Guilty Minds

54

It was a few minutes after two o’clock in the morning. The parking lot was dark and almost empty. A cold wind whipped our faces. The only lights on in the building, as far as I could see, were in the lobby, where a lone security guard sat at a counter and probably was browsing aimlessly on the Internet.

The front door to the building was unlocked. We passed the guard, and I said, “Good evening, or is it good morning?”

The guard smiled and gave us a sort of salute. We were confident, we knew where we were going, and we looked like we belonged. He probably assumed we were computer nerds coming to solve some middle-of-the-night crisis. We headed for the elevators. That was the limit of building security. Easy.

We got off the elevator on the fourth floor. The hall was dimly lit. We quickly came upon the entrance to Norcross and McKenna. The glass doors were dark. Apparently no one was inside. That had been a worry of mine: Lawyers often work very long hours. At midnight I wouldn’t have been surprised to find someone toiling there, a lone beleaguered partner, even several associates. At two in the morning, there was less chance of encountering someone.

I pulled our masks out of my toolkit and handed the young man one to Merlin. I put on the old man mask. I’d noticed earlier that there was a CCTV camera just inside the glass doors, pointed at the entrance. From now on we were being photographed. Our ball caps and masks made it impossible for the cameras to record our likenesses.

I waved my cloned keycard up to the card reader, a little black box mounted to the wall next to the glass doors. I bit my lip.

The little light switched from red to green and it beeped. I pushed the door and it came right open.

Until that moment, when something relaxed inside me, I hadn’t been aware of how clenched with anxiety I’d been.

There was low-level emergency lighting here in the office, just like in the hallway, so although it was dim, there was just enough light to make our way. I knew where I was going.

I led Merlin through twisting corridors to the strong room. The door appeared to be wooden, mahogany, like all the other doors in the firm, but I knew that it was actually a sandwich of wood over several inches of high-grade steel. This was not a room you could slip into through the air-conditioning ducts and the ceiling tiles. There was no dropped ceiling. The wall, floor, and ceiling were reinforced concrete, Norcross had told me proudly, eight inches thick. Not only was the room fireproof, but it was protected against intrusion.

Merlin knocked on the door a few times and chuckled at its dead sound. He glanced at the steel lever attached to the Simplex lock, a vertical row of five steel buttons. He nodded and ran his fingers down the buttons. It was a familiar lock, the sort of thing you see inside all sorts of businesses, including jewelry stores and watch shops and casinos. FedEx uses them to secure their drop boxes.

“You start working on this,” I told him. “I’ll head over to Norcross’s office.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Merlin said. “This shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

He unlatched his toolbox and pulled out a small cloth bag. From the bag he drew an oblong block of metal about two inches by three inches. “Watch,” he said. He placed the shiny metal block on the side of the Simplex lock. Then he grabbed the lever and tried to turn it. Nothing happened.

“Shit,” he said. “They fixed it.”

“What are you doing?”

“This is a rare-earth magnet. Neodymium. A couple of years ago some security expert figured out that if you put one of these next to the Simplex lock, it messes with the combination chamber and unlocks it right away.”

“Doesn’t look like it’s doing anything.”

“Yeah. They must have upgraded to one that uses a non-ferrous metal inside. Oh, crap. That would have been too easy, wouldn’t it?”

“Now what?”

“We do it the old-fashioned way.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from a pocket. It had a long column of numbers on it. “This could take fifteen minutes or so.”

“If you get lucky,” I said.

Merlin grunted.

The Simplex had five buttons, which could be pressed in any order. But it had one rule, one weakness: Each number could be used only once per combination.

That meant that the Simplex lock had “only” 1,082 combinations. I don’t know how this is calculated, but I know that math teachers sometimes give their students the “Simplex math problem” to solve: how to calculate the number of combinations for the five-button Simplex lock.

“I can shorten the time a little,” I said. “I saw Norcross push four buttons, not five.”

“Oh yeah?”

On the piece of paper he’d just taken out was a list of all possible combinations for the Simplex five-button mechanical lock. Now he was going to run down the list and enter each four-digit combination.

Seriously. I thought we’d be lucky if it only took him fifteen minutes.

I tested our walkie-talkies one last time and then left him there pushing buttons. I took out my penlight and wandered the corridors until I found Norcross’s office. The door was closed, as I expected. The plaque on the door said ASHTON NORCROSS in black letters on gold. I waved my keycard at it, and it beeped and the red light turned green.

There was no CCTV camera in here, as far as I could tell, but I didn’t want to take a chance, so I kept my mask on. What if there was a well-concealed camera? Not likely, but possible, and I didn’t want to risk being photographed.

It was starting to get hot and sweaty inside the mask. Perspiration was dripping down my face.

I remembered from my earlier visit that there was a credenza behind the desk that had books and keepsakes on display and a lower hutch section that looked like a file cabinet. I figured that might be where he kept active files on matters he was currently working on. It wasn’t locked, but inside, disappointingly, were a few reams of printer paper and nothing much else. I turned around and surveyed the desk. There was not much on top of it except a pen set, a lamp, a few knickknacks, and a computer monitor.

I squatted down, searching with my penlight, and located a computer tower underneath the desk, pushed to one corner. It grunted quietly. I found a USB port and inserted the Rubber Ducky.

Dorothy had instructed me to keep it plugged in for at least ten minutes, though it would probably finish its work within five.

Then I stood back up and checked the drawers of Norcross’s desk, looking for a sticky note with numbers on it. You’d be surprised how often I find combinations to safes or passwords to computer accounts scrawled on Post-it notes or scraps of paper. We all have too many passwords and numbers to remember nowadays, and he couldn’t be expected to have the combination to the strong room memorized. But there was nothing here. Good for him. He practiced good security hygiene.

Then again, I considered, there was his executive assistant’s desk just outside, an even more likely place for one of those sticky notes. I left Norcross’s office, headed to his assistant’s desk, and searched her drawers, and the underside of the drawers, and her computer monitor and keyboard — all the usual places.

But nothing here either. Both Norcross and his assistant were good doobies.

So what about the other name partner, McKenna? Maybe he was sloppier.

I followed the corridor to the next corner office, and sure enough, the plaque on it read JAMES MCKENNA. I waved my keycard at the reader mounted to his doorjamb, but nothing happened. It was keyed separately, no surprise. I rifled through his assistant’s desk. This one was sloppier, the desk drawers jammed with extra supplies like boxes of paper clips, printer cartridges, tape, staples. It took me longer to go through this cluttered desk, more false alarms, pieces of paper to examine, but I still ended up without the combination to the strong room.

I looked at McKenna’s office door and stood there in silence, thinking for a moment about how I might try to get in.

Then my walkie-talkie came to life and I heard Merlin’s voice. “I’m in,” he said.