PrivateSector

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

My answering machine held three calls from Cy Berger. He kept asking me to call him back as soon as it was convenient, and I assumed by that he meant convenient for me. But I didn’t care what he meant; I’d call when I was ready. And I wasn’t. Not yet.

Aside from my other growing problems, the firm was threatening me and Janet with charges serious enough to merit disbarment and even jail. But the firm needed my signature on the audit, which was leverage, albeit limited leverage. There surely was a plan B, which probably involved drafting some compliant associate to sign the audit. But there was a roomful of accountants who had witnessed my daily involvement in the audit, and legal niceties had to be met, so the compliant associate would have to go back and review every aspect of the process, and the timeline would no doubt slip beyond Friday. At the moment, I was a far more convenient solution, bordering on becoming completely inconvenient.

So I called Cy, and we exchanged a few phony pleasantries before he got around to it, asking almost nonchalantly, “So Sean, we had a difficult morning, didn’t we?”

No, we didn’t have a difficult morning, and it was so asinine to suggest otherwise that I decided not to reply.

The pause lasted long enough for Cy to realize that this tack would go nowhere. Finally, he said, “Well, I believe the ball’s in your court.”

“You mean, what will it take for me to sign the audit?”

“I’m going to be blunt here. That’s what we’re wondering.”

“I’m innocent and I want to clear my name.”

“Fair enough. Harold told you, you’ll have that chance.”

“And Hal implied it would be a kangaroo court.”

After a moment, he said, “Hal is very protective of the firm. He has a tendency to be melodramatic.”

“Is that a fancy word for being an asshole?”

He chuckled. “It will be fair, Sean.” He then promised, “You have my word on this.”

“But that still poses a problem, doesn’t it?”

“What problem?”

“I need to get into your server to prove my innocence.”

“Oh… I see you what you mean.”

“And I’ll need one of your computer people to guide me through the database.”

“Even if I could allow that, it’s too late. We need to get that audit into Defense tomorrow.”

“No problem. I’ll work all night.”

After a considerable pause, he said, “All right. But Hal has to be there.”

“Wrong. Hal will get a printout from the server in the morning. Remember, the server sees all and remembers all.”

He realized that my request was a small price to pay and said, “Fair enough.”

So I walked out of the paneled elevator an hour later and entered the seventh floor, where, with the notable exception of Mr. Piggy-eyes, the firm’s entire administrative staff was crammed into a sprawling cube farm. Cy had told me that a computer expert named Cheryl would be waiting, and indeed, a skinny black woman of about forty was seated beside the water cooler, her nose stuffed inside the latest issue of Glamour. She did not look like a computer nerd, she looked like an overstressed, worn-down sub-urban mom, but I suppose they come in all flavors.

I introduced myself and she immediately complained, “I got a little boy bein’ watched by my mama and don’t want to be doin’ this all night.”

“If you’re good, you won’t.”

“I’m good.” She sized me up and asked, “So… what you wanta see?”

I explained that Lisa Morrow’s active files had been wiped clean, and I needed to see if there was a record of her messages magnetically lingering in the wiry bowels of the server.

“ ’Course there is,” she informed me, and we then worked our way through the cube maze and eventually squeezed ourselves into her office carrel.

Cheryl fell into her chair, typed a few commands into her computer, then pointed at a chair and ordered, “Sit. And keep your mouth shut. I don’t like being bothered when I’m workin’.”

Fine by me. I moved a stack of manuals off the chair, laid them on the floor, and sat. Cheryl was already typing commands and long lines of incomprehensible code were flashing incessantly across the screen. She was really grumpy.

She asked, “What you say her name was?”

“Morrow… Lisa Morrow.”

She nodded. “She the blond chick from the Army used to work upstairs?”

“Yup.”

“Heard she died.”

“She was murdered, actually.”

“Uh-huh. I heard she was good folk.” She studied her screen and said, “What you wanta look at?”

“Lisa’s e-mail going back, say, three months.”

She continued typing. “Everything’s kept going back two years.”

I watched what she was doing. In a way, I envy people who understand how the byzantine machine works, and in a larger way I don’t. Most programmers are weird. When I was a kid we were told not to sit too close to the TV, or hair would grow on our palms-but maybe I’ve got my warnings confused. It strikes me today’s mommies should warn their kids that too much time on your computer turns you into a dimwit.

She finally said, “Shit, shit, shit. Would ya look at this.”

“What?”

“A firewall ’round her file.” I suppose I looked a bit clueless, because she added, “Code protection. Single-layered, but it’s a good one, very complex.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That somebody don’t want us lookin’.”

I studied the screen. “No way to get past it?”

“Hack past it.”

“Yeah? How do we do that?”

“ We don’t.” She spun around in her chair and faced me. “The server administrator can fix it… tomorrow.”

