by Sydnie MacElroy
[MD2, morning, the Colquitt house]
>Jordan's cell phone rang and he answered, "Stern."
>There was a pause and he said, "Is she all right... Ok, I >understand. I'll meet you there in about 15 minutes."
>Jordan hung up the cell phone and frowned.
>"Is something wrong?" Zenya asked.
>"I'm not sure," Jordan replied, "Will you be all right if I >take the car for a while?"
>"I think so," Zenya replied. We'll wait here for you, >unless you'll be too lone, in which case we can walk to >one of the other houses."
>"I'll give you a call if I'm going to be a while."
When Jordan left, Leo and Martin were absorbed in examining the computer. Since Zenya's interest in computers and technology in general was roughly equivalent to having a tooth pulled, she slipped out of the room to continue the search.
Jessie's room was, she supposed, a typical room for a sixteen year old boy. A few posters on the walls, a few trophies and awards on a shelf over the bed, a stereo, some CDs. The room looked as though it hadn't been cleaned in a while, but wasn't so bad that it made a search impossible. The bed was unmade, which reminded Zenya that Jessie had said he was asleep when Prentice and Dolan arrived and informed him of his parents' murder. She pulled back the bedspread to examine the sheets and found what looked to be a couple of small blood stains, possibly hand prints. She shook her head at the inefficiency of local law enforcement around here. The sheets should have been tagged as evidence and taken away.
Something blue sticking out from under the pillow caught her eye and she pulled it out. It was a scarf, silk and very pretty. How it got there was probably an interesting story, but Zenya couldn't think of how it might be related to the case. She put it on the bedside table and moved on.
Turning her attention to the desk in the corner, she opened a drawer and found it crammed full of papers, old school assignments, tests and reports among other things. Assembling a sampling of them, she noticed a trend. Jessie Colquitt had been an average student at best, up until a few months earlier when the consistent Cs and Ds he'd been getting suddenly turned into As and Bs.
She took the papers with her back to the study and found Leo and Martin still hard at work at the computer, examining the evidence. She was fairly certain they wouldn't admit they were playing.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," she said, grinning. When she didn't get an immediate response, she cleared her throat.
"What?" Leo turned to look at her. His voice had been a little snappy, which caused Zenya to frown.
"Find anything interesting?"
"Maybe. Jessie was active in a couple of games. Nothing so far in his logs to indicate why he might have been driven to kill his parents, though," Leo said. His voice was back to normal. Maybe Zenya had imagined the snappiness a moment ago.
"Can you tell when the program was installed?"
Martin nodded. "We checked that. It's been on the system for about three months."
"I thought so." She held up the papers. "His grades started improving about that time."
"So whatever else this program is doing to these kids, it's also doing what the flyer promised," Martin said.
Leo shook his head. "How is that possible?"
"Subliminal messages," Martin suggested.
"I doubt it. It's never been proved that subliminal messages actually work. We could be back to some kind of hypnosis, though, although I don't know how that would work through a computer screen."
"And how does it relate to the cows," Leo added. "They still seem to be the common denominator." His phone rang as he was speaking and he answered it. "Jones. .. We'll be here." He hung up. "That was Jim. There's a bunch of cows down at the strip mall. He's on his way to pick us up."
*****
[a few minutes later, in the car]
With four people crammed into the little Swift, there was barely room to breath, but at least this time around, Zenya wasn't driving. She was now completely convinced that there was a conspiracy against her. The rest of the team had gotten together and decided that given her dislike of driving, they were going to force her to get over it by making her drive at every opportunity. Well, not this time!
"Is everything all right, Jim," she asked.
"Yeah. Vanessa had a little run in with some cows, but she's okay now."
"Cows again," Martin said.
"What happened," Leo asked.
"She cut herself. She remembers watching some cows, and nothing after that."
"Consistent with what the kids are reporting," Leo said.
"Except she didn't attack someone else," Zenya added. "The three kids killed their parents and the Laughton boy came after you. Vanessa tried to injure herself."
"If just being around the cows is the cause, why haven't there been more incidents?"
"Exactly. There has to be another factor."
"In the case of the kids, RPG Universe," Martin said. "Of course, we'll have to verify that the other three were involved with it. But Vanessa obviously hasn't been."
"A case of the exception proving the rule," Jim suggested. "There's the mall."
Up ahead, they saw the strip mall, a large one by small town standards. A few dozen cows were wandering around the parking lot, resisting the attempts of the sheriff and deputy - and several civilian volunteers - to move them along. Among the volunteers were a couple of teenage boys. In the window of one of the stores and on the sidewalk, several more young people stood transfixed, trance-like, watching the spectacle. The other Swift was parked in the street, and Jordan and Vanessa were standing next to it. Jim pulled up and parked alongside.