The 37th Amendment: A Novel (25 page)

Thunk. THUNK. Thunk. Now Julia was fully awake. She slid open the shower door and leaned out to listen. Then she turned the water off.

Thunk. THUNK. It sounded like drawers being opened and closed. Julia wrapped herself in a towel and opened the bathroom door.

There, in her bedroom, were three blue-uniformed police officers, tearing through her closet and dresser. Another was pulling the blankets off her bed.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked. “What’s going on here?”

“We’re executing a search warrant on this property,” one of the officers said crisply, looking awkwardly away from her towel. “Sgt. Mackey is downstairs with all the paperwork if you have any questions.”

Julia ran out of the bedroom and down the hall to her office. Two policemen were filling cardboard boxes with computer disks and cartridges.

“Hey!” Julia shouted. “That stuff is for work! You can’t take it!”

“If you have any questions,” said one of the officers calmly, “see Sgt. Mackey downstairs.” He lifted the cover on a blue plastic storage box, revealing a stack of ten neatly-labeled disks. He grabbed all ten and jammed them into a cardboard box that was already filled.

Julia was pale. She ran from the room and raced down the stairs. “Which one of you is Sgt. Mackey?” she shouted to the crowd of blue uniforms in her living room. A woman stood up. “I’m Sgt. Mackey,” she said, “Are you Julia Thomsen?”

“I sure as hell am,” Julia said fiercely. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Ted was underneath Tiffany’s car in the garage when he heard the phone inside the house ring. A moment later he saw Tiffany’s feet standing next to the car. “Dobson Howe’s on the phone for you,” she said, holding a wireless phone down near the front tire. Ted scooted out from under the car and held up oily hands. Tiffany held the phone against Ted’s ear while he reached for a rag.

“Hello?” he said.

“Don’t call her, don’t try to make contact with her. Her phone is probably tapped. I’m on my way over there to pick her up right now.”

“Who?” Ted asked, wiping his hands. “What are you talking about?”

“You haven’t seen the news?”

“No,” Ted said. “What happened?”

“Your friend Julia Thomsen got a visit from the police today,” Howe said.

“What?” Ted took the phone from Tiffany.

“The police executed a search of her house this morning,” Howe continued. “If you know what they were looking for, this would be a good time to tell me.”

“She wasn’t arrested, was she?” Ted asked.

Howe paused. “Not yet,” he said.

Officer Francine Luntz lifted a cardboard box full of computer disks and let it drop with a thud onto her desk. She looked disapprovingly at the three boxes still remaining on the metal cart. She pressed a button on her phone.

“Desk,” answered a voice on the speaker.

“This is Luntz,” she said. “Can I get some help over here with this inventory? It’s got to be done today and there’s so much stuff, I’m not even halfway through it.”

“I can send you a couple of volunteers,” the voice said.

“That would be great,” Luntz replied.

“You made a duplicate of the entire computer network?” Dobson Howe’s voice sounded awed. “You can do that?”

Julia leaned back against the leather passenger seat of Howe’s Bentley. She nodded. “Government offices all have really old hardware,” she said. “Their equipment fills a huge room but all the data will fit on a handful of today’s servers.”

“Incredible,” Howe said. “And you and Ted set this up in his house.”

Julia nodded. “And I took it all apart again when Ted left town.”

“And what did you do with all the components?”

“I reformatted all the hard drives,” Julia said, “so no one could ever recover any data from them. Then I shipped everything up to my sister in Sacramento. My three-year-old nephew now has a computer that could run a small stock exchange.”

“You used a freight service?”

“No, no,” Julia said. “U.S. mail. Cash. No records.”

Howe smiled. “So there’s no problem,” he said. “There was no trace of any of this for the police to find in your house this morning.”

Julia was silent.

“Right?” Howe asked.

Julia was silent.

Howe pulled the car over to the curb and threw it into park. He fixed a penetrating gaze on Julia. “Right?” he asked again.

