P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“No signs of intrusion.”

“Which meant they were feds, doesn’t it?” he said. “Agents, or at least other FBI people who were already in your system?”

“I don’t know,” she said evenly.

“You said it was worse than I thought. They have Mary Ellen Goode. What’s worse than that?”

“McLain and the Bureau are playing you and your sheriff.”

“Playing how?”

“I’ll show you in a minute, but first tell me where your home PC is.” He pointed to the study. She pulled out a package of CDs from her briefcase and went to the machine.

“I’m going to execute a wipe disc on your machine,” she said. “First, we save all your data.”

“Uh, okay, I guess. May I ask why?”

“Because I discovered something while I was showing Ranger Goode some of the Bureau’s case files on this vigilante matter.” She brought up a file-management program. “I found out that the next time you go on-line, there’s a federal computer waiting to suck every piece of data right off your hard drive,” she said, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’ve made some other discoveries, Just Cam, and they’re not good ones. I think I’ve been used, as well.”

She backed up all his data files onto the CDs and then put one of her own into the machine. Within ten seconds, the monitor went black.

“There,” she said. “I killed everything but your on-line service and the underlying OS. It’ll go on-line in a minute, and when they trap it, there’s a truly nasty little program that’s going to be swept up along with not very much from your computer. Then, wipe disc.”

Cam wasn’t too sure what “wipe disc” meant, but it sounded dramatic.

“Now,” Jay-Kay, said, getting up from his computer chair. “That coffee?”

They sat down in Cam’s kitchen and Jay-Kay explained that she’d detected an attempted intrusion into her mainframes when she went to AFIS to see if Marlor’s fingerprints were on file. “I have the fire wall from hell,” she said. “My machines are set up to detect an intrusion and swallow it whole, making the intruder think he’s in, when in fact my tigers are going into his machine and wiping out the hardwired machine-language programming. You know, the firmware stuff that starts the boot sequence. They order up a restart on the way out, and the intruding computer goes dark.”

Cam nodded, pretending to understand what she was talking about. “And what happened this time?”

“This time, in the process of blocking the intrusion, the tigers were thrown out. Two IBM mainframes in parallel operation can usually overwhelm most other computers, so this had to be a big federal machine, probably running some NSA code.”

“So what’s the deal?” he asked.

She sighed. “I’m a federal consultant. I have clearance and access. And yet someone within federal LE ordered up an intrusion. I checked with the sys op at the Charlotte field office. I happen to know her and I’ve helped her with some security issues. I made a joke of it: ‘What, you guys bored? Nothing to do on the graveyard shift? You want to mess with my tigers?’”

“And?”

“Well, she told me that Thomas McLain wanted to find a pattern analysis-report file in my machines and see if they could steal it. To test my security, he said. And they got it.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, because that means they went in looking for a specific file-by its file name. I delivered that file to the Manceford County system, which is probably how they got the file name.” She sipped some of her coffee and then smiled. “Luckily, it’s encrypted.”

“Can’t they break it?”

She shook her head. “This one’s based on an optical code with a physical onetime pad. They need to get their hands on the other half of a specific piece of heat-tempered plastic to break it.”

Cam got up and started to pace around his kitchen. “McLain’s been on the fence the whole time with this mess,” he said. “Let’s assume there is a second vigilante cell, made up of federal people, operating here in North Carolina. Or that there are feds involved with the cat dancers. Let’s assume McLain thinks this is true. What would the Bureau do?”

“The Professional Standards directorate would be all over it,” she said. “There would be Washington types in Charlotte as we speak.”

“McLain said those two agents at the meeting we went to were from that directorate.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know who they were, but everyone in the field office would know it if Pro Standards people were in the building. They’d talk about nothing else.”

The phone rang again. It was the sheriff.

“I’ve got Ms. Bawa here with me,” Cam said. “She thinks there’s something hinky at the Charlotte field office.” He recapped what Jay-Kay had just told him.

“Well, they haven’t shown up here, yet, either. And Horace just called down. Said he had some news. This new video? Our Computer Crimes people think that the picture is faked-some kind of digital construct. The eyes are wrong. Apparently, a human retina reflects a certain wavelength of light in a video, while a photograph doesn’t.”

“How sure are we?” Cam asked.

“Well, your ass is not out of the woods,” he said. “Because our lab rats aren’t willing to bet their asses that the video’s a fake. So to answer your question, we’re not sure.”

“Terrific.”

“We may have one break, though. The lighting was different in this video. In the execution videos, there was nothing visible in the background. In this one, there’s a tiny bit of the floor visible. One of our lab guys used to be an over-the-road truck driver. He makes it for the deck in a tractor-trailer-something to do with pallet skid marks. And when you think about it-”

“Yeah, that would be perfect,” Cam said, as Jay-Kay came back into the kitchen. “So I guess I still wait for a message?”

“I think we have to assume she’s alive and is being held hostage and then see what happens, Lieutenant,” the sheriff said. “I’ve got the SWAT team on hostage alert, and a helicopter set up with the state guys in case that Owl thing was bullshit.”

“And how about the G-men?” Cam said.

“We’ll play that by ear. See what develops. Let’s get off this phone, and whatever happens, leave the lady at home.”

“Roger that,” Cam said, and hung up.

“Your computer is officially wiped,” she said. “I left the CDs, but you might want to hide them.”

“Did your little bomb go out?”

“Don’t know, but if I’m right about the origin of that probe, sometime tomorrow I should get a call to come in and see why a certain network self-destructed. What have your people decided to do?”

Cam told her. She asked how she could help.

“Actually,” Cam said, “the sheriff told me to make sure you do not get involved in whatever goes down tonight.”

She frowned. “I did not mean going along for the ride,” she said. “I meant, how can I help by doing what I do best?”

“I have no idea,” he replied.

The night wind had begun to stir outside, so he turned on the gas fireplace in the living room and poured them both some coffee. They sat down in the living room. Frick and Frack took up stations on either side of the fireplace and fell asleep. Jay-Kay reached into her briefcase and pulled out her cell phone to check for messages.

“Now I guess we wait,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the Sheriff’s Office has my phone up so they can try a trace.”

“Might not someone come here to retrieve the pictures?”

“The general sense of it is that they’re after me, not the pictures. I’m the guy who can provide direct testimony.”

“Surely you’ve been deposed by now?”