Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 21

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“Were you in love with him?”

“We never dated.”

“Was he in love with you?”

“You ask too many questions, Lucy. You can't just ask people anything you want.”

“Yes I can. They don't have to answer.”

“It's offensive.”

“I think I've figured out how someone got into your directory, Aunt Kay. Remember I told you about users that came with the software?”

“Yes.”

“There's one called demo that has root privileges but no password assigned to it. My guess is that this is what somebody used and I'll show you what probably happened.”

Her fingers flew over the keyboard without pause as she talked. “What I'm doing now is going into the system administrator's menu to check out the log-in accounting. We're going to search for a specific user. In the case, root. Now we'll hit g to go and boom. There it M She ran her finger across a line on the screen..

“On December sixteenth at five-oh-six in the afternoon, someone logged in from a device called t-t-y-fourteen. This person had root privileges and we'll assume is the person who went into your directory. I don't know what he looked at. But twenty minutes later, at five twenty-six, he tried to send the note 'I can't find it' to t-t-y-oh-seven and inadvertently created a file. He logged out at five-thirty-two, making the total time of the session twenty-six minutes. And it doesn't appear anything was printed, by the way. I took a look at the printer spooler log, which shows files printed. I didn't see anything that caught my attention.”

“Let me make sure I've got this straight. Someone tried to send a note from t-t-y-fourteen to t-t-y-oh seven, “ I said.

“Yes. And I checked. Both of those devices are terminals.”

“How can we determine whose office those terminals are in?” I asked.

“I'm surprised there's not a list somewhere in here. But I haven't found it yet. If all else fails, you can check the cables leading to the terminals. Usually, they're tagged. And if you're interested in my personal opinion, I don't think your computer analyst is the spy. In the first place, she knows your user name and password and would have no need to log in with demo. Also, since I assume the mini is in her office, then I also assume she uses the system terminal.”

“She does.”

“The device name for your system terminal is t-t-y-b.”

“Good.”

“Another way to figure out who did this would be to sneak into someone's office when they aren't there but are logged in. All you've got to do is go into UNIX and type 'who am I' and the system will tell you.”

She pushed back her chair and got up. “I hope you're hungry. We've got chicken breasts and a chilled wild rice salad made with cashews, peppers, sesame oil. And there's bread. Is your grill in working order?”

“It's after eleven and snowing outside.”

“I didn't suggest that we eat outside. I simply would like to cook the chicken on the grill.”

“Where did you learn to cook?”

We were walking to the kitchen.

“Not from Mother. Why do you think I was such a little fatso? From eating the junk she bought. Snacks, sodas, and pizza that tastes like cardboard. I have fat cells that will scream for the rest of my life because of Mother. I'll never forgive her.”

“We need to talk about this afternoon, Lucy. If you hadn't come home when you did, the police would have been looking for you.”

“I worked out for an hour and a half, then took a shower.”

“You were gone four and a haft hours.”

“I had groceries to buy and a few other errands.”

“Why didn't you answer the car phone?”

“I assumed it was someone trying to reach you. Plus, I've never used a car phone. I'm not twelve years old, Aunt Kay.”

“I know you're not. But you don't live here and have never driven here before: was worried.”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

We ate by firelight, both of us sitting on the floor around the butler's table. I had turned off lamps. Flames jumped and shadows danced as ft celebrating a magic moment in the lives of my niece and me.

“What do you want for Christmas?” I asked, reaching for my wine.

“Shooting lessons,” she said.

Lucy stayed up very late working with the computer and I did not hear her stir when I woke up to the alarm early Monday morning. Parting the curtains in my bedroom window, I looked out at powdery flakes swirling in lights burning on the patio. The snow was deep and nothing was moving in my neighborhood. After coffee and a quick scan of the paper, I got dressed and was almost to the door when I turned around. No matter that Lucy was no longer twelve years old, I could not leave without checking on her.

Slipping inside her bedroom, I found her sleeping on her side in a tangle of sheets, the duvet half on the floor. It touched me that she was wearing a sweat suit that she had gotten out of one of my drawers. I had never had another human being wish to sleep in anything of mine, and I straightened the covers, careful not to wake her.

The drive downtown was awful, and I envied workers whose offices were closed because of the snow. Those of us who had not been granted an unexpected holiday crept slowly along the interstate, skating with the slightest tap on the brakes as we peered through streaked windshields that the wipers could not keep clean. I wondered how I would explain to Margaret that my teenage niece thought our computer system was insecure. Who had gotten into my directory, and why had Jennifer Deighton been calling my number and hanging up? I did not get to the office until half past eight, and when I walked into the morgue, I stopped midway in the corridor, puzzled. Parked at a haphazard angle near the stainless steel refrigerator door was a gurney, bearing a body, covered by a sheet. Checking the toe tag, I read Jennifer Deighton's name, and I looked around. There was no one inside the office or X-ray room. I opened the door to the autopsy suite and found Susan dressed in scrubs and dialing a number on the phone. She quickly hung up and greeted me with a nervous “Good morning.”

“Glad you made it in.” I unbuttoned my coat, regarding her curiously.

“Ben gave me a lift,” she said, referring to my administrator, who owned a Jeep with four-wheel drive. “So far, we're the only three here.”

“No sign of Fielding?”

“He called a few minutes ago and said he couldn't get out of his driveway. I told him we only have one case so far, but if more come in Ben can pick him up.”

“Are you aware that our case is parked in the hall?” She hesitated, blushing. “I was taking her over to X ray when the phone rang. Sorry.”

“Have you weighed and measured her yet?”

“No.”

“Let's do that first.”

She hurried out of the autopsy suite before I could comment further. Secretaries and scientists who worked in the labs upstairs often entered and left the building through the morgue because it was convenient to the parking lot. Maintenance workers were in and out, too. Leaving a body unattended in the middle of a corridor was very poor form and could even jeopardize the case should chain of evidence be questioned in court.

Susan returned pushing the gurney, and we went to work, the stench of decomposing flesh nauseating. I fetched gloves and a plastic apron from a shelf, and clamped various forms in a clipboard. Susan was quiet and tense. When she reached up to the control panel to reset the computerized floor scale, I noticed her hands were shaking. Maybe she was suffering from morning sickness.

“Everything okay?” I asked her.

“Just a little tired.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. She weighs one-eighty exactly.”

I changed into my greens and Susan and I moved the body into the X-ray room across the hall, transferring it from the gurney to the table. Opening the sheet, I wedged a block under the neck to keep the head from lolling. The flesh of her throat was clean, spared from soot and burns because her chin had been tucked dose to her chest while she was inside the car with the engine running. I did not see any obvious injuries, no bruises or broken fingernails. Her nose wasn't fractured. There were no cuts inside her lips and she hadn't bitten her tongue.

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