Some voice in the back of my brain made me ask, “And that would be who?”

“Mr. Merriweather.”

Wasn’t that a surprise? Actually, it wasn’t; so I took a gamble and asked, “He a pal of yours?”

“That fatassed moron? He got no friends on this floor.”

That news was no surprise either. I said, “Cheryl, it’s very possible something in that database will embarrass Merriweather, maybe even get him fired. But tomorrow morning, he’ll know from the server printouts that we tried to enter Lisa’s file, and he might find a way to block us forever.”

“That’s your problem. Wanta hear my problem? I got a kid with my mama.”

“I’ll buy your kid a shiny new bike, a baseball glove, whatever.”

She stared into her computer screen for a long while. She finally said, “A BB gun. That’s what he wants.”

“Deal.”

I took the stairwell upstairs, tried to fix us espressos, was foiled by the machine again, settled for two cups of regular coffee, and then returned to settle in and observe Cheryl in action. A stream of curses poured out her throat every ten minutes or so. I did not regard this as a hopeful sign.

She had started at ten, and at eleven I thought I detected a faint trace of a smile. It was nearly midnight when she mumbled, “Oh, baby,” leaned back in her chair, ran her fingers through her hair, and announced, “Shit, I’m good.”

I observed a long column of e-mails on the screen.

“Could I?” I asked. She climbed out of her chair, saying, “I gotta go pee. Don’t you break nothin’.”

I began with Lisa’s oldest e-mails and worked forward. I checked incoming mail for the two files, and outgoing for any references to the Boston cases. Modern young executives, like Lisa, transact a lot of business electronically. I’m more old-fashioned, aka, a technological idiot. But even if my mastery were to extend beyond punching off and on, I prefer face-to-face and phone interaction, where a facial tic or a verbal nuance allows you to detect what’s not being said, which often is more revealing than what is. Lisa had sent or received up to a hundred messages a day.

I felt unnerved, and actually a bit sad, rummaging through the messages of a dear but dead friend. Pieces of her-Lisa’s intelligence, warmth, efficiency, and wit-jumped off the screen. I found myself stifling a sob or two.

Half her messages went to other firm members and concerned firm business, from her caseload to mundane administrative matters. I knew barely a handful of the firm’s lawyers. Most of the names were just names.

Twenty or more times a day, Lisa e-mailed friends, associates, clients outside the firm, and I recognized the names of several JAG officers. She was popular and made a point to stay in contact with her chums, passing on jokes and anecdotes, but more often just brief, cheery notes, the high-tech version of a blown kiss. Cheryl returned from the ladies’ room with two cups of espresso, and we sipped and chatted as I opened more e-mails, trying to detect anything curious or suspicious. A number had enclosures I made sure to open on the chance the legal files had been smuggled into Lisa’s file in that manner.

I noticed several e-mails to Janet, and of course I opened those, too. Nothing too personal, though from the jovial, intimate tone you could tell that Lisa and Janet shared more than just sisterhood. Lisa updating Janet on her day, Janet updating Lisa about the family, about some mutual friends, and in one of her last e-mails from Lisa a promise that a package would arrive for her any day. I checked the date, about two weeks before Lisa’s murder, and made a note to ask Janet about that package.

After another thirty minutes of this, the Jacks and Harrys and Barbaras and Marys of Lisa’s life started running together into a big friendly blur. Once or twice I read an e-mail and something funny went off in the back of my head. But nothing went off in the front of my head.

By one-thirty, Cheryl was curled up in her chair and snoring. I was on an e-mail sent by Lisa to ANCAR@SEC. GOV that read, “Dear A., Meet at Starbucks at 7:00 tomorrow AM for package. Friends Always, Lisa.”

Next was a message to DCOULTER@AOL. COM, something about providing an affidavit, when a bell went off inside my head.

I returned to the previous message and wondered what it was. I pondered this… and pondered this, and… nothing.

I moved on, and 122 messages later was one sent to JCUTH@JOHNSMATH. ORG that read, “Dear J., Appreciate your views and expertise greatly. I’ll deliver package to your apartment tomorrow night. Friends Always, Lisa.”

Ding, ding, ding. What? I studied it again. In every other e-mail Lisa referred to the recipient by their full name, not an initial. Actually, there had been another initial-A. So I went back to A., then back to J., and back and forth a few more times, and bingo!

I slapped my forehead hard enough that Cheryl suddenly shot up in her chair.

I had no idea what Lisa’s messages to them were about, and in fact, didn’t really care about the messages-the connection was the only thing that mattered.

J. -well, J. was Julia Cuthburt of Johnson and Smathers. And A. -that was Anne Carrol of the SEC.

Put the two together, and I was staring at the second and fourth victims of the L. A. Killer.