The Never Game Page 16

  “No, I’m just helping the police. And I could use some help from you.”

  “Nancy Drew.”

  “Who?”

  “You have a sister, Colt?”

  “Three years younger.”

  “She didn’t read Nancy Drew?”

  “A kid’s book?”

  “A series, yeah. Girl detective.”

  “I don’t think so.” The Shaw children had read a great deal yet children’s fiction was not to be found in the substantial library in the cabin at the Compound.

  “I read them all growing up . . . We’ll save the date talk for another time . . . You don’t smile much, do you?”

  “No, but I don’t mind date talk.”

  She liked that. “Ask away.”

  “The kidnapper might’ve based the crimes on a video game. The Whispering Man. Do you know it?”

  Another bite of roll. She chewed, thoughtful. “Heard of it. Been around for a long time.”

  “You ever played it?”

  “No. It’s an action-adventure. NMS.” She noted his blank reaction. “Sorry. ‘Not my style.’ I’m a first-person shooter, remember? I think the gameplay for that one is you’re trapped somewhere and you have to escape. Something like that. It’s the Survival subcategory of action-adventures. You think some psycho dude’s acting out the game in real life for kicks?”

  “One possibility. He’s smart, calculating, plans everything out ahead of time. He knows forensics and how not to leave evidence. My mother’s a psychiatrist. I’ve talked to her about some of the jobs I’ve worked. She told me that sociopaths—serial killers—are very rare and even the organized ones aren’t usually this organized. Sure, he could be one. I’m guessing that’s only a ten percent option. Somebody this smart might be acting crazy, to cover up what he’s really doing.”

  “Which is what?”

  Shaw sipped coffee. “Not many ideas there. One possibility? Drive the manufacturer of The Whispering Man out of business.”

  He went on to explain about the incident of the schoolgirl in Ohio, the classmates who played the game in real life. Maddie said she hadn’t heard of it.

  He continued: “Maybe those crimes gave the perp the idea. When word gets out that for the second time somebody’s been inspired to re-create the game, the publicity might ruin the company.” He tapped some of the printouts. “You probably know this, but there’s a lot of concern about violence in video games. Maybe the perp’s harnessing that.”

  “The debates’ve been going on forever. Back to the seventies. There was an early arcade game called Death Race, published by a company right here, I think, in Mountain View. It was cheesy: monochrome, two-D, stick figures. And it caused an uproar. You drove a car around the screen and ran over these characters. When you did, they died and a tombstone popped up. Congress, I mean everybody, freaked out. Now there’s Grand Theft Auto . . . One of the most popular games ever. You get points for killing cops or just walking around and shooting people at random.” She touched his arm and looked into his eyes. “I kill zombies for a living. Do I look disturbed?”

  “The question is: Who’d have a motive to ruin the company?”

  “Ex-wife of the CEO?”

  “Thought of that. His name’s Marty Avon and he’s been happily married for twenty-five years. Well, I’m adding the happily. Let’s just say there’s no ex in the picture.”

  “Disgruntled employee,” Maddie suggested. “Plenty of those in the tech world.”

  “Could be. Worth checking out . . . There’s another thought too. What’s the competition like in the gaming world? I mean, competing companies, not players.”

  Maddie gave a sardonic laugh. “More combat than competition.” Her eyes seemed wistful. “Didn’t used to be that way. In the old days. Your days, Colter.”

  “Funny.”

  “Everybody worked together. They’d write code for you for free, no bullshit about copyright. They’d donate computer time, give away games for nothing. The one that got me started was Doom—remember from C3 yesterday? Ground zero for first-person shooters. It was originally shareware. Free to anybody who wanted it. That didn’t last long. Once the companies figured out they could make money in this business . . . Well, it was every shooter for himself.”

  Maddie told him about the famous “Console Wars,” the battle between Nintendo and Sega, Mario the plumber versus Sonic the hedgehog. “Nintendo won.”

