thoughtfully a moment later.
"The one on the computer? Well, there was Doc Baker, George Yamamoto, Big Al—
"No, no, Ames interrupted. "I don't mean who saw it on the computer this morning. How many people around him were aware that it was Tadeo Kurobashi's favorite poem?
"Probably several. Yamamoto said it was familiar as soon as he saw it, but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it. Kimi knew it well, and I would imagine so would her mother. Why are you asking about the poem?
"Because it sounds to me as though whoever fed the virus into the MicroBridge computers must have known Tadeo Kurobashi very well in order to pick that particular verse, to know unerringly that it was part of his favorite poem.
"So? I asked. "What are you getting at?
Ames cocked his head to one side. "Think about it. If you were a young woman struggling to get along on whatever crumbs the university dishes out to instructors and on what you could make shoveling horse manure in someone else's barn, and if you knew your father was busy squandering your entire inheritance, wouldn't you be tempted to do something about it?
"I might, I said, "but not in this case. Kimiko Kurobashi isn't the type.
Ralph Ames looked at me sadly and shook his head. "Beau, you of all people should know better than that. It seems to me that we were both suckered very badly once by a lady who didn't look the part at all, remember?
Remember? Of course I remembered, and the memory of Anne Corley caused a burning pain in my chest that didn't seem to lessen with the passage of time. I got up and poured myself another drink. That was easier than talking.
"I'll look into it, I said at last.
Ralph Ames nodded. "All right. In that case, I'm going to bed, he said.
I followed suit, but once in bed, I didn't go to sleep. For a long time, I lay there, doing all kinds of mental gymnastics in an effort to keep my mind off Anne Corley. By focusing completely on the hows and whys of Tadeo Kurobashi's murder and other more immediate matters I managed to keep her at bay somewhere outside my conscious memory. Eventually my mind wandered away from Tadeo Kurobashi's mystery to one of my own, one much closer to home and very much in need of a solution.
Where was my missing chunk of time? I worried the question like an old dog gnawing a bone. What had happened to the part of my life that contained my agreement to go to the mystery meeting with Ralph Ames and where I had somehow, inexplicably, smashed my fingers badly enough to require the attention of a doctor? How could I possibly have forgotten those things so completely? As if on cue, the constant throbbing reasserted itself, a pulsing reminder.
Try as I might to remember, though, there was nothing there, not a trace. It was as if a heavy black curtain had been pulled over the window of my memory. A blackout curtain.
As soon as the word came into my head, so did a sickening inkling of where that piece of my life had gone. I had forgotten things before on occasion. Everybody does that, but it had never been anything terribly important. I could recall misplacing my car once, finding it late the next day in the parking lot outside the Doghouse. But this time it was blatantly clear to me that, despite my desperately wanting to remember, I was missing pieces of my life that nobody else was. And there was a distinct cause-and-effect relationship that was hard to deny.
I thrashed around in bed and fought with the covers in a vain effort to deny the word's reality, to make the ugly possibility rebury itself somewhere far away, but it didn't. The word blackout was an evil genie let out of its bottle. It was out, and it wouldn't disappear.
And so I waited for sleep and mostly didn't find it until close to daylight. The rain had stopped. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep was the raucous squawk of a marauding sea gull. And that's when the dream came. I know it by heart. I see it over and over, and it's always the same.
Anne Corley,
"The one on the computer? Well, there was Doc Baker, George Yamamoto, Big Al—
"No, no, Ames interrupted. "I don't mean who saw it on the computer this morning. How many people around him were aware that it was Tadeo Kurobashi's favorite poem?
"Probably several. Yamamoto said it was familiar as soon as he saw it, but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it. Kimi knew it well, and I would imagine so would her mother. Why are you asking about the poem?
"Because it sounds to me as though whoever fed the virus into the MicroBridge computers must have known Tadeo Kurobashi very well in order to pick that particular verse, to know unerringly that it was part of his favorite poem.
"So? I asked. "What are you getting at?
Ames cocked his head to one side. "Think about it. If you were a young woman struggling to get along on whatever crumbs the university dishes out to instructors and on what you could make shoveling horse manure in someone else's barn, and if you knew your father was busy squandering your entire inheritance, wouldn't you be tempted to do something about it?
"I might, I said, "but not in this case. Kimiko Kurobashi isn't the type.
Ralph Ames looked at me sadly and shook his head. "Beau, you of all people should know better than that. It seems to me that we were both suckered very badly once by a lady who didn't look the part at all, remember?
Remember? Of course I remembered, and the memory of Anne Corley caused a burning pain in my chest that didn't seem to lessen with the passage of time. I got up and poured myself another drink. That was easier than talking.
"I'll look into it, I said at last.
Ralph Ames nodded. "All right. In that case, I'm going to bed, he said.
I followed suit, but once in bed, I didn't go to sleep. For a long time, I lay there, doing all kinds of mental gymnastics in an effort to keep my mind off Anne Corley. By focusing completely on the hows and whys of Tadeo Kurobashi's murder and other more immediate matters I managed to keep her at bay somewhere outside my conscious memory. Eventually my mind wandered away from Tadeo Kurobashi's mystery to one of my own, one much closer to home and very much in need of a solution.
Where was my missing chunk of time? I worried the question like an old dog gnawing a bone. What had happened to the part of my life that contained my agreement to go to the mystery meeting with Ralph Ames and where I had somehow, inexplicably, smashed my fingers badly enough to require the attention of a doctor? How could I possibly have forgotten those things so completely? As if on cue, the constant throbbing reasserted itself, a pulsing reminder.
Try as I might to remember, though, there was nothing there, not a trace. It was as if a heavy black curtain had been pulled over the window of my memory. A blackout curtain.
As soon as the word came into my head, so did a sickening inkling of where that piece of my life had gone. I had forgotten things before on occasion. Everybody does that, but it had never been anything terribly important. I could recall misplacing my car once, finding it late the next day in the parking lot outside the Doghouse. But this time it was blatantly clear to me that, despite my desperately wanting to remember, I was missing pieces of my life that nobody else was. And there was a distinct cause-and-effect relationship that was hard to deny.
I thrashed around in bed and fought with the covers in a vain effort to deny the word's reality, to make the ugly possibility rebury itself somewhere far away, but it didn't. The word blackout was an evil genie let out of its bottle. It was out, and it wouldn't disappear.
And so I waited for sleep and mostly didn't find it until close to daylight. The rain had stopped. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep was the raucous squawk of a marauding sea gull. And that's when the dream came. I know it by heart. I see it over and over, and it's always the same.
Anne Corley,
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