Because of the sedentary nature of the Spider’s job, the department had excused him from the minimum physical fitness standards set for field officers. The department had also created the position of chief technical sergeant in order to feed the Spider’s ego and keep him happily clicking away at the keyboards. The Spider had never gone on patrol, never arrested a suspect, never even qualified on the shooting range, yet after only four years with the department, Nailsworth effectively held the same rank that Rivera had attained in fifteen years on the street. It was criminal.

The Spider looked up. His eyes were sunk so far into his fat face that Rivera could see only a beady green glow.

“You smell of smoke,” the Spider said. “You can’t smoke in here.”

“I’m not here to smoke, I need some help.”

The Spider checked the data spooling across his screens, then turned his full attention to Rivera. Bits of pink coconut phosphoresced on the front of his uniform.

“You’ve been working up in Pine Cove, haven’t you?”

“A narcotics sting.” Rivera held up the suitcase. “We found this. It’s full of names and addresses, but I can’t make any connections. I thought you might…”

“No problem,” the Spider said. “The Nailgun will find an opening where there was none.” The Spider had given himself the nickname “Nailgun.” No one called him the Spider to his face, and no one called him Nailgun unless they needed something.

“Yeah,” Rivera said, “I thought it needed some of the Nailgun’s wizardry.”

The Spider swept the junk food from the top of the typing table into the wastebasket and patted the top of the table. “Let’s see what you have.”

Rivera placed the suitcase on the table and opened it. The Spider immediately began to shuffle through the papers, picking up a piece here or there, reading it, and throwing it back into the pile.

“This is a mess.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I’ll need to put this into the system to make any sense of it. I can’t use a scanner on handwritten material. You’ll have to read it to me while I input.”

The Spider turned to one of his keyboards and began typing. “Give me a second to set up a data base format.”

As far as Rivera was concerned, the Spider could be speaking Swahili. Despite himself, Rivera admired the man’s efficiency and expertise. His fat fingers were a blur on the keyboard.

After thirty seconds of furious typing the Spider paused. “Okay, read me the names, addresses, and dates, in that order.”

“So you need me to sort them out?”

“No. The machine will do that.”

Rivera began to read the names and addresses from each slip of paper, deliberately pausing so as not to get ahead of the Spider’s typing.

“Faster, Rivera. You won’t get ahead of me.”

Rivera read faster, throwing each paper on the floor as he finished with it.

“Faster,” the Spider demanded.

“I can’t go any faster. At this speed if I mispronounce a name, I could lose control and get a serious tongue injury.”

For the first time since Rivera had known him the Spider laughed.

“Take a break, Rivera. I get so used to working with machines that I forget people have limitations.”

“What’s going on here?” Rivera said. “Is the Nailgun losing his sarcastic edge?”

The Spider looked embarrassed. “No. I wanted to ask you about something.”

Rivera was shocked. The Spider was almost omniscient, or so he pretended. This was a day for firsts. “What do you need?” he said.

The Spider blushed. Rivera had never seen that much flaccid flesh change color. He imagined that it put an incredible strain on the Spider’s heart.

“You’ve been working in Pine Cove, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever run into a girl up there named Roxanne?”

Rivera thought for a moment, then said no.

“Are you sure?” The Spider’s voice had taken on a tone of desperation. “It’s probably a nickname. She works at the Rooms-R-Us Motel. I’ve run the name against Social Security records, credit reports, everything. I can’t seem to find her. There are over ten thousand women in California with the name Roxanne, but none of them check out.”

“Why don’t you just drive up to Pine Cove and meet her?”

The Spider’s color deepened. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? What’s the deal with this woman, anyway? Does it have to do with a case?”

“No, it’s… it’s a personal thing. We’re in love.”

“But you’ve never met her?”

“Well, yes, sort of — we talk by modem every night. Last night she didn’t log on. I’m worried about her.”

“Nailsworth, are you telling me that you are having a love affair with a woman by computer?”

“It’s more than an affair.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Well, if you could just check on her. See if she’s all right. But she can’t know I sent you. You mustn’t tell her I sent you.”

“Nailsworth, I’m an undercover cop. Being sneaky is what I do for a living.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“If you can find something in these names that will bail me out, I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, Rivera.”

“Let’s finish this.” Rivera picked up a matchbook and read the name and address. The Spider typed the information, but as Rivera began to read the next name, he heard the Spider pause on the keyboard.

“Is something wrong?” Rivera asked.

“Just one more thing,” Nailsworth said.

“What?”

“Could you find out if she’s modeming someone else?”

“Santa Maria, Nailsworth! You are a real person.”

Three hours later Rivera was sitting at his desk waiting for a call from the Spider. While he was in the computer room, someone had left a dog-eared paperback on his desk. Its title was You Can Have a Career in Private Investigation. Rivera suspected Perez. He had thrown the book in the wastebasket.

Now, with his only suspect back out on the street and nothing forthcoming from the Spider, Rivera considered fishing the book out of the trash.

The phone rang, and Rivera ripped it from its cradle.

“Rivera,” he said.

“Rivera, it’s the Nailgun.”

“Did you find something?” Rivera fumbled for a cigarette from the pack on his desk. He found it impossible to talk on the phone without smoking.

“I think I have a connection, but it doesn’t work out.”

“Don’t be cryptic, Nailsworth. I need something.”

“Well, first I ran the names through the Social Security computer. Most of them are deceased. Then I noticed that they were all vets.”

“Vietnam?”

“World War One.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. They were all World War One vets, and all of them had a first or middle initial E. I should have caught that before I even input it. I tried to run a correlation program on that and came up with nothing. Then I ran the addresses to see if there was a geographical connection.”

“Anything there?”

“No. For a minute I thought you’d found someone’s research project on World War One, but just to be sure, I ran the file through the new data bank set up by the Justice Department in Washington. They use it to find criminal patterns where there aren’t any. In effect it makes the random logical. They use it to track serial killers and psychopaths.”

“And you found nothing?”

“Not exactly. The files at the Justice Department only go back thirty years, so that eliminated about half of the names on your list. But the other ones rang the bell.”

“Nailsworth, please try to get to the point.”

“In each of the cities listed in your file there was at least one unexplained disappearance around the date listed — not the vets; other people. You can eliminate the large cities as coincidence, but hundreds of these disappearances were in small towns.”

“People disappear in small towns too. They run away to the city. They drown. You can’t call that a connection.”

“I thought you’d say that, so I ran a probability program to get the odds on all of this being coincidence.”