“It’s a pretty mushroom,” Chanterelle said.
The woman named for a fungus got up from behind the desk and started up the spiral staircase. O’Hara looked up to see where they were going and found herself wondering why any woman who knew she’d be going up and down steep stairs all day would wear such a short dress, unless she was hoping to save money on visits to her gynecologist. Staring straight ahead she followed the sound of the receptionist’s footsteps until both of her own feet were on level floor. Then she looked around.
They stood in a much smaller lobby, which was only the size of the entire Santa Barbara police station. Corridors led off in either direction and they were dotted with doors spaced far enough apart that Juliet was certain the offices behind them must be enormous.
Chanterelle waited until Lassiter had stepped up next to O’Hara-his sense of chivalry had kept him from mounting the first stair until the hem of the receptionist’s dress had disappeared through the hole in the ceiling-and then pointed to a double door. “I’m going to put you in conference room B.”
“Are you going to put this Masterson in there with us?” Lassiter said. “Because we’d prefer not to bankrupt our city government.”
The receptionist smiled broadly, apparently choosing to ignore whatever she couldn’t understand, and walked to the double doors. She gave a gentle knock on one of them and then threw it open.
As Chanterelle headed back down to her station, O’Hara led Lassiter to the door. Inside, the room seemed to stretch the length of the building and it contained a polished granite table that ran from one end to the other. Enough leather chairs were clustered around it to seat a joint session of Congress. All the way at the far end of the table Juliet could make out the form of a man.
“Mr. Masterson?” Juliet said, hoping she could make her voice carry over such a distance without shouting.
“Please come in,” the man said. His voice was muffled by the distance, but Juliet thought there was something familiar about it.
O’Hara and Lassiter came into the conference room and started down the length of the table.
“Mr. Masterson, we talked briefly on the phone,” O’Hara said as they began to get close enough to make out the figure sitting at the end of the table.
“I’m afraid Sam Masterson isn’t with us anymore,” the man said.
“I just talked to him a few days ago,” O’Hara said. “He didn’t mention he was leaving the company.”
“I’m sure if he had left the company he would have contacted you first,” the man said. “Sam was really good about things like that.”
“Was?” O’Hara said.
“He took a personal day on Monday and zipped up to Tahoe with a girlfriend to get in a little skiing,” the man said. “Hit a tree at sixty miles an hour. At least he didn’t suffer.”
“And you are?” O’Hara said.
She took another step forward and now she knew why he had looked so familiar. And from the shocked gasp in her ear, she could tell Lassiter had recognized him, too.
“Really glad to see you,” Gus said. “Seems like it’s been forever.”
Chapter Twelve
The girl was holding something back. Shawn knew it. She tried to come across as an innocent college student-majoring in library sciences, no less-but he was convinced she was the key to finding Macklin Tanner.
He had first become suspicious when he’d spotted her ducking out of a jewelry store he’d been trying to break into. The safe inside contained a diamond the size of a large house cat, and if Shawn could steal it, he’d almost certainly be invited to join Morton’s crew on a heist they were planning. But every time he’d tried sticking the place up, he’d been killed by a team of well-armed security guards. There was no way he was going to get that gem when anyone was looking.
Not that breaking in promised to be much easier. What looked like a normal storefront during the day became an impenetrable fortress at night, all four walls covered by thick steel slabs that slammed down once the doors were locked. And even if Shawn found a way into the building, he was pretty sure the diamond wouldn’t just be lying around on a counter. He’d still have to break into the safe.
There was only one answer to both these problems-he’d have to use some kind of explosive. Since he hadn’t come across any dynamite in the game, Shawn had to check his inventory to see what other incendiaries he might have earned along the way. At first nothing jumped out at him. He had an arsenal of machine guns, pistols, and shotguns; he had switchblades, machetes, and stilettos-both the knife and the shoes; he had stacks of cash, piles of gold, and heaps of jewels. He’d been doing well for himself lately, picking up trophies at every encounter. But he didn’t have anything that looked like it might explode.
Shawn dug deeper in his inventory, searching through the things he’d been given that seemed to have no use at all. There was a spare tire from a boat hauler, the skeleton of a fish, an empty can of pork and beans, a broken floor lamp with no bulb. And then there was the poo.
That was the first thing Shawn had won in the game. Just after he’d logged in he was attacked by a pack of rabid dogs. They killed him. Three times in a row they killed him seconds after he materialized in the city. The fourth time he was ready for them. Just before his third death he had noticed a wrench lying in the gutter by a fire hydrant. The fourth time he stepped onto the mean streets he didn’t waste any time reaching for the single revolver his avatar started with. He dived to the ground and rolled over to the hydrant. As soon as he touched it the dogs stopped in their tracks, then trotted docilely over to him. He waited until they were lined up right in front of him, then used the wrench to open the hydrant and sent the hellhounds tumbling away in a torrent of water.
His reward for that bit of ingenuity was a massive heap of dog poo in his inventory. He’d tried to get rid of it, but there didn’t seem to be a way. He supposed it was a message from the game’s creators: You may think you’re clever for figuring this one out, but it’s the most basic of all the puzzles so don’t get cocky.
But over the course of his sessions, Shawn had learned a lot about the logic of this world. There was never anything in the inventory that couldn’t be used in some way, but the mode of employ was rarely what a normal person would expect. It was like that with the gas can he’d acquired a few levels back: When he tried to fill the tank of his car with it, the auto exploded into flames. This gasoline was intended only for external combustion.
Shawn knew that in the real world there were very few uses for dog poo. Sure, you could scoop it into a bag, then put it on a grumpy neighbor’s doorstep and set it on fire, so that he’d stomp on the bag and get it all over his shoe. But if you tried that with anyone in Darksyde City, he’d shoot you or stab you or blow you up, which took much of the fun out of the prank.
The logic of the game world worked differently from our own. There was a lot of metaphor involved, as Gus had said early on. And Shawn knew that in the real world people made bombs out of fertilizer-in the virtual one dog poo would probably perform the same function.
Shawn stole an SUV from a parking lot and filled the passenger’s compartment with the poo. He drove it into the alley behind the jewelry store, noticing that the car’s keyless remote had grown a new button, one illustrated with a cartoon explosion. Apparently Shawn was on the right track. He was about to push the detonator button when he saw the girl casually strolling out of a side exit. He didn’t think to grab her then-it seemed more important to make sure she was free of the blast zone, since he’d finally figured out that the game tended to penalize the player for indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians. He watched her walk out of the alley, then put her out of his mind.
At least he did until the next time he was inside the game. The explosion had worked spectacularly-too spectacularly, as it turned out. Not only did the car bomb blast through the steel walls, it wiped out the entire city block, vaporizing Shawn’s avatar into pixels that swirled for minutes before resolving into the “game over” screen.