Mind-Altering Murder

Chapter Twelve

The girl was holding something back. Shawn knew it. She tried to come across as an innocent college student-majoring in library sciences, no less-but he was convinced she was the key to finding Macklin Tanner.

He had first become suspicious when he’d spotted her ducking out of a jewelry store he’d been trying to break into. The safe inside contained a diamond the size of a large house cat, and if Shawn could steal it, he’d almost certainly be invited to join Morton’s crew on a heist they were planning. But every time he’d tried sticking the place up, he’d been killed by a team of well-armed security guards. There was no way he was going to get that gem when anyone was looking.

Not that breaking in promised to be much easier. What looked like a normal storefront during the day became an impenetrable fortress at night, all four walls covered by thick steel slabs that slammed down once the doors were locked. And even if Shawn found a way into the building, he was pretty sure the diamond wouldn’t just be lying around on a counter. He’d still have to break into the safe.

There was only one answer to both these problems-he’d have to use some kind of explosive. Since he hadn’t come across any dynamite in the game, Shawn had to check his inventory to see what other incendiaries he might have earned along the way. At first nothing jumped out at him. He had an arsenal of machine guns, pistols, and shotguns; he had switchblades, machetes, and stilettos-both the knife and the shoes; he had stacks of cash, piles of gold, and heaps of jewels. He’d been doing well for himself lately, picking up trophies at every encounter. But he didn’t have anything that looked like it might explode.

Shawn dug deeper in his inventory, searching through the things he’d been given that seemed to have no use at all. There was a spare tire from a boat hauler, the skeleton of a fish, an empty can of pork and beans, a broken floor lamp with no bulb. And then there was the poo.

That was the first thing Shawn had won in the game. Just after he’d logged in he was attacked by a pack of rabid dogs. They killed him. Three times in a row they killed him seconds after he materialized in the city. The fourth time he was ready for them. Just before his third death he had noticed a wrench lying in the gutter by a fire hydrant. The fourth time he stepped onto the mean streets he didn’t waste any time reaching for the single revolver his avatar started with. He dived to the ground and rolled over to the hydrant. As soon as he touched it the dogs stopped in their tracks, then trotted docilely over to him. He waited until they were lined up right in front of him, then used the wrench to open the hydrant and sent the hellhounds tumbling away in a torrent of water.

His reward for that bit of ingenuity was a massive heap of dog poo in his inventory. He’d tried to get rid of it, but there didn’t seem to be a way. He supposed it was a message from the game’s creators: You may think you’re clever for figuring this one out, but it’s the most basic of all the puzzles so don’t get cocky.

But over the course of his sessions, Shawn had learned a lot about the logic of this world. There was never anything in the inventory that couldn’t be used in some way, but the mode of employ was rarely what a normal person would expect. It was like that with the gas can he’d acquired a few levels back: When he tried to fill the tank of his car with it, the auto exploded into flames. This gasoline was intended only for external combustion.

Shawn knew that in the real world there were very few uses for dog poo. Sure, you could scoop it into a bag, then put it on a grumpy neighbor’s doorstep and set it on fire, so that he’d stomp on the bag and get it all over his shoe. But if you tried that with anyone in Darksyde City, he’d shoot you or stab you or blow you up, which took much of the fun out of the prank.

The logic of the game world worked differently from our own. There was a lot of metaphor involved, as Gus had said early on. And Shawn knew that in the real world people made bombs out of fertilizer-in the virtual one dog poo would probably perform the same function.

Shawn stole an SUV from a parking lot and filled the passenger’s compartment with the poo. He drove it into the alley behind the jewelry store, noticing that the car’s keyless remote had grown a new button, one illustrated with a cartoon explosion. Apparently Shawn was on the right track. He was about to push the detonator button when he saw the girl casually strolling out of a side exit. He didn’t think to grab her then-it seemed more important to make sure she was free of the blast zone, since he’d finally figured out that the game tended to penalize the player for indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians. He watched her walk out of the alley, then put her out of his mind.

At least he did until the next time he was inside the game. The explosion had worked spectacularly-too spectacularly, as it turned out. Not only did the car bomb blast through the steel walls, it wiped out the entire city block, vaporizing Shawn’s avatar into pixels that swirled for minutes before resolving into the “game over” screen.

