Virtually Dead

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Michael left the door open behind him as he moved step by careful step into the profound darkness that smothered the interior of Angela’s house. He placed a hand against the wall to his right and used it to guide himself the seven or eight feet to the long hallway that transected the house lengthwise.

To the left, he knew, were the kitchen, bathroom, and utility rooms. To the right, a couple of bedrooms, Angela’s office, and at the far end of the hall, the sitting room where she conducted her sessions with clients, blinds drawn against the glare of the beach and the ocean beyond. A narrow staircase led up to a guest apartment with its own kitchen and sitting room.

As he turned into the hall, he saw a faint glow of ghostly light spilling from the open door of what he knew to be the office. He waited for a moment, listening intently for the slightest sound. But the silence was so deep it was almost suffocating. All he could hear was the sound of the rain that still fell outside, the tattoo of it on the roof and the veranda. He started moving carefully down the hall, eyes now fully adjusted to the small amount of available light.

He pushed open the first door he reached and could just make out the dark shape of a bed, a wardrobe, a dresser. He reached inside for a light switch. But its dull click produced no light, and the apprehension in him rose like the acid reflux in his digestive system.

Further along the hall, he found a panel of switches, none of which brought light to his darkness, and he wondered what was powering the light source he saw emanating from the office. He was driven on now by a sense of dread, of a growing certainty that he was going to find Angela dead, and of wanting to get it over with. But there was, too, the very real sense that the killer might still be here. Waiting for him. The fact that there seemed to be power in the office put the thought in his head that perhaps someone had deliberately disabled the lighting circuits. Simple enough to throw a few switches in the fuse box.

He passed a second bedroom and hesitated for just a few seconds before moving into the ghost light from the office. The door was only partially open. He reached out to push it gently inwards to reveal an arc of computer monitors ranged around the inside curve of a long, semicircular office desk. Six of them. Each one illuminated by a scene from Second Life, an AV in each, heads dropped, arms hanging at their sides, all with the Away text next to their names.

Michael realised with a shock who each of them was, as his eyes jumped from screen to screen. Laffa Minit, Demetrius Smith, Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, Dark Daley. All of Angel’s patients from his group therapy session at The Blackhouse. The sixth and final screen displayed the Second Life welcome page that Michael had seen for the very first time at Arnold Smitts’ home the night of his murder. There were keyboards in front of each monitor, and a single office chair on castors. Speakers set behind the screens hummed with the familiar ambient sound of the virtual world.

Michael stood rooted to the spot, mesmerised, confused, until a sound from along the hall filtered through the myriad thoughts that choked his brain and reignited his fear. It was just a small sound, as if the leg of a chair had scraped on a carpet. But it crashed into his thoughts like the discordant percussion of a Peking opera. He wheeled around toward the source of it, eyes straining in the gloom. He listened carefully to try to catch it again. Nothing. But there was somebody there. Of that he was certain.

He resisted an urge to turn tail and run. The adrenalin pumping through his body was readying him for fight or flight. But he had come too far to run away now, into the arms of the mob who would kill him or the police who wouldn’t believe him. And so he prepared himself for the fight, tensed and ready, as he inched forward toward the sitting room.

Double doors stood wide. An electric clock display on the far wall cast the only light around the room and confirmed Michael’s worst fears that someone had deliberately disabled the lights. The drapes on the side windows were drawn against the night, thick velvet curtains that fell luxuriantly to gather on the carpet. And as he passed them, he caught a tiny movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned in time to see the faintest reflection of light catching the blade as it plunged into his neck.

The pain of it seared through his body, the knife cutting through sinew and muscle, missing vital arteries, but penetrating deep into the flesh of his left shoulder. He felt a disabling weakness surge through his body, and his legs buckled under him. As he fell to the floor, his head hit the carpet with a sickening thud. He felt the blade sliding out of the wound it had made, followed by a rush of his blood, warm and sticky, spreading over his neck and shoulder, soaking into the floor. A sense of panic almost crippled him entirely. It felt like his very life was flowing out of him.

A dark figure emerged from the folds of the drapes and stepped over him, moving across the room to switch on a table lamp. The sudden light hurt like hell, and Michael screwed up his eyes against it. He put a hand to his neck and felt his blood wet on his fingers. He rolled over on to his side, opening his eyes to peer into the light to get a look at his attacker.

“Get up, Michael.”

