Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998

The Net by Jas. R. Petrin

“So what was your main excuse in the first place to go out and buy a computer, of all things, Dianne?” Evelyn Culver, a dubious tone to her voice, skillfully shuffled the cards with first a backwards and then a forwards bend and a long buzz both ways while shooting a sideways glance at the younger woman. “I never can see why a normal human person’d want to own one of them things, any more than I can see them wanting to own, say, a scanning electron microscope, whatever that is.”

“If you don’t know what a thing is,” Dianne Freely returned, one eyebrow cocked in a critical, inverted V, “then maybe you shouldn’t be giving opinions about it.” Her annoyed gaze dropped to Evelyn’s brisk shuffling. “And are you actually going to deal those cards out to us one of these days, or are you going to wear the spots off them first?”

It was Thursday evening in End of Main, and that meant frustration night, frustration being the card game that brought the women together here in Evelyn’s kitchen each week, Mrs. Aird and Winona Delmare completing the foursome.

“It’s not I’m being critical. All’s I’m wondering is, what the heck do you do with a contraption like that?” Evelyn was persistent, dealing the cards. “Sit around and figure out the theory of relativity? Calculate the national debt?” She shook her head, puzzled. “I guess you could play solitaire on it — that’s what I see Rhona Mowett doing at the real estate office each time I pass her window on Burton Street.”

“There’s more to computers than games,” Dianne Freely returned defensively with a toss of her blonde hair. “You can waste time on solitaire with a two dollar deck of cards; you don’t need to fork over three thousand dollars, plus tax, to do it.” She frowned over her hand, finally discarding the queen of spades, then flinching when Mrs. Aird pounced on it with a rapacious grin. Further nettled, Dianne went on: “There’s no end of things you can do with computers. Winona here could type in all her recipe cards, for example. Then, when she wanted to know where that certain recipe was, the one that’s got the custard and maraschino cherry topping, say, she’s only got to tell the machine to go fetch anything with those ingredients, and — splang! — there it is right in front of her.”

“I had a boyfriend would go fetch me anything,” Winona Del-mare replied flatly, “and it didn’t cost me one red cent.”

“Are you sure about that?” Evelyn asked. “What about at ten a.m. when the Netley beer store opened?”

“Well, he might of cost me something. But not no three thousand in one whack, that’s for sure.”

“What are we talking about?” Mrs. Aird wanted to know. Hard of hearing, she had drifted into one of her spells of woolgathering, now resurfacing for a recap of everything that had been said in the last ten minutes or so.

“Computers, dear. We’re talking computers. Pay attention, for pity’s sake,” pleaded Evelyn.

“I do pay attention.” Mrs. Aird frowned haughtily. “But you mumble like you got a three-armed dentist in your mouth.” Her hearing aid gave a whistle, and she poked it.

“I suppose,” Winona Delmare speculated, “if you got tired of solitaire, you could use a computer to hold up a flowerpot.”

“Okay, all of you, keep riding me.” Dianne Freely’s tone had turned suddenly sharp, a fresh note of aggrieved persecution to it. “But if you’re trying to make me feel guilty about spending my own money, you’re wasting your time.” She hesitated, as if uncertain whether or not to deliver her next statement; then, with a quick breath to brace herself, she came out with it. “You might laugh out the other sides of your faces if you knew what I’ve been using it for the last while.”

“Figuring out a square root?” asked Evelyn.

“Counting a calorie?” grunted Winona.

“No. To connect, that’s what. To connect and communicate. To talk with people all over the world and especially to chitchat with the pleasantest and nicest person I ever come across in my life.”

This got their instant attention. “What on earth are you blathering about?” Evelyn asked.

“Who are you blathering about?” demanded Winona.

Dianne became coy. She mused thoughtfully over her cards. “Oh, just someone.”

“Tell us!”

Dianne raised her face to them with arched eyebrows, as if mildly astonished at the sudden interest. “Well, I don’t see what difference it makes. There’s no way any of you would be acquainted with him, not having such a useless thing as a computer in your possession. None of you have been surfing the Net, I suppose.”

Mrs. Aird’s shortsighted eyes narrowed but never left her cards. “Smurfing? What’s she mean — smurfing? That’s those little blue cartoon creatures, isn’t it?”

“You don’t mean to tell us, dear,” Evelyn Culver said with a scowl of maternal concern — she employed Dianne in her unisex hair salon, the Easy-Clip, and fretted over her like a mother — “that you’re involved with the Internet? All those gossip lines that we’ve been hearing about?”

“It’s called IRC–Internet Relay Chat,” Dianne replied curtly. “And we don’t gossip, we have enlightened discussions. Which is more than I can say for the chin-wagging that goes on around this table most of the time.”

“But good grief, girl! Don’t you read the newspapers? There’s something nasty going on in the world of computers. Some sort of ‘predator,’ according to the Sun. Several Internet users from right around here have been killed! Strangled! Found with traces of blue twine wrapped around their necks!”

Mrs. Aird was still mired in the terminology. “Maybe smurfing has got something to do with computer games. Like you draw a smurf on the screen, and then make him hop.”

“All right, so you met this person on the Internet; then what?” Evelyn boldly discarded a heart. “Was it love at first sight? Did he wink at you out of the screen or something?”

“You don’t actually see each other. It doesn’t work that way. You talk to one another by typing words with your keyboard.”

“Sounds boring.”

“And unromantic,” Winona sniffed.

“Actually, it’s kind of neat,” Dianne insisted. “You’re anonymous, so you can try on new identities. You can be anything you want to be — a rocket pilot, a doctor, a stewardess. While you could really be, say, a clerk.”

“Or a murderer,” muttered Evelyn darkly.

“If you want smurfs in your life,” said Mrs. Aird, shaking her gray head in perplexity, “you only got to turn on the TV every morning and there they are, scurrying all over the place.” She laid down her cards. “I’m out. See? There’s my two runs of five in the same suit. I’m winning. What’s next?”

The others threw down their hands in disgust. Evelyn shoved her chair back sharply and went off to root in a cupboard for something that would augment the depleted chips and dip. “Give us the lowdown, Dianne,” she said over her shoulder, dragging out a bag of pretzels that were left over from New Year’s. “So you met on the Net, or whatever you computer geeks call it. But what happened exactly? We want the details.”

“The juicy details,” Winona Delmare added.

“There are no juicy details. We met in the MUD, actually.”

“Where?” Mrs. Aird’s eyes blinked several times in quick succession.

“In the MUD. The multi-user dungeon. One of the chat rooms, okay?”

“And what,” Winona asked, “is a chat room, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Dianne’s pretty face tightened at their collective obtuseness. “A chat room is a sort of electronic place that you key into. There are different rooms for different interests. This particular one is for singles. They call it the Lonelyheart’s Cafe.”

“A cafe, huh?” Evelyn was back at the table rattling the bag of pretzels over the chip bowl.

“In the mud, she said!” Mrs. Aird remarked with stem disapproval.

“The Lonelyheart’s is where people from all over the world — people with computers, that is! — can meet electronically to talk about their love life.” Dianne seemed to be avoiding their gaze. “Naturally,” she admitted, “they are mostly folks who haven’t got one — a love life, I mean — but who would like to have one if they could arrange it, even one that’s made out of electrons.”

“Is that why you went surfing in there, dear?” asked Winona Delmare with a catty tone to her voice.

“Of course not!”

Dianne squared her shoulders angrily and snatched a pretzel. She was one of the prettiest girls in End of Main and didn’t need anyone to remind her of it. She had dated every eligible male — even, rumor had it, some who were not so eligible — but apparently up to now had found them all wanting. “I was curious, that’s all. And I’m glad I was. This is a nice person. And so knowledgeable. He says there are two new classes of people in the world — the information rich and the information poor — just like in the Middle Ages before the printing press was invented. Back then it was books people didn’t have. Now it’s computers. So he collects old computer equipment and distributes it to the underprivileged. He says it’s a duty.”

