by Clea Simon
But Mona opened her mouth with a look of shock and horror. Her voice, when it came back, was appalled. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It was a joke. Sorry.’ Dulcie tried to explain. ‘You know, bookworms in a library?’
‘That’s not very funny right now.’ Mona glared, but then motioned to her friend. ‘Come over here.’ With a glance at the two officials, the flamboyant librarian walked to the end of the circulation counter unnoticed, gesturing for Dulcie to follow. ‘Seriously, Dulcie, do you know anything?’
‘About what? What’s going on?’ This was more baffling by the minute.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mona said to nobody in particular – and rather more loudly than was usual for a career librarian, ‘we cannot check out materials just at present.’ She looked back toward her terminal. Nobody was paying attention. ‘I can’t . . . I’m not supposed to say anything. But what you said . . .’
‘What?’ Dulcie was bursting.
‘We’re being hacked, Dulcie. Someone has been trying to feed a bug into the university computer system!’
Mona wouldn’t tell Dulcie any more details – ‘I can’t, Dulcie, I’ve been told it’s worth my job!’ – but that didn’t stop Dulcie’s imagination from filling in the details. Computers were going nuts all over town: at Priority, a computer worm or virus program had allowed someone in the system to embezzle funds; and now this. But what would anyone gain from hacking into the university library? Reduction of overdue fines? Dulcie recalled a scandal from years before. A student had been smuggling out rare books, selling them on eBay for huge amounts. But that had been old-fashioned stealing, involving backpacks with false bottoms, not technical expertise.
She thought again of her own corrupted computer file. Maybe it hadn’t come from something Tim had typed in or from Priority. Chris had mentioned that the university had a clear path into her own system. Maybe whatever was eating away at the library computer had messed up her picture of Mr Grey. It seemed unlikely though; her system was still working, after all. But she made a mental note to call Chris as soon as she got home. She couldn’t afford to take her laptop to a professional repair place, certainly not until she got another job. But he’d said if she found anything he’d come by.
She could always call Stacia, she thought with a grimace. Luke had seemed truly impressed with the sleek brunette’s computer expertise. She rejected the idea immediately. No, that woman and her clique had humiliated Dulcie enough for one summer. Chris it was. She could sweeten the deal with talk about Suze, too. Her old friend was spending too much time in the library, even for a law student. It was only healthy for one of them to have a love life.
The phone was ringing as Dulcie unlocked her front door. By the time she had raced up the stairs, the answering machine had kicked in. The male voice speaking didn’t sound like anyone she knew.
‘Ms Schwartz, I’m calling from Priority Insurance.’ Oh, great. She sank on to the sofa and waited for her fate to be pronounced into a cheap answering machine. ‘We’d like you to come into work tomorrow. We need to speak with you first, and would like you to report to Conference Room B at nine a.m. But there is no reason for you not to continue your clerical duties at Priority, and we’d appreciate it if you were able to resume these duties tomorrow, after our meeting.’ That was it. No name, no number to call back. No waiting to see if she still wanted their stupid job. But then again, she didn’t need to threaten them with legal action, either. It was a stupid job, but it sounded like it was her stupid job, if she wanted it.
The afternoon in the library had spoiled her. She’d been on the edge of something, some breakthrough. But her classes and her grant would resume in one more month. She’d go back to Priority in the morning.
While she had time, though, Dulcie really wanted to recapture that library buzz. Did she dare start up her own computer? Holding her breath, she flipped the laptop open and, sighing with relief, watched as the screen saver resolved into her regular assortment of folders and pages. OK, so the system was working at least a little. Before she got started on anything, though, she thought of Chris’s warning. It was so easy to forget about backing up her files . . .
With a twinge of guilt, she opened an email to Suze. ‘Hey, Suze, hang on to these for me, please. Don’t open until I give you the all-clear,’ she typed, dragging her research folders over to the electronic letter: ‘RoU: Fragment 1’; ‘RoU: Fragment 2’; ‘Hermetria speeches’; ‘Demetria, Others’; probably all the sidekick deserved. She decided she ought to buy one of those tiny thumb drives, and she would – next pay day. But until then, sending her files to Suze couldn’t do any harm, could it?
