Death Dream (56 page)

"And you stuck your death trap into it. You turned my work into a murder machine."

Jace raised his face to the ceiling and sighed as if to ask the gods why he was being persecuted.

"Look," he said to Dan, "if I left a pistol in Ralph's office with one bullet in it and he went in and blew his friggin' brains out with it, is that murder? Is it my fault?"

"It sure as hell is, and you know it."

"Well," with a shrug, "you're gonna have a damned tough time provin' it, y'know."

"If you don't kill me first."

Jace gave him a sour look. "Aw, for craps sake, Danno, don't make it all so friggin' dramatic. I'm not going to kill you. Go ahead and tell Appleton or the cops or the friggin' FBI, if you want to. Nobody's gonna believe you."

"Doc will."

"Big friggin' deal. The sim's safe now. Anybody can use it. No trouble. It's all fixed."

Propping himself up on one elbow, Dan asked, "Don't you feel any guilt at all?"

Jace turned away slightly, avoiding his eyes. "I really didn't mean for them to die," he mumbled. "I just wanted to kick Ralph's ass a little."

Dan stared at his partner. This was a different Jace from the would-be God in the VR chamber.
He's got a split personality
, Dan thought. But then he corrected himself:
No, it's the same personality. Only, in the VR sims he makes his own rules. All the limits of the real world are off and he can go as far as he wants to. As far as his imagination or his hatred can take him.

"You really hated Ralph that much?" Dan asked. "Enough to kill him?"

"Hey, listen. I'm gonna be workin in the White House. Smith is gonzo about what I've been doing for him. I'm gonna be the friggin' hero!"

"You think Smith's going to protect you?" Dan asked.

"You bet!"

"And you're going to be developing VR systems for the White House?"

"And Congress, too."

"Jesus Christ."

"Hey, you can come along, pal. We don't need Muncrief and all this chickenshit game stuff. We're goin' to the big leagues, Danno!"

"What about my daughter?"

Jace froze for an instant, then put his grin back on. "What about her? She's okay."

"Just what have you been doing to her? The real story, Jace. No more bullshit."

"I already told you. I'm recordin' her emotional reactions for a sim that Muncrief wants."

Dan pushed himself up to a sitting position. He noticed his clothes heaped on a white chair in the corner of the cubicle.

"What's Muncrief want a simulation of Angela for?"

Looking more and more uncomfortable, Jace answered, "It's not Angela in particular. He wants a kid. A young girl."

"A twelve-year-old girl?"

Jace nodded.

"For what?"

"A simulation."

Knowing the answer but hoping he was wrong, Dan asked, "What kind of a sim?"

Jake's face screwed up into a frown that was half guilt, half exasperation. "Shit, man, what do you think?"

"For sex," Dan said.

"What else?" Jace snapped.

Dan just stared at him, his mind spinning.
The son of a bitch wants to fuck my daughter. Sue was right. He wants to fuck my daughter.

"It was part of our deal," Jace explained. "Kyle hired me and swore he'd give me anything I needed, long as I developed this sim for him. Why do you think he blew all that money on the school?"

Dan's gut went hollow as he realized the truth of it.

"And when I told him I needed you," Jace added, "it didn't hurt that you had a twelve-year-old kid."

"You bastard," Dan said, his voice a stiletto-thin whisper. "I thought you were my friend and all along you were doing this."

He planted his bare feet on the floor and stood up, fists clenched, pulse thundering, fury blazing through him.

"You god-damned sonofabitch bastard." Dan advanced toward Jace.

Jace backed away. "Hey, now wait, Dan. Don't get yourself all worked up."

"We're not in a VR chamber now," Dan said. "This is the real world, Jace, and I'm going to break every bone in your face."

Jace spun around and tried to duck through the curtain but he bumped into a chunky balding middle-aged man wearing a white hospital jacket with a stethoscope jammed into one of its pockets.

"What are you doing in here?" the doctor demanded of Jace. Despite his question he was smiling amiably.

"Leaving," said Jace over his shoulder, as he disappeared past the curtain.

Dan stood rooted, shaking inside, jaws clenched so tight they hurt. "Maybe they gave you too much adrenaline," the doctor said, smiling at Dan. "You look like you're ready to kill."