“I’m sure he’s well-meaning, dear,” said Evelyn, “but you could of gone to a dating service a whole lot cheaper. What’s all this costing you, down there at the bottom line? I mean, in addition to forking out the three thousand, plus tax, in the first place.”

“It’s a hobby. I don’t care what it costs. But my biggest expense right now is my Internet connect time. It adds up fast. And as for equipment, I’m going to upgrade my hardware just as soon as my new Computer Warehouse catalogue arrives. Last month I got the telephone answering-machine feature.”

“What?” snapped Evelyn Culver. “You mean I got to talk to a computer next time I phone you?”

And Winona Delmare said, making out as if she were completely flabbergasted, a plump hand spread wide across her breast, “Upgrade the thing already? Hell’s bells, dear, you only just got it.”

“I’ve had it for months. It’s a fast-moving technology, and it costs money to keep up with it. Already I need more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a faster modem. You can never have a fast-enough modem, too big of a hard drive, or enough RAM, according to Timothy.”

“Aha!” said Evelyn, pouncing. “So it’s Timothy, is it?” She gave the others a shrewd look. “And if he’s telling you to replace your brand-new computer parts, let me guess what he wants you to do with the old ones.”

“Send them to him, of course. What else? It’s charity for the underprivileged.” Dianne said it with pride.

“Rams and modems,” muttered Mrs. Aird grumpily. “Smurfs and mud. Why can’t it be like the good old days — root-beers and hula hoops.”

“Maybe,” went on Dianne, deliberately ignoring Evelyn’s insinuation about the motives of her new acquaintance, “while I’m at it, I’ll get myself a faster CD-ROM drive and send my old one of those to him as well.”

Mrs. Delmare looked baffled and put off. “It’s like alphabet soup. It don’t make a lick of sense.” She glared at Evelyn. “Are you going to just sit there? I played that diamond, for Pete’s sake! It’s your go, for crying in the sink!”

Evelyn threw down a club, addressing Dianne.

“This guy must think you’re made of money, dear.”

“Money’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just that your RAM — that’s the machine’s memory, if you want to know — and your hard drive — that’s like a filing cabinet where you can store information — are like closets and cupboards. Timothy says that no matter how big they are when you first get them, they’re way too small for you before you know it.”

“My memory’s fine,” said Mrs. Aird proudly.

Winona rolled her eyes. “God help us. Your memory was tight in the hips the day you got it.” She looked at Dianne. “I made mine bigger without driving a nail — my closets and cupboards, that is. All’s I did was to kick out Wilbur and replace him with my little Shih Tzu, Dodo. His junk took up the space of three vacuum cleaners. He must of had five or six old jackets there on every hook. When he finally run off with that sexpot from the Gimli Marina, I called the Goodwill to send a truck around and wound up with more space than I know what to do with.”

Dianne shrugged. “Whatever works for you, Winona. But you can’t kick a husband out of a computer, can you?” She twitched her nose, reconsidering. “Well, I suppose you could, but I don’t have a husband. Anyway, this is the most exciting hobby I ever had. And if keeping up with it benefits the disadvantaged, well then, so much the better so far as I’m concerned.”

“What about the Internet Predator?” Evelyn asked.

“What about him? There are millions of us on the Internet. Tens of millions. There’s as much chance of meeting that nut as there is of getting hit by a meteorite.”

“So did you already send away some of your equipment?”

“A few things, yes.”

“And you mean to send him more?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’re quite the Samaritan, dear. And there aren’t many of those around.”

“That depends,” said Winona, “what you call a Samaritan. Some might say there’s one born every minute.” She glanced at the clock. “Listen, can we finish this? I got to get home and walk my Dodo before she does poopsies on my own property.”

At the Easy-Clip next day, after the tide of morning trade had swept the first wave of customers in and then subsided, Evelyn sank with a grateful sigh into one of the mauve swivel chairs and got back onto the subject of Dianne’s new acquaintance. She’d been thinking about it all night. It worried her. She couldn’t help herself.

“You know—” she was determined not to get into an argument “—now I think about it, maybe this computer craze isn’t such a bad thing after all.”

“It isn’t a craze,” replied Dianne without a hint of conciliation in her tone.

She rinsed her combs in the sink, laid them on a folded towel, then picked up that morning’s issue of the Sun and sat down herself in one of the customers’ chairs.

“No, no, of course not, dear. What I meant to say was—”

“A revolution is more what it is. Like the industrial one, when they converted everything over to steam.”

“I thought you said it was like the invention of the printing press.”

“It’s like a lot of things. It’s like steam because it lets one worker do the work of ten.”

“Hmm.” Evelyn stared blankly into space. “And that caused some unemployment in the world, if I remember my high school history correctly.”

“People got new jobs. They moved on to other things.”

“They moved to the New World, dear. Problem is, there’s no New World to move to this time.” She was arguing again, but she couldn’t help it. “What do you suppose will happen when they get computers to cut people’s hair? When folks only have to walk in, select the ‘do’ they want, and press a button. Dial-a-Style, they’ll call it. Whir! Zing! Done! There won’t be much for us to do. Except maybe change the oil in the computers once in a while.”

With an air of strained patience Dianne shook out the newspaper. “Computers don’t have oil.”

“Well, that proves my point. More people out of work. All your Texans and Arabs in the welfare office with their oil drills under their arms.” Evelyn hesitated. She wanted to make Dianne see the dangers of being impetuous. She laid her hand on the girl’s arm. “Dear, listen, what do I know? When it comes to computers — nothing. You know way more about them than I do, I admit it. But I do know something about life, and about people, and I’d be lying if I said that what you’re doing doesn’t worry me.”

“Why should you worry?”

“I just want you to be careful. It’s the Internet. And there’s a killer on the loose. You don’t know nothing about this person. You don’t know what his ethics are.”

“His ethics are fine. I trust him completely.” Dianne turned a page. “In fact, we’ve arranged a meeting.”

Evelyn gaped, stunned by this news.

“You mean to tell me this is a local person?”

“What did you think? That he’s flying in from China?”

“And you gave him your particulars? Your name and address and all that?”

“I told him a few things. I mean, I had to. How could we meet if we don’t tell each other anything?”

“But, dear, honestly! That’s the one thing you’re never to do — give out your identity on the computer network. It’s like shouting it to the winds. Plastering it in the newspapers. It could be dangerous!”

“So you do know all about it, don’t you? You are an experienced netter!”

“I may not go surfing the Internet, but I do have a lick of common sense.” Evelyn frowned at Dianne. “I listen to the radio and watch the TV, and I have a nephew who’s quick as cats about computers. And one thing I hear over and over again is how important it is to protect your identity. Especially with that Internet Predator skulking about. There’s no telling what might happen. No telling what kind of grief you might be attracting if you don’t take precautions.”

“I’ve taken precautions all my life. I’ve been too cautious if anything.” Dianne’s eyes flashed. “So maybe I want something to happen in my life. Has that crossed your mind?”

Dianne was admitting — what, exactly? That she was lonely? It had never occurred to Evelyn that a young woman with her attributes could have that sort of a problem, ever.

“Hon,” she said grudgingly, finding a softer tone, “I see where you’re coming from. Life can seem dull. I feel that way myself sometimes, Lord knows. All’s I’m trying to say is I wish you’d be careful. I’m sure this person is very nice, but for the moment at least, he’s a stranger. You don’t know the first thing about him.”

“I know this,” Dianne replied curtly. “The person I’ve been communicating with is kind and considerate. And generous — look at that charity work! And whether you approve of it or not, I’m going through with our f-2-f!” She flung down the newspaper and snatched up a hairdryer.

Evelyn watched her direct a gale of superheated air at the mirror. “Your f-2-f, dear?”