“Well, there was one thing,” Julia said in a voice barely audible over the soft idle of the Bentley. “I kept the original back-up disks.”

Thursday, July 20, 2056

District Attorney Thomas J. Huron arrived at the mayor’s office exactly on time at 4:00 p.m. sharp. “Hello, Rosa,” he said pleasantly. The secretary smiled disinterestedly. “Go right in, sir,” she said. “They’re all waiting for you.”

Huron grasped the brass door handle, took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hello,” he said.

Much to Huron’s surprise, no one glared at him. The mayor was in her chair, pre-occupied with a document on the desk in front of her. Police Chief Wilson Price was seated on the couch next to a balding man in his fifties whom Huron assumed was Gregory Ulrich. The mayor’s chief of staff, Ronni Richards, sat in a leather chair across the room. They all murmured greetings.

The mayor gestured to a leather chair next to Ronni. Huron sat down. “We think they’re in Nevada,” the mayor said.

“Mmmm,” said Huron. “Can’t touch them in Nevada.”

“It’s been two days since we searched the home of Braden’s friend,” the mayor continued. “But it doesn’t seem to have been enough to scare them out of hiding.”

“Mmmm,” said Huron.

“So what I need you to do,” the mayor went on, “is look at this list of things that were seized during the search, and see if you can arrest this Julia Thomsen for something.” She extended a stack of stapled pages across her desk to him.

Huron frowned. The list was at least ten pages long, mostly single-spaced, and he had forgotten his glasses. He held the pages at arm’s length. “Any drugs?” he asked.

Gregory Ulrich took his glasses out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Huron. “Just some marijuana. But if that was a crime you’d have half the country in jail.”

Huron put the glasses on and perused the top page. “What is this stuff?” he asked. “Computer games?”

“Who knows?” said the mayor. “It looks like she labeled all her disks with abbreviations and numbers. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Huron turned a page, then another one. “I wish the police didn’t do everything on paper,” he said. “If this list was on a disk we could search for keywords and maybe find something.”

Ronni sat up. “Well, let’s scan it,” she said. “Does anyone here know how to use the new scanner?”

Half an hour later the five of them were huddled around a computer monitor behind the mayor’s desk. Gregory sat in the mayor’s chair, his fingers clicking over a keyboard. “Search for ‘taxes,’” said the mayor. Ulrich clicked the keys. “Not found,” reported the screen. “Try ‘D.A.’s office,’” Ronni suggested. Ulrich typed it in. “Not found,” the screen replied.

“Let me try ‘D.A.’ by itself,” Ulrich said. He clicked the keys. The computer beeped and a screen of text rolled up. The five of them crowded in to read it.

Here are the results of your search:

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 1 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 2 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 3 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 4 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 5 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 6 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 7 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 8 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 9 OF 10”

“DEUCE - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56 - DISK 10 OF 10”

“What does that mean?” asked Huron. He got no answer. Ulrich took a wireless out of his pocket and speed-dialed a number.

“Let me talk to Omar,” Ulrich said into the wireless after a moment. There was a pause. “Omar,” he said, “It’s me. Have you heard of something called ‘Deuce’? Yeah. What is it? Uh-huh. How’s it work?” Ulrich gestured for a pen and paper. Ronni handed him her yellow pad. “Uh-huh,” Ulrich said, scratching out a few notes as he listened. “Okay, Omar, you’ve done it again. Thanks.” He pressed a button on the wireless and slipped it back into his pocket.

The others waited for Ulrich to speak, but he only sat in the chair looking thoughtful. Finally the mayor jumped in. “Well?” she demanded. “What is it?”

Ulrich smiled. “Deuce,” he began in his silky tone, “is a high-powered back-up utility for large computer networks. It’s used to make a complete copy of everything on the system, so in the event of a crash, everything can be put back exactly as it was. It copies everything. It ignores passwords, access codes, lock-outs, restrictions of any kind.”

