Effected Intent

by Alan Ross

  Chapter 12

  Bill Strikes Gold

  Another week almost done, Bill thought as he sat in the kitchen enjoying a Friday doughnut and coffee. Things were back to normal with Margie in the office and she’d worked out most of her childcare situation to where she was there almost four full days a week. Her mood was much better than it had been when she’d come back. Kathy explained to Bill that mothers suffered from post partum depression and that could be multiplied with the separation anxiety of leaving your new child in the care of someone else. Over time Margie’s attitude and appearance had changed back to her normal sunny self that Bill had come to know over the past few years.

  Don had his weekly staff meeting today and he needed to make a presentation so he was already sweating bullets. Bill had seen him several times today, pacing frantically around the office and looking like he’d run a marathon. He was in the kitchen rehearsing what he was going to say, muttering to himself as he wore a path into the floor.

  “What’s wrong Don? You not ready for your presentation?”

  “I’m ready but still nervous that they’re going to throw it out. It’s important for us to continue down this single vendor strategy but a lot of the other prison managers are nervous and want to hang on to the old ways. I built this to show my value to the team and am counting on them adopting it.”

  “We’ve got great data, Don, how can they refute it?” Bill had spent a lot of time working with Don to analyze and graphically present the data. It was compelling financial data that should save millions of dollars per year. The emotional impact of the decision was holding it back.

  “Just present the information and try to keep the emotion out of it.” Bill wondered how he had such wisdom, must have rubbed off from someone else because he’d never actually been in that situation.

  “Thanks Bill, appreciate your support and confidence. I’m going back to my desk to practice again.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.” But he was out the door without acknowledging the comment, Bill surprised there wasn’t a trail of sweat behind him. He picked another doughnut and went back to his desk to work on the new purchase order system. The prison still used an old manual process that made integration of data and auditing painful. Having an automated system would help with budgeting, reporting and may also force further automation across other prisons in the system. Bill hoped that this could be Don’s next project after the single source vendor one and was building the foundation in anticipation. Margie and Kathy had done all of the data entry to convert the old vendor list into a database and they’d also helped design the user interface to make it as intuitive as possible. Bill had reused some of the routines from the payroll program in terms of how approvals and authorizations were used, even tapping in to the same security database so he wouldn’t have to manage one for each application.

  Bill had his headphones on and the music cranked up in his ears, locking into his coding world. He jumped about a foot in the air and almost fell out of his chair when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry Bill, didn’t mean to scare you.” Shannon Walker said, now standing awkwardly near his desk, wondering if she should just leave.

  “Glad you did Shannon, how’s everything going?” Bill took in Shannon who was average height but well proportioned with an open, friendly face that was sprinkled with freckles. It was always great to see her though it was a torture exercise for Bill to keep his eyes on her eyes. Her visits stayed in his memories for a long time and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her. Her voice was like sweet music to his ears as she began to speak.

  “Busy as ever and not getting any richer but that’s the life of a public defender. I’ve got a few cases right now because our office is overburdened, not too many criminals who can afford representation. How about you?”

  “Trying to keep myself busy. The prison is helping, they’ve added recycling manager to my list of things to do, that’s how I spend my Saturdays now. They said I could give back a day from the office but this is the closest I have to a life so I’m doing both.”

  “You know that I could make an argument for parole Bill. All that you do for everyone inside the prison and this office would be evidence enough of rehabilitation and your resume would look very good to employers in the area. Why won’t you think about it?”

  “Shannon, there are times when I dream of nothing but being free. It’s how most prisoners cope with long stretches inside. But what happened that night, watching my friends die, caused me to die that night. I know what it did to my dad and that he might have lived a lot longer had I not put that stress on top of everything else.”

  “You need to think of your mom and sister, how much they would like to have you in their lives again. Your debt has been paid again and again, there is so much you could do outside the fences of this prison.”

  Bill wanted to hug her, didn’t want to have this conversation. He started choking up, thinking of freedom. Shannon touched his knee and they sat for some time before Bill broke the silence. “How are the boys?” Shannon had four boys and had put herself through law school after her husband decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. It had been a long, rough stretch but she stuck through it. Her story had inspired Bill, it would be so much easier for her to move to corporate law and make more money but she really wanted to leave a mark on the world.

  “The boys are ok, it’s almost football season so I’m going to be very busy the next few months. My mom and dad help out a ton during the season, making sure everyone gets to practice and works on homework.”

  “Good to hear but summer practice can be hard, I remember those days well.”

  “Did you play in college?”

