Fort Worth, Texas. Some still call it Cow Town. Most that do are starry-eyed Easterners traveling past the Appalachians for the first time. They have expectations of a "wild west" where dust-caked wranglers still drive herds to market. But, it's tough to find any cows in Cow Town unless one counts the beefy ladies that work in the downtown offices. Besides, it's not a town anymore. Fort Worth's a diverse city that gives Dallas, its high and mighty neighbor, a run for her money on industry, the arts, the crime rate, and everything in between.

That's where I usually come in, the "everything in between" part. I'm a private eye. I'd handled a few juicy divorces and even been hired as a bodyguard from time to time. But, the only work I'd seen since the first of the year had been some tedious skip tracing for a local loan company.

I wish I could say that I'm the first PI people in trouble turn to when they've decided to call in a professional. But, my name's "Dodge". Most folks thumb through a big chunk of the yellow pages before they get to the D's. Sure, I'd toyed with the idea of changing my listing to "AAADodge" to get closer to the front of the book, but I decided against it. The way I figured it "AAADodge" would just get me a lot of 3 AM calls to tow some clown's Volare.

As I said, business, case-wise, had been a little on the dry side. So, I'd stopped by my office in the Sinclair Building to finish a case I knew would get me soaked. I broke the seal on my last bottle of Cutty Sark.

Just before midnight the phone on my desk rang. Knocking back what was left in my glass and pouring myself another, I waited for the third ring. I didn't want to seem too anxious--even if it had been months since I'd done anything resembling real detective work. After ring number three I picked up faster than a newlywed undressing.

"Dodge Investigations, Denton Dodge speaking."

"DD? Is that you?"

The baby doll voice was unmistakable. Only one person called me DD and got away with it, Pearl Stringer, my old pal Jerry's wife.

"Yeah, it's me, Pearl. That's why I answered the phone like that."

"DD, you gotta help me. It's Jerry. He's.... "Her voice broke off as if she'd forgotten why she'd called. No big surprise there. Pearl's a good example of why the lungs work on automatic.

"Let me guess." The Cutty Sark was calling for my full attention. Time to cut to the chase. "Is Jerry posting those pictures of you two in that horse costume out on the Internet again?"

"No, DD. I think he's dead."

"You think he's dead?" I threw back a big swallow of scotch to medicate my ears, lest I was hearing things. "What're the paramedics saying?"

"Paramedics?" She definitely sounded lost.

"Yeah, the guys that got out of the ambulance when the siren stopped."

Silence was the only response I got.

"Pearl, you did call 911, didn't you?" The horror of what must be happening hit me in the pit of my stomach like an order of leftover fries.

"OH! That's what it is." She sounded proudly embarrassed. "I knew it had a '1' in it."

"GOOD GOD, PEARL!! HANG UP AND DIAL 911! I'm on my way."

I polished off the glass of scotch in one gulp, grabbed my overcoat and walked hurriedly across the marbled tiles of the fifth floor to the stairwell. I didn't have time to wait for the Sinclair's notoriously slow elevator.

I should have been thankful for the warmth of the thick wool overcoat on my back and the scotch in my belly. Outside, the North Wind made a last ditch effort to impose winter on Texas, causing the thirty-degree temperature to feel more like zero. But, the razor-edged wind didn't bother me. My best friend might be either dead or dying, and I had twenty miles to drive before I'd know which. That was the real "chill factor."

Jerry and I had been tight ever since he'd patched a 7.62mm hole in my thigh back in Iraq. I'd made it back from taking out an Iraqi weapons depot, but one of the desert-turds got in a lucky shot, his last. Jerry was the corpsman that spotted me and came running. We'd hit it off like brothers from there, two kids from North Texas running into each other for the first time in that vast open toilet called the Persian Gulf.

We made a point of looking each other up when we got out. At least once a week, we played racquetball, shot pool, got drunk or just generally enjoyed our own company. I wasn't ready to not have him around.

I squealed the tires on my Viper, and bottomed out twice before I exited the parking garage. There may have been a few traffic laws I didn't break getting onto Interstate 30 going toward Arlington. I'd be damned to figure out what they were. Any psychiatrist witnessing the way I jumped lanes, weaving in and out of traffic at speeds in excess of 90 mph, would have fit me for a straight jacket, assuming he could've caught me.

I was nuts to drive that way, and extremely lucky that whatever patrolmen were on duty had obviously more important donuts to dunk. What could I do for Jerry once I arrived? I'd been a Ranger in Iraq, a killer not a corpsman. Jerry had been the one with the cross on his helmet. So, why hadn't he trained Pearl in CPR? I hated to admit that I already knew the answer to that question.

