Dog Helps Those (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (15 page)

I tried the door handle, and since it was locked I knocked lightly. No answer. I looked around but couldn’t get the attention of anyone behind the window to buzz me in. I waited, uncomfortably squeezed between a guy in a ball cap and football jersey and a heavyset young woman wearing stiletto heels that were too high to keep her balanced.

Jim Shelton shouldered his way through the crowd a couple of minutes later, after I’d knocked three more times. “This is chaos,” he said. He dug his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, apologizing to the teetering girl for elbowing her, and called Dot.

The line moved forward, the guy in the jersey squeezing past us so he didn’t lose his place in line. Finally the door opened, and Jim and I were able to slip inside.

I took a deep breath. “That’s a mess out there.”

“I’m going to kill Verri Parshall one of these days,” Dot said. “I’m extending hours til eight o’clock tonight, and even then we won’t get through everyone waiting.”

She led us into the conference room. “What’s up?”

We sat down at the big oval table and I explained what Dustin De Bree had told me. “That explains a lot,” Dot said. “I couldn’t imagine why we were still using that product when it was so crappy.”

“Have you spoken to John Babson about these computer problems?” Jim asked Dot.

“Just in the most general way. He’s been traveling a lot lately and I haven’t had the chance to sit down with him one on one.”

“I think you’re going to have to,” Jim said. “We don’t want to accuse Verri of anything based on one student’s sour grapes, but Babson needs to know that we’re in danger of a massive screw up with graduation.”

Dot sighed. “I know. I’ve been here twenty years and things have never been this chaotic. I’ll try and get a meeting with him as soon as possible.”

“This has gone beyond the level of an inconvenience,” Jim said. “Very soon, you’re going to have the entire faculty trying to access the mainframe computer to enter our final grades. At least one third of our classes are taught by adjunct faculty who go off the payroll, and in many cases disappear, as soon as the semester is over. If they can’t get their grades in, students can’t graduate.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Jim,” Dot said. “Transfers get screwed up, too. And don’t even think about Federal financial aid. If we can’t demonstrate that students successfully completed their courses, we’ll lose our funding. The whole damn college will grind to a halt.”

“All from a software malfunction,” Jim said.

“Welcome to the world of computers,” I said.

Dot let Jim and me out a back door into the garden so we didn’t have to fight the crowds. “See if you can talk to that student again,” Jim said, as we walked back around to the front of the building. “We’re going to need every piece of ammunition we can find against Verri if this comes to a fight.”

“I’ll try.”

I also wondered if I could dig up any evidence myself. Eastern wasn’t only my employer, it was my alma mater. I couldn’t stand by and let someone sabotage it, if that’s what was going on. Even if it was only massive incompetence, I had to do what I could to head off disaster.

I could already feel my fingers itching. Instead of going back to my office I headed for that secluded carrel in the library. I felt like some kind of undercover agent as I looked all around me before I slipped into it.

I sat down at my computer and flexed my fingers. I was going to enjoy this. Verri’s team had locked down the college system, but I’d gotten around such safeguards in the past.

I got myself a DOS prompt and started trying to figure out how I could get around Freezer Burn. If it was as crappy a program as I thought, I knew I could find a back door into it. At my last job I had gotten a lot of experience trying to break into software, helping the engineers figure out where the bugs were and how to fix them. I’d learned that hitting a random mix of keyboard keys and function keys together often confused a program. I’d run password generating programs that tried endless combinations of letters, numbers and symbols until they hit one that would give me high-level access, enabling me to actually edit the code that ran things. I had a lot of ideas and I was willing to use them all.

I was right; Freezer Burn was a crappy program. It took me only a half hour to figure out that if I arrested my computer’s boot-up before it hit the Freezer Burn code, I could bypass that section of the routine. Once I’d done that, I could also bypass the software that restricted what could be done on any campus computer based on its location and internet protocol address. The computers open to students for their use, for example, couldn’t access the employee database, even if you logged into one with an employee ID.