“That’s Net talk! It means face-to-face, all right?”

“Ah,” breathed Evelyn sadly. “Right.” On the countertop the newspaper headlines screamed CYBER-PREDATOR STRIKES AGAIN! ANOTHER NETTER MISSING! “You know best,” she said. “Of course you do.”

Sixty miles away, Big Heloise Walker had appointments to keep. The first was her meeting with a stewardess — a so-called stewardess — whom she wouldn’t be seeing till half-past nine, even though the girl had suggested an earlier hour for their first meeting. Lu had pitched hard for the later time, saying it was the best she could manage, there being a computer project for the underprivileged making heavy demands upon her at the moment.

The girl had bought it.

That was important.

It had to be well and truly dark at zero hour.

Her other appointment was of the electronic sort, with an individual who lived in Europe, a cyberholic like herself, known to her simply as Qwaz. Lu had never had an f-2-f with Qwaz. Nor did she know what the four-character name stood for. Probably nothing. Probably chosen because the letters were simple to generate, all grouped handily at the left end of the computer keyboard. She glanced at her Swiss Army watch and saw that it was time. She keyed into their usual chat room, and typed:

The response came back:

Blu was the shorthand Qwaz used for her. Like all netters, Qwaz loved shorthand. It saved connection time. Qwaz typed:

Qwaz meant generation X — a member of the post baby-boom wave.

QAI stood for Quality Assurance Inspection. Qwaz added:

And Qwaz was gone, allowing Lu one more chance. Lu knew that she had to make good on it this time, that there were unlikely to be any further extensions. And damn it, she would have had the material in Qwaz’s hands weeks ago if things hadn’t kept going sour for her.

Her attempts kept coming up dry. She’d arrange a meeting and arrive promptly, but the other party would fail to materialize. It was like a curse, or else extremely bad luck. Tonight would be different, though. Her luck was due to change. She felt it way down deep in her bones.

To burn off adrenaline before setting off to meet the stewardess, Lu sat at the computer a while longer and flamed people. Flaming was an amusing pastime, the Net equivalent of throwing spitballs. You made contact with someone, were enormously polite and sympathetic, pressing them to open up to you, to bare their innermost self. Then you lashed out at the unsuspecting cyber-dork with the most outrageous and abusive insult you could possibly muster. Lu was a champ at it. She liked the instant gratification, the raw and indignant response. She had just meted out a terrific scorcher to a particularly soppy net-head and was waiting in keen anticipation for the comeback when suddenly the system operator keyed onto the screen. The sysop typed a curt message, followed by a sideways crabby face:

Lu replied with a face of her own; a cheeky one...

...and shut down.

She was peeved. Sysops were intrusive. Once a frontier of unfettered freedom, the Net was now drifting the way of everything else — towards overregulation and policing. It was a trend that had started with the phone companies, them and their digital networks. No longer an assortment of clumsy electro-mechanical switches, the telephone network had evolved into a web of powerful computers. And computers remembered things. It meant the authorities no longer had to keep you on a line to trace you, as they did in the old movies, but had simply to look at a screen — the next day, even — and there you were. The time and duration of your call, the number of the called party, the number of the caller. Your number. It was all there. An infringement of rights. They’d be recording conversations next. They were probably doing it now.

But it was time to leave. Time to go out into that lousy real world and take one last stab at bagging a subject for Qwaz.

Lu locked up carefully as she always did. And as always, standing in her garage moments later with her ignition key in her hand, she hesitated, then returned to inspect the locks. There were five of them — their number had grown over the years — and each time she left the house they all had to be double-checked. You just couldn’t be too careful nowadays. There was a grave nationwide law-and-order problem in her view: too much law and not enough order.

She drove toward the park contemplating her stewardess — or more accurately, her virtual stewardess; things were rarely what they seemed on the Net.

Virtual or not, stewardesses reigned in Big Lu’s bad books. As a teen she had fantasized about joining those high-fliers, envying the free travel, exotic places, and high wages. But when she was old enough to try for the job, she didn’t even apply. She knew they wouldn’t accept her. By her eighteenth birthday Lu was already six feet tall, weighed over two hundred pounds, and, unlike some more fortunate large women, didn’t wear it well.

Lu hoped that the subject truly was a stewardess, or at least somebody very much like one.

Gathering thunderheads in the west drew an early twilight over the sky, the footbridge that spanned the river already an arc of yellow electric light dispensed by round glass globes on ornamental posts. Very murky. Very turn-of-the-century. It made one feel like — well, like Jack the Ripper. Pausing on a broad, grassy slope, Lu gave the area a quick once-over. A real stewardess ought to stand out like a clothes horse — twiggy, neat, and pert, with the air of someone balancing a book on her head. But there were few people here and certainly no one of that description. An older couple walked a small fuzzy dog across the bridge; a boy on a bicycle swept past them in defiance of the bylaws. The only other person present was a dumpy middle-aged man in an ugly plaid coat. Was this her stewardess? Lu seethed. She hoped he wasn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise her. The guy was staring at the water as if he meant to end it all. Go for it, Lu thought with acid spite. Do it! I’ll give you a leg up.

She sauntered past as if the bridge were the last thing that interested her. Only when she was completely out of sight of it and its arches were screened by the limbs of a broad, gnarly willow did she casually turn and stroll back the other way. She hoped to find the dumpy metajerk replaced by a reasonable facsimile of a stewardess.

He hadn’t been.

She would have to ignore him.

She walked out on the bridge, keeping her distance from the man, placed her own brawny elbows on the parapet, and peered down at the water, which was slate-gray, turgid, dimpled with vortices. Swallows skimmed its surface, then veered under the bridge like miniature fighter planes. It was a peaceful scene; almost, she thought, as good as the screen-saver on her computer monitor.

The stewardess was late. She would give her another five minutes, and then...

“Deep water for this time of year, huh?” The voice was nasal and chummy, and it resonated right at her elbow. She was not surprised to discover that the middle-aged man had sidled up to her like some rotund, wheezing predator. He had a nylon bag that Lu hadn’t noticed before, which he dropped theatrically on the wide, stone parapet with a soft, heavy plop. The bag was black with a loud pink racing stripe across it, and jaunty lettering that announced boldly: JUNK.

“Got some items here that just might interest you.” The man leered as if this were his private showroom. He flopped the bag open before she could raise an objection, revealing a panoply of wares for the local lowlifes: a couple of handguns; some combat knives, many of them particularly vicious-looking; and the cold gleam of throwing stars and brass knuckles. Deeper in the bag’s folds were lurid magazines and videotapes. And there was computer software...

It was the software that caught Lu’s attention. Diskettes bundled in elastic bands and CD-ROM’s bright with garish artwork. She saw immediately what this guy was about. The gang weaponry, the magazines, the rest of this stuff she didn’t give a damn about. But the software touched a nerve. It implied something else. It told her that this guy must be her stewardess, and that he had come here simply to make a buck off of her.

In sudden rage, Lu shot out her hand and seized the man. He gasped and made a plaintive mewing sound. She jerked him off his feet and with a thrust of her powerful shoulders heaved him sideways out over the water. He fell away from her, his astonished face orange under the lights, and hit the water with a dismayed yell and an enormous ka-ploosh! She sent his bag after him with an angry backhander, then turned on her heel and stormed off. To hell with the guy, to hell with Qwaz, to hell with the lousy unreliable real world.

Behind her, in the black water, her victim floundered under the bridge’s arches, the dark blob of his sports bag sedately making for the first bend in the river but sinking fast.

It was well past the appointed time. Dianne sat, nervous and expectant, on the bench. The vantage point she had selected was so far off among the trees of the park that it did not permit her to observe the full breadth of the river, but she had seen the large person in the black jacket arrive and stride out onto the bridge. Now the figure was screened by leafy boughs, and she wondered whether it was her Timothy. Be careful, Evelyn had advised. Well, she was being careful. Heck, she was almost a quarter of a mile away.

