Saturday, April 30

Sweet Oblivious Antidote

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
—Macbeth V.iii

Andi drove from the theater to her house in silence. I was afraid to break it. My arm resting on the seatback let me softly touch her shoulder as she drove. Once at a stoplight, she pulled my fingers to her lips and kissed them, then put my hand securely back on her shoulder. Much though I wanted to, I didn’t dare put my hand on her leg beside the console. I didn’t want to seem pushy. I hadn’t felt this nervous since high school.

She pulled the van into the spot behind her duplex and as soon as we were both out of the car she grabbed my hand tightly as she went to the back door and unlocked it. She didn’t bother to ask whether I wanted to come in.

As soon as the door shut behind us, Andi’s lips were pressed against mine and we both moaned as we found each other’s warm, receptive mouth. I held her… no, I clutched her tightly against me, willing her to simply know how much I loved her.

When Eric’s three-legged cats finally decided they liked me a few years ago—or at least that I was a fact in the building and wouldn’t suddenly disappear—they attached themselves to me at every opportunity. If I sat on the back steps to drink wine with Eric, or if a group of us gathered around a hibachi to grill steaks on the landing, they would twist around my ankles, rubbing and purring. If I failed to pet them in the right spot, they rubbed against me until they had satisfied themselves. Once, when I was juggling two bags of groceries that I’d carried down the hill from QFC, they slipped past me into my apartment and when I sat in my recliner they were suddenly both in my lap kneading my leg with their one front paw each and pushing every part of their bodies against me with a purr that shook the picture on my wall.

I swear that Andi was purring against my chest as she molded her body into mine.

Nor was I idle in petting her.

Whenever I took a breath to say something, she captured my mouth in another kiss. We were lost in each other. When Andi pushed me away firmly, I thought we were ready to return to cautious reality.

“Dag, Cali is spending the night at Alex’s house. Will you stay with me tonight? Please.”

“Andi…” It was what I wanted more than anything, and still I was so afraid that our relationship wasn’t ready. “Andi, are you sure? Once we do this we can’t go back. I love you desperately, but I don’t want to lose what we have.”

“Dag, my darling. We don’t have to sacrifice what we have to have what we want. You are a good man. I know you might break my heart one day, but I also know you would never be cruel or hurt me if you could avoid it. Now come with me.” She turned and headed toward her bedroom. I started to follow, then stopped abruptly.

“Andi, wait.” She turned and I saw a moment of doubt and worry on her face. “I’m not prepared. I didn’t bring anything…” Damn the age of safe sex!

“Take one from the cookie jar,” she said, laughing at me. Then she stepped back into the kitchen and looked me straight in the eye. “Grab a handful.”

***

Once we were in Andi’s bedroom, everything slowed down. It wasn’t that we didn’t both desperately want to consummate our love, but neither of us wanted to miss anything about the experience. I looked around and realized that in seven years of friendship I’d never seen Andi’s bedroom. Her bed was actually bigger than mine, no matter that I was nine inches taller. There simply wasn’t room in my apartment for a big bed and so I slept diagonally on a standard double.

The décor in Andi’s room was feminine, but not girly. She had matching pastel sheets, duvet cover, dust ruffle, and pillows complemented by the simple dressing chair upholstery and the drapes. There was nothing ornate, but a simple throw-rug in a darker hue was in front of the bed, and a couple of very nice pieces of artwork that on closer examination proved to be quite erotic hung on the wall. The rest of the room was decorated in pictures of Cali at all stages of her life. There was Cali in school pictures and Cali in plays. I was a little nervous about undressing in front of so many pictures of the girl.

Andi took that decision away from me. We gently helped each other out of each item of clothing, showering kisses on each other as we removed each piece. We let our hands touch each other and our lips taste each other. Both of us wanted to remember this moment for the rest of our lives and neither of us wanted it to be a blur of frantic passion.

But the passion was there. As we settled our naked bodies between the sheets, we kissed and even laughed at each other’s reactions. She softly kissed my head near my wound and asked if it was okay. We surprised each other with impromptu discoveries of erogenous zones that neither of us knew we had. When I dragged a finger lightly from the hollow beneath her collar bone across her breast and down to the valley of her navel, Andi shuddered in my arms. Then she giggled like a teenager and quietly said, “Do you want to… now?” I smiled at her wickedly.

“No. I was thinking we’d just tease each other tonight.” Her eyes got big and then a fit of giggles took us both over. Her hand caressed my ribcage and I could feel an electric tingle all up and down my spine. I pulled her to me and kissed her eyelids. “Oh Andi, I love you so much.”

“Then make love to me, Dag.”

We slid together and with a minimal amount of fumbling I began to enter her as I looked into her eyes. Not for the first time, I felt I could just lose myself in her eyes. I pressed my cheek against hers and sank sank slowly into her. She suddenly caught her breath, her whole body shaking. I felt moisture against my cheek and looked again at her face. Tears streamed from her eyes, clenched shut. I panicked slightly. I don’t know what possessed me.

“Andi… Were you… Were you a…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. She panted shallowly.

“I have… a… 17-year-old daughter. I don’t think it grows back.” There was something determined about the way she said it. She opened her eyes, filled with tears and a smile broke across her face that filled my heart.

“Andi…?”

“Just make love to me, Dag. I’ve waited so long for you.”

Excite the Man

For their dear causes
Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm
Excite the mortified man.
—Macbeth V.ii

I hadn’t been to sleep yet when Andi called and asked if I was interested in a cup at the Analog. I glanced at the clock on my screen and realized it was after 8:00. After I said yes, I looked at the results of all my research during the night. What I had to report wasn’t happy, but neither did it explain why Melissa would suddenly up and run away without even telling her best friend. I met Andi at the foot of the back stairs in the alley and we walked down to the Analog Café. We’d done this dozens of times in the past, though usually not quite so early in the morning. And never before with her hand held in mine as we walked.

It was a beautiful clear day, though the streets were still wet from last night’s rain. The Space Needle punctuated the view down Thomas with Puget Sound glistening in the background and an amazing clear and crisp view of the Olympic Mountains in the background. I had the feeling this was going to be a good day after all the stress of the week past. One thing for sure was that I had no intentions of going back to CCS this weekend, and probably not Monday either. All through searching for clues about Mel during the night, my brain was processing the clues to the credit card fraud in the background. I was down to four suspects based on who had access to my backpack after the accident. I’d been at CCS two weeks. Phil had been on vacation half that time. We’d had very little interaction. Darlene had been nothing but helpful to me since I started there. She was sweet, loyal to her boss, efficient at what she was doing, and great at covering for me when needed. I’d looked into Jen’s eyes. I saw a degree of raw lust there—maybe even a challenge—but I hadn’t detected any outright malice. She had the same kind of dogged determination to get to the bottom of a puzzle that I had. Then there was Arnie. Position of power. Access to everything in the company. Technically adept. And when it came down to it, I really disliked executives. I was pretty sure I had my villain. I just needed proof.

I was so wrapped up in the pleasant sensations of walking hand in hand with my newfound love that I didn’t even notice the sights that were so commonplace in our neighborhood. I saw people I recognized and we all belonged in our community—like the very cute brunette dressed, like so many people on Capitol Hill, all in black. She wore a brightly colored scarf around her neck and cowboy boots. She cut quite the figure as she bent to fasten the leash of her pug to a chair leg outside while she ran in to get a coffee. I didn’t even notice. Yeah.

“How’s Cali this morning?” I asked Andi.

“Better, I think. She’s still asleep. I popped my head into her room to see if she wanted to come along this morning, but she pulled the covers up over her head. Between the show and her best friend running off, she was pretty exhausted. I cuddled her until she finally fell asleep last night. Afterward, I was wishing someone would cuddle me.” She smiled up at me and I placed a light kiss on her lips just before we ordered our coffees.

“You could have called me.”

“Mmm. I glanced up, but your room was dark. I assumed you were asleep.”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Young love,” Lonnie the barista commented while he waited for us to place our orders. “I wondered when you two would finally get together. What a difference a week makes.” We grinned at him. He was already pulling our shots.

“Do you know everything about everyone in this neighborhood?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” he replied. “It’s our own little soap opera. Do you know how many hearts you’ve broken by finally choosing Andi? There’ve been more tears than coffee on this counter this week.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “How could anyone even know?”

“Well, I certainly don’t gossip about anything, but I do hear things.” Andi was blushing almost scarlet. I looked around the café. Did I just imagine that people’s eyes were turning away from us just as I glanced their way?

“There isn’t even another girl in the same generation in this neighborhood,” I joked casually. “Rule of dating: Half your age plus seven. Minimum.”

“Who was talking about the girls?” Lonnie said, sighing. This time I blushed—I could feel it. We left and took our drinks outside to enjoy the sunny morning. As soon as we were out of the coffee shop, Andi started giggling.

“What?” I asked.

“Pheromones. Now I’m sure of you,” she said cryptically. I raised an eyebrow. I had no idea what she was talking about. “As soon as a man falls in love, he starts exuding an aura that attracts other potential mates. It’s the perceived last chance before the boat sails.”

“Hey,” I said. “This boat has already left the harbor.”

“Hmmm. This boat hasn’t even entered the harbor yet.” That shut me up, but good! We strolled south and ended up watching an early morning soccer game at Cal Anderson Park.

“What did you find out about Mel last night—since I know now you were up all night.”

“It doesn’t look good,” I said softly. This was going to be hard. “I’m suspecting she had assistance.”

“You mean she met someone?”

“Actually, I hope that’s all. She might have just put herself in danger.”

“Kidnapped? But the police…”

“If you have an 11-year-old who disappears, the police will immediately assume kidnapping and put out an amber alert. But if the child is over 15, the first assumption is that she’s a runaway unless you can provide specific evidence that it wasn’t voluntary. The police have a bulletin out on her, but there is no active search or alert. But Mel…”

“I can’t believe that Olivia accused Cali of causing her best friend to run away!” Real anger flared in Andi all at once. I knew she was concerned for Mel, but the fact that her own daughter had been verbally attacked brought out the momma bear in her. I clutched her to me tightly.

“Whatever happened, Cali is not to blame for it,” I reassured her. “You are the best mom in the world and Cali is a great kid. She didn’t lead Mel astray. But the truth is that Mel was acting dangerously online. It’s going to be almost impossible to get her parents to see that. She was very good at keeping an image of perfection at home.”

“What was she doing?”

“I ran various searches and comparisons all night long. In fact, I still have some running. The social network account that she has and that Cali is friends with her on was only one of her accounts. It’s public, and I’m sure her parents monitor it. They are both friends on her profile. Her posts are sweet and controlled. In fact, too controlled. Even Cali has slipped up and posted an occasional profanity on her updates. But Mel never expresses profanity in the way that we know she uses it. Her posts are always upbeat and rah-rah. It got me thinking that this wasn’t her real profile. It took a long time to verify, but I found an account that was marked ‘members only.’ That’s a dangerous sign, but I joined it. She has over 3,000 followers on that account and they are nearly all male.”