  “No, I wasn’t good enough to play on Case’s team, when I got there coach Chapman has loaded the team with a bunch of great players and even though I’d played all my life there was no way I could compete at the next level.”

  “I tell the boys that it gets harder when they move up. They are good players but I’m not sure they’ll play in college. It’s going to be me and the government putting them through school. The good thing is that they were all old enough when I went through law school that they understand the importance of doing it when they’re young.”

  Bill and Shannon had become friends during one of her cases, where she was having trouble getting information that she needed for the case. Bill had helped her do research and then helped her organize the information. The thing that instantly attracted him to her, aside from the fact that she was hot, was that she never treated him differently because he was wearing the orange jumpsuit. They didn’t see each other too often but when they did it was good for both of them.

  “I have to go talk to my latest client, will you be here later? Oh that’s a pretty stupid question, isn’t it?”

  Bill blushed a bit for her. “Don’t worry about it Shannon, I’ll be here. Do you need anything that I can help you with?”

  “Thanks for offering, but unless you can represent some clients for me I can’t think of anything else.” She smiled and went to talk to Kathy for a minute and then left. Bill found it hard to concentrate, thinking about Shannon’s hair and the light touch of her hand on his knee.

  “Earth to Jack, come in Jack.”

  “Hey Mom, happy Friday.”

  “Haven’t seen Shannon in a while, did you guys have a nice talk?”

  “Yeah, seems like she’s as busy as ever, don’t know how she manages her career and raising four boys.”

  “I can’t imagine but she always comes round with a smile on her face and a kind word out of her mouth. She stopped by on her way out and really wants me to talk to you about parole, thinks you’d be an easy case. I told her that I know how you feel about that subject but would talk to you anyway.”

  “She tried to talk me into it but I told her I deserve a life sentence and don’t ever expect to see the outside world again. I’m not sure I’d be suited f
or the world, even though I’ve kept up electronically there’s so much that I’ve missed. I owe it to Don and Mike to stay here for the rest of my life.”

  Kathy shrugged and patted him on the arm. “You know that we will support you whatever you decide and if you want to go for parole there’d be a line around the building to support you. Almost time for staff now, I better go get set up so Don doesn’t pop that last hair on his head.” She was laughing as she walked away.

  Bill decided he’d done all the work he was going to do and decided to pass by Don’s office to see if he could get a reading on how the staff meeting had gone. Even though it was only a few minutes until their staff Bill was curious. He strolled by and Don was on the phone, probably telling Joanie about it. He seemed relieved and it looked like someone had cranked down the air conditioning if you used his forehead as the humidity gauge. Don even smiled at the phone and laughed at a joke from the other end so all must be well in the world. Bill smiled as he moved around the office toward the kitchen, proud of Don for keeping it together and sticking to his guns with his boss and staff. More coffee to get through the meeting, Bill wondering what Kathy had brought him for lunch. He was hoping for steak, something substantial to get him through the weekend, especially with another day of work ahead of him tomorrow.

  Staff was quiet when Don walked in the room, anticipation on the faces of all to get work of how it had gone. Don sat down at the table with a firm stare, looking like he’d just lost his best friend. The table collectively shifted in their seats, waiting for him to say something. “So…just got done with staff. They completely bought off on the idea, now the real fun begins! Lunch is on me today!”

  Everyone congratulated him for his success and the mood of the team lifted. Kathy made Don replay the meeting for them with detail and he was glad to oblige. There had been reluctance at the start, several other prison managers bringing up reasons why it couldn’t be done but Don had won them over with the data and the charts in the presentation, there was no way they could refute the data. “Bill, I wanted to let you know that it was the way the data was presented that really drove it home. Once they saw the data even the most vocal opponents shut up. Thank you so much.”

  “That’s why you pay me the big bucks Don, don’t ever forget that.” Bill smiled, all of them knowing that Bill felt indebted to everyone in the room but mostly to Don and Kathy for all they’d done. No additional words were said and Don smoothly moved through the rest of the meeting without incident, everyone anxious to get out for the free lunch that Don was going to buy. Kathy had read Bill’s mind and brought a loaded steak dinner and enough food to feed two people, including a layer cake with raspberry in the middle and whipped cream frosting.

  “I wish we could bring you out Jack, maybe one of these days we can make it happen.”

  “My orange jumpsuit might stick out a little bit at Applebee’s, Mom.” Bill laughed. “This meal looks better than anything I could get in a restaurant, I can’t wait to dig into it. Go on now, don’t want to hold up the whole team on account of me. Have a great time and I’ll see you when you get back.”

