Raika: Come in.
She led them into the long east wing of the house, divided by screens into three open rooms. The door slid shut behind them. They passed a Buddha on a bookshelf, potted plants, and occasional chairs, and followed her into a corner room with windows looking out over the arboretum toward the ocean beyond. A long, low table with kneeling mats then led off into the central area of the house. There was a bottle of saki sitting on the table, and several china cups.
Raika stood for a moment, as if contemplating her next move, and Chas thought how attractive she looked. She had long, crinkly, red hair tied at the nape of her neck and tumbling in a mane down her back. She wore tight jeans and a cross-over cream sweater that revealed the swell of her breasts. Her face was thin, with an almost pointed chin, and she had the most penetrating amber eyes that blinked continuously behind long, long lashes.
She padded in bare feet across the carpet and sat on one of the kneeling stools.
Raika: Take a seat.
Chas knelt with his back to the window and saw, through a partially open screen door, water tumbling over a collection of large boulders in a square, marble hot tub. The sound of running water tinkled gently in the silence of the house.
Raika: Tell me it’s not true.
Chas: I wish we could, Raika.
Raika: I can’t believe it. She was my best friend in SL. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard from her. We exchanged IMs every day. And when the grid was down, we would chat on Skype. What happened?
Chas: Somebody shot her, Raika. We think she was killed for a large amount of money that was in her SL account. Did you know anything about that?
Raika: No. I didn’t know that much about her RL. Except that money didn’t seem to be a problem. She had a huge house in SL, just off an island called Revere. She’d bought it, along with an enormous parcel of land. God knows what she was paying in tiers. We used to hang out there a lot when we weren’t working. Fabulous beach. Views across the water to a little group of islands and a smoking volcano. It was cool, you know. People used to drop by. We would drink wine and chat.
Doobie: Where did you meet her?
Raika: At Twisted’s. She’d been dancing there a while, and I was the new girl. The guys, you know, girls, whatever... they were a bit cliqué, know what I mean? Nice, but, well, you know, the third sex. So we real girls kinda stuck together. Quick took me under her wing. Took me shopping for clothes, skins, anims. She’s basically responsible for the way I look now.
There was a long pause.
Raika: I... I still can’t believe it. I could tell her anything, you know? And she never judged me. Jees, I mean, I had some pretty rough relationships in here, and she was always there to pick up my pieces. I don’t know how I’ll survive without her.
Chas: Did you ever hear her talk about a guy called Maximillian Thrust?
Raika: No, not that I can remember. One of her clients, maybe.
Doobie: Clients?
Raika: She did escort work, as well as dancing at Twisted’s and a couple of straight clubs. Loved the whole virtual sex thing. Playing the slut. Know what I mean? She didn’t do it for the money. She got such a kick out of it.
Chas: Did she have any boyfriends? Or any other special friends?
Raika: She had lots of friends. She was a popular girl. But she didn’t seem interested in having any kind of serious relationship in here. No BFs that I knew of.
Chas: Did she ever give you the idea that she was scared of something, or that something was troubling her?
Raika: In RL?
Chas: Both.
Raika: Not really. She always seemed pretty fearless to me. Nothing fazed her, you know?
Doobie: Could you give us a Landmark for her house in Revere?
Raika: I’ll take you there, if you like.
There was a pause.
Raika: Oh, God. I just looked in my Landmark folder and saw the LM. Quick’s Place. I used to click on that so often. Every time I was down. Every time I was up, and needed to share. I guess this’ll be the last time I go there. What’ll happen to the house and all her stuff? I suppose it’ll be returned to her Inventory when the tiers run out.
Doobie: There is no inventory Raika. The account’s been erased. I guess all her things will just be deleted from the asset server.
Raika: Aw, shit. That’s such a shame. She has lovely stuff, too.
She stood up.
Raika: I’ll send you a TP.
As in RL, Quick Thinker lived in a mansion, a huge house that filled an entire corner of an island in Emelia Bay, just off the coast of Revere. Water tumbled over the smooth boulders of an enormous waterfall into a small inlet behind the house. Acres of deck space, and a roof terrace covered an area the size of two tennis courts. The west-facing beach was punctuated by leaning palm trees and dotted with tables and chairs and loungers. A campfire sent smoke and sparks spiralling up into a clear sky. On the far corner of the parcel stood a blue helter-skelter tower with dance animations on its flat roof, and beyond it, the smoke from the volcano hung over the island like a dark, brooding cloud.
When Raika clicked on the wood-panelled front door, it turned transparent, and they were able to walk through it into a marble-floored sitting room where sofas and armchairs were grouped around a large open fire. Coloured light filtered in through a tall stained glass window above the mantel.
Reproductions of works by famous nineteenth- and twentieth-century impressionists hung on red and tan walls. In the hallway, a Roman-style bath sank into the marble had two poseballs set along one side of it, lix m, lix f. Which didn’t take too much imagination to envision.
The hallway then opened into another sprawling lounge area, arched windows looking out over palm-shaded gardens. Here stood another open fire, and an oval frame on the wall above it showed an SL photo sequence of Quick herself.
Raika: That’s her. OMG, I think I’m going to cry.
Chas watched the slide-show once through. The sequence contained half a dozen pictures, some portraits, some full-length poses, and one depicting her naked on a beach. She was tall, blond, and beautiful, like so many other women in SL. Chas had seen her corpse spreadeagled across the bed and knew that, in truth, she’d had short, brown hair and a broad, plain face. But, then, death had a habit of stealing beauty away from the features of its victims. Quick, he imagined, was how Jennifer would have liked to look.
A spiral staircase led up to a sumptuous bedroom, where a bed was raised high on three levels. Flames licked around the hearth of yet another open fire. Windows looked out over the sea, and patio doors opened on to the roof terrace. There was no sign of a corpse. Quick’s dead AV was not here.
A touch on a tile set into the wall TP-ed them back downstairs.
Chas: Nothing here.
Raika: What were you hoping to find?