A young man strolled by her bench and glanced at her. With short-cropped hair and manly features he was very handsome. His intelligent gaze lingered on her curiously for a moment, and then he continued on.

She was considering the advisability of moving down the slope, getting closer to the river so she could reconnoiter things more closely, when suddenly the large person left the bridge and strode briskly away. Was it Timothy, angry that he’d been stood up? Before she could stop herself, she jumped up and followed.

Evelyn’s warnings still rang in her mind. She let the person maintain a good lead as he made his way to a van that was waiting, not in the public lot, but outside the park gates on the street where Dianne had left her own vehicle. Soon she was trailing the van through late evening traffic.

The van got away from her once, carried off like a cork in the vehicular flow; but luckily — it seemed lucky at the time! — she caught up with it again at the Route 90 on-ramp. Ten minutes of fast driving brought them to an exit that debouched into the elm-lined street of an older neighborhood. Staying close now, Dianne watched the van pull briskly into the driveway of a tall, prewar clapboard house and disappear into a garage. She pulled over, and after several more minutes of wrestling with Evelyn’s cautions and her own misgivings, she got out of her car and approached the front door. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She knocked twice, but no one answered. Then, as she raised her hand again, the porch light came on and the door sprang open under her knuckles.

Black Jacket stood in the doorway, glaring down at her balefully under the dim porch light. Dianne was startled to find that, seeing the individual close up, she was no longer sure that she was dealing with a male person; somehow the features seemed too effeminate, the skin too soft, and there was the unsettling suggestion of a bosom swelling the jacket’s folds.

“Are... are you Timothy?” Dianne asked, tipping her head quizzically to one side.

Black Jacket said nothing. Not a word. Not, “Oh, hey, you must be Dianne,” or, “Jeez, how come you weren’t at the bridge?” There was no smile, no hint of welcome, only a long, glassy stare with petulant lips slightly parted. The awkward moment passed. The next thing Dianne knew, she was airborne.

The strength of Black Jacket was shocking. It was a man’s strength, enough brawn to haul Dianne Freely’s not insignificant self through the door and toss her into a chair as if she were an overcoat. In the same motion Black Jacket kicked the door shut and bent over her, the flaccid face now just inches away. Dianne couldn’t meet the hostile eyes. She found herself searching for razor stubble and not finding any.

The question came in a ragged whisper, lips pulled tightly back against yellowed smoker’s teeth. “You mean to tell me you’re the so-called stewardess?”

Dianne had some trouble finding a steady voice, but when she was finally able to put a sentence together, she found herself projecting a bravado she did not feel. “I’m not really a stewardess, no. But you really shouldn’t go throwing people around like that!”

The reply was venomous.

“Oh, shouldn’t I? And what should I do about people who spy on me, follow me home — people who stalk me?”

“Stalk you?” It was such an absurd accusation that it left Dianne stammering. “But, but I didn’t stalk you!”

“Oh yes you did! You followed me home. You invaded my—” a large hand waved, taking in the shabby room “—my real space!” With each utterance Black Jacket grew more agitated. Specks of saliva flew from her lips. She flailed an accusatory finger. “You were watching for me, weren’t you? Then you followed me here. You shouldn’t have done it, my little newbie. And believe me, you’re going to regret it!”

Black Jacket jerked open a drawer, dragged out a pair of shiny handcuffs, and rattled them. Frozen with horror, Dianne had to look twice to make sure she was seeing right. Handcuffs? What did it mean? She watched the big woman pin her wrists with one powerful hand. She felt like a rabbit in the grip of a grizzly bear.

The cuffs closed with a metallic snick, and when she looked down at the cold steel binding her, a wave of bitter hopelessness swept through her.

Where the heck was Dianne? That was what they wanted to know.

She hadn’t shown up for work that morning, Evelyn testified, and now here she was pulling a no-show at the card game. They sat around feeling put out and irritated. Winona played solitaire, snapping the cards down with brisk annoyance. By half past eight the chips and dip were gone, and most of the pretzels, and still their youngest member hadn’t appeared.

It was the last straw for Evelyn Culver. Dianne would avoid a day’s work any chance she got, but it wasn’t like her to miss frustration night.

“She don’t answer her phone. All’s you get is that stupid computer asking for a message. I won’t tell it nothing. I don’t trust it. I believe it’s got something to do with this.”

“What’d you say?” asked Mrs. Aird.

“Her computer! Her damn computer! I said the thing’s got something to do with this!”

“Now that,” said Winona, calmly studying her cards through glasses riding precariously on the end of her nose, “is plain ridiculous. Computers are just machines. They’re like VCR’s. TV’s with an attitude. They don’t get up on their hind legs all of a sudden and attack people.”

“Maybe not,” Evelyn admitted, “but their owners might. In fact, computers could make some people more capable of nastiness than ever.” She set her jaw. “I should call the police. Report a missing person.”

“Hoo!” snorted Winona Delmare. “Hoo! Haw! And what’ll you tell them? That a grown woman’s been missing for all of ten hours, that she went out for a walk and the computers got her? ought to get Chief Robideau leaping around. That ought to get him rushing up and down the Interlake waving his magnifying glass around.”

“Well, I admit it sounds silly the way you put it, but I still feel we have to do something!”

Evelyn exhaled loudly.

“We can’t just sit here like a bunch of sofa slugs if there’s a chance poor Dianne’s in trouble!” She strode to the hall closet and rattled her coat off its hanger. “I’m going to her house. Who’s coming?”

“I’m staying right here,” said Winona, stifling a yawn. “You may need me to hold down the fort in case of a total computer attack.”

“You do that.”

“In case,” Winona elaborated, “they come whirring up the sidewalk, a gang of crazed PC’s with their RAM’s and their ROM’s all differing and clacking.”

“And they just might!”

Mrs. Aird spotted Evelyn at the door and came beetling toward her. “I’ll come.” Then she looked baffled. “Where are we going?”

Dianne’s little house on Burton Street appeared tranquil and calm. Porch light on. Door locked. A cosy place awaiting the return of its owner. But Evelyn wasn’t satisfied. She had to be sure Dianne was all right. After beating on the door till her hand was bruised, she fished the spare key out of the hanging bird feeder — she had seen Dianne retrieve it any number of times — brushed the millet from it, and opened the door.

It was shadowy inside, the only interior fight an eerie glow emanating from the half-open door of a back bedroom. The living room was tidy. So was the kitchen. No sign of foul play. In fact, everything was just as it ought to be except for that back doorway and its ghostly glow. Evelyn walked through the kitchen and pushed the bedroom door all the way open, and there on a small desk sat Dianne’s computer faintly whirring, its screen building intricate designs out of colored dots, then going blank and starting over again.

“So that’s the famous calculator, is it?” Mrs. Aird peered over Evelyn’s shoulder.

“That’s it,” replied Evelyn.

“Big deal,” Mrs. Aird said. She opened the closet and glanced inside. “So where’s Dianne, then?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Why not ask the calculator, if the damn thing’s so smart?”

She was right. It was the only thing they could do. Seated before the glowing screen, Evelyn couldn’t rid herself of the sense that the machine was an agent of evil. Not dangerous by itself, perhaps; not any one computer in particular. But a whole worldwide network of them gossiping over long-distance circuits was a scenario that was truly menacing. This one didn’t seem to be engaged in anything particularly sinister at the moment — only staring back at her with its cyclopean eye. But it seemed capable of a fiendish nastiness, an evil raised to a very high order.

Still, she would brave the thing if it helped track down Dianne.

She spoke into the phone to her nephew: “Now what?”

