperlinks.

“Since we’ve just left the start, let’s click on the link for the path.” Rok followed his words with the action. The screen changed again:

The sound of water is louder now. You can head toward the water or climb up the hill.

Rok chose “climb up the hill” and, for the first time, a picture appeared on the screen. It wasn’t much of a picture, a bunch of wildflowers, but Faith saw how adding pictures to each location might make the simple games more interesting.

“It really is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book!” the young girl squealed with delight. The geeky boys gave her the stink eye.

“Let’s talk a little about making a game.” Rok perched on the corner of the desk, his left leg dangling a short distance above the floor. “There are three parts involved when you create a game: design, coding, and story. The design is how a game flows, what the object of the game is, what kind of puzzles or challenges are involved, the overall structure. The story is the text displayed on the screen. Coding is putting the design and story together into a playable game. Twine makes the coding part simple enough so a game developer can focus on the design and story.”

The elderly couple appeared confused.

Rok slipped off the desk and switched to a new window on his computer. “Let’s take a look at how you can create a game in Twine.”

Now the screen displayed a number of off-white boxes with different colored headers, most connected by arrows. The screen also showed the picture of wildflowers. While blue headers topped most of the boxes, the header of the box labeled Start was green.

“Each of these boxes is called a ‘passage.’ Each passage is the text you want to display in your game plus directions as to what the player can do.”

Rok double-clicked on the Start box. “You link one box to another one by putting the other passage’s name inside a double set of square brackets. Rocky Hillside is a passage we didn’t get to while playing the game. When you finish entering your text, you close the window. If you link to a passage that doesn’t exist yet, Twine will ask you if you want to create a new passage. You can say yes to that.”

The last of Faith’s twitches vanished as she watched Rok demonstrate the game development system. This was something she understood.

“It’s up to you whether you want to create a map of your game first or let the software draw one as you type in the narrative.”

Rok switched slides again. “This is where you can add pictures. Under the Story menu, there’s an option for ‘Import Image.’ You can link to an image on your computer or to one on the web. To make the picture appear with a passage, you insert a link to it by using square brackets again.” He went through the steps.

“It’s simple to create a game with Twine. The best way to learn is to try it yourself. If you plug the flash drive into your computer, you’ll find versions of Twine for both Windows and Mac on it. Copy the version for your system onto your hard drive, then open the program and try writing a game. If you need a break, feel free to get up while I work with anyone who needs help getting started.”

Two of the teens packed up their laptops and left the room so fast you would have thought they were afraid of catching Ebola. The young girl got the software installed and studiously started creating boxes on her screen. The elderly couple, with one laptop between them, proceeded to engage in an intense discussion.

“I think you have to put it in the other way,” the woman said.

“No, Emily, I’m sure it goes in this way,” her husband replied as he struggled with the flash drive. Eventually he got the device inserted into the side of the computer. Emily reached over and pressed a key. “What’d you do that for?” her husband asked in alarm.