his feet on the drawer. Not quite seven oâclock: Heâd gone to bed a little after two, and normally wouldnât have gotten up until ten.
Years beforeâbefore heâd inadvertently gotten richâheâd invented board games as a way of supplementing his police salary. The games were created in all-night sessions that now, in memory, seemed to merge with his time of running the streets. The games eventually became computer-based, with Lucas writing the story and a hired programmer from the University of Minnesota writing the computer code.
That work led to Davenport Simulations, a small software company that specialized in computer-based simulations of law-enforcement crises, intended to train police communications personnel in fast-moving crisis management. By the time the companyâs management bought him out, Davenport Simulations were running on most of the nationâs 911 equipment.
The simulations hadnât much interested him. Theyâd simply been an obvious and logical way to make money, more of it than heâd ever expected to make. And while games still interested him, heâd lost his place in the gaming world. The new three-dimensional computer-based action/strategy games were far beyond anything heâd been able to do as recently as five years before.
When heâd gotten rich, when heâd gotten political, heâd stepped off the streets. But in the past six months, his life had begun to shift again. He was wandering the Cities at night. Looking into places he hadnât seen in years: taverns, a couple of bowling alleys, barbershops, a candy store that fronted for a sports book. Strip joints, now masquerading as gentlemen clubs. Putting together rusty connections.
And he was talking to old gaming friends. He began to consider a new kind of game, a game set in the real world, with real victories to win, and a real treasure at the end, maybe using palm computers and cell phones. Heâd been staying up late again, working on it. He was still in the pencil-twiddling stage, but now had a block of scratchy flow charts pinned to his drafting table. One idea a night, thatâs all he wanted. Something he could use. But an idea a night was a lot of ideas.
He leaned back in the chair, yawned, closed his eyes. In his mindâs eye, he saw Maison on the floor, her foot sticking out from behind the bed, and the woman crumpled on the floor below the closet. Maison and her friends were dopers, and dopers got killed; it happened forty or fifty times a year in Minneapolis, thousands of times a year across the country.
As far as he was concerned, dopers were crap, and if they died, well, thatâs what dopers did. That Alieâe was famous cut no ice with Lucas. Her fame was entirely ephemeral, not the result of hard work, or intellectual or moral superiority, but simply a by-product of her appearance.
He felt no impulse to revenge; he did feel the first tingles of the hunt. That was something else altogether. That had nothing to do with Alieâe, but was purely between his guys and the other guys.
Â
Â
THEN HE SAW, in his mindâs eye, the image of Catrin as a young woman. Man, the last time he saw her . . .
Lucasâs eyes were closed, and the corners of his mouth turned up. A small smile, and not a particularly attractive one. Feeling a little wasted; feeling some pressure from the politicals; feeling a killer out there, somewhere, maybe running, maybe not. And a woman on the mind, somebody to wonder about.
This was how life was supposed to be. Propped up in a chair, wishing you still smoked, worried about twenty-four things at the same time. Not that laid-back, going-nowhere-slowly feeling . . . that prosperous, rich-guy, hand-shaking shit.
Like this.
He was sleeping like a baby when the phone rang.
5
DARK. BAD TASTE. Lucas pushed himself up in the chair, the phone still ringing. Confused for a moment, he realized he was in his office, that
Years beforeâbefore heâd inadvertently gotten richâheâd invented board games as a way of supplementing his police salary. The games were created in all-night sessions that now, in memory, seemed to merge with his time of running the streets. The games eventually became computer-based, with Lucas writing the story and a hired programmer from the University of Minnesota writing the computer code.
That work led to Davenport Simulations, a small software company that specialized in computer-based simulations of law-enforcement crises, intended to train police communications personnel in fast-moving crisis management. By the time the companyâs management bought him out, Davenport Simulations were running on most of the nationâs 911 equipment.
The simulations hadnât much interested him. Theyâd simply been an obvious and logical way to make money, more of it than heâd ever expected to make. And while games still interested him, heâd lost his place in the gaming world. The new three-dimensional computer-based action/strategy games were far beyond anything heâd been able to do as recently as five years before.
When heâd gotten rich, when heâd gotten political, heâd stepped off the streets. But in the past six months, his life had begun to shift again. He was wandering the Cities at night. Looking into places he hadnât seen in years: taverns, a couple of bowling alleys, barbershops, a candy store that fronted for a sports book. Strip joints, now masquerading as gentlemen clubs. Putting together rusty connections.
And he was talking to old gaming friends. He began to consider a new kind of game, a game set in the real world, with real victories to win, and a real treasure at the end, maybe using palm computers and cell phones. Heâd been staying up late again, working on it. He was still in the pencil-twiddling stage, but now had a block of scratchy flow charts pinned to his drafting table. One idea a night, thatâs all he wanted. Something he could use. But an idea a night was a lot of ideas.
He leaned back in the chair, yawned, closed his eyes. In his mindâs eye, he saw Maison on the floor, her foot sticking out from behind the bed, and the woman crumpled on the floor below the closet. Maison and her friends were dopers, and dopers got killed; it happened forty or fifty times a year in Minneapolis, thousands of times a year across the country.
As far as he was concerned, dopers were crap, and if they died, well, thatâs what dopers did. That Alieâe was famous cut no ice with Lucas. Her fame was entirely ephemeral, not the result of hard work, or intellectual or moral superiority, but simply a by-product of her appearance.
He felt no impulse to revenge; he did feel the first tingles of the hunt. That was something else altogether. That had nothing to do with Alieâe, but was purely between his guys and the other guys.
Â
Â
THEN HE SAW, in his mindâs eye, the image of Catrin as a young woman. Man, the last time he saw her . . .
Lucasâs eyes were closed, and the corners of his mouth turned up. A small smile, and not a particularly attractive one. Feeling a little wasted; feeling some pressure from the politicals; feeling a killer out there, somewhere, maybe running, maybe not. And a woman on the mind, somebody to wonder about.
This was how life was supposed to be. Propped up in a chair, wishing you still smoked, worried about twenty-four things at the same time. Not that laid-back, going-nowhere-slowly feeling . . . that prosperous, rich-guy, hand-shaking shit.
Like this.
He was sleeping like a baby when the phone rang.
5
DARK. BAD TASTE. Lucas pushed himself up in the chair, the phone still ringing. Confused for a moment, he realized he was in his office, that
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