10b body against the door. Maude heard something—a lamp?— fall and break outside the bedroom door.

  Maude could feel the door open a few more inches when the woman hit it, and then she felt a thud. The woman was kicking the door, hard. Maude didn’t think she could hold the door closed much longer. She had to do something. What if this woman was Ray’s killer—and what if she was about to throw down her knife and pull out a gun—the same gun she had used to kill Ray.

  Wait a minute—the gun in the box. If she could reach that . . .

  She waited until the woman outside had pulled her weight back for another blow, then leaped away from the door and toward the bed, where she’d left the gun. The door flew open so suddenly that the woman stumbled and fell as Maude scrabbled for the gun. As the woman staggered to her feet, Maude rolled over the surface of the bed, putting it between them and managing to land on her feet.

  “Stop where you are,” she ordered, and took the stance she’d learned at the range. Feet solid, a little apart. Both hands on the gun. Both arms extended. She tried to slow her breathing. And wondered what she would do if Ray had been safety conscious and unloaded his gun before he put it away. No time to check.

  The woman crouched, feinted to the left, then began moving slowly to the right, trying to come around the foot of the bed toward Maude.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” Maude shouted. “Drop the knife.”

  The woman took another step. And another.

  Maude fired. So Ray had been careless, luckily for her.

  ID 7

  She fired again, and then a third time, in close succession, aiming at the woman’s body.

  She saw the woman jerk with each shot, and stagger back, then she saw the splashes of color blossom on front of the woman’s shirt.

  Splashes of bright green.

  The woman staggered back and clapped her left hand to her chest at the first shot, and was now staring in confusion at the green paint dripping from her hand. The knife wavered a little.

  Maude fired again, this time aiming for the right hand. As she hoped, the woman dropped the knife when her hand was hit. It looked as if the paintball smarted when it hit at close range.

  “What the hell is that?” the woman hissed, backing away as if she found the green paint more horrifying than real blood.

  “Don’t move,” Maude said.

  “Police! Drop your weapons!”

  Hurray for the cavalry, Maude thought, dropping her gun and putting her hands into the air for good measure, even though the police officer hadn’t yet requested it. Her assailant made Maude’s life ever so much easier by attempting to attack the police.

  I called 111 as soon as I realized flaude was in trouble, and I gather they arrived rather quickly. In time to rescue her from an enraged woman with a knife. I suspected Maude wouldn't have tried to shoot the lunatic if she’d waited to hear that the weapon she’d found was a paintball gun instead of the real thing, so perhaps it worked out for the best.

  Although if she’d taken my advice and not answered the door in the first place . . .

  After reassuring me that my friend was all right and promising to have Maude call me when she could, the police hung up. I didn’t mind. I knew Maude was safe, and I wanted to do some investigating of my own.

  I’d overheard Maude’s assailant using the phrase “online Romeo. ”

  I flagged KingFischer. Sent him a priority one message, in fact.

  “This had better be important, ” he responded. “We’re having a very difficult time with these hackers —”

  “It’s damned important,” I said. “Your online flirtations nearly got Maude killed just no w. I want to know where those wonen are, and I want to know in about a nanosecond'!”

  He wasted almost ten seconds protesting and apologizing, but as soon as he knew how serious I was, he cooperated. And he’d already started investigating. We could eliminate SallyGladly, Loosefem-ale, and Marigold20, since the assailant had thought Maude might be one of them. And it proved easy to winnow through the other four and identify Maude’s assailant. A Mary Louise Smith of Bethesda. None of the others lived in the Washington metropolitan area, and he’d seen all of them online through their home ISPs too recently for them to have reached Washington, even by plane.

  “I want you to keep track of them,” I warned KingFischer.

  “I will,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “1 mean it, KF,” I said. “If one of them sets foot out of her hometown, I want to know about it in seconds. Nanoseconds. ”

  “As soon as I know, you'll know, ” KingFischer said. “Turing . . . im it’s not just the attack on Maude, is it? This has something to do with Ray’s death.”

  I wanted to say yes; that I’d discovered that Ray had been murdered because of KingFischer and his online harem. That it was all KingFischer’'s fault.

  But I’d only be taking my frustration out on him. And literalist that he is, he’d never get it.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally. “It might have everything to do with Ray’s death. Or nothing. The only way we’ll ever know is by watching those women. ”

  “I’ll watch them,” he said. “I’ll watch every byte of data on them, and let you know everything they’re up to. ”

  Which meant I’d be wading through terabytes of data on these seven women; and probably none of them was guilty of anything other than having the bad taste to fall for KingFischer s online persona. Still, he meant well. I felt strangely comforted.

  Maude was fuming. Yes, it was very nice that the Arlington County Police had arrived in time to save her from the intruder. But neither they nor the D.C. Violent Crimes Branch seemed to have the slightest interest in a possible connection between the attack and Ray’s death.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,’’ the Arlington officer was saying. “I met the D.C. detectives handling the case—helped them search this place the other day. They’re very thorough; I’m sure they’ll give this the attention it deserves.”

