Chasing the Dime (2002)

by Michael Connelly

  "Carbon," he said. "I figured I'd bake a batch of wires while I waited on you."

  Pierce nodded toward the closed door of the wire lab. Zeller snapped his fingers repeatedly as he attempted to draw something from memory.

  "That smell . . . it reminds me of when I was a kid . . . and I'd set my little plastic cars on fire. Yeah, my model cars. Like you made from a kit with glue."

  "That's a nice memory. Go in the lab there. It's worse. Take a deep breath and maybe you'll have the whole flashback."

  "No thanks. I think I'll pass on that for the time being. Okay. So I'm here. What's the rumpus?"

  Pierce identified the question as a line from the Coen brothers' film Miller's Crossing, a Zeller favorite and dialogue bank from which he often made a withdrawal. But Pierce didn't acknowledge knowing the line. He wasn't going to play that game with Zeller this night. He was concentrating on the play, the experiment he was conducting under controlled conditions.

  "I told you, we've been breached," he said. "Your supposedly impregnable security system is for shit, Code. Somebody's been stealing all our secrets."

  The accusation made Zeller immediately become agitated. His hands came together in front of his chest, the fingers seemingly fighting with one another.

  "Whoa, whoa, first of all, how do you know somebody's stealing secrets?"

  "I just know."

  "All right, you just know. I guess I am supposed to accept that. Okay, then how do you know it's through the data system and not just somebody's big mouth leaking it or selling it? What about Charlie Condon? I've had a few drinks with him. He likes to talk, that guy."

  "It's his job to talk. But I'm talking about secrets Charlie doesn't even know. That only I and a few others know. People in the lab. And I'm talking about this."

  He opened a drawer in the computer station and pulled out a small device that looked like a relay switch box. It had an AC/DC plug and a small wire antenna attached. From one end of it stretched a six-inch cable attached to a computer slot card. He put it down on the top of the desk.

  "I got suspicious and went into the maintenance files and looked around but didn't find anything. So I then went and looked at the hardware on the mainframe and found this little slot attachment. It's got a wireless modem. I believe it's what you guys call a sniffer."

  Zeller stepped closer to the desk and picked up the device.

  "Us guys? Do you mean corporate computer security specialists?"

  He turned the device in his hands. It was a data catcher. Programmed and attached to a mainframe, it would intercept and collect all e-mail traffic in the computer system and ship it out over the wireless modem to a predetermined location. In the lingo of the hacking world it was called a sniffer because it collected everything and the thief was then free to sniff through all the data for the gems.

  Zeller's face showed a deep concern. It was a very good act, Pierce thought.

  "Homemade," Zeller said as he examined the device.

  "Aren't they all?" Pierce asked. "It's not like you can bop into a Radio Shack and pick up a sniffer."

  Zeller ignored the comment. His voice had a deep quaver in it when he spoke.

  "How the hell did that get on there, and why didn't your system maintenance guy see it?"

  Pierce leaned back and tried to play it as cool as he could.

  "Why don't you quit bullshitting and tell me, Cody?"

  Zeller looked from the device in his hands to Pierce. He looked surprised and hurt.

  "How would I know? I built your system but I didn't build this."

  "Yeah, you built the system. And this was built into the mainframe. Maintenance didn't see it because they were either bought off by you or it was too well hidden. I found it only because I was looking for it."

  "Look, anybody with a scramble card has access to that computer room and could've put this on there. I told you when we designed the place you should've put it down here in the lab. For the security."

  Pierce shook his head, revisiting the three-year-old debate and confirming his decision.

  "Too much interference from the mainframe on the experiments. You know that. But that's beside the point. That's your sniffer. I may have diverted from computer science to chemistry at Stanford but I still know a thing or two. I put the modem card in my laptop and used it on my dial-up. It's programmed. It connected with a data dump site registered as DoomstersInk."

  He waited for the reaction and got a barely noticeable eye movement from Zeller.

  "One word, ink like the stuff in a pen," Pierce said. "But you already know that. It's been a pretty active site, I would imagine. My guess is that you installed the sniffer when we moved in here. For three years you've been watching, listening, stealing. Whatever you want to call it."

  Zeller shook his head and placed the device back down on the desk. He kept his eyes down as Pierce continued.

  "A year or so ago —after I'd hired Larraby —you started seeing e-mail back and forth between us about a project called Proteus. Then there was e-mail back and forth with Charlie on it and then my patent lawyer. I checked, man. I keep all my e-mail. Paranoid that way. I checked and you could've put together what was happening from the e-mail.

  Not the formula itself, we weren't that stupid. But enough for you to know we had it and what we were going to do with it."

  "All right, so what if I did? So I listened in, big deal."

