“Virginia?” He ran his fingers through his hair and strangled his nervousness before it could speak. “I’m returning your call,” he easily said.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the computer.” She was all business.

“Yours too?” He couldn’t believe it. “Fish?”

“Yes! And get this. I leave home this morning and my computer’s off, right. Then I come home and not only is it on now, but there’s this map of 219 with all these little blue fish swimming around in it.”

“Has anyone been inside your house today?”

“No.”

“Your alarm was set?”

“Always.”

“You sure you didn’t just think you turned your computer off?”

“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What are all these fucking fish? Maybe you should come over.”

“I guess you’re right,” Brazil hesitated to say as his heart beat harder to make itself heard.

“We’ve got to get to the bottom of this,” West said.

Chief Hammer had been fighting with her computer for the past hour, trying to figure out how the city crime map had gotten on her screen and why there were fish in it. She tapped keys and rebooted twice while Popeye restlessly paced about, in and out of her toybox, scratching, standing on her hind legs, and jumping on furniture and finally into Hammer’s lap.

“How am I supposed to concentrate?” Hammer asked for the tenth time.

Popeye stared up at Hammer as she pointed the mouse at an X and tried again to exit the map on her screen. This was crazy. The computer was locked. Maybe Fling had screwed up the software. That was the risk when all PCs had to log into the microprocessor downtown. If Fling put a bug in the system, everybody on the Richmond network was infected. Popeye stared at the screen and touched it with her paw.

“Stop it!” Hammer said.

Popeye stepped on several keys that somehow jumped Hammer off the map and landed her on an unfamiliar screen with the heading RPD PIKE PUNT. Under it were strings of programming that made no sense: IM to $im__on and available and AOL% findwindow(“AOL Frame2.5” , 0&), and so on.

“Popeye! Now look what you’ve done. I’m in the operating system where I absolutely don’t belong. Let me tell you something, I’m not a neurosurgeon. I don’t belong here. I touch one thing and I could brain-damage the entire network. What the hell did you hit and how am I supposed to get out?”

Popeye stepped on several keys again, and the map and fish returned. She jumped to the floor, stretched and trotted out of the room. She came back with her stuffed squirrel and started slinging it. Hammer swiveled her chair around and looked at her dog.

“Listen to me, Popeye,” Hammer said. “You’ve been home all day. When I left the house this morning, my computer was on the main menu. So how could it be that when I walked in just a little while ago I find this map with all those little fish? Did you see anything? Maybe the computer made noises and things started happening on it? We don’t have fish in any of our COMSTAT applications that I am aware of.”