  A shrine to the chivalrous who protect the weak . . .

  “Nowadays, you can’t look at the news out of SV without seeing stories about theft of trade secrets, ripping off copyrights, spies, insider trading, piracy, sabotage. Buying up companies, then firing everybody and burying their software because it might compete with yours.” She glanced at the remnants of the roll and pushed it away. “But murdering somebody, Colter?”

  Shaw had pursued rewards for fugitives who’d killed for less than the value of a businessman’s second Mercedes. He recalled the welcome screen at the conference.

  THE VIDEO GAMING INDUSTRY REVENUES WERE $142 BILLION LAST YEAR, UP 15% FROM THE YEAR BEFORE . . .

  Plenty of motive with that kind of money.

  “The Whispering Man’s made by—”

  “Oh, Colt. We say published. A game’s published, like a book or a comic. By a studio, like Hollywood. Games actually are just like movies now: the avatars and creatures are real actors shot against green screens. There are directors, cinematographers, sound designers, writers, CG people, of course.”

  Shaw continued: “Published by Destiny Entertainment. Marty Avon and Destiny have been sued a dozen times. All the suits were settled or dismissed. Some complaints alleged that Avon stole source code. I’m not sure what that is but it seems important.”

  “Just the way your heart and nervous system are important.”

  “Maybe one of the plaintiffs got kicked out of court and wanted to get revenge against Destiny his own way.” Shaw slid a stack of sheets toward her. “This’s a list of lawsuits against Destiny for the past ten years. My private eye pulled them together.”

  “You’ve got a private eye?”

  “Can you see if there are any plaintiffs that publish games like The Whispering Man and were around ten years ago?”

  Reading, Maddie said, “It’d have to be an independent company. None of the big public companies—Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, id—are going to hurt anybody. That’d be crazy.”

  Shaw didn’t necessarily agree—thanks for the paranoia about corporate America, Ashton—but he decided to stick to private companies for the moment.

  Maddie read for no more than two minutes before stopping. “Well. Think I just earned my Cinnabon,” she said, and brought her index finger down hard on a name.

  33.

  Tony Knight was the founder and CEO of Knight Time Gaming Software.

  He’d been creating video games and other programs for years. He’d been hugely successful, hobnobbing with politicians and venture capitalists and Hollywood. He’d also been down-and-out, bankrupt three times. Once, like the Walmart residents Shaw had spoken to, he’d lived out of his car in an abandoned lot in Palo Alto and written code on a borrowed laptop.

  Maddie had ID’d Knight as a possible suspect because his company published a survival action-adventure game in the same vein as The Whispering Man. Knight’s product was called Prime Mission.

  “Let’s see if it came first. If it did, maybe Knight believes Marty Avon stole his source code. He tried to sue and lost and now he’s getting even.”

  It took only a few minutes to find that, yes, Prime Mission preceded The Whispering Man by a year.

  Maddie reminded Shaw that she wasn’t particularly familiar with either game—they were action-adventures, which were too slow for her—but she did know that Tony Knight was known in the industry to have a raging ego, a ruthless
nature and a short fuse . . . and a long memory for slights.

  “How close are the games?” Shaw asked.

  “Let’s find out.” She nodded to his computer and scooted her chair close to his.

  Lavender? Yes, he smelled lavender. Freckles and lavender seemed like a good combination.

  And what was that tattoo?

  She logged on to a website and an image of a labyrinth appeared—the Knight Time logo—then the words Tony Knight’s Prime Mission.

  A window appeared. Shaw expected ads for insurance or discount hotels. It was an actual news broadcast. Two attractive anchors—a man and a woman, both with fastidious hair and wearing sharp outfits—were reporting on the news of the day: a trade meeting of the G8 in Europe, a CEO of a Portland, Oregon, company under fire for suggesting the government was justified in interring U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, a shooting at a school in Florida, a Washington congressman under investigation for texting a gay teenage prostitute, an “alarming” study about the cancer risks of a brand of soft drinks . . .