Dulcie paused, weighing the risk to her friend – and to their friendship. Suze had asked her not to send that weird file. But these were her research notes, the beginnings of what just might become a thesis and might keep her in Cambridge and at school. If there was some kind of virus in her system, Suze would have to open the files to be infected, wouldn’t she? And she’d understand. She always had, right? With a silent prayer, Dulcie hit ‘send’.
Seventeen
On Wednesday morning, Dulcie walked back into the Priority Insurance building feeling as if she were in another world. Was it only two days ago when she’d last pushed through these revolving doors? On Monday, she’d still thought of Bruce as a prospect – as opposed to a suspect. And she’d pitied Luisa, not envied, let alone suspected, her. Dulcie caught herself up short; the whole mascara thing was weird, but she shouldn’t blow it out of proportion. Tim had had some kind of fatal attraction for women, but that didn’t make any of those women murderous, did it?
Just because one of his women had left some make-up at her place didn’t mean anything. It might have been Alana’s; she was wealthy enough, she probably didn’t think twice about buying high-end cosmetics, even if the colors were wrong for her. And just because Luisa had succumbed – correction, might have succumbed – didn’t mean either she or her cute blue-eyed boyfriend had stabbed Dulcie’s cheating room-mate. Dulcie was letting her imagination run away with her, and all because her crazy mother had a dream.
‘Bag, miss?’ Dulcie was woken from her reverie by the guard. The line had been moving slowly and now it was her turn. Had it really only been two days since she’d let him paw through her bag, without giving the new security procedures a second thought?
Automatically she queued up for the elevator along with all the other office drones. ‘Fourteen, please,’ she said from habit, and then remembered. ‘I mean, eight.’ Before she could go back to work, she had to meet with human resources, and who knew who else from Priority’s upper management. That thought, as much as the sudden start of the elevator, made Dulcie’s stomach lurch, and the conference-room floor arrived a little soon for comfort. Dulcie made herself remember what Luke and Suze had told her. She had done nothing wrong. She could be suing these guys, if she wanted. She could be – she opened the door to Conference Room B and walked in.
It was difficult to hold on to her righteous anger, but Dulcie was trying. At the far end of a long oval table, facing the door, sat the unsmiling Sally Putnam. To her right sat a blue-suited man of indeterminate age, and flanking them both were the security guards who had escorted Dulcie out of the building only two days before. Caught in the HR capo’s unfriendly glare, Dulcie felt herself pinned, silent and frozen.
‘Please be seated,’ the suit said. Dulcie slid into the nearest chair. It was the farthest from the Snake, and she mentally kicked herself for choosing it – and for waiting for permission to sit. Didn’t she have any spirit left?
‘We deeply regret the necessity of the unpleasantness on Monday, Miss Schwartz.’ The suit seemed to be in charge, and Dulcie realized with a start that as head of human resources, Sally Putnam was probably considered the employee’s representative. ‘We were within our rights to act as we did, but new evidence now indicates that perhaps we acted precipitously.’
Dulcie’s ears pricked up. The new eviden
ce sounded interesting. Even more important, she realized, the suit was apologizing in his own way. She hadn’t been Suze’s room-mate for so many years without being able to hear the legal underpinnings of office-speak. He was covering his butt!
‘Oh, yeah?’ Dulcie spoke before she realized what she was saying. Sally Putnam blinked, slowly. The suit, who had been about to continue, shut his mouth. ‘I’m sorry, and you are?’
She didn’t know where this attitude was coming from. Cat-itude. She envisioned Mr Grey sitting up tall, his tail wrapped around his front feet, and purring.
‘As Mr Olmstead was saying,’ the Snake spoke up before the suit could answer, ‘we don’t believe you were directly culpable in the breach of security. However, there have been indications, several indications, that your workstation was involved. Compromised, shall we say.’ She leaned forward ever so slightly, the words hissing between thin lips.
‘What do you mean, compromised?’ As her fear ebbed, Dulcie realized that she was curious.
‘We mean, Miss Schwartz, that someone else may have used your workstation for . . . illicit purposes.’ Olmstead, the suit, seemed uncomfortable with the phrase. ‘George, please?’
