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close friend of Connie Fenton. The police suspected foul play and had searched Miller's Creek and surrounding countryside without success.

  It was perhaps a week after the first Leah Farrel story appeared in the paper that I found myself in Kelly's Bar. My bank account was running low, I had been eating Mrs. Harris' meat loaf for what seemed like a month, I was getting nowhere with my investigation (although I had talked to maybe two dozen people) and there was bloody little in the Chronicle. The police even seemed to be evading direct questions from the reporters, as though they were hiding something. Maybe I was a little hasty in quitting my job. At least if I were working and had access to the mill's computer I could break into the police minicomputer, look at their records, see what they were doing.

  I guess I was feeling sorry for myself.

  After the third or fourth beer this guy walks up, sits beside me and orders a glass of tonic water. Somehow he looks familiar. I was down to my last buck and was about to leave when this dude leans over and says "Buy you a drink?"

  He was big and lanky, with a thin little beard that followed his chin from ear to ear.

  "No thanks," I said, "I'm leaving." I got up and backed away from the bar.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me back onto the stool and I was thinking of punching him when I recognized the face. A Fenton face, Mr. Fenton's face, Connie's face. I held my breath.

  "Jonah, Connie's brother," he said, almost in a whisper. Then he looked around and pointed to a corner table and walked away without another word. I watched him sit at the table, then I looked around exactly as he had, then I followed him. Bloody stupid, like some crummy black-and-white movie.

  He started talking even before I sat down.

  "Know anything?" he asked. This guy was staring.

  "Nothing," I said, still whispering.

  "I know something," he said.

  "What?"

  "Leah Farrel is dead."

  I felt like I was talking to a moron. Of course Leah Farrel was dead. It was in the paper last week. Was this guy retarded?

  "Yeah, it was in the paper," I grunted.

  "No. The paper said 'missing'. She's dead."

  I remembered now. Missing. No body found. I felt like a bloody asshole.

  "Yeah, missing," I repeated. Maybe this guy knew more than I did. "What do you know?" I asked. It was weird, this conversation.

  "Somebody killed her."

  Jesus Murphy. Is this guy for real?

  "Yeah, I'd say so." I got up from the table.

  He said "... and Connie too."

  I sat down again, hard enough to hurt my ass on the chair. I didn't know if I was up to talking about Connie Fenton. Her murder had torn me apart. I wanted to forget. This Jonah fellow went quiet and I got up after just a moment.

  I gulped the last of my beer and turned to leave but another identical Fenton face was staring at me and I sat down again. This other guy seemed even taller than the first.

  He sat down and whispered. "The letters."

  "Letters? What letters?" I was looking at them both, sitting side by side across the table from me, like twin fence posts.

  "Pink letters. Threats."

  I wasn't sure who said it. They both seemed to say it, together.

  "Tell me about the letters," I said, looking back and forth at each of the brothers. "I don't know anything about pink letters, threats."

  "Connie got letters, pink letters. They said she would die."

  Jesus Murphy! The police never said anything about letters. Pink letters?

  "What do you mean, 'pink' letters?"

  "The paper was pink." Jonah had said that, I'm sure.

  I sat and stared and neither one said anything for a few minutes. Then they looked at each other, shook their heads, then the second brother got up and left. I watched him go. Then the first brother, Jonah, he got up and left too.

  I was feeling stupid, weary and a little light-headed.

  Then I got up and left too.

  The next day I walked to the mill and asked for my job back.

  Buck just grinned, then spat into the waste basket. He has the demeanor of a sloth. Then he leaned back in his chair, smoothing that bloody black suit with both hands.

  "We already got a computer expert, better than you ever was."

  Not likely. Some snot-nosed bastard who read the goddamn manual and thinks he knows everything. I was probably the only person in Haversville who actually had a diploma in Computer Engineering.

  "Let me talk to him," I said. "I'll show you what an idiot he is." I knew Buck wouldn't turn me down. He'd like to see me fall on my ass.

  "Why not?"

  She was just a kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a pizza-face full of pock marks and dirty brown hair that came just barely to her ears.

