‘The photograph was in the envelope with the American Express card he apparently now has,’ I said. ‘Logic would tell you that he may have both.’
‘Someone else could have it.’ She was intensely watching the modems, then glancing at the time on her screen and making notes. ‘It depends on who actually went through my desk.’
We had always assumed it was Carrie alone who had broken in and taken whatever she wanted. Now I was not so sure.
‘Carrie may not have been by herself,’ I said.
Lucy did not reply.
‘In fact, I don’t believe Gault could have resisted the opportunity to come in here. I think he was with her.’
‘That’s awfully risky when you’re wanted for murder.’
‘Lucy, it’s awfully risky to break into here to begin with.’
She continued making notes while CAIN’s colors swirled on the screen and lights glowed on and off. CAIN was a space-age squid with tentacles connecting law enforcement entities here and abroad, his head an upright beige box with various buttons and slots. As cold air whirred, I almost wondered if he knew what we were saying.
‘What else might have disappeared from your office?’ I then said. ‘Is there anything else missing?’
She was studying a modem’s flashing light, her face perplexed. She glanced up at me. ‘It’s got to be coming in through one of these modems.’
‘What is?’ I asked, puzzled.
She sat before a keyboard, struck the space bar and the CAIN screen saver vanished. She logged on and began typing UNIX commands that made no sense to me. Next she pulled up the System Administrator Menu and got into the audit log.
‘I’ve been coming in here routinely and checking the traffic on the modems,’ she said, scanning. ‘Unless this person is physically located in this building and hardwired into the system, he’s got to be dialing in by modem.’
‘There’s no other way,’ I said.
‘Well’ – she took a deep breath – ‘theoretically you could use a receiver to pick up keyboard input via Van Eck radiation. Some Soviet agents were doing that not so long ago.’
‘But that wouldn’t actually get you inside the system,’ I said.
‘It could get you passwords and other information that might get you in if you had the dial-in number.’
‘Were those changed after the break-in?’
‘Of course. I changed everything I could think of, and in fact, the dial-in numbers have been changed again since. Plus we have callback modems. You call CAIN and he calls you back to make certain you’re legit.’ She looked discouraged and angry.
‘If you attached a virus to a program,’ I said, trying to help, ‘wouldn’t it change the size of the file? Couldn’t that be a way to find out where the virus is?’
‘Yes, it would change the file size,’ she said. ‘But the problem is that the UNIX program used to scan files for something like that is called checksum, and it’s not cryptographically secure. I’m sure who ever did this included a balancing checksum to cause the bytes in the virus program to disappear.’
‘So the virus is invisible.’
She nodded, distracted, and I knew she was thinking about Carrie. Then Lucy typed a who command to see what law enforcement agencies were logged on, if any. New York was. So were Charlotte and Richmond, and Lucy pointed out their modems to me. Lights danced across the front of them as data was transmitted over telephone lines.
‘We should go eat dinner,’ I said gently to my niece.
She typed more commands. ‘I’m not hungry now.’
‘Lucy, you can’t let this take over your life.’
‘You’re one to talk.’
She was right.
‘War has been declared,’ she added. ‘This is war.’
‘This is not Carrie,’ I said of the woman who, I suspected, had been more than Lucy’s friend.
‘It doesn’t matter who it is.’ She continued typing.
But it did. Carrie Grethen did not murder people and mutilate their bodies. Temple Gault did.
‘Was anything else of yours taken during the break-in?’ I tried again.
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me, her eyes glinting. ‘Yes, if you must know,’ she said. ‘I had a big manilla envelope that I didn’t want to leave in my dorm rooms at UVA or here because of roommates and other people in and out. It was personal. I thought it was safer in my desk up here.’