Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  Dart ran all the way up to the top of the stairs and through to the hall, attempting to slow down his thoughts and concentrate. His adrenaline was his biggest enemy.

  Using the guard’s card to enter a room would alert security to his location, and would, in turn, limit his chance to do what had to be done. It gave him an idea.

  He slid the stolen card into the first security box he encountered. The light turned green. Dart spun the doorknob, threw the door open, and then quickly pulled it shut. He ran to the next security box, the next door, and followed the same procedure. And the next. One eye trained nervously on the fire stairs through which he had just come, he crossed the hall and used the card on two more offices, blocking the first with a pen to keep it from closing. The security computer would now show six offices accessed.

  Backtracking, Dart entered through the door that he had blocked by the pen. He could hear the security man’s footfalls charging up the fire stairs. He had only a few seconds …

  With the door open, he shoved his stolen card into the reader and began violently rocking the card back and forth. The sound of the feet stopped, Dart guessing the guard was standing immediately on the other side but was being more cautious than his partner below. Dart continued to wiggle the security card. It cracked along the left edge. With one tremendous effort, Dart tore the card straight across, leaving a significant piece of it down inside the reader, to prevent another card from being inserted.

  He pushed the door firmly shut just as he heard the fire stairs door whine open. The guard was on the sixth floor with him.

  Dart slipped into the first chair that fronted a terminal. He touched the space bar, and the screen saver cleared.

  “Go,” he said to Ginny.

  A voice interrupted and instructed, “The tiger’s in the garden.” Terry Proctor had arrived. Dart felt a chill run through him, right into his bowels. It was a huge risk for Proctor to come here in person, illustrating to Dart just how desperate the man was.

  Dart pulled out the cellular, hoping for privacy-getting off the police frequency-pushed RECALL and SEND and a moment later, Ginny answered. “We’ve got less than two minutes. Now listen carefully …”

  Level by level, Ginny steered Dart through the proper key combinations and necessary passwords. To ensure that Dart was on track, Ginny kept repeating anxiously, “What’s the title line? What’s the title line?” Dart would read the uppermost title and await the next instruction.

  Out in the hallway, Dart heard the security guard open a door and then silence. He’ll have to search every office, Dart thought, realizing he had bought himself some time.

  He could picture the operation continuing outside. Proctor’s arrival had triggered a third phase, independent of Dart: The lookout confirmed that Proctor had entered; the ERT team, dressed all in black, was presently scaling the walls of the compound, on their way to sealing the building’s exits. Proctor would be trapped.

  This changed the dynamics-there was no predicting the behavior of a cornered animal.

  “Are you listening?” an almost hysterical Ginny asked. She said, “L-A-T-E-R-I-N-5. Did you get that?”

  Dart typed it in and hit the ENTER KEY.

  The cover page of the clinical trial appeared on his screen. Dart felt a huge wash of relief. It was dated fourteen months earlier.

  “The file is seventy-six pages long,” Ginny told him.

  He heard a banging behind-the security guard was at his door.

  “I’m not going to get out of here with this disk,” Dart informed her, realizing his situation. He had a disk in his pocket on which he was supposed to record the information; that seemed impossible now. After a long beat of silence, he asked, “Are you there?”

  In his left ear he heard the dispatcher in the command van announce, “The garden is surrounded.” The ERT team was in place.

  The security guard’s deep voice attempted to whisper a radioed request, but Dart overheard it through the door: “I need a master key, ASAP. Third floor.”

  “Okay,” Ginny said into the cellular, “here’s what we’re going to do.” A fraction of a second later she snapped, “Oh shit, hang on. You’ve got visitors.”

  Glancing toward the door, and knowing that the security guard was coming through it any second, Dart said, “I can’t hang on. There’s no time.”

  “Mark the complete text. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Ginny?” Dart shouted into the phone.

  There was no answer.

  Ginny’s second laptop alerted him the moment Martinson’s password was used to log on to the system. Many of the commonly used security soft-wares prevented the duplication of a password if one person was presently on the system. Ginny had hoped that was the case-that by Dart already being on the network, Martinson, or whomever Martinson had called, would be denied access. To her horror, the system allowed this other person access onto the network.

  Dart guessed that this person was Terry Proctor and that he might even be in the lobby now, following Martinson’s instructions to erase the files.

  Ginny felt helpless. The screen followed the intruder’s every move. He traveled past the main menu and along the route Ginny now knew only too well. In a matter of thirty to sixty seconds, the intruder would be on top of Dart; how the system would perform was anybody’s guess. Ginny’s guess was that it would freeze, locking up, and that only the system operator would be able to correct it. And the SYSOP worked for Martinson, which meant the files would never be seen again.

  Dart couldn’t copy the text to a disk because the disk might be confiscated by the security guards and destroyed.

  It left Ginny only one choice. Using a modem line, she was going to have to attempt to raid the system’s security firewall a second time, attempting to avoid her earlier mistake.

  She picked up the phone and said to Dart, “Is the text marked?”

  “I’m ready,” Dart said into the phone. He heard the sound of someone running. The master key-a real key, not some security card-was seconds away from being delivered.

