The Never Game

The conference room was populated with fifteen or so men and women from various law enforcement agencies. Shaw saw the uniforms of deputies and police and the plainclothes suits and ensembles of agents and detectives. They stood in clusters, looking at a whiteboard on which were written details of the recent kidnapping.

Shaw walked up to LaDonna Standish, who said, “What’d you find? About Maddie?”

Without expression Shaw said, “I was wrong.”

As soon he arrived at the Task Force headquarters he’d confirmed Maddie’s story. The picture accompanying one article was an image of the woman, younger, on top of a mountain with her husband, both in ski gear, both smiling, taken a few months before the murders.

He nodded at the new bodies present. “FBI?”

“California Bureau. Not the feds.”

Heading the show was a tall, chiseled B of I agent, dark-haired and wearing a gray suit a shade darker than his partner’s — a man who was not tall, not thin, not good-looking. The name of the tall one was Anthony Prescott. Shaw had missed the other’s.

Prescott said, “Detective Standish, could you brief us on the latest taking?”

She explained how the vic was kidnapped in a parking lot in Mountain View about an hour ago on her way to work. “Municipal lot. No video. We canvassed and a wit saw a person in gray sweats and a gray stocking cap. Like on the Quick Byte Café security cam.”

Standish had created a file and made copies for everyone on the case. She handed Shaw one. Inside was a bio of the victim, which Shaw read through. There were pictures too.

The detective fired off other facts — the absence of fingerprints, the lack of DNA for tracing through the CODIS database, every piece of physical evidence the Gamer’d left behind being untraceable, the homemade knockout potion, his weapons, the inability to identify his vehicle because he drove on grass or other ground cover and left no tread marks.

“In the files I gave you are security webcam shots of the suspect that Mr. Shaw here obtained at the Quick Byte. It doesn’t show much but it might be helpful.”

Prescott asked, “And who are you?” Then to Standish, “And who is he?”

“A consultant.”

“Consultant?” the shorter CBI agent asked.

“Hmm,” Standish confirmed.

“Wait. The bounty hunter?” Prescott asked.

Shaw said, “Frank Mulliner offered a reward to find his missing daughter.”

“Which he did,” Standish offered.

“Is there a fee to us involved?” Prescott’s partner asked Shaw.

Shaw said, “No.”

Perhaps Prescott wanted an explanation about why Shaw was doing this. He didn’t indulge.

Standish touched her copy of the folder. She continued: “Another fact you need to know. The victim — her name’s Elizabeth Chabelle — is seven and a half months pregnant.”

“Jesus!” from somebody. Gasps too. An obscenity.

“And one more thing: the unsub hid her on a ship. A sinking ship.”

Colter Shaw took over.

“It appears that the unsub is basing the crimes on a video game.”

Void reaction from the room.

“It’s called The Whispering Man. That’s the villain in the game. He hides his victims in an abandoned place. They have to escape — before other players, or the character himself, kill them.”

Someone in the back — an older male uniformed officer — called, “That’s pretty bizarre. You sure?”

“His kidnapping M.O. lines up with the gameplay. And he’s left graffiti or printouts of the character at the scenes.”

“Photos are in the file,” Standish said.

Shaw: “Any of you know how levels work in video games?”

Some nodded. Others shook their heads. The majority simply gazed at him the way they’d observe, with more or less interest, a lizard in a pet shop terrarium.

Shaw said, “A video game’s about meeting increasing challenges. You start out on the simple level, saving some settlers, trekking to a certain place, killing X number of aliens. If you’re successful you move to a more difficult level. The Gamer’s placed his victims in the first two levels of The Whispering Man.”

Standish added, “The Abandoned Factory. That was Sophie Mulliner. Henry Thompson’s was The Dark Forest. The third level is The Sinking Ship.”

The last level, the tenth, Shaw had learned, was hell itself — where the Whispering Man lives. No player in the history of the game had ever made it that far.

Prescott said slowly, “An interesting theory.” Slowly and uncertainly.

There was enough corroboration that Shaw could accept theory over hypothesis in this case.

One officer, a uniform from Santa Clara, pointed to the whiteboard. “That’s why he’s the Gamer?”

Shaw said, “Correct.”

Prescott’s partner said, “Supervisor Cummings said you’re profiling him as a sociopath.”

Standish cleared her throat. “I said the likelihood of that diagnosis was about seventy percent.” She glanced at Shaw, who nodded.

“But no sado-sexual activity?” someone pointed out. “Which you almost always see in the case of a male unsub.”

“No,” Standish said.