Murder in the Rue Ursulines Read Online Free PDF

future or what’s going to happen to you, you exercise that need for control by controlling your home environment.” He’d even said that was part of the reason I worked out regularly—to gain ‘control’ over my body. While going to the therapist was helping me, there were times I thought he was full of shit.
    But even my therapist would understand why walking into Jephtha’s computer lab made me cringe inwardly. There was a thick layer of dust on everything—he refused to let Abby clean in there. Piles of newspapers and paper covered every available surface. Empty plastic soda bottles were scattered all over the floor. Jephtha was partial to every conceivable kind of snack that came in a bag—potato chips, pretzels, and corn chips. If Abby didn’t cook, he would probably live on chips. He always kept the curtains closed, and the only light he ever turned on was the one on the desk by whatever computer he was working on.
    Predictably, I sneezed.  He looked up from the computer screen and grinned at me. There was an open bottle of Coke next to his keyboard, and in one hand he held a bag of Funions. As I watched, he tilted the bag over his mouth and shook the crumbs out in a shower—some of them missing his mouth and dusting his cheeks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him when he wasn’t eating or snacking on something, but somehow he never gained a pound. He was taller than me—about six-feet-six with maybe 150 pounds on his long-limbed frame. He wore his light brown hair long and was always pushing it out of his pale face. His face was long and thin, and he was wearing his glasses. “Hey, Chanse, buddy,” he said, spitting out Funion crumbs as he wiped his hands on his Che Guevara T-shirt. “You got something for me, man?”
    I reached into my backpack and pulled out the folder of e-mails.  “I need you to trace the computer these came from.” I handed it to him.
    He didn’t even look at them, just slid the folder on top of the stack closest to his computer. He waved a hand. “Piece of cake—so easy it’s hardly even worth my time. I keep telling you—let me teach you how to do it yourself, save you a trip over here and some money, too.”
    I shook my head. “Nah, I’d rather pay you to do it.”
    “Well, you know my rule. I have to charge for at least an hour’s worth of work.” He said it apologetically. He always seemed to regret charging me for the work he did for me, no matter how much I insisted it was more than worth it to me.
    “That’s fine.” Jephtha’s hourly rate was ridiculously low. “I don’t want you to have to go back to a life of crime.”
    “No worries on that score, trust me.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Like I said, it won’t take more than ten minutes, tops.” He grinned at me. “But you got to check this out, man.” He enjoyed writing programs, but his real love was designing computer games. He confided in me once that should one of his games ever catch on and become a success, he wanted to start a foundation to help kids like him.
    “I don’t want some other kid to wind up in jail the way I did,” he said simply, “just because there wasn’t anyone around to help out.” That was the kind of person Jephtha was. There was no doubt in my mind that one day he’d finally design the game that would make him millions. I suspected the only reason he hadn’t so far was his macabre sense of humor. His games were usually inspired by something that irritated him. He used the computer games to vent his spleen.  Some of them were so brilliantly funny—if slightly disturbing—that they just might catch on in the increasingly violent world of computer gaming.
    I looked at the computer screen and recognized Tourist Season, his latest game. In it, the player walked through the streets of the French Quarter with an automatic weapon. You got points for killing tourists doing things they shouldn’t. But if the tourist was just walking along doing nothing wrong,