Death on the Web, page 3
The 'zine ended abruptly. I went over to DiCiccio's computer, which still networked into Reid's, and tried messing around, looking for the rest of the site. Just as the paramedics lifted Reid's body off the keyboard, Julie came bustling in.
"Marshall," she whispered," steering me off into a corner. "He was electrocuted through the cable somehow. You saw the way he was lying? He was reaching for one of the cables. I bet somebody sent him a literal killer app. I've heard rumors about stuff like that, e-mail-delivered software that sends thousands of volts through the computer and into a cable if you pull it a certain way."
A Net assassin? The thought stopped me cold. A wild idea, but not impossible. Where were the stakes bigger than in the software business? Wall Street had nothing on Silicon Valley when it came to ruthlessness and greed.
"Get his e-mail," Julie hissed. She clacked away furiously on Reid's keyboard as the cop in the doorway yawned. One message came up on the screen:
*&X~/usr/local/bin/ztalk jrnysrk:@ ---,
but then the screen went blank. The e-mail program had destroyed the message before it revealed the source. At least I'd thought to scribble down what we had seen.
It dawned on both of us at the same time: whoever had sent the e-mail was almost surely the killer. The message must have activated whatever killed Reid, because it was still up on the screen, and it was cut off. I didn't think it was possible to kill somebody that way, but then again, wireless modems wouldn't have made much sense to most people a decade ago.
Somewhere in the message were commands that had led to Eric Reid's death.
Send us your solution.
The first person to correctly guess the murderer and the motive wins a $25 gift certificate from Borders.