The older of the two security guards took over. ‘Basically, we can trace the breach, Miss Schwartz. And it originated at your terminal.’
‘And what is it, exactly? A computer virus?’ The quartet at the other end of the table exchanged glances. So Joanie’s information had been correct. ‘Is someone hacking into the Priority computers?’
All eyes were back on her now. ‘Never mind that.’ Sally Putnam’s eyes narrowed, but the blue-suited boss put up one hand.
‘We understand that some information may have been leaked. Now, Miss Schwartz, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I can assure you that it probably isn’t accurate, and rumors and half truths do nobody any good. That said, we would rather not go into details. Let it suffice that we at Priority believe strongly in safeguarding the integrity of our systems, and we intend to trace this breach to its source. Which is why we asked you to come in this morning.’ He paused.
Here it comes, thought Dulcie. Whatever they mean to do, it will happen now.
‘What we need to know, young lady, is who has had access to your terminal during office hours.’
‘My terminal?’ Dulcie thought of her email, and of the strange disruption in the library system. She’d assumed some cyber attack, something coming in online, not an actual person.
‘Yes, your terminal. Your floor is locked after hours, and we haven’t seen any ID cards showing up in inappropriate places.’ Dulcie flashed for a moment on her own visit to the IT offices. Those doors had been opened. Was she leaving electronic footprints everywhere she went? ‘We’d like to know if you’ve seen anyone else typing, or otherwise’ – he paused, searching for the word – ‘fiddling with your terminal.’
‘If this is a computer problem, isn’t it just as likely that it came in through cyberspace; through email or a hacker?’ Curiosity was once again outweighing her fear.
The two bosses exchanged a look. ‘We’re considering all possibilities,’ said Olmstead. ‘Please answer the question.’
Dulcie sat back in the chair. The row of cubicles was usually half empty. There was she – and Joanie. Joanie had often arrived earlier than Dulcie, and Joanie had been the one to get her into the server. But, could the little Goth be a cyber hacker? That was awfully like the question Luke had asked. Dulcie bit her lip. In truth, she could imagine her cubicle neighbor doing something destructive – but for fun, not profit.
‘No,’ she said finally, ‘I have never seen anybody working at my cubicle.’ The suit looked grim, his face set in stiff lines. Sally Putnam, however, nodded as if she expected as much.
‘Never?’ She turned her head slightly, as if to focus one cold eye on the younger woman.
‘Never.’ Dulcie held firm. ‘Though I have to say, security doesn’t seem that tight up on fourteen. I mean, even before all of this happened, someone stole my sweater.’ The eye blinked. ‘I mean, during the days I was out, it just disappeared. To be completely honest, Mrs Putnam, I kind of thought, well, maybe I saw you wearing it the other day.’
The manager turned her tanned face fully toward Dulcie. Her eyes, dark and hard, looked as opaque as beach pebbles, though not as pretty. ‘Are you accusing me of stealing? A sweater?’
Dulcie could have sworn the woman hissed.
‘Are you insane?’
The man in the blue suit tried to stifle a smile.
‘I—’ Dulcie started to respond; to defend herself, her perceptions, and the sanctity of her property. But something about the question, or maybe it was the unblinking stare of those dark eyes, stopped the words from coming. Was she, in fact, insane – not in general, but right now, two weeks after the murder of her room-mate; two weeks after she started having visions of her dead pet? She thought of her mother’s ‘flights of fancy’, the latest of which may have turned out to be a psychic warning about second-hand mascara, and wondered about the genetics of mental health. ‘I don’t think so,’ she stammered. It was the best she could do.
‘Never mind.’ The suit looked at her, vaguely disappointed that no cat fight would be in the offing. When it became clear that Dulcie had nothing more to say, he sighed and placed his hands flat on the table. ‘The morning is getting on.’ He stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Miss Schwartz. If we have any more questions, we’ll be sure to contact you.’
She was dismissed. For a moment, Dulcie thought he would reach out to shake her hand. But then Sally Ann Putnam, senior manager of HR, turned toward him, putting her long, lacquered fingers on his blue sleeve, asserting her dominance in the field of human resources and recalcitrant employees. With only the lightest pressure from that hand, she turned them both away. Dulcie, muttering something she was afraid sounded too much like ‘Thank you,’ slipped back out of the door.
