“Is this a riddle?”
“No, it’s a question. Do they do the en guard, touché thing or just go around stabbing unarmed fish because they can?”
“Maybe they do battle with the hammerheads.”
“Sword’s got a longer reach than a hammer, but a hammer could break a sword. It might be interesting, but I think it’s stupid to bring a hammer to a swordfight, unless it’s all you’ve got.”
“Use whatever weapon comes to hand, and anything that comes to hand is a potential weapon.”
“Yeah. If Bart was gaming a swordfight, he wouldn’t have brought a hammer.”
Easier, Roarke realized, to consider the details of death than to sink into the philosophy of it. “Depending on the game, the level, the programming, he might have had to earn his weapons. They can also be lost or broken, jammed or simply run out of charge or ammunition, again depending.”
“Did you ever play with him?”
“A couple of times. We never did holo, as it generally takes more time, and the facilities. But we played some VR, and some straight comp. He was very good, quick reflexes, and though he tended to take unnecessary risks, he made up for that with enthusiasm. But for the most part we talked technology, the business, marketing. We only had contact a handful of times the past two or three years.”
“Did you ever have him over here?”
“No. I’m not as trusting, and there was never any reason or purpose to it. We didn’t actively socialize, or have anything in common really but a common interest. He was very young, on several levels, and as many in their twenties do, he considered someone in their thirties as another generation.”
“Jamie’s younger,” she pointed out, speaking of Feeney’s godson and another e-wiz. “He’s been around a lot. You’ve worked with him. So have I.”
“Bart was nothing like Jamie. He hadn’t that edge, the street savvy, and certainly not any aspirations to turn his considerable e-skills toward a career in EDD. Jamie’s the next thing to family.”
Roarke paused, sipped some wine. “And does this conversation help you justify bringing me, a competitor of your victim, into the investigation as a consultant?”
“I don’t have to justify your participation, but it doesn’t hurt given the business interests, and the fact you told me you have a similar project under development, to keep it all open.”
“It’s always pleasant not to be a suspect.” He watched irritation cross her face, and honestly couldn’t say why he’d pushed that particular button.
“Look, from a strictly objective view, you could have smashed U-Play before it ever got off the ground, and at any point since then. They don’t threaten you. Hell, you’ve got the hammer and the sword, plus a couple of blasters and a pocketful of boomers. If you want to take down a company, and effectively, its brain, you use money, strategy, and guile, not a magic sword.”
She stabbed a piece of fish. “You have another perspective on the victim-not a partner, not exactly a friend, not an enemy, and a competitor only in the most technical sense. So you add to my picture of him while laying out the basics and the extent of your association.”
“That’s a lot of explanation,” he said mildly.
“Maybe.”
“Then I suppose I should add my own, in the interest of full disclosure and openness. I’ve implemented level-three runs on any of my people involved in the development of the holo-game project, and those on the fringes of it. Their associations, financials, communications.”
“That’s not your job.”
“I disagree. They’re my people, and I will be bloody well sure no one in my employ is involved in this, on any level, in any way.”
“The Privacy Act-”
“Be damned.” And a hot thread of anger, he admitted, felt more comfortable than this inexplicable sorrow. “Anyone employed by me or seeking to be is routinely screened, and signs a waiver.”
“Not for a level three, not without cause. That’s cop or government level.”
“Murder would be cause on my gauge.” His tone was as crisp and chilly as the wine.
“It’s a gray area.”
“Your gray is broader and darker than mine. There are incentives attached to a project like this, bonuses that could be very lucrative.” He stopped again, angled his head. “Which you know very well already as you’ve done or are doing your own level three, on my people.”
“It’s my job.”
“You might have told me. You might have trusted me enough to get the information for you.”
“You might have told me,” she countered. “Trusted me enough to do my job. Dammit. I didn’t tell you because you had a personal attachment to the victim, and I didn’t see the point in adding to the upset by telling you or asking you to get the data. What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t need an excuse. They’re my people. But the fact is once I have the data, and-whatever the results-pass it to you, you’d be able to contract or expand your suspect list.”
“All you had to do was tell me.”
“And the reverse holds just as true, so there’s no point in you getting pissed off.”
“I’m not pissed off. I’m… aggravated.”
“You’re aggravated? Consider, Eve, how aggravated I might be if it turns out that someone I trust, someone I pay had anything whatsoever to do with that.”
He gestured to the board.
“You can’t be or feel responsible for every person who pulls a check from Roarke Industries.” She threw up her hands. “It’s half the fucking world.”
More than one hot thread of anger wound through him now. “Oh yes, I bloody well can, and it’s nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with being in charge. You are and feel exactly the same about every cop in your division, in the whole shagging department come to that.”
She started to argue, then stopped because he was right about that much. “Any data from your run has to coincide with mine, and officially come from mine whether it clears your whole crew or somebody bobs to the surface.”
“I know how it works, Lieutenant. I’ll just get back to it then, so you can have what you need and shift it back to your side of the line.”
“That was low,” she mumbled as he walked out.
“Maybe it was.”
She sat, brooding into her wine. She didn’t know, exactly, why they were at odds. They were doing basically the same thing for basically the same reason.
Basically.
But he should’ve let her do it, or waited until she’d assigned him to do it. And that probably grated. The assign portion. Couldn’t be helped. She was the LT, she was the primary, she gave the damn orders.
Now she was passing aggravated and heading toward pissed, she realized.
She’d just been trying to shield him a little. Wasn’t that her job, too? she thought in disgust as she rose. Part of the marriage deal? So why were they fighting when she’d done her job?
And now she had to do the damn dishes, which she’d fully intended to dump on him.
She gathered them up as she scowled at the door he’d closed between their offices, and the red light above it that indicated he’d gone private.
That was pattern, she thought as she carted the dishes into the kitchen. When he was seriously peeved he walked away, closed up until he cooled off. Which was probably for the best as it saved a serious bout. But it was… aggravating.
She wondered why two people who loved each other to the point of stupid managed to aggravate each other as often as they seemed to.
She couldn’t think about it now, she decided as she dumped the dishes in the washer. She had work to do.
She programmed coffee and took it back to her desk.
Since he was doing the runs, whether she wanted him to or not, she’d let that part slide for now. No point in doubling the work.
Instead she studied the probabilities she’d set up before dinner. With the available data, the computer calculated a more than ninety-two percent probability Bart Minnock had known his killer. It gave her just under sixty on premeditation, high nineties on the killer working in or involved in the gaming business, which dropped to middle seventies on personnel from U-Play.