  "The big deal is you sold us out. You used what you got to cut a deal with somebody."

  Zeller shook his head sadly.

  "Tell you what, Henry, I'm gonna go. I think you've been spending too much time in here. You know, when I used to melt those plastic cars I'd get a really bad headache from that smell. I mean, it can't be good for you. And here you are . . ."

  He gestured toward the wire lab door.

  Pierce stood up. His anger felt like a rock the size of a fist stuck in his throat.

  "You set me up. I don't know what the play is, but you set me up."

  "You're fucked up, man. I don't know anything about a setup. Yeah, sure, I've been sniffing around. It was the hacker instinct in me. Once in the blood, you know about that.

  Yes, I put it on there when I set up the system. Tell you the truth, I mostly forgot about it, the stuff I was seeing at first was so boring. I quit checking that site a couple years ago at least. So that's it, man. I don't know anything about a setup."

  Pierce was undaunted.

  "I can guess the connection to Wentz. You probably set up the security on his systems. I mean, I doubt the subject matter would have bothered you. Business is business, right?"

  Zeller didn't answer and Pierce wasn't expecting him to. He forged ahead.

  "You're Grady Allison."

  Zeller's face showed slight surprise but then he covered it.

  "Yeah, I got the mug shots and mob connections. It was all phony, all part of the play."

  Again Zeller was silent and not even looking at Pierce. But Pierce could tell he had his complete attention.

  "And the phone number. The number was the key. At first I thought it had to be my assistant, that she had to have requested the number for the scheme to begin. But then I realized it was the other way around. You got my number in the e-mail I sent out. You then turned around and put it on the site. On Lilly's web page. And then it all began.

  Some of the calls were probably from people you put up to it. The rest were probably legit —just icing on the cake. But that was why I found no phone records at her house.

  And no phone. Because she never had the number. She operated like Robin —with just a cell phone."

  Again he waited for a response and got none.

  "But the part I'm having trouble with is my sister. She was part of this. You had to know about her, about the time I found her and let her go. It had to be part of the planning, part of the profile. You had to know that this time I wouldn't let it go. That I would look for Lilly and walk right into the setup."

  Zeller
didn't respond. He turned and moved to the door. He turned the knob but the door wouldn't open. The combination had to be entered to come in or go out.

  "Open the door, Henry. I want to leave."

  "You're not leaving until I know what the play is. Who are you doing this for? How much are they paying you?"

  "All right, fine. I'll do it myself."

  Zeller punched in the combination and sprang the door lock. He pulled the door open and looked back at Pierce.

  "Vaya con dios, dude."

  "How'd you know the combination?"

  That put a pause in Zeller's step and Pierce almost smiled. His knowing and using the combination was an admission. Not a big one, but it counted.

  "Come on. How'd you know the combo? We change it every month —your idea, in fact.

  We put it out on e-mail to all the lab rats but you said you haven't checked the sniffer in two years. So how'd you know the combo?"

  Pierce turned and gestured to the sniffer. Zeller's eyes followed and landed on the device.

  Then the focus of his eyes moved slightly and Pierce saw him register something. He stepped back into the lab and let the mantrap door close behind him with a loud fump.

  "Henry, why do you have the monitor off? I see you've got the tower on but the monitor's off."

  Zeller didn't wait for an answer and Pierce didn't give one anyway. Zeller stepped over to the computer station and reached down and pushed the monitor's on/off button.

  The screen activated and Zeller bent down, both hands on the desk, to look at it. On the screen was the transcription of their conversation, the last line reading, "Henry, why do you have the monitor off? I see you've got the tower on but the monitor's off."

  It was a good program, a third-generation high resonance voice-recognition system from SacredSoftware. The researchers in the lab used it routinely to dictate notes from experiments or to describe tests as they were conducted.

  Pierce watched as Zeller pulled out the keyboard drawer and typed in commands to kill the program. He then erased the file.

  "It will still be recoverable," Pierce said. "You know that."

  "That's why I'm taking the drive."

  He squatted down in front of the computer tower and slid it around so he could get to the screws that held the shell in place. He took a folding knife out of his pocket and snapped open a Phillips bit. He pulled out the power cord and began to work on the top screw on the shell.

  But then he stopped. He had noticed the phone line jacked into the back of the computer.

  He unplugged it and held the line in his hand.

  "Now Henry that's unlike you. A paranoid like you. Why would you have the computer jacked?"

  "Because I was online. Because I wanted that file you just killed to be sent out as you said the words. It's a SacredSoft program. You recommended it, remember? Each voice receives a recognition code. I set up a file for you. It's as good as a tape recording. If I have to, I'll be able to match your voice to those words."

