Evidence of Murder (10 page)

He chuckled. “No, I already know. I’m here to remind Evan that he’s missed two release dates. Your daughter might want to see this. I don’t want to leave out any potential customers.”

“Tear yourself away, Rachael. We’re moving on.”

The vendors at the other booths watched in resignation as the customers filed out, though a few used the break to put their feet up and open Styrofoam containers of lunch. Theresa and Rachael followed the crowd through a set of double doors at the rear of the building and past a crowd of smokers braving the below-freezing temperatures to satisfy the nicotine craving. The scent of tobacco followed her, tempting and taunting. But if Paul’s death hadn’t pushed her back into the comforting arms of burning tobacco, nothing would. It wouldn’t get worse, right?

“I want to buy that game, Mom. They’re having a sale.”

“Good idea.” Perhaps she could deduct it as a business expense.

“The main character is Captain Alastair, and first he has to lead his team around these really cool cliffs to get to this castle, and there’s these branches that come off the side from the trees above you and form sort of a tunnel, and you think they’re just roots, but then when you’re about halfway through—well, after you kill the troll—they come to life and you have to figure out how to get them to stop—”

Theresa’s mind wandered back to the idea of venture capital as she took in deep breaths of frigid air, noting the architecture surrounding them. Eight rectangular, barnlike buildings, including the one they had just left but not including the fancy offices/apartment building near the street, lined the fenced property. The sounds of traffic and the rapid transit rolling past faded quickly, dampened by the thick snow. A brass plaque, turned green with age, hung on the wall of the next structure; it told her the National Carbon Company had been established in 1886. That sounded terribly old, though beyond the peeling paint and rusting metal fixtures, the walls seemed sturdy enough.

She didn’t interrupt her daughter to tell her that the carbon company had been instrumental in creating Lakewood. They needed a workforce and encouraged the influx of Slavic immigrants, saturating the area around the turn of the century. The company provided homes within walking distance, and the surrounding streets, with names like Thrush and Quail, became known as Birdtown. It had been a time of great opportunity. Of hope.

The walking tour skipped the closest building, and moved through heavy steel doors into the one beyond it. It smelled like dust and metal, the air turned to a shade of gray by the combination of overcast outdoor light and high windows that hadn’t been cleaned since, perhaps, its original construction. The entire building existed as a single open space with catwalks running the two-hundred-foot length on either side. Whatever carbon-processing equipment it had once housed had been removed, leaving only pits and discolorations in the concrete floor and three vast metal silos in the southeast corner, but the two cameras mounted above them, in opposite corners, appeared quite new. Closed in by a metal-mesh cage, the silos bore faded labels in red paint: NCC, N2, and even a haphazardly drawn smiley face. Remnants of the past. In the center of the building, however, stood the future.

A gray gyroscope, at least nine feet in diameter, stood balanced on black rubber supports. The beams crisscrossed each other, interrupted here and there by protrusions or short cables. On either side of this sphere computer monitors balanced on stands, displaying the Polizei logo.

The crowd gathered around this centerpiece, talking rapidly but not with the reverence Theresa expected to hear. “It’s a virtual-reality sphere,” a waif of a girl declared to her companion. “I saw one at the tech show in Columbus last month.”

“Cool but way too pricey,” a boy to Theresa’s left intoned.

“I did this at the carnival last year,” Rachael told her mother. “That was just a ride, though. I think this one is meant to be used with a video helmet.”

“A what?”

As the last of the crowd drifted in, Jerry Graham stepped into the sphere, moving gingerly until he strapped his feet into two of the protrusions on the inner frames. Then he plucked a set of goggles from a bracket at the top and a gun from another at the side. The gun—or plasma rifle or phaser or whatever futuristic weaponry it represented—and the goggles remained attached to the frame by flexible spiral cables, long enough to let him move in all directions but not long enough to tangle as he ran, twisted, turned, and jumped. The rings of the gyroscope rotated with him, but the entire sphere itself remained in place, resting on its rubber chocks without a quiver.

