“A droid? That’s interesting.” Mira sat back, recrossed her fine legs as she considered. “Certainly you’d have that quick efficiency, the necessary strength. And if programmed for warrior, for sword skills, very effective. It would suit the killer’s-speaking of the human element-pathology. The use of those clever e-skills. In a way, in his way, he would have pitted himself against the victim, thereby winning the game by his proxy, and eliminating his opponent with a method that spotlighted those skills. Droids have been used in combat and in assassinations before, which is why the laws and safeguards are so stringent. It would be a challenge to subvert those laws and safeguards. The killer enjoys a challenge.”

“Maybe we need to take another look at the vic’s house droid. It’s had the once-over in EDD, and there was no sign of tampering or reprogramming. But it was already inside, already trusted, and there was more than enough time between the murder and discovery to reprogram, dispose of the weapon. Leave her just where she’s supposed to be. Or… maybe she was replaced earlier with a duplicate.”

The idea added another angle, more complications, and thinking of them Eve drank tea without realizing it. “Detail-oriented, organized, sure. But it’s a kind of showing off. Plus, it’s childishly risky. All of it. If Bart doesn’t do precisely what he did, it falls apart. He doesn’t go home early, doesn’t take the disc home, isn’t able to take the time to play the game then and there, it doesn’t work.”

“Calculated risks. Most game players take them, as do killers.”

“Especially if the player knows his opponent’s habits and style.” It just kept circling back to that. To knowledge and to trust. “There’s a lot of ego involved in game playing, especially if you take it seriously. A whole lot of ego. Nobody likes to lose. Some people practice obsessively, some cheat, some go off and sulk after a loss-and that can turn to festering obsession.”

“The more seriously one takes the game,” Mira commented, “the more real the game is to the player, the more frustrating the loss.”

Eve nodded. “Fights break out in arcades regularly. This wasn’t like that, not that passion and pissed at the moment. But it might have had its roots there, and what grew out of them turned entertainment and fantasy into something real.”

“Some have difficulty separating the violence in a game from actual violent behavior. Most use it as a release, as a way to play hero or villain without crossing lines. But for some, gaming stirs up violent tendencies already in place, held back, controlled.”

“If it wasn’t games it would be something else. But yeah, I’d say the line’s blurred between fantasy and reality. The killer’s crossed it. Maybe he’s done, he got what he wanted. He won. But it seems to me when the line’s that blurred, and it gets crossed, it’s easy to cross it again.”

“Winning can be addictive,” Mira agreed.

“So can murder.”

Going from Mira’s to EDD was something like leaving an elegant home where people engaged in quiet, intellectual discussion and being flung into an amusement park run by teenagers on a sugar rush.

Eve didn’t suffer from culture shock; she was too used to it. But both her ears and eyes began to throb when she was still ten feet outside the division.

Those who walked and worked here favored colors and patterns that stunned the system and spoke in incomprehensible codes that jumbled in the mind like hieroglyphic tiles. No one stayed still in EDD. The techs, officers, detectives all pranced, paced, or paraded to some inner music that always seemed to be on maximum speed.

Even those who sat at desks or cubes jiggled and wiggled, tapped and trilled. Feeney ran what Eve saw as a madhouse with a steady hand, even thrilled at being at the controls. In his baggy pants and wrinkled shirt, he struck her as a sturdy, unpretentious island in a riotous sea.

In his office he stood in front of a screen, frowning, mussed, normal as he moved blocks of numbers and letters-those hieroglyphics again-from location to location.

“Got a minute?” she asked him.

“Yeah, yeah. You took my boy.”

Since they were all his boys-regardless of gender-it took Eve a minute. “McNab? I asked you first.”

“I hadn’t had my coffee. You get these notions in the middle of the damn night it puts me at a disadvantage.”

“It was after six this morning.”

“Middle of the night when I didn’t crash out until two. Now I’m doing his work.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I asked first,” she muttered. “What is that?”

“It’s bits and pieces we got off what’s left of the game disc-which isn’t a hell of a lot. We’ve got it running through the computer, but I thought I’d try it the old-fashioned way.”

“Any luck?”

He sent her a weary glance. “Do I look lucky?”

“Take a break for a minute.” Her fingers hit something in her pocket. She pulled it out. “Look. I have a sucking candy. It’s yours.”

He eyed it. Then shrugged and took it. “How long’s it been in there?”

“It can’t have been long. Summerset’s always bitching about stuff I leave in my pockets. They’re my pockets. Plus it’s wrapped, isn’t it?”

He unwrapped it, popped it in his mouth.

“I’ve got a couple new angles I want to try,” she began. “I want another look at the vic’s house droid.”

“She’s clean.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but two possibles. One, the killer programmed and used her for the kill, then set her back to normal. Two, he shut her down and brought in a dupe for the kill.”

“You’re looking at a droid whacking the guy’s head off?”

“I’m looking at the possibility. We’ve got two divergent styles-and Mira agrees.”

While he sucked on the candy, she ran him through the high points of the consult.

“How’d he switch the droids?”

“One step at a time, Feeney. Plus I don’t know they were switched.

It’s a possibility. If you could run a second, deeper diagnostic on it, with those two possibilities in mind, we might be able to confirm or eliminate.”

“Somebody’s going to fuck around with a droid’s programming, bypass the safeguards, they need time and privacy. And equipment.”

“They have equipment at U-Play. Plenty of them work late, stay after hours. That’s time and privacy.”

He scratched his cheek. “Maybe.”

“The second thing is going over the game logs, finding a pattern to the vic’s play. What version did he favor, who’d he play with. I want to see who he beat routinely, and what he beat them playing.”

“Now you figure somebody cut off his head because he beat them gaming?”

“It’s a factor. It plays. Why kill him during a game unless playing the game mattered? It’s showing off, isn’t it? All of this is a kind of showing off. Look how good I am. I made it real. I won.”

“Can’t tell anybody though. That takes some shine off it. You don’t play enough,” Feeney decided. “A serious gamer? He wants his name on the board. He wants the cheers and applause. He wants the glory.”

“Okay, okay, I get that.” She paced the office. “So maybe he gets that applause, that glory another way. Like… people who steal art or have it stolen then stick it in a vault where nobody can see it. It’s all theirs. It’s a kind of glory, too. The big secret, the ownership. That takes control, willpower and a hell of an ego. It took all of that to set up this kill. It took precision, brutality, and cold violence to execute the kill. So, it takes me back to maybe we’ve got two involved. Maybe two people, maybe one and a droid. Or maybe a multiple personality type, but that’s low on the list for now.”

He sucked on the candy, scratched his cheek again. “The model’s copyrighted on account it’s a replica of a vid character and there’s merchandising rights and all that. Then you gotta register a droid. There’s some getting around all of that if you buy it black or gray market, but this one’s the real deal. She’s got her registration chip and the proper model number. We got the vic’s registration and his authentication certificate. If she was messed with, she passed the standard diagnostic. We can run deeper. As for copies, well, it’s a popular model. It’s a classic for a reason. You can run a search for ownership on that, and maybe you’ll get a pop.”