When it came to computers, Robert was good. In addition to that, he was exceptionally patient. More patient than a formal instructor when it came to teaching an old dog a new trick. He couldn’t be there in person, and so she had to take his instructions over the telephone, his calm, unruffled voice making her feel like a tourist preparing to land a stricken airliner under directions from an airport control tower.

He guided her into Dianne’s “browser” software as he called it. “Do you have the main screen now?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Fine. Click on the word Bookmark.”

She slid the mouse across its pad unsteadily, bringing the pointer over the Bookmark icon after some zigzags and a muttered, “Where’d it go, where’d it go?” When she clicked the button, a list of addresses dropped down the screen. The topmost of these said Lonelyheart’s, with some other gibberish trailing after the words. She felt a surge of excitement.

“I see it! I see it!”

“Great. That’s the most recent address she’s accessed. You should be in business.”

Mrs. Aird wandered in from the kitchen with a fridge magnet in her hand.

“When you get through with that thing,” she said from the doorway, “you better come in here and take a boo at this.”

“Not now!” Evelyn snapped irritably.

“What’s the matter?” asked Robert.

“Oh, it’s a friend of mine. She’s wandering around here with a magnet in her hand.”

“Did you say a magnet? Good lord, keep her away from things. Magnets and electronic media don’t mix. She could wipe out a diskette, make total gibberish of it.”

“Keep away from me with that thing!” Evelyn ordered Mrs. Aird.

“I’ll leave you to it now,” said Robert. “If you need me, call me later.”

“You’ve been great. I’ll remember this on your next birthday.”

He told her a small Porsche would make a suitable thank you gift and with a chuckle hung up the phone.

She clicked the mouse button. The screen blinked, refreshed itself a couple of times; moments later words appeared like scripted dialogue. It appeared to be a discussion regarding prime holiday resorts for affluent singles. Well and good, she thought, I’ll just have to break in. Hesitantly she typed “Timothy,” and with a suddenness that startled her, a reply came back at her:

It must mean Dianne! What else could it mean? Excitedly, she typed:

She watched as a few more exchanges between the vacationers went by; then, as if after some deep and careful thought, came a response:

Time to make a decision. Whatever had happened couldn’t involve Timothy. He wouldn’t be surfacing like this, asking after Dianne, if he was responsible for something bad happening to her. Not likely. And while she agonized over his innocent request, poor Dianne might very well be... She swallowed. She didn’t want to think about what might be happening to Dianne. She was going to have to take this Timothy person into her confidence, and that’s all there was to it. She placed her fingers over the keyboard and began to explain, pecking the words out clumsily, but after a sentence or two Timothy took pity on her and broke in, suggesting they continue off-line and asking for a phone number. She gave it to him.

You’re crazy! a small voice hollered inside her. Completely mad! After everything you told Dianne, you suddenly give out her telephone number over the Internet? Never mind, she countered. She had to do it. In any case telephone numbers could be changed. And this was the only lead she had on poor Dianne.

When the phone rang, she snatched up the receiver. Mrs. Aird peered curiously in at her from the hallway.

“This is Timothy,” said a voice. It was a gentle voice, a reassuring one, communicating just the proper note of concern. “Tell me what this is all about.”

She took a deep breath, then related what she knew — which, now that she actually came to verbalize it, she realized wasn’t a whole heck of a lot.

But she learned some things, too. The caller told her he knew nothing about collecting computer parts for charity and that he knew nothing about any face-to-face meeting.

“But I know she was supposed to meet with you. She told me so. She had it all planned. You don’t know anything about it?”

No, he didn’t, but he assured her they would get to the bottom of things. He then asked about any notes or clues to Dianne’s whereabouts that she might’ve left lying about on her desk or saved on her computer.

“There’s nothing on her desk. I don’t know much about computers,” Evelyn admitted.

“That’s all right. I’ll help you.”

Coolly — as cool as her nephew almost — he led her through arcane keyboard and mouse maneuvers until she found herself in an application called File Manager. With it they examined the file names stored on the hard drive. What to watch out for, Timothy explained, was anything that might refer to such a meeting or, failing that, any mention of used computer parts, especially an address to which she might have sent them.

“Nope, nothing,” Evelyn said.

“Okay. That means we’ll need to look through her diskettes, Evelyn.”

Robert had mentioned those. “What’s a diskette?”

“There should be some there. Little things, about the size of a coaster, in square plastic cases.”

“Oh.” She could see plenty of the little kerwaladers scattered about. She picked one up. “How do you get ’em out of the case?”

“You are a newbie, aren’t you? You don’t take them out of the case, you insert case and all into the computer. See the slot? Just slide one in. We’ll go through them one at a time until we find what we’re looking for.”

“Jeez, this could take a while,” Evelyn said.

But with the first diskette she got lucky. “I see something here says RECYC.DOC.”

“That sounds promising. Click on it twice.” She obeyed. The screen flickered and changed.

“Holy cow,” she said, “it’s a letter explaining what she’s sending.” Then her spirits plunged. “But it’s got no address!”

Big Lu — apparently her proper name — was a wacko, a complete space cadet. She was a candidate for a guest shot on the latest freakazoid talk show, one of those nuts who might hole herself up in a farmhouse with half the army reserve trying to chivvy her out. Dianne peeped at her through loops of galvanized chain link, trying to come to grips with the situation. After being manacled in the upstairs hallway, she had been flung over Big Lu’s shoulder, toted downstairs, and dumped like a sack of beans in a tiny room next to the furnace. The room had damp fieldstone walls and a concrete floor, probably a coal room in some previous era. A hunk of chain link fencing served as a door, her captor removing one of the cuffs from Dianne’s wrist, then snapping it to the links. She then had bade Dianne good night and had gone off to dispose of her captive’s car. Dianne had spent a sleepless night with one arm raised higher than her head, and now, with daylight filtering through the curtained windows, she knelt with her fingers hooked in the links, staring out at a wall of electronic equipment.

“World government’s coming,” Lu was telling her. “Your United Nations. And when that happens, we’ll really be in the soup.” Under a teetery wall of dead monitors and other stacked-up, dusty computer gear, she was laboriously positioning a heavy workbench under a hanging fluorescent light.

“Some of us are already in the soup,” Dianne responded weakly.

“You’re not mocking me, are you?”

“No, I’m mocking myself.”

“That’s good. It’s not wise to mock me.”

The table was massive, built of stout timbers and angle-irons, and even Big Lu, for all her bullish strength, grunted at her labors. She eyeballed the thing, then threw a couple of hip checks into it as a final adjustment.

Satisfied, she began rooting through an old wooden soft drink crate bursting with cables and other junk.

“Technology,” Lu said, “sets us free. That’s the point of it. Trouble is the government wants to use it to create bondage, the bondage of bureaucracy. New laws, new regulations. We’ll be more enslaved than ever.”

Got to humor her, Dianne thought. Buy some time. With enough time she could work out a plan, and with a plan and some luck, she might escape.

But the thought left a hollow in the pit of her stomach. How could she escape when she was penned up like this, watched by a jailer who could break her in half with one hand? She wished to heaven she hadn’t been so headstrong. She should have taken someone into her confidence.

Someone like Evelyn...

“Bureaucrats only do what they get paid to do,” she said, trying to be conversational. “They’re lawmakers. So they make laws.”

“Yeah. Whether we need them or not.”

“Well—”

“It’s like that Disney cartoon, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. All those buckets carting water and dumping it till the entire room is flooded, not having sense enough to know enough is enough.”

“Well—”

“That’s government for you. What they’re doing with the Internet. Typical arrogant pseudo-cyberheads. The only freedom we got left, and they want to control it.”

“Then maybe we can vote them out at the next election.”

“Pooh! Complete horse potatoes! There’s too many spineless voters for that. If the government passed a law tomorrow allowing netters to be shot on sight, most people would not only accept it, they’d provide the bullets.” Lu suddenly gave a bark of triumph, dragging a rusted chain from the crate with a grinding rattle. “I knew I’d find this sucker if I kept looking for it”

Dianne eyed Lu’s find with cold misgivings. Its oxidized links left orange stains on Big Lu’s fingers.

