by Jeanne Adams
“Ms. Hagen? Torie?”
“Yes, I’m still here. It’s just that, well, there’s been so much, I hadn’t considered the jewelry. My grandmother’s diamonds. They were…”
“Special. I know,” Barbara said, her sympathy evident. “This is the worst sort of thing. Having to catalog these things, give us lists, keep receipts. All that.”
“Oh, the catalog,” Torie brightened. “I have that. On disc in my safety deposit box.”
“You have an inventory?”
“I do. I made it after an attempted robbery a few years ago,” Torie said, then realized she hadn’t put that incident on the list she gave Paul. “I put it in the safety deposit box. The key,” she began. Well, hell. The key was at her office, locked in her desk. “I’ll get the key from my office and get the disc. Should I bring you a copy of the disc or a paper copy?” She would go to the office at the end of the day. She’d call Steve, her boss, and tell him what she needed. He’d understand that much, she hoped.
“Are there pictures?” Barbara said eagerly.
“Yes, and comparable prices for some of the pieces. I’m an engineer, Barbara. We dot the Is and cross the Ts.”
“Well, you’ll be glad of that in this case, especially with the jewelry. It means a quicker payout for you, too, on getting new furniture and so forth, if you can prove what you had.”
“Well, there’s one thing that’s going right. I have to say, it’s about the only thing.”
“I know, dear,” the other woman commiserated. “I’ve seen the news. It must be hideous for you.” For a moment, Torie wondered if the woman was fishing for gossip, but in the next sentence, she disproved the worry. “All the more reason for us to find you a rental house, get you on the road to recovering from this.”
“Thank you. What do I need to do?”
“Contact a real estate agent, someone reputable, and have them set you up with something.” She named a price range that insurance would pay, and then said, “And if I could offer one word of advice?”
“Yes?”
“Buy some new clothes, get what you need there. Start car shopping as well so you’ll have reliable transportation, but don’t overwhelm yourself. Wait to buy furniture. Wait to try and replace the jewelry and dishes and personal items. From everything I’ve seen over the years, if you just give it a little time, it’s a lot better.”
Torie sighed. It was good advice. “Thanks, Barbara. I think I needed to hear that.”
She’d no sooner disconnected the call than her phone rang again. It was Pam, calling from home. Pam had said she had a client presentation today. Her design business was so popular, so sought after, the days were often so full for Pam that she barely ate lunch, much less had time to talk on the phone.
“Hey, girl,” she tried to sound cheerful. “What’s up.”
Pam’s answer was a sob.
“It’s Dev.”
“What happened?” Paul was in full battle mode by the time he reached his office. “And when?”
“Yesterday sometime, in the evening they think,” Martha said as she rose. “Detective Tibbet is here with the cybercrimes officer, a Detective Johnson. They’re in the computer center.”
“Jameson,” Tibbet greeted him as he walked into the center. The other detective was seated at one of the programmer’s stations, her hands flying over the keyboard. “Where’s Ms. Hagen?”
“Trying to piece her life back together,” he said bluntly. “She’s being watched over, and the press are off on another trail, so I think she’s okay for the moment.”
“Yeah.” Tibbet grimaced. “The courthouse shootings. Miracle nobody died. I guess that’s more interesting than a car blowing up and some guys getting hurt.”
“Lot of crazy people in the world,” Paul noted, thinking that whoever was after Torie ranked right up there on the crazy scale.
“God’s truth,” was Tibbet’s pithy rejoinder. “Back to this deal, though,” he continued. “Looks like this is going deeper and deeper. You got any more ideas you’re willing to share about who might be behind it? Got some skills with a computer, seems like.”
“Damn straight,” Detective Johnson commented. She glanced up long enough to say, “I’m Johnson, pleased to meet you, and all that.” She then went back to hammering at the keyboard.
“I’ve told you everything I can think of, Detective,” Paul said, watching the code fill the oversize screen the programmers used. It was like watching someone knit, each row following closely along to the next.