The shock of hearing her voice made his eyes open wide. He struggled to his knees, clutching at his shoulder, steadying himself against the wall with his other hand. “Angela?”

“Surprised?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to. For a clever man you’re pretty stupid, Michael. Weak. Driven by your emotions rather than your intelligence. Which made you perfect, really, for what I had in mind.”

She slid open a drawer in her writing bureau and brought out a small handgun. She waved it at him, casually, almost relaxed.

“I said get up.”

So Detective Luis Angeloz was not, after all, Dark Daley or any of the others. They were all Angela. With a great effort of will, Michael managed to get to his feet. He felt the blood oozing between his fingers, and the pain was spreading down his back and across his chest. He felt giddy and took several staggering steps forward before dropping again to his knees. A bloody hand stopped him falling on his face.

“Good. That’s going to look very convincing. You see, after I heard the side door being forced I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find. A kitchen knife. When you attacked me I stabbed you with it. But you were only wounded and came after me. I ran in here, where I took my gun from the bureau and... well, I think you can guess the rest.” She sat down, perched on the edge of an armchair, and he saw how pale she was. For for all her superficial confidence, there was a tremor in her voice. “Oh, and you should know. When you broke into my house you triggered a silent alarm system. The police are on their way, even as we speak. Too bad they won’t get here on time. You’ll be dead, and I will be distraught. Attacked by one of my own patients. Of course, I’ll tell them I didn’t realise it was you until after I’d shot you. Not that it would have made any difference. You don’t stop defending yourself from an attacker just because you know who he is.”

“You killed Janey.”

“The stupid girl came here trying to pass herself off as a policewoman. Asking questions about patients any detective would know I couldn’t answer. And in any case, I knew who she was. You’d talked about her often enough during our sessions.”

“Did I?” Michael had no recollection. He could only ever remember talking about Mora. All those hours of self-indulgent grief were a distant blur now.

“So she had to go, I’m afraid.”

“But why, Angela? What’s it all about?”

She sighed and looked at her watch. “Well, I suppose we have a few minutes. I can wait until we hear the siren before I shoot you. That way I won’t have to sit too long with you bleeding on my floor.”

“Jesus, Angela! You’re a cold-blooded bitch!”

Her smile was strained. “Yes. I suppose I am.” She drew a deep breath. “Where to begin... With Roger Bloom, I guess. A patient. Very interested when I told him my idea of starting group therapy sessions in Second Life. I’d already been in for a while by that time. Knew what I was doing and how I wanted to set things up. Turned out Roger was a real expert on the subject. Had his own software company in RL, created and scripted weapons systems in SL.”

“Wicked Wilson.”

Angela cocked an eyebrow. “Yes... You got further down that road than I expected. Well, Roger just couldn’t resist telling me how clever he was. Always in therapy, so it was confidential. Like the confessional. Plus, I think, he wanted into my panties. He tried so hard to impress me. Which made him very malleable. So, anyway, he told me he’d created and scripted a weapon that would not only kill an AV, but wipe any record of its account off the database. And — this was the really clever bit — transfer any money out of that account into his own. An untraceable transaction. But the truth is, he never saw its financial potential, Michael. He was a mischief-maker. Enjoyed the sheer act of fucking with people’s lives. A great big kid. I saw immediately how damned lucrative it could be. I mean, let’s face it, you don’t practise psychotherapy in Newport Beach without having a lot of very wealthy clients. If I could drop the idea, in casual conversation, that an SL account was an ideal place to hide money from the taxman, a business partner, a spouse, then persuade them to join my virtual group therapy... ”

She stood up and wandered toward him. Michael’s breath was becoming stertorous, as he continued to lose blood.

“A simple matter, to kill their AVs with an alt of my own, and suddenly all that secret money is in my account. Money that none of them could report missing, since it was there illicitly.” She looked at him. “You’re not going to pass out on me before I finish my story, are you? I’ve been just dying to tell someone. And I know you’re just dying to hear it.”

“You killed Wicked Wilson for his gun?”

“It was easy, Michael. I invited him over for drinks. Played on his fantasies. He’d shown me how it was possible to amend the script to pay the money into any account he chose. I persuaded him to give me a demonstration. We went online. On two different computers. But what he could never have guessed was that I’d slip a little sedative into his bourbon. And when he drifted off into his happy slumber, I took control of his AV, transferred the gun to mine, and amended the script to pay into my account. Then shot him. Simple.