Without Freezer Burn blocking my access to the college’s mainframe computer, I was able to start figuring out why our systems seemed to be constantly failing. One routine asked for an employee password before granting access to the college network. It looked to a particular database to validate the credentials. However, the path to that database required the employee to already have logged in to another database on a different server.

That server was supposed to be first on the path to log in—but if you were logging in from an off-campus computer, or a computer the network didn’t recognize, the path didn’t lead you in the right direction.

Freezer Burn was clearly a lousy program, and one that the college was wasting money on. But what should I do with the information? I couldn’t go to President Babson with the evidence I’d discovered without admitting that I’d broken the law myself. And no matter how valuable the information was, I couldn’t see how he could justify keeping an unreformed hacker on his staff.

It was after five o’clock by then, so I gave up hacking for a different kind of investigation. I shut the computer down, looked around to make sure the coast was clear, and then left the carrel, and the library.

When I unlocked the door to my office, Rochester rolled over onto his back and waved his paws in the air. “What, you don’t want to go home?” I sat down on the floor next to him and rubbed his belly. “Who’s a good boy?”

“You do love that dog, don’t you?”

I looked up to see Mike MacCormac at my office door.

“Yeah. A friend of mine has a term for it. Puppy whipped.”

Mike laughed. “I guess I belong in that crowd, too. Anyway, I came by to ask if talked to Mariana at the News Bureau about helping her with press releases.”

The News Bureau handled all the general public relations work for the College, while I handled everything related to fund-raising. “Yeah, I’m splitting the workload with her. I’ve finished one for each recipient of an honorary degree and sent them out, along with bios and photos. Next up I’m working on a couple of releases about the valedictorian, the salutatorian, and the students who won the honor awards.”

Like any old-line college, Eastern had a range of legacy awards given to exceptional students—all related to our logo, the rising sun. The Ray award was for school spirit, the Corona for volunteerism, and so on. “I’ll be sending them to all their hometown papers, too. I figure any mention of Eastern is good for us.”

“Great. Why don’t you cross-reference our donor database and email them to any alums in the area, too? It’ll be nice for them to hear something from us that isn’t asking for money.”

I stood up. “Will do.”

Mike left, and Rochester scrambled to his feet. “Feel like a ride, boy?” I asked, as I hooked up his leash. I wanted to go back out to Berkey Farm Road and take a look at Rita’s neighbors. When I’d been to her farm in the past I hadn’t noticed them at all.

I rolled down the windows, and Rochester sat on the passenger seat with his big golden head streaming in the breeze as we navigated those country roads once again. As we got close on Scammell’s Mill Road, I slowed down to note my surroundings.

One new development was under construction, a series of sprawling faux-Colonial homes on wide lots, and I wondered who had the money for such properties in the current economy. I passed a couple of farmsteads, and then approached Don Kashane’s property. He kept a couple of horses in a field by the road, protected by a white split-rail fence. Beyond them I could see his house, and a series of newly planted fields. I smelled dirt and fresh grass as I signaled my right onto Berkey Farm Road.

As soon as I made the turn, though, the breeze shifted and I smelled dogs, and dog shit. Rochester sniffed it too. I could also hear the cacophony of barking, even far from Rita’s driveway. I could only imagine how irritating it would be to have every evening ruined by that kind of sound and smell.

I pulled next to Don’s fence and stopped the car. A big Jeep Grand Cherokee sat in the Hubbards’ driveway, and from the Eastern parking decal on the back window I assumed that meant Naomi was still there. The house was faced with fieldstone, and floor-to-ceiling windows looked out from what was probably the living room. A flagstone path led up to the front door, which sat slightly back, protected by the two-story right wing of the house. The yard was immaculately groomed, with fresh-blooming tulips in beds around the maple trees.