Clearly, Shawn realized, he had used too big a vehicle, and once he had the game restarted, he grabbed a tenspeed that some bike messenger had left outside an office building and filled its courier pouch with the poo, then rode it back to the alley. Fortunately the SUV’s keyless remote was still in his inventory. More promisingly, its detonator button had shrunk down to half its previous size. Shawn assumed that meant the explosion, too, had been right-sized.

He was about to use the remote to detonate the bicycle when a small door in one of the steel walls swung open and the same girl came out. She was carrying a small bag, as if she’d just made a purchase from a store that had closed hours ago.

That was when Shawn realized the girl was more than a misplaced bunch of pixels. She was a major clue. Shawn started to chase after her, but before he could close the distance between them he tripped over a crack in the asphalt and landed on his remote, triggering the explosion and killing himself. He quickly restarted the game, rehijacked the bicycle, and rode back to the alley. But no matter how long he waited, she never reappeared. Worse, the keyless remote had disappeared from his inventory, and he had no way to set off the explosion.

That night he was able to report for the first time to Brenda Varda that he’d found a major clue in the game and would be following it up in the morning. Not that he had any idea how he’d be doing it.

By the time he reentered the game he had come up with one. She’d shown up every time he came up with a new way into the jewelry store. So he had to plan one.

Shawn had no idea if the jackhammer he stole from the Darksyde City work crew could actually penetrate the steel walls, and he didn’t really care. As long as the game thought he was trying, he figured that would be enough. And as soon as he pressed the blade to steel, he was proved right. The girl stepped through the suddenly appearing door in the wall and headed down the street.

Shawn ran as fast as he could-which was a lot faster in the virtual world than in the real one-and caught up with her quickly. According to game logic he probably should have kidnapped her right there, hauled her back to an abandoned warehouse, and worked her over until she talked. But even though he had given himself almost entirely over to the virtual way of life when he played this game, there were still some things that he couldn’t bring himself to do. Blowing up a building wasn’t a problem for him. Even driving that bus off the bridge caused him no pain, any more than the moment in a disaster movie when a bunch of extras were knocked off.

But he found himself pulling back when confronted with the prospect of committing the kind of interrogation that any civilized nation would consider a war crime, especially on a pretty young woman. So he tried talking to her instead. She pulled out a gun and pumped eighteen bullets into him.

After he’d restarted the game and tried a new way into the building, this one involving a bulldozer, she appeared again. This time he grabbed her and hauled her through a manhole into the sewer. That was where she informed him that her name was Fawn Liebowitz and she had a bomb strapped to her back. Before he could check out the claim, the sewer exploded and Shawn was out of the game again.

It had taken several more tries before Shawn could get any more information out of the young woman, and each time he ended up feeling a little less compassion for her. But no matter what methods he tried, he couldn’t get her to say anything except that her name was Fawn Liebowitz, that she was a student at Darksyde U, and that she was majoring in the most ridiculous, phony subject whoever invented her character could come up with, something they called library science. Whatever he did next ended up with her dying or him dying or both of them dying or, in one spectacular bit of game play, the entire human race dying, and none of it was advancing his cause any.

The next day, instead of going back into the game, he decided to spend his time on the outside, thinking about the clue. He looked at it from every angle and replayed every move. He Googled the name Fawn Liebowitz, even though he knew exactly where the programmer had taken it from, and even though the fact that she was known only for dying in a kiln explosion would do him no good at all.

And then he realized the one piece he hadn’t played with yet. She was a student. That was the key. There had to be some secret code that only students knew, some special way to talk to them. That would make sense, since most of the game’s audience would be college kids desperate for an excuse not to study.

The only trouble was Shawn had never been to college. He hadn’t been a student since he’d graduated from high school, and while he had talked to a lot of college girls, the subject of their studies somehow never came up

But that wasn’t a problem. Because Gus had actually been to college. And in his years there, he had spent some time in every major they had on offer. For all Shawn knew he might have even spent some time in this so-called library science, if such a thing really existed. If there was anything to know about college life, Gus would know it. Shawn grabbed for the phone and started to dial.

And then he remembered. Gus didn’t work for Psych anymore.

And Gus would never work for Psych again.