The fact Pearl called me first wasn't proof in itself that Jerry had married her for something other than her mind. Jerry often admitted the two reasons he'd married her were a lot bigger than her IQ. I always thought he sold the lady a little short. Sure, an unlit candle was brighter, but Pearl always stood by Jerry, no matter what. She always had a word of praise for the old boy regardless of how big an ass he was being. So, why did the notion that Pearl might be involved in Jerry's death keep coming up in my mind like I-19 at a bingo parlor?

There was another possible reason. When we'd made it back stateside, I put up my PI shingle, but Jerry got rid of the med-kit. He'd traded patching people for patching software. Just didn't want to deal with the blood anymore. So, maybe not training Pearl CPR was just a by-product of his disdain for health care. Ironic his desire to forget death translated into his own.

When I pulled up in front of Jerry's three bedroom brick at 2110 Wooded Way, the paramedics were just hauling their gurney off the wagon. I followed them in at a big enough distance to give them room to work. As it turned out, there wasn't much for them to do.

If Pearl had ever been right about anything in her life, she was right about Jerry's condition. Once the medics got a look at him, they just stood there shaking their heads. Jerry was still seated in front of his computer, but had a telltale blue tint to his skin. His hands, covered in the latest interactive power gloves, were stretched out over his keyboard. His fingers weren't arched in the typing position, but pointed straight up and stiff as if he'd been trying to push away from the console.

The only visible portion of Jerry's face was his mouth, which hung wide open. His tongue, also blue, pointed oddly towards the roof of his mouth as if he'd been frozen in mid-scream. The rest of his head was covered in a top-of-the-line VR helmet.

Pearl stood against the wall by the workstation, sobbing softly. "Is he...? Is he dead?"

"Well, duh," the younger of the two medics threw off callously.

I usually try and stay out of a pro's way. I didn't have any problems diving into this little punk's face. Grabbing him by his collar I enrolled him in the Denton Dodge School of manners.

"In case you haven't noticed, the lady is having a bad day. Maybe you should apologize, unless you're ready for a steady diet of soup for the next six weeks."

"Yes, sir." He gulped, tucking his tail between his legs. "Sorry, Ma'am."

Pearl nodded in response, then leaned back against the wall with a lost look in her eyes. Considering the situation, she looked damn good, as always. Her long cream-colored mock-turtleneck dress might have just looked like an oversized sweater on most girls. On Pearl it fit snugly in all the right places. Her long, bleached-blond curls fell casually down the sides of her face and neck until they reached one of those places. As she stood there in a daze she unconsciously rolled a single curl of her hair between the fingers and thumb of her left hand. Large tears welled up in those big, blue, baby-doll eyes.

I couldn't stand to see her like that. There was nothing more to do for Jerry except comfort his widow. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder near the base of her neck.

"I'm sorry too, Pearl. If there's anything I can do, you know you can count on me."

"Oh, DD." She buried her head in my chest and threw her arms around me, hugging me a little tighter than I'd expected. "I can't believe he's gone. I'm all alone."

Gently, I pushed her back by her shoulders, and looked her square in her tear-swollen eyes. I shook my head. "No you're not. It's going to be Okay. You'll see."

Looking back at my late friend, I realized Jerry was wearing the complete outfit, gloves, helmet, and the most recently released Impact Vest. That meant he'd been immersed by three of his senses--sight, sound, and touch--in whatever he'd been working on. By the continuously playing demo cut on his monitor, that would have been a war game simulation. From a first person viewpoint, the screen displayed a horde of nasty looking warriors with big guns and fixed bayonets overrunning the player's position inside a dimly lit bunker.

The second medic gently removed the helmet, and then shook his head again.

Jerry's wide glaring eyes completed the panic stricken look of terror on his face.

"Oh God, just as I thought." The bulky medic spoke to himself. "Another one."

My ears perked up. To this point I'd just figured Jerry's ticker gave out.

I turned away from Pearl to question the man. "What do you mean another one?"

"Well the coroner will have to confirm, but if this is what I think, he's the third one to die like this in as many days."

"THE THIRD?" I checked to be sure.

"Yeah, they all had this rigor mortis thing going even though they'd been dead less than a couple of hours. They all were wearing this gamer gear, and had that same stupid war game running."

"You're sure it was this same game?" I had to verify again.

