"That's really cool," he said. "I want to know more about it."

"Some other time," Shawn said.

"Anytime," ponytail said. "Stop by my office whenever you feel like it. I'm Diarmuid Robert Benson, president, CEO and owner of Benson Pharmaceuticals. But to my friends I'm D-Bob, and since you seem to be a friend of my new friend Gus, that makes you my friend, too."

Shawn pulled away from D-Bob's clutch. "Your friend Gus?" Shawn said. "You always make friends this fast, Diarmuid?"

"Only when I can offer them a quarter mil a year, plus housing allowance, hiring bonus, and three weeks' paid vacation," Benson said cheerfully.

Shawn stared at Benson, then turned to Gus. "What's going on here?"

"I told you," Gus said. "Rutland Armitage isn't a detective agency. It's a headhunting firm."

"And Gus is the head they've hunted for me," Benson said. "Burton Guster is Benson Pharmaceuticals' new junior vice president of marketing."

Chapter Eleven.

Carlton La.s.siter strode quickly down the marble corridor, forcing Juliet O'Hara to scramble just to keep up with him. It was certainly a change from the way he'd been acting the past couple of weeks. In the month since they'd been called to the scene of Mandy Jansen's death, he'd been dragging his heels every time she wanted to investigate further. Now that they were at Mandy's former workplace, it seemed he couldn't wait to get to their appointment.

"Our meeting isn't for another fifteen minutes, Carlton," she said, as he sprinted for the elevator and pounded his index finger against the already lit b.u.t.ton.

"We get in early, we get out early," La.s.siter said.

"If Mandy's old boss can see us early," O'Hara said. "And even if that's the case, we're here to get certain information. That's going to take as long as it's going to take."

"You've got sixteen minutes," La.s.siter said as the elevator doors slid open. He stepped into the car and jabbed the DOOR CLOSE b.u.t.ton, forcing his partner to leap in before the panels slid shut in front of her.

"What's the hurry?" she said.

"It's a little thing called money," La.s.siter said. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything to you, but it certainly does to the department. And I don't feel free just to fritter it away."

"They're paying us the same whether we talk to this guy for five minutes or five hours."

"It's not our salary I'm worried about," La.s.siter said. "It's the parking in this building. Fifteen dollars for twenty minutes? If we're going to arrest anyone in this pit of depravity, it should be the guy who runs the garages."

"You could have badged the attendant," O'Hara said.

"As I've mentioned about eight thousand times, we have no jurisdiction in San Francisco," La.s.siter said. "Which means we have no right to expect to be treated as if we did. Which would make free parking an illegal emolument."

"Maybe we could get a validation."

"And if there actually is a killer and it turns out to be someone at the company?" La.s.siter said. "Tell me then how we're not hideously compromised."

O'Hara flirted briefly with the idea of telling him a lot more than that, but she decided to let it pa.s.s. She knew La.s.siter had only agreed to this trip because she had begged him. He still believed that Mandy's death was a suicide and saw no reason to investigate further. If he'd stated his opinion firmly to Chief Vick that would have been the end of the case. But instead he gave the chief a pa.s.sionate argument for keeping it open just a little longer, and even for taking a day trip up north to check out Mandy's former employer.

That didn't mean he was happy about doing it or that he believed they would find anything up here. But partners stick up for each other, he said. If Juliet hadn't been willing to back down--and he could tell she wasn't--then his only choice was to let her lead or put in for a new partner.

They'd spent the first part of the drive up the 101 going over the details of the case. Since there were essentially no details, that took them about as far as Solvang; then they'd ridden the remaining ninety percent of the way in silence. That was fine with her. She knew if they'd talked La.s.siter would have spent most of the time trying to convince her that Mandy's death had been self-inflicted and that they should close the case. That was a conversation she wasn't eager to have again because she still didn't have a substantive response for him. She couldn't say why she refused to believe that Mandy had killed herself. She just did.

She knew it wasn't just because, as La.s.siter had hinted several times, she was identifying with the victim. It was true that the sight of a twenty-eight-year-old woman hanging by the neck in her cheerleader's outfit had an immediate emotional resonance with anyone who'd ever called the Rebel Yell or the Tiger Roar or the Duck Quack. You couldn't help but think of that time you were at your lowest ebb, fired from a job or dumped in a relationship or just lost in your life, and you put on the colors "just to see if they still fit."

But she knew there was more to it than that. She wasn't projecting her own psyche onto a suicide victim. She was too good a cop for that. Something about the crime scene was making her crazy. So far she'd just seen little things that didn't make sense for an imminent suicide: a prescription for her mother she'd arranged to pick up the day after her death, a book on caring for ill relatives she'd requested from the library's interbranch loan.

There had to be something bigger. She just couldn't identify it. Whatever it was, it had registered somewhere in the back of her mind and she hadn't been able to bring it forward yet. Usually if she took a quick walk or a long shower she could turn off enough of her conscious brain to allow the subconscious to seep through. But she'd walked and showered and showered and walked and still she was no closer to the solution. She'd hoped the hours in the car, staring out at the scenery, might coax the clue out of hiding, but by the time they cruised past old Candlestick Park and into the city there was still nothing.