  Ginny said, “Go to the Edit menu. Select Cut.”

  “Cut?” Dart barked. “You mean copy!”

  “I said cut, Detective. Do it now.”

  “But I’ll lose the file!” Dart protested.

  “Edit. Cut!” Ginny ordered. “Do it now!”

  Ginny’s eyes widened as she followed the activity on the second laptop. She watched as Proctor typed L-A-T …

  “This is not up for discussion. Do it fucking now!”

  Dart’s index finger hesitated above the button on the computer’s mouse. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his jaw. He heard the key in the door. And then he heard that same key turn.

  Cut would make the blocked text disappear. Does she know what she’s doing?

  “Now!” he heard repeated in his ear.

  His index finger punched the button automatically and the seventy-six pages of clinical trial reports disappeared from the screen.

  “Thank God,” Ginny said through the phone. “Now,” she added, “if you want to see those files again, there’s something you’ve got to do-”

  “Not right now,” Dart interrupted, dropping the cellular phone and springing out of the office chair and dragging it to the door just as the doorknob turned.

  Dart blocked the door with his foot, flipped the chair upside down, wheels in the air, and wedged it inside the handle to prevent the door from opening.

  He glanced up at the ceiling: large rectangular panes suspended by an angle-iron aluminum frame. It offered one possibility of escape.

  The door came partially open, encountering the chair. The guards on the other side leaned their weight into it. The sound was deafening.

  A bead of sweat slipped into Dart’s eyes, stinging him.

  Dart considered going out the window. The golf-ball-like architecture crowned at the top of each module. Being on the top floor, this office’s windowpanes were more parallel to the ground than those o
f the floors below and would be easier to climb. Dart was not one for heights, but it seemed to offer him the fastest exit.

  He took two steps toward the window and reached it before identifying the hollow thump underfoot. He stooped to inspect the source of that sound.

  Behind him the office chair slipped. The door popped open two or three inches and several fingers appeared in the crack, groping to remove the chair.

  Dart flung himself across the room, drove his shoulder into the door, and broke all four of the man’s fingers. An animal cry erupted from the far side of the door. Dart hiked the chair back into position and leaped over to the windows.

  Along the office’s perimeter, a series of floor panels covered spaces created to house phone lines, transmission lines, computer cables, and electrical conduit. To allow easy access, the office carpet had not been glued here, and Dart pulled it back. He yanked up the first-floor panel and found himself staring down into a darkened dead space through a tangle of wires. Three feet below him was the suspended acoustical tile of a fifth-floor-office ceiling. Steel I-beams supported the floor of the office Dart was currently inside.

  He didn’t hesitate. He sat down, forced his toes through the mesh of wires, and lowered himself down.

  The door banged and the chair slipped again.

  Dart kicked at the pressboard panel beneath him, broke it in pieces, and could see through to a desktop in the office below. He let go his purchase and fell through the dead space and down into the office below, landing awkwardly on the desk, driving a sharp pain into his injured ankle.

  He heard the chair explode above him. They were inside.

  Dart jumped off the desk, ignoring his pain, and ran for the door. A moment later he was running quickly toward the fire stairs, hoping he had enough of a lead.

  “That sounded ugly,” the voice said in his left ear.

  “Patch me through to Ginny,” Dart said. “I’ve lost the phone.” Like it or not, Proctor’s people would now hear every word.

  On Ginny’s instructions, Dart headed for the bottom of the stairs. As Dart ran, she talked nonstop.

  Ginny’s detected raid on the Roxin server had triggered the mainframe to adopt a defensive position, eliminating an outsider’s ability to access the machine through modem and pulling the system temporarily off-line. The situation could be reversed, but only from the SYSOP terminal inside Roxin’s data processing center, which Ginny guessed was likely to be located on the facility’s basement level.

  “How can you possibly be sure about this?” Dart questioned on the run.

  “There are three different systems they could be using, and I know every one of them. They all share the ability to take modem communications off-line. By definition, they cannot be put back on-line using software; they require someone to throw a physical switch-a button. It’s what keeps them secure. The front panels are all basically the same: some system indicators and either one or two buttons. I know the way this works, Joe. This is my area of expertise,” Ginny reminded. “You’re going to have to trust me. And listen, Joe, once we’re back on-line, I need a couple minutes, minimum.”

  “What am I looking for?” He asked.

  “It will be a plain vanilla box-maybe a stack of them, depending how many incoming lines there are. If there’s more than one, you’ll have to trip each master. The front panel will show a series of seven small lights across it, red probably; in all likelihood, only the farthest right-hand light will be lit. On the far right-hand side of the box itself will be a vertical stack of red lights-one for each incoming line-these are actually buttons, not lights. Below these lights,” she emphasized, “there is another button off by itself.” Then, editing herself, she said, “On two of the machines it is below. On the Black Box model it is above. But it will either read ‘Master,’ or ‘Group On-line,’ or ‘All.’”

  “Master, Group On-line, or All,” he repeated.

