Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem

I didn't say anything.

She was tentatively searching my face, looking for a sign of displeasure, for a glint in my eyes telling her I was angry or blaming her.

"It's awful," she blurted out. "Really. I don't have a clue, don't know what all the person did. The DBA isn't working, for example."

"Isn't working?"

The DBA, or data base administrator, was a grant giving select persons, such as Margaret or me, authority to access all tables and do anything we wished with them. For the DBA not to be working was the equivalent of being told the key to my front door no longer fit. "What do you mean it isn't working?"

It was getting very difficult to sound calm.

"Exactly that. I couldn't get into any of the tables with it. The password was invalid for some reason. I had to reconnect the grant."

"How could that have happened?"

"I don't know."

She was getting more upset. "Maybe I should change all of the grants, for security reasons, and assign new passwords?"

"Not now," I automatically replied. "We'll simply keep Lori Petersen's case out of the computer. Whoever the person is, at least he didn't find what he was looking for."

I got out of the chair.

"This time he didn't."

I froze, staring down at her.

Two spots of color were forming on her cheeks. "I don't know.

If it's happened before, I have no way of knowing, because the echo was off. These commands here" - she pointed to the print out "are the echo of the commands typed on the computer that dialed up this one. I always leave the echo off so if you're dialing in from home, whatever you're doing isn't echoed on this screen.

Friday I was in a hurry. Maybe I inadvertently left the echo on or set it on. I don't remember, but it was on."

Ruefully she added, "I guess it's a good thing-" We both turned around at the same time.

Rose was standing in the doorway.

That look on her face - Oh, no, not again.

She waited for me to come out into the hallway, then said, "The ME in Colonial Heights is on line one. A detective from Ashland's on line two. And the commissioner's secretary just called-"

"What?"

I interrupted. Her last remark was the only one I really heard. "Amburgey's secretary?"

She handed me several pink telephone slips as she replied, "The commissioner wants to see you."

"About what, for God's sake?"

If she told me one more time I'd have to hear the details for myself, I was going to lose my temper.

"I don't know," Rose replied. "His secretary didn't say."

I couldn't bear to sit at my desk. I had to move about and distract myself before I lost my composure.

Someone had broken into my office computer, and Amburgey wanted to see me in an hour and forty-five minutes. It wasn't likely that he was merely inviting me to tea.

So I was making evidence rounds. Usually this entailed my receipting evidence to the various labs upstairs. Other times I simply stopped by to see what was going on with my cases - the good doctor checking in on her patients. At the moment, my routine was a veiled and desperate peregrination.

The Forensic Science Bureau was a beehive, a honeycomb of cubicles filled with laboratory equipment and people wearing white lab coats and plastic safety glasses.

A few of the scientists nodded and smiled as I passed their open doorways. Most of them didn't look up, too preoccupied with whatever they were doing to pay a passerby any mind. I was thinking about Abby Turnbull, about other reporters I didn't like.

Did some ambitious journalist pay a computer hack to break into our data? How long had the violations been going on? I didn't even realize I'd turned in to the serology lab until my eyes were suddenly focusing on black countertops cluttered with beakers, test tubes, and Bunsen burners. Jammed on glass enclosed shelves were bags of evidence and jars of chemicals, and in the center of the room was a long table covered with the spread and sheets removed from Lori Petersen's bed.

"You're just in time," Betty greeted me. "If you want acid indigestion, that is."

"No, thanks."

"Well, I'm getting it already," she added. "Why should you be immune?"

Close to retirement, Betty had steel-gray hair, strong features and hazel eyes that could be unreadable or shyly sensitive depending on whether you took the trouble to get to know her. I liked her the first time I met her. The chief serologist was meticulous, her acumen as sharp as a scalpel. In private she was an ardent bird-watcher and an accomplished pianist who had never been married or sorry about the fact. I think she reminded me of Sister Martha, my favorite nun at St. Gertrude's parochial school.

The sleeves of her long lab coat were rolled up to her elbows, her hands gloved. Arranged over her work area were test tubes containing cotton-tipped swabs, and a physical evidence recovery kit-or PERK comprising the cardboard folder of slides and the envelopes of hair samples from Lori Petersen's case. The file of slides, the envelopes and the test tubes were identified by computer-generated labels initialed by me, the fruits of yet one more of Margaret's programs.

I vaguely recalled the gossip at a recent academy meeting. In the weeks following the mayor of Chicago's sudden death, there were some ninety attempts at breaking into the medical examiner's computer. The culprits were thought to be reporters after the autopsy and toxicology results.

Who? Who broke into my computer? And why? "He's coming along well," Betty was saying.

"I'm sorry… " I smiled apologetically.

She repeated, "I talked with Dr. Glassman this morning. He's coming along well with the samples from the first two cases and should have results for us in a couple of days."

"You sent up the samples from the last two yet?"

"They just went out."

She was unscrewing the top of a small brown bottle. "Bo Friend will be hand-delivering them-"

"Bo Friend?"

I interrupted.

"Or Officer Friendly, as he's known by the troops. That's his name. Bo Friend. Scout's honor. Let's see, New York's about a six-hour drive. He should get them to the lab sometime this evening. I think they drew straws."

I looked blankly at her. "Straws?"

What could Amburgey want? Maybe he was interested in how the DNA testing was going. It was on everyone's mind these days.

"The cops," Betty was saying. "Going to New York and all. Some of them have never been."

"Once will be enough for most of them," I commented abstractedly. "Wait until they try changing lanes or finding a parking place."

But he could have just sent a memo through the electronic mail if he'd had a question about DNA tests or anything else. That's what Amburgey usually did. In fact, that's what he'd always done in the past.

"Huh. That's the least of it. Our man Bo was born and bred in Tennessee and never goes anywhere without his piece."

"He went to New York without his piece, I hope." My mouth was talking to her. The rest of me was elsewhere.

"Huh," she said again. "His captain told him to, told him about the gun laws up there in Yankeeville. Bo was smiling when he came up to get the samples, smiling and patting what I presume was a shoulder holster under his jacket. He's got one of these John Wayne revolvers with a six-inch barrel. These guys and their guns. It's so Freudian it's boring…"

The back of my brain was 'recalling news accounts of virtual children who had broken into the computers of major corporations and banks.

Beneath the telephone on my desk at home was a modem enabling me to dial up the computer here. It was off-limits, strictly verboten. Lucy understood the seriousness of her ever attempting to access the OCME data. Everything else she was welcome to do, despite my inward resistance, the strong sense of territory that comes from living alone.