“When he came round, I told him that the grid had shut down for maintenance, and that he had drunk way too much. I offered to drive him home in his car. When we got there, I shot him for real. Walked around the corner and got a taxi home. The Super Gun was mine.” She smiled. “And that’s when I hit on the really clever bit of my plan. When I persuaded a wealthy client to join group therapy in SL, I used the group to introduce the idea of hiding money in the account. Which was easy, because each and every one of the group was me. A small investment. Six computers, six AVs. Each one, in many ways, the personification of some part of me that I’d always had to keep under wraps.

“If was such fun, Michael. Hard for you to imagine. Being able to tell these poor little rich fucks exactly what I thought of them. All those hours of having to keep a lid on my private thoughts, finally given an outlet through Laffa, and Demetrius, and Dark, and the Tweedles. I could say anything through them. And I did. As you found out.”

“So you killed your patients in RL after you killed them in SL.”

“Good God, no. No need. Until Arnold Smitts, damn him! I had no idea he worked for the mob until I killed his AV, and ended up with three million in my account. Which was much more than I’d ever bargained for. He called me. Told me everything, without the least idea that it was me who had done it to him. He was terrified his employers would think he had ripped them off. But I knew that if these people started digging, there was a chance the money trail could lead back to me.

“Of course, none of the money ever paid directly into my account. I had created Green Goddess, another AV, especially for that, and to do the killing. Even so, I needed to divert attention as far away from me as possible. I had to go to Smitts place and kill him to stop him telling anyone else about his connection with me. Then I set you up to be the recipient of the mob money. Amended the script before I shot Green and sent the cash winging its way into your account. So now the trail led to you, rather than me.”

“And Jennifer Mathews?”

“A spoiled brat. But smart, Michael. Way too smart. She started getting suspicious. And when her AV got killed and the money her father had put into her account just vanished, she came to see me, asking some very awkward questions. And with the whole Smitts thing having just blown up in my face, I couldn’t afford to have her pointing any fingers at me.”

Michael fell over on to his side. He was getting very faint now. He heard her words, but was having trouble making sense of them any more.

“It was fun shooting myself to put you off the scent, and letting Dark do the dirty work. But I knew the hero in you would think I was in danger and come charging in like a knight in shining armour. It took you a while, though. I was waiting almost two hours for you to show. Almost began to doubt you.”

She took several steps back.

“Get up now, Michael. It’s time.”

“I can’t.”

“Get up!” Her voice became shrill.

Michael rolled over on to his knees and grabbed the edge of her writing bureau, trying to get himself to his feet. But his legs wouldn’t hold him. He was too far gone now to feel fear any more. But he knew he was going to die, and something in him was resigned to it.

In the distance he heard the sound of the police siren and knew that it was his death knell. She would have to do the deed before they arrived. And he speculated, as he had many times during the past months, on whether there really was an afterlife. And if there was, if he might meet Mora there again. There was comfort in the thought, even although deep down he couldn’t really bring himself to believe it.

He looked up as she raised her arm to point the gun directly at him, and he closed his eyes to brace himself for the impact of the bullets.

He heard the shots. Three of them. But felt nothing, and he wondered if death really came that quickly. He opened his eyes in time to see Angela stagger backwards, blood pulsing from three closely grouped wounds in the centre of her chest. She sat down abruptly in the armchair where he had sat so many times in the dark talking about Mora. Her arm fell away to the side, the handgun slipping from her fingers to hit the floor with a thump. Her eyes were wide, startled, staring off into some unseen distance. And Michael knew that she was dead.

He slid down to the floor and rolled over, propping himself on one elbow, and saw Angela’s killer standing in the doorway, the gun that shot her still raised.

He frowned, confused, and thought that maybe he really was dead after all. Angela’s killer was the elderly, silver-haired lady from the Starbucks coffee shop on Balboa Island. Her hand was trembling as she lowered the gun. “When I bought this, I took a course in care and maintenance,” she said. “It included eight lessons in loading, targeting, and firing. I never ever thought I would actually shoot someone with it.”

“Who are you?” Michael’s voice was barely a whisper.

The sound of it seemed to awaken her, as if she was just emerging from some daydream, or maybe a nightmare. She hurried over to kneel down beside him.

“Oh, my dear, that looks bad.”

He looked up into her pale blue eyes and saw her concern.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

For a moment she avoided his gaze, before turning her eyes directly to meet his. “I’m Doobie,” she said. “I thought maybe you might need some help.”