"Maybe I am," Dan said.

The doctor glanced thoughtfully at the curtain where Jace had just left, then turned back to Dan, the smile still spread across his face. "Well, I guess you're ready to go home, huh?"

"Damned right," said Dan. He grabbed for his clothes as the doctor turned and left the cubicle.

Dan was buttoning his shirt when the black nurse came in again, holding a portable phone in one hand.

"It's your wife," she said.

Dan took the phone from her. "Hello Sue. I'm okay, it was just—"

"Dan!" Sue's voice sounded frantic. "Angie hasn't come home from school! Muncrief picked her up and she hasn't been seen since!"

CHAPTER 43

"Where are you?" Dan shouted into the phone.

"In the Subaru," answered Susan, "heading for the police station. I can't stay on the phone, Dan. If Angie calls the home phone it's programmed to forward the call here."

"Be careful with your driving," he said.

"Are you okay?"

"It was just an asthma attack," he half-lied, watching the black nurse watching him. "I'm at the hospital. I'll drive over to the police station as soon as I can get out of here."

"See you there." And the connection clicked off.

"You can't get out of here without one of the doctors signing a release form," said the nurse warily.

"Then you'd better get a doctor in here fast," Dan said, sitting on the edge of the bed to tug on his shoes. "My daughter's missing and I'm heading for the police station."

The nurse wheeled around and ducked through the curtains. Dan did not wait for her to come back. He pushed through the curtains and made his way through the waiting room with its sorrowful handful of old people in pain and mothers with injured children. He heard the nurse yelling behind him but kept on going through the door out into the warm late afternoon sunshine of the parking lot. And realized that his car was still at ParaReality.
They must have brought me here in an ambulance or somebody else's car.

Dan stood at the top of the hospital entrance's stairs, his mind racing. If I go back to phone the lab the nurse'll grab me and make me sit around until all her forms have been signed off. Dan looked wildly around the parking lot. He did not recognize any of the cars. Not even Jace's bicycle was in sight.

A faded green four-door sedan slowed to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

"Need a lift?"

It was the doctor who had told him he could get dressed. The white coat was gone, replaced by a wrinkled lightweight suit jacket. He was still smiling amiably.

"I need to get to the police station right away!" Dan said.

The man's eyebrows hiked up a notch, but his smile stayed in place and he said, "Okay, hop in."

Dan sprinted around the front of the car and slid into the right-hand seat. Luke Peterson put the old Cutlass in gear and pulled smoothly away just as the nurse barged through the hospital's front doors waving a fistful of papers in her hand.

The Fine Lake police station was nothing more than a wing of the community center building, quiet and cool and modern. Sergeant Wallace, chief of the three-man police squad, was a solidly built man with graying hair clipped short, a leathery tanned face etched with deeply weathered seams, and sad hound-dog eyes. He was leaning back in his chair, fingers steepled over his slightly bulging middle. His desk was like a barrier protecting him from the distraught woman sitting in his office.

"We've notified the county sheriff and the state police," he was saying to Susan. "Both my boys are out in their cars scoutin' around for her."

"What about the FBI?" asked Susan.

The hound-sad eyes focused on her. "Yew want to treat this as a kidnapping?"

"I want my daughter back!" Susan snapped.

Sergeant Wallace nodded understandingly. "We been to Mr. Muncrief's house. Nobody there. Place is locked up tight and his car's not in th' garage."

Susan was holding Philip on her lap. She had thought about asking one of the neighbors to mind him but that would have taken too much time. The baby seemed to understand that something serious was going on; he was singing quietly, without squirming or squalling, watching the police sergeant in his blue shirt and shiny badge.

"Would the FBI be helpful?" Susan asked. She felt tense with strain, ready to crack apart.

"They could be," said Wallace. "But they get kinda huffy if we call them in and it turns out to be jest a kid runnin' away from home for a few hours."

"It's been more than four hours," Susan said. "He took her from the school."

"I know. Mebbe he just took her to a movie or over to Disney World."

"No. Angie would have called—"

Sergeant Wallace smiled slightly. "I got the Disney security people lookin' for the two of 'em. And checkin' out their parkin' lots for his Jaguar." He pronounced the car's name with three syllables. "Not much more we can do, 'cept wait."

