As I emerged from the governor’s offices, I was accosted from every direction. Flashguns went off in my eyes, and it seemed that everyone was shouting. The lead news item the rest of the day and the following morning was that the governor had temporarily relieved me of my duties until I could clear my name. An editorial conjectured that Norring had shown himself to be a gentleman, and if I were a lady I would offer to step down.
11
Friday I stayed home in front of the fire, continuing the tedious and frustrating job of making notes to myself as I attempted to document my every move over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, I was in my car driving home, front the office at the time the police believed Eddie Heath wars abducted from the convenience store. When Susan was murdered, I was home alone, for Marino had taken Lucy shooting: I was also by myself the early morning that Frank Donahue was shot. I had no witnesses to testify to my activities during the three murders.
Motive and modus operandi would be significantly more difficult to sell. It is very uncommon for a woman to kill execution style, and there could be no motive at all in Eddie Heath’s slaying unless I were a closet sexual sadist.
I was deep in thought when Lucy called out, “I’ve got something.” She was seated before the computer, the chair swiveled around to one side, her feet propped up on an ottoman. In her lap were numerous sheets of paper, and to the right of the keyboard was my Smith and Wesson thirty-eight.
“Why do you have my revolver in here?” I asked uneasily.
Pete told me to dry-fire it whenever I have a chance. So I’ve been practicing while running my program through the journal tapes.”
I picked up the revolver, pushed the thumb latch, and checked the chambers, just to be sure.
“Though I’ve still got a few tapes to run through, I think I’ve already gotten a hit on what we’re looking for,” she said.
I felt a surge of optimism as I pulled up a chair.
“The journal tape for December ninth shows three interesting TUs.”
“TUs?” I asked.
“Tenprint Updates,” Lucy explained. “We’re talking about three records. One was completely dropped or deleted. The SID number of another was altered. Then we have a third record which was a new entry made around the same time the other two were deleted or changed. I logged into CCRE and ran the SID numbers of both the altered record and the new record entered: The altered record comes back to Ronnie Joe Waddell.”
“What about the new record?” I said.
“That’s spooky. There’s no criminal history. I entered the SID number five times and it kept coming back to ‘no record found.’
Do you understand the significance?”
“Without a history in CCRE, we have no way of knowing who this person is.”
Lucy nodded. “Right. You’ve got someone’s, prints and SID number in AFIS, but there’s no name or other personal identifiers to match him up with. And that would indicate to me that somebody dropped this person’s record from CCRE. In other words, CCRE has been tampered with too.
“Let’s go back to Ronnie Waddell,” I said. “Can you reconstruct what was done to his ?”
“I’ve got, a theory. First, you need to know that the SID number is a unique identifier and has a unique index, meaning the system won’t allow you to enter a duplicate value. So if, for example I wanted to switch SID numbers with you, I’d have to delete your record first. Then after I’ve changed my SID number to yours, I’d, reenter your record, giving you my old SID number.
“And that’s what you think happened?” I asked.
“Such a transaction would explain the TUs I’ve found in the journal tape for December ninth.”
Four days before Waddell’s execution, I thought.
“There’s more,” Lucy said. “On December sixteenth, Waddlels record was deleted from AFIS.”
“How can that be?”
I asked, baffled. “A print from Jennifer Deighton’s house came back to Waddell when Vander ran it through AFIS a little over a week ago.”