“What... what do you want a thing like that for?”

“What do I want it for?” Big Lu nudged a camera on a tripod into Dianne’s field of view. “Sweetie, you’re gonna be famous. An international cyber-celebrity. As they say in Tinsel Town, girl, I’m gonna make you a star.”

She dropped the chain on the bench with a hideous clatter.

Finding clues among the confusion of computer files was no easy matter. Not the least of Evelyn’s problems was deciphering Dianne’s spidery printing on the labels. She removed the last diskette from the drive slot and looked at the phone. What could she tell Timothy?

“You through with that calculator yet?” Mrs. Aird shouted in crusty tones from the other room.

“I’m more than through,” Evelyn admitted, “I’m completely beat.”

“I didn’t bleat! I only asked you a question!”

“Yes, I’m through! I am totally through!”

“When you do get through, come on in here and I’ll show you something that isn’t a waste of time.”

Evelyn groaned and went into the kitchen.

Mrs. Aird glanced up at her. “So you are through. I thought you’d get tired of all that nonsense.” She held up the fridge magnet. “Check this out. It’s won’t be as much fun, maybe, as playing with a calculator, but I think we should try and see where this chicken-scratching leads us.”

“Huh?” Evelyn didn’t comprehend what her friend was alluding to. “What chicken-scratching are you talking about?”

The magnet in Mrs. Aird’s hand was in the form of a metal clamp that had a slip of pink notepaper clipped in its jaws. Mrs. Aird gave the note a flourish and squinted at it over her glasses. “Let’s see now, if I’m deciphering correctly, it says here ‘Last Chance Computers — mark shipment fragile!’ And there’s an address scrawled here beside it...”

Evelyn’s spirits leapt as she grabbed the note. “You mean the whole time I been sweating like a computer scientist the information was stuck on the door of the fridge?”

“Seems like it.”

“I can’t believe it! It’s so... so old fashioned!”

“That’s your opinion. There’s no such thing as an old fashioned fridge note. They’ll always be around. Just like brooms.”

“Huh?”

“Has the vacuum cleaner replaced the broom? No. Ever try to swat a mouse with a vacuum cleaner? You can’t do it. All you’d do is knock a hole in your wall. And witches can’t ride vacuum cleaners, they’d run out of electrical cord, wouldn’t they?”

Evelyn rushed to phone to read the address to Timothy. “I know where the place is,” he replied. “I’ll head straight down there.”

“Not without us!”

“But it could be dangerous—”

“I don’t care. Me and Mrs. Aird want to see this thing through.”

“Mrs. Aird?”

“A friend of mine. You’re going to love her. We’ll meet you in front of that shop in less than an hour.”

Evelyn hung up the phone and gazed at her old friend affectionately. “Mrs. Aird, find us a photo of Dianne. I know two old witches that better saddle up this minute, zoom down to the city, and fast!”

As Dianne watched, Big Lu divided the rusty chain into four equal sections with a bolt cutter — her square wrists bulging with each cut — and then secured each length to one corner of the old workbench with long and shiny self-tapping screws. The lengths of chain lay flat on the tabletop, angling in from each corner, and to the free end of each one Big Lu attached a padlock.

“Can you figure it out yet, dear?”

Dianne could figure it out all right. What Big Lu had constructed here was something one might see in an old Boris Karloff flick. There was nothing sophisticated about it; it was straight out of the Middle Ages.

It was a rack.

“You see,” Big Lu confided, “here’s how it is. There’s people on the Net who like photography. And they download it from wherever they find it. It’s what you might call a marketable item. How it works is, you put out a free sample. If it’s quality stuff, there’s some who’ll pay good money for it. Delivery can be made via snail mail, which is to say our friendly post office, or electronically over the Net. It’s done all the time, sweetie. It’s big business.”

The fullness of what Big Lu was implying was just beginning to sink in.

“My God, you don’t mean you brought me down here to...”

“I think we’re on the same wavelength, sweetie.”

“But what you’re suggesting is... I mean, what you’re intending is... But that’s sick! It’s not normal!”

“Absolutely right. But it’s profitable, sweetie. And one has to keep body and soul together, doesn’t one?” Big Lu beamed at her. Just a regular gal trying to eke out a living.

Dianne felt her strength drain away, her knees begin to fold. She saw Big Lu watching her through the links, smiling and smiling...

They did make the trip in less than an hour, Mrs. Aird driving like a madwoman, Evelyn saying, “Careful there,” and “Easy does it,” and pumping an imaginary brake pedal every minute with her foot. They made such good time they arrived only moments behind Dianne’s Internet friend Timothy, who was just climbing out of a low-slung sports car in front of the shop as they pulled up. Evelyn looked him up and down.

He had one of those youthful faces women love, fashionable clothing, and neatly groomed hair. After a hesitant greeting, Evelyn felt it necessary to explain that Dianne was much younger than her or Mrs. Aird. This out of the way, they turned to the computer store. It was a small brickfront single-story pinched between a fried chicken take-out and a toy and novelty shop. Computer-generated electric signs in the windows announced bargains in seven-segment letters: CASH BACK FOR OLD RAM! — NEW AND USED CD-ROMS! — ON-RAMP TO THE INFO HIGHWAY — COME IN FOR A TEST DRIVE!

“Well,” said Mrs. Aird, “now what? Do we go in there and hammer somebody?” Timothy glanced at her with raised eyebrows. “It’s brutal,” Mrs. Aird explained, “but we may have to do it.”

“I’ll go in alone,” Evelyn announced. “I’ll ask some questions and try to get us some answers.”

“You could also,” Mrs. Aird continued, “threaten to break someone’s legs.”

“Don’t mind her,” Evelyn told Timothy. “She’s what you might call proactive.” She looked at the novelty shop. “She’s right, though. I may need a good argument. I wonder...”

“What do you wonder?” Timothy asked.

“Oh, just something my nephew mentioned to me...”

Entering the computer shop, instead of the jangle of a bell or an electronic beep Evelyn heard a Darth Vaderlike voice announce in reverberant tones, “I sense a new disturbance in the Force, admiral...”

The place was well-stocked with computer gear, though most of it was surplus and outdated, even Evelyn could see that. Heaps of grubby old computers and keyboards, shelves lined with grimy monitors. And boxes under the display tables bulged with thick gray cables and loose circuit boards. She was wondering if the place had been cleaned once since the business opened when a pudgy man with a widow’s peak and a humorless frown shuffled into the room.

He sized her up doubtfully. “You got a grandson, lady?” And before she could respond, he added, “I order new, or sell secondhand. I can build a setup out of new or used parts or a combination of both, depends how you want to go.”

Evelyn moved closer. He didn’t look like a kidnapper. Still, you never could tell...

“I want to go,” she said, “in the direction a friend of mine went a day or so ago. I want to go exactly in her direction. In short, I want to find her.” She took Dianne’s photo from her pocket. “Her name is Dianne Freely. She did some business here, as I understand it.”

The guy glanced at the photo with reluctance. “I don’t know nothing about missing persons. But I get a fair walk-in trade. Could be she stopped by here once.”

“I’m telling you,” Evelyn insisted, her voice hard and level, “she did business here. She shipped you used equipment for some so-called charity. You should have a record of it.” The man shook his head, not taking his eyes off of her. Evelyn said, “You do keep records here, don’t you?”

“Look, lady—”

“No, you look. It isn’t just me. I can call in the police if you like and have them root through your files. Or, if you prefer it, I got a friend outside just itching to come in here and hammer somebody.”

The proprietor still made no move to cooperate.