  Kathy blew him a little kiss and ran out of the kitchen. Bill put his plate in the microwave and started on the salad, which was an incredible mix of fruit and vegetables with a dressing that was sweet and sour. He thanked the sky for the opportunity to have food that wasn’t from the prison kitchen. It was too quiet for Bill so he hooked up the speakers to his computer and streamed the 1980s rock station that he listened to when he wanted to reminisce. He was singing and dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” when he sensed someone looking over his shoulder. It was too early for the team to be back, so he wondered how embarrassed he was about to be as he swung his head around and saw Shannon, a smug look on her face.

  “I was waiting for the moon walk, too bad you spotted me, I think you should continue.” Bill was red with embarrassment, didn’t know the last time he’d done that and was mortified that she caught him in the act. Could have been worse, but not by much. He raced over to his desk and turned down the music but left it on as a distraction. Steadying himself with a few deep breaths, he returned to the kitchen and tried to act as nonchalant as possible.

  “I guess that could have been more embarrassing but it’s hard to imagine how.”

  “Don’t worry, I thought it was cute. Bet you don’t get to dance or sing much in the rest of the prison.”

  “Probably the first time I have danced for almost twenty years but never was very good at it.” He was already over it and wondered why she was back. “Everyone went out to lunch, Don took them out to celebrate a project he got the other prison managers in the system to agree to follow. I don’t think they’ll be back for a while, which is why I was doing that.”

  “Kathy told me they usually go out to lunch on Friday but someone might stay back with you. I thought we left off on a touchy note and wanted to make sure I didn’t ruin your weekend with our talk earlier.”

  “Don’t worry about it Shannon, it’s something that gets brought up a few times a year, I’m used to talking about it. Everyone knows how I feel but still want to change my mind. So what do you have planned for the weekend?”

  “We’re going to the beach, the kids love to spend the summer weekends playing in the lake. A lot of their friends go and it turns into an all-day affair.”

  “Sounds like fun, do you swim much?”

  “No, I have a book or some case paperwork that I read between little naps, it’s really relaxing. Once in a while I’ll take a quick dip if I’m overheating. Sundays the boys’ dad picks them up and takes them out for the day, usually over to his parents’ house in Medina. They have some land and the kids can play with the animals or ride horses, it’s different than city life.”

  Bill was thinking of what to say next when Shannon stood up, came over to his seat and gave him the deepest kiss he could have imagined. He wrapped his arms around her and held her so close, not knowing how much he’d missed that contact. She sat on his lap and they made out like teenagers for the next fifteen minutes or so. “I’ve been thinking about that for a long time Bill and it was better than I had expected.”

  “You can’t imagine how I feel right now Shannon. Every time I see you the memory of your visit stays with me for weeks. This will keep my mind occupied for months, hopefully it won’t be that long before I see you again.”

  “I’m still here silly, why are you talking about next time. Let’s enjoy the rest of the time we have here. She kissed him again, this time with her arms around him, protecting him from the world he lived in.” Bill wondered what man would be dumb enough to leave a woman like this but he knew that if he did ever get out he would want to spend a lot more time getting to know Shannon.

  They both knew that private time was running out. Bill threw away the portion of his lunch he didn’t eat and got the cake out of the refrigerator. He shared it with Shannon, feeding her pieces and stealing chaste kisses. When the cake was done they held hands under the table and made more small talk about growing up. The gang showed up five minutes later, all giddy from lunch and the good news. The mood in the office kept up throughout the rest of the day, not much work getting done but nobody concerned. Shannon made small talk and then said goodbye to Bill, he really hated to see her leave and could still feel her lips against his.

  Sleep came at lights out for Bill, most likely due to the excitement of the day. He woke the next morning and the realization hit home that he was going to be working again. Making his way through breakfast, he went to the recycling area and checked through the metal detector. The Saturday crew was pretty mellow and Bill hadn’t had much supervising to do. Most were looking for a few extra dollars a month and some good behavior points for the next parole board. Bill wandered around and made his presence known before getting so bored he decided to pitch in and help out. The paper area had the most material to go through so he started a new table and grabbed a box to sort. The idea was to make sur
e there was only paper in there and to make it as compact as possible for transport. The first box was filled with miscellaneous instruction manuals and material safety data sheets. Someone must have been cleaning out their cabinet, this stuff was old. There were also some status reports having to do with polymer chemistry, guess these were from Foundation, a local chemical company. Bill didn’t know much about what the company did but thought this was one way to find out. He took his time going through the material, most of it over his head or reminiscent of freshman chemistry at Case with Doc Oc, one of the favorite professors on campus.

