‘I’m sorry.’

‘But at least it’s not my fault.’ She looks up at him with thin and pitiable defiance. ‘No one can say it was. I didn’t do anything.’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ Jerome says.

It comes out sounding stilted, but she smiles a little, so maybe it’s okay. ‘Is Mr Hodges all right? He’s a very, very, very nice man. Even though my mother doesn’t like him.’ She shrugs. ‘But who does she like?’

‘He’s fine,’ Jerome says, although he doubts if that’s true.

‘You’re black,’ she says, looking at him, wide-eyed.

Jerome looks down at his hands. ‘I am, aren’t I?’

She bursts into peals of shrill laughter. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude. It’s fine that you’re black.’

‘Black is whack,’ Jerome says.

‘Of course it is. Totally whack.’ She stands up, gnaws at her lower lip, then pistons out her hand with an obvious effort of will. ‘Put it there, Jerome.’

He shakes. Her hand is clammy. It’s like shaking the paw of a small and timid animal.

‘We have to hurry. If my mother and Uncle Henry come back and catch you in here, I’m in trouble.’

You? Jerome thinks. What about the black kid?

‘The woman who used to live here was also your cousin, right?’

‘Yes. Olivia Trelawney. I haven’t seen her since I was in college. She and my mother never got along.’ She looks at him solemnly. ‘I had to drop out of college. I had issues.’

Jerome bets she did. And does. Still, there’s something about her he likes. God knows what. It’s surely not that fingernails-on-a-blackboard laugh.

‘Do you know where her computer is?’

‘Yes. I’ll show you. Can you be quick?’

I better be, Jerome thinks.

29

The late Olivia Trelawney’s computer is password-protected, which is silly, because when he turns over the keyboard, he finds OTRELAW written there with a Sharpie.

Holly, standing in the doorway and flipping the collar of her housecoat nervously up and down, mutters something he doesn’t catch.

‘Huh?’

‘I asked what you’re looking for.’

‘You’ll know it if I find it.’ He opens the finder and types CRYING BABY into the search field. No result. He tries WEEPING INFANT. Nothing. He tries SCREAMING WOMAN. Nothing.

‘It could be hidden.’ This time he hears her clearly because her voice is right next to his ear. He jumps a little, but Holly doesn’t notice. She’s bent over with her hands on her housecoated knees, staring at Olivia’s monitor. ‘Try AUDIO FILE.’

That’s a pretty good idea, so he does. But there’s nothing.

‘Okay,’ she says, ‘go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES and look at SOUND.’

‘Holly, all that does is control the input and output. Stuff like that.’

‘Well duh. Try it anyway.’ She’s stopped biting her lips.

Jerome does. Under output, the menu lists SOUND STICKS, HEADPHONES, and LOG ME IN SOUND DRIVER. Under input, there’s INTERNAL MICROPHONE and LINE IN. Nothing he didn’t expect.

‘Any other ideas?’ he asks her.

‘Open SOUND EFFECTS. Over there on the left.’

He turns to her. ‘Hey, you know this stuff, don’t you?’

‘I took a computer course. From home. On Skype. It was interesting. Go on, look at SOUND EFFECTS.’

Jerome does, and blinks at what he sees. In addition to FROG, GLASS, PING, POP, and PURR – the usual suspects – there’s an item listed as SPOOKS.

‘Never seen that one before.’

‘Me, either.’ She still won’t look directly at his face, but her affect has changed remarkably otherwise. She pulls up a chair and sits beside him, tucking her lank hair behind her ears. ‘And I know Mac programs inside and out.’

‘Go with your bad self,’ Jerome says, and holds up a hand.

Still looking at the screen, Holly slaps him five. ‘Play it, Sam.’

He grins. ‘Casablanca.’

‘Yes. I’ve seen that movie seventy-three times. I have a Movie Book. I write down everything I see. My mother says that’s OCD.’

‘Life is OCD,’ Jerome says.

Unsmiling, Holly replies, ‘Go with your bad self.’

Jerome highlights SPOOKS and bangs the return key. From the stereo sound sticks on either side of Olivia’s computer, a baby begins to wail. Holly is okay with that; she doesn’t clutch Jerome’s shoulder until the woman shrieks, ‘Why did you let him murder my baby?’

‘Fuck!’ Jerome cries, and grabs Holly’s hand. He doesn’t even think about it, and she doesn’t draw away. They stare at the computer as if it has grown teeth and bitten them.

There’s a moment of silence, then the baby starts crying again. The woman screams again. The program cycles a third time, then stops.

Holly finally looks directly at him, her eyes so wide they seem in danger of falling out of her head. ‘Did you know that was going to happen?’

‘Jesus, no.’ Maybe something, or Bill wouldn’t have sent him here, but that? ‘Can you find out anything about the program, Holly? Like when it was installed? If you can’t, that’s all ri—’

‘Push over.’

Jerome is good with computers, but Holly plays the keyboard like a Steinway. After a few minutes of hunting around, she says, ‘Looks like it was installed on July first of last year. A whole bunch of stuff was installed that day.’

‘It could have been programmed to play at certain times, right? Cycle three times and then quit?’

She gives him an impatient glance. ‘Of course.’

‘Then how come it’s not still playing? I mean, you guys have been staying here. You would have heard it.’

She clicks the mouse like crazy and shows him something else. ‘I saw this already. It’s a slave program, hidden in her Mail Contacts. I bet Olivia didn’t know it was here. It’s called Looking Glass. You can’t use it to turn on a computer – at least I don’t think so – but if it is on, you can run everything from your own computer. Open files, read emails, look at search histories … or deactivate programs.’

‘Like after she was dead,’ Jerome says.

‘Oough.’ Holly grimaces.

‘Why would the guy who installed this leave it? Why not erase it completely?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he just forgot. I forget stuff all the time. My mother says I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t attached to my neck.’

‘Yeah, mine says that, too. But who’s he? Who are we talking about?’

She thinks it over. They both do. And after perhaps five seconds, they speak at the same time.

‘Her I-T guy,’ Jerome says, just as Holly says, ‘Her geek freak.’

Jerome starts going through the drawers of Olivia’s computer station, looking for a computer-service invoice, a bill stamped PAID, or a business card. There ought to be at least one of those, but there’s nothing. He gets on his knees and crawls into the kneehole under the desk. Nothing there, either.

‘Look on the fridge,’ he says. ‘Sometimes people put shit there, under little magnets.’

‘There are plenty of magnets,’ Holly says, ‘but nothing on the fridge except for a real estate agent’s card and one from the Vigilant security company. I think Janey must have taken down everything else. Probably threw it away.’

‘Is there a safe?’

‘Probably, but why would my cousin put her I-T guy’s business card in her safe? It’s not like it’s worth money, or anything.’

‘True-dat,’ Jerome says.

‘If it was here, it would be by her computer. She wouldn’t hide it. I mean, she wrote her password right under her goshdarn keyboard.’

‘Pretty dumb,’ Jerome says.

‘Totally.’ Holly suddenly seems to realize how close they are. She gets up and goes back to the doorway. She starts flipping the collar of her housecoat again. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I guess I better call Bill.’

He takes out his cell phone, but before he can make the call, she says his name. Jerome looks at her, standing there in the doorway, looking lost in her flappy comfort-clothes.