Virtually Dead

Chapter Thirty-Four

The drive back along the Pacific Coast Highway to Corona del Mar passed in a blur. Michael was having to force himself to think clearly, which, given the events of the last twenty-four hours, was far from easy. Going back to Dolphin Terrace was no longer an option. The police would come looking for him at home sooner rather than later, and his misplaced minders would almost certainly come back to stake it out.

But he needed Internet access. The only person left in the world, it seemed, who could help him, was a Second Life avatar called Doobie Littlething.

He reached the junction where Jamboree crossed PCH heading down to the ocean and Balboa Island. There was the Starbucks on the island, where he regularly bought coffee. He would be able to log on to the Internet there. But parking was an issue. And then he remembered that there was another Starbucks about half a mile further on, still on PCH, just past the Porsche franchise. It had its own carpark. He accelerated across Jamboree as the lights changed.

Three minutes later he slotted his SUV between two compacts and carried his laptop into the Starbucks coffee shop. Frustratingly, it was busy, and he had to wait nearly ten minutes to get served with his usual caramel machiatto. He carried it quickly to a table at the window, freshly vacated by two teenage girls, and opened up his laptop. As he sipped on his coffee and waited for the system to load, he remembered that he didn’t have the Second Life software on this computer.

He cursed aloud, then looked up self-consciously at the faces turning in his direction.

“Sorry.” He blushed and lowered his head and tapped Second Life into the Google search engine to get a link to the website. It took several more minutes to download the software and go through all the disclaimers, before he was able to enter his avatar name and password. Finally, he was back in.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Chas: Jesus, Doobie. There was something. She left me a message. I just never realised it till now.

Doobie: What was it?

Chas: Oh, shit! RL! BRB.

Michael dipped his head as the two police officers came through the door. They did not look immediately in his direction, but he knew they could not avoid seeing him on the way out. Cops always looked around, took in the lay of the land. It was their training and their instinct for self-preservation. He recognised one of them from the Newport Police Department, and knew that he would recognise him, too.

Michael leaned on his elbow, resting his head casually in his hand, and turned to look out of the window, attempting to hide as much of his face as possible. He listened to them order nonfat cafe lattes, then spoil the low-fat effect by asking for two traditional chocolate donuts. What was it with cops and donuts?

It was dark outside now, just the merest trace of light left in the western sky. All his options were rapidly running out, but if he was to confirm his revelation about the message left for him by Janey, there was only one course of action open to him.

“Hey, Mike, how are you doing buddy?” It was the NPD cop.

Michael turned around, feigning surprise. “Oh, hi. Didn’t see you coming in.” He nodded toward the bag of donuts. “I see you’re still working on your waistline.”

The cop laughed too heartily. “Don’t tell the little lady; she’s had me on a diet for months. Can’t understand why I’m not losing weight.” He put his fingers to his lips. “Our secret, huh?” He winked.

Michael smiled winningly. “Don’t worry, it’s safe with me.”

He watched them go, his heart pulsing in his throat. But at least one thing was clear. There was no APB out on him. If there were suspicions about his involvement in Janey’s murder, they hadn’t yet surfaced from the crime scene. He turned back to his computer.

Chas: Doobie, you still there?

Her AV was there, but she took several seconds to respond.

Doobie: Sorry, yeh. I was in an IM with my boss. I’m in the shit. What’s happening?

Chas: I can’t stay here. I’m going to have to move.

Doobie: Where are you?

Chas: I’m in a Starbucks. But I’ve been seen by a couple of cops. I’m going to transfer to another one over on Balboa Island. It’ll take me about ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.

Doobie: Okay, IM me when you get back in. Oh, by the way, what was Janey’s message?

But he had already logged out.

From nowhere, it seemed, dark clouds had rolled in off the Pacific, pregnant with rain that was just beginning to fall in big, fat spots. Michael left the cover of Starbucks and ran for his car, his laptop clutched beneath his jacket. The rain was warm, like the air, and by the time he reached his SUV it was coming down from the heavens like stair-rods. He slipped into the driver’s seat, breathless and soaking. On the far horizon, splinters of scarlet fractured the skyline, glowing pink around the edges of burgeoning black clouds.

He laid his laptop on the seat next to him and sat clutching the steering wheel, his eyes closed. He couldn’t clear the picture of Janey lying dead on the floor of her den. It was as if it had been etched permanently on his retinas, like an image burned onto a computer monitor by too constant exposure.

