room with us, Aidan,” he said. “He’s not a suspect anymore. In fact, he’s the one who suggested you look closely at the games Uretsky was playing.”
Heads turned and eyes fell on me, even though most were already aware of my presence.
“Okay, news to me,” Brewer said. “Computer guys are always the last to know these things.”
I could see Higgins fidgeting in his chair. We were both impatient. I wanted to shout, “Get to the damn point!” but knew that would be counterproductive. Instead, I opened my mind, allowing some positive energy to flow in.
I will find you, Ruby. . . . I will find you . . . and I will find you alive. . . .
“So Uretsky was a big gamer,” Brewer went on to say. “He played a bunch of games. Some we’ve heard of, like FarmVille and Kingdom Age. Some we hadn’t. Like the flash-based game Streetwise, in which you play a pimp with a vendetta to kill all your hos. A lot of these online games can be sickeningly violent, full of profanity and sex, and easy to access. Parents give their kids gaming consoles for Christmas, not realizing they can be used to play games that are a heck of a lot more violent than most of the titles rated mature.”
“So what other game was Uretsky playing?” Detective Kaminski asked.
“Has anybody ever heard of a game called See Evil?”
No hands went up, including my own.
“We’ve contacted Sick World, the game’s manufacturer. We’re going to try to get a database dump of all the registered players, as well as anybody who has chatted or messaged Uretsky’s game account.”
“What’s this game all about?” Clegg asked.
The projection behind Brewer flickered and flashed. The screen refreshed with an animated street scene, a cartoon drawing of some nondescript city corner. A hokey-looking cartoon character appeared on-screen, oversize head on a smallish body, animated to enter from screen left. The character, dressed in a nice dress shirt and jeans, had been drawn to have a high forehead, wavy brown hair neatly parted to the side, close-set eyes, and a handsome nose—a handsome face, in fact. He stood on the street corner, looking bored. A woman, animated as well, her breasts overexaggerated, waist impossibly narrow, hips seductively swaying—well, as seductive as a cartoon can be—materialized from the right side of the screen. Cartoon balloons appeared above the man’s head.
“Hello,” the balloon read. “My name is Ted Bundy. What’s your name?”
Detective Brewer must have hit something on his remote to pause the game.
“See Evil allows the game player to pick from a preset list of notorious serial killers. You can be Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader—that’s the BTK killer—Dahmer, Gacy, and the list goes on.”
“What’s the point of the game?” someone asked.
“Basically, it’s about torture and torment,” Brewer said. “I’ll show you.”
The game came to life again, as the blond bombshell with a heaving bosom said via her cartoon bubble, “My name is Sugar. Do you want to hang out?”
“Sure,” the Bundy avatar said, his eyes bulging and going watery with lust. “We can go back to my place.”
“Not so fast,” Sugar said, holding up an animated finger. “Can you tell me what year you were arrested?”
A box appeared on the screen containing several options.
a) 1972
b) 1974
c) 1976
d) 1977
Brewer selected answer C, 1976, and Sugar cooed delightedly, her animated body doing the equivalent of a shimmy.
“So this is like serial killer Jeopardy?” Chief Higgins asked.
“Yes, in a way,” Brewer said. He pointed to a status bar on the screen, above which were written the words Trust Index. The index was currently at 10 percent trust. Brewer continued, “Players have to answer trivia questions about the serial killer they’ve chosen to play. Right now the game offers about twenty to choose from. The trust status bar goes up the more questions a player gets right.”
“Can’t they just go to Google for the answers?” Gant asked.
“I don’t think the sickos who made this game care if you use first source material,” Kaminski said.
“What happens when the status bar reaches a hundred percent?” Clegg asked.
“That’s where things get really interesting,” Brewer said. “I could tell you, but it’s better if I show you.”
CHAPTER 57
It took about a minute for Brewer to go through a dozen questions that virtual Sugar asked virtual Ted. As soon as that bar filled in completely, the city scene faded to black and a new scene took its place. I felt my stomach drop.
Sugar, animated to be wide-eyed and terrified,