Palm Sunday Read Online Free PDF Page B

an upstairs-downstairs routine. He considered whether he should barge in and bully them into returning the palmtop, or wait for an opportune moment to break into the house and steal it. The trouble with both approaches was that he didn’t know for sure that they even had it, and he didn’t want to attract undo attention. Had he simply knocked on the door and asked for it, Stanley Whipple would have been delighted to give it to him, but of course Slocum had no way of knowing this. After watching and thinking about it for another twenty minutes, he started his car and pulled away from the curb. He would come back in the morning. 

    ***

    The lights in the Whipple household burned long after Slocum had left. Stanley, on the verge of giving up, had stumbled upon a clue. It happened when he started playing with the date and time settings on the palmtop. He had simply been trying the various features, having tired of all his previous failures. As he toggled through the settings, the regular menu suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a peculiar logo that nearly filled the screen. A pair of wheat plants formed an arch, encompassing the initials NC.
    “Bobby, check this out.” Stanley excitedly looked up, and only then realized that he was alone. He looked at his watch. Ten forty-five. He glanced at the palm unit, then pushed his chair back and walked upstairs. The light was on in Bobby’s room, so he gently knocked and opened the door.
    Bobby was stretched out on his bed–sound asleep and fully clothed. Stanley walked over and covered him with a blanket, then stood watching him for several minutes. He recalled how he and his wife had stood together like this many times when she was alive. He smiled at the fond memory.
    He left Bobby’s room and went into the bathroom to splash some water on his face, and it was then that he caught himself staring into his own reflection. The face that looked back wasn’t old looking, but it was old, he knew. Not in years, perhaps, but experience can find ways to age a man that don’t necessarily find their way into wrinkles and creases. Stanley’s clean-shaven skin and bony features defied easy assignment of age, but in the eyes it was there, and Stanley couldn’t hold his own gaze. He was grateful for the towel that broke the moment, and softly closed the door and went downstairs to resume work on the palmtop.
    He sat before the strange display. NC. What did it mean? Beneath the logo was a line with a flashing cursor, obviously waiting for some input. A user name perhaps? He was reluctant to even touch it, fearing that even this bit of progress would slip away. He decided to take a guess, to put something in and see what happened, and racked his brain for the right word. What did he know that might make sense to the device?
    The only thing he could think of was NC, the logo that now stared at him. He had picked up the stylus to enter it, but then changed his mind. He did have one other word. Pascua, from the text he had downloaded earlier. He had florida, too, but pascua seemed more likely. He input the six letters, and tapped Enter. The logo disappeared and the screen went blank.
    At first he thought he had lost everything, but after ten seconds the screen refreshed and a menu system appeared, numbered one through five. He checked the interface cable attached to his computer and studied the menu.
    Option one read ‘New Contacts’. He scanned the rest, but none made any sense except the last one, number five, ‘Download’. He selected this option and watched as a light blinked on the palmtop, while his hard drive once again went crazy.
    This time the process was different from his earlier experiences. It more closely resembled the file transfers he was accustomed to, and there was even a status bar indicating what percentage remained. A few minutes later the process completed, and he was returned to the main menu. With nothing to lose, he now selected option one. The screen again