MURDER IN RETROSPECT (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 5) (9 page)

              Allie had the habit, when faced with a rather complicated sentiment to be written inside a card, of typing in Microsoft Word before transcribing the words by hand. It helped her to edit and gets the words finely honed enough to convey her thoughts sufficiently.

              My dear one,

              I don’t know how to write this, so you'll have to forgive me. It kills me that every time we see each other, when it doesn’t have to do with any damned murder case, there's always this ugly awkwardness between us. Why can’t it be better? Why can't we both seem to acknowledge that, despite what it may seem like, we in fact go very well together?

              I look at your beautiful eyes, your smile, and I can see in that way you look at me when I'm just feisty enough so that it tickles you, that underneath it all, you know as well as I do that there is something special between us. You're a good man underneath it all. A very good man. And I'm sorry that whenever I see you I can only act the way you see and not the way I really want to.

But I love you.

With All My Heart,

Allie

              She read what she wrote, and then reread it. And then read it one more time before she put it into the envelope without sealing it.

              Later on, she sat in her car outside the police station. Her hands trembled.

              She reread the card again. It was perfect, she thought. She waited, drumming and tapping and feeling the butterflies do jitterbugs in her belly.

              No sign of Beauchenne's car. A man came out of the building. She recognized the face. It was Lewis Billings, one of Beauchenne's rookies. Thank God for Billings. She got out of the car and approached him.

              "Hey Lewis, would you do me a huge favor and give this to your boss? I would've mailed it, but I thought he'd enjoy reading it more here than anywhere else."

              "Yeah?" said Lewis Billings.

              "Yeah," said Allie, staring the youth in the eye.

              The rookie shrugged. "No prob."

#

              Back in the comforting confines of her home, she called the hospital.

              "
Richard Teller, please?
"

              "One moment..." Background clicking. "
I'm sorry, but Mr. Teller no longer works here.
"

              "Wait, what? What are you saying?"

              "
He was dismissed this morning.
"

              She hung up without saying anything more.

              Teller was her only chance at getting an inside look at the hardware database. Everything was coming together now, and as Frank Beauchenne had taught her, she needed to revisit areas where she had already been.

              Without Jimmy Welles, Allie was up a creek, digitally speaking. She was by no means a technophobe, but there was a blockage that existed in the ethereal plane between her and the cyber universe.

              Say she was to randomly type a few characters into a search engine. And say it was to land her somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. Was that a crime in itself, to wander into the wrong place unknowingly? Of course not.

              But it was, and Allie knew it.

              Some things did justify questionable actions. Things like trying to apprehend a murderer. Of course that had to justify what she was doing now: Sitting in her bedroom, her cat by her side purring sweetly, and her wandering around cyberspace trying to find a way in to the Verdenier General Hospital filing system.

              She wasn't sure how she did it, but just by looking up a few random hack sites, she'd managed to gain access into the hospital's network. Her heart pounded in her chest. This was wrong, but there was a murderer out there. Wasn't that indirectly part of the Hippocratic Oath?

              She was stuck, and there was one person she knew who could help her. And she dialed his number.

              "
Yeah?
" said Jimmy Welles.

              "Hey, just listen. You don’t have to do anything, but I was just typing some stuff on the computer, right?"

              "
Yeah?
"

              "And I think I may have accidentally breached secur—"

              "
Hold it! Stop right there! Shut down your computer now. Pull the plug, smash it, throw it in the kitchen sink, whatever you have to do, and hang up the phone. Now.
"

              The call disconnected.

              Great. When Jimmy Welles starts talking like he's got a gun to his head, there's a problem.

              Allie Griffin wasn't foolish. She shut down her computer.

#

              She paced her house, thinking, and letting all aspects of the problem float around her. Sandeswack and DuBarry. Two unknowns among the knowns. Hawkes's lawyer...

              Allie went to her 'everything closet'. This was her former linen closet that had been converted into the last resting place for all things without a home. Everything from batteries to hand cream to homeless plastic parts of old popcorn makers could be found here. And board games.

              Like Scrabble.

              With hands trembling from the rush of adrenaline she'd just gotten, she opened up the game box and dumped out its contents onto her dining room table. The knot in the oak that was shaped like an eye stared at her. The eye was watching, and the eye approved. She slid an empty coffee mug over it. She had no time for the judgement of the eye now.

              She arranged the tiles.

              S-A-R-A-H S-A-N-D-E-S-W-A-C-K

              Her hands trembled so much it was hard to maneuver the tiles into their new positions, but she managed, and she laughed a nervous, shaky laugh when she looked at the new name:

              C-A-S-S-A-N-D-R-A H-A-W-K-E-S

              Cass was having an affair with her husband's lawyer. It was the only theory that explained all the facts. How else would she be cleared so quickly of any suspicions regarding a pre-nup? No one
knew
she'd had a pre-nup. No one except her, her husband, and her husband's lawyer.