Could I be living in a house like that, I wondered, if Mary hadn’t miscarried, if I hadn’t hacked into the credit bureaus, if I hadn’t gone to prison and we hadn’t divorced? Was this my road not taken? Mary had been a high-earning business executive, and though I hadn’t matched her income, I’d done well for myself.

Suppose she hadn’t miscarried, and we’d moved back to the East Coast. We could have had a house like that—maybe not quite so fancy or expensive, but we probably could have bought in that development I had passed. Would I be a stay-at-home dad, freelancing or doing computer consulting?

Rochester leaned over and put his head in my lap. “Yes, boy, that’s not a road we want to go down, is it? My life has led me here, to you, and we’re going to make the best of it, aren’t we?”

He snuffled my crotch and I laughed. “Come on, let’s go.” I put the car in gear and we cruised down the road, past the driveway that led to Rita’s property. Berkey Farm Road dead ended at Hugo Furst’s drive, and I noticed a farm stand in the Fursts’ front yard.

Jars of strawberry and rhubarb preserves shared space on a splintered plywood table with bundles of fresh asparagus and spinach, heads of green leaf lettuce, and a tray of other mixed vegetables. An older man sat behind the table and looked up as I got out of the car and walked over. He wore a pair of overalls and a white T-shirt.

“Evening,” I said. “Wow, those asparagus look great.”

“First of the season. I’m Furst, and I raise ‘em.”

For a minute I misheard him and thought he was talking about poker. But then I made the connection. I picked up a bunch of asparagus. The spears were crisp and straight, and the heads were compact. “I’ll take two of those,” I said.

As if on cue, Rita’s dogs erupted in a new round of barking as Furst flipped open a brown paper bag.

“How many dogs do they have? Sounds like a hundred.” I knew the number was closer to fifty, but I thought asking the question might be a good conversation opener.

“Too many,” Furst said. “But not for much longer. Woman who lived there got herself killed, so all them little Chihuahuas and dachshunds will be moving on.”

I picked up a head of lettuce and sniffed it. It smelled fresh and earthy. “Bet it won’t come soon enough for you.”

“You got that. I got nothing against dogs, you know.” He looked beyond me to where Rochester had his front paws on the windowsill of the passenger door. “Got two of ‘em myself. But that witch Rita, she had forty or fifty at a time. And it’s not just the noise, either. She hosed down the kennels and the dog shit ran right down into my land.”

“Isn’t manure good fertilizer?” I asked innocently.

“Not dog shit, with all the chemicals in their food. But you can be sure, my produce is one hundred percent pure and organic.”

I picked out some ripe Jersey tomatoes, a couple of zucchini, and a few other vegetables and then pulled out my wallet. “I’ll take two heads of lettuce, too. So the woman was killed? Run over or something?”

He shook his head as he took the bills from me. “Nope. Somebody poisoned the old bitch. If I knew who, I’d shake his hand. You have a nice night, now.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

I could see Hugo First was glad that Rita was dead. But had he hated her enough to kill her? I couldn’t say.

As I drove back toward Stewart’s Crossing, I realized that I didn’t have a main course for dinner—just the asparagus and the lettuce. I could have stopped at the McCaffrey’s grocery and picked something up, but it was on the other side of town and I didn’t feel like going all the way over there. Instead I called Rick. “You want to grab a burger at the Drunken Hessian?” I asked.

“I’m wrapping up here. I have to head home and feed Rascal. Why don’t you come over to my house and we’ll order a pizza?”

“Sounds good to me. You can spare a bowl of chow for Rochester, can’t you?”

“I can, but I’m not sure Rascal will share.”

“Rochester will see to that, don’t you worry.”

I pulled up in Rick’s driveway as he was getting out of his truck, and Rochester bounded out of the car and rushed up to him. As I got out I could hear Rascal going wild inside his crate in Rick’s living room. Rochester and I followed Rick inside, where Rascal was up on his hind legs shaking the metal bars of the crate as if he was Jimmy Cagney in some old prison movie.