“How do you know it is her account?”

“The photographs.”

“Oh God, no! She’s not doing pornography is she?”

“Not openly, if at all. There were enough face shots that I could recognize her clearly. The rest of the pictures were not explicit, but were suggestive. Alluring. Some were even provocative. But none of them likely to get a person thrown into jail for possessing child pornography. She’s been doing this for at least two years.” Revealing this information to Andi was hard. She was the parent of a 17-year-old girl. Hearing what her daughter’s best friend was doing was not going down well.

“Cali… Cali isn’t involved in… Please tell me no, Dag.”

“No. Believe me, once I found out what Mel was into, I did just as extensive a search on Cali. Nothing came up.”

“Thank God! What do we do now?”

“I still don’t have any kind of evidence that suggests that she was kidnapped, so nothing I can turn over to the police. What I need to do is get access to her private email on this forum. I’m doing a search on everything I can come up with as a potential password.”

“How? How can you find a person’s password?”

“I’m using a hackerazzi technique. You’ve read about stars whose cell phones and Twitter accounts were hacked—pictures stolen, personal information given out? Essentially, most people use a password that is easy to remember. It’s usually something that has meaning to them. It could be the name of an old boyfriend, a dog, a favorite movie, an old address, even a private nickname or name of a sibling. Mother’s maiden name is popular. Now that I’ve got several different accounts where Mel has posted social updates, I’m downloading everything she’s said online and have a database searching for specific types of information. I’ll also do a word map to see what she’s said most frequently. Sometimes a password is simply a favorite word or phrase, and that shows up in the word map.”

“Cali’s name?”

“Too short. Passwords on most of these accounts have to be at least seven characters. And I already tried California.”

“You knew?”

“Cali’s full name? Yes. Was it a secret? How did you ever come up with that?”

“I was young, widowed, and desperate. Charles used to say he was the King of Florida. I’d say, today Florida, tomorrow the world. He’d answer, no, tomorrow California.” There was a twinge in my chest. I had to wonder how well rehearsed that story was.

I knew there had been no Charles Marx.

***

For all my efforts, my research between naps the rest of Saturday came up with nothing that worked. Granted, I was pretty tired and suffered periodic headaches, but I hadn’t found an answer yet. I met Andi at 6:00 and we got a bite to eat before going to Cali’s closing performance of “Macbeth.”

Cali got involved with Theater in the City when she was in grade school. According to Andi, she had been a shy, insecure child with no friends. Apparently, Andi grew up much the same way and enrolled her in an acting class on a whim. Cali had blossomed and soon she had acting, dance, and singing classes at the theater and was cast in her first musical as a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. She was hooked, and had grown into what her friends called a triple threat. She could sing, dance, and act. Mostly, I’d admired her singing voice over the years. I remembered her first impromptu performance for the Faculty Lounge about five years ago when she sang a very campy “Wash that man right out of my hair,” with Mel clowning as a man caught in her hair. The singing was a little hesitant, but the clowning the two did had all of us in the restaurant laughing our heads off. Whenever Cali convinced Mel to join her in one of her performances, Mel was a silent clown. Her own bent was toward sports and she was a very physical girl.

The last time I’d heard Cali sing in a musical, she’d nearly broken my heart as Johanna Barker in “Sweeney Todd.” Her voice was like crystal and filled the auditorium. She was looking forward to studying theater at a major university when she graduated from high school.

Based on what she had been saying for the past week, I was braced for a truly awful, amateurish rendering of Macbeth. What we got was nothing short of stunning. The director had made two choices that made a professional quality production. First, rather than try to get his teen actors to master the English and Scottish dialects, he focused them on cadence and pronunciation. As a result, we could hear the music in Shakespeare’s language and could understand every word that was spoken. Second, with the exception of a couple of seriously older characters—notably the assassinated king and his advisor Ross—the director had interpreted the cast as adolescents who were thrust into their roles without adult supervision. They were ruled by their passions, impulses, and superstitions. They automatically believed everything that everyone said, and as a result stood by while their friend and gang leader turned into a ruthless bully. Setting Macbeth on the streets of the city in a gang war environment, complete with allusions to drug abuse among the cast was a little bit reminiscent of West Side Story, but at the same time it completely made sense to see Macbeth hallucinating a vision of dancing kings when he was sitting in a dark room stoned out of his mind.

And Cali. I don’t know if it was the pain of losing her best friend or if she was truly that gifted an actress. The transition from confident, scheming, adolescent wife of Macbeth to the shell-shocked waif that wandered the battlements crying “Out damn’d spot!” was poignant. Andi clutched my hand and both of us had tears in our eyes.

Theater in the City, being all kids with an occasional adult ringer in an appropriate role, had a ritual of letting the cast meet parents, friends, and well-wishers in the theater lobby after the show as soon as the actors get out of costume. It wasn’t Cali that reached us first, though. It was a bouncing redhead wearing black-rimmed geek glasses with silver filigree running the length of the bows. She was in jeans, a black production t-shirt that said “That Scottish Play” on the back, and a floppy straw hat. She was still wiping some kind of adhesive off her face and I recognized her as the actor who played Siward in the last act. She rushed straight to Andi.

“Hi Mrs. Marx,” she said.

“Hi Alex. Good show!”

“Thank you. Before Cali comes out, I was wondering if it would be okay with you for her to come to my house tonight after the strike party. I’m having some girls over and….” She paused and reconsidered what she was about to say. “We all love Cali and she’s really hurting over Mel running away. We don’t want her to go off alone tonight like she did last night. She belongs with us.”

“Alex, that is so sweet of you. Of course, if she wants to come to your house for the night it’s fine. In fact…,” Andi seemed to consider something for a moment and caught her breath slightly. “In fact, I agree that it’s a good idea for her to be with friends tonight.”

“Yeah. Things just aren’t right without CaliMel.” What was that?

“CaliMel?” I asked, breaking in to the conversation. “Did you call her CaliMel?” The teen turned toward me as if wondering who I was to be breaking into her conversation.

“Oh Alex,” Andi came to the rescue. “You’ve never met my friend, Dag Hamar.” There was an instant look of recognition in Alex’s face. She was a good foot shorter than I was, but I swear that when she turned her attention on me she looked me straight in the eye.

“Oh! You’re the computer geek!”

“Alex!”

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” I said, laughing. “I can’t honestly think of a better way to describe me.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” Alex rushed on. “I’m a geek, too!” She held up a hoodie sweatshirt she was carrying and turned the back to face me. Across the shoulders were written the words “Talk nerdy to me.” I laughed.

“Cali said you are trying to find Mel.”

“I’m doing some searches. Which brings me back to my original question, for which I’m sorry I interrupted you. Do you always call her CaliMel?”

“A lot of us do. You never see one without the other unless it’s on stage or on a sports field. We used to joke that when Cali was in a show, Mel took the curtain call and if Mel hit a homer, Cali signed the ball. It’s just not right for them not to be together.”

“Thank you. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything about it, but I am trying. You don’t have any ideas about where Mel might have gone do you?”

“No. I really only know Mel through Cali. Now if my robot were as smart as I’m making him out to be, I could just let him solve the problem.”

“Robot?”

“It’s my senior project. I’m writing a one-act, one-woman show in which I carry on a dialog with my artificial intelligence robot. See? I told you I was a geek.” We laughed and I saw Cali approaching.

“I’ll look forward to seeing that,” I said.

“Say, do you know anything about artificial intelligence? Could I use you as a resource?”

“I’m not an authority, but if you have any questions, please feel free to give me a call.” I handed her one of my business cards and she spun around into the arms of a very tall, blonde guy with a ponytail and a voice much deeper than a teenager’s should be. They had a quick hug and were off to visit other parents and friends in the crowded lobby.

Cali was already wrapped in a big hug by her mother. I had to ask myself, whatever happened to teens who kept their chins against their chests and mumbled when they were around adults? These kids—all of them in the theater program—walked with their heads held high and a sense of confidence and accomplishment that just oozed out of them. They looked adults in the eye and spoke clearly and comfortably. They carried on actual, intelligent conversations. I just don’t get kids.

It was my turn to hug Cali and I was a little surprised by the ferocity of her grip. She didn’t let go when she stopped hugging, but wrapped one arm around her mother and pulled all three of us together in her hug. She looked up at the two of us and asked a little fearfully, “Was it okay?”

“Oh Sweety, it was magnificent. I’m so proud of you,” Andi answered immediately. Cali’s eyes shifted to mine as if she was waiting for my assessment before she could relax.

“You lied to me,” I said softly. Her eyes got big. “You told me it was awful and would be a big flop. You told me you didn’t understand Lady Macbeth. You told me it was no big deal.” By this time she was grinning shyly. “I brought earplugs so I wouldn’t have to listen to the butchering of the bard,” I continued. “You didn’t prepare me to be wowed. You didn’t tell me you were such a professional that you could pull off one of Shakespeare’s hardest roles and make it look so natural. The show was great and you were spectacular.” I was rewarded with another death-grip hug that brought the three of us together. The show was great, but I really loved this.

After saying our goodbyes and affirming that Cali had everything she needed to spend the night at Alex’s house, Andi and I left the theater.

Friday, April 29

Eyes Open

Her eyes are open.
Ay, but their sense is shut.
—Macbeth V.i

The hall was empty when I poked my head out the door. I’m sure I could have talked my way out of confinement if I needed to, but there was something about walking around with my butt hanging out of a hospital gown that affected my confidence. I wasn’t connected to any beeping machinery or medicine bags so at least I could walk quietly to the stairway and make my way to the lobby. No one uses the stairs in a hospital at night when the elevators are no longer in high demand.

I looked out of the lobby door and could see the reception desk almost out of sight of the elevators. Unfortunately, the mailbox was directly across from me. I clutched the dozen credit card envelopes in my latex gloved hand, straightened my back and walked straight across the lobby to the mail slot. I dropped them in, turned on my heel and went back to the stairwell and inside. I know that the young couple who were sleeping in the lobby leaning against each other opened an eye, but he shook his head and they went back to sleep. I couldn’t see whether the night watchman had taken notice.

My progress was arrested briefly as I spotted a neat sign in English and Spanish behind a stack of waiting room magazines. “This is a safe place to leave your newborn infant with an employee or volunteer.” I almost choked. The law regarding infant abandonment was a good law, providing safe transfer of unwanted children to the care of the State. But it caused my heart to ache when I thought about the things that could lead a young mother to abandon her newborn and flee. What kind of world to we live in?

