Murder in the Rue Ursulines Read Online Free PDF Page B

you lost points for shooting them. You also lost points for killing locals. It certainly cracked me up. The more horrible the tourist, the more points you got. For example, if you shot a tourist taking a piss on the street, it was worth two thousand points. Shooting the couple having sex in public was worth five thousand points. Blowing away the jerk throwing trash in the street was only a thousand points.
    The game was paused. An obvious tourist, in one of those ridiculous Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts, was pissing in front of the Cabildo.   “I’ve been working on this some more. Pull up a chair, man.” He started the game again, blowing the man to bits, and then reset the game. “You want to play while I trace this? It won’t take ten minutes, I’m telling you.” He grinned at me. “You know you want to kill some tourists.”
    It was a hard offer to resist. I moved a pile of newspapers, magazines and crumpled empty bags of chips on top of a pile already on the floor.  I pulled the chair over next to his. He rolled his chair over to another computer, and started typing away at the keyboard.    I looked at the computer screen in front of me and clicked on the mouse to start the game. I took aim and shot at a woman running across Burgundy Street pushing a baby in a stroller in front of her as a car slammed on its brakes. As the woman’s head exploded, I said, “Um, this game is kind of sick, Jephtha.”
    “Yeah, well,” he replied grimly, looking over at the screen in front of me, “that very thing happened to me yesterday when I was taking Abby to work. Some stupid pregnant woman with a baby ran right out in front of my car. Why would anyone do something so stupid? I mean, what if my brakes were bad? And there wasn’t a car behind me. She couldn’t wait twenty seconds for me to go by?” He glowered. “Just because you can breed doesn’t mean you should.” He pursed his lips at me. “At least in the game she’s not pregnant. And besides, you don’t kill the baby. If you do, you lose points.” He shook his head. “I’m not that sick.” He gave me an innocent grin.
    “Well, no video game company would allow that. People would get pissed.”
    “And it would make the national news. The family values assholes would get up in arms—even though women who risk their kids’ lives like that—that’s who they should be pissed at—and every teenaged boy in the country would want to play it, and I’d make a bazillion dollars.” He reached for the folder he’d set down on the desk beside the computer screen. He opened it and removed one of the e-mail printouts, then handed the folder back to me. “All I need is the information on one of these.” He peered at the paper, and laughed. “Chanse, this is not even a challenge, you know? When you going to give me something hard to do?” He sighed. “It’s like taking candy from a baby. You want lunch or something?  Abby’s making a strawberry cobbler…her cobblers are fucking awesome, man. It’s like going to heaven.” He raised his eyebrows and licked his lips.
    My stomach growled, but Jephtha had treated me to lunch once before. He’d made me an ‘Elvis special,’ a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.  It had sat in my stomach for the rest of the day like a lead weight.  “No, I’m meeting someone for lunch in about an hour,” I lied, glancing at my watch.  “You’ll be done by then?”
    “I told you, I’ll have this IP address in like two seconds…there it is.” His eyes gleamed. “Okay, give me another few minutes and I’ll know whose computer this is...well shit fire.” He sneered at his computer screen. “This e-mail address is one of those dummy ones, you know, the kind where you don’t have to give any personal information?” His fingers flew over the keyboard. He shrugged.  “Okay, so this is going to take a few more minutes. I’ll have to trace the computer—if they registered it.” He glanced over at