  "Kid, this here's Terry Cleaver. Used to have your job." Buck was chewing his cigarette, his face one big smirk. "He wants to ask you a few questions."

  The kid poked a few keys then swivelled in her chair and jumped up.

  "Gee Mr. Cleaver, I'm sure glad to meet you. I really like what you've done with the system files. Pretty tricky coding and hardly a bug anywhere."

  Hardly a bug anywhere? This little brat telling me 'hardly a bug'?

  "Bug? You won't find any bugs in my programs, kid." I wanted to say more but this little bastard was pumping my hand like I was some big wheel.

  "Well," she said, "not many. It's just the message-handler. It'll hang up the machine unless ..."

  "Wait just a minute!" No way I was going to let this shitfaced teenybopper tell me about programming. Besides, Buck was about to burst out laughing. "Look at this." I pulled the kid out of the chair, sat down at the terminal and logged in as the superuser. The dopes hadn't even bothered to change the password. Then I called up the message-handler.

  Buck and pizza-face both watched me, quiet, and I went over the code. I knew exactly what I had written and would recognize any change that shitface had made.

  Bastard! She had modified the program!

  The kid was bending over my shoulder. "You see Mr. Cleaver, if a user doesn't terminate with a lower case 'q' then the handler should just read a few null lines and stop. The way you had it written, the handler would keep reading ..."

  I was getting red and I felt it. When I looked around, Buck was killing himself laughing, his cigarette still stuck to his lips.

  "... but what I really found slick was the way you ..."

  The kid was still jabbering, but I was looking at Buck.

  " ... so any remote machine could be accessed, like the police computer, without ..."

  Buck stopped laughing. "The what?"

  I jumped up from the chair and patted the kid on the head, hard.

  "Nice work kid," I said, still looking at Buck.

  "Did she say the police computer?" Buck's cigarette had fallen from his lips and the kid looked worried and started to stutter.

  "Oh no, no ... not the police computer. Did I say that? I'm sorry. I meant the ... uh, the ..."

  "The police recruiter," I suggested quickly. "He can be notified via computer in case of an emergency in the plant." That was stupid. Police recruiter? It was the only word I could think of, in a hurry, that sounded like computer.

  "Yeah, yeah, the police recruiter," the kid said enthusiastically. It looked like there was a smile lurking behind her chewed-up face.

  Buck just grunted and stared at us, then he turned and walked toward the door. Before leaving he looked over his shoulder and he had a big ugly grin on his big ugly face. "Cleaver, find another job. You ain't working here no more."

  Actually, the kid wasn't so bad after all. Her name was Rita. She'd flunked out of school at seventeen, her parents had abused her, they'd separated, and she lived with and was supporting an old aunt. She'd taught herself computers and was really pleased to have the job at the mill - and she really was impressed with my mods to the syste
m files. She apologized umpteen times for having mentioned my piracy of the police files, then went on to show me how to access their computer without leaving a login trail. Jesus Murphy she was good.

  After work (her work, not mine) we walked along Teaker's Lane and sat on the bench at the end of the park. I don't know why, but I told her all about Connie. Maybe I needed to explain why I wanted the police files. Maybe I needed to explain why I found Connie so attractive. Maybe I just needed to talk. Anyway, Rita listened patiently and even seemed angry at the bloody waste of life and asked if she could help in tracking down the killer.

  I said I had almost given up, but Rita insisted that we go on with the investigation. She would provide all the information from the police files.

  That was Wednesday, September 16. I know because it was my birthday.

  I saw Rita that weekend and I was actually looking forward to it. She was a nice kid, I liked her, we were friends, and we were in this together - and she had some information for me ... for us.

  It was about the pink letters.

  Connie Fenton

  I thought that the first letter was a joke, a magical missive, and I was thrilled. It was a wonderful, electrifying statement. It said:

  Sister of the devil, you are dead

  It was slipped under my door and I found it that first Saturday in August. I read it again and again and again while I sipped my morning tea and knew right away that it was from Leah. She's my best friend and lives in the apartment at the end of the hall. It was just the sort of thing she would do.

  So I wrote her a note and slipped it under her door that very same evening. I even bought some pink paper on my way home from work, just as she had done. I'll bet we even