"Positive." He looked at the screen to confirm. "Say, you think this game has something to do with it? I'm in the market for my boss's birthday gift."

Some would think I'm cold-hearted for being relieved that there were other deaths involved. I didn't care. The other deaths pretty much eliminated Pearl as a suspect, and I'd already lost one friend that night.

The rounder medic started to unhook the wires to Jerry's impact vest but I stopped him. "You'd better leave that until the police arrive."

"What? Are you nuts?" The round man started to give me the same attitude his younger cohort had laid on Pearl. He must have remembered my earlier response. "I mean the cops aren't going to care about a heart attack victim."

"Yeah, but they have this quirky little habit of getting upset when evidence has been disturbed at a murder scene."

"Murder?" The round medic yelped.

"Yeah, as in dial "M" for." I gave the EMS doughboy my most sardonic grin. "They'll want to talk to you about this when they get here. I imagine they'll find it more than a little interesting that you've been one of the first on the scene at each of these deaths."

"Me?" His surprise then turned into a growl. "What would you know? You've been drinking. I can smell it on you."

"Yeah, and fish live in the water." I set my jaw and gave him a 'let's step outside' sneer. I also made a mental note to change breath mints. "What's your point, chunky?"

"Nothing, mister." He backed down. "Look, I'm EMS. I'm supposed to get here first."

"So, you're saying it isn't the least bit strange that you just happened to get all of these calls." I didn't wait for a response to call him on the point. "Three out of three? There's gotta be Vegas type odds against that, Mac. This will go a lot easier on you if you come clean. How'd you do it?"

I had unnerved the big guy. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and he was shaking visibly. Finally he broke.

"Okay, Okay. I'll tell you. I have this little box under the dash of that van out there. These voices come through it telling me where to go. I don't know how it knows, but whenever I go where it tells me, I find people either dead or dying. You tell me, mister is it ... Is it some kind of demon, or maybe, just maybe could it be EMERGENCY DISPATCH!" He chuckled, mocking me.

I felt like not only telling him where to go, but also giving him a hand getting on the express. "Wise guy, huh? Just remember when whatever evil you're mixed up in turns on you, that Denton Dodge tried to help you."

"Yeah, yeah." He waved me off. "Just give us room to work here, loser."

I could have taken on both of the medics no sweat, but the mess would have been more than it was worth. Besides, Pearl had enough to deal with without me wrecking her house. Instead, I decided to gather what evidence I could to prove foul play.

It's easy to gather nothing. Everything looked as cozy, warm, and inviting in the Stringer nest as it always had--with the exception of Jerry. There were no signs of any sort of struggle other than the obvious differences between Jerry and Pearl's taste in decor. In Jerry's office where any disk or notebook out of place would have been a red flag, all was typically in order from the modernistic desk and ergonomic chair to the sleek high-end stereo. Across the mini-foyer in the more lived-in looking living room Pearl's choices were revealed in every color of the rainbow and every fabric texture known to man. Amidst the myriad of throw pillows and patchwork rugs I saw nothing out of the ordinary, at least where Pearl's lack of taste was concerned.

I took a handkerchief from my pocket and picked up the phone next to the workstation to call someone I knew in Homicide. The unmistakable squelch of a modem signal shrieked in the receiver, and then went dead. The screen of the monitor also changed from the demo cut to an error message. "Network transmission has been interrupted. Reset modem and redial to continue."

A modem connection in the age of DSL and wireless networks seemed a little odd, especially for a geek like Jerry, but it made me think.

"Pearl, you didn't call me from this phone." I merely stated the obvious, but she was duly impressed.

"Wow, DD. You really are good at this detective stuff." Her eyes were still red from sobbing, but now contained a glint of admiration for my deductive skills. "That's Jerry's dedicated line for his computer. I'm not supposed to use it."

"Which phone did you use?"

As I asked, I tapped the redial button on the phone. A number came up on the screen, 338-1001. The modem squelched again as the line tried to re-establish a connection, and then went silent after failing to make contact.

"I called from the phone in the hall." Pearl's face twisted as if she was straining to formulate a question. "Why do you need to know where I called from?"

"Maybe for once in his miserable career, Dodge might be thinking he'll do some real detective work. That would mean he has to be thorough for a change." The smart-ass remark was fired out of the nearly lipless mouth of Inspector Ben Dunnigan, my contact in Homicide and, by accident of birth, my cousin.

