“What do you mean?”
“I mean the Wicker Man. I’ve been suggesting since we hooked up in Shadow World that he might be a TTL, a guy who mirrors his real-life killing online.”
“Yeah, so? You think I’m him?” She was kidding, Justin was pretty sure.
“No, I don’t think you’re him. But why do you find my theory so implausible, considering you’re a True-to-Lifer yourself?”
“Because there are so many other explanations that make more sense, Justin. The correct explanation is almost always the simplest one.”
“Occam’s Razor, I know,” Justin typed.
“Huh?”
“William of Occam. Fourteenth-century Franciscan monk. The correct explanation is almost always the simplest one. He said that.” Justin wondered if he was coming across like a know-it-all. He frequently did in real life.
“You’re full of surprises,” Sally said. “It’s hot in here.” Temperature in the game was metered on-screen, and characters were expected to act accordingly – remove clothes, drink liquids – or they would start to get tired. Eventually avatars could become dehydrated and need to go to a Shadow emergency room.
Justin didn’t want to talk about the broken thermostat. “But why is it more likely that the Shadow World murders, or the ones most similar to the Wicker Man killings at least, are being done by a copycat, when we know that a quarter of the folks in Shadow World are True-to-Lifers like you? Why not explore the possibility that the Wicker Man is a gamer and he’s killing in both worlds?”
“Because we have no evidence of that beyond your crazy imagination. And even if it were true, Justin, how would we prove it? The Wicker Man hasn’t left any physical evidence in the real world. On a computer network he’d be a total phantom. No fingerprints, no DNA, no blood evidence.” She paused, as if she were hesitant to say the next thing. “Plus there’s another reason.”
“What?”
“The Wicker Man’s victims are posed, postmortem. The bodies in Shadow World aren’t.”
“Some of them looked kind of posed,” Justin said.
“No, the real Wicker Man victims have their legs spread wide apart, and the left hand is covering their left breast. Every one of them,” Sally said. “The cops have asked to keep that out of the papers so they don’t run up against copycats.”
Justin was undeterred. “Maybe he’s doing it slightly different in the game. I just think it’s worth looking into. If we find out who’s killing these girls in Shadow World, it might lead us to the real-life killer.”
Sally’s avatar covered her mouth but no titles showed up on Justin’s screen to indicate she was laughing. Maybe she was yawning. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She said. “Is this what you came all the way down here for? To argue this all over again now that you’ve found out I’m a TTL?”
“I’m in school,” Justin typed. “I’m bored.”
“Smart guy like you, I’m not surprised.”
“I have to go to my next class soon. I should head for the train.”
“Yeah, and my lunch break’s about over.”
“Sally, tell me something before I split,” Justin wrote. “If I had gone downtown in real life and left you a message that I was waiting for you across the street, would you have shown up?” As he typed he realized it sounded flirtatious and, given his age, presumptuous. He didn’t care.
Shadow Sally reached across the table and touched him on the shoulder. “‹ AGE INAPPROPRIATE› right, I would,” she wrote, turning his empty bag of chips inside out. “A girl’s gotta eat.”
– 68 -
They would have been meaningless, forgettable syllables six weeks ago, but the name took on an instant taint of evil when he heard Dr. Moore say it. He fingered through the envelope of evidence, which featured it in bold type on every page.
Sam Coyne.
In Justin’s mind it was a name already as menacing, and as fascinating, as Bundy and Gacy and Speck.
Samuel Nathan Coyne. It needed the middle name to be official. For the highest dishonor.
“So what do we do?”
“I’m not sure,” Davis said.
“Let’s go to the cops,” Justin said. “We can explain what happened. Get a judge to order a sample of his DNA. If it matches mine they can charge him with Anna Kat’s murder.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Why not? Wasn’t that always your plan?”
“First of all, I doubt we have enough evidence here for a warrant. As soon as the sample of Coyne’s DNA left the police station, the chain of evidence was broken. The fact that his DNA matches yours, or even that it matches the original sample, if I still had it, would probably be inadmissible. Plus there’s the fact that when I created you – and you’re the only evidence that fingers him – I broke the law. Any good attorney, and Coyne would have a dozen of those, would have a field day. Coyne would go free, I’d probably go to prison for ten years, and your life would become a media freak show. You’d be the world-famous Killer Clone Boy of Chicago.”
Justin didn’t look up from the thin stack of paper and photographs. “I could handle that. Could you? Would you go to prison in order to catch him?” Davis shuddered at the matter-of-fact way the boy said it. Like it was a challenge. As if he were calling Davis out. Now you’re not going to be a problem, are you? You’re not going to go yellow on me? There in the car Davis realized he was afraid of Justin Finn, the boy made from an animal. But he was also in awe of him. He had poise. Intelligence. Charisma. Talking with him, it was nearly impossible to keep in mind that he was only a fifteen-year-old kid.
“At one point, yes, I would have been willing to do that, years ago,” said Davis, although he couldn’t remember if that was really true. “Now I don’t know. Could I do that to my wife? If it meant Coyne would go to prison, or worse, maybe. I’m not sure. But it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t do any good.”
Justin felt himself getting warm inside his coat and he cracked the window. The old trees of the park covered the car in a dappled shade. It had been pleasant all day, if a little cold, and the path was more crowded than it had been the last time they met. This discussion was more important than caution, however.
“I’ve been looking for that name for eighteen years,” Davis said. “Sam Coyne. I’ve done unimaginable things. Phil Canella and my first wife are both dead because of it. And now that I know, I’ve never felt more helpless. When I didn’t know who killed AK, I could imagine he was a miserable psychotic. I could imagine him suffering in some prison, or hospital. I could imagine him rotting in the ground. Burning in hell. Forced to confront the evil he committed. To pay for it. I could imagine the karmic scales had been balanced without my help. Honestly, it tortures me to know he’s been made partner in a thriving law practice. That he lives in an expensive condominium on the Gold Coast. That beautiful young women are probably lined up at his door.” Davis felt like he might cry, but he also felt detached and cold, like he did the night of Anna Kat’s murder. He didn’t cry over her body, and he didn’t cry now.
Justin said, “Dr. Moore, I’ve read a lot of books written by philosophers. Some of them, like Kierkegaard, are trying to figure out who we are, what makes one guy different from the next guy. Some want to know if there’s a God. Like Anselm or Augustine. Others – Hobbes, Hume – are trying to sort out right from wrong: what’s okay to do, what isn’t okay, and why. Every single one of them, in his own way, is trying to find out, Why am I here? ” He clutched the envelope in the space between them. “Do you know how many get to hold the answer in their hands?”
Davis coughed, the spasm in his throat disguising his amazement. Justin was so much like an adult. Davis had expected something like empathy from him and instead got a lecture on metaphysics. “Come on, Justin. You’re more than that. More than some investigative tool. I was callous about bringing you into this world. I should have considered the consequences, the burden I’d be putting on you if you or anyone else ever found out, but I take responsibility for that. There’s nothing unique or odd about you, physically or metaphysically. You’re just a teenager – an extremely intelligent teenager, obviously – but a teenager like any other.” As was so often the case these days, Davis wasn’t sure he believed what he was saying.