Old Man Foster might have a deed that said he owned a whole lot of acres and the state conservation agency might pass al sorts of regulations, but as
far as Jack was concerned, the Pine Barrens were an extension of his backyard, and no one was keeping him out of his own backyard.
Kate came in then. Slim with pale blue eyes, a faint splash of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and a strong jawline. Her long blond hair, which she
worked at keeping straight, had gone wavy in the humidity. Jack warmed at the sight of her. Eight years older and a natural nurturer, she’d practical y
raised him. She’d been his best friend growing up and had broken his heart when she left for col ege. Last year, when she’d spent her junior year abroad
in France, had been the worst. He didn’t know what went on over there, but it had changed her. Nothing he could put his finger on, but no denying the
feeling that she’d come back just a tiny bit … different.
“Just got off the phone with Tim,” she said.
Tom came in behind her, smirking. “Rekindling the old flame?”
He was ten years older with a bulging middle; his brown eyes and brown hair were the exact same shade as Jack’s. They’d never got along wel .
Though Tom had never said it, Jack knew he saw him as a fifth wheel on the family car.
Kate gave Tom a tolerant smile. “Not likely. He’s engaged. But he gave me what information he could on the body.”
Jack was al ears. He licked his fingertips, red from opening the pistachios. He had seventeen of the little nuts piled before him—three more to go
before gobbling time.
“Do they know who it is?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. They think it’s maybe two years old.”
“Aaaaw,” Jack said as he popped open another shel . “There goes the Indian mummy idea.”
Kate smiled. “Afraid so.” Her smile faded as she glanced at Tom. “Tim says it was a murder.”
Jack froze, feeling creeped out. The three of them stood silent around the counter. Even big-mouth Tom seemed to have lost his voice.
Final y Jack regained his. “R-real y?”
She nodded. “Yeah, his skul is cracked. But more than that, he says it was some sort of ritual kil ing.”
Jack’s mouth felt a little dry. A ritual murder … images of an Aztec priest cutting out a stil -beating heart flashed through his head. Definitely gross … but
kind of cool.
“Did he say what
Kate shook her head. “I asked, but he said that’s al he’s heard.”
Tom gave a low whistle and grinned at Jack. “And to think, this heinous crime would have remained undiscovered, maybe forever, if not for our own
miracle boy.”
Jack was about to say something when Dad popped his head through the door. He looked excited.
“Hey, kids. Come here. You’ve got to see this.”
Jack left his pistachios behind as the three of them trooped into Dad’s study. They found him seated before his brand-new home computer. It looked
like little more than a beige electric typewriter with a couple of oblong boxes atop it, crowned with a six-inch black-and-white monitor. On the table next to
it lay copies of a magazine cal ed
Years ago Dad had built an Apple I from a kit, but it never worked right. This one he’d bought ful y assembled. Unlike the Apple I, which used tape
cassettes to store programs, this baby used things cal ed disk drives.
General y pretty quiet, Dad seemed fired up. He worked as a CPA, recently moving from Arthur Anderson in Phil y—for some reason, he hadn’t been
getting along with them—to Price Waterhouse in Cherry Hil , which meant a shorter commute. His two loves, outside of his family, were tennis and this
contraption, his Apple. Unlike Jack, Tom, and Mom, his eyes were blue, and he wore steel-rimmed glasses for reading. His formerly ful head of hair had
begun to thin on top.
“I just wrote this little program,” he said, pointing to the screen. “Watch.”
Jack caught a glimpse of a short column of text with lines like “N=N+1” and “Print N” and “GOTO” before Dad hit a key. Suddenly numbers began cascading down the left side of the screen:
