The Hanged Man's Song

me,” LuEllen said, looking back at the kid in the street. “Why’s he walking around in this sun with a helmet on? Why doesn’t he have a bicycle?”
    >>> WE ALL went together to the Willowby apartment, a little cluster, a scrum, three sweating, cranky people in clothes that suddenly looked too good, knocked on the door and got nothing. We were standing there, listening for anything inside, and LuEllen said, “Now what?”
    “Try again later,” I said, and stepped back. We were headed reluctantly back to the car when a woman pushed open a door on an adjoining apartment, sweeping dust out on the sidewalk. She fussed at it and then called, “You looking for somebody?” She wasn’t actually sweeping anything—the broom was an excuse to see what we were doing.
    John stepped toward her and put out his best official vibration. He was wearing slacks and a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and looked like he might just have taken off a sport coat in the heat. He said, “We’re looking for Rachel Willowby.”
    “She in trouble again?” The woman’s head was cocked away from us.
    “No. Not exactly. But we would like to talk with her. Have you seen her?”
    “Playing hooky again,” the woman speculated. Her eyes hit me, then went to LuEllen, and finally back to John. “Takes three of you, now.”
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re really not allowed to talk about it,” John said. “Do you know where she might be?”
    Another long pause, but John’s official stare got on top of her. “She’s home. Probably hidin’ under the bed.”
    “Where’s her mother?”
    “Her mother took off. Two months ago. I wouldn’t tell you about the girl, ’cept I don’t know what she eats, and she ain’t gonna be let live there much longer. It’s been rented. She sneaks in now.”
    “Thank you.” John walked straight back to the door and knocked on it, then tried the knob. The door was locked, but was so loose in its frame that he put a shoe against it, pushed, and it popped open. He called, “Rachel? We know you’re home.” A moment later, “There you are.” He stepped inside, out of sight, then stepped back to the door, looked at the woman, and said, “Thank you,” and to us, “Come on in.”
    >>> WE ALL trooped inside and found ourselves looking at a skinny little girl in shorts and a tube top. She wore big unfashionable plastic-rimmed glasses and had a ferociously unhappy look on her face. The house was unlit, with most of the blinds pulled, so she was working in semidarkness. The place smelled of onions and sweat. I could see one piece of furniture in the front two rooms, and that was a kitchen table. A laptop sat on the table, with a wire leading to a telephone. The laptop screen showed three open windows; a digital counter blinked in the lower right corner. She said, “That ol’ bitch gonna get her snoopy nose cut off, one of these days.”
    John shook his head and said, “We need to talk.”
    “I’m sick.” A sick look slipped onto her face. “I really am.”
    Fuck it: she was a hacker. I said, “We’re not from the schools. We’re not from the cops. I’m a hack and I want to know what you have to do with blowing Bobby out of the system.”
    That stopped her. She looked at me, forgot the others. “Where’d he go?”
    “We don’t know,” I lied. “We’re part of his backup group. He’s not at his house anymore, and something you did caused the trouble.”
    “Not me,” she said shrilly. She stepped protectively toward her laptop, eyes wide. “I hardly even know the man.”
    “He sent you the laptop,” I said. “You’re the only person who could’ve given anything away.”
    “I did not.”
    “You did something. You might not even know it.” I bent over the laptop, looking at the screen. “What’re you doing here, running a dictionary? What’re you trying to get into?”
    She flinched, put a protective hand out toward her screen. “I didn’t give shit to nobody.” She was loud, defiant, and still pretty small; I loomed over her.
    “Then somebody came over and got an address from you. Got it off the FedEx package. Who was that?”
    Her tongue curled over her bottom lip and she glanced at LuEllen and John and saw nothing but more adults, all ganged up on her. So she just said it. “That was Jimmy James Carp. He said he was gonna get me a laptop from Bobby and he did.”
    “Where does he live?”
    She shrugged, and relaxed a notch: she felt the blame shifting. “I