He remembered the night she had come to his house to surprise him. Her mock seduction, which somehow, he felt, had really been a front for some more wishful intent. He remembered her laughter, her wicked sense of humour, jokes made so often at her own expense. And now she was dead. Because of him. Her blood staining the carpet of her den. Clutching fingers leaving smears of blood on the wall as she reached up to grasp the little plaster figurine. Her last act on this earth. Her last thought. A message for Mike.

And something else came back to him now, too. Something that had slipped by completely unnoticed. Although it must have lodged somewhere in his brain, as if waiting impatiently to be discovered and swept back into the flow of mainstream information where it might make more sense.

A throwaway line in their conversation with Jennifer Mathews’ brother, Richard. His bitterness at learning from his sister that their father was salting away a tax-free inheritance for her in Second Life. She told me about it, you see. Rubbing my nose in it. There always was a spiteful side to her. Like father, like daughter. And no amount of expensive therapy could ever remove that nasty little character trait.

Michael flipped open his cellphone and pulled up a number from its memory. He clamped it to his ear and listened to it ring.

“Yeh?”

“Is that Stan or Ollie?”

“Stanley. Who wants to know?”

“It’s Michael, Stan. Have you heard?”

He held his breath. This was the moment of truth. If word had got back about him from Laguna, then this conversation would be short-lived.

“Shit, yeh. About Plain Jane? Jesus, man, I can’t believe it. I was talking to her just this afternoon.”

Michael controlled his breathing. It seemed he wasn’t in the frame just yet. “Stan, I need some information.”

“About Janey?”

“No. About Arnold Smitts and Jennifer Mathews.”

“Jesus, Mike! You and Janey both. She was bugging me for info this afternoon. What are you two, detectives all of a sudden?”

“Stan, it’s important. It might explain why she’s dead. What did she want to know?”

He could hear Laurel breathing heavily at the other end of the phone, wondering perhaps if he should tell him or not. “She wanted to know if Smitts and Mathews consulted with the same therapist. Seems like she’d been digging in the Smitts file and come up with a name.”

“And did they?”

Laurel grunted. “What if they did? It wouldn’t be unusual for two people in the same small town to be seeing the same therapist. This ain’t LA.”

“Who was it, Stan?”

But he knew, even before Laurel told him. “Some psychology consultant called Angela Monachino.”

Michael closed his eyes and saw again the little plaster cherub clutched in Janey’s hand. Only it wasn’t, he knew now, a cherub. It was an angel. In her dying moments, even through all her pain and the certain knowledge of imminent death, she had found a way of telling him who had killed her.

“Mike? You still there, Mike? Hang on. There’s some kinda weird shit coming in from Laguna Beach on the other line.”

Michael snapped his cellphone shut. He could imagine only too well just exactly what that weird shit might be. Weird shit that was about to hit the fan.

He gripped the steering wheel even more tightly and cursed his frustration into the night. Angela had set him up right from the start. She had manipulated him into Second Life with the promise of continuing his therapy in her SL group. It must have been Angela who somehow contrived to transfer Smitts’ millions into Chas’ account. Though God only knew why.

Michael turned the key in the ignition. There would probably be alerts going out on every police radio in the next few minutes. And this was his last known whereabouts. He pulled out into the southbound stream of traffic on PCH and headed up to Jamboree, where he took a right. At the foot of the hill, he drove past the Cosmetic Care plastic surgery center on his left and the Newport Beach Yacht Club on his right, to cross the bridge over the channel to Balboa Island. He found a parking spot right across the street from Starbucks on Marine Avenue. Through the rain he could see that the coffee shop was nearly empty. Just a handful of customers sitting at tables in the window. He slipped his computer beneath his jacket again, and hurried across the road, the rain bouncing off the tarmac as he ran. By the time he pulled open the door and got himself in out of the rain, he was soaked to the skin and breathing hard.

The few customers there were in the place turned to look at him. Two middle-aged women in jogpants and training shoes, taking shelter, mid-jog, from the unexpected rain. A young woman with long hair tied back from a pale face, engrossed in a laptop. A middle-aged man in shorts and a yellow tee-shirt plastered to his chest and shoulders. He had clearly been drenched in the downpour, wet, dark hair swept back from his forehead. An elderly, silver-haired woman sitting in the corner, face buried in her MacBook. She dragged her eyes away from her screen for a moment to look up to give him a sympathetic smile.

The bearded barista smiled at him warmly across the counter. “How are you today, Michael? What can I get you? The usual?”

In truth, Michael didn’t want another coffee. But he needed the excuse to be here. “Sure.”

He carried his coffee to a free table and sat down to open up his laptop. He immediately received a warning that his battery was low. He muttered a mouthful of imprecations under his breath. He was going to have to be quick.