Evelyn sighed and reached into her pocket. In the shop next door she had purchased a magnet, the biggest one they had, almost cartoonlike in size and appearance. It was a fire-engine red horseshoe that weighed two pounds if it weighed an ounce, and when she held it out over the counter, to the shopkeeper’s horror and her own surprise, a mass of screws and metal plates leaped into the air and stuck to it.

“Physics 301,” Evelyn said. “Magnetism.”

“Ye-e-es...” The shopkeeper breathed shallowly.

“And as magnets go, this here one’s pretty powerful.” As if on cue, the magnet practically tore itself from Evelyn’s grasp, leaping to the metal frame of the glass display case with a loud whack! With difficulty she pried it loose. “You realize,” she said, “what a magnet can do in a place like this?”

The shopkeeper was starting to crack, perspiration beading on his high, polished cranium. Maybe he believed she was a criminally insane person, a wild-woman capable of anything. Evelyn brandished the magnet threateningly, moving it toward a batch of CD-ROM’s. The shopkeeper gave a feeble grin. “It won’t harm CD’s.”

“It will if I whack them with it!”

The grin dissipated. “Okay, you win. I’ll try and help you. But you have to agree to keep it a secret.” He glanced at the door and then leaned towards her. “There’s this — this person comes in from time to time, right?”

“Name?”

“Calls himself Timothy.”

“Description?”

“Well, to start with, he... But I’m not really sure he’s a... Strike that. You want to know what he looks like? Big. Real big. And always wearing these black clothes, like Johnny Cash, right?”

Evelyn frowned. It wasn’t the Timothy waiting outside with Mrs. Aird, that was for sure.

The shopkeeper threw in some background. “He asked me if I would take delivery of used computer parts for him.”

“Used parts from where?”

“He didn’t tell me that.”

“And you went along with it?”

“Why not? He said we’d share the stuff. He takes the best items, and I get the junk, but hey! — junk’s my stock in trade. Hobbyists, people who tinker, they love junk. They can’t get enough of it. And if I sell anything, I keep the proceeds.”

“Well,” Evelyn said, “so much for the poor and underprivileged.” She hardened her tone. She wanted an address. The man consulted a notebook computer and jotted one down for her.

“Now remember,” he cautioned, “this is strictly between you and me. I don’t want that character getting on my case.”

“Don’t get your mouse in a knot,” Evelyn told him. “My word is my bond.” Taking the slip from him, she added, “One other thing. This better be on the level. If not, I’m going to actually use this magnet. Not on your merchandise but on you! In unpleasant ways that you never thought possible!”

The house was an old two story wood-frame near the Route 90 freeway. Mrs. Aird and Evelyn thumped on the door while Timothy waited and watched from his car; they were disappointed when the occupant, someone they couldn’t see clearly through the window screen, told them flatly that she didn’t know anyone answering to such a description, that she was the sole occupant of the place and could not help them in any way. She shut the door firmly in their faces, and they came down the steps feeling stumped and uncertain. They met Timothy coming up the walk.

“It’s a dead end,” Evelyn told him. She could not contain her vexation. “Poor, poor Dianne!”

“Gives up easy, don’t she,” Mrs. Aird said to Timothy. She moved her head ponderously to peer back up at the place. “Maybe the woman just don’t trust strangers. They could be in there gabbing about calculators for all we know. Having a nice chitchat about Smurfs and mud rooms.”

“About what?” Timothy looked puzzled.

“Never mind,” Evelyn said, touching his arm.

She started back towards the house, her shadow thrust ahead of her by the streetlight.

“Let’s take a look around the back. Maybe there’s a separate entrance, a neighbor or something...”

Big Lu came down the stairs from the kitchen frowning and shaking her head. “Just a couple of old bags, sweetie, collecting for some charity. Probably the local seniors’ drop-dead center. Oh, pardon me, I mean the drop-in center.” She sniffed derisively. “I should keep a rottweiler by the door. I hate visitors.”

“Old bags?” A flutter of hope stirred in Dianne’s heart.

“Two old frumps, hon. I gave them the brushoff. Back to business.” Lu had been setting up parasol reflectors around the bench, and now she adjusted them, poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth. A lit computer screen dominated the room. “This won’t be your usual photography, sweetie. It’s digital. Produces images called bit maps that you can modify, store on diskette, send out over the Internet to customers half a world away.”

“Aren’t you afraid they might be intercepted?” Dianne mumbled.

She was still trying valiantly to stall for time but was too dazed by all that had happened to her to put any real effort into it.

“No problem. I use PGP encryption. That stands for Pretty Good Privacy, and it’s shareware, which means it don’t cost nothing. But it’s so good even the FBI can’t crack it.” She grinned. “Ain’t technology wonderful?”

Dianne felt her last threads of sanity drifting away. She couldn’t hold back any longer. She threw back her head, opened her mouth wide, and let out her grief out in a loud, “Ya-a-aaah!”

Judas in a jumpsuit! “What was that?” Evelyn stopped in her tracks at the side of the house and flung a restraining hand up in front of the others.

“Somebody yelled,” said Timothy.

“They sure did,” agreed Mrs. Aird. Even she had heard it. “Sounded like a bare-bottomed warbler doing a tail-plant on a prickly bush.”

“It was Dianne’s voice!” said Evelyn excitedly. “I’m sure of it!” They hurried around the corner to the rear of the house, where they found the back storm door latched against them. It was a flimsy thing; a lot of badly caulked glass in a frail latticed frame. “We need something heavy,” Evelyn said breathlessly, looking around, “to knock the window out with.”

“Look,” said Mrs. Aird, “we got something to knock the window out. Stand clear!” She took her large purse in her hands, hefted it, then brought it forward with all her force. The impact stove in the glass panes and smashed the framework into kindling.

“You heard of the Inquisition?” Big Lu asked pleasantly, making conversation as if Dianne had dropped by to obtain a passport photo.

She performed a few last adjustments to her photographic setup, then came towards the chain link gate. “There was this guy Torquemada back then, and it’s too bad he didn’t have a digital camera setup. The things he did! You wouldn’t believe it. There’s folks would give thousands to see the stills of it, and I’m not exaggerating.”

“What... what kind of things did he do?” Dianne asked hesitantly.

“I was just about to show you.” Big Lu unfastened the loose bracelet of the handcuffs from the links, then opened the gate. “It’ll be a reenactment. Come on out of there, sweetie.”

But Dianne could not make her limbs obey. She stayed huddled against the damp fieldstone, trembling uncontrollably. “Snap out of it!” Big Lu ordered. “Time is money!”

“I c-can’t...”

“Oh, yes, you c-can!” returned Big Lu, mocking her stammer. “And you better d-do it, too, or else!”

She took a menacing step forward, then stopped. There had been a crash upstairs, the tinkle of glass hitting the floor, and Big Lu’s eyes flew wide open.

She tipped her head back and stared upwards as if she could see through the floor joists.

“What the devil—”

The tinkle was followed by the sudden tread of footsteps across the floor of the kitchen, and then the clump of feet on the stairs. Dianne gasped when the sturdy frame of Evelyn Culver hove into view, followed by Mrs. Aird. Her friends wore expressions of curiosity, concern, and wrath. And then a third person appeared. She recognized him immediately. It was the handsome young man she had seen in the park!

Evelyn put her hands on her hips and threw Big Lu a scalding look.

“So you didn’t know who we were talking about, huh?”

Big Lu seemed stunned. She was quivering with rage. “You-you broke into my house! You’re breaking the law!”

“Wow!” Evelyn said, “what a grasp of the obvious.” She gave Dianne an encouraging grin and a waggle of fingers. “Hi, kiddo! We’ll take you home now, if that’s all right.”

If it was all right? It was more than all right! Dianne’s strength returned magically. She would have dashed up the stairs if Big Lu hadn’t resecured the flap of chain link that imprisoned her.

