Death Match

TWENTY-FOUR

It shouldn’t take long to clear Handerling,” Mauchly said. “Our background checks and psych batteries for prospective employees are even more exhaustive than for clients. I’m a little surprised Liza even flagged him.” The air of disappointment in the office was almost palpable.

“What’s the procedure?” Lash asked. He sipped his espresso, found it cold, drained it anyway.

“We have passive monitoring devices in every workstation and cubicle. Keystroke loggers, so forth. It’s no secret, they’re more a preventive measure than anything.” Mauchly opened a different file: a thin manila folder containing only a few sheets. “Gary Joseph Handerling. Thirty-three years old. Formerly employed as data technician for a Poughkeepsie bank. Currently resides in Yonkers. Divorced, no children. Background check turned up nothing except some visits to his high school guidance counselor after breaking up with his first girlfriend.”

Tara chuckled.

“Passed his psych evaluation within the nominal benchmarks. Scored high on his leadership and opportunistic scales. Hired by Eden in June of 2001 and put on a revolving internship. Worked six months in Systems Support. Transferred to Data Gathering in January 2002. Finished his internship by moving to Data Scrubbing in August. Given good marks on all performance reviews. Singled out for his high level of motivation and his interest in learning more about the company.”

A damn Eagle Scout, thought Lash.

“Became head of his scrub crew last February. Eligible for promotion out of Data Scrubbing, but seems happy in his position.” Mauchly raised his eyes toward Lash. “Fit any profile you know of?” His voice was tinged with a whisper of irony.

Lash felt defeated. “Not really. Some sociopaths are remarkably good at hiding in plain sight. Look at Ted Bundy. The guy’s age, race, marital status jibe with an organized serial killer. But the consistent employment history goes against the profile. Then again, nothing about these deaths is standard.” He thought a moment. “Is he up to date on his car payments and credit cards? Organized serial killers can be obsessive about not missing payments, not sticking out.”

Mauchly looked back at the folder. “Tara, can you check the credit agencies, cross-check with the DMV records?”

“Sure. What’s his SSN?”

“200-66-2984.”

“Just a moment.” Tara tapped at the keys. “Everything spic-and-span. No late charges on any cards, going back eighteen months. Car payments up to date.”

Mauchly nodded.

“Pretty decent driving record, too. Only two points on his license.”

“How’d he get those?” Lash asked, more out of habit than any real curiosity.

“Speeding ticket, probably. Let me check WICAPS.”

The room fell silent save for the patter of keystrokes.

“Yup,” Tara said after a moment. “Excessive speed in a residential zone. Recent, too: September 24.”

“September 24,” Lash repeated. “That was the day—”

But Tara interrupted. “The location was Larchmont.”

Larchmont.

“That was the day the Wilners died,” Lash finished.

For a second, the office was still as the three exchanged glances. Then Mauchly spoke.

“Tara,” he said in a very quiet voice. “Can you secure this terminal? I don’t want anybody looking over our shoulder.”

Tara turned back to the keyboard, typed a series of commands. “You’ve got it.”

“Let’s start with his credit card records,” Mauchly said. “See if he’s been anywhere interesting in the last month.” His voice remained slow, almost sleepy.

“Interfacing with Instifax now.” More typing. “He’s been a busy little boy. Lots of restaurant bills, mostly in the city and lower Westchester. Strange: a couple of motel charges, too. One in Pelham, another in New Rochelle.” She looked up. “Why would he be paying for motel rooms fifteen minutes from his apartment?”

“Keep going,” Mauchly said.

“Here’s a recent plane ticket: Air Northern. Car rental of just over a hundred bucks. Another lodging charge for one Dew Drop Inne. And here’s an Amtrak charge, too. And what looks like an advance hotel reservation for this coming weekend.”

“Where?”

“Just a minute. Burlingame, Massachusetts.”

“Get onto EasyTrak. Let’s check out those tickets.”

“On it.” Tara paused, waiting for her screen to refresh. “The plane ticket was a round trip to Phoenix. Leaving La Guardia September 15, returning September 17.”

“The Thorpes died on September 17,” Mauchly said. “You mentioned a Dew Drop Inne. Where’s that located?”

The staccato hammer of keys. “Flagstaff, Arizona.”

Lash felt an electric tingle.

