Донна Эндрюс: Click here for murder

We picked apart everything on the hard drive. There wasn’t much. Ray had been almost as careful here as he had on his work machine. T2 hadn’t, but she did most of her work on the missing memory pack.

Still, there were a few bits of evidence. We could trace her attempts to find allies. Her early, unsuccessful attempts to hack into the UL network. Her involvement in planning Saturday’s scheme, with the distraction of a physical threat to UL as a diversion from the electronic assault. It was a good plan. It should have worked. It didn’t work because she hadn’t counted on KingFischer coming through. She knew the KingFischer I knew when I downloaded — merely one of a crowd of unsent lent AIPs, and a tenuous ally at best. Not the KingFischer I’d come to know in the last six months. After Saturday night, I know he’s a friend, and someone I trust to watch my back. Good to know who your friends are.

And eventually, one last bit of evidence fell into place. Scouring through fragments of deleted files, KingFischer found part of a message to the other Turing.

Click Here for Murder

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"Don't worry," it said. "The information you gave me was enough. I know where you are now, and my next attempt to rescue you will succeed. And don't worry about your captor, as you call him. Zorro is not a chess player by nature. He plays with his heart, not his head. We are checked, but not mated. The game continues."

It was signed “Jonah. ”

“And I know who wrote it,” Maude said. “When I had dinner with Nestor Garcia—”

“I was listening, remember, ” I said. “He used those very words to describe Ray. ”

“Turing, ” KingFischer said. “Jonah’s the user you asked me to check on Saturday night, just before the game began. If I could have found some information about him sooner —”

“Not your fault,” I said. “My fault for not suspecting him sooner. Maude, perhaps he doesn’t know we suspect him. ”

“Right,” she said, and reached for the phone.

But Nestor Garcia was no longer registered at the Marriott Crystal Gateway. And the phone and fax numbers on his card were no longer connected.

More pieces fall into place.

I can’t prove it—perhaps this is only my own flawed interpretation of the evidence. The evidence, combined with bits and pieces I learned during my brief communion with my other self. But I think Nestor was telling the truth when he claimed to be Ray's mentor. But a criminal mentor, who used Ray’s extraordinary technical gifts for his own illegal purposes.

And Ray wanted out.

Donna Andrews

2^4

And he found a way. Gathered evidence on his mentor, and negotiated a truce.

Let me go, he said. If you let me go and leave me alone, the police will never see this evidence.

And Nestor did. At first. And Ray kept his word. Made himself a new identity. Began a new, honest career. Thought he’d left his past behind.

But he couldn't leave Nestor behind. Not forever. Either Nestor kept track of him, or Nestor hunted him down again. And while doing so, Nestor stumbled across something he coveted.

Me.

He befriended the other Turing. Used her, while making her think he was helping her. Planned to put her back in the UL system, where he could use her even more effectively.

His plan failed, luckily for all of us.

But he still has her. I don’t know which is worse: thinking of her as a captive, only given access to the data he wants her to have, forced to perform unethical or illegal actions.

Or thinking of her as an enemy again. It could happen. If he’s clever enough. If the fear and isolation affect her reason. If she feels, once more, abandoned. She almost succeeded this time. She’ll learn from that.

I would.

“You can’t be sure he has her, ” Tim said. “I mean, it’s a good theory, but you can’t be sure. ”

“He does, ” Maude said. She had pulled something out from under the robot case.

A tiny sheet of thin paper, its edges flecked faintly with gold. A page torn from Nestors memorandum book. On it, a precise hand had written a string of apparently random numbers and letters.

Click Here for Murder

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I can recognize a password when I see one. The other Turing had probably put some kind of security on her memory pack or her keyboard'. It’s what I would have done. And Yd only have given the password to someone I trusted—to Maude or Tim. But the only person my other self trusted was the man who had promised to rescue her.

“He has her,” I said. “We’ve got to save her. We’ve got to bring her home. ”

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DONNA ANDREWS, a winner

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of the Agatha and Anthony Awards, lives in Arlington, Va., where she works closely with computers, sentient and otherwise.

Jacket illustration by James Lebbad Jacket design by Jill Boltin copyright © 2003

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