That didn’t work. An hour later my pager remained silent.
‘She probably didn’t get it straight about putting pound signs after everything,’ Lucy said as she cruised around inside CAIN.
‘Any strange messages anywhere?’ I asked.
‘No. It’s a Friday afternoon and a lot of people are on holiday. I think we should send something out over Prodigy and see what comes back.’
I sat next to her.
‘What’s the name of the group?’
‘American Academy of Gold Foil Operators.’
‘And their highest concentration is Washington State?’
‘Yes. But it can’t hurt to include the entire West Coast.’
‘Well, this will include the entire United States,’ Lucy said as she typed Prodigy and entered her service ID and password. ‘I think the best way to do this is through the mail.’ She pulled up a Jump Window. ‘What do you want me to say?’ She looked over at me.
‘How about this? To all American Academy of Gold Foil Operators. Forensic pathologist desperately needs your help ASAP. And then give them the information to contact us.’
‘All right. I’ll give them a mailbox here and carbon copy it to your mailbox in Richmond.’ She resumed typing. ‘The replies may come in for a while. You may find you get a lot of dentists for pen pals.’
She tapped a key as if it were a coda and pushed back her chair. ‘There. It’s gone,’ she said. ‘Even as we speak, every Prodigy subscriber should have a New Mail message. Let’s just hope someone out there is playing with their computer and can help.’
Even as she spoke, her screen suddenly went black, and bright green letters started flowing across it. A printer turned on.
‘That was quick,’ I started to stay.
But Lucy was out of her chair. She ran to the room where CAIN lived and scanned her fingerprint to get in. Glass doors unlocked with a firm click and I followed her inside. The same writing was flowing across the system monitor, and Lucy snatched a small beige remote control off the desk and pressed a button. She glanced at her Breitling and activated the stopwatch.
‘Come on, come on, come on!’ she said.
She sat before CAIN, staring into the screen as the message flowed. It was one brief paragraph repeated numerous times. It said:
– – -MESSAGE PQ43 76301 001732 BEGINS- – -TO: – All COPS FROM: – CAIN
IF CAIN KILLED HIS BROTHER, WHAT DO YOU
THINK HE’D DO TO YOU?
IF YOUR PAGER GOES OFF IN THE MORGUE,
IT’S JESUS CALLING.
– – -MESSAGE PQ43 76301 001732 ENDS- – –
I looked at the shelves of modems filling one wall, at lights flashing. Though I was not a computer expert, I saw no correlation between their activity and what was occurring on screen. I looked around some more and noticed a telephone jack below the desk. A cord that was plugged into it disappeared beneath the raised floor, and I found that odd.
Why would a device plugged into a telephone jack be stored beneath a floor? Telephones were on tables and desks. Modems were on shelves. I got down and lifted a panel that covered a third of the floor inside CAIN’s room.
‘What are you doing?’ Lucy exclaimed, unable to take her eyes off the screen.
The modem beneath the floor looked like a small cube puzzle with rapid flashing lights.
‘Shit!’ Lucy said.
I looked up. She stared at her watch and wrote something down. The activity on the screen had stopped. The lights on the modem quit flashing.
‘Did I do something?’ I asked in dismay.
‘You bastard!’ She pounded her fist on the desk, and the keyboard jumped. ‘I almost had you. One more time and I would have had your ass!’
I got up. ‘I didn’t disconnect anything, I hope?’ I said.
‘No. Dammit! He logged off. I had him,’ she said, still staring at her monitor as if the green words might begin to flow again.
‘Gault?’
‘CAIN’s imposter.’ She blew out a big breath of air and looked down at the naked guts of the creation she had named after the world’s first murderer. ‘You found it,’ she blandly said. ‘That’s pretty good.’