Донна Эндрюс: Click here for murder

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

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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

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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.

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Ifl

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 coidd 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

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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

EO

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office system or use office equipment for personal business, Yd have to hold Ray up as a model. But ironically, since Ym 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.