Before I slipped back into my room, I dropped the gloves in a “Hazardous Waste” bin. When I was safely tucked back in bed, I buzzed the night nurse. She arrived a few minutes later.

“I was just wondering if I could have something for my headache,” I asked politely. She looked at my chart, took my pulse and nodded.

“I’ll be right back.” True to her word, she was back with two pills and a glass of water in just a few minutes. It was 10:45 when I rolled over and coaxed myself back to sleep

I was now down to four suspects.

***

There was a bit of a scuffle and a quick “Hush. This is a hospital. You have no right to interfere with a patient’s rest.”

“Ma’am, unless you can tell me the patient is at risk, we have a warrant and service is timely.”

“Just don’t wake anyone else,” I heard her concede as the light in my room came on. I rolled over and squinted through my eyes. There were two uniformed officers in the room and just behind them I could see Arnie.

“What’s up officer?” I asked groggily. “I gave a couple of statements this afternoon when they thought I pushed the girl. Is there something new you want?”

“This doesn’t have to do with that matter,” the first officer said. “I’m officer Rick Newton and I have a warrant to search your personal effects for stolen property.”

“Stolen property? A don’t have much here. They cut my clothes off of me this afternoon and I’m not sure where they went. They brought me a bag with my personal items in it. It’s in the drawer. My backpack is here. I don’t have much else.”

“I warned you, Dag,” Arnie said coming forward. “I warned you that you would be watched. But you had to prove how clever you could be.”

“Excuse us, sir,” the second officer said looking at the plastic bag that contained my wallet, handkerchief, pen knife, change, cell phone, and car keys. Both policemen wore latex gloves as they pawed through my possessions. “You’ll need to stand back.” Thing One had pulled the few items that I carry in my backpack out. Laptop, power cord, tablet, writable disks, and a few assorted cables. Thing Two had moved to the closet and was rifling through my shredded suit. Man, the pain pill that nurse gave me was having some interesting side effects.

“We’ll have to search your person as well,” officer Newton said after shoving my laptop back in the backpack. I pulled off the covers and slid out of bed to stand on the floor. He patted me down while the other officer ran his hands through the bedclothes, under the mattress, and into the pillow.

“This gown doesn’t even conceal me, officer,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t hide much of anything else in it. Do you mind telling me what you are looking for?”

“Can you tell us your whereabouts last night at 1:00 a.m.?” Newton asked.

“Ellensburg Washington,” I answered. Arnie’s eyes popped open in surprise.

“Do you have proof of that?”

“In my wallet, you’ll find several credit card receipts.” I answered.

“What were you doing in Ellensburg?”

“A lot of things were happening in my life on Wednesday. Detective Jordan Grant in cybercrimes can fill in any details you’d like. I decided I needed to go for a drive to clear my head. I got carried away. When I finally got to Ellensburg, I just sat in a truck stop and did Internet searches until five. Then I made a couple of phone calls and drove back to town. I’d just come down to go to the office at 11:00 this morning when I was caught in an accident.”

“That’s not possible,” Arnie said. “We clearly have him on video surveillance entering the manufacturing facility at 1:00 and leaving fifteen minutes later.”

“My ID card doesn’t open that door, Arnie.” He hemmed a bit.

“Building security showed me the footage,” Arnie said. “They can’t just make that stuff up.”

“Sure they can. You asked me to find out who was dipping in the till. Now I think I know,” I said it with bravado, knowing that Arnie was one of only four people who had access to my backpack when I was brought to the hospital. It must have seemed like an ideal time to plant the evidence. He just shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Dag. Things have been so tense in the office the past two weeks that I’m jumping at everything. Don’t bother to tell me now. I’ve got my own suspicions. Just get well and get back on the job.” He looked apologetic and defeated as he walked out the door with the two police officers. I didn’t believe him for a minute.

***

The day had been long and exhausting and I still hadn’t managed much sleep. After the cops left with Arnie, I called Lars. As much as my ass was on the line, CCS had hired Lars’s agency to work undercover. It wasn’t long after that when I got a call from Jordan. He was ticked off as well and had gone after the patrol that was called on the credit card theft. There was no way uniforms should have made the investigation. Even if the theft had technically not been a cybercrime, in this day financial crimes were so closely related that they all sat in the same department. He was on the warpath.

I hadn’t really slept long when the doctor came in and summarily released me. Now that created a problem as I had no clothes that I could put on, but a nurse came in and told me Jared had dropped off a sack of clothes for me on his way to work at five. I was more than thankful just to be back in my jeans and classic rock t-shirt. I packed up my meager belongings and caught a cab outside the hospital.

I was still in the cab when my phone rang and Andi asked if she could come and pick me up. I laughed.

“That’s a great idea,” I said. “Why don’t you come out to the curb and open the taxi door for me?”

The cab pulled up two minutes later and Andi was in my arms.

“I’m going to call in sick and cancel my classes today so I can take care of you,” she said helping me up the steps to her house. Cali came rushing out the door and grabbed me from the other side.

“Oh my god that was you! Mom told me all about the accident.” Somehow the two sentences didn’t connect in my mind. I shook it off as being a result of my fuzzy-headedness.

“Wait, wait,” I said as we entered the house.

“I can’t stay here and cause you to miss work. And you have to go to school. I’m not going to do anything all day long today but sleep, so there isn’t a thing either of you can do.”

“But Dag…”

“No. Just seeing you both here this morning is more than any guy could hope for, but the doctor gave me some great pills. I’m going up to my room and take one, then sleep until Faculty Lounge this evening.”

“You can’t seriously think that you are going out tonight!” Andi was shocked.

“I have a date with a really sweet woman tonight and I am not about to miss it. I disappointed her once this week already and I won’t do it again,” I said. Andi launched herself at my lips and scored a direct hit. She clung there for a minute and I savored her taste. We’d probably have kept kissing if we hadn’t heard Cali’s “Awww.” We broke our kiss and I’m sure the color of my face matched the blush on Andi’s cheeks. “You guys are so cute. I’m going to school now. Glad you’re okay, Dag.” With that she was off and I was being led across the lawn to my stairs.

“Are you sure you don’t just want to stay with me?” Andi asked softly.

“I want to have all my faculties when I stay with you, sweetheart,” I said softly. “Right now I need to sleep and my own bed is the best place for it.” She walked with me up the steps, but didn’t come inside the apartment building.

“I’ll see you tonight, then,” she said, placing her lips softly against mine once more. It wasn’t passionate, but it was infinitely sweet. I was ready to fall asleep wrapped in her love.

***

I chose jeans and my cashmere sweater for the evening. It was still pretty cool out, but I didn’t want to take a jacket to the club later. I came out of the apartment building, and looked up the hill toward Broadway. I sat down on the steps, pulled out my cell phone and called a cab. Twenty minutes later, longer than it would normally have taken me to walk to the Blue Moon, a cab pulled up and took me up the hill. I’d slept all afternoon, but I just didn’t have the energy to walk anyplace.

Lars and Jordan showed up at the lounge as well. Neither talked about the accident, but simply came to enjoy the collegial atmosphere. I given to understand, however, that Lars had stormed Arnie’s office this morning and raised holy hell regarding the midnight raid on my hospital room.

“I’m one step away from putting the screws on him,” I said. “He knows. I haven’t figured out how he’s doing it yet, but it’s coming together. The whole stolen cards thing was a red herring. It had all the signs of being an impromptu scheme thought up after I’d shown interest in manufacturing.”

“As soon as you get something concrete, I’ll have a team ready to move in and mop it up, Dag. I’m getting a little frustrated having big collars one step away from positive ID.” Jordan was obviously not in a good humor. His techs still hadn’t closed the loop on Patterson and the longer it took, the more likely he would be to find shelter in a faraway land. We weren’t even sure he was in Seattle now.

After everyone had gathered, Jan turned to Andi and me. “You two look very punk tonight. Have something planned?”

“We’re going to see Two Man Flash at SoDo tonight,” I answered.

“What’s the occasion?” Sara asked.

“No special occasion. We just happened to have tickets,” I smiled.

“Actually, there is kind of a special occasion,” Andi broke in. I looked at her expectantly. This was new. “You see, while you were sleeping today, I got a phone call. I got a job offer from the University!” Wow! The news hit us all and put us in a celebratory mood. “I’ll be teaching one section of Intro to Literature and one of Reading Fiction. It’s a part time gig, so I’ll still be able to teach at the community college as well.” We all congratulated Andi. She’d wanted to get into the U for as long as I’d known her, and even if this was only teaching two classes, it was a foot in the door.

We relaxed and sat there eating and talking until much later in the evening than usual. Andi and I didn’t need to be at the club until 9:00, so we were in no hurry to leave and other members of the Lounge seemed to be in various stages of spring fever. We just sat and laughed and relaxed until Andi and I had to leave for the concert. We did, however, both get a text off to Cali wishing her a broken leg.

The concert was fun, though by 11:00 I was already feeling a little weak and the heat, noise, and press of people in the club were getting to me. At 11:30, I asked Andi if we could go now, even though the band had one more set to play. She quickly agreed and we caught a cab in front of the club.

Frankly, I’m not all that comfortable in Pioneer Square at night these days—even as far south as SoDo was. There’s a pocket of light around each of the popular nightspots with huge voids of darkness in between and enough booze flowing in the gutters to make the seagulls sick. The shadows hid all manner of danger and I was glad we had a cab right in front of the club and could send him directly out of the neighborhood and up to Capitol Hill.

On the ride, I don’t think we broke our kiss so much as to breath. Our hearts were still beating in time with the music we’d been listening to and there was no way we were ready for the night to end, even if we wanted a change of venue. To someplace, maybe, softer and quieter.

I tipped the driver and we stumbled into Andi’s house. We were so wrapped up in each other that it took us a moment before we realized we weren’t alone. We heard the sniffles first and then Andi turned on a light and we saw Cali lying on the sofa crying.

Andi turned from passionate girlfriend and near lover to concerned parent in an instant and I was left staring with my mouth open.

“Cali, baby. What’s wrong honey?” Andi asked as she scooped her daughter up in her arms. “Was the show that bad?”

“The show… was… fine,” Cali sobbed. “But Mel didn’t come.”

“She’s never missed one of your openings. What happened.”

“I… I… called after the show. Her mom… said… said… she’s run away from home. And then she said it was all my fault. She said she never should have let her little girl run around with an undisciplined brat like me with my liberal upbringing and no rules. She said it was all my fault that Mel ran away. Mommy, why did she do that?”

I couldn’t honestly tell whether Cali was asking about Mel or Mel’s mother. I guess it didn’t matter.

