The Never Game

“His online presence defines him,” the designer had said. “Oh, he probably goes to school or a job, sleeps — though probably not much of that. He’ll be obsessed with the game and play it constantly.” Foyle had then sat forward with a slight smile. “But when do you know for certain the times he wasn’t playing?”

A brilliant question, Shaw had realized. And the answer: he wasn’t playing when he was kidnapping Sophie Mulliner and Henry Thompson and when he was shooting Kyle Butler.

He now told Standish, “The Whispering Man is a MORPG, a multiplayer online role-playing game. Players have to pay a monthly fee, which means Destiny, the publisher of the game, keeps credit cards on file.”

Standish’s thinking gesture was to touch an earring, a stud in the shape of a heart, an accessory in stark contrast to her outfit of cargo pants, black T and combat jacket. Not to mention the big-game Glock .45 on her hip.

“Foyle said we could use the credit card information to get a list of all the subscribers in the Silicon Valley area. Then we find out from the company who, among those, play obsessively but who weren’t online at the times of the kidnappings and Kyle’s murder.”

“That’ll work. I like it.”

“We need to talk to the head of Destiny, Marty Avon. Can you get a warrant?”

She chuckled. “Paper? Based on a video game? I’d be laughed out of the magistrate’s office.” She then turned her eyes his way. They were olive in color, and very dark, two tones deeper than her skin. Hard too. She added, “One thing I’m hearing, Mr. Shaw.”

“How about we do ‘Colter’ and ‘LaDonna.’”

A nod. “One thing I’m hearing: ‘we.’ The Task Force doesn’t deputize.”

“I’m helpful. You know it.”

“Rules, rules, rules.”

Shaw pursed his lips. “Upstate New York one time, I was visiting my sister. A boy’d gone missing, lost in the woods near his house, it looked like. Five hundred acres. The police were desperate, blizzard coming on. They hired a local consultant to help.”

“Consultant?”

“A psychic.”

“For real?”

“I went to the sheriff too. I told him I had experience sign cutting — you know, tracking. I said I’d help them for free. The psychic was charging. They agreed.” He lifted his palms. “Don’t deputize me, LaDonna. Consultize me. Won’t cost the state a penny.”

A finger to the earlobe. “Out of harm’s way. No weapon.”

“No weapon,” he agreed, and could see, from the tightening of her lips, that she was aware he’d offered only half agreement.

They walked out of the Task Force building and into the parking lot, heading for her gray Altima. Standish asked, “How’d it turn out, that missing boy? Did she help?”

“Who?”

“The psychic.”

“How’d you know it was a woman?” Shaw asked.

“I’m psychic,” Standish said.

“She said she had a vision of the boy near a lake, making shelter under the trunk of a fallen walnut tree, four miles from the family house. A milk carton was nearby. And there was an old robin’s nest in a maple tree next to him.”

“Damn. That was one particular vision. Was she in the ballpark?”

“No. Took me ten minutes to find him. He was in the loft of the family’s garage. He’d been hiding there the whole time. He didn’t want to take his math test.”

39

“Your first name?” Standish asked Shaw. They were driving through Silicon Valley in her rickety car. Something was loose in the rear. “Never heard of it.”

“I’m one of three children,” Shaw told her. “Our father was a student of the Old West. I was named after the mountain man John Colter, with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. My kid sister’s Dorion, after Marie Aioe Dorion, one of the first mountain women in North America. She and her two kids survived for two months in the dead of winter in hostile territory — Marie Aioe, not my sister. My older brother, Russell, he was named after Osborne Russell, a frontiersman in Oregon.”

“They do this reward stuff too?”

“No.”

Though the apples didn’t fall far, at least in Dorion’s case. She worked for an emergency preparedness consulting company. Maybe in Russell’s too. But no one in the family knew where he was or what he was up to. Shaw had been trying to find him for years. Both hoping to and worried that he might succeed.

October 5, fifteen years ago...

Sometimes Shaw thought he should simply let it go.

He knew he wouldn’t.

Never abandon a task you know you must complete...

They were cruising along the 101, southbound, and had left the posh Neiman Marcus Silicon Valley behind, as well as the more modest yet tidy neighborhoods where the Quick Byte Café squatted and Frank Mulliner lived. Here, on either side of the freeway, badly in need of resurfacing, was hard urban turf, banger turf, city projects housing, abandoned buildings and overpasses dolled up with gang-sign graffiti.