“No new ideas? No one you know who has outstanding computer skills?”
“I know a lot of people with computer skills. I have good skills, my assistant should have been a hacker, and I have two friends who run software companies. But neither Martha nor my geek pals want to hurt Torie.”
“You sure about that?” Tibbet lowered his voice. “Your secretary doesn’t like Ms. Hagen. Not one bit.”
“Assistant. She’s my executive assistant,” Paul corrected, thinking furiously. He shook his head. “It doesn’t play, Detective. You’re right, she doesn’t like Torie, but she adored Todd. She really, really thought the world of him.”
“Not a far stretch to hate, though.”
Paul couldn’t fathom how someone lived each day, worked each day, seeing the worst of society. “I still don’t think so.”
“Where were you last night?” Tibbet opened his little book. “Just to clear that up, ’cause I’m gonna get asked.”
“I was with Torie, helping her get some clothes. We met her friend Pam and her cousin for a—” he stopped, shifting mental gears. “Drink. We stayed at another of their friend’s house for a while. Someone she and Pam know. I didn’t know him.”
Tibbet was looking at him, and had obviously noted the hesitation. Damn.
“Uh huh. So, what time was this, uh, drink, you all had?”
“Around eight-thirty or nine. We’d been out shopping.” He rolled his eyes for form. “Then met Pam, Dev, and Carlos. When we finally left there, Torie and I were starving. We picked up burgers and fries from Ted’s Burgers over off Maple, on the way to my house. I think I have the receipt somewhere. We were nearly too tired to eat, but we managed it, then went to bed.”
“Together?”
Paul’s temper flared immediately, but he strapped it down. Tibbet was trying to get a reaction. Paul wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“No, Detective. She’s my client and she slept in my guest room. She didn’t want to endanger her friend Pam, but since it appears that hotel rooms aren’t safe or secure, I put her in my guest room.” He finished by putting his hands on the table between them and leaning in. “Satisfied?”
Tibbet grinned. “For now.” When Johnson made a noise, he whipped around.
“Whatcha got, Johnson?”
“Trace. Not much. Hang on,” Johnson muttered.
“What the hell?” A new voice joined the conversation and Paul turned to see the head of the computer department for the firm, Kathryn Tryon, hurrying in. “What’s going on? Who authorized this? What are you doing here?” She turned the last question to Paul. She was fired up and mad, mad enough to get up in his face.
“Pratt authorized it,” Paul said calmly. “We got hacked. I’m here because it focused on my files from a particular client. Some others were damaged, but Detective Tibbet indicated that Detective Johnson—” he pointed at the madly typing woman—“felt they were decoys. My files were the only ones totally wiped.”
“Oh, my God.” Her face blanched. “I hope like hell the backups work.”
Paul felt his stomach churn. His antacids were in his desk. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve had trouble with the backups in the last few months. Some disruptions. This is exactly what we were afraid might happen, but the partners…” she trailed off, realizing to whom she was speaking. The firm protected its own, especially the partners, and evidently Kathryn realized that she had been about to diss them to a det
ective.
“Ahem,” she said, clearing her throat. “The partners have been reviewing all my requests and fail-safe plans, and were budgeting for the options we would need.”
“Does that mean we’re shit out of luck in recovering my files?” Paul demanded, not really caring that Tibbet was there.
“No, no. We have backup, it’ll work.” Kathryn shot a look at Johnson and Tibbet, then faced Paul. “It’ll work.”
“Don’t try and boot it any time soon,” Johnson said without turning around. “You got some serious cleaning up to do before you can clear and reboot with the backup.” With a last lightning sequence on the keyboard, she turned around and looked at them. “In fact, if your firm can afford it, you may want to start fresh with new drives, load the backup on them. I can’t guarantee you’ll ever be able to get these clean.”
“Really? What kind of virus are we talking about?”
