The Never Game

He left one of his business cards in the door crack. It gave only his name and the burner number. He wrote: I need to talk to you about Sophie. Call me.

Shaw returned to his car and sent Kyle’s picture, address and phone number to his private investigator, Mack, requesting background, criminal and weapons checks. Some information he wanted was not public but Mack rarely differentiated between what was public and what was not.

Shaw skimmed the notebook once more and fired up the engine, pulling into traffic. He’d decided where the next step of the investigation would take him.

Lunch.

7

Colter Shaw walked through the door of the Quick Byte Café in Mountain View.

This was where Sophie had been at about 6 p.m. on Wednesday — just before she disappeared.

On Thursday, Mulliner had stopped in here, asking about his daughter. He’d had no luck but had convinced the manager to put up a MISSING flyer on a corkboard, where it now was pinned beside cards for painters, guitar and yoga instruction and three other MISSING announcements — two dogs and a parrot.

Shaw was surveying the place and smelling the aroma of hot grease, wilty onions, bacon and batter (BREAKFAST SERVED ALL DAY).

The Quick Byte, EST. 1968, couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a bar, a restaurant or a coffee shop, so it opted to be all three.

It might also function as a computer showroom, since most of the patrons were hunched over laptops.

The front was spattered plate glass, facing a busy commercial Silicon Valley street. The walls were of dark paneling and the floor uneven wood. In the rear, backless stools sat in front of the dim bar, which was presently unmanned. Not surprising, given the hour — 11:30 a.m. — though the patrons didn’t seem the alcohol-drinking sort; they exuded geek. Lots of stocking caps, baggy sweats, Crocs. The majority were white, followed by East Asian and then South Asian. There were two black patrons, a couple. The median age in the place was about twenty-five.

The walls were lined with black-and-white and color photographs of computers and related artifacts from the early days of tech: vacuum tubes, six-foot-high metal racks of wires and square gray components, oscilloscopes, cumbersome keyboards. Display cards beneath the images gave the history of the devices. One was called Babbage’s Analytical Engine — a computer powered by steam, one hundred and fifty years old.

Shaw approached the ORDER HERE station. He asked for green huevos rancheros and a coffee with cream. Cornbread instead of tortilla chips. The skinny young man behind the counter handed him the coffee and a wire metal stand with a numbered card, 97, stuck in the round spiral on top.

Shaw picked a table near the front door and sat, sipping coffee and scanning the place.

The unbusy kitchen served up the food quickly and the waitress, a pretty young woman, inked and studded, brought the order. Shaw ate quickly, half the dish. Though it was quite good and he was hungry, the eggs were really just a passport to give him legitimacy here.

On the table he spread out the pictures of Sophie that her father had given him. He took a shot of them with his iPhone, which he then emailed to himself. He logged on to his computer, through a secure jetpack, opened the messages and loaded the images onto the screen. He positioned the laptop so that anyone entering or leaving the café could see the screen with its montage of the young woman.

Coffee in hand, he wandered to the Wall of Fame and, like a curious tourist, began reading. Shaw used computers and the internet extensively in the reward business and, at another time, he would have found the history of high technology interesting. Now, though, he was concentrating on watching his computer in the reflection in the display case glass.

Since Shaw had no legal authority whatsoever, he was present here by the establishment’s grace. Occasionally, if the circumstances were right and the situation urgent, he’d canvass patrons. Sometimes he got a lead or two. More frequently he was ignored or, occasionally, asked to leave.

So he often did what he was doing now: fishing.

The computer, with its bright pictures of Sophie, was bait. As people glanced at the photos, Shaw would watch them. Did anyone pay particular attention to the screen? Did their face register recognition? Concern? Curiosity? Panic? Did they look around to see whose computer it was?

He observed a few curious glances at the laptop screen but they weren’t curious enough to raise suspicion.

Shaw could get away with studying the wall for about five minutes before it looked odd, so he bought time by pulling out his mobile and having an imaginary conversation. This was good for another four minutes. Then he ran out of fake and returned to his seat. Probably fifteen people had seen the pictures and the reactions were all blasé.