  “Yes. And that is the one you want. One or more of those masters is going to be red. When you push it, it will change to green or amber. At that point we’re back on-line.” She asked, “Is that enough of a description?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You can describe things to me and ask, once you’re there.”

  “I missed that last bit,” Dart said, finally arriving at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny repeated herself. “Okay,” Dart said, cowering from the time pressure. “I’m on the basement level. What room am I looking for?”

  “Data Processing,” Ginny replied.

  Dart reevaluated his situation. There were, at the very minimum, three guards after him. Proctor, and anyone accompanying him, had to be thrown into the mix. That made four or more after him. They had lost track of him. With Proctor running things, Dart felt certain they would do the smart thing: conduct a floor-by-floor search. At the same time, at least one guard would watch the computer, monitoring the system to see if Dart attempted to use a security card to gain access anywhere. This person would guide the search team.

  The voice of the lookout scratched into Dart’s ear like fingernails down a blackboard. “They’re taking their time, but they’re working their way down. I’m showing them at the second floor.”

  By going to the basement level he had, in all likelihood, trapped himself.

  He ran down the hall where, instead of the cryptic color system, the doors actually carried titles. Several were marked SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY. Another read FOOD SERVICES. He passed two bathrooms. Something marked HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER.

  Dart turned right down a long corridor. The basement was a rabbit warren. He passed a door marked TECHNICAL SERVICES.

  “Ginny?” he said into the air.

  “Right here.” She spoke into his ear.

  “I’m looking at Technical Services. Haven’t seen anything like Data Processing.”

  “Basement level?”

  “Right.”

  “Security?”

  “You bet,” Dart confirmed, wondering how he could get inside.

  “Check the crack below the door,” Ginny advised. “The gap at the bottom of the door. Cold air sinks,” he said. “The computer room will be real cold.”

  Dart dropped to his knees and poked his fingers through. “You got it. Real cold.”

  “Let’s give it a try,” she said.

  Dart stood back up, his knees killing him. He stared at the door in confusion. It was a heavy steel door, and it was locked. He pulled his gun out of his holster. It was all he could think of.

  “Whatever you do,” Ginny said, as if standing there, “don’t break that door down.”

  “I have to,” Dart replied.

  “You can’t. Same reason we can’t have your bad boys breaking in,” she said, referring to the ERT team. “That kind of illegal access will cause the mainframe to suspend. The only person able to undo that is the SYSOP himself.”

  “Shit,” Dart replied. He glanced up: acoustic panels. “Hold on,” Dart said.

  “You need a security card,” Ginny advised. “It’s the only way. Trust me.”

  “Maybe not,” Dart corrected, heading back down the hallway toward the bathrooms that he had passed.

  The lookout interrupted and said, “They’re descending fire stairs, north and south, approaching level one.”

  Dart pushed into the mens room and flicked on the light. He glanced up: acoustical panels hung in a suspended frame. He ran back into the hallway, down to the intersection of the other corridor and made a mental note of distance and angle. He returned to the bathroom, pulled himself up onto the sink’s countertop, and pushed up on the panel. It moved out of his way.

  “I’m going for it,” Dart announced.

  “Going for what?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Securing a hand-hold on a pipe within the area above the suspended ceiling, Dart hooked a foot over the stall partition and pulled himself up and through. The dead space occupied an area about four feet high-above Dart was the support structure for the first floor
; below, the suspended ceiling through which he had just entered. The area was claustrophobic and vast; hallway ceiling fixtures threw enough light around for Dart to see a series of black plastic plumbing pipes and heavy steel sprinkler pipes that were suspended from the overhead I-beams. He took the time to replace the acoustic panel he had come through to hide the way he had come. He hoped the security team would pass up the men’s room and continue their search elsewhere on another level.

  The flimsy false ceiling, supported by strands of twisted wire, was not strong enough to hold him. Dart, flat on his stomach, distributed his weight between a plumbing pipe, where he hooked his left leg, and a fire sprinkler holding his right, his fingers groping for purchase on the overhead I-beams. If he slipped and fell, he would crash down into whatever room and unseen hazards lay below.

  The parallel pipes were his only support, and he had to stay with them despite the fact that they appeared to follow the direction of the hallway-east, west-rather than the angle that Dart had projected to reach the computer room. He crawled carefully, all the while attempting to maintain his bearings. The pipes and conduit were suspended by metal plumber’s “tape” and lengths of wire, requiring Dart to pause and navigate around them, reaching around each obstruction, taking hold of one pipe and shifting his weight onto the opposing one.

  Dart suddenly realized he heard only static in his left ear. Either the radio had gone dead or the combination of the sublevel basement and the abundance of metal was causing interference. If he wasn’t hearing them, then they weren’t hearing him. He had to hurry. If the command van lost track of him for too long they would order the ERT team to hit the building, and according to Ginny such unauthorized entry would shut down the mainframe, rendering it inaccessible, the files lost.

  A series of lights came on, immediately to Dart’s left, blinding him. At the same time, he heard the frantic footfalls of people running immediately below him-close enough to touch. Dart remained still as two men stopped directly beneath him, and he recognized the tension-filled voice of Terry Proctor.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Proctor said, out of breath.