"Sinclair gets to do his thing while Reed gets on the radio and the phone, calls for a supervisor, runs the tag ASAP. Bingo. The car comes back to you, and now his first thought is ifs you inside. So you can imagine how it was out there."
"A circus."
"You got it. Turns out Sinclair just got out of the academy. Your wreck was his second."
"Even if it was his twentieth, I can see how he might have made a mistake.
There was no reason for him to look for skid marks two hundred feet up from where Lucy went off the road."
"And you're certain it was a yaw mark you saw?"
"Absolutely. You make those casts, and you're going to find the impression on the shoulder's going to match the impression back there on the road. The only way that yaw mark or scuff could have been left was if an outside force caused the car to suddenly change direction."
"And then acceleration marks two hundred or so feet later," he thought out loud.
"Lucy gets hit from the rear, taps her brakes, and keeps on going. Seconds later she suddenly accelerates and loses control."
"Probably about the same time she dialed Nine-one- one," I said.
"I'll check with the cellular phone company and get the exact time of that call. Then we'll find it on the tape."
"Someone was on her bumper with their high beams on, and she flipped on the night mirror, and finally resorted to putting up the rear sunscreen to block out the glare. She didn't have the radio or CD player on because she was concentrating hard. She was wide awake and scared because someone's on top of her.
"This person finally hits her from the rear and Lucy applies the brakes," I continued to reconstruct what I believed had happened.
"She drives on, and realizes the person is gaining on her again. Panicking, Lucy floors it and loses control. All of this would have taken place in seconds."
"If what you found out there is right, it sure could have happened exactly like that."
"Will you look into it?"
"You bet. What about the paint?"
"I'll turn it, the taillight unit, and everything else in to the labs and ask them to put a rush on it."
"Put my name on the paperwork. Have them call me with the results right away." It was five o'clock and dark out when I got off the phone in my upstairs office. I looked around dazed, and felt like a stranger in my house. Hunger gnawing my stomach was followed by nausea, and I drank Mylanta from the bottle and rummaged in the medicine cabinet for Zantac. My ulcer had vanished during the summer, but unlike former lovers, it always came back. Both phone lines rang and were answered by voice mail. I heard the fax machine as I soaked in the tub and sipped wine on top of medicine. I had so much to do. I knew my sister, Dorothy, would want to come immediately. She always rose to crisis occasions because it fed