“So we’ve now eliminated your favorite option.”
Win nodded. “Sad, no?”
“Tragic.”
“But it gets worse, old friend.”
“How’s that?”
“Innocent or guilty,” Win said, “Esperanza is concealing something from us.”
Silence.
“We have no choice,” Win said. “We need to investigate her too. Delve into her personal life a bit.”
“I don’t relish the idea of tangling with the Aches,” Myron said, “but I really don’t relish the idea of invading Esperanza’s privacy.”
“Be afraid,” Win agreed. “Be very afraid.”
Chapter 11
The first potential clue did two things to Myron: It scared the hell out of him, and it reminded him of The Sound of Music.
Myron liked the old Julie Andrews musical well enough—who didn’t?—but he always found one song particularly dumb. One of the classics actually. “My Favorite Things.” The song made no sense. Ask a zillion people to list their absolute favorite things, and how many of them are going to list doorbells, for crying out loud? You know what, Millie? I love doorbells! To hell with strolling on a quiet beach or reading a great book or making love or seeing a Broadway musical. Doorbells, Millie. Doorbells punch my ticket. Sometimes I just run up to people’s houses and press their doorbells and well, I think I’m man enough to admit I shudder.
Another puzzling “favorite” was brown paper packages tied up with string, mostly because it sounded like something sent by a mail-order pornographer (er, not that Myron would know that from personal experience). But that was what Myron found in the large stack of mail. Plain brown packaging. Typed address label with the word Personal across the bottom. No return address. Postmarked New York City.
Myron slit open the brown paper package, shook it, and watched a floppy disk drop to his desktop.
Hello.
Myron picked it up, turned it over, turned it back. No label on it. No writing. Just a plain black square with the metal across the top. Myron studied it for a moment, shrugged, popped it into his computer, hit some keys. He was about to hit Windows Explorer and see what kind of file it was when something started to happen. Myron sat back and frowned. He hoped that the diskette didn’t contain a computer virus of some sort. He should, after all, know better than to just stick a strange diskette into his computer. He didn’t know where it had been, what sleazy computer drive it had been inserted into before, if it wore a condom or had a blood test. Nothing. His poor computer. Just “Wham, bam, thank you, RAM.”
Groan.
The screen went black.
Myron tugged his ear. His finger stretched forward to strike the escape button—the escape button being the last refuge of a desperate computerphobe—when an image appeared on the screen. Myron froze.
It was a girl.
She had long, semistringy hair with two flips in front and an awkward smile. He guessed her age at around sixteen, braces fresh off, the eyes looking to the side, the backdrop a fading swirl of school-portrait rainbow. Yep, the picture belonged in a frame on Mommy and Daddy’s mantel or a suburban high school yearbook circa 1985, the kind of thing with a life-summing write-up underneath it, a life-defining quote from James Taylor or Bruce Springsteen followed by So-So enjoyed being secretary/treasurer of the Key Club, her fondest memories including hanging out with Jenny and Sharon T at the Big W, popcorn in Mrs. Kennilworth’s class, band practice behind the parking lot, that kind of apple-pie stuff. Typical. Kind of an obituary to adolescence.
Myron knew the girl.
Or at least he’d seen her before. He couldn’t put his finger on where or when or if he’d seen her in person or in a photograph or what. But there was no doubt. He stared hard, hoping to conjure up a name or even a fleeting memory. Nothing. He kept staring. And that was when it happened.
The girl began to melt.
It was the only way to describe it. The girl’s hair flips fell and blended into her flesh, her forehead sloped down, her nose dissolved, her eyes rolled back and then closed. Blood began to run down from the eye sockets, coating the face in crimson.
Myron bolted his chair back, nearly screaming.
The blood blanketed the image now, and for a moment Myron wondered if it would actually start coming out of the screen. A laughing noise came from the computer speakers. Not a psycho laugh or cruel laugh but the healthy, happy laugh of a teenage girl, a normal sound that raised the hairs on the back of Myron’s neck as no howl ever could.
Without warning, the screen went mercifully black. The laughter stopped. And then the Windows 98 main menu reappeared.
Myron gulped down a few breaths. His hands gripped the edge of the desk to the point of white knuckles.
What the hell?
His heart beat against his rib cage as though it wanted to break free. He reached back and grabbed the brown paper wrappings. The postmark was almost three weeks old. Three weeks. This awful diskette had been sitting in his pile of mail since he’d run away. Why? Who had sent this to him? And who was the girl?
Myron’s hand was still shaking when he picked up the phone. He dialed. Even though Myron had call block on his phone, a man answered by saying, “What’s up, Myron?”
“I need your help, PT.”
“Jesus, you sound like hell. This about Esperanza?”
“No.”
“So what have you got?”
“A computer diskette. Three-and-half-inch floppy. I need it analyzed.”
“Go to John Jay. Ask for Dr. Czerski. But if you’re looking for a trace, it’s pretty unlikely. What’s this about?”
“I got this diskette in the mail. It contains a graphic of a teenage girl. In an AVI file of some sort.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll call Czerski. You head over.”
Dr. Kirstin Czerski sported a white lab coat and a frown as yielding as a former East German swimmer’s. Myron tried Smile Patent 17—moist Alan Alda, post-M*A*S*H.
“Hi,” Myron said. “My name is—”
“The diskette.” She held out her hand. He handed it to her. She looked at it for a second and headed for a door. “Wait here.”
The door opened. Myron got a brief view of a room that looked like the bridge on Battlestar Galactica. Lots of metal and wires and lights and monitors and reel-to-reel tapes. The door closed. Myron stood in a sparsely decorated waiting room. Linoleum floor, three molded plastic chairs, brochures on a wall.