  Cable news at its finest . . .

  She nodded at the screen. “Most video games’re cheap to buy but you can’t really play without the add-ons—things to help you win or just be cool—power-ups, costumes for your avatars, armor, weapons, spaceships, advanced levels . . . You can spend a ton of money.”

  “The razor’s free,” he said, “but the razor blades . . .”

  “Exactly. Knight Time never charges for anything—the game, the extras. You’ve just got to sit through this.” The newscast faded to a public service announcement encouraging voter registration. Maddie then pointed. “See?” The announcer said players could get five hundred “Knight points,” to be used to buy accessories for any Knight Time game, if they did in fact register.

  Whether or not Tony Knight was in some way behind the kidnappings, Shaw had to give him credit for the public service. As a professor of politics, Ashton Shaw believed it was a travesty that the U.S. didn’t have mandatory voting like many other countries.

  And, finally, the logo for the game Prime Mission appeared.

  “Watch,” Maddie said, nodding as type scrolled onto the screen.

  YOU ARE THE PILOT OF A UNITED TERRITORIES XR5 FIGHTER SHIP. YOU HAVE CRASH-LANDED ON THE PLANET PRIME 4, WHERE UT FORCES HAVE BEEN BATTLING THE OTHERS. YOU HAVE LIMITED AIR AND FOOD AND WATER. YOU MUST REACH SAFE STATION ZULU, TWO HUNDRED KILOMETERS TO THE WEST.

  The rest of the crawl revealed, in effect, that the character must take three items from the spaceship to use to survive on the trek. It ended with the admonition:

  You’re on your own. Choose wisely. Your life depends upon it.

  “It’s The Whispering Man in space,” Shaw said. “Even those lines at the end are similar. In The Whispering Man, it’s ‘You’ve been abandoned. Escape if you can. Or die with dignity.’ I want to see more about Knight.”

  He logged out of the game and called up more articles about the CEO and the company.

  Shaw learned that Knight Time fell into the mold of several big tech companies—cofounded by two men in a garage. Like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Knight’s partner was Jimmy Foyle, both from Portland, Oregon. Knight handled the business side of the company; Foyle designed the games.

  The press accounts of the company revealed details that echoed what Maddie had told him about Knight’s nature.

  The stories pointed to Jimmy Foyle as the model of a professional tech industry expert, who’d spend eighty-hour weeks perfecting the code for the company’s gaming engines. He was described as a “gaming guru.”

  This was in sharp contrast to Tony Knight. The handsome, dark-haired CEO had a legendary temper. He was paranoid, petty. Twice, police were called to the company headquarters in Palo Alto when employees claimed Knight had physically hurt them—shoving one to the floor and flinging a keyboard into the face of another. No charges were filed and “generous” settlements were offered. Knight would sue for what he thought was a breach of a nondisclosure or noncompete, even if there was little reason to do so. He had also been arrested outside of the company for incidents like a pushing match over a parking space and a lawn worker whom he believed had stolen a shovel from his garage.

  The industry was always anticipating a breakup between the partners because of their differing personalities. One inspired profile writer described the two as the “Black Knight” and the “White Knight” because Foyle had once been a well-known white hat hacker—someone hired by companies and the government to try to break into their IT systems and expose vulnerabilities.

  Knight’s lawsuit against Destiny had been dismissed and both parties moved to have the records sealed, claiming that the court documents connected to the case contained trade secrets. A Freedom of Information Act request could be made, but that would take months. Shaw would proceed on the assumption that Destiny Entertainment had in fact stolen Knight’s code. And he’d make the assumption that Knight was egotistical and vindictive enough to exact revenge.

  He said to Maddie, “Still, it’s a big risk for a man who’s already rich.”

  She replied, “There’s another piece. Knight Time’s flagship game is Conundrum. It’s an alternative reality game. Spectacular to watch. Too brainy for me, I’m not fast enough. The new installment is six months late. That’s a no-no in the gaming world.”