There was a pause. “How does that help us?” asked the district attorney.

Ulrich pointed at the computer screen. “Look how Julia Thomsen labeled these ten disks,” he said. “‘Deuce - D.A. BACK-UP - 6/20/56.’ Somehow she got ahold of a system-wide back-up from June 20th. She and Braden must have found a way to convert the back-up disks into a readable form. Then they had their very own copy of every file in your whole office network.”

“Good enough for me,” said the D.A. “Let’s pick her up.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Jordan pleaded. “It can’t possibly help Julia if you get arrested, too.”

“I’ll rent a car,” Ted said. “The Highway Patrol is looking for the Corvette.”

“You need a photo ID to rent a car,” Jordan answered.

“Even in Nevada?”

“Even in Nevada.”

Ted slammed the pen he was holding down on the kitchen table, then quickly checked the table for damage. He pushed his chair back and turned away from Jordan. “I’m going,” he said. “I got her into this and I can’t just hide out while she goes to jail.”

“She’s got Dobson Howe, Ted.”

“That didn’t help Robert Rand.”

Jordan was silent. When Ted turned back to look at her, he saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

“I thought I meant something to you,” she said quietly.

“You do!” Ted said emphatically. He reached for Jordan’s hand and pulled her to her feet, wrapping his arms tightly around her body.

“Then don’t go,” Jordan whispered.

Tiffany walked into the living room to find Ted sitting on the sofa, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’m pond scum,” he said.

Tiffany’s eyebrows lifted slightly. She came straight over and sat down in a chair next to the sofa. Ted looked up. “Well,” Tiffany said, “That’s not something you hear every day. What happened?”

“A girl in L.A. got arrested,” Ted said. “And it’s my fault. I used her because I wanted to help Jordan. I asked her to do me a favor. And she did. And now she’s been arrested for it.”

“That must have been some favor,” Tiffany said.

“I’m pond scum,” Ted repeated. He plunged his head back down into his hands. “It’s going to cost me my job if I go back,” he said. “I told them the news reports were bogus and I was just called away on a family emergency. If I go back and turn myself in, they’re not going to like it.”

“Turn yourself in?” Tiffany said. “For what?”

“I don’t know,” Ted said. “But Julia wouldn’t have been arrested unless somebody wanted to charge me with something. She only did what I asked her to do.”

“Oh, my,” Tiffany said. “What does Dobson Howe say about it?”

“He said he got her out on bail and I should stay in Nevada. But I can’t just sit here and let her face charges. I can’t do it.”

“She’s someone special to you, isn’t she?”

“We’ve gone together for about five years,” Ted said. “But it’s not serious.”

Just then, Jordan came flying down the stairs, stopped suddenly and turned a ferocious gaze on Ted. “Well?” she demanded.

Ted sat up and looked at her. “I have to go back,” he said quietly. “I have to.”

“I need some air,” Jordan said. She stormed across the living room and out the front door.

Tiffany watched Jordan leave. Then she watched Ted plunge his head into his hands again. “Sounds serious,” she said.

“I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,” Ted said. “What if I go to L.A. and turn myself in and it doesn’t even get Julia out of trouble? Maybe Jordan’s right. Maybe I should stay here and wait to see what happens.”

“You love her, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“Jordan.”

Ted looked up. Then he looked down again. “I’m crazy about her,” he said.

“Do you love the other one?”

“We’ve been together so long,” Ted said. “She loves me, she’d do anything for me. My daughter adores her. I don’t know what to do.”

Tiffany nodded. “You know, Ted,” she began in a soft voice, “When I was younger I used to think, ‘What if I had done this differently?’ or ‘What if I had done that differently?’ I would agonize over every decision, so fearful that I’d make the wrong choice and regret it all the rest of my life.” Ted sat up and looked at her. Tiffany smiled. “But, you know,” she continued gently, “You get older, and you learn a lot. And eventually you realize that no matter what you decide, you’re fucked.”