CHAPTER FIFTEEN
This was the first time ever that she’d typed on a computer keyboard wearing gloves, Cami thought as she turned her mind to getting into the system. It was shocking beyond belief that this woman had been murdered, and if there was anything online that could point the way to the killer, she was determined to find it.
With no phone available, any answers to be gained immediately would have to come from the computer setup.
Behind her, she could hear the sounds of the body being moved. There was a whir of wheels as the stretcher was pushed into the room.
She wasn’t going to look around, she didn’t want to see that, and she felt glad to be able to focus on what was her area of expertise.
She started up the machine, and in the brief few seconds that the fast technology was powering up, Cami made a mental list of what she was going to look for first.
There was a password. That was her first challenge.
Quickly, Cami worked to bypass the system’s main access password. It was fairly simple. It didn’t take her long at all to get around it. And then, she saw what lay beyond. A setup that looked mostly used for work. In fact, to her surprise, Cami saw there were only a couple of games loaded.
“She was playing Bordercross,” she said aloud.
“She was?” The words, from right behind her, made her jump. She hadn’t realized Connor was just about breathing down her neck. With a flash of resentment, she wondered if he was there to check up on her and make sure she didn’t veer away from her FBI-imposed mandate.
Really? Did he really think at this time she was about to do something else and not look for clues? Is that the opinion he had of her?
But there was no time for Cami to explore the resentment that was now smoldering inside her again. Not when her research was proving to be fascinating and, she hoped, useful.
“Yes. But this is strange. She’s a very recent user. Her avatar is called SirenSong, and she created it just a few days ago.”
“Now that is interesting,” Connor said. “On what day?”
“On Saturday morning,” Cami said.
“The day before the first murder,” Connor said thoughtfully. “I wonder if that’s significant. How about most recently?”
“Yesterday, she logged onto Bordercross at eight p.m. or thereabouts and she was playing from then until the computer was shut down just before midnight.”
Cami guessed that would have given the killer four hours from seeing her online to arriving at the home and killing her. Most people gamed for at least four hours, so he would probably have known that he had time. And there was something else interesting, she saw.
“She’s recorded all her footage from the game,” she said.
“Can we use that? Would she have interacted with the killer?”
Cami shook her head. “Not necessarily. He could have simply noticed her in a public or communal place. That’s the whole point of the game, really. It is an espionage game and characters are able to observe situations. But somewhere on the same screen, within sight, the killer would have been visible.”
“So, we could track him that way?” Connor sounded eager yet impatient, as if frustrated at his own lack of knowledge.
“It depends on what areas she was in. Some areas, there are a lot of other game players on screen and in view at any one time. Hundreds of others, and you can move from scene to scene. Some scenes are quite crowded if they are public places within the game.”
Cami saw Connor was frowning, as he took all this information in. She continued explaining.
“So potentially and most likely, she would have been visible to hundreds of other players so far. But the footage is here if you want it. She’s played for about fifteen hours in total.”
“Fifteen hours of footage. Hundreds of other players.”
Connor sounded thoughtful and she guessed he was feeling the way she was, that this killer was near and yet, so far.
“We can use the footage anyway,” he said. “Can you download it, save it somewhere? It’ll be time consuming, but it could provide a link to other evidence.”
Cami saw the logic there. “Sure. I can do that. I’ll create a cloud storage for it and forward everything there.”
Quickly, she got that started, feeling relief as she glanced around to see the stretcher getting wheeled out.