Evan took his place next to the object, speaking into a wireless microphone so that his voice seemed to boom from all four corners of the building. “This is a virtual-reality sphere. You’ve seen them before. Doppler ultrasound tracks your moves, and instantly translates them into the game. The haptic interface lets you interact with the objects around your character. With this you don’t just see what Captain Alastair sees, you feel it. You feel the snow crunching underneath your boots. You feel your thighs aching as you climb the winding staircase. You have to duck low to avoid the spiders. You live the game.”

The monitors behind him changed to a scene in motion, an underground stone tunnel. The view advanced, lit only by the flicker of an occasional torch, with every step Jerry Graham took within the gyroscope. The rocks glistened with subterranean sweat. Theresa could almost smell the mold, and had to remind herself that, given the age of the building, she probably
did
smell mold.

Some sort of humanoid appeared from the dimness ahead, did a double take at the approach of the captain/Jerry/the crowd, and began to lift a sword. As Jerry held the weapon out in front of him, the tip of it appeared at the bottom of the monitors, and a burst of fire felled the unlucky henchman. The people around Theresa gasped and applauded. The venture capitalist had not exaggerated the game’s popularity.

From there the action moved into a treasure-filled cavern, where gold and diamonds glowed with such real color that Theresa felt a twinge of jealousy toward the captain’s team.

“Cool, Mom. Can we get one?”

“No.”

Rachael laughed.

“I’m glad you’re not a video-game junkie, by the way. I’m getting the feeling my bank account couldn’t handle it.”

“That’s what credit is for,” Cannon said.

“You all know what happens next,” Evan said, with such a boyish grin that the crowd giggled and even Theresa couldn’t help but smile.

“What happens next,” Evan went on, “is, you decide you have to have one of these. Every serious gamer does. But there are two problems. What’s number one?”

“Affordability!” shouted a man in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt. Several other attendees echoed this sentiment.

“Good point. We’re working on the price—more on that in a minute. But what’s your second obstacle?”

“Availability?”

“Software support?”

“Size?” suggested the waif in front of Theresa.

Evan pointed at her. “Exactly. The problem is Mom.”

Confused silence. Theresa noticed the venture capitalist standing on the other side of Rachael, waiting. He did not seem the least bit confused.

“Really,” Evan went on. “Would your mom let you install this thing in the middle of her family room? Or even your bedroom? Mrs. MacLean, you’re a mom. Would you want a gray sphere this size next to your coffee table?”

The heads around her swiveled in her direction. “No,” she admitted, with the trepidation of the outnumbered.

“Whose mom would? Or whose spouse? Or you yourself—would you want this blocking your big screen during playoffs?”

Murmured dissent.

“Of course not. So let me show you something new. Jerry, if you would tear yourself away from the treasures of the keep there….”

His partner hung up his gun and goggles, unstrapped his Nikes, and stepped out of the gyroscope.

“Jerry Graham, everybody, the inventor—no, not the inventor of the virtual-reality gyroscope, let’s say the perfector. Because Jerry has patented a way around both these obstacles. Jerry, show them what they
haven’t
seen before.”

The man touched no more than three spots on the frame, flipping small latches, and then pushed. The rings rotated to nest within each other, almost completely flat save for the various protrusions. In less time than it took to pick up a remote and change the channel, the sphere’s width went from nine feet to less than a foot.

The crowd sucked in its collective breath.

Jerry Graham demonstrated the movement again, expanding the gyroscope, locking the frame and climbing inside to show its stability, before hopping out and collapsing it into itself. It remained a nine-foot-in-diameter object, but the reduction in depth made it seem downright svelte.

Evan continued to delineate the sphere’s attributes. “Unlock the casters and you can wheel the sphere anywhere you want, up against the wall or into a hallway. It’s made of recycled plastics, so it’s environmentally sound as well as lightweight and durable. You, come here and try to move it.”

The tiny girl in front of Theresa placed both hands on the collapsed frame and gave a shove. It rolled easily. She asked if they were going to manufacture the spheres on-site.

