A Game Called Chaos (9 page)

After resting for a few minutes, they climbed into their seats and headed south toward Jewel Ridge. Joe called Viking Software while Frank drove. When Phil answered the phone, Joe put it on the speaker.

“Hey, great to hear from you guys,” he said. “How'd it go?”

“Well, it looked pretty hairy for a while,” Joe said, “but everything turned out fine in the end. We've got the master disk.”

“That's great,” Phil said. “I dug up something on those computer messages, too.”

“It can wait,” Frank said. “Now that we've got the disk, it doesn't much matter where Royal is. I'm sure he'll turn up now that his little game is over.”

“And when he does show,” Joe added, “I hope the cops give it to him. And if they don't, I will.
His stunts could have gotten someone hurt—or worse.”

“Yell at him all you want, as long as it doesn't mess up the release of the game,” Phil said. “Look, we'll see you when you get here.”

“Right,” Joe said, and hung up the phone. They stopped on the way back for burgers and gas but otherwise drove straight through. Still, it was close to one
A.M
. when they finally arrived at the offices of Viking Software.

Dave, Chelsea, and Phil were a small welcoming committee and gave the Hardys an ovation as the brothers dragged themselves in. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” Dave said, beaming.

Phil clapped each of his friends on the shoulder, and Chelsea gave each a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “How can we ever reward you?” she asked.

“A hot bath, a good meal, and a good night's sleep,” Joe replied. He handed the master disk to her.

“Come on,” Phil said, waving to the cubicle where he'd been working. “I've got everything set up to check out the disk.”

Dave looked worried. “You don't think it might be the wrong disk, do you? After all this?”

“We won't know until we try it,” Frank said. Like Joe, he was exhausted.

Phil sat down at the workstation, and Chelsea
handed him the disk. They popped it into the DVD/CD drive, and the computer hummed to life.

A moment later the game filled the screen with dazzling graphics. Bats swooped and screeched over a deserted town, and somewhere in the distance a church bell tolled thirteen. Then suddenly a building exploded and the title of the game appeared on the screen: A Town Called Chaos.

“Yes!” Dave said, jumping up and giving Chelsea a high-five.

Soon, the Katherine Chaos character appeared on screen. First, there was a brief but visually stunning recap of the first three games, then an explanation of the goal of the game: to lift the curse of Chaos from Katherine's hometown.

Then the intro ended, and the game demo began.

“These graphics are amazing!” Joe said. “Light-years beyond the first two games.”

“I've never seen these sequences before,” Dave said, hardly daring to take his eyes from the screen.

“I have,” Chelsea said, smiling from ear to ear. “The last time I saw Royal. These are the missing sequences. Frank and Joe, you did it! Viking Software is saved!”

“Let's see how it plays,” Phil said. He hit the control key to stop the demo and start the game.

Suddenly the screen went blank. The computer's drives whirred madly, and then the screen filled with a rapidly changing series of ones and zeros.

Both Chelsea and Phil went pale. “Computer virus!” they gasped.

“Do something!” Dave said, practically screaming.

“I'm trying, I'm trying,” said Phil, frantically pounding the keyboard.

“Phil!” Chelsea said, tension making her voice shrill.

A few seconds later Phil stopped typing. “It's okay,” he said. “Everything's okay. I stopped it before it could do any damage to the Viking systems.”

Joe clapped him on the back. “Good work, Phil.”

Phil leaned back in his chair. “Actually, I was half expecting something like this. With all the games Royal's put you guys through, I thought he might have a trick or two left. So I put up a fire
wall between this computer and the rest of the system. Good thing, too. This virus is one of the nastiest I've ever seen. That Royal must be one amazing programmer.”

“Actually,” Frank said, “I think this little stunt proves that Royal isn't behind our present troubles.”

“He's not?” Dave and Chelsea asked simultaneously.

“Think about it,” Joe said. “What would Royal have to gain from wrecking your system? It won't get him out of his contract with you, will it?”