“I can’t believe she ran away and she didn’t even tell me. What am I going to do without Mel?” Cali was wailing and Andi was rocking her baby in her arms. I went into the kitchen to find the one remedy that every parent I’ve known has used. I boiled water and made tea. I found a Night-time tea in the cabinet and made two steaming mugs. As Andi rocked Cali on the sofa, I held the warm cups for them and tried desperately to think of a nice fatherly gesture to make. Apparently the tea was it. Cali looked up at me.

“Thank you Dag. I’m sorry I ruined your night for you.”

“Tweety Bird, nothing is more important when you are hurting,” I said. I’d used the pet name for Cali on occasion since the day I saw her running around in Tweety Bird and Sylvester pajamas. “Do you want me to try to find Mel?”

“Can you?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll look on the Internet and see what I can locate. It’s hard for a girl who is so used to being connected to just drop out of sight.”

“Thank you Da… Dag.” My heart skipped a beat. For a moment, I thought she was going to call me Dad. Andi kissed her daughter on the forehead and told her to go take a shower and she’d cuddle her in bed. Cali took another sip of tea then left the room.

“That was so sweet of you, Dag.”

“I don’t know if I can find anything, but I’ll try.”

“Maybe you aren’t such bad parent material after all.”

“I love you, Andi. Cali comes with that.” I’d said it without realizing it. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined saying it. It wasn’t how I’d planned. But with all my intentions aside, it seemed to have been the right thing to say. Andi’s arms went around my neck and she lifted herself off the floor getting to my lips. The kiss was a more effective painkiller than anything the doctor could have prescribed. My head, while not exactly clear, was suddenly pain free.

“Good-night, darling,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I climbed to my room in the apartment building next door. I felt light and free. It was the kind of feeling that makes a man want to write poetry. Only I don’t write poetry. I write code.

Short, beautiful, elegant lines of code.

Thursday, April 28

An Angry God

To offer up a weak poor innocent lamb
To appease an angry god.
—Macbeth IV.iii

I was caught in morning traffic coming into Seattle. I’d sat in the cafe running searches through the night until finally ran down the batteries of both the tablet and the laptop. I drove back to Seattle with less pressure on the gas pedal. I still didn’t have a great answer. In fact, I didn’t have an acceptable answer. Andi simply was not who she said she was. I’d even run a search designed to find a news story about a death with a smile, a martini, and a pregnant wife. I was amazed at how many of those there were.

And really—what could I say about it anyway? I couldn’t just open a conversation and say, “By the way, now that I’ve told you I love you, who are you?” I was sure there was a simple explanation, but outside of being in a witness protection program, I had no idea what it could be.

Now it was Thursday morning. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I was walking downtown toward the office, but hadn’t determined whether or not to go in. I showered and shaved when I got home and then got online at CCS by remote access to see if anyone was missing me, not caring if I got there on time and not sure if I was going at all. But still, here I was walking up Third toward the office. There were quite a number of people on the street for 11:00 in the morning. My experience was that most people who were in the financial district at this hour were in offices. The rigid schedule of bankers and brokers meant that everyone would flood out onto the streets at exactly noon and the street would be empty again at 1:00. It was always a curiosity to me as to why no one ever changed their lunch schedule, but maybe today was the day.

There was a woman coming toward me who looked like she had just walked down from Capitol Hill herself. She wore a plaid lumberman’s shirt with a knit cap. Her motorcycle boots were pulled up over faded khaki denims. Her nose was pierced with a hoop through it. There were several rings in her ears and a tattoo was visible under her left ear that disappeared beneath her collar. I didn’t really want to imagine where else she had things stuck through her body.

Behind me a couple was arguing. It sounded trivial to me—something about the time they were supposed to meet a friend—but I’ve often thought that what is trivial to one person could be the most important thing in the life of another. Arguments occur when people on opposite ends of that spectrum collide.

Two men in black suits and white shirts walked past me. If I lived in the suburbs I’d automatically assume they were missionaries wanting to tell me about this religion or that. Two by two. Another war waiting to occur. When the only right way and the only possible way collide. In fact, maybe that was what I was arguing with myself about. Only this time I couldn’t see either a right way or a possible way to handle my situation. I’d been set up and I didn’t know who on my team I could trust. I’d started my tenure at the company distrusting everyone, and now I had to find a way to expose the right person while exonerating myself.

I still don’t know what alerted me—a scuffle, a gasp, a shout, a scream. It seemed they all happened at once, directly behind me. I spun around in my tracks.

I’ve heard people describe events like this with words like “everything went into slow motion,” and then they describe in great detail everything they saw. I can’t honestly say I saw anything that my brain could process quickly enough to comprehend. But my body seemed to act without me. Even after the fact, all I could put together was that a woman was falling into the street, a bus was coming, and that as I grabbed her and spun her out of the path of the bus she screamed, “He pushed me.” Then there was a sharp pain in the back of my head and everything went black.

***

I was being pushed into an ambulance on a gurney when I opened my eyes. I was strapped down securely and could see a blue uniformed police officer standing over me on one side with a med-tech pulling an oxygen mask off my face. My pack was lying on the seat to my right. The EMT was asking if I could see his fingers while I heard the officer rambling on about my rights. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law….”

“Can you raise your finger? Do you feel your toes?”

“You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you….”

“Is there any pain when I press on your stomach?”

“Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t move my head. My mouth wagged open and closed a couple of times.

“Is there anyone we should contact for you?”

“Why did you push her?”

It was too much. The overload blacked me out again.

***

I certainly wasn’t expecting Jen there when they wheeled me into a room after x-rays. I’d been summarily stripped of my clothes—a nice gray suit cut to shreds—while they examined my body for additional damage. Apparently, the twelve stitches the doctor had put in my scalp and a mild concussion from where the bus mirror hit me in the back of the head were all the damage they could find. I felt like I’d been run over. I looked around for the policeman. No one was there.

“Jen? What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Arnie and Phil were coming back from a morning coffee just in time to see the commotion. When Arnie recognized you he caught a cab up to the hospital and Phil alerted the rest of the team. I came down because I knew Arnie had a budget meeting this afternoon. Phil came over with me, but both he and Arnie left as soon as we heard you were going to be okay.”

“Police?”

“Big mix-up. One rode here with you and another came with the gal you rescued. Apparently she’d claimed you pushed her, but when was asked to identify you, she screamed that it wasn’t you it was her boyfriend. A woman across the street said she saw you save the girl. As soon as they realized they got the wrong message, one of them got on his mike and called in an arrest bulletin for the boyfriend.

“Why did you stay?”

“I thought I might be easier for you to look at when you woke up than police and doctors.” She smiled and I realized she was joking. Still, she was pretty easy to look at. She was dressed in a deep lavender suit with three buttons up the front and apparently no more than a black camisole under it. Under other circumstances I’d have been salivating. Under current conditions, however, she was still a suspect.

And my affections, even though tested by what I’d learned in the past 24 hours, lay elsewhere. All through the painful flashes and confusion after the accident, all that kept me in the real world was thinking of Andi and that we’d just begun. I knew for a fact that it would make no difference to me why she had changed her identity. I had fully thrown my lot in with her. I had no reservations.

“I need to call Andi.”

“The girlfriend? You can use my cell phone. I think Darlene already called, though.”

“What time is it?” I had no idea how long it had been since the accident and I hadn’t called Andi last night in the turmoil of my net search.

“Two o’clock. Darlene called Lars and he suggested she call Andi.”

“Which I did, and she’s on her way,” Darlene said coming into the room. “I’m sorry we didn’t call her sooner, but she wasn’t on your contact list. Your mother is on her way as well. She was your emergency contact.” Poor Mom.

“Thank you, Darlene,” I still grasped Jen’s phone, dialing in Andi’s number. Even if she was on her way… Darlene put a big bunch of flowers in a vase and arranged it next to the bed. They looked a little wilted.

“Sorry I didn’t have time to go to a florist for you. These are left over from Admin Day last Friday.” I laughed a little, but my head was beginning to throb.

“I hope I’m out of here before they lose all their petals,” I said. I pushed the connect button to dial Andi. A second later I heard a phone ring outside the door and Andi in stereo saying “I’m here.” I heard her through the phone and from the door as she came into the room.

I dropped the phone on the bed in time to catch Andi in my arms as she practically threw herself on me.

“You said it wasn’t dangerous! You said you’d be okay! We just got started, don’t get yourself killed yet!” She was laughing and crying and smothering my face with kisses between words. Beyond her, I saw Jen reach to the bed beside me to pick up her phone. She bit her lip and then slipped out of the room.

“I guess none of us are still needed here,” Darlene said as she, too, edged away.

“Wait,” I said. “Andi, this is Darlene, the Admin in our department at CCS. She’s the one who called.

“I don’t know how you knew to call me, but thank you,” Andi said extending a hand to Darlene. She still kept one hand clutching me.

“If it hadn’t been for his boss seeing the accident, none of us would have known he was in the hospital at all,” Darlene said. “I’m sorry it took so long to reach you.”

“I appreciate all you did, Darlene,” I said. “Please thank the guys at the office for me.”

“You’re a lucky man, Dag,” she said looking at both Andi and me. “I hope your luck holds.” With that, she nodded goodbye and left Andi and me alone.

***

During the remainder of the afternoon, my mother, Lars, and Jordan all showed up. The doctors told me they wanted to keep me for observation overnight to be sure there were no lasting effects from the concussion. They also seemed to think I was a lucky man.

I was pretty exhausted from the effect of the accident, the drugs, and having been awake most of the previous night. I drifted in and out of sleep as people milled about. My mother was suitably impressed with Andi when I introduced her as my girlfriend. Andi outright giggled at the pronouncement. Before Mom left, she looked at me sternly and said, “Keep this one.”

Once she was satisfied that I was not in danger of dying on her and that I was really a hero and not a target, Andi reluctantly took her leave to take Cali to final dress rehearsal. I asked her to stop by my apartment and pick up some clothes for me. She waved away my offered keys and said she’d ask Jared to go get some for me. There was some hesitance on her part to enter my private living space without me.

When it was just Lars and Jordan left with me, things got serious.

***

“We can’t get a positive ID on the bastard,” Jordan said. “Somehow we’ve got to flush him out in the open. If we walk in there less than an open and shut case, the courts will eat our lunch. Even the attack on your systems yesterday came by such a circuitous route that it looked like a dozen different sites were downloading to your computer at once. It’s nasty.”

“He’s a gamer,” I said. “We’ve got to think of him that way. To him it is just another game.” John Patterson was one of the few entrepreneurs who emerged from the dot com bust with both his reputation and his fortune intact. He’d been investigated for insider trading, but with no evidence ever emerged on that either. He built a billion dollar fortune in a matter of three years and then surprised the world by signing most of it over to a charitable foundation. At that point the investigations stopped. He was chairman of Patterson Trust, but drew no salary, living what was deemed an exemplary life within the means of the small fortune he had retained for himself. Only in our small group was he suspected of being an online predator and brutal murderer. I’d found enough evidence to make him a person of interest, but even with the threat I’d received we couldn’t positively tie him to the disappearances.

