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The dateline was Boston, and the story was accoraph

The picture was still blurry and dark, but the scale was now large enough to allow her to read the text, although not coe one of the already enlarged quadrants, pulling up the first column of the article so she could read it without strain

The opening line eous bystander, ould say only that his name was Jiland Power and Light Company vault exploded under a sidewalk in a Boston residential area Thursday evening

Softly, she said, "What the hell?" She tapped the keys, instructing the coe to show her the multiply enhanced photo that accoer scale, then to a still bigger one, until the face filled the screen

Jim Ironheart

Briefly she sat in stunned disbelief, immobile Then she was stricken by a need to know enuinely physical need that felt not unlike a sudden and intense pang of hunger

She returned to the text of the story and read it through, then read it again The O’Conner boy had been sitting on the sidewalk in front of his home, directly on the two-by-three-foot concrete lid that covered the entrance to the power coh for four ether within its subterranean confines The kid had been playing with toy trucks His parents had been within sight of hier had sprinted along the street "He coht at Nicky," the boy’s father was quoted, "snatches hi to steal er leaped over a low picket fence onto the O’Conners’ lawn, just as a 17,000-volt line in the vault exploded behind hih into the air, as if it was a penny, and a bright ball of fire roared up in In its wake

Embarrassed by the effusive praise heaped on hihbors who had witnessed his herois insulation, heard a hissing co from the vault, and kneas about to happen because he had "once worked for a power coraph, he insisted on leaving before the h value on my privacy"

That hair’s-breadth rescue had occurred at 7:40 Thursday evening a Boston at 4:40 Portland time yesterday afternoon Holly looked at the office wall clock It was now 2:02 FridayNicky O’Conner had been plucked off that vault cover not quite nine and a half hours ago

The trail was still fresh

She had questions to ask the Globe reporter who had written the PIECE But it was only a little after five in thein Boston He wouldn’t the at work yet

She closed out the Press’s current-edition data file On the COMPUTER screen, the standard h a modern she accessed the vast network of data services to which the Press subscribed She instructed the Neeb service to scan the stories that had been carried by the wire services and published infor INSTANCES in which the name "Jim" had been used within ten words of either "rescue" or the phrase "saved the life" She asked for a printout of every article, if there should be any, but asked to be sparedher request, she snatched up the phone at her desk and called long-distance infor a listing for Jie, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties

None of the operators was able to help her If he actually lived in southern California as he had told her he did, his phone was unlisted

The laser printer that she shared with three other workstations was hu into the receiving tray

She wanted to hurry to the cabinet on which the printer stood, grab the first printout, and read it at once; but she restrained herself, focusing her attention on the telephone instead, trying to think of another way to locate Jim Ironheart down there in the part of California that locals called "the Southland"

A few years ago, she simply could have accessed the California Department of Motor Vehicles computer and, for a s a valid driver’s license in the state

But after the actress Rebecca Schaeffer had been murdered by an obsessed fan who had tracked her down in that fashion, a ne had imposed restrictions on DMV records

If she had been an accoe, she no doubt could have finessed entrance to the DMV records in spite of their new safeguards, or perhaps she could have pried into credit-agency databanks to search for a file on Ironheart

She had known reporters who honed their coht her sources and inforitimate fashion, without deception

Which is why you’re writing about such thrilling stuff as the Tiht sourly

While she puzzled over a solution to the probleot a cup of coffee from the coin-operated brewer It tasted like yak bile She drank it anyway, because she was going to need the caffeine before the night was through She bought another cup and returned with it to the newsrooes from its tray and sat down at her desk

Neeb had turned up a thick stack of stories from the national press in which the name "Jim" was used within ten words of "rescue" or "saved the life" She counted them quickly Twenty-nine

The first was a huo Sun-Ti sentence aloud: "Jim Foster, of Oak Park, has rescued over one hundred stranded cats from" She dropped that printout in her wastecan and looked at the next one It was fro for the Phillies, rescued his club fro that one aside, as well, she looked at the third It was afor the mention of Jim The fourth was a reference to Jim Harrison, the novelist The fifth was a story about a New Jersey politician who used the Heimlich maneuver to save the life of a Mafia boss in a barrooether, when the patron began to choke to death on a chunk of peppery hot Sli to worry that she would come up empty-handed by the bottom of the stack, but the sixth article, from the Houston Chronicle, opened her eyes wider than the vile coffee had WOMAN SAVED FROM, VENGEFUL HUSBAND On July 14, after winning both financial and child custody issues in a bitter divorce suit, Aed husband, Cosmo, outside her home in the wealth River Oaks district of the city After Cosmo missed her with the first two shots, she had been saved by a man who "appeared out of nowhere," wrestled her round, and disarmed him