“It might if it put us out of business,” Dave said. “But I think we'd have a pretty good case against him if that happened now.”

“So do I,” Frank said. “And I don't think Royal's dumb enough to think otherwise. No, from all the evidence we have now, and from what's happened here tonight, I think it's pretty clear that we've been barking up the wrong tree. Steven Royal isn't running this game, and he hasn't been from the beginning.”

“So, who is?” Chelsea asked.

“We can't be sure, yet,” Joe said. “Obviously it's someone out to ruin Royal's work and reputation. Rosenberg, Tochi, and Winters are still the obvious suspects. All could benefit from the failure of the new Chaos game and, incidentally, Viking Software.”

“There may be another suspect, too,” Phil said. “Remember last night I said I'd turned up something new? Well, I traced both those computer messages you found to a computer in Switzerland, just over the Italian border.”

“Near Italy?” Joe asked. “That could mean that Tochi's involved. His family comes from there.”

“There's more,” Phil said. “The computer I traced the messages to is owned by Cross Enterprises.”

“Sakai's heir?” asked Dave.

“Looks like,” Frank said. “Now things are starting to fall into place. Remember when McLean told us she'd seen Sakai's ghost? Well, suppose it wasn't a ghost, but a look-alike relative, Regina Cross. Could be that relative blames Royal for Sakai's death. Trashing Royal's rep might be the best way to get back at him.”

“But Sakai's heirs would still get money from any game in the Chaos series,” Phil said. “Smearing Royal would be like throwing money out the window.”

Dave cut in. “Not on the game we're putting out now. I checked on that. So far as I know, the Crosses don't get any cut at all,” he said. “Royal is the only person we're obligated to pay under our contract, and then Royal pays anyone who works with him.”

“That's what the recent contract change did,”
Frank said. “And I'm betting that that's what set this all off. Royal disappeared last Monday, shortly after he made that change to the contract.”

“Whoever he was working with kidnapped him,” Joe said.

“But that still doesn't tell us where he is, or who's behind this,” Chelsea said. “You really think he's been kidnapped?”

“It seems pretty likely now,” Joe said. “Though I'm not sure the police would think so.”

“At least they're looking for him, because of that remote-controlled car bit,” said Frank. “Say, did anyone follow up on that?”

“Chelsea and I poked around in the police files,” Phil said. “Their preliminary report says that the control unit was made up of common electronic components, processors from toys, and parts of an old amusement park ride—chain-belts, gears, things like that.”

“An amusement park ride?” said Joe. “Hmm. This puzzle has too many pieces.”

“But I'm betting,” Frank said, “that with a little bit of work, we can put them all together. We're all going to be up late tonight, but I think we're finally on the right track. Here's what I want everyone to do . . .”

Frank divided the group up and gave each person a specific task. They each used a computer to
search. They took catnaps when they couldn't keep their eyes open, but they didn't nap long before going back to work. By morning they had a good deal to go on—though no one had gotten enough sleep.

Dave called the tired-looking group together in a conference room early Sunday morning. “Okay,” he said. “What did everyone find out?”

“Looks like Winters is in the clear,” Joe said. “After he sped away from our little tussle the other night, he got caught for speeding in the next county. He must have had a lot of outstanding tickets because they're still holding him at the county jail. He couldn't have been messing with us since then.”

Joe continued. “McLean is under psychiatric observation. I think they're looking at giving her a one-way ticket. What about Tochi?”

“His record looks clean,” Frank said, “though McLean's breaking into his place did make the police blotter. Otherwise, he's got an outstanding record.”

“He still seems like one of the best candidates,” Joe said. “He'd have the expertise to make those mechanical animals. Bombo was a pretty impressive toy, at least mechanically. I wonder why he sicced that wolf-dog on us in the woods, though? If he's our culprit it seems to me that he'd have wanted to use a bear.”

“Maybe all the bears were booked up,” Phil said.

“Wolf-dog?” Chelsea said. “I remember reading something about that when I was researching Royal's past. Anne Sakai had a dog that was part wolf. I wonder what became of it after she died.”