I told both my colleagues what I suspected was happening at CCS as well. Lars was appalled, but he said that the accident in front of the building might have bought me enough time to sort it out. He was not happy that I was contemplating walking back into the building.

“Stay out of there until you get the evidence,” he said flatly. “Use your recovery time as an excuse. If nothing else, that might force them to change their timeline and tactics. If they have to move in a different way, they could expose themselves.” We were using the term they, not knowing yet how many of the employees at CCS were involved in this scheme. I was content to stay out of the building for now.

When the nurse came in and told them they’d have to leave because visiting hours were over, I was relieved. I needed to get some rest. My brain was still whirling, though, so just before Lars left I asked him to hand me my backpack. I figured I could at least check my mail. I said goodbye and for the first time during the day I was alone.

***

I dozed off with the backpack still clutched in my arms. When I jerked awake in the digital clock across the room read 10:17. There were no sounds and no movement anywhere near. I’d been told to ring if I needed a pain reliever, but there was no I.V. drip or monitoring device connected to me. The scene from the morning flashed through my brain and I found myself sweating. I didn’t know what instinct had caused me to dive in front of that bus, or how I’d escaped being killed. It just happened.

I unzipped the backpack and pulled out the big laptop, intending to take a look at my other search results to see if I could make sense of them. When the computer came out of the bag, it caught on the zipper and I let the bag slip out of my hands. An envelope fell out of the bag onto the bed.

I stared at it in disbelief. We’d just said they would have to adjust their schedule, but I hadn’t prepared for this. I reached for a paper towel on the bedside table and used it to pick up the envelope. I’d looked at several just two nights ago when I was trapped in the robotics room. I could feel the card through the envelope addressed to someone I didn’t know in Kansas.

I upended the bag and a dozen more envelopes fell onto the bed.

Wednesday, April 27

Dangerous Folly

I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly:
—Macbeth IV.ii

I didn’t go into CCS on Wednesday as it was my day to work in my own office. I did, however, intend to investigate what my search spiders had found overnight. Unfortunately, Andi was unable to get together for more than a pleasant good morning kiss before she left for class. She said she was scheduled to go back to the university for interviews in the afternoon and that she had a committee meeting this evening. She’d be bringing Cali home about 10 if I wanted to stop by for a cup of tea before we said goodnight. I told her I wouldn’t miss it.

“Unless you are locked up someplace,” she sighed.

“Locked in.”

“Mm hm.”

That left me with a day to work in my office on 15th and to begin putting together the pieces that were left by the police. They’d finished gathering the evidence I’d left them yesterday and the tape was removed from my door. With my new toys, I had more computers lying around than would fit on my desk. I closed up my old laptop and plugged in the new one. It was powerful, but it ate batteries.

I immediately logged in to the computer in the CCS office by remote access on my tablet. The first search I wrote gave me limited results. It showed that I was online in the office but none of the other people I wanted to find. The second search result was more productive. I had a log of employee numbers of everyone who had entered the manufacturing facility in the past 48 hours. I matched names with employee numbers from the Human Resources database and waited for my list to be downloaded.

In the meantime, I started my gaming machine and called up the entire record of the game I’d run Monday night. I wanted to know who was playing and where they were physically located. While that was running, I flipped on my desktop unit to take a look at what the police had left me. Surprisingly, that was the first computer that gave me results to look at as all three struggled to access the cloud through my wired connection at the same time. The picture on the screen that greeted me was chilling.

The mutilated body of a child flooded my largest monitor. A message flashed across the screen that read “Two can play this game. Who do you love, baby?” the screen blanked and then images started flashing across the screen with a timer bar that told me there were two million files waiting to download.

I jerked the network cables out of the wall for all three computers as I noticed images starting to download on the laptop as well. This was not good. A quick scan of the files that were downloading told me my computer had been hit with a motherload of porn, much of which was still downloading. I pulled the power out of the desktop and the laptop, then pulled the battery from the laptop as well.

Damn!

I called Jordan and had to leave a message. Things were heating up. I knew we had a predator on our hands, but I wasn’t used to being the prey. Then a thought struck me. I dialed into the office and asked for Don. The call was routed to Darlene.

“Darlene, I need to talk to Don immediately.”

“He’s in conference with Mr. Dennis.”

“Put me through to both of them, then. This is an emergency.” There was only a moment’s lag before I heard the phone connect.

“What’s going on, Dag?” Arnie asked.

“Is Don with you?”

“I’m here,” Don’s voice answered.

“Here’s the situation. I was ras’d in a few minutes ago when I was hit with a massive attack on my office network. It blasted past my firewalls, virus detectors, and several other bells and whistles I’ve got running in my office. It’s nasty stuff. There is a chance the worm got through to my laptop in the office. If so, it could propagate through the network. You’ve got to isolate my computer from the rest of the company.” I could hear a door slam, but the only other sound for a few seconds was the clacking of keys. “Are you guys there?”

“I’m here,” Arnie said. “Don is in your office. How long ago did this attack take place?”

“Less than five minutes ago. I disconnected my computers, called the police, and then called you.”

“You called the police?”

“I’ve been doing some consulting for them on tracking down an online predator. This looks like it’s related.”

“That’s bad news for you, Dag. Very bad. If you’ve infected our network…”

I haven’t infected anything,” I said hotly. “If the corporate firewalls are working the way they should be, nothing should be able to get through the connection.”

“Still, I can’t afford to have risky behavior in my department. We’re under scrutiny as it is.”

“Well, with luck that will all be taken care of soon, too.”

“You’ve got a solution to our little problem?”

“I’m closing in on one. I should be able to tell you more by the end of the week.”

“Good. That’s good, Dag. We’ll mop up here. You take care of your equipment. See you tomorrow.”

What was that all about? Arnie went from being threatening to exceedingly calm in a heartbeat. Just telling him I was onto a lead shouldn’t have changed him that much. Maybe he was just regretting having snapped at me in the first place. No matter. I needed to clean up the mess of my electronics. I started by pulling the hard drive in my tower. I sealed it in a static proof bag and pulled a spare out of my locked file cabinet. Something told me I was going to need to expand my inventory of spare parts if I kept going in this business. I did an install and put a clean system on the machine. I loaded it up with all the anti-virus software I had and connected an old modem to my landline. My T1 was obviously compromised as a route out. When it came time to get back online, I would have to use the old-fashioned way.

I grabbed my tablet and logged on to the cellular network. I wasn’t going to identify myself any further on the Internet than I had, but I needed to check my mail accounts. I knew exactly who had launched this attack, and he wouldn’t have done it without leaving me messages. He was the kind of guy who loved to talk.

Sure enough, my email had been bombarded with messages, some ranting about Internet spies, some flaming me directly, and all of them containing an invitation to click on a message that I could see would lead to another virus. The last mail message, however, was one I hadn’t expected this time. It read simply “Unit purged with no harm. IGotUrBak.” What was this? Could it be that Don was the one working to back me up and watching to see what I would do? He certainly had the skills and access to everything in the company.

***

My phone buzzed.

“Hamar.”

“What happened?” Jordan was speaking.

“Booted the computer this morning and an attack message showed up on screen. Started downloading porn and unpacking it to everything on the network. And I’m not talking legal porn. This stuff is sick. I disconnected everything and bagged the hard drive. This was complete with a threat, Jordan.”

“I’m on my way there now. I’ve got a tech with me that will verify. See you in 20 minutes.”

***

Twenty minutes gave me just time enough to check the laptop. By disconnecting everything as quickly as I did, I’d aborted the download to the new laptop, which was a relief to say the least. I wanted to know more than ever now who was accessing that room. I looked at the results I’d received from my match. What I saw was not what I expected and not what I wanted to see.

I pulled my ID badge out of my pocket and looked at it carefully. The log showed that every time I’d walked by that room the past week, I’d been logged as entering it. I checked the times. There was video footage that showed me at that door twice last week and twice again this week. And there was an access log that showed me entering it.

What was it Jen had said? “It could be a setup,” was beginning to look like I had been set up. Damn.

***

The Internet is a dangerous place. The fact that I called the police and that my entire interaction with Predator X had been recorded by a court recorder as a tech tore apart my computer kept me out of trouble. The hard drive that was now filled with a self-replicating virus that kept unpacking level after level of highly illegal porn was confiscated as evidence not against me, but against the scum who attacked me.

The problem was the cops had yet to make a hard ID on the guy. We all knew who it was. None of us wanted to believe it. But the evidence so far was all just one step away from being hard enough to make an arrest.

What bothered me most were the words that had scrolled across the screen with that first horrid image. “Who do you love, baby?” It reversed an old television catch-line and turned it from a comfort to a threat.

I needed to think. And for this thinking, I needed to drive.

Half an hour later, I was cruising south on I-5 in the Mustang, feeling the horses in the muscle car whine with power. As soon as I was south of Tacoma, I opened it up and let it roar at 85 slowing down just enough at Olympia, Centralia and Chehalis to not draw attention. Then I put the pedal to the metal and spent 45 minutes over 90. That car moves like a demon, but it drinks gas. I refueled near the Cascade locks on I-84 and swung back onto the Interstate until I hit 82 headed north. I’d been driving nine hours with hardly a break when I reached Ellensburg, going around in circles. It was nearly midnight and both the car and I needed fuel.

I thought about the paper trail I was leaving and what it could mean if there were stolen credit cards that just happened to land in the places is was visiting this night. I was plain spooked, but I didn’t have much cash on me, so I ran the card through the pump and went to sit in an all-night truck-stop for food.

Had they already lifted credit cards? Printed an untraceable batch of “gift cards?” Downloaded customer data files?

Or were they waiting for the next time they could verify I was in the building? It was best that I stay away, but I was going to have to go back tomorrow. There was only one person who could answer the ultimate question. I had to come up with a plan for asking it.

In the café, I ordered tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. It came with chips and a pickle on the side. I wolfed it down with a cup of trucker coffee while my computer was booting up. The truck stop had free WiFi, so I logged in and accepted the terms on the browser screen. It was time to get into the office and see what was going on. I was far enough away that I couldn’t be there making off with cash while searching the corporate data for a traitor. Right now I had no less than seven suspects and that had kept me so occupied that I couldn’t even begin to guess who else might be involved. I still thought the key would be in finding out who was on the corporate network during my game Monday night. I opened the email account to which I’d sent the search results and started comparing them with known markers on the network log from that night. Five out of seven suspects had logged in between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. But none had visited sites associated with my game.