Susan wanted to scream.

The sergeant smiled patiently. "Maybe y'all ought to go home. Be there by the phone. She'll prob'ly phone yew when she gets tired of runnin' away."

"She didn't run away," Susan flared. "Kyle Muncrief abducted her."

"I think you should take me home," she said, not getting out of the car.

Muncrief held the door open for her. "We'll phone your mother. Everything'll be fine. I've got a great surprise for you; you'll love it."

Reluctantly, Angela got out of the Jaguar and followed Muncrief up to the door of the ground-floor suite. He unlocked the door and ushered her inside the darkened room with a sweep of his arm and a little bow.

"After you, Princess," he said.

Once she saw the VR helmets and gloves and the gray box of the computer that was almost as tall as she, Angela felt both better and worse.

"My parents told me I'm not allowed to play any VR games at school," she said.

"Oh?" Muncrief looked slightly surprised as he shut the door and turned on the lights. "Well, we're not at school now, are we?"

"No," Angela had to agree.

"And I've got a really special program for you, Angie. That good-looking prince is waiting for you. He's in love with you, you know."

"My prince?" She felt her heart leap.

"Right in here," said Muncrief, tapping a fingernail on the computer box. "All you've got to do is put on the helmet and gloves."

Her worries about her mother were swept away. Angela pulled on the data gloves and then slid the helmet over her hair, mussed and tangled from the ride in the convertible.

In less than a minute she was in the castle, completely lost in its wonders.

"But where's the prince?" she asked as she moved through room after room.

"He's waiting for you," replied Mr. Muncrief's voice. "You'll find him, don't worry."

She climbed a marble staircase that spiraled up one of the castle's many towers. Each time she passed a window she saw more of the enchanted landscape out beyond the castle's walls, a green flowering land where fruit trees were always in bloom and unicorns frolicked in the meadows.

At the top of the winding stairway was a huge airy room with magnificent views of the entire world through its sweeping open windows and the most beautiful furnishings Angela had ever seen.

And, standing in the middle of the room, in front of the big canopied bed, stood the prince, her prince, young and strong and handsome and smiling at her.

"Hello, my love," he said. "You don't know how long I've waited for this moment."

Angela realized that her prince spoke with Mr. Muncrief's voice.

"Why've you going up on the highway?" Dan asked. Luke Peterson's perpetual smile dimmed just a little as he slid the Cutlass into the stream of traffic. "There's somebody wants to meet you, Mr. Santorini. I'm taking you to him." He revved past seventy and swung into the left lane, passing a big semi rig chuffing sooty black smoke.

"What the hell do you mean? What's going on?"

Peterson glanced in his rear-view mirror, then nudged the accelerator even more. "I'm not a doctor, Santorini. I'm a delivery service."

"My kid's been kidnapped, for Chrissake!" Dan yelled over the roar of the rushing wind. "I've got to get to the police station!"

"I'm afraid not."

Peterson weaved in and out of the highway traffic, constantly looking around for any cars that might be following him. The Inquisitor had been as good as his word. The tail was gone. He had been planning to nab Santorini in the ParaReality parking lot, knowing that the guy usually worked so late that the lot would be dark and empty by the time he came out. Lucky thing he parked himself back behind the building before quitting time, though. He saw two ParaReality employees lugging Santorini's half-unconscious form out to a car; he followed them to the local hospital. It had been fairly easy to insinuate himself into the hospital's busy, disorganized emergency room. Santorini had suffered a crippling asthma attack, but a healthy shot of adrenaline had fixed him up.

As he drove through the darkening night Peterson wondered if he should tell the Inquisitor about the asthma. Might be a way to make Santorini more cooperative.
Probably the Inquisitor already knows about it. I'll tell him anyway, win some points with him.

"Goddammit, stop this car and let me out!" Santorini was yelling.

"Calm down," Peterson said softly. "You don't want to have another attack, do you?"

Santorini grabbed for the door handle.

"It's locked and I've got the only working controls on my side. Anyway, you don't want to jump out of a car doing nearly eighty, do you? They'll pick up what's left of you with a shovel."