“Not so fast,” Big Lu said, recovering a little. “I got something to say about this.”

“No,” replied Evelyn, “you don’t. You’ve said and done enough already.” She stepped forward. “Move aside. We’re taking our friend, and we’re leaving.”

“I don’t think so,” Big Lu said.

Evelyn produced her magnet. “Do you know what this is?”

However, this time her threat didn’t have the desired effect. Instead of being cowed, Big Lu suddenly threw herself forward like a linebacker, striking Evelyn broadside with forearms and elbows. The magnet flew from her grasp and skittered across the floor while she herself staggered backwards and sat down heavily on the floor with a grunt.

Big Lu loomed above her. A foot-long screwdriver had appeared in her hand.

“You dare threaten me? In my own home?”

“What’s going on? What’s the blathering about?” It was Mrs. Aird.

Evelyn blinked.

Her friend had procured an axe from behind the furnace where a number of garden implements were stored. She was hefting it with the confidence of a seasoned north woods lumberjack.

“What does she think she’s going to do with that?” scoffed Big Lu. “Chop my head off? I don’t think so!”

“You want me to chop something?” asked Mrs. Aird. “That’s fine with me. What do you want me to chop first?”

“You’re bluffing,” Big Lu said. Then she suddenly went pale with alarm. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

Mrs. Aird had raised the axe and now brought it down briskly on a spare computer screen, the jarring blow turning it into broken glass, splintered plastic, and scattered electronic components.

Big Lu screamed. “Oh my god! That was my twenty-inch monitor!”

She lunged at Mrs. Aird, but Evelyn, still sitting on the floor, caught her ankle and sent her sprawling.

“What’s she hollering about?” Mrs. Aird nonchalantly pounded an ink-jet printer into fragments. “Tell her to speak up. There’s a fair bit of noise in here.” She flattened an outboard modem.

“Stop her! Somebody stop her!” Big Lu shrieked.

She was trying valiantly to regain her feet, but each time, Evelyn pulled her down again. In the confusion Timothy slipped past them both and lifted the chain link from its fastenings. Gently he helped Dianne up the stairs.

“I’ll just keep at it till she tells me to stop,” said Mrs. Aird, stepping into the soft radiance of the computer on the desk.

“No, no, NO!” Big Lu implored, beating her fist on the floor. “That’s my latest addition! It’s worth ten thousand dollars!”

“Bad investment,” commented Evelyn. “I think it’s about to depreciate.” Mrs. Aird swung the axe. There was a delayed explosion this time, a shower of whirling, scintillating sparks, then a cloud of gray-white smoke, and finally a dance of fluid bluish flame licking up from the machine’s wrecked innards.

Mrs. Aird rested on the axe a moment, shaking her head and clucking her tongue.

“This,” she said, “is what happens when your high-tech and your low-tech meet.”

The room was a shambles. Smashed equipment, broken plastic, and glass shards lay everywhere. A thin smoke haze and a stink of scorched plastic filled the air.

“Hey. Where’s Dianne?” asked Evelyn, glancing around suddenly-

“Timothy took her out,” said Mrs. Aird, her hearing unexpectedly keen.

“Thank heavens.” Evelyn bent over Big Lu who was curled up on the floor wracked with great frame-shaking sobs. “All right, you! Don’t carry on. This is nothing compared to what the police will do to you. They’ve been trying for weeks to get a line on the Internet Predator.”

“The what?” Big Lu blew her nose on her shirtfront.

“Don’t play dumb. You’re a famous killer.”

“And you’re crazy. I never killed anybody.”

“You must have. It’s in the newspapers.”

“It’s not me they’re talking about. I don’t have a clue what happened to those other girls. I didn’t even get to meet them. I arranged to meet them, all right. But when I showed up, they didn’t.”

Evelyn snorted. “You expect us to believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth. Somebody got to them first.”

Something in her voice made Evelyn hesitate. “But who? How would anyone else know?”

“We’re talking Internet, lady. It’s like CB radio. Anyone could have seen our arrangements. The Net is dangerous. Or didn’t you know that?”

“Oh my God,” said Evelyn to Mrs. Aird with a sudden intake of breath, hearing her own admonitions thrown back at her. “That’s right! That’s exactly right!”

And she made for the stairs at a lumbering gallop.

Timothy was so very gentle, so kind and considerate. He helped her into his car, a low-slung sports model, one with darkened windows that were impossible to see through, then he got in himself, slammed the door, and locked it. They were alone. He held her hand.

“Did that madwoman hurt you?”

“No. I’m all right — I think.”

“I saw you at the bridge,” he said.

“I saw you, too.”

“I knew it was you. At least I thought it was. But then you suddenly rushed off so fast, I couldn’t get to my car in time. You got clean away on me.”

“How... how did you find me, then?”

“Persistence.”

“You mean you wanted to?”

“I had to.” He smiled at her. “Oh yes. I couldn’t help myself.”

Dianne was touched. She felt the trickle of tears on her cheeks. She fumbled for a tissue, automatically reaching for the glove compartment release.

“Don’t do that!” Timothy suddenly blurted, thrusting out a hand to stop her. But he was too late. The glove compartment opened, and two large wooden spools fell out, connected by thick blue twine.

Dianne stared. She rubbed her eyes. Tried to make sense out of what she was seeing. Then things clicked into place. A pall of fear dropped over her.

“You!” she said. “You’re the one!”

He returned her gaze evenly.

“I had hoped for a more romantic spot, but now I guess I’ll have to take care of you right here.” He yanked the spools from her hands and threw her back against the seat. A fresh wave of emotion rose up and engulfed Dianne. All the fear, all the terror, all the anger and hurt inside her came together like a fast-moving stormfront. A mental tempest. She brought her hand up in one swift motion, feeling the weight of the cuffs that still hung from her wrist. She swung them hard, hearing the dull thump as they connected with her assailant’s head. He yelled with pain. She struck again and again till he fell away from her. Then her door was suddenly jerked open, and Evelyn Culver was peering in.

“Well,” she said, taking in the scene. “Looks like your f-2-f didn’t go so well.”

The four of them sat around Evelyn’s table trying to keep their minds on their cards but not having much success at it. Evelyn was especially agitated. It had been a shock to realize that she had practically befriended a killer. Chief Robideau had explained the details, passing on information received from the city police.

Timothy’s real name was Harold Kurtz. He’d been tracking Big Lu’s assignations with the clear intention of striking first. He had meant to confuse investigators, and it had been working. His attacks had naturally been attributed to Heloise Walker as the cops gradually closed in.

“How was I supposed to know who the real murderer was?” she demanded earnestly. “He didn’t look like a murderer, did he?”

“What’s a murderer look like?” asked Winona Delmare. “I mean when he’s not actually murdering people?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well then, stop blaming yourself. That madwoman could of been a killer. If she’d stuck that screwdriver into you, you’d of wound up dead. Completely dead.” She looked approvingly at Mrs. Aird. “Thank goodness somebody showed some deft action.”

“Who’s deaf?” Mrs. Aird flung down a club.

“Not deaf, dear. Deft!”

“I heard you the first time. I’m not deaf!”

Evelyn sighed. “I admit I learned something. Dianne was able to take care of herself after all.”

Dianne shrugged. She still had a pale look about her. “I guess that’s true. But I still should’ve listened to you. But I learned something, too. That’s why I sold my computer.”

“You what?” Evelyn mouth fell open. “Who’d you sell it to?”

Dianne raised her chin slowly and looked across the table. Following her gaze, Evelyn suddenly sucked in her breath.

“Oh no!”

Winona Delmare said, “It’s fascinating. Last night I found this chat room all about insects, and I learned about this spider — which isn’t really an insect — that doesn’t spin its own web, but preys on the bugs trapped in other spiders’ webs. And I met the nicest person. A real spider expert. And the two of us are planning to have dinner together one night...”