Chapter 18

“You’re notorious,” Callie said.

“How could people think that? Why do people even know me?”

We were taking the back stairs up to my office. When we got to the top we were met by Brandon, flushed and worried looking.

“Have you heard?” he asked. “They think you killed S and Tommy.”

“Both of them?” I moved down the hall. “That’s ridiculous. Why would I kill either of them? And how does anyone even know who I am?”

“Someone put it together that Tommy owned the Palace and that you work here and that you were questioned by the police,” Brandon said.

“One quarter of the Palace,” I said. “He only owned a quarter.”

“Not really the point,” Callie said, following us into the office.

I shook my head. “What, exactly, are they saying?” I sat at the desk and opened the laptop.

Brandon closed it. “I don’t think you want to see it.”

I stared at him.

“Um, the guys on the forums, they can be a little…”

“Crazy? Misogynistic? Disgusting?” Callie offered.

“I was going to say ‘hotheaded,’” Brandon said. “They get a little carried away. You know, with, um, speculating.”

“Okay.” I kept the laptop closed. “So how carried away are they? And why on earth do they think I would have killed anyone?”

Brandon began. “They think you wanted to kill Tommy all along because you’re some sort of disgruntled employee. The most popular theory is that you poisoned something you thought Tommy would drink at the launch announcement, but that S drank it by mistake—”

“I wasn’t even there!” I protested.

Brandon swallowed and looked to Callie. “They’re just making things up,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Brandon made a strangled sound. I turned to him.

“Um, I’d worry a little,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “How do they think I killed Tommy? Did I magically teleport myself into his car and pour arsenic in his juice?”

“They think you were in the car with him,” Brandon said, flushing a deep crimson. “They think you, um…”

I gaped at him. “That I spent the night with him?”

Brandon looked up at the ceiling, turning bright pink. “Um, yeah.”

“So let me get this straight—I’m a disgruntled employee who was in Palo Alto poisoning the wrong person even though over a hundred people saw me right here in this theater moments after S was killed, and I was also sleeping with my boss, whom I then poisoned after a night of passion at the Four Seasons even though twenty people saw me in the café and rushed out with me to help him when Tommy collapsed? Is that about it?”

“I told you they were crazy,” Callie said, scrolling furiously on her phone.

“Why should I be worried?” I asked Brandon. “You said I should be worried, but I can’t believe anyone would take this seriously.”

“Well, not if they stop to think about it,” he agreed. “The thing is—”

“They’re crazy,” Callie said again, not looking up from her screen.

Brandon pointed at her. “That,” he gulped. “What she said.”

I looked at Callie. “Has it gone mainstream?”

She glanced up and shook her head. “It’s all just on the gamer blogs. It hasn’t migrated to social media yet.”

“I suppose that’s something.” I hadn’t gone viral. Yet.

“You should lay low,” she advised. “Don’t go to any of the gamer forums—they’ll track your identity in a hot minute. And don’t try to defend yourself.”

Brandon nodded vehemently. “Anything you say will just be twisted around. You’ll just fan the flames.”

“I’m supposed to just let them say whatever they want about me?”

“Let it burn itself out,” Callie urged. “By this afternoon they’ll be on to someone else.”

I sat back, feeling queasy. “Remember what I said the other day about the wisdom of the crowd?” I asked them.

They looked at me.

“The crowd is crazy.”

  

By mid-afternoon I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like every single person who came into the theater was looking at me like I was a murderer. Never mind that the senior citizens who brought their grandchildren in for classic films didn’t exactly fit the profile of rabid gamer fanboys. I still felt notorious.

Ultimately I pulled my hair into a ponytail, put on a baseball cap, and stopped off at the ticket booth to tell Callie I needed a walk.

“Nice disguise,” she said. “What about sunglasses?”

I took them from my bag and put them on.

“Perfect.”

I walked toward downtown, wanting to tire myself out with as many hills as possible. Walking was my therapy. It was how I got my head straight, and I had a lot to get straight. I turned left at Filmore and went uphill and down until I found myself at the marina, looking out over the bay.

I wasn’t the only one walking the city. The first few times I saw them, I didn’t really pay attention to the clumps of young people wandering around together, intent on their phones. But by about the third time I’d been bumped into, I figured it out.

They were playing the game.

Once I realized what was happening, I looked at the groups more closely. Mostly clusters of four or five players, some as large as a dozen, each concentrating on their screen, looking at the world around them through their cameras, seeing who knows what kind of AR everywhere.

I sat on a bench at the Marina Green, my back to the sparkling bay. I was more interested in the gamers drifting around on the jogging paths and open grassy field. There were at least three groups of players meandering within eyesight. I watched them, fascinated.