"I didn't hear you come in, Inspector." I set the handset back in the cradle and tucked my hanky away. I tried to mask my surprise that a homicide detective had shown up without being called by returning his compliment. Besides, I wouldn't have wanted him thinking I didn't love him anymore. "You're getting better, Ben. Someday you might even sneak up on a clue. So, tell me, Inspector. When did you become a psychic?"

Dunnigan's badge hung in plain sight from the breast pocket of the gray tent he wore for a suit. That meant he was here to set up a full-blown crime scene, and didn't want to slow down to identify himself to the players.

"You boys leave everything where it is for now." Dunnigan barked at the disbelieving medics. "When forensic and the M.E. finish they'll take him. In the meantime, call your supervisor and tell him I want to talk to you when you come off rotation. I'll have some questions for you, and I don't want to have to track you all over the city to ask 'em. So, report to homicide when you finish your shift."

Doughboy and Mr. Manners held the wide-eyed gawks on their mugs a fraction of a second longer than they should have.

"Scram, you little flea-bites!" Dunnigan clenched his ham-sized fist as if he were going to take a swing at the two of them. "I wouldn't mind kicking your cans, and then running you in for obstruction. Now, go park your butts in that meat wagon, and I might skip the obstruction part."

Dunnigan didn't have to repeat himself. The medics hightailed it out to the ambulance without so much as looking at any of their gear.

The Inspector has that effect on people. More than just his subtle banter is his sheer physical presence. Somewhere in the middle of cranking out a gorilla, God got distracted by an earthquake or something. The end result, Ben Dunnigan, had less hair but considerably more mass than any of the great apes. As far as his weight was concerned, he wasn't through throwing it around.

"What the hell are you doing here, Dodge?" He squinted his dark brown eyes in my direction like he was focusing a microscope. "Besides making a nuisance of yourself, and tampering with evidence at a possible murder scene?"

"Until you showed up, it didn't look as if anyone was going to believe it was murder. Strange that no one called this in, and yet here you are ready and raring to string yellow tape." I let him have one of my knowing grins.

He didn't seem amused or ruffled by the insinuation. He just stood there silently expectant. If I'd had a banana, I'd have thrown it to him.

"The deceased was a friend of mine. So is his wife here, Pearl Stringer." I nodded toward Pearl to make sure the big ape knew who I was talking about. "She called me."

"Ma'am." He nodded respectfully at Pearl. "Sorry for your loss."

"I don't get it." Pearl was typically dumbfounded. "Are you saying someone killed Jerry?"

"Nobody said any such thing." Dunnigan denied sternly.

"Let me guess why you're here then, Ben." I watched his face for any sign of confirmation. "The fact is there are two other corpses like this one in the morgue. At least, that's the count according to the paramedic. Someone connected with all three is nervous and has started pulling your chain. I'd say someone with big bucks or big connections, probably both. Jerry did beta testing. So, I'd guess some computer or software mogul. How am I doing?"

Dunnigan tried to conceal his frustration at my hitting on all points. But, I could tell that he knew that I knew. He looked at Pearl, then at me, then back at Pearl.

"Would you excuse us for a minute, Ma'am?" He scratched behind his ear, and grabbed my arm to pull me aside.

I yanked my arm out of his meat hook. "I nailed it, didn't I?"

"Yeah, some super rich pal of the commissioner is screaming bloody hell about how someone is offing his testers, and why isn't someone doing anything about it. We've been monitoring EMS against a list of the remaining testers. That's how I happen to be here. But, I gotta tell ya, Dodge, I'm still not convinced we're dealing with a homicide. Right now I'm going through the motions to keep the chief out of my face. We have some strange looking stiffs that all have a computer connection. It's what we ain't got that's bugging me. All three deaths look like natural causes. There's no apparent motive, and no weapon."

I shook my head, patronizing the inspector. "It's a shame my aunt Rose will be old and gray before her little boy, Ben, makes captain."

"What kind of crack is that, Cuz?" Dunnigan growled.

"In a multi-million dollar industry like PC software there's always a motive--greed. As far as the weapon is concerned, it's staring you right in your ugly kisser.

Dunnigan scratched behind his ear again. It must have been awhile since him and his wife groomed each other. "I didn't see any weapon. You holding out on me, Dodge? Don't play with me. I'll pull your license so quick--"

"Easy, big fella." I extended my arm to put some space between us. He needed to change breath mints, too. "It's right there, the computer. I don't know how yet, but from what that chunky EMS guy said, all of the victims had the same game running when they picked up the bodies. Their computers killed them."

"You telling me I gotta haul that gizmo downtown for questioning?"

"Just don't forget to readme its rights."