That was no problem, since I showed up as logged in as well, but none of my game activity was logged. I was pretty sure that I could identify who was online. I already knew that Jen was following me around the city until close to 1:00 a.m., so it was unlikely she had been online. Unlikely, but not impossible. I was getting stuck. Everyone was still a suspect.

I decided to come back to the problem later when my computer chimed. I’d set up an alert system earlier to let me know when anyone used my ID to open a door at the company. I scanned down the list of doors and saw that somehow, I’d just opened the door on 12th floor into the manufacturing facility. I quickly paid for my snack, using a credit card and checking the receipt for the timestamp. With physics operating the way it does, I couldn’t be there and here at the same time.

***

When I get stumped by a puzzle, I sometimes change projects just so my brain will disconnect from the logic of the problem. Often, while I’m working on this new problem the answer to the previous one will simply come to mind. That’s one of the reasons I work on Sudoku puzzles and why I take multiple clients. So I decided to shift my focus to a client that seemed simple by comparison. I’d do some of the research that Cali had asked me to do. I already knew I wasn’t going to betray Andi, no matter what I uncovered, but I did need to show Cali there was nothing to worry about. I ordered a BLT and a bowl of chilli with more coffee and started searching for Andi.

It was completely possible in my mind that the yearbook staff had screwed up the pictures and had put someone else in Andi’s place. That was my operating assumption. So I started searching for Anne D. Sullivan in Florida.

I wasn’t happy about what I found. The Sullivan family in Sarasota, Florida had a daughter named Anne. Photos posted online showed that the family was, indeed black. On a hunch, I found a number for the Sullivans but it was only five a.m. in Florida and I decided that was too early to call.

I checked directories around Ann Arbor, but found no indication that there was a Sullivan with a daughter near the right age. I looked up every high school in the area for information on their alumni during a two year period that matched Andi’s age and college graduation information. I extended my search and state-by-state repeated the process. All with the same results. None. Further, there was no certificate of marriage for Anne Sullivan and Charles Marx, and no death record of Charles.

At five, after paying for my third breakfast with a credit card, I went to the car and dialed the number in Sarasota.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Sullivan?”

“Who’s calling please.” I had the college yearbook open in my lap and picked a name from the graduating class at random.

“This is Dick Warnicki. I’m calling on behalf of our graduating class at Central Florida University. We’ve launched an effort to locate all the members of our class for a directory and I’m wondering if you could give me contact information for Anne. We seem to have lost touch with her.” There was silence at the end of the line.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You people all know that Anne died two weeks after graduation. Why are you calling to torment us.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Sullivan. I didn’t have a note on that. I thought I was just calling people we hadn’t heard from. Please forgive me.” I felt like a royal heel. Dead? I wasn’t expecting that.

“Just don’t call again. We already gave all her things to the historical society that called after she died. There’s nothing left.”

“Could you give me the name of the historical society?” I asked before I thought. She had to be getting suspicious.

“It was a long time ago. Just leave us alone.” The line went dead.

Something about giving a dead girl’s things to a historical society didn’t ring true with me. I had to draw the same conclusion that Cali had over a year ago. Andi Marx was not Anne Doreen Sullivan. For some reason, that made my heart hurt.

Tuesday, April 26

Strangely Borne—Part 2

It was after lunch that I began my exercise routine. I started on the third floor, walked the entire circuit, and then moved to the fourth floor. I stopped on each floor to examine the bulletin boards where employees posted notices of apartments for rent, puppies for sale, housekeeping services, and the mandatory HR Fair Employment Practices bulletins. CCS had a lively community of employees who posted notes about community service events, ethnic events, and book clubs. I hadn’t noticed how many people I saw walking the halls while I did on most floors. Marketing, of course had the most elaborate displays and included notices about cookie and candy sales from various schools and clubs, and a May Day festival coming up over the weekend.

On the other hand, on floors that were mostly technical or manufacturing, there was little or no activity in the halls. The offices had no interior facing windows, and the core was devoted to equipment, much of which was managed remotely. Robotics are an amazing thing.

That’s what I encountered on the 12th floor.

As I approached the security door where I’d concealed my miniature RFID reader, I pulled out my cell phone and launched an app for capturing the info from the device. I timed my approach so the cameras were pointed away and waved the phone at the reader. In an instant it had captured the signal and replayed it for the security unit. The door clicked unlocked and a green light came on. I smiled and continued my exercise routine.

***

I was back in my office by 2:30, having cut short shrift to the upper floors. There is a fundamental fact about security cameras that few people know. They aren’t usually monitored. It was ridiculous to imagine a person whose job was to watch the camera feed 24 hours a day. Add to that the fact that there were over 100 cameras that I had counted with at least four to a floor and you have a phenomenal amount of video to watch. It would take no less than 60 people by my rough estimate to monitor all the feeds 24-7. Instead, footage was stored for a period of time in a digital vault that could accommodate several petabytes of data. After 30 days, the data was erased. Only if there was an intrusion into the company, a theft, or assault, would the tapes ever be reviewed. CCS’s unique policy of having security cameras playing as screen-savers on every employee’s desktop simply served to remind people they were being watched.

I needed to know if there was video surveillance in the manufacturing facility. I used my portable keyboard to tap out the commands and searches I needed inside the network to generate a list of video feeds. True to my assumption, there was video surveillance at the entrances to the facility, but not inside.

Next, I needed plans for the building. I suspected there was a reason for the facility being on the 12th floor. Unfortunately, the company plans for offices were of no help. The floor plans on the Intranet showed what offices were on which floors, where emergency exits were, and general use information regarding the large spaces that were used for the server farm and the manufacturing facility. I needed electrical, heating, and plumbing plans.

Developers making structural changes in buildings are required to obtain a building permit from the Department of Planning and Development. Applications for building permits must be accompanied by blueprints that building inspectors use to approve the work and then verify that it was done according to specification, is safe, and is habitable. Being a government office, it doesn’t throw anything away. A huge microfilming project was undertaken a few years ago and development documents from the 1890s forward have been cataloged. At the same time the historical documents went into microfilming, all current projects were stored digitally. I was betting the modifications to the 12th floor were made after digitization started.

Proper protocol for looking at these documents requires an investigator to submit a request, go to the office, and pick up the files after signing for them. But the permits and drawings are a matter of public record, so technically breaking into the city’s digital vault to view the plans wasn’t completely illegal in my mind. I looked up the city records for the building permits on this site. The low-res digital images I found were just adequate to confirm my suspicions.

There is still something about the number 13 that makes people jittery, even in an age supposedly beyond superstition. As a result, very few buildings acknowledge a 13th floor. The elevators in our building were no exception. The buttons were numbered consecutively from 1-12 and from 14-26. We were supposed to believe that there simply was no 13th floor.

The reality was that most of the building’s mechanicals were located on the 13th floor, accessible only by a service elevator and stairs. The central core, however, had been cut out to make a single two-story room where the manufacturing equipment of the credit card company was located. It would take me some work, but I was pretty sure I could access the facility through the equipment rooms on the non-existent 13th floor. It was going to be a climb. It was nearly 5:00 by the time I’d finished my various searches and memorized the access points I needed. There was still one thing I wanted to check.

***

I stepped out to verify that Don had left for the day. If he was here since four a.m. he had a good excuse to bug out early. In fact, all my teammates on this floor were gone. I wasn’t going to bother checking on Jen upstairs. I went back to my desk and called up the network logs for last night. I wanted to see exactly what was recorded at the time I was being attacked in cyberspace.

Network logs are screen after screen of text lines. CCS is a 24-hour company in some areas, so there is always traffic on the network. I could get close to the information I wanted by searching the time, but I was only certain that it was between 3:30 and 4:00 which left thousands of lines of log entries. Part of being a good detective is being able to see anomalies. Take one look around a room and identify the one item that is out of place. I’d already proven how inept I was at that last night when I failed to realize I had not one but two tails on me. But it was different when I looked at lines of code. I started scrolling through the lines of log entries, not sure what I was looking for, but watching for the anomaly. I didn’t try to read the lines, just watch for the patterns. As the lines went by, I zoned out, letting them flood my mind.

It took me two passes through the entire half hour log before I saw it. The timestamps.

At 3:42:24 there was a ten second gap. The numbers had been consecutive, often multiple for a given timestamp up to that point, but between 3:42:24 and 3:42:34 there were no entries. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that all network traffic into and out of CCS suddenly ceased for ten seconds in the middle of the night right when half a dozen gamers broke through the firewall and were ousted by another gamer who was already inside. Right. That’s like thinking there is ever a time in 24 hours that there is ten seconds between messages posted on Twitter.

I examined the records carefully. On either side of the ten second block, an employee was surfing the Web. The network log indicated a start point and an end point for each link. Above the ten second gap the addresses moved smoothly. From a to b, from b to c, from c to d. But below the gap the transitions were suddenly from f to g. The referrals from d to e and e to f were missing. Someone had edited the network log and that took a lot of skill. The log was autogenerated from the system. Blanking out a portion of it or deleting it was a lot more serious than simply breaching the firewall.

Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could write search parameters and send spiders into the network. At least theoretically. First I had to locate a server in the cloud that would let me execute a program that would technically be classed a virus by security. I could get the results, but whatever server I found would be pulled off-line and the hole patched by morning. Ah well. That will just enhance company security. I set the little bug loose.

It was nearly six and I was supposed to meet Andi at seven. I set up both the company laptop and my big gaming machine side-by-side on my desk and put them sleep so I could wake them remotely if I needed to. Then I grabbed my tablet and my cell phone and left.

***

The service stairwell was accessible from the underground parking garage where some impatient mechanic had simply wedged the door open and left it. It had taken me nearly ten minutes to find it, even knowing from the building blueprints where to look. It took 12 minutes to climb to the 13th floor. Of course, it wasn’t marked 13. The access door below was marked 12 and the access door above was marked 14, but this door was simply marked “Danger. High Voltage. Do not enter.” It was secured by an old fashioned key-lock. It took me almost three minutes to pick it. That’s not really my specialty.

Inside, I got my bearings as I walked up and down aisles of cable boxes, heat and air conditioning units, telephone and electrical boxes. Finally I came to the door I wanted. This door was secured by an electronic lock that matched the ones in our office. I waved my cell phone at it with the recorded RFID and it clicked open.

It was a good thing I didn’t just step through. It was an access door, no doubt on the fire department’s list of emergency exits, but it was nearly twelve feet off the ground with no more than a narrow catwalk crossing in front of it. I stepped onto the catwalk and heard the door click shut behind me.

Damn.

There was no way to open the door from the inside that I could see. I was inside and I’d have to figure out how to get out later. For now, I found my way down a metal stair onto the main floor.

