Sooner or later, she’d have to choose between UL and Alan Grace. She knew it would be hard to find someone to replace her at UL. Someone sharp enough to run marketing who would be content to remain the power behind the throne. With Ray Santiago running systems at Alan Grace—and systems was almost all of Alan Grace—Maude was less necessary there. So logically she should remain at UL. She would, if Turing asked her. But what she really wanted to do, what she’d do if given the choice, was move full time to Alan Grace. Computers were a recent passion with Maude; she’d only discovered her aptitude for working with them while helping Turing solve the disappearance of her programmer. But she’d fallen for them, hard. Even though working at Alan Grace often made her feel, like the Red Queen, as if she were running as fast as she could just to stay in place, she loved the race. She felt proud of her limited but growing technical expertise, and unashamedly grateful that Ray and his staff didn’t treat her like a complete idiot— that they tried to help her learn rather than dismissing her as over the hill.

  It ought to bother her, she thought, that at some future time, she would need to make a difficult decision and perhaps give up a key part of her life. But it didn’t; at least not much. She didn’t have to deal with it yet. She could enjoy this happy phase of her life while it lasted, for as long as it lasted.

  She was still ten minutes away from leaving when the phone rang.

  Unusual; only a few people knew Maude well enough to realize that she would be awake this early; and which of them could possibly be awake themselves?

  Turing, of course, Maude thought, even before she glanced at the caller ID. But Turing usually made such a point of respecting her weekends, she thought as she lifted the receiver. What on earth—?

  “Maude?”

  Perhaps it was only her imagination that the synthesized voice Turing used for phone calls sounded upset.

  “What’s wrong?” Maude asked.

  “Ray’s dead.”

  Tim sat at his too-clean desk, looked at his equally naked calendar, and sighed. He glanced at the computer, wondered if the universe would really care if he frittered away the morning playing Beyond Paranoia, and then forced himself back to the few papers before him. Bills, and an unfinished surveillance report.

  In the game, his PI character did really cool things— meeting mysterious characters in sleazy bars; passing around rumors of drug smuggling, gunrunning, and murder for hire; and flirting with beautiful dames.

  Being a real private investigator wasn’t quite the same. Clients weren’t exactly beating down his door. And he usually ended up turning away half the people who walked through it anyway. Some couldn’t pay even Tim’s modest fees. Others wanted things that were illegal, unethical, or frankly impossible. He wasn’t about to take money from the man whose missing girlfriend probably didn’t want to be found, at least not by someone Tim suspected of being a little too ready with his fists. Or from the woman who didn’t even care when he told her there was no legal way to get the information she wanted on her ex-husband’s finances. Or the woman who wanted him to investigate a twenty-year-old homicide and tell her the reason someone shot her son outside a gay bar—a reason other than the obvious; a reason she could accept.

  His bread-and-butter work came from Turing, or through Turing. Routine background checks, mostly, requiring nothing more than a lot of routine phone calls, routine computer searches, and routine visits to local courthouses. Occasionally, he did workmen’s comp or insurance cases, following hapless people around the city, ready to snap photos when they inevitably grew careless and did something that couldn’t be done with whatever dire injuries they claimed to have suffered. And then, if he’d been spotted, he’d put as much distance as possible between him and his supposedly disabled targets, before they decided whether to disassemble Tim or his camera.

  And then there was surveillance. Every time he did a surveillance job, he swore he’d never do it again. In the winter, you froze in unheated cars; in the summer, you battled bugs and dehydration along with the heat; and peeing in a bottle wasn’t fun anytime. And why didn’t someone warn him that chiggers and poison ivy were such an occupational hazard of outdoor stakeouts?

