“Sell?” Abbott leaned forward, interest in his eyes. “You sell things in this world?”
“You can sell all kinds of things. When you enter the game you can design your own avatar, but it’s from a template. If you want anything more unique, you pay someone. I don’t charge a lot for my avatars, which is why I get a lot of business, especially with people new to the World.”
“Like many of your test subjects,” Webster said.
“Exactly.”
“You were watching them,” Jack said. “As Pandora.”
Eve nodded. “Yes. That’s where I get into trouble.”
“Why were you watching them?” Webster asked.
“My concern was having subjects abuse Shadowland. The ultra-users did, but they were our control. I worried that people who had full lives in the real world would be sucked in, so I monitored usage. We also measured personality changes. Mood swings, changes in sleep, missing work. And suicidal tendencies.”
“Oh.” Webster leaned back, understanding in his eyes. “You read Martha committed suicide. You thought it had something to do with your study. With the game.”
“That was my fear. I’d wanted to test subjects monthly for mood changes, but my advisor wouldn’t approve that frequency. We tested every three months instead. I was, and still am, worried that that’s not often enough.”
“So you monitored them from the inside,” Abbott said. “Clever.”
“And against the rules, Captain. I was only supposed to know these people by a number. I got worried when a few of them started spending huge hours in the World. It was like recruiting people for a gambling study and watching them become overnight addicts. It was taking over their lives.”
“So you went undercover,” Olivia said.
Eve nodded. “I opened Façades and waited for people to come to me. It was the least intrusive method I could conceive. I could chat with them, gauge their moods, and they didn’t know who I was. Martha’s Desiree was one of my best customers. She was an obsessive face upgrader. Then about a week ago, Desiree disappeared.”
“What did you do?” Webster asked.
“Worried. Hoped Martha had gone on a real-world vacation, but I knew she hadn’t. She was hard-core. And she’d been like that for months before the study began.”
Webster frowned. “How long had she been a gamer, in total?”
“I’d have to check my notes, but maybe a year?”
Webster looked over his shoulder at Phelps. “It’s when everything changed for her.”
Phelps was nodding. “The mess in her apartment, missing her bills. The fights with her mother. Makes sense. So Martha disappeared. Then what?”
“I went looking for her. I didn’t find Martha, but I did find Christy. Every single night Christy would go to the club. It’s called The Ninth Circle.”
“Of hell?” Webster winced. “Lovely.”
“It’s a dance club, a social center. Christy’s Gwenivere was a party girl. I’d use Greer-that’s another of my avatars-to check on her and my other red-zones, the subjects I most worried about.”
“How many red-zones do you have?” Webster asked.
“Right now, five more, with another dozen brewing. I just checked on Christy last night, when I got home from Sal’s. She was dancing and flirting, same old.”
“So how did you know who these people were in real life?” Jack asked.
“This is where I really get into trouble. I broke double-blind.”
The detectives glanced at one another, their confusion clear.
“Double-blind means I don’t know who they are and they don’t know which group they’re in. It’s supposed to be sacrosanct.”
“But you peeked,” Olivia murmured.
“Big time.” Eve rubbed a tight cord in the back of her neck. “I broke in, located the test numbers of the subjects I was most concerned about, and their real-world names.”
“And real-world addresses?” Webster asked sharply.
Eve closed her eyes, trying to figure out how to keep Ethan’s involvement secret. “Not until today. I needed to know where to find Christy. I’d just come from Martha’s. You said she’d been murdered. And here’s where it gets incredibly unbelievable.”
Eve looked at Webster. “I’d set a Google Alert for Martha. This morning it popped up, with an article saying she’d committed suicide. I didn’t know what to do. I ended up going to my advisor. I told him about Martha.”
“You admitted you broke the double-blind?” Webster asked. “That was brave.”
“It was the right thing to do,” she said and saw respect in his eyes. “I couldn’t let anyone else’s life be ruined by this study. But my advisor got angry. I gave him a printout of the article about Martha. He… shredded it and told me I’d never seen it.”
“Bastard,” Abbott murmured.
“Technically, he was right. Morally he wasn’t. I knew where Christy worked. She’d told me about her job when she came to Pandora’s. Christy was lonely. She just wanted to talk. She was worried about getting fired for being online so much, but couldn’t stop.”
“She was addicted,” Webster said quietly and Eve nodded sadly.
“I went to see her in real life, but she hadn’t come to work. I thought she was home, playing. I thought if I couldn’t find Christy, I should at least pay my respects to Martha. That’s when I saw you, Detective Webster.”
“And when you called me?” Olivia asked.
“Not yet. I went home, got online.” Eve felt her heart start racing all over again. “I went to Christy’s house, in the World. There was a black wreath on the door and…” She swallowed hard. “She was hanging. And her shoes had fallen off.”
“How?” Webster asked, his eyes narrowed.
“The same way they were in the real world. I almost called 911, but it sounded too crazy. So I called Olivia here at the station. I didn’t have her cell.”
“That’ll change,” Olivia said. “My sister will kick my ass if anything happens to you.”
Eve’s smile was wan. “Can’t have that. I figured you could get her address, that you could check on her and make sure she was okay. I didn’t think you’d think I was crazy.”
“How did you find Christy’s address?” Webster asked, more quietly this time.
“Don’t answer that,” Matt said, then lifted his brows at Webster’s scowl. “For now.”
“I went to see Christy,” Eve said, “hoping it was a sick joke. But it wasn’t.”
“What about Martha’s door?” Webster asked. “Did it have a black wreath, too?”
“I didn’t check today. I was too rattled. But it didn’t as of yesterday.”
“Let’s check when we’re done here,” Webster said. “What about Samantha Altman?”
“She may live in Shadowland, but she wasn’t in my study. I’m sorry.”
“How do you know?” Webster pressed, and Matt Nillson stepped in.
“All you need to know is that Eve checked the list and Altman wasn’t there.”
Webster shook his head. “Two of my victims were in her study. Not a coincidence.”
“That’s exactly what it is. Hear me out,” Eve added. “Two victims spent inordinate amounts of time in the virtual world. Your third might have, too, but not as part of my study. Whoever killed them knew Christy played, because he simmed the crime scene.”
“Simmed?” Abbott said.
“I’m sorry, Captain. Simulated. Maybe he knew all three from the World. Maybe he preyed on them there.” That Christy wouldn’t have been there except for her study was something Eve couldn’t dwell on right now. The guilt would come later.
Webster was shaking his head. “What are the odds that he’d meet two of your test subjects at random, Eve?”
“Pretty high, if he’s local. We required our subjects to come in for evaluations. They had to be local. We stacked the deck, geographically speaking. If he was looking for women from the Cities, he would have had a larger-than-average pool to choose from.”
“That does make sense,” Webster admitted.