  Zeller reached up from his crouched position and slapped his tool down hard on the desk.

  His back to Pierce, the angle of his head rose, as if he were looking up at the dime taped to the wall behind the computer station.

  Slowly he stood up, going into one of his pockets again. He turned around while opening a silver cell phone.

  "Well, I know you don't have a computer at home, Henry," he said. "Too paranoid. So I'm guessing Nicki. I'm going to have somebody go by and pick up her drive too, if you don't mind."

  A moment of fear seized Pierce but he calmed himself. The threat to Nicole wasn't counted on but it wasn't totally unexpected, either. But the truth was the phone jack was just part of the play. The dictation file had not been sent anywhere.

  Zeller waited for his call to go through, but it didn't. He took his phone away from his ear and looked at it as if it had betrayed him.

  "Goddamn phone."

  "There's copper in the walls. Remember? Nothing gets in but nothing gets out either."

  "Fine, then I'll be right with you."

  Zeller punched in the door combination again and moved into the mantrap. As soon as the door closed Pierce went over to the computer station. He picked up Zeller's tool and unfolded a blade. He knelt down by the computer tower and picked up the phone line, looped it in his hand and then sliced through it with the knife.

  He stood up and put the tool back on the desk along with the cut piece of phone line just as Zeller came back through the mantrap. Zeller was holding the scramble card in one hand and his phone in the other.

  "Sorry about that," Pierce said. "I had them give you a card that would let you in but not out. You can program them that way."

  Zeller nodded his head and saw the cut phone line on the desk.

  "And that was the only line into the lab," he said.

  "That's right."

  Zeller flicked the scramble card at Pierce like he was flipping a baseball card against the curb. It bounced off Pierce's chest and fell to the floor.

  "Where's your card?"

  "I left it in my car. I had to have the guard bring me down here. We're stuck, Code. No phones, no cameras, no one coming. Nobody's coming down here to let us out for at least five or six hours, until the lab rats start rolling in. So you might as well make yourself comfortable. You might as well sit down and tell me the story."

  38

  Cody Zeller looked around the lab, at the ceiling, at the desks, at the framed Dr. Seuss illustrations on the walls, anywhere but at Pierce. He caught an idea and abruptly started pacing through the lab with a renewed vigor, his head swiveling as he began a search for a specific target.

  Pierce knew what he was doing.

  "There is a fire alarm. But it's a direct system. You pull it and fire and police come. You want them coming? You want to explain it to them?"

  "I don't care. You can explain it."

  Zeller saw the red emergency pull on the wall next to the door to the wire lab. He walked over and without hesitation pulled it down. He turned back to Pierce with a clever smile on his face.

  But then nothing happened. Zeller's smile broke. His eyes turned into question marks and Pierce nodded as if to say, Yes, I disconnected the system.

  Dejected by the failure of his efforts, Zeller walked over to the probe station furthest from Pierce in the lab, pulled out the desk chair and dropped heavily into it. He closed his eyes, folded his arms and put his feet up on the table, just inches from a $250,000 scanning tunneling microscope.

  Pierce waited. He had all night if he needed it. Zeller had masterfully played him. Now it was time to reverse the field. Pierce would play him. Fifteen years before, when the campus police had rounded up the Doomsters, they had separated them and waited them out. The cops had nothing. Zeller was the one who broke, who told everything. Not out of fear, not out of being worn down. Out of wanting to talk, out of a need to share his genius.

  Pierce was counting on that need now.

  Almost five minutes went by. When Zeller finally spoke, it was while in the same posture, his eyes still closed.

  "It was when you came back after the funeral."

  That was all he said and a long moment went by. Pierce waited, unsure how to dislodge the rest. Finally, he went with the direct approach.

  "What are you talking about? Whose funeral?"

  "Your sister's. When you came back up to Palo Alto you wouldn't talk about it. You kept it in. Then one night it all came out. We got drunk one night and I had some stuff left over from Christmas break in Maui. We smoked that up and, man, then you couldn't stop talking about it."

  Pierce didn't remember this. He did, of course, remember drinking heavily and ingesting a variety of drugs in the days and months after Isabelle's death. He just didn't remember talking about it with Zeller or anyone else.

  "You said that one time when you were out cruising around with your stepfather that you did actually find her. She was sleeping in this abandoned hotel where all the r
unaways had taken over the rooms. You found her and you were going to rescue her and bring her out, bring her back home. But she convinced you not to do it and not to tell your stepdad.

  She told you he had done things to her, raped her or whatever, and that's why she ran away. You said she convinced you she was better off on the street than at home with him."

  Now Pierce closed his eyes. Remembering the moment of the story, if not remembering the drunken confession of it to a college roommate.