‘What happened? What did they do to you?’ Joanie wasn’t even trying to hide her excitement as Dulcie took her seat in her cubicle. Her hair had reverted from green to its customary black in Dulcie’s absence. ‘Did they have the cops there to question you?’
‘No, but I probably won’t sue them either.’ Dulcie couldn’t help smiling as she stowed her bag in the bottom drawer of her desk. All in all, she’d come out OK and could afford a bit of swagger. ‘They even sort of apologized.’
‘Tell!’ Joanie rolled her chair around the cubicle divider, and Dulcie did. From that ignominious exit on Monday, when the security men had marched her out, to her return had been less than two days. But telling her workmate about the legal advice she’d gotten from Suze, and from Luke at the clinic, made the whole thing seem more like an adventure. Dulcie paused for a moment while she related her latest meeting with her employers. She didn’t necessarily want to reveal to the black-swathed Joanie that she had wondered about her own involvement. Still, it only seemed fair to warn her.
‘So, then they asked if anyone else had access to my terminal.’ Dulcie studied Joanie’s heavily made-up face. The girl didn’t blink. ‘And I thought of you.’
To her surprise, Joanie’s black-lined mouth broke into a big grin. ‘Am I a suspect? Cool!’
‘I don’t think so.’ Even the piercings on the girl’s nose and eyebrow seemed to fade and lose their sparkle. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s OK. I just liked the idea of striking a blow against the man, and all that. I mean, my stepdad works for Citibank, and my mom’s the über-boss of Krall Information Tech.’
Information – the word struck a chord. ‘Hey, tell me something, Joanie.’ Dulcie leaned in. ‘The day I came back to work, you knew about Tim, my room-mate. How?’
‘Are you serious?’ The sparkle returned. ‘Lou Ann in the phone center took the call. Everyone knew by lunch!’
‘Then why didn’t the bosses? It seemed like nobody knew I wasn’t going to be in. The files kept piling up.’
Joanie shrugged.
‘Maybe someone didn’t want to know; didn’t want to deal.’ They both sat silent for a moment, musing on the inscrutability of the corporate world.
‘I guess we should get to work.’ Dulcie began to push her chair back toward her terminal, confident once more that the Goth girl had had nothing to do with hacking Priority.
‘Are you crazy?’ Suze’s voice was friendly, but the undercurrent of worry could be heard clear from Washington. ‘Dulcie, you don’t know this woman at all. And she did help get you into trouble in the first place.’
‘All she did was poke around—’ The remainder of her work day had been dull, blessedly so. More than anything, Dulcie wanted life to calm down.
‘She logged you on to the company server.’ From Suze’s voice, Dulcie could tell she was sitting up. It was easy to picture her counting off points against Joanie on her fingers. ‘She was the first one to tell you about the nature of the hacking. And, unless I’m misremembering, she also tried to send you off to the computer guys to ask questions for her.’
‘No, you’re not misremembering.’ What kind of word was that anyway? Dulcie sank back on to her own cushions. Suze in lawyer mode could be exhausting. ‘It’s just, to be honest, I don’t want to think about it anymore if I don’t have to.’
‘But—’ Dulcie closed her eyes. She really couldn’t deal. ‘No, you’re right. I’m sorry.’ When push came to shove, Suze the friend would always win out over Suze the lawyer. ‘So, anything else fun happening up there?’
This was her cue, Dulcie knew, to tell Suze about Lucy’s dream and the discovery of the mascara. Suze had actually met Lucy, on one of her mother’s rare trips East, and she’d heard enough stories so that she didn’t need any prepping on Dulcie’s mother’s various crazy theories. But somehow, Dulcie didn’t want that one dismissed just yet. Maybe because it would lead to the whole Bruce thing. The whole Bruce and Luisa embarrassment, to be accurate, and Dulcie didn’t want to go there. Suze had warned her about protecting Luisa, in much the same way as she’d warned her about Joanie. But Luisa wasn’t a murderer, was she? She was just a more attractive, younger woman.