  Maude sighed. Obviously he thought it deserved no attention at all. And she had to admit that her tale of jealous online girlfriends sounded a little bizarre when she tried to explain it, with only a few paint-covered e-mail printouts as evidence. The officer was getting restless, pacing up and down the living room.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I should let you get back to your work.”

  The young man looked relieved, and bent down to pick up a radio he’d set on a nearby chair. Then he stopped.

  “What happened to the funky computer, anyway?” he asked. “No way she could have made off with it—did your firm pick it up already?”

  “Funky computer?” Maude echoed.

  “It was over there when we inspected the apartment,” the officer said, jerking a thumb toward Ray’s desk. “Looked like some kind of homemade deal—didn’t have a case; whole lot of wires and things showing.”

  “Oh, right,” Maude said. “I think I know the one you mean; an experimental machine Ray was working on. I’ll have to check with our computer services staff to make sure, but I expect they have it.”

  Not that she actually knew what he was talking about, but given how much sensitive data Ray might have on a computer, she wanted to check with Turing before having the police search for one.

  “If it turns out she took it, let us know,” the officer said. “You have the card. You want us to walk you out?”

  “I need to look at a few more things before I leave,” Maude said. “I’ll be okay with the chain lock on.”

  The policeman exited after a few more reassuring sentences. Maude slid the chain back and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she called Turing.

  Click Hera for Murder

  “Oh, no,” Turing said when Maude told her about the missing computer. “You know what that is, don’t you?”

  “Not really,” Maude said. “I’m getting a lot more comfortable with technology, but I’ll never keep up with you and Ray; I wouldn’t necessarily recognize what he was working on.”

  “You’d recognize this,” Turing said. “You built it.”

  “The robot?” Maude said.

  “Well, the replacement robot, at any rate,” Turing said.

  “Well, yes; the original’s gone. But I still think of it as the robot. What was Ray doing with it?”

  “His desktop machine died about a month ago,” Turing said. “He needed something to work with, ASAP. Grant went looking for something with enough power, and found the robot.”

  “They could have asked,” Maude said. She hadn’t thought about the robot in months. Hadn’t wondered what had happened to it. And yet, at the thought of someone else using it, she felt strangely defensive.

  “They did ask,” Turing said. “They were just going to scavenge parts from it, but I felt—I don’t know. Sentimental, I suppose. You probably think that’s silly.”

  “Not at all,” Maude said. “It’s a part of history, really. The history of the AIPs. I can see it in the Smithsonian someday, along with Lindbergh’s plane and Edison’s first lightbulb.”

  “So I told Ray not to break it up; just use it as is, till his desktop came back from the shop. All he did was add in the hard drive from the old desktop, so he’d have all his files.”

  Maude walked over to Ray’s desk and studied the dust.

  HE

  Not a lot of dust, but enough for her to interpret. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see an irregular patch where the dust was much lighter; almost nonexistent—obviously this was the space the robot had occupied. Its footprint, she’d heard it called. The footprint matched the remembered shape of the machine she and Tim had thrown together so hastily all those months ago. And the clean, sharp, dust-free streaks—four of them, parallel, pointing toward the front of the desk—they were from the four rubber pads on the bottom of the case. Someone had moved the machine very recently; and with enough haste to leave those marks.

  She relayed this to Turing.

  “I can report it to the cops if you like,” she said.

  “No,” Turing answered. “Not yet. Let’s look around a little. We don’t know what Ray might have put on it. Theoretically, of course, he shouldn’t have left anything confidential on either machine. He knew better.”

  “But knowing and doing are two different things,” Maude said.

  “Look around for anything that looks like a backup— tapes, CDs, zip disks, external hard drives. Bring anything like that back to the office.”

  “I think I’ve already got everything like that,” Maude said. “But I’ll look around one last time.”

  She signed off and searched the desk again, but found no more items to add to the few CDs she had already put in her purse. Perhaps Ray was careful, she thought. Or perhaps whoever took the robot had the same idea.

  She was turning out the lights, preparing to leave, when she heard a soft knock on the door. She froze.

  Don’t be silly, she told herself. Mary Louise was in custody, wasn’t she?

  No harm in caution, though. She walked to the door, keeping her footsteps as quiet as possible, and looked through the peephole.

  A man was standing outside. He was looking up; as she watched, his head made a slow circle, as if he were studying the hallway.

  Older, but not old, she thought, studying him through the peephole. He was about her height, which made him perhaps five-eight or five-nine, and not the least bit stooped or stiff. His gray hair was cut neatly, if a little long, and the matching beard and mustache gave him an aristocratic, slightly foreign look. Or perhaps it was the suit that looked foreign. White linen, obviously fresh from the dry cleaner, since it showed only the inevitable faint, fresh wrinkles that marked it as real linen rather than a synthetic. With a peach shirt, and a tie in soft tones of peach and azure. Carrying a white Panama hat. He looked like a visitor from the tropics. Or perhaps to the tropics. Many embassies defined Washington, in the summer, as a tropical duty station, but few local residents, diplomatic or home-grown, dressed the part.