              And that wonderful aspiring writer in the cafeteria.

              If her husband was killed before the divorce, she could very easily get her inheritance without a hitch.

              Dinah went scurrying past her and into the bedroom.

              Someone was at the door.

              She opened it up and saw Jimmy Welles on her doorstep.

              "You need to let me in."

              "Of course," said Allie, still surprised.

              The boy entered and looked around. "You changed the place."

              "Yeah, did a little redecorating."

              "Where's your computer?"

              "It's in the bedroom."

              "Get it. Please. Now. You're probably still visible."

              She retrieved her laptop for him. Sweeping away the Scrabble tiles, she placed it on the dining room table.

              "Allow me," he said, booting it up. "While we're waiting, I want you to answer me a question. What would you say if you were lying on the operating table waiting to have your gall bladder out, and suddenly you realized that the guy performing the operation was the same dude who sells hot dogs down at the roller rink?"

              Allie was flustered. She'd never seen Jimmy like this. All she could say at this point was a monotone, "Ummm..."

              "Let's take it a step further. Let's say you allowed him to do the operation anyway. What do you think would happen?"

              She was about the answer when the boy interrupted her.

              "I'll spare you the gory details and just say that the guy would probably leave ample evidence that he doesn’t know what he's doing. Would you agree?"

              "Um, yeah. Jimmy, do you mind telling me what your point is."

              Allie's computer was fully booted up, and Jimmy began typing feverishly, speaking as he typed. "My point is, never perform gall bladder surgery when it's obvious that all you're qualified for is selling hot dogs at the roller rink. There. You’re no longer visible. Now what is it you need to find?"

              She was now completely dumbfounded. "Um, I, wow, um, I guess I need to look at the database in the technology department. I need to see the hardware database, specifically the portable oxygen concentrators. I have a serial number."

              "Write it down for me," Jimmy said, typing.

              She grabbed a pen and a napkin and recalled her mnemonic:
In May, rookie Pete Rose moved into her first apartment.
0563308.

              In reverse: 3086305.

              She slid the napkin over to him and he grabbed it without looking.

              A moment later, "Here it is. What do you need to know?"

              She looked over his shoulder. There on her computer screen was the database that Teller used. The serial number was highlighted.

              "If I'm reading this correctly," said Jimmy, "this thing was sent back just yesterday. There's a FedEx tracking number right here. Looks like the unit with this serial number was originally loaned out to Robert Hawkes...wait..."

              "What, what is it? What do you see?"

              "Hang on..." Jimmy clicked and typed, typed and clicked. "Huh, that's interesting."

              "What's interesting?"

              "The database keeps a log of changes. Smart. You can see if someone's been messing around and making mistakes. The database remembers everything. I mean, it’s not apparent. You have to dig for it, but you can definitely uncover a history of any changes made."

              "So what are you saying?"

              "Well, for one thing, this serial number was edited. It used to read 5542589. Someone changed it."

              "I knew it. Something told me. I've got to get to that machine. Quiet for a second."

              Allie closed her eyes and thought, picturing the number in her head.

              554 – the telephone exchange of her childhood number

              25 – the traditional silver wedding anniversary year

              89 – the year the Berlin wall fell

              She said it aloud, twice: "
I called my home the silver year of the fall of the wall. I called my home the silver year of the fall of the wall."

              "Mnemonic?" said Jimmy Welles. "Cool."

              Allie paced the room while Jimmy made a few clicks and clacks on her keyboard. There was one man who could help her now, and that was Richard Teller. If only she knew how to get in touch with him. And then it struck her.

             
I'm here from seven to nine every evening, rain or shine.

              "Of course!" she said. "Jimmy, if you'll excuse me, I have to get in touch with someone."

              "I'll send you my bill."

              "I swear I'll make you the best dinner you ever had."

              "And dessert. And there has to be a craft beer. I'll let you know the details soon enough."

              "You got it."

              She was walking Jimmy to her front door when she stopped and looked back at her laptop. "Wait, am I still logged in to that hospital network?"

              "No, you're out. And you're visible again."

              She smiled. "How do you do it, Jimmy?"

              She meant it as a rhetorical question, and was slightly taken aback when Jimmy Welles answered it.

              "I switched the proxy server so that it would look like it was me doing it. So you’re in the clear. No one saw you."

              Allie felt as though her jaw weighed ten pounds, for it dropped open and stayed there.

              "Stop giving me that face," Jimmy said.

              "Hold on, you’re not supposed to hack anymore. I mean, I had no idea you were just now doing what you did. The proxy server I mean... Jimmy!"

              "They can’t see me."

              "What about, you know, you’re prospective employers?"

              "Yeah, they might be able to. I think I hid pretty well. We'll see. See ya 'round, Allie."

              And with that, Jimmy Welles left. It was a full minute before Allie got her jaw to close.