Van Zandt would be pleased. Soon hundreds of thousands across the world would flock to experience this. Van Zandt considered him an animation genius, but he never forgot that the computer animations were merely a means to an end. The end was having his paintings displayed in the best galleries, the very galleries that had rejected him before.
He lifted his eyes to the seventh painting of Warren Dies. To the moment Warren Keyes ceased to be. Perhaps those galleries had been right. His work before Claire and Warren and all the others had been generic. Familiar. But these-Warren, Claire, Brittany, Bill Melville as the flail sheared his head away-these were genius.
He stood up and stretched. He needed to sleep. He had a long drive ahead of him tomorrow morning. He wanted to be in Van Zandt’s office by nine and out by noon. That would allow him ample time to meet Mr. Gregory Sanders at three. By midnight he’d have Gregory Dies on canvas and a whole new scream.
He took a few stiff steps, rubbing his right thigh. This old house was too drafty. He’d picked it for its remote location and ease of… appropriation, but every gust of winter wind found its way inside. Philadelphia in the winter was hell. Made him long for magnolias and peach blossoms. He clenched his jaw. He’d been exiled from home far too long, but that would soon change. The old man’s hold over him was broken.
He chuckled. So was the old man. Broken. He walked to his bed on the far side of his studio. Sitting on the mattress, he focused on the poster board that he’d mounted on the wall next to his bed, positioned so that he could see it every time he woke. The poster board on which he’d drawn the matrix. Four by four.
Sixteen blocks, nine of them filled with still shots of the victim at that crucial moment of death. Well, one was a photo of a painting. He hadn’t filmed his strangulation of Claire Reynolds, but in the moments after her death, he had created Claire Dies and knew his life had irrevocably changed. In the days thereafter he’d relived the moment he’d ended Claire’s life over and over.
In those days, he’d dreamed of doing it again and again. And in those days he’d formulated the plan which was progressing well. Some might attribute his success to luck, but only fools believed in luck. Luck was for the lazy, the undeserving. He believed in intellect, and in skill. And fate.
He hadn’t always believed in fate, in the inevitable overlap of one person’s destiny with another’s. He believed now. How else could he explain walking into Jager Van Zandt’s favorite bar a year ago, just hours after the man had received a crushing review on his last game? “Less exciting than Pong,” the reviewer had proclaimed and Van Zandt had been just drunk enough to pour out every last detail, from his frustration with Derek Harrington to the fear that the game he was ready to launch, Behind Enemy Lines, would be equally disastrous.
How else could he explain the sudden appearance of Claire Reynolds with her bold but poorly executed attempt at blackmail the very next day? Those had been fate.
Intellect was being able to combine Claire’s unfortunate end and Van Zandt’s unfortunate present into a new destiny that would meet his own needs. But none of it could have happened without skill. He had been uniquely gifted to give Van Zandt exactly what he wanted in exactly the form he needed. Few others could create images, worlds, with both pixels and paint. Few others had the computer expertise to imbue them with life.
But I can. He’d created the virtual world of the evil Inquisitor, a fourteenth-century cleric who saw the elimination of heretics as more of a hostile takeover opportunity and the elimination of witches to be the door to great power. The more wealthy heretics and true witches the Inquisitor found and eliminated, the more powerful he would become, until he becomes the king.
A fanciful tale, but gamers would enjoy the political scheming and lies required to get ahead. Points would be scored by how clever the deceit and how diabolically complex the torture. He’d filled most of the primary roles-the powerful Witch who’d suffered the torture of the chair before revealing the source of her great power, the Good Knight who is vanquished with the flail, the king himself who suffers a most ignominious and… gutless end.
Of course all of these subjects had played supporting roles as well. He’d been careful to plan the tortures to get the most use out of each subject, both audio and video. With a few small changes, these additional tortures would be converted to at least twenty additional minor characters that gamers could add to their collection.
Gregory Sanders would play the role of an honest cleric attempting to stop the evil Inquisitor. Of course the cleric would not prevail and Gregory Sanders would meet a most bitter and painful end, after which he would be buried in the final plot on the third row. The third row would be complete.
The first row was already complete, filled with casualties of Behind Enemy Lines-Claire and Jared and Zachary. And poor Mrs. Crane. Crane was… collateral damage, an unfortunate victim of his real-estate acquisition. Regrettable, but unavoidable.
The fourth row was currently empty, reserved for cleanup when Inquisitor was complete. The fourth row would hold his resources, the only people capable of proving the images in his medieval fantasy world were more than the product of an active imagination. They were the only people who knew the instruments of torture were indeed real, who knew of his intense interest in the weapons and warfare of the Middle Ages. They would pose a distinct threat when Inquisitor hit store shelves, so they would have to be dealt with before that time.
The three vendors of illegal antiquities would give him no pause. They were pompous asses who’d overcharged him too many times. Simply put, he disliked all three. But the historian… She would be another regrettable loss. He had nothing against her, per se. On some level he even… liked her. She was intelligent and skilled. A loner. Just like me.
Still, she’d interacted with him on too many occasions. He could not allow her to live. Like the two old women, he’d make it as painless as possible. Nothing personal. But the historian would die and would be laid to rest in the last block on the fourth row.
He lifted his gaze and stared at the second row of blocks with cold resolve. Two blocks were filled. Two remained. Unlike any of the others, this row, these blocks were very, very personal indeed.
Tuesday, January 16, 1:15
A.M.
Daniel had been staring at the ceiling for hours, putting off what he knew he had to do. It was probably too late, in more ways than one. But she had a right to know, and he had a responsibility to tell her.
She’d be angry. She was entitled. With a sigh Daniel sat up and reached for the phone, dialing the number he’d committed to memory long ago but had never called.
She answered on the first ring. “Hello?” She sounded awake and alert.
“Susannah? It’s… me. Daniel.”
There was a long moment of silence. “What do you want, Daniel?” There was an edge to her voice that made him cringe. But he supposed he deserved it.
“I’m in Philadelphia. Looking for them.”
“In Philadephia? Why would they go there?”
“Susannah, when was the last time you talked to them?”
“I called Mom on Christmas Day, a year ago. I haven’t talked to Dad in five years. Why?”
“Frank called me, told me they might be missing, but it looked like they were only on vacation. Then I found e-mails on Dad’s computer. They say ‘I know what your son did.’”
Once again he was treated to a moment of silence. “So what did his son do?”
Daniel closed his eyes. “I don’t know. The only things I know is that one of them did an Internet search for Philadelphia oncologists and that the last person to actually talk to them was Grandma. I’m here looking for them, and I’m prepared to go to every hotel in this city, but it would help to know what number they called Grandma from.”