That was why this interview with Mandy's supervisor was so important. If she couldn't find a lead here she'd have to admit there really was no case. She was not going to cut it short, no matter if the parking threatened to cost more than the unmarked Crown Vic was worth.

The digital readout on the elevator's control panel flipped to 34 and the car decelerated suddenly. The doors slid open and they stepped out into open s.p.a.ce. At least that was what it looked like. The vast lobby was nearly empty, a black slate floor running uninterrupted the entire length and width of the building, so that whichever direction you looked you saw nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows.

Or almost nothing, anyway. A football field's length away from the elevators the slate rose to form some kind of large shelf, and behind that a wide spiral staircase led up to what Juliet a.s.sumed was the thirty-fifth floor. As they walked toward the eruption they saw a pair of tanned legs coming down the stairs, and by the time they were halfway there the legs had been joined by a torso and finally a head. The body parts belonged to an athletic young blond woman in a dress so short a professional tennis player might think twice about wearing it at Wimbledon. She seated herself behind the shelf and gave them a gleaming smile as they approached.

"May I help you?" she said.

"We have an appointment with Sam Masterson," O'Hara said.

The blond woman's smile faltered. "May I ask what this is about?"

"You can, but it won't do you any good," La.s.siter said. "Take it from someone who's been asking for weeks."

"I'm Detective Juliet O'Hara with the Santa Barbara Police Department," she said. "This is my partner, Detective La.s.siter. We scheduled this appointment with Mr. Masterson to talk about one of his former employees, Mandy Jansen."

"In that case, you'd better follow me," the blond woman said. "I'm Chanterelle, by the way."

"That's a pretty name," O'Hara said.

"It's a mushroom," La.s.siter said.

"It's a pretty mushroom," Chanterelle said.

The woman named for a fungus got up from behind the desk and started up the spiral staircase. O'Hara looked up to see where they were going and found herself wondering why any woman who knew she'd be going up and down steep stairs all day would wear such a short dress, unless she was hoping to save money on visits to her gynecologist. Staring straight ahead she followed the sound of the receptionist's footsteps until both of her own feet were on level floor. Then she looked around.

They stood in a much smaller lobby, which was only the size of the entire Santa Barbara police station. Corridors led off in either direction and they were dotted with doors s.p.a.ced far enough apart that Juliet was certain the offices behind them must be enormous.

Chanterelle waited until La.s.siter had stepped up next to O'Hara--his sense of chivalry had kept him from mounting the first stair until the hem of the receptionist's dress had disappeared through the hole in the ceiling--and then pointed to a double door. "I'm going to put you in conference room B."

"Are you going to put this Masterson in there with us?" La.s.siter said. "Because we'd prefer not to bankrupt our city government."

The receptionist smiled broadly, apparently choosing to ignore whatever she couldn't understand, and walked to the double doors. She gave a gentle knock on one of them and then threw it open.

As Chanterelle headed back down to her station, O'Hara led La.s.siter to the door. Inside, the room seemed to stretch the length of the building and it contained a polished granite table that ran from one end to the other. Enough leather chairs were cl.u.s.tered around it to seat a joint session of Congress. All the way at the far end of the table Juliet could make out the form of a man.

"Mr. Masterson?" Juliet said, hoping she could make her voice carry over such a distance without shouting.

"Please come in," the man said. His voice was m.u.f.fled by the distance, but Juliet thought there was something familiar about it.

O'Hara and La.s.siter came into the conference room and started down the length of the table.

"Mr. Masterson, we talked briefly on the phone," O'Hara said as they began to get close enough to make out the figure sitting at the end of the table.

"I'm afraid Sam Masterson isn't with us anymore," the man said.

"I just talked to him a few days ago," O'Hara said. "He didn't mention he was leaving the company."

"I'm sure if he had left the company he would have contacted you first," the man said. "Sam was really good about things like that."

"Was?" O'Hara said.

"He took a personal day on Monday and zipped up to Tahoe with a girlfriend to get in a little skiing," the man said. "Hit a tree at sixty miles an hour. At least he didn't suffer."

"And you are?" O'Hara said.

She took another step forward and now she knew why he had looked so familiar. And from the shocked gasp in her ear, she could tell La.s.siter had recognized him, too.

"Really glad to see you," Gus said. "Seems like it's been forever."

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 a.r.s.enal 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 h.e.l.lhounds tumbling away in a torrent of water.

His reward for that bit of ingenuity was a ma.s.sive 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 c.o.c.ky.

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 pa.s.senger'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 b.u.t.ton, one ill.u.s.trated with a cartoon explosion. Apparently Shawn was on the right track. He was about to push the detonator b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton had shrunk down to half its previous size. Shawn a.s.sumed 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 compa.s.sion 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.

Chapter Thirteen.

When he thought back on that day in San Francisco, Shawn was still surprised at the way it had turned out.