  Once he was through the office cleanup stuff he noticed some recent material that had been thrown away. This was less chemical related and had some code, system names and database schemas documented. “IT trash” Bill thought, rummaging through the mostly uninteresting things. He was getting bored when he saw some firewall information, it was a document that contained all of the information about their firewall complex and included all of the network addresses, rule sets and administrator account information! Bill set the papers aside and dug harder, like a kid finding his grandpa’s baseball card collection looking for Mickey Mantle cards. It didn’t stop there, the next group of information was related to all of the company’s internet site and related infrastructure equipment, including all of the database and application server information. He kept digging and got more information, including account information on remote connectivity for managing systems away from the office. By the time he was done it had been over two hours and he had a stack of papers over three inches thick in front of him.

  He set the pile aside and covered it with some plain paper on the top and bottom of the stack and then finished with the paper he had been sorting. He checked on the rest of the crew and they were all wrapping up for the day. Bill and the guards cleared all of the workers and then the guards checked Bill out.

  “Lot of paper there Bill, what you going to do with that?”

  “Use it for drawing and writing letters home.”

  “Whatever you say.” The guard wanded Bill to make sure he wasn’t carrying any metal out and then sifted quickly through the stack to insure Bill didn’t bury a sharp piece of plastic in there, like the old fake book safe trick. Finding nothing he gave the stack back to Bill and they locked up the recycling center for the weekend. Bill skipped dinner and by the time it was lights out he had a comprehensive document that outlined Foundation chemical’s entire public facing network, including all of their servers and applications. He wondered if anyone at the company had such a detailed document and couldn’t wait until Monday so he could get it into Visio and print it out.

  Bill sat in the dark for hours, thinking about what he’d found. For a convicted felon, this information could lead to nothing but trouble. Bill thought about how much he could learn by studying their network but wondered how much trouble he’d get in if he got caught. Was it worth losing his job in the prison office for hacking? He needed to think about it and for now would just document the environment and maybe scan the environment to see if this was current information. Either way he knew a lot more about Foundation chemical thanks to the recycling job and would like to continue learning from an environment he normally wouldn’t have access to.

  He got braver day by day and at the end of the week he had fully articulated the chemical company’s entire infrastructure and was now researching how current everything was. There were some systems that were kept very current but many that were literally years behind in terms of versions of the software and the operating system patch level. This information might not mean anything to most people but to someone who worked with systems and applications it meant a lot. Bill determined that each group who was responsible for an application was also responsible for keeping it current. He researched some of the vulnerabilities in the versions that were present within the network and thought that it would be trivial for an attacker to compromise the systems and be able to use the system resources for their own gain or leverage the attack to steal or modify information about the company. Bill wanted to know more about the company and how their systems were used so the next step was to capture and analyze data that the computers in Foundation’s network processed and stored information.

  Bill was worried about downloading malicious code from the prison office until he thought about it for a second and decided to use one of Foundation’s systems to connect to the web and pull down some common spy and analysis utilities. He downloaded wireshark, which is a legitimate network traffic capture and analysis tool and also grabbed some applications that would analyze the activity on the computer itself and write the data to a file that Bill could research at his leisure. He targeted the systems that were significantly out of date, thinking that an administrator who was on the ball might notice some subtle changes to the file system or the presence of a new application. There were stealthier tools but why risk it when the company was giving him the information without a fight? By the end of the day Thursday Bill had installed backdoors and information gathering software on two dozen systems of different kinds, from web servers to their file servers, database servers and even on their firewall complex. Each night he would print off some of the data to see what was useful and what was noise.

  He spent Friday writing a series of scripts that parsed the various types of data and summarized the key information based on variables that Bill had assigned such as customer, account number, credit card and many other fields. The weekend was spent updating what was now turning into a book about the chemical company’s information technology landscape, all he was missing was information about how Foundation’s users connected and what kind of software was included on the users’ computers. This was less interesting but something he would do next week. The weekend recycling job provided additional information about some systems that weren’t in the same network as the one Bill had been browsing, these were meant to only be accessed from inside the company. Once again someone had been kind enough to provide username and password combinations that would provide him with administrative access to the company’s resources, and these ones contained finance, human resources and legal information.

  Sunday Bill spent several hours working out with William, who then shared some of the cookies that his mom had brought on her visit the previous day. It was bittersweet for Bill because it had been a long time since he’d had a visitor and kept hoping that he’d get the call that someone was here to see him. Even though it entailed going through a rigorous search, including a cavity check, it was worth it. He only took one cookie, knowing that he’d be having good food from Kathy the next day. Bill went to bed in a melancholy mood, especially after writing long letters home to his mom and sister telling them how things were going and reminiscing about growing up.