Stephen Hunter - Black Light

This is what Russ was waiting for.

“What databases are you into?”

“Nexus, Entertainment Data Service and On-Line Search.”

“Cool. What about the phones? Just as I was leaving the Oklahoman they’d bought into a CD-ROM national service.”

“Oh, yeah. We started that up, too. Phone Disc Power Finder.”

“Yeah, I think that’s what we had. Very useful.”

By this time, they’d reached a little room off the corridor.

“You’re ready?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay, it’s two-ten. I’ll be back at three-ten.”

“Swell,” Russ said.

Bruce left the room and Russ started the test at 2:11. He finished it at 2:26. Of the 100 general information questions, he knew he had gotten 97 right, and only had to guess on the year of the Little Big Horn (he guessed 1873, and it was 1876), the percentage of the vote Upton Sinclair received for governor of the state of California in 1936 (45, right) and whether Willa Cather or Edith Wharton had written My Antonia , and since he’d seen a movie based on a Wharton novel and knew that she was a New York kind of girl, he guessed Cather, right again. Then there was a badly written news story to straighten out which, once he got the lead into English, fell into place in a second. The last page was for a short personal essay on “Why I want to work for the Record” (ho-hum).

Then, glancing at his watch, he rose, took off his coat, loosened his tie and discreetly stepped out into the corridor. Nobody that he’d been introduced to was in sight. Trying to look as if he belonged, he went to a coffee urn in the newsroom and got himself half a cup in Styrofoam. He picked up a ballpoint and a notepad from an untended desk. He didn’t look ahead but he knew his newsroom culture: everybody read everything, nobody paid any attention to anything.

He turned into the library, taking a quick peek to see that no one he’d been introduced to was here either. All clear. He went up to a desk that said “Information Service.”

“Hi, I’m Russ, I’m new in Metro,” he said, hoping they called it Metro, but what else could they call it? It was always called Metro.

“Oh, uh, hi,” said a middle-aged woman, looking up over half-lensed reading glasses.

“I’m looking for some numbers. Could you run the CD-ROMs for me, please?”

She turned and opened a desk, where a stack of CDs in their little clear plastic containers were.

“Which section of the country?” she asked.

Key question. Bob had searched his memory that morning and came up with the idea that Miss Connie was from Baltimore, or Maryland anyway. He didn’t know why he thought that; it was just an impression from some clue stored irretrievably in his head. But would she retire to Baltimore? Would she return after her twenty-five tragic years in Arkansas? Or maybe she did return and died there in the eighties. Maybe she did return until she got very old and then moved to Florida. Or Mexico. Or California. Or Arizona. Or—

“Northeast region. Maryland.”

She selected a disc and they walked over to a large computer terminal on the adjacent desk. She loaded the disc into the tray, which with a hum absorbed it into the machine, which buzzed, clicked, flashed to life (“Phone Disc Power Finder, from Digital Directory Assistance, Inc.”) and yielded a menu.

“Do you know how?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Call me when you’re done.”

He sat down and snapped through the commands until he got an entry prompt.

He typed “Constance Longacre.”

The machine hummed and flashed and diddled, and in seconds, across its blue screen, in white, there traveled a list of endless C. Longacres, Constance Longacres, Conny Longacres, Connie Longacres; fifty-nine of them, spread between Maine and Virginia.

He scanned the list. Anyone could be her or none of them could be her. What could he do now, write down the fifty-nine numbers and call them, one at a time?

Well … what about something else?

He restarted, this time narrowing the field to Maryland. Only thirteen Longacres resided in Maryland. That was something. He could write those down. He did, in fact, in the notebook. Now he could call those thirteen and …

But he knew another capability of the CD-ROM; it could be entered via phone number or by street address or by institutional identity. Returning to the menu, he called up a prompt by institution. He typed “Nursing home” and narrowed the field to Maryland.

Clickety-click, whickety-whack . The screen flashed. Suddenly, it was alive with names and addresses, eighty-seven of them according to the helpful listing up top.

He examined the thirteen Longacres and found between them only five different exchanges. He wrote them down and cross-referenced to the eighty-seven listed addresses and numbers and came up with eleven matches. He compared each of the thirteen numbers with each of the eleven matches.

There was only one match.

“C. Longacre, 401-555-0954” and “Downy Marsh, St. Michaels, Md., 401-555-0954.”

Russ took a deep breath.

He looked about. Nobody was noticing him.

There was a phone. He picked it up, dialed 9 to get an outside line, then dialed the digits.

The phone was answered.

“Downy Marsh.”

“Yes, this is Robert Jones, I’m an attorney in Fort Smith, Arkansas. I’m trying to reach a Miss Connie Longacre.”

“Mrs. Longacre is sleeping.”

“Well, please don’t disturb her. She’s been named in a will out here, or rather a Connie Longacre, who lived in Polk County, Arkansas, between 1931 and 1956, has. I’ve been trying to track her down. Has your Mrs. Longacre ever mentioned living in Arkansas?”

“That’s confidential information, I’m afraid.”

“Well, I think she’d be upset if she didn’t attend the reading. The sum of money involved is considerable.”

“Mrs. Longacre is not a needy woman, Mr. Jones.”

“I see. Well, with the money, there’s news. News of the people she knew and loved for twenty-five years, and that she left cold for reasons that nobody has ever understood out here.”

There was a long pause on the phone.

“She never talks about Arkansas. I only know she was there because her photo album is full of pictures of the country, and once I asked her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘another lifetime. Far, far away. Arkansas, believe it or not.’ And then I knew it upset her because that night she was crying.”

“Thank you very much for the information.”

“You won’t hurt her?”

“No, ma’am. Not at all.”

“She’s been through so much. She’s ninety-five now, and very frail.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And, of course, she’s blind. Has been for ten years.”

Giddy with joy at his triumph, Russ downloaded the machine and returned the disc to the librarian, and with a light step, hurried out the door. He ran smack into his new friend Bruce Sims, who looked at him in surprise.

Russ felt stupidity drain into his face but then said, in a frenzy of fake desperation, “Bathroom?”

“Not in the library! Down the hall.”

“Thanks. The test is on the table. I’m all done. Sorry, but when you gotta go—”

And he took off running down the hall.

“—you gotta go,” called out Bruce, laughing.

Russ went and hid in a stall for ten minutes, then made a big deal out of washing his hands. He emerged to find Bruce waiting.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have left the room. But I never went back—”

“That’s okay, don’t worry about it. I picked up the test.”

“So when do you think I’ll hear?”

“Well, can you give us a week or so? We’ll look it over and see how it fits into our needs. Do you have a phone?”