  Shaw added, “And Knight waited until tens of thousands of gamers descend into the Valley. He hired somebody to be a psychotic player. Police wouldn’t look past that. Great smoke screen.”

  “You going to tell the police?”

  “The detective wasn’t impressed with my idea in the first place. When I suggest a famous CEO might be the perp, it’ll make her even more skeptical. I need facts.”

  Maddie was looking over his face. She said, “I’d go hunting with my father sometimes, remember?”

  He did, an interest they shared—though it was a sport for her while something else entirely for him.

  “And there was this look he’d get. He wasn’t really himself. He was in a different place. All that mattered was getting that deer or goose or whatever. That’s what you’re looking like now.”

  Shaw knew what she was talking about—he’d seen the same expression in her face while she was stabbing him to death yesterday.

  “Knight Time Gaming would have a booth at the C3 Conference?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. One of the biggest.”

  Shaw started assembling the printouts. “I’m going to go pay a visit.”

  “You want some company? Always more fun to hunt with somebody else.”

  Shaw couldn’t argue with that, thinking of the times he’d go out with his father or his brother into the forests and fields of the Compound. His mother too, who was the best shot in the family.

  This, however, was different.

  Most crime’s simple. This’s complicated . . .

  “Think it’s better for me to go on my own.” Shaw took one last hit of coffee and headed out the door, pulling out his phone to make a call.

  34.

  Truth is a curious thing.

  Often helpful, sometimes not.

  Colter Shaw had learned in pursuing rewards that there usually was nothing to be gained by lying. It might get you a few quick answers, but if you were found out, as often happened, sources would dry up.

  Which didn’t mean that there weren’t times when it was helpful to let the impression settle that you were someone other than who you were.

  Shaw was once again strolling the chaotic aisles of the C3 Conference, wandering through the mostly young, mostly male audience.

  He passed Nintendo, Microsoft, Bethesda, Sony and Sega. The same carnage as before yet also bloodless games, like soccer, football, race cars, dance, puzzle solving and, well, the just plain
bizarre. One featured green squirrels wearing toreador outfits and armed with nets as they chased worried bananas.

  Shaw thought, People actually spent their time this way?

  Then: Was obsessively cruising the country in a battered camper any worthier?

  You disregard others’ passions at your peril.

  The Knight Time booth was larger but more austere and somber than the others. The walls and curtains were black, the music eerie, not thumping in your chest. No flashing lights or spots. Of course, the booth boasted ten-foot-long high-def screens—those seemed to be requisite at C3. The displays showed trailers for the delayed installment Conundrum VI. The text promised Coming Soon!

  Shaw watched the action on the big screen for a while. Planets, rockets, lasers, explosions. In the booth fifty or so young people sat at stations and tried their hand at Knight Time games. In front of him a young woman wearing stylish red glasses, her hair in a ponytail, was intently playing Prime Mission.

  “Well, that sucks.” A teenager was talking to his friend. Waiting for a Knight Time game to start, he was gazing at the ad and news broadcast window Shaw remembered. On-screen was a pair of anchors, two young, geeky men. They were reporting on the fact that a congressman had supported a proposal to tax users’ internet traffic over a certain number of gigabytes per day.

  The gamer’s friend lifted a middle finger to the screen.

  They both relaxed when the game loaded and they could start to shoot aliens.

  Shaw wandered up to an employee.

  “Got a question,” Shaw said to the man, who was in black jeans and a gray T-shirt, which had KNIGHT TIME GAMING across the chest. The letters began at the left in solid black, then dissolved into pixels, graying so that the final ING was hard to see. He noted that all Knight Time employees wore the same outfit.

  “Yessir?”

  The man was six or seven years younger than Shaw. About Maddie Poole’s age, he thought.

  “I get games for my nieces—you know, birthdays and Christmas. I’m checking some out here.”