  Quite the dandy, she thought. She took her eye away from the peephole and, after a moment’s pause, reached to undo the chain and open the door. Shallow of me, she thought, but I have a hard time feeling threatened by anyone quite that dapper.

  “Yes,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  The man turned, startled.

  “Perhaps,” the man said. “I am looking for—”

  He paused and frowned.

  Maude was frowning slightly, too, trying to puzzle out his accent. Something European, she thought, but so faint it was hard to tell exactly what.

  “I am looking for . . . for the residence of Rafael Santi-ago.

  Hispanic, she realized. Only a native Spanish speaker would pronounce Ray’s name quite like that, at once liquid and staccato and wholly foreign. Ray himself usually Anglicized the pronunciation, except on very rare occasions when he wanted to play up his Latino roots—like when he set out to charm the coffee witch, as they all called the elderly Salvadorean woman who ran the snack bar across the street from the Alan Grace company offices.

  “This is Ray’s apartment,” Maude said. “I’m a friend of Ray’s, from work. And you are?”

  “Nestor Garcia,” the man said with a faint bow. “I am Ray’s uncle. I heard the terrible news and came to see what I could do. To find out what had happened.”

  “I see,” Maude said, keeping her face neutral. Had the police located Ray’s family after all? Surely they would have mentioned it. Especially if it had happened long enough ago for his uncle to come to Washington.

  “Are you in touch with the rest of the family?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid I am all the family Ray had,” he said, shaking his head. “My sister and her husband are both gone. I only heard the news about Ray myself because someone told me that the D.C. police were trying, without success, to reach them.”

  US

  “I’m sorry,” Maude said, and then wondered if he thought it rude or strange that she hadn’t said that before. “I’m Maude Graham, one of Ray’s coworkers at the Alan Grace Corporation. Would you like to come in, Senor Garcia?”

  “Please, call me Nestor,” he said. “Thank you, I would like to come in, if I may. Just for a moment. To see where Ray lived. I had not visited him since the move from California.

  He stepped in with just a shade of hesitation. Maude could see that his shoulders were hunched, almost imperceptibly, as if expecting a blow. He stood, hat in hand, studying the room, and Maude saw his shoulders relax. As if he no longer feared the blow. Or perhaps, as if it had already fallen.

  “There is very little of Ray here,” Nestor observed with a small, sad smile.

  “It’s a corporate apartment,” Maude explained. “We originally rented it so he would have someplace to live right away, until he had time to look around and find a place where he wanted to live more permanently.”

  “And there has been so little time,” Nestor said, nodding. “Only a few months since he moved. And not enough hours in the day for all he would want to do, with a new job that excited him so much. A place only to eat and sleep.”

  He sounded as if he disapproved. Maude fought an impulse to protest. To defend Ray; defend herself and her friends. You don’t understand, she wanted to say. Ray was happy. The long hours Ray spent happily tinkering with the hardware. The meetings he ran like an orchestra conductor, inspiring the discouraged, steadying the over- lit. enthusiastic, keeping the work on Turing’s new home moving steadily forward. The evenings Ray spent over dinner with her and Tim at the sidewalk tables of various small restaurants on Twenty-third Street, talking, debating, laughing together.

  But she wasn’t sure how to explain that to the small, sadfaced man who stood gazing so wistfully around Ray’s living room. She simply nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” Nestor said abruptly, as if he had suddenly awakened. “I trespass on your time and patience. Forgive me.

  He turned as if to leave.

  “Wait,” Maude said. “How can we reach you?”

  “Of course,” Nestor said. He reached into his pocket and extracted a silver card case. “This is my address and number in Miami, but you will find only an answering machine there. I do not yet have accommodations here in Washington. I had thought to call the switchboard of Ray’s office when I was settled, but perhaps if I could call you directly?”

  “Of course,” Maude said. “Let me find something to write the number down for you.”

  “No need,” Nestor said. He pulled out a small memorandum book with bright gilt-edged pages, and used a small gold ballpoint to write down the work number she recited. His handwriting was small and neat, Maude noticed, and he crossed his sevens, in the European style.

  “I will call when I am settled,” Nester said, shaking her hand formally. “I am sure there will be . . . arrangements that need to be discussed. For a memorial service, perhaps?”

  “Yes,” Maude said. “We really couldn’t plan anything, not knowing what the family wanted.”

  Of course, it remains to be seen whether you’ll have anything to say about them, she thought as she escorted Nestor out and locked the door behind him.

  “Interesting,” she murmured aloud. She put the chain on and walked through the apartment to a kitchen window that overlooked the street. She watched as Nestor exited, donning his Panama hat as he did. He walked half a block up to the corner, where the cul-de-sac joined a large, heavily traveled street, and lifted his right hand to hail a cab. Many people looked forlorn or frazzled when trying to hail cabs. Nestor had an air of complete self-assurance, with just a hint of impatience. A cabbie would see him as a seasoned business traveler, she thought; someone on an expense account, with no incentive to stint on the tip. She wasn’t surprised to see a cab swerve to the curb by Nestor, passing over several less affluent-looking passengers on the other side of the street.