“Exactly,” Evan told the crowd. “It will keep costs down since we’ll be doing both the software and the hardware. But it’s not just for Polizei—although it is the coolest game in existence, not that I’m biased or anything. No, you can play any PC or console game that lends itself to virtual reality in this sphere. I’m not going to make something that only takes my games—we’ve all been down that road before. You buy some cool piece of equipment and in two years you can’t get games for it, or you have to buy a new game for both your console and PC. Uh-uh. If you buy Polizei for your Nintendo, it will come with a version for the Graham sphere
and
a PC version. If you buy the version for Xbox, same deal.”

This seemed to impress the crowd even more than the collapsible aspect had.

Theresa leaned around her daughter. “This is his bigger idea, Mr. Cannon?”

The financier nodded. “It’s the next logical step for home entertainment. But it has to be affordable and convenient, the two most important things to an American household. In most families the second is becoming more vital than the first. It wasn’t only lower prices and more versatility that made people start buying home computers—it was that they didn’t take up half the room anymore. Once they fit on a desktop and had rounded edges, they became a necessity. Same with video games. Once consoles got small and light enough to be tossed in a cubbyhole when the kid went to school, sales shot up.”

A black woman with her hair twisted into spiky clumps and cheekbones to die for approached Jerry Graham and greeted him with a kiss. They exchanged a few words and parted with another kiss, and not a professional-colleagues one. A girlfriend or wife. She must have seen quite a lot of Jillian, since the two men were so close. She might be an interesting person to talk with.

“Say,” the financier went on, “are you single, by any chance?”

She still wore the engagement ring Paul had given her. “No.”

“How about you starting us off?” Evan said from beside the gyroscope, and Rachael moved forward without a glance at her mother. Theresa followed, watched her daughter step inside a globe with moving parts that resembled the inside of a blender, and tried to tamp down the nerves tightening around her throat. It’s a toy, she told herself. Just a toy. It couldn’t hurt anyone. They must have checked the design for every possible danger, certainly, before demonstrating it in front of a hundred or more potential customers.

Theresa took another step forward, and felt a tiny lump under the worn sole of her Reebok. At first she thought someone had dropped a coin, but it turned out to be a flat ring of gray plastic, similar to the one found with Jillian’s body, but not exactly the same diameter. Theresa picked it up.

Rachael slipped on the goggles. According to the monitor, she now faced a slowly advancing army of pale but sexily clad vampires. Using the weapon, she gleefully dispatched the front line. The crowd drew in closer to call out advice and encouragement.

Theresa felt Evan watching her, and caught his eye. Two young men had begun to ask questions as quickly as he could answer, and yet he seemed interested in Theresa’s reaction. Why?

If he thought he had a sure sale, he had another thought coming. Rachael would have to use her car fund if she wanted the circular monstrosity; hardly likely—games were fun, but wheels were a teen’s holy grail. “I thought vampires couldn’t die,” she said to Evan.

“The bullets are silver.”

“Must get expensive.”

“It’s only virtual silver,” he said, laughing.

She held out the piece of gray plastic. “What’s this?”

“Garbage.” He took it out of her palm and tossed it into a nearby can with one arc of his right arm, then appeared surprised by her surprise. “They’re just punch-outs from the sphere arms. We swept this room, but there’s still a ton scattered around, I’m sure.”

“What’s the holdup with Polizei Two?” one of the boys asked.

Evan bounced on his toes, his gaze darting between Rachael, Theresa, the boys in front of him, and the rest of the crowd. “Trying to get the fuzzy wings on the vultures just right. The graphics are killing me.”

“Seriously, dude. It was supposed to be out for Christmas.”

Evan bounced harder. “There are a lot of factors at play here. I wanted the sphere to be ready for preorder with the game.”

“You could have embedded an ad and order form in the higher levels. Why hold up the game?”

Theresa wondered if the boy, with his Chinese-symbol tattoo and peach-fuzz beard, felt the same urgency about his geometry homework.

His friend, thinner and pastier, came to Evan’s rescue. “Don’t hassle the guy, dude. His wife died, and all.”

The first young man remembered his manners. “Oh, yeah. That really sucked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Evan agreed, watching Rachael. The bouncing subsided.