“I think I know,” Dave said. “I checked into the public records of Sakai's will. It seems she didn't have a very large estate when she died. She had gotten into some tax trouble. The IRS got what they could, but they think that she probably had some untraceable Swiss bank accounts.”

“Cross Enterprises is in Switzerland,” Joe said.

Dave nodded. “Yes.”

“How long before she died did Sakai write the will?” Frank asked.

“Funny thing, she only wrote it about a week before she died. She filed it and had it notarized on the island. And, in her will, Sakai left her dog, Scavenger, to Regina Cross—who the will says
is
her cousin. But as near as I can figure out, the dog never left the U.S. There was some kind of trouble about taking a half-wolf to Europe. So the dog stayed in this country, in a kennel—until someone picked him up, about two months after Sakai's death. I tracked down the kennel records over the Net.”

“Do you think you could see if that dog has been kenneled recently?” Frank asked.

“I'll get right on it,” Dave said, and left the room.

“You know, if we get good enough at this, we might be able to crack all our cases from the comfort of our computer room back home,” Joe said.

“This case isn't cracked yet,” Frank said. “And besides, where's the fun in that?”

“You know,” Phil said, “I've got a funny idea. Sometimes skills run in families—for example, Chelsea and I are both good with computers.”

“I see where you're going, and I've been thinking the same thing,” Frank said. “Sakai was good with computers and all kinds of machines. Maybe that knack runs in her family.”

“Which would make Regina Cross—Sakai's cousin—the perfect person to pull off a scheme like this,” Joe said. “Which also fits in with McLean's ‘ghost' theory.”

“That's not all,” Chelsea said. “I cross-referenced the names of all the people with that name in the United States. One of them lives in Sullivan's Point, up in New Hampshire. And, according to the research I did, Sullivan's Point is where Anne Sakai grew up.”

“Here's the kicker,” Phil said. “Among the papers in McLean's car that the police confiscated was one that indicated that Royal hired Cross Enterprises to work on parts of A Town Called Chaos.”

“Which means Royal had complete control over how Cross Enterprises was paid, according to his recent contract change,” said Frank. “So he could change their deal at any time. Suppose he decided to pay her less than they had agreed. He could do that legally now.”

“I'd say that jumps Regina Cross to the head of our suspects list,” Joe said. “Maybe she and Royal had a disagreement over money. Or maybe she's been carrying a grudge about what happened to her cousin. Or maybe she just doesn't like him—a lot of people apparently don't.”

Just then Dave came back into the room. “Guys, I've found it,” he said. “A dog by that name and matching the description has been kenneled in Benson, New Hampshire, off and on for the last few years and as recently as a month ago.”

“I bet if we check a map,” Joe said, “that Benson will turn out to be close to Sullivan's Point.”

“We can check the map in the car,” Frank said. “Let's go.”

“Can we stop for a shower at Chelsea's place first?” Joe asked. “If I'm going to face down danger, I'd rather not be Mr. Grunge.”

• • •

An hour later, washed and fed, Frank and Joe Hardy rolled out of Jewel Ridge on their way to Sullivan's Point, New Hampshire. Locating the town didn't turn out to be as easy as they had expected;
it wasn't on the map in their car, but Phil turned it up on an older map he found on the Internet.

“Strange the town isn't on our map,” Joe said.

“Almost par for the course on this case,” Frank noted. “We're looking for a ‘ghost' in a town that doesn't exist.”

The two had left Chelsea, Phil, and Dave to hold the fort at Viking Software. They were also going to explain the Hardys' theory of the case to the local police. Frank figured the explanations would take someone, probably Dave, most of the day, and even then he didn't expect the police to believe their theory.

Sullivan's Point was located in the mountainous northwest corner of New Hampshire. Driving there took the Hardys most of the day. As they drove they kept in touch with Phil and Chelsea via their car phone. Late in the afternoon, Phil had some news for them.