The room was two stories high and filled with the equipment and robotics that were required to make credit cards, including warehousing the stock, manufacturing, sealing, and shipping.

Sheets of plastic were fed into cutters and trimmed to credit card size. Printing on the front and back was done on a digital press, including laminating holographic images on the front of certain cards. Magnetic strips were applied to the cards and each was treated with an ink-receptive strip for the signature. The cards were then fed through a magnetic recorder that recorded the personal information of the user on the card. From there, the card was fed into a machine where the strip was read and then the card was stamped with the raised numbers and letters that identified the credit card number and customer.

I took pictures of the process with the camera built into my tablet and started cataloging the operation. CCS produced private label credit cards for various organizations, including associations and credit unions. It had also developed a side-business of manufacturing gift cards with dollar values for various restaurants and retail outlets. It even subcontracted card manufacturing for larger credit organizations and banks.

The magnetic stripe on a credit card contains the necessary information to conclude a transaction. The primary account number embossed on the card is also the leading information on the stripe. It includes the name of the cardholder, the expiration date, the Verification number or CCV Code, and the address and zip code of the cardholder. Of course the information is encoded so you can’t simply run it through a tape recorder and read the info, but one of the cleverest schemes for pirating accounts has been to have a thin card reader inserted into a regular bank station like an ATM machine or gas pump. Usually a cleverly concealed camera is focused on the keypad so that the thief can record the keying of the PIN as they capture the information from the magnetic stripe. It’s quick and efficient.

It also goes undetected for a long time. A compromised account can be hoarded by a thief for weeks or even months before use. That gives the thief time to collect a huge amount of data and then remove all trace of his equipment before it is discovered. It makes it almost impossible to identify the source of the compromise.

As I watched the machines doing their thing, I observed an occasional card being rejected at one or another station. The most common rejections occurred before any data was imprinted on the card. The magnetic stripe might not have adhered. The ink might have been smeared. Any number of defects were caught by inspecting equipment in a fraction of a second and led to immediate rejection of the card.

Further down the line, a card might be rejected for failed data recording, duplication, or simply being blank when it got to a place that required data. Each of these failed cards were shuffled to a bin that led to a shredder where rejected cards were chopped to tiny bits to be recycled.

After a card passed all its tests, it was put in line for mailing. Based on the card data, a letter was printed, envelope generated, the card attached with a glue spot to the letter, inserted in the envelope, sealed, and bundled for mailing. No human hand had touched it.

The few cameras that were in this manufacturing room were focused on the equipment so a technician could visually verify if there were production problems. If there was an equipment malfunction, service or maintenance to be done, or supplies to be refreshed, someone would come through a security door on the 12th floor. Once inside, the operating assumption was the tech belonged there; security did not take responsibility for what authorized people did once they were inside the room.

I’d seen what I needed to in this room. I wasn’t happy about exiting onto the 12th floor but my exit back through the mechanicals room was blocked. I headed for the main door into the room and got a shock. It didn’t have a RFID reader to open the door from the inside. It had crash bars that were clearly marked “Emergency Exit. Alarm will sound. Use Keypad.” Next to the door was a ten-key pad with a flashing red light above it. I estimated the location of the card reader on the outside of the door and waved my cell phone at it, transmitting the code, but it was too far away and on the other side of a wall. No signal penetrated.

I was stuck.

Strangely Borne—Part 1

My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,
Which can interpret further: only, I say,
Things have been strangely borne.
—Macbeth III.vi

Being at an office at nine in the morning after gaming until four is a royal pain. I’m getting too old for this. I was willing to bet that nearly everyone in that game last night was in his teens or twenties except me. The hackers were getting better all the time, and to basically turn a treasure-hunt into a first person shooter game was really rude. I wanted to find out who these guys were, but once they were destroyed, they were erased from the game system. It would have been helpful if the mysterious IGotUrBak had kept them alive for interrogation instead of so completely obliterating them.

And that was reason enough to go to the office.

It was one thing to have someone in the office monitoring what I did, but to have him poking his nose into the rest of my life was a little uncalled for, even if benign. He’d even proven helpful on a couple of occasions now. But it was still uncalled for. My life was none of CCS’s business. Today was the day I was going to find out who was on my tail.

I started by checking to see who was in and who wasn’t. It looked like Ford had spent the night in the office. But his normal position was sleeping at his desk and I wasn’t sure if he even had a home to go to. I swung by Arnie’s office and Darlene caught my attention.

“He’s in exec meeting this morning. Can you wait till after lunch to see him?”

“Not a problem. I was just stopping by to update him,” I said. Darlene stifled a yawn. “You look tired. Should we be going for coffee?”

“These meetings start at 7:00. They just kill me. I’m supposed to get my beauty sleep, not be fetching donuts at 6:30 in the morning.”

“Ouch. I barely make it to bed by that time.”

“Mmmm. Hope staying up late is for pleasure.”

“Sort of. About that coffee…”

“No. I have to run interference at 10:00 when they take their ten minute break. Phil looked like he could use coffee when I saw him. Said his 3-month old kept them up all night last night.”

“I’ll stop by and check.” I headed Phil’s direction, but detoured by Don Abrams’ office. It would be interesting to see if anything was happening in the area of Network Security. Don was in jeans and a polo shirt, a baseball hat pulled down low as he stared at his screen. “Hey Don,” I greeted him. “Did I miss the memo on casual Tuesday?”

“I haven’t been home to change yet. We had a hack attack on the network at 3:30 this morning. I got a call from my team and have been here since 4:00. Didn’t take time to shower and dress up before work.”

“What area did they hit?”

“That’s the thing. It looks like they were mostly interested in getting inside. Once they were in, they disappeared as quickly as they entered. It was like they all just unplugged their computers from the network at the same time.”

“All? How many were there?”

“Half a dozen. Looked like they were marauding and just trying to hack through firewalls. Maybe a contest to see who could get through first. We’re looking at the possibility that they are just testing a new approach in getting through and didn’t really have a reason to be there thought out in advance. They were gone before we got an address for them or could isolate the signatures.”

“Sounds nasty,” I said. So the invasion of my six pursuers had triggered an alarm in the system. It sounded like they just retreated, but the message that had come up on my dashboard led me to believe someone inside had expelled them. Still Don seemed to have no knowledge of this. I decided to stick my head into Allen Yarborough’s office. You’d think the System Administration Manager would have been called about the security breach, but Allen’s office was closed and the lights were out. It didn’t look like he’d come in yet.

There was just one other person I was interested in this morning. I still didn’t know what kind of work she did. I went up to the 26th floor and strolled by Jen Roberts’s office. She was just walking out the door. She was dressed sharply in a blue pinstriped suit with a white silk blouse buttoned to the throat. She was carrying a file and nearly tripped into me.

“Oh, Dag! Just the person I wanted to see. Were you coming to see me?”

Jen was brighter and more cheerful than I’d seen her on any other occasion. She must have had a good weekend. I’d avoided her all day on Monday.

“I was just stopping by to get some pointers on filling out a travel request. Ford tells me you are a stickler on setting up cost/benefit analysis and I wanted to find out how you prefer to see travel estimates put together.”

“I’m a stickler with Ford because he submits a travel request every three weeks. If I approved half of them, that would still be four times the team’s entire budget. If you have travel that will advance your work for your boss, just ask him for a travel approval and he’ll sign it for you. You don’t need to bring it to me unless you particularly need it to be discussed and approved in our team meeting.”

“Well, that’s good to know. Did you want to see me about something?”

“Yes. You wouldn’t happen to have been headed out for coffee would you?”

“I was thinking about it. Most of our team seems to be whacked out of their minds with lack of sleep, but no one was interested in taking a break.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “Let’s take a walk.”

***

Unlike the others I’d been out for coffee with, Jen avoided the long walk down the hill to the Daybreak. Instead we entered a bank building on Third and went to the atrium where an independent vendor did a good business all day long with people in suits. I noticed the price of a cup of coffee was about 30% higher than down the hill. Jen had grabbed an umbrella from the stand next to our building entrance to keep the light rain off her perfectly coifed hair and silk blouse. But once we hit the marble of the atrium her wet high heels slid and I caught her in a position that was neither ladylike on her part nor chivalrous on mine. I couldn’t help but notice that she eschewed anything that would strap her in.

“Let’s just pretend that little embarrassment didn’t occur shall we?” she said once she’d straightened up.

“I’m sorry…” I started. She held a hand up to silence me.

“Didn’t occur.”

“Right.” We got our coffees and found a wrought iron table near the three-story windows. If you were high enough, you could see the Sound out the upper part of the windows, but where we were, there was nothing outside but tree planters. “You have something in that file you wanted to go over with me?”

“No. Carrying the file was just a prop to get an impromptu meeting with you. I want to talk to you about last night.” That was a surprise. First, she was the only person I’d seen this morning that didn’t look like she’d been up all night. Second, I didn’t think she could possibly have information that Don didn’t have and he showed no interest in talking to me. Third, I didn’t think she had the technical skill to hack the systems. She seemed more like a numbers person to me.

“What about last night?”

“Forgive me, but you were behaving oddly, and I couldn’t help but notice. I live in West Seattle. I went for a jog and saw you sitting in a coffee shop. I was going to stop and say hello, but you seemed intensely involved in something. You were carting around more computer hardware than most of us have on our desks.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know about the intrusion at all. This was completely off the record. “I was setting up some new gaming equipment.”

“Gaming? As in gambling?”

“No. RPG. That’s a role-playing game. People from all over the country gather together online to participate in a gamemaster’s storyline. I was running a game last night.”

“Not just locals?”

“I don’t really know where most of them are from. They sign on with their gaming alias and we play. Last night we played until quite late?”

“Yes. Do you always have someone trailing you?”

“Trailing me?”

“The guy in black with a Nike jacket on. Seahawks cap. Text messaging all the time.”

“Didn’t even see him.” There was a guy following me? I wracked my brain trying to visualize who was in that coffee shop. I couldn’t call him to mind.

“It was intriguing. Made me curious as to why he was following you, so I followed along.”

“You were following me last night?”

“Oh no. Even in running sweats, if I had been following you, you would have noticed me. I followed him.” I shivered just a little thinking about the parade of followers behind me. Was someone following Jen? I could just imagine her in sweats, jogging along. All right, I’d definitely have noticed. I put that image out of my mind.

“It must have looked pretty strange.”

“I gave up when you caught the bus to the airport and called a taxi to take me home. Did you come to work straight from your game?”

“No. I slept…” I didn’t want to tell her exactly when I ended the game if she didn’t already know. People up at certain hours of the night when other things were happening at those hours would be too easy to connect. “…a few hours before I showered and dressed for work. By the time I got on that bus, the game was beginning to wind down.”

“And how many others on our team were playing your game with you?” There it was. She was suspicious.

“None that I’m aware of. Like I said, people log in with their gaming alias. I don’t try to track down the real identity. Could be the whole company was playing. Were you?”

“Though I try not to be blatant, I don’t play games.” She looked me intently in the eyes and I could see more than a professional interest. Her lips curled into a smirk. After an awkward silence of a few seconds, she changed to a more professional tone.

“You should know that you arrived on the scene at CCS in the midst of an intense power struggle. The company is closely held, but the founders and majority stockholders have been at this for 25 years. They’re getting tired of playing Caesar and are looking around every corner for potential assassins. That includes your boss and mine. It’s clear to me that neither of us was brought here to do the job for which HR has a description. What’s less clear is that we may not have been brought to do the job our bosses described either. Watch your back. It could be a setup.” She let me soak that in for a minute while she finished her coffee. A lot of what she said suddenly fit with my suspicions. “Let’s get back to work.”

She stood and casually tossed her cup in a bin. She walked carefully across the marble floor, put up her umbrella and marched out into the rain.

***

Something Wicked

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
—Macbeth IV.i

It was ten after seven when I called Andi. It wasn’t a happy call.

“Hey! I cooked. When are you going to be here?” I loved the sound of her voice.

“Um, I got a little tied up at work,” I said. “I’m not sure I’ll make it.”

“Tied up?” I could hear the disappointment in her voice and it broke my heart.

“Well, it’s more like locked in.”

“Can’t you call someone to let you out?”

“I’m locked into a room that I’m probably not supposed to be in.”

“Probably?”

“Definitely.”

“Dag, what do you do for a living?” Andi was trying to make light of the situation while hiding her disappointment.

“I guess there’s nothing for it but to tell you. I’m a spy.”

“And the government has sent you undercover in a credit card company because they are suspected of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.” She was taking it well, but I had to be truthful with her. I wasn’t planning to make a practice of getting locked in places I shouldn’t be, but it was pretty likely that in the course of my career I’d be unable to keep personal appointments. It was just the nature of the business.

“Andi, you know I got a contract here, and that I’m not an employee, right?”

“Yes. I thought you were troubleshooting a computer network glitch.”

“More or less, that’s the story they gave out. I’m investigating ways to improve network security. But the truth is they sent me in here to find out who has their fingers in the till. I’m trying to track down someone who’s stealing from the company.”

“It’s never going to end, is it?” she said softly. “I thought the thing with Henderson was just because it personally affected you.” It was true that the Henderson case was personal. My retirement funds were part of the money that was missing. But the deeper into computer forensics I got, the more likely I’d be dealing with cases like this.

“Well, when it looks like you’re an expert in a field, then others line up to use you, I guess.” What’s an expert anyway? As far as I could tell, it’s just a guy who guesses right twice in a row.

“What can I do? Can I bring you dinner? No I suppose that won’t work unless you’re just locked in the women’s restroom. You aren’t are you? I didn’t think so. Is there an outside latch I could open? Should I call someone for you? I could create a distraction outside the office if you need.” Andi had suddenly shifted into Cali mode. I understood now that it was a method of coping with information that was flooding her brain. I became just a little more aware of how her daughter’s mind worked.

“Andi, I’ll find a way out of here. It just might take me a while. I don’t do a dangerous job, I just got stuck. I’m sorry I can’t join you for dinner.” I really was sorry. Right now I couldn’t imagine what I was thinking in doing this before I went home tonight. It’s that single-mindedness that takes over when I start working on a puzzle.

“Me too.” I could hear the hurt in her voice and it had to match my own. I couldn’t ignore the way she made my heart race, even over the phone.

“Andi, is this serious?”

“Oh no. I’ll eat my share of dinner and the rest I’ll refrigerate. Cali always comes home from rehearsal hungry.”

“I don’t mean dinner, Andi. I mean us. Are we really more than friends? Because I think I’m falling in love with you and if you think I shouldn’t, I’d like to know that before it gets worse.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you said that before we had sex. I mean, not that we’re going to have sex. Yet. It’s just nice to know that you feel that way before, or without, or… I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time,” she blurted out. That surprised me. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t I’d been feeling closer and closer to her for months. I could feel my face stretch into a grin.

“I’m really sorry I’m not there for dinner now.”

“If you get lonely, all locked up there by yourself, you can call me anytime.”

“Thanks. I should get started figuring out a way to get out of here. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Yeah. Later.”

Oh yeah. Later.

***

I needed to get out of this room. I was almost willing to crash the doors and let the alarm sound. Almost, but not quite. It was just that the thought of Andi saying she’d loved me… I really needed to get out of here.

I could see the setup pretty clearly. As with most robotic manufacturing rooms, this one was extremely clean and the air conditioning kept it at about 68 degrees if I judged the temperature correctly. Some of the equipment generated a lot of heat. The robots were controlled by their own set of computers in a room on one side that I guessed was probably kept even colder. These computers were not on the company network or a part of the cloud. In order to keep customer data protected, the secure computers had no connections to the Intranet or Internet. The workstations in the offices on the 12th floor were slaves to these powerful computers. I’d have to do some investigating to find out how information on customers was eventually connected to billing and customer service. There had to be a physical medium involved since these weren’t connected to the network.

The room room with the computers was also secured behind a door with a keypad lock. With the information that I now possessed, I knew that if I had the keypad code, I could steal all the customer data I wanted from the company and it was unlikely it would be detected for weeks or even months. Unfortunately, I lacked the keypad code, so it was a moot point.

I had few options. I was sealed in a locked room.

I went back to observing how the equipment worked to see if there was a way I could use any of it. There was a freight elevator that had a door on this floor, but the call buttons had the same keypad lock on them that the doors had. Apparently all raw materials came up in that elevator and all finished letters went down in it. There were no apparent robotics for moving the boxes of finished mail that were stacked on palettes as they came off the conveyor belt. That meant that workers had to enter the room at some point to load the material in the elevator and actually do the shipping at the post office. The palettes were nearly full, so I began to wonder what time the night shipping crew arrived.

I looked for all the usual ways to get out of a room. The heating ducts and air vents were twenty feet overhead. The few places where the ceiling was only one story high were behind locked doors like the computer room. I sat in a corner near the door and pulled out my tablet, connecting remotely to my company laptop in the office. From there I began searching for access codes in the manufacturing center. Wherever they were located, they were well-guarded. It looked like I’d found the one truly secure place in the company.

So I started thinking about how a thief could capitalize on this security. I’d always thought that a thief would try to spot the least secure access to what they wanted. But perhaps that was the wrong attitude. The most secure part of a system could become the weakest simply because of its impregnability. With access to this room, I could have access to any credit card being created on the system. If I waited until the card was packaged and ready for mailing, I could have the card, the cardholders address, and the security information. Technically, it was a postal offense since the last machine in the line stamped postage on the sealed envelopes. If I was stealing credit cards, I don’t think I’d hesitate at robbing the postal system.

But there were other options as well. I could launch an attack on an entire range of cards, in fact, essentially make cards that appeared valid, by just taking one good card off the conveyer belt. It was called a BIN attack. The Bank Identification Number is contained in the first 12 digits of a credit card. With one card, especially a newly released card, I could simply change the last four digits of the card, keep the same expiry date, and advance the CCV code. Five sequential cards would show me any variance the system had put in place to keep customer codes and CCV codes from advancing at the same pace. I could sit at a computer and order cash advances on each of my dummy cards for an hour, close my accounts and strip my computer of all records, then fly to South America with the cash.

I’d always held that if I was in the same room as a computer, I could own all the data on the computer. This was a step up. Being in the same room with the manufacturing equipment for bank cards, I could own a slice of the banking world.

Back on the tablet, I changed my search parameters for the log of who went through the security doors into this room. I assumed that it was limited to the technicians who did maintenance on the equipment and the shipping clerks who moved the raw materials and finished products in and out of the room. But there was always a chance that someone else was helping themselves to untraceable credit card information. I concluded my search parameters by having the results emailed to me at one of my POP accounts and erase the search spiders from the network. I didn’t want to leave evidence on the company laptop.

Before I got results back from the search, I heard the electronic lock on the door next to me click. I flattened myself back behind the frame where I was partially sheltered from a direct sightline. Two technicians in white lab suits opened the door and headed straight for the shipping area. Before the door snapped closed, I’d squeezed out through it and was in the hall. I scraped my miniature RFID reader off the bottom of the card reader and got out of Dodge.

***

I didn’t stay around to see if the cameras had picked me up. As long as I hadn’t tripped any alarms, the video would never be looked at. I went to the main lobby, switched elevators and flashed my ID at the elevator’s after hours reader to head to my 23rd floor office. It should look like I had just come back to the office to pick something up. Tomorrow was my day to work remotely, so I needed my equipment.

I closed things up, took the laptop and headed up the hill. On the way I called Andi.

“’Lo?” Her voice sounded groggy and I glanced at my phone. Damn! It was nearly midnight. She’d been asleep.

“Sorry, Sweetheart. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Dag? Are you okay?”

“Yes. Just wanted to let you know I got out and am on my way home.”

“Okay. Stop by before you go up.”

“You don’t need to get up. You can just go back to sleep.”

“No. I really want to see you. Don’t knock. I’ll watch for you at the door.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. By comparison, my time in the manufacturing room had flown by. I was panting up a storm by the time I’d walked up across the freeway on Olive and turned onto Summit to get home. I passed the giant sequoia in front of my building and practically ran up Andi’s steps. I was huffing and puffing like crazy after the fast walk uphill.

True to her word, Andi opened the door as soon as I stepped up on the porch. She was wearing a plush bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, but it looked like she’d just brushed out her hair.

“You really didn’t have to wait up for me,” I said as she came into my arms.

“Shh. I don’t think Cali’s asleep. I didn’t wait up. I was a sleep. But I wanted to see you.”

“Not that I object, but why so urgent?”

“Because I said something on the phone that I shouldn’t have.” My heart fell. There was only one thing she’d said that I could think she might regret. I braced myself for the worst. She looked me straight in the eyes and I nearly fell into them. “The first time you tell someone you love them, it should be face to face, not on the phone. I love you, Dag Hamar.” With that, she closed the distance between us and pressed her lips against mine. I was lost in her kiss. When we parted, I caught my breath for a moment then started to speak.

“Andi…” She pushed her finger against my lips.

“Shhh. I don’t want any ‘me toos.’ When you tell me, I want it to be first.” With that she kissed me again and pushed me toward the door. “Sweet dreams, Dag,” she said, brushing my ear with her lips. I stumbled across the lawn to my own back steps and looked back in time to see the porch light go out.

Sweet dreams, indeed.