“You’ve got a three-pronged attack,” Johnson began. The two women began speaking what Paul considered to be a deeply foreign language. He could figure out a lot of things, dig down into the code to a limited degree, but it wasn’t his first love. The larger databases, like the ones designed especially for the firm, weren’t the poison he’d pick.
Wait.
“Kathryn, doesn’t this database have markers? Like, uh, special hooks? Don’t I remember something about that in one of the presentations early on? You or what’s his name—” Paul searched for the former staffer’s name—“Caldwell. Didn’t you or Caldwell make a big deal about the whatchamacallits that were supposed to protect from hackers?”
“Yes, that was me. Before I took over.”
“Where’s Caldwell?” Tibbet asked, looking from Paul to Kathryn. “This Caldwell knows the system well enough to do this?”
“Uh, well,” Kathryn began, obviously not sure whether to rat out a colleague she hadn’t liked to the police, or protect the firm.
“Caldwell left the firm about six months ago.”
Tibbet frowned and scribbled. “Full name?”
“Taylor Caldwell.”
Tibbet looked up. “Like the author?”
Kathryn grimaced. “Yeah, but it’s a guy. He hated that reference. Said his mom just liked the name.”
“He got any beef with your client, Jameson?”
“Huh? Caldwell? Not that I know of. Why?”
Tibbet ignored him. “Ms. Anderson, these fail-safe technologies, should they have prevented this kind of intrusion?”
Kathryn looked at Paul. He had no idea what Pratt would have done, but he nodded. Better to tell the truth.
“Yes. They should have.”
“I got something,” Johnson said. Motioning Anderson over, she detailed how she’d put in a program and how to take it out.
When she was done, she said, “I’m runnin’ a search and track program. Like a bloodhound, it’s supposed to give me a location for the sender. Like an address in cyberspace. I send the dog out, it comes back with the info.” Data stopped flowing off and on to the screen. Four lines of text appeared, but didn’t change.
“What’s that?”
“The address. Now to backtrack it.” She scrambled the keys again and the data disappeared, and was then replaced by a mapping program. The satellite maps that popped up drilled down onto a street in a suburban area of Philadelphia. “Damn.”
“What?” Tibbet demanded.
“Cybercafé. Out a ways from town, over the river. Wish it could have been something better. These places are glorified coffee shops. Make more money on food and stuff than on renting the computer time. No cameras, no paying attention to the customers. Kinda like a Starbucks or a McDonald’s. Unless we can go in there with a picture and a description, they won’t be any help.”
Tibbet turned to Paul. “You got a picture of this Caldwell?”
“Kathryn?”
“Uh, Human Resources should have something. There are those ID cards and stuff.”
“But they’re on the database, right? And it’s compromised, isn’t it?”
“Uh, no, separate system. HR demanded stand-alones.”
“Good damn thing,” Tibbet muttered. “C’mon Jameson, let’s go to your HR department.”
He paced the confines of his office. What had happened? He hadn’t been that clumsy. No one should have known the files were gone. Not for months. How could they have figured it out so quickly? He’d seen the police going back in. He’d seen the woman’s jacket. It said “Cybercrimes” on the back.
There should have been no way for his subtle tampering to be found in such a short time.
“It’s not me,” he decided, muttering the words aloud. “Nothing I did should be traceable. It wouldn’t crash anything major.” He looked out the window, noted the obvious police cars parked across the street. “Don’t panic now. This isn’t about you. Red herring. Something else,” he reassured himself. He needed to find out.
How could he get into the offices? What pretext could he use? It had to be good, normal, natural. It would be too obvious otherwise.
He’d come too far, risked too much to panic now. No one suspected him. No one would ever suspect him.
There had to be something, someone else.
The thought hit him like a bolt of lightning.
What if someone else had hacked into the law firm’s computers? None of his tampering should warrant the cybercrimes people. What he’d done was too small, too delicate. Especially at this stage. It should have been months before it was detected.
