The Puppet Master

spent four years as a Ranger, then injured a hip in a jungle drop and been transferred to the CID, where he'd been trained as an investigator. His military record had been excellent; he'd made sergeant first class before he'd turned twenty-five. A check of his CID personnel file turned up phrases like 'analytical, tough, and learns quickly. Shows particular talent in the adaptation of electronic resources.' Also, 'Is not given to talking shop, even with his peers.'

Then his wife and kid had been killed in a retaliatory hit near Salinas. He'd applied for a discharge, and it had been granted.

After leaving Fort Ord, he'd gone to Tucson, a city he'd gotten to know and like while investigating a theft ring at Fort Huachuca. He'd wanted to get a civilian investigative job, but they were hard to get at the time, particularly without a college degree in law enforcement. Contract legal investigation hadn't begun its major expansion yet.

So in Tuscon he'd taken a job as a security supervisor with Algotsson-Scherker, a Westwide construction contractor, and worked there for more than two years. The job involved the routine security of buildings, and also of equipment at company warehouses, equipment parks, and on the job. A-S' personnel records rated him highly, particularly for his 'scrupulous attention to details.' Carlos loved that, I was sure. It's important in our work, although in my opinion it can be overrated.

After a while he'd subscribed to a professional job-listing network, watching for a job in investigation with a company that might offer a good future. When Joe listed Prudential as hiring, Steinhorn applied. An opening-level job with us paid quite a bit less than his A-S job did, and the cost of living is higher in L.A., but as he put it in his application, 'It offers a career ladder in my preferred line of work.' An attitude Joe Keneely liked.

Joe and Carlos might have thought we had a good one, but somehow I didn't feel right about Steinhorn. There was something behind his eyes, as if he wasn't being straight with us. And unlike Joe and Carlos, it didn't make any difference to me whether the new positions got filled or not. So it was easier for me to feel skeptical of him.

I didn't say anything though. His employment record was excellent, his test scores very good, and so what if I didn't like his eyes? Me, a guy who'd allowed himself to get thoroughly bogged down on a case.

Looking back, I'd say my attitude just then constituted treason against myself, against my own instincts, but that's how it was.

26

COMPUTER TRESPASS

The next day it was time to make the rounds of my informants again, and Carlos told me to take Steinhorn with me, give him the feel of the L.A. underworld. It went okay. We didn't talk much, beyond line of duty, but he had a good attitude. Sometimes a person with experience thinks he knows it all, and scorns procedures different from those he'd learned somewhere else. Not Steinhorn. So I pretty much banished my misgivings about him.

The only thing wrong with the day was the continuing lack of any useful results.

* * *

That evening Tuuli called from Diacono's. She sounded great, and said she'd be coming home in three days. When she asked me how things were going, I lied: I said fine. I'd called her the evening after I'd gotten back from Eugene, telling her about the photos, so 'fine' might have been believeable, but after we'd disconnected, it seemed to me she knew better. Also, I realized I was feeling sorry for myself because she wasn't home already, 'when I needed her.' Yeah, you big clod, I told myself, what you want is someone to pat you on the head and say, 'Poor thing, poor poor thing.'

* * *

The next morning I looked into Carlos' office to say 'buenos dias, jefe' or maybe 'ohaio, gozaimasu.' Carlos wasn't there though. He'd gone to Fresno and wouldn't be back before late afternoon, and Steinhorn was sitting at Carlos' desk. I didn't think anything of it, beyond, he's doing some flunky work for Carlos. The sort of thing I used to do as an investigative assistant, although Carlos had never told me to use his desk and computer; I'd done my work in the IA pen.

In my office, I took my six thousand dollars' worth of photos out of the desk—or actually computer facsimiles; the originals were in the evidence vault—and stared without really seeing them. I knew right away I could look at them all day and come up with nothing. So after a couple of minutes I told Fidela I was going to take some compensatory time off, and left. I didn't go to Gold's; I drove west out Sunset Boulevard and parked in the lot at Will Rogers State Beach.

The day was overcast—common enough for the season—and the onshore wind verged on chilly, so there weren't many people there. Mostly surfers in wet suits, because the surf was up a bit. I hiked the sand for quite a ways along the fringe of the surf wash, deliberately using my eyes instead of thinking about things. Spotting the dead gull, the piece of driftwood with some old carving worn nearly illegible by sea and sand, the discarded condom, while listening to the regular, soothing rush and hiss of breakers and their backwash, and the random, counterpoint screeing of gulls. I'd discovered some years earlier, as a junior detective with the Marquette, Michigan, police force, that skiing some forest trail or hiking the Lake Superior shoreline could sometimes shake things loose for me. This was the same sort of thing.

On toward noon I got back to my car and drove south to Santa Monica Beach. There I walked around eating the local equivalent of a Dodger dog and a couple of ice-cream cones, and watched people ride the rides and throw baseballs at targets. This one girl about eleven, who should have been in school, was watching the baseball throwers. She wore as despondent an expression as I'd seen for a while. Even I didn't look that bad. So I bought three tosses, knocked down three targets, and won a fluffy, meter-long nylon or something rabbit which I handed to her, then walked away quickly so she wouldn't get the wrong idea and be scared.

After that I browsed the bookshelves at the Change of Hobbit II, and bought a couple of paperbacks—an Ed Bryant collection and a new novel by an old master, David Brin. It was almost quitting time when I got back to the office. I told my computer 'hyvaa iltaa,' and called up the Christman file, prepared to enter another null day.

Before it downloaded, a code flagged on the screen. When I'd first been with the Marquette Police Department, there'd been some factional infighting, replete with spying and even accusations of the sabotage of files. And because it wasn't all right to make a file inaccessible to the office, or try to, I'd learned to install a covert security alarm on sensitive files, something I've done routinely ever since, on general principle. 'Hyvaa iltaa,'—'good evening' in Finnish—or hyvaa paivaa, depending on the time of day, were the codes I used to identify myself and tell the computer to flag anything that might be a trespass.

And someone had activated the Christman file, called it up on Carlos' terminal at 12:27 that afternoon! Fidela would have been in the lunchroom, and a check indicated that Carlos still wasn't back from Fresno. So far as I knew, the only people who should be using Carlos' computer were Carlos himself, and whoever he might have told to use it for some reason. Steinhorn for example. Except there was zero likelihood that