Read PsyCop 4: Secrets for Free Online Page B

sprawled on the bed and gave a long, bone-tired groan. “We have sheets. Somewhere. But maybe it’d be just as easy to stop at the store and grab another set.”
    “I was trying to look something up…” I had some sort of momentum going, and I wasn’t about to let sheets, or the lack of them, get me off track. I focused on my hands and kept talking. “Something that really should have been there—and I kept coming up with nothing. Which was kind of weird. Because it seems like when you search for people online, you usually find something. It might not be recent, and it might not be what you’re looking for, but it’s something. Like you, for instance. You’re all over the place. No wonder people stop you for autographs when we go out to eat.” I laughed. It sounded nervous.
    “But me…there’s nothing about me on there at all. Not anywhere.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I glanced up at the designs on the tin ceiling instead.

    There was a long pause. No doubt it was the last subject Jacob had been expecting me to bring up that night. He didn’t have a reply ready. That was good. It would be harder for him to brush off. “Not that I know for sure I’ve ever been on there at all, but come on. I’ve solved hundreds of murders. I won that microwave in the raffle at the grocery store last year. You’d think there’d be something about me online, even if it was stupid, even if it was small. It’s almost as if someone erased me from the Internet.” Even I hadn’t known that’s where my line of reasoning would take me, and I shuddered.
    “Well?” I said, and then I couldn’t stand not knowing what Jacob thought anymore. “What do you make of it?”
    I turned. I’m sure it was a very dramatic turn. Sadly, the drama was lost on Jacob.
    He was asleep.
    And not just pretending to be asleep so he could avoid the conversation, either. His mouth was open. He never did that if he was faking.
    The comforter was tangled with his bare legs. I slid it out from between them. He didn’t stir, didn’t even breathe differently. I covered him up and enjoyed a little fantasy about waking him up and demanding that he look me up on the laptop. But with my luck, a
    “let’s cyber” message from Crash would pop up, and I’d end up looking guilty of something I hadn’t even done.
    I dug around for my Sudoku magazine, and wished I had a TV hooked up so I could watch some porn, or even some static. I’d ask Jacob tomorrow. My Internet blackout would be right there waiting for me once I managed to corner him.

-FOUR-
    It was a crisp February morning, and I stood on the narrow concrete-slab porch of a red brick building that had been constructed to look like the existing architecture in the area, but screamed out “new” nonetheless. Bob Zigler lived in Skokie, a suburb you’ll hit if you’re headed north through Chicago and you’re bound and determined to squeeze by the congested Indian neighborhood on Devon and the dilapidated row of bizarre 1950’s motels on the Northern end of Lincoln Avenue. Zig’s expression told me I was about the last person he expected to see on his doorstep when he opened his front door.
    “Vic. What’re you doing here? Did we get called in?”
    “No.” I crossed my arms. “We’re going to talk.”
    Zig deflated. That’s what he does when there’s no way he can possibly get the upper hand.
    His shoulders sag, his spine compresses, and he seems to get about two inches shorter.
    Zig’s not good at the cop-face like Jacob is. That’s probably why Zig hides behind a graying Mike Ditka mustache. “It’s not a good time.”
    “Look. You can’t say it on the phone. You can’t email it. I get that. But I need to hear whatever you know about Heliotrope Station and the Internet.”
    “You didn’t know?”
    “I don’t know shit.”
    “All right, all right.” Zig held up his meaty hands as if to ward himself from me. “But watch the language. The kids are home from