Slowly, almost casually, Mauchly stood up and came around the table. “Can you bring up the keystroke logs for Handerling’s terminal over, say, the past three weeks?”

Lash found himself standing and, like Mauchly, approaching the screen.

“Here we are,” Tara said. Lash saw a torrent of data scroll up the screen: every keystroke Handerling’s typed over the last fifteen business days.

“Run it through the sniffer.” Mauchly glanced at Lash. “We’ll pass it through an intelligent filter, look for anything he typed that seems suspicious.”

“The way the government combs email and phone calls, looking for terrorists?”

“They license the technology from us.”

“Nothing out of place,” Tara said after a moment. “Sniffer comes up clean.”

“What job did you say this guy has?” Lash asked.

“Data Scrub handles the secure archiving of client data, post-processing.”

“Post-processing. You mean, once a match is made.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you said he has a leadership position. Could that give him access to sensitive, personal data?”

“We slice client data across several scrub teams to minimize such access. It’s theoretically possible. But if he’d been snooping around, it would have shown up in his keystroke logs.”

“Could he have accessed the data from a different terminal?”

“Terminals are coded by identity bracelet. If he’d used a different terminal, we’d know about it.”

The room fell silent. Mauchly stared at the screen, arms folded across his chest.

“Tara,” he said. “Run frequency analysis against the keystrokes. See if he deviated from his normal work at any time.”

“Give me a minute.” The screen refreshed, and a series of parallel columns appeared: dates, times, obscure acronyms meaningless to Lash.

“Nothing stands out,” Tara said after a moment. “It all seems routine.”

Lash found himself holding his breath. Was it going to happen again: would they find themselves at the threshold of a breakthrough, only to reach another dead end?

“If anything, too routine,” Tara added.

“How so?” Mauchly asked.

“Well, look at this. Each day, from precisely 2:30 to 2:45, the exact same commands are repeated.”

“What’s unusual about that? It could be some daily activity, like freshening an archive.”

“Even those vary a little: new datasets, different backup locations. But here, even the volume names are the same.”

Mauchly peered at the screen for a long moment. “You’re right. For fifteen minutes each day, the keystrokes are precisely identical.”

“And they’re typed at precisely the same time each day.” Tara pointed at the screen. “Down to the second. How likely is that?”

“So what’s it mean?” Lash asked.

Mauchly glanced at him. “Our employees know their work is monitored. Handerling knows that if he tried anything obvious — like disabling the keystroke logger, for instance — he’d come under immediate attention. Looks like he’s found a way to throw up a smokescreen, perhaps run a macro of innocuous commands while he’s actually doing something else.”

“He may have found a vulnerability in the system,” said Tara. “Some loophole or flaw he’s exploiting.”

“So is there some way we can see what he was really up to during those fifteen minutes?” Lash asked.

“No,” said Mauchly.

“Yes,” said Tara.

They looked at her.

“Maybe. We also use video cameras to take screen captures of all management terminals, right? They’re infrequent, and random. But maybe we’ll get lucky.”

She typed a fresh flurry of commands, then paused. “Looks like there’s been only one recent screen capture from Handerling’s terminal during that fifteen-minute block. On September 13.”

“Can you print it out, please?” Mauchly asked.

She moused a few commands and the printer on the desk began to hum. Mauchly grabbed the sheet as it fed out and they looked at the blurred image:

“Oh, Jesus,” Tara breathed.

“Those other names,” Lash said. “Supercouples?”

Mauchly nodded. “All six to date.”

But Lash barely heard him. His mind was racing now. Serial killers are creatures of habit…

Staring at the list, he remembered something — something chilling.

“You mentioned an Amtrak ticket,” he said to Tara. “And an advance motel reservation?”

Tara’s eyes suddenly widened. She turned back to the keyboard.

“A reservation on the Acela to Boston. This coming Friday morning.”

“And the motel location?”

“Burlingame, Massachusetts.”

Mauchly stepped away from the terminal. The dispassionate demeanor was gone. “Tara, I want you to get a record of Handerling’s phone calls. Both from his desk and his apartment. Will you do that?”

Tara nodded, picked up the phone.

“Thank you.” Mauchly started for the door, turned back. “Now, Dr. Lash, you’ll have to excuse me. There are several things I need to do.”