Death on the Web, page 2
It was Thanksgiving Day, mid-afternoon, when most of the country was sitting down to a big feast. I was sitting down to yesterday's microwaved pizza. The day was foggy, the temperature in the 60s. I had just returned from taking Clarence for a run (he doesn't actually run, just lumbers with great dignity) when I saw the mail icon flashing and went over to the computer.
It was an urgent message from a client, CyberEdge Futures (CEF), a small company downtown. "Marshall," said the e-mail message from Steve DiCiccio, "get over here right away. We have a huge problem."
Three police cars and an unmarked cruiser were idling out front of CEF's dingy stucco building, along with an ambulance. A small crowd had gathered in the bodega next door, probably neighbors trading gossip.
Steve DiCiccio, CEF's owner, greeted me at the door. He'd taken the day off to have a long lunch in San Jose with some potential investors, he told me as we walked inside. When nobody answered his calls to the office, he'd come over to check. When he'd opened the office, he found his 24-year-old software designer, Eric Reid, dead at his keyboard.
I knew Reid a little from a previous job. He was brilliant, arrogant, but unlike the stereotype of his fellow nerd colleagues, he had many finely developed social skills. He boasted, trampled sensibilities and had a propensity, according to DiCiccio, for stealing other people's girlfriends.
DiCiccio, a genius in his own right, was a large, balding man in his 40s. He looked crushed. "Eric was a great kid, Marsh. He was a true genius. He was going to take us all the way, and was so close. If this was murder, you gotta find whoever did it. I'll put up everything I own."
Which wasn't that much. DiCiccio wasn't exactly at the epicenter of the computer revolution. But my bank account was getting depleted, and this could mean the rent for the next three months and a year's supply of the special hypo-allergenic dog food required by Clarence, the only Lab in North America allergic to water and grass.
"You know my fee, Steve," I said. "Five hundred now, $150 a day plus expenses. Plus any online research costs." DiCiccio nodded and didn't seem to care, a sign that he was truly shaken.
The cops wouldn't let me inside at first, but I could see enough through the glass door. Reid, a thin young kid with blonde hair flipping over his shoulder, wearing jeans and a Green Day T-shirt, was slumped over his desk. His monitor was knocked over on its side. In his left hand, he was holding a cable that went into the back of the computer. His round spectacles were set on the desk next to him. His right hand clutched the mouse of his Sun SPARC station, one of the hottest and most powerful computers in the business.
DiCiccio's eyes watered. "He was working on this incredible new PCTV software," said Steve. "Called 'Journeys: MicroWorld 2000.' He wasn't done, but getting there. Believe me, this would have made Microsoft quake." Right, I thought, I'm sure DiCiccio had Bill Gates quaking. I wondered if these tears were for Reid or for the software.
DiCiccio caught my skeptical glance. "No, Marshall, honest. Why else do you think he was killed? Eric didn't have an enemy in the world! He was electrocuted, they think, just shocked to death right there at his keyboard. I heard the people from the medical examiner's office estimate about noon. They can't figure out how it happened. All the other appliances and sockets are working fine. How could that happen? Did you ever hear of anything like that?"
Truth was, I hadn't. But I had met enough computer whizzes to know they could do almost anything with a few strands of wire, a keyboard and a cellphone. And although I didn't say so, Reid must have had plenty of enemies. Developing a revolutionary new software app would make some in a hurry.
"Where's the software?" I asked.
"That's the whole point," he said. "It's missing. The software he was working on. Deleted from the files. I just checked it a couple of minutes ago, when I got onto the system here. He had his Web page up on the screen."
The paramedics removed the body. I couldn't touch the computer, but DiCiccio led me over to look at his monitor, where he'd been able to pull up what Eric was working on. "Look at this, Marsh," he said. It was Reid's Web Page, "Links to the Other World."
Reid, like some of the smartest young minds in the country, was fiddling around with virtual autobiography, telling his story on the Web through graphic and text links. DiCiccio went over to another computer, entered some commands and printed out Reid's page. He looked a bit surprised at first, as if he hadn't read it before. Then he went pale white, mumbled something about not feeling well and walked off down the hallway. My eyes started scrolling the Webzine.