They formed loose circles, each one facing out in a different direction, so among them they had a three-sixty view of the world. Occasionally someone would shout, and they’d all point their phones in the same direction, oohing and ahhing and arguing about what they were seeing and what it might mean. They wandered into the paths of oncoming joggers and cyclists, and didn’t seem to notice. I thought about the rumors of people stumbling into traffic, oblivious, when playing S’s last game. Watching these players, it seemed entirely plausible. Inevitable. I wondered how many of them might get hurt. I wondered how many of them frequented the gamer forums.

Eventually they all wandered off, presumably following more clues, and other groups came. It was pretty clear by then, at least to me, that no virtual gold coin worth millions lurked on the Green.

Watching them, I thought things over. The Internet—or at least some weird offramps of it—thought I was a killer. Meanwhile, there was an actual killer running around poisoning people. If I figured out who that was, would the Internet leave me alone? I had no idea. But I took out my phone and jotted down notes of what I did know, hoping some obvious clue would leap out at me.

 

• S was poisoned with bee pollen.
• Tommy was poisoned with arsenic.
• They were together the day before the webcast, at least for part of the day at Monica’s shop.
• S bought a lot of weed that day and was a regular user. He seemed high onstage even before he got sick.
• Tommy and S argued the morning of the webcast.
• The bee pollen may have been in the energy drink S drank onstage.
• The arsenic was in the orange juice Tommy drank in his car.

   

Nothing leapt out at me, probably because I didn’t know enough about either victim to know who would have wanted them both dead.

I found myself wondering who else had been with Tommy and S the morning of the webcast in Palo Alto. Did either of them have an entourage? Assistants? Someone close enough to S to know if he was allergic to bees? Someone close enough to Tommy to know he’d been staying at the Four Seasons? Someone with access to both bee pollen and arsenic? Did either of them have a girlfriend who might have been with them? No, that wouldn’t fit. Why would one girlfriend want both men dead?

Then I remembered Kristy. Abby had told Monica and me that S had spent a lot of time with her in the shop that day. I had no idea if he might have told her anything meaningful, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do, so I got off the bench and headed for the Potent Flower.

  

“Ohmygod he was amazing,” Kristy said.

We were talking in the lounge in Monica’s shop, Monica having given permission for her sales assistant to take a break. There were a few other patrons in the room, talking among themselves on the low benches that lined the walls, or working on their laptops at the central table. We kept our voices down.

“He was a genius,” Kristy said, the dim light of the lounge giving her long lavender hair a hazy sort of glow. “If you told me he was an enlightened being from another world, or another dimension, I would totally believe you. I mean, just look!”

She pointed at the giant video screen on the wall. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. “Is that the game?” I asked.

She nodded. “Thirty-second live streams from player’s phones all over the world.”

One half of the screen showed wobbly hand-held videos while the other half had scrolling text that looked like comments players were making. The videos were of streets, buildings, parks, and anywhere else on the planet people were playing the game, occasionally including one of the AR effects. I got a glimpse of what looked like a CGI chimney sweep on someone’s roof, and then a fortune teller sitting on a building’s front steps.

“It’s a whole world,” Kristy said, transfixed. “He built a whole beautiful world, and they killed him.”

It looked like the same old world to me, with the random addition of the AR characters, which I had to admit did look pretty cool.

“What do you mean, ‘they’ killed him?” I asked her.

She didn’t take her eyes off the screen. “His enemies,” she shrugged.

“He told you about his enemies?” That sounded promising.

“He didn’t have to. I saw what he was going through. You should have heard the way that other guy yelled at him, and right before he went onstage. So disrespectful! Like he could have done anything without S.”

“Wait—are you talking about Tommy? Are you saying you were there in Palo Alto? The day of the launch?”

“Sure.” She looked surprised that this wasn’t common knowledge. “S and I really connected, you know? He hung out here in the lounge after we met that day. And then we went out, and then back to his place, and when the car came to take him to the venue in the morning, he just assumed I’d come along, so I did.” She glanced at me. “We were soulmates. We both knew it.”

“Right,” I said, my mind racing with questions. “Did you notice when S started feeling sick? Was it before he went onstage, or just after he took that drink? Did you see who took the bottle from him? Or if anyone had it before he took it onstage?”

She finally turned her attention away from the screen, fixing me with a look. “Isn’t it obvious what happened?” she asked. “That guy Tommy poisoned S, and then when he realized that he couldn’t run the game without him, he killed himself.” She shrugged. “Simple.”

I blinked, not quite knowing how to respond. I was spared the need to when there was suddenly a blinding flash of light from the screen. Music blared, and the image of a giant gold coin appeared, rotating and sending off sparks. Everyone in the lounge started murmuring, then yelling in excitement.

Kristy leapt up, clapping and whooping. “They found one!” she yelled joyfully. “They found the first coin!”