It should have simply deteriorated the files slowly, oldest documents first, with very little trace. The file names would have remained.
If someone else tampered, would it speed the process up?
“Damn.” He whirled away from the window and dropped into his chair, swiveling it to face his monitor.
Chapter Eleven
“Pam, what is it?” Torie demanded. “What is it?”
“He’s-he’s-he’s—” she hiccupped.
“WHAT?”
“Gone,” she said on a wail.
“What? Where? Back to New Orleans?”
“I-I-I don’t know.”
Torie fishtailed around a corner, flooring the Mercedes as she got on the Schuylkill Expressway. She took a moment to appreciate the car Paul had loaned her. Maybe she’d look into a Mercedes for her next car. She hardly felt the excessive speed, and hoped the silver SUV could keep up. She found it in her rearview mirror as she scanned for police cars. She prayed there wouldn’t be any cops out looking to make their ticket quota as she sped up three exits to wind through the neighborhoods to Pam’s house. All the while trying to get Pam to stop crying, and give her some coherent information.
Pam met her at the door. Her eyes were red and her hands clutched a wad of tissue. Torie had never, ever seen her this distraught.
“Pam, what on earth is going on?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I do, but I don’t.”
“Huh?”
“We had this thing,” she sobbed, collapsing on the couch.
“Thing?”
“Yeah, you know.” Pam glared at her as she sat down, as if she should be able to know all this already. “A thing.”
“Do you want some tea or coffee or something?”
“No.” Pam’s head drooped, any flare of anger quickly extinguished.
That, more than anything, worried Torie. Pam never let anything stop her. Never let anything defeat her sparkling spirit. Certainly not a man.
“You’re not…you didn’t…”
“I’m not pregnant.”
Torie sighed. “That’s not what I was asking.” Not that she wasn’t relieved to hear it. “You didn’t…fall in love with him, did you?”
Pam’s laugh was harsh. “No, not me. I never do anything like that, do I? Have you ever known me to do that?”
“No, but I’ve never seen you like this, either.” Torie scooted closer, putting her arm around her friend. “Do you know where he went?”
Pam shook her head, then blew her reddened nose with a loud honk. Torie took a moment to look around. It was obvious Pam had been moping for a while. There was an empty tea mug, her drink of choice when depressed. Tissues were scattered around the trash can, which was pulled to the coffee table.
Definitely not Pam’s usual MO.
“Did you have a fight?”
“No.” Pam’s answer was defensive. “I just asked if he would miss me when he went home.”
“Had he said he was leaving?”
“No. But he lives in New Orleans, right? So I figured I’d ask.”
“Actually, I think he lives in Baton Rouge now, but he’s from New Orleans. He keeps a house in both places.”
“There, see? I didn’t know that. How come you know that? You never slept with him.” Irrational questions weren’t Pam’s usual order of business either, so Torie was beginning to be more and more concerned.
“I’m his cousin, Pam. We share a great-grandmother. He came to my father’s funeral. I know a bit about him.” She cocked her head. “You never showed any interest in him then.”
“I was seeing other people,” she said with ill grace. “I noticed him.”
“Noticed him.”
“Yeah, of course. He’s a man. I noticed him, all right? He wasn’t interested then. Neither was I, okay?”
Uh oh.
“You talked to him then?”
“Well, of course I did. He’s your cousin.” She folded her arms over her ample chest and huffed out a breath. “I flirted. He flirted back. But he was lookin’ at others, so I backed off.”
“Backed off. You?”
Pam rubbed her eyes, letting her head fall back onto the back of the couch. “I have standards, you know.” She closed her eyes. “They’re more flexible than most people’s, but I got ’em.” She rolled her head, opened her eyes, and looked at Torie. “I don’t hunt.”
“Oh, honey, I know. He was so supportive, especially after the wedding was called off. Really kind. But there wasn’t anything between us. You know that, right? Nothing but family.”
“Yeah. He said the same thing.”