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The front door opened and I smiled at the sight of my grandfather, Seamus. A moment later, his IT guy, Elgin, followed. Seamus introduced Elgin, then let the kids introduce themselves to him. It was no small feat.

Seamus pulled me into the kitchen and said, “I hope you and Mary Catherine don’t mind that I brought Elgin over for dinner without checking first.”

I said, “You know I don’t mind. I also know you don’t care whether I mind or not.”

Seamus chuckled. “Just trying to follow social convention, my boy.”

My grandfather, Mary Catherine, and I stood in the kitchen for a moment. Elgin seemed amazed at the number of people at the table. I smiled at the gangly young man as he took in the group.

I called from the kitchen, “Yes, Elgin, this is normal.”

He managed a shy smile as he looked up and said to all of us, “Usually, it’s just me and my mom at home.”

Having Elgin at the dinner table helped take the focus off Jane and her funk. For a quiet computer nerd, Elgin didn’t seem to mind the attention.

Of course, he and Eddie bonded over computers, losing everyone else at the table as they dove deep into the details of networks and hacking. Elgin reached into his backpack and pulled out a magazine called 2600. He handed it over to Eddie.

Eddie’s eyes lit up. “Wow, the latest issue. Thanks!”

Mary Catherine inquired, “What kind of magazine is that?”

“It’s a magazine for hackers. Really cutting-edge stuff,” Eddie blurted out.

Elgin looked down at the table but added, “There’s nothing in it Eddie hasn’t already seen. I just thought he’d get a kick out of reading it.”

Mary Catherine nodded, trying to avoid openly endorsing hacking.

After dinner, Seamus took me aside. In a low voice he said, “I wanted Elgin to see you as a real person, with the family. He’s been following the investigation, and he mentioned that it’s difficult for him to think of cops as regular people.”

There were two sides to every story, and I took the NYPD’s. “The news always avoids any talk of a cop’s family or the kids left behind when a cop is murdered. I’m glad you brought him. He seems like a good kid.” I smiled. “He’s smart and gets along with the others.”

Seamus clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Great. Now for the next order of business: your wedding. Specifically, you need to write your vows.”

“I’m working on it.”

My grandfather winced and said, “That’s a tired excuse. How hard can it be for you to write four or five lines?”

“Can it be a limerick? Mary Catherine is Irish, after all.”

“So are we. If you do a limerick, she’ll slug you. After I get the first crack at you.”

I tried to hide my smile as I said, “There once was a girl from Tipperary. Her body was not terribly hairy. She—”

My grandfather punched me in the arm and walked away.

Chapter 81

The next morning, my first stop was the bustling medical supply office near Columbia where Chloe Tumber, the third New York homicide victim, had worked part-time while she was in school.

The manager, a pleasant woman, was clearly busy but didn’t rush me or my questions, though she didn’t have much information either. No one in the office did. There was no one as forthcoming as Luis Munoz here. Even when I made the offer to go off the record, no one had any information to give me about Chloe other than that she was twenty-six years old and a whiz with data entry. But apparently she’d kept to herself and also kept unusual hours due to her class schedule.

I thanked the manager but mentally wrote this place off as another dead end. Before I gathered my things and stood up to go, I took a moment to check my phone and messages.

Then I saw it: the same sticker I’d seen at the insurance company yesterday. Stuck on the front edge of a computer monitor. The cartoon of a computer with rubbery arms holding a radio and a phone. Computelex.

It took a moment for it to register, then a thousand new questions rushed into my brain. I reached up and stopped the first person walking past me.

“Excuse me,” I said, putting my finger on the sticker in the corner of the computer monitor. “Do you know what that is?”

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