Chas stood waiting for several seconds while Twist’s office rezzed around him. He checked his Friends List and saw that Twist was still online, and his face stung from the shock of knowing that while Twist might still be around, the real life person who had created him was dead.
He let his eyes wander about the office. All the tiny details. The pictures on the wall, the friendship bear on the desk, the laptop computer with its joke welcome page for Third Life, the potted plants. Every item here had been bought or made, and placed by Janey. The world she had built. Her escape from a life that was disappointing her, to a place where she could re-make herself and take control. And Chas felt the pain of knowing he would never see her again. Never hear her laugh or tell her his troubles. In some strange way, by comparison, Mora’s death seemed to have retreated to a distant place and time. To have gained a perspective he had never been able to find. And he reflected how, in just a few short days, he himself had changed almost beyond recognition. Become someone else.
But he had no time to dwell on it. Time had become a luxury. It was a commodity he could no longer afford. He saw, with relief, that Doobie was still online, and he opened up an IM.
Chas: Hey Doobs!
Doobie: How you doing, lover?
Chas: Not good. I need to talk to you.
Doobie: I’m still dancing, Chas. Come down to the club.
A teleport invitation to Sinful Seductions arrived almost immediately, and Chas clicked to accept.
The club was half empty when he arrived, and the few customers at tables or gathered around the stage rezzed slowly. Soft, sexy, jazz sax oozed around the auditorium, a bored-looking DJ sitting behind his desk, idling through piles of DVDs. There were only two dancers on stage, Doobie and another called Pennyweather Boozehound, a tall, willowy, blond with a small group of admirers urging her to take off more items of clothing as she gyrated around the pole for their pleasure.
Chas watched for a few moments, mesmerised. Doobie had already divested herself of her top and wore nothing more than the skimpiest pair of lace panties, stockings, garters, and the inevitable high heels. She was a sexy AV, and her dance animation showed her body off to best effect. She twisted and arched, and thrust in a sexually provocative manner, encouraging a string of lewd comments from a customer sitting on a stool immediately below her, leaning forward, his elbows on the stage, his upturned face just above a tip jar showing donations of almost 2000 Lindens. So she’d had a good afternoon’s work.
The last donation, of 200, had been made by Biglurch Pinion, the customer still drooling lasciviously in front of her. He was a big-built man with impossibly wide shoulders and even more impossibly narrow hips. His features were gross, but clearly his RL creator had thought them attractive. He wore a tight, black tee-shirt, and even tighter jeans. There was a cigarette burning between the fingers of his left hand. He was passing comment in open chat, rather than discreetly in IM.
Biglurch: Man, you got great jugs, woman. I’d just love to get my hands on those.
Doobie: Fifteen hundred an hour, Biglurch, and they’re all yours.
Chas was alarmed. He didn’t want Doobie tying herself up for an hour.
Chas: Doobie, I’ve got to talk to you.
Doobie: It’ll have to wait, Chas. This guy’s about to drop another 500 in my tip jar to make me take off my panties. And I don’t want to disappoint either of us.
Chas: Jesus Christ, Doobs!
Chas walked up to Biglurch.
Chas: Hey, Biglurch.
Biglurch: Hey, Chas.
Chas: Look, I don’t want to spoil your fun or anything, but I really need to talk to this lady. Could you give us a few minutes?
Biglurch swivelled his head to glower at Chas.
Biglurch: Piss off! I’ve got an investment going here.
Doobie: And so have I, Chas. You’ll get me into trouble with the owner if you go bothering customers.
Chas: This is important, Doobs!
Dennis: What’s the problem here?
Chas turned to see an enormous gorilla of a man called Dennis Ember towering over him. His tag labelled him Security. A glorified SL name for a bouncer.
Chas: I just need to talk to Doobie for a few minutes
Biglurch: She’s dancing for me, okay. I’ve got money in the jar.
Dennis turned to Biglurch.
Dennis: Is this AV bothering you, sir?
Biglurch: Yes, he fucking is.
Dennis: In that case, Mr. Chesnokov, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Mr. Pinion is a VIP member here.
Chas: I don’t care if he’s the Sultan of Brunei.
Dennis: And I don’t care for your tone. Goodbye.
Chas found himself spinning through space and time, until he landed with a thump on some anonymous piece of featureless waste ground. He stood up and looked around, dazed and wondering what had happened.
Doobie: You got ejected, you idiot! TP me.
Chas sent her a TP, and she arrived in a sprinkling of light several seconds later. She was still topless, but as she rezzed Chas was relieved to see that she had not yet removed her panties.
She was fuming.
Doobie: Chas, I know you have big problems, but you’re going to get me the sack here.
Chas: Doobie, Janey’s been murdered. And whoever did it took over her AV and tried to erase me with the Super Gun.
Doobie stood still for a very long time, and the dialogue box remained inactive. Her silence spoke volumes more than anything she might have written in it. Then,
Doobie: What happened?
Chas: Someone shot her, then set it up to look like it was me. There was evidence planted all over the murder scene. I was the first there, so I didn’t know if she was dead till I checked. And I got her blood on my hands and clothes, left my fingerprints everywhere. So now the cops are going to think that I killed her. And I’m not so sure I wouldn’t be better off now in police custody, anyway. Because without that three million I’m a dead man.
Doobie: Whoa, whoa. Calm down. Let’s take this slowly. Why would someone want to kill Janey?
Chas: I have no idea.
Doobie: She phoned you earlier, didn’t she? All excited because she said she’d found something to link you and the victims all together.
Chas: Yes, but I don’t know what that was.
Doobie: She was going to talk to someone, you said.
Chas: She never told me who.
Doobie: And there was nothing at the scene that might have given you some idea of what that link was, or who she might have been going to see?
Chas: No, nothing. Well, at least, not that I was aware of. She was murdered in her den. I didn’t have time to go through her things before the cops got there.
And then, out of the blackness of his despair, came a pinpoint of light, the tiniest fragment of hope. A recollection of the bloody trail on the carpet, the smears on the wall, the tiny plaster cherub clutched in Janey’s blood-stained fingers. He hadn’t been able to understand at the time why she would have made such a determined effort to pull it off the wall. But now comprehension came to him, as clear as day.