When the customer left, there was only one other, a young man in a leather jacket perusing a showcase of voice-activated tape recorders and portable voice stress analyzers. The fat man behind the counter wore thick glasses and gold chains, and looked like he always had a deal for someone.
“Excuse me,” I said as quietly as possible.
“I’m looking for Carrie Grethen.”
“She went out for coffee, should be back in a minute.” He studied my face.
“Can I help you with something?”
“I’ll look around until she returns,” I said.
“Sure.”
I had just gotten interested in a special attache case that included a hidden tape recorder, wire tap alerts, telephone descrambler, and night vision devices, when Carrie Grethen walked in. She stopped when she saw me, and for an unnerving instant I thought she might fling her cup of coffee in my face. Her eyes drove through mine like two steel nails.
“I need a word with you,” I said.
“I’m afraid this is not a good time.” She tried to smile, to sound civil, because now there were four customers in this very small store.
“Of course it’s a good time,” I said, holding her gaze.
“Jerry?” She looked at the fat man.
“Can you handle things for a few minutes?” He stared hard at me like a dog ready to lunge.
“I promise I won’t be long,” she reassured him.
“Yeah, sure,” he said with the distrust of the dishonest.
I followed her out of the store and we found an empty bench near a fountain.
“I heard about Lucy’s accident and I’m sorry about that. I hope she’s all right,” Carrie said coldly as she sipped her coffee.
“You don’t care in the least how Lucy is,” I said.
“And there’s no point in wasting any of your charm on me because I have you figured out. I know what you did.”
“You don’t know anything.” She smiled her frosty smile, and the air was filled with the sounds of water.
“I know you made a cast of Lucy’s thumb in rubber, and figuring out her Personal Identification Number was simple since you were with each other so much. All you had to do was be observant and note the code she punched in. This was how you accessed the biometric lock system the early morning you violated ERF.”
“My, don’t you have an active imagination?” She laughed and her eyes got harder.
“And I might advise you to be very careful making accusations like that.”
“I’m not interested in your advice. Miss. Grethen. I’m interested only in giving you a warning. It will soon be proven that Lucy did not break into ERF. You were smart but not smart enough, and you made one fatal oversight.” She was silent, but I could see her mind racing behind her icy facade. Her curiosity was desperate.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with self-confidence that was beginning to waver.
“You may be good with computers, but you are not a forensic scientist. The case against you is very simple. ” I put forth my theory with the certitude of any good lawyer who knows how to play the game.
“You asked Lucy to assist you in a so-called research project involving the biometric lock system at ERF.”
“Research project? There is no research project,” she said hatefully.
“And that’s the point. Miss. Grethen. There is no research project. You lied to her so you could get her to let you make a cast of her thumb in liquid rubber.” She laughed shortly.
“My goodness. You’ve been watching too much James Bond. You don’t really think anyone would believe” — I cut her off.
“This rubber thumb you made was then used to get into the lock system so you and whoever else could commit what amounts to industrial espionage. But you made one mistake.” Her face was livid.
“Would you like to hear what that mistake was?” Still, she said nothing, but she wanted to know. I could feel her paranoia radiating like heat.
“You see. Miss. Grethen,” I went on in the same reasonable tone.
“When you make a cast of a finger, the print impression on it is actually a reversal or mirror image of the original one. So the print of your rubber thumb was an inversion of Lucy’s print. In other words, it was backward. And an examination of the print that was scanned into the system at three in the morning will show this quite clearly.” She swallowed hard, and what she said next validated all that I conjectured.