  PI work was much more interesting in books and movies, he thought, absently scratching his arm. Or in Beyond Paranoia. But however eager he was to make his rep as a sharp PI in the alternate world of the game, it wasn’t going to pay the bills. Turing would, if necessary, but he felt guilty about letting her subsidize his new business any more than she already had. Up until six months ago, he’d been a copy operator—or as he preferred to call himself, the Xeroxcist— at Universal Library. Then, after he’d helped Turing solve the disappearance of her programmer, she’d offered to front him the money to go to PI school and set up an office. He still wasn’t sure whether she’d done it because she thought he showed promise as a PI or because she thought he needed all the help he could get. But she was footing the bills until he started breaking even. Which meant the least he could do was give her routine jobs top priority, right?

  Although it wouldn’t hurt if he spent just a few more minutes . . . no. Bills and reports. Gaming later.

  Just then, a small text box opened in the upper-left corner of his screen. An IM, or instant message, from Turing.

  “Tim?” it said. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure thing,” he replied.

  “I have some bad news,” Turing said. “Ray’s dead.”

  Tim started to reach for the keyboard, then tilted his head lb back slightly, so the tears wouldn’t run down his cheeks. They’d either go back into his eyes at the outer corner or evaporate. He couldn’t tell which, but the trick always worked—fortunately, or he could never watch a movie in public, not since he’d discovered that even the corniest of sad scenes made him sniffle.

  Of course, in the movies, he could think about something else instead of watching. Or even pretend a sudden dire need to visit the bathroom. Not an option here. He fumbled in his desk drawer for a reasonably clean paper napkin and swiped at his eyes with it. He was glad, at the moment, that they were on the computer, and not using the camera and microphone they kept so Turing could see and hear his clients. Then he turned back to Turing.

  “Tim?” she was asking. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” he typed, scanning the screen to see if she’d said anything while he was pulling himself together. “Sorry, I don’t know what to say. It s such a shock. What happened?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Turing said. “The police just said that he was shot. The article in tomorrow’s Post calls it ‘execution-style,’ although they don’t have many details. They don’t even have Ray’s name, but it’s clearly him.”

  “Tomorrow’s Post?” Tim echoed. “Oh, I guess the article’s already in their computer system.”

  “I need you to do something,” Turing said. “Go see the police. They want someone to come down and formally identify the body.”

  “You mean the dead guy might not be Ray after all?”

  “If it isn’t Ray, it’s someone who stole his wallet and all his ID,” Turing said. “While you’re down there, find out where his laptop and PDA are. He could have data in there we don’t want anyone to see. And find out if they have any idea what happened—who killed Ray and why.”

  “Right,” Tim said. “I’ll check in as soon as I get back.”

  “Thanks—I’ll talk to you later,” Turing said, and closed the chat window.

  Tim printed the conversation, so he’d have a record of what they knew so far about Ray’s murder. He opened his bottom desk drawer, took out a brand-new blue file folder from the nearly full box, inserted the single sheet of paper, and labeled it SANTIAGO, RAFAEL. Keep good records of your cases; they had drummed that into him in PI class. Make it a routine. Routines are good. Maybe if he had enough routines, he wouldn’t have to think about it.

  It. Ray’s murder. And the possibility that he might have—

  Caused it? No. Failed to prevent it, maybe. If he’d only gone to meet Ray, instead of playing that stupid game.

  But the game was important, too. According to Ray, anyway. Ray was the one who’d gotten him started playing Beyond Paranoia.

  “I can’t tell you yet,” Ray had said. “But there’s a reason for this. Learn to play it, build up a good, strong, wily character, and keep your eyes open. If you notice anything funny, let me know. It could be important, amigo.”

  So far he hadn’t noticed anything in particular, other than the strange coincidence that his on-screen character stumbled into the same kind of stupid, embarrassing situations

  Tim did. But if Ray suspected something fishy about the game—well, Ray wasn’t around to take care of the problem.

  Knowing Ray, it was probably another crusade to protect kids from online perils. So far, Tim hadn’t discovered anything suspicious. Although he’d followed Ray’s orders and spent time in the message boards where players discussed the game, he really preferred just playing the game. He’d begun to suspect that at twenty-five, he was a lot older than most of the players; and that most of them had no dark secrets beyond spending their study time in the grim, nihilistic world of Beyond Paranoia. But he’d persevere. After all, with Ray gone, it would be up to Tim to pick up the investigation where Ray had left off. As soon as he could figure out where the hell that was.

  “Off to see Homicide,” he announced to no one in particular, and strode out of his office.

  A few seconds later, he strode back in and grabbed the phone book to look up the address for the D.C. Police Department’s Homicide Squad.

  Maybe I'm just being paranoid - Maybe

  Ray’s death has nothing to do with me. Lots of people are killed for reasons that have nothing to do with their jobs. Ever since I got the news about Ray, I’ve studied statistics on homicide—trying to make sense of his death, I suppose. And the statistics are frightening. If you look at the small percentage of large-city homicides that aren’t drug related—and I don’t see how drugs could have anything to do with Ray’s death—you find that most homicide victims know their killers. Humans so often kill their friends, their relatives, even their lovers. Especially their lovers. Ray didn’t have any family here, and he’d only been here six months. Was that long enough for a friendship to form and then fall apart so violently that the friend would want to kill him? It seems unlikely. An ill-fated love affair seems more plausible, from what I have observed of human mating rituals. I gather from what others said that Ray was considered sexually attractive. So I suppose a woman he scorned could have killed him. Or some man who felt he had a prior claim to a woman Ray was seeing. Things like that happen all the time in the mystery books I scan in the UL databanks. Especially in the noir classics.

  But for some reason, it feels wrong. There’s something cold about the way he was killed. What little I know of it so far; maybe it’s only that damned reporter’s phrase: “execution-style.” Doesn’t seem an accurate description of how a jealous rival or a scorned woman would kill. “In the heat of passion” is the cliche for that kind of killing.

  More likely it was a killing that didn’t have anything to do with Ray personally. An armed robber. A desperate drug addict. One of those sad, pointless crimes that happen so often in the city. But if that’s the case, there’s nothing much I can do. And I have a feeling it’s not; so I’ll continue to look for anything that might indicate a personal relationship between Ray and his killer.

  I’ve scanned all the documents Ray had in the Alan Grace system. The closest thing I can find to personal documents are a few incoming e-mails from casual friends setting up lunches or dinners. And no responses from him; apparently he answered these by phone or with some other, more personal e-mail account. A few all-staff e-mails seeking volunteers for various public service projects. Teaching computer skills to teenagers in Anacostia or seniors in Adams-Morgan; donating old computer hardware to inner-city schools — that kind of thing. If I were checking to see how well employees complied with the directive not to keep personal documents in the office system or use office equipment for personal business, Yd have to hold Ray up as a model. But ironically, since I'm looking for evidence I can use to track down anyone who might have wanted to kill him, I find myself frustrated. Why couldn’t he have been a little more careless about this?

  Of course this could be a good sign. Maybe he was equally careful about security with his laptop and his PDA. But l can’t take a chance that he wasn’t.

  Maude’s going to call in sick to UL and head over to the Alan Grace offices this morning, instead of waiting till the afternoon, as usual. If possible, I want her to be the one to break the news of Ray’s death to the employees, and observe their reactions. Not that I really think any of them could be responsible, but we shouldn’t ignore any possibilities. And while she’s there, I can have her log in using Ray’s office computer so 1 can search it, too. And we issued him a desktop computer to use at home. We need to find a way to get someone into his apartment to turn it on so I can investigate that, too. Must ask Maude how we can do this.

  And I've paid more attention than usual to attempts to break into the UL and Alan Grace systems. KingFischer, the chess AIP who moonlights as UL’s security expert, takes care of well over ninety-nine percent of outside attacks, with the help of his killer firewalls. Like every other AIP, I need to stay alert for attacks that might slip by the firewalls by piggybacking on my communications with users and other computers. Normally that’s all I worry about. But today, I'm watching everything that hits the firewall.

  Are there more attacks than usual? Not really. The level is high, but we’ve seen similar peaks before, plenty of times. But are these attacks more focused than usual? That I don’t know. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I think perhaps they are. Which could mean that someone is using expert knowledge—knowledge someone could have taken from Ray’s laptop—to target the flaws in KingFischer’s security more effectively.

  Of course, when I asked him about it, he got very huffy at the mere suggestion that his security could be breached. Which is ridiculous. There’s no such thing as perfect security. He knows that.

  He has spent more time on security today than usual. Is that merely because I insulted him and he wants to make a fuss? Or because there are problems?

  I trust KingFischer, as much as I trust anybody. More than I trust myself at the moment. It must be the strain of worrying so much; I very nearly missed one clever worm that had piggybacked on some data I was retrieving from the FBI system. Or was it because the worm was custom-designed by someone who knew too much about me?

  And, of course, it’s not the attacks we detect that do the damage.

  *

  What if one has already slipped by KingFischer’s firewalls and my own frayed defenses?

  Maybe all this worry is unnecessary. Maybe when Tim gets down to the police department, he will find that they already know who killed Ray. That they have a weapon, fingerprints, some good leads, an eyewitness, even a suspect already in custody. And, of course, his laptop.

  Of course, that wouldn’t bring Ray back. The only practical benefit of catching Ray’s killer would be that it could prevent future deaths. And from what I’ve read of human psychology, I gather it would give Ray’s friends a certain comfort. Closure, they call it. I wonder if I’ll feel that when we know what happened; or if, as happens so often, the answers will only raise another more complex set of questions. Only time will tell. Which is unfortunate. Right now, I don't have the patience to wait for things to happen at a human pace. But there’s nothing else I can do.

  Haude dragged one of Ray's guest chairs into the comer and stood on it to reach the tiny ceiling-mounted camera.

  ‘‘Tim was already at his office,” Turing said through the speakers of Ray’s computer. “He’s going down to see the police.”

  “Good,” Maude replied. She made one more minute adjustment to the camera. Normally, it pointed toward where Ray would sit when he was at his desk, so he could add video to a telephone call with Maude or Turing. Today, they would use it so Turing could watch the reactions of the Alan Grace staff when Maude told them about Ray’s death.

  “People should begin arriving any minute now,” Maude said. “Can you see okay?”

  “Fine,” Turing replied. The desktop computer continued chugging and grinding, so Maude assumed Turing was continuing to search Ray’s files for clues. And from her lack of cheerful remarks, not finding any.

  Maude got down from the chair on which she’d balanced and sat behind the desk. She glanced at the in-basket, then leaned back, took off her glasses, and pressed her fingers to her temples. Now was not the time to get a headache, she told herself. She imagined shoving the twinges of pain back with everything else she didn’t have time for right now. Like worrying about how things were going at UL, Would anyone take advantage of her calling in sick today? Right now she didn’t care. UL would have to look after itself, at least for today. She probably had time to tackle the first item on her Alan Grace to-do list. But browbeating the vendor about the computer that should have arrived last week didn’t seem as urgent as it had on Friday. After all, the new machine was intended to be Ray’s machine, to use for working at home. They’d probably need it later, for whoever took over Ray’s job, but not now. She knew that eventually, as her grief for Ray evolved, she’d hit an angry stage. She’d save calling the irresponsible vendor until then, when she could put her anger to good use.

  Just as she’d save her grief until a convenient time. After she’d dealt with the staff, the police, and poor Ray’s family. She wondered again whether the police had reached them yet. Should she try to call? No, better to wait. Make sure the police broke the news first. If she’d known them, it would be different. But she didn’t want her first—and perhaps only—contact with Ray’s family in Miami to be as the messenger bringing news of his death.