John Verdon - Think of a Number

Nardo nodded. The recording went on.

“If I could hear God, what would He tell me?”

“I don’t really understand that, sir. Could you explain what you mean?”

The voice, suddenly booming, announced, “God would tell me to kill them all!”

“Sir? I’m pretty confused here. Did you want me to write this message down and pass it along to someone?”

There was a sharp laugh, like cellophane crumpling.

“It’s Judgment Day, no more to say. / Dermott be nimble, Gurney be quick. / The cleanser is coming. Tick-tock-tick.”

The first to speak was Nardo “That was the whole call?”

“Yes, sir.”

He leaned back in his chair and massaged his temples. “No word yet from Chief Meyers?”

“We keep leaving messages at his hotel desk, sir, and on his cell phone. No word yet.”

“I assume the caller’s number was blocked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“‘Kill them all,’ huh?”

“Yes, sir, those were his words. Do you want to hear the recording again?”

Nardo shook his head. “Who do you think he’s referring to?”

“Sir?”

“‘Kill them all.’ All who?”

The female cop seemed to be at a loss. Nardo looked at Gurney.

“Just a guess, Lieutenant, but I’d say it’s either all the remaining people on his hit list-assuming there are any-or all of us here in the house.”

“And what about ‘the cleanser is coming,’” said Nardo. “Why ‘the cleanser’?”

Gurney shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe he just likes the word-fits his pathological notion of what he’s doing.”

Nardo’s features wrinkled in an involuntary expression of distaste. Turning to the female cop, he addressed her for the first time by name. “Pat, I want you outside the house with Big Tommy. Take diagonal corners opposite each other, so together you’ll have every door and window under surveillance. Also, get the word around-I want every officer prepared to converge on this house within one minute of hearing a shot or any kind of disturbance at all. Questions?”

“Are we expecting an armed attack, sir?” She sounded hopeful.

“I wouldn’t say ‘expecting,’ but it’s sure as hell possible.”

“You really think that crazy bastard is still in the area?” There was acetylene fire in her eyes.

“It’s possible. Let Big Tommy know about the perp’s latest call. Stay super alert.”

She nodded and was gone.

Nardo turned grimly to Gurney. “What do you think? Think I ought to call in the cavalry, tell the state cops we got an emergency situation? Or was that phone call a bunch of bullshit?”

“Considering the body count so far, it would be risky to assume it was bullshit.”

“I’m not assuming a freaking thing,” said Nardo, tight-lipped.

The tension in the exchange led to a silence.

It was broken by a hoarse voice calling from upstairs.

“Lieutenant Nardo? Gurney?”

Nardo grimaced as if something were turning sour in his stomach. “Maybe Dermott’s got another recollection he wants to share.” He sank deeper into his chair.

“I’ll look into it,” said Gurney.

He stepped from the room into the hallway. Dermott was standing at his bedroom door at the top of the staircase. He looked impatient, angry, exhausted.

“Could I speak to you… please?” The “please” was not said pleasantly.

Dermott looked too shaky to negotiate the staircase, so Gurney went up. As he did, the thought came to him that this wasn’t really a home, just a place of business with sleeping quarters appended to it. In the city neighborhood where he was raised, it was a common arrangement-shopkeepers living above their shops, like the wretched deli man whose hatred of life seemed to increase with each new customer, or the mob-connected undertaker with his fat wife and four fat children. Just thinking about it made him queasy.

At the bedroom door, he shoved the feeling aside and tried to decipher the portrait of unease on Dermott’s face.

The man glanced around Gurney and down the stairs. “Is Lieutenant Nardo gone?”

“He’s downstairs. What can I do for you?”

“I heard cars driving away,” said Dermott accusingly.

“They’re not going far.”

Dermott nodded in an unsatisfied way. He obviously had something on his mind but seemed in no rush to get to the point. Gurney took the opportunity to pursue a few questions of his own.

“Mr. Dermott, what do you do for a living?”

“What?” He sounded both baffled and annoyed.

“Exactly what sort of work do you do?”

“My work? Security. I believe we had this conversation before.”

“In a general way,” said Gurney, smiling. “Perhaps you could give me some details.”

Dermott’s expressive sigh suggested that he viewed the request as an irritating waste of his time. “Look,” he said, “I need to sit down.” He returned to his armchair, settling into it gingerly. “What kind of details?”

“The name of your company is GD Security Systems. What sort of ‘security’ do these ‘systems’ provide, and for whom?”

After another loud sigh, he said, “I help companies protect confidential information.”

“And this help comes in what form?”

“Database-protection applications, firewalls, limited-access protocols, ID-verification systems-those categories would cover most projects we handle.”

“We?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You referred to projects ‘we’ handle.”

“That’s not meant literally,” said Dermott dismissively. “It’s just a corporate expression.”

“Makes GD Security Systems seem a bit bigger than it is?”

“That’s not the intention, I assure you. My clients love the fact that I do the work myself.”

Gurney nodded as though he were impressed. “I can see how that would be a plus. Who are these clients?”

“Clients for whom confidentiality is a major issue.”

Gurney smiled innocently at Dermott’s curt tone. “I’m not asking you to reveal any secrets. I’m just wondering what sort of businesses they’re in.”

“Businesses whose client databases entail sensitive privacy issues.”

“Such as?”

“Personal information.”

“What sort of personal information?”

Dermott looked like he was evaluating the contractual risks he might be incurring by going any further. “The sort of information collected by insurance companies, financial-service companies, HMOs.”

“Medical data?”

“A great deal of it, yes.”

“Treatment data?”

“To the extent that it is captured in the basic medical coding system. What’s the point of this?”

“Suppose you were a hacker who wanted to access a very large medical database-how would you go about it?”

“That’s not an answerable question.”

“Why is that?”

Dermott closed his eyes in a way that conveyed frustration. “Too many variables.”

“Like what?”

“Like what?” Dermott repeated the question as though it were an embodiment of pure stupidity. After a moment he went on with his eyes still closed. “The hacker’s goal, the level of expertise, his familiarity with the data format, the database structure itself, the access protocol, the redundancy of the firewall system, and about a dozen other factors that I doubt you have the technical background to understand.”

“I’m sure you’re right about that,” said Gurney mildly. “But let’s say, just for example, that a skilled hacker was trying to compile a list of people who’d been treated for a particular illness…”

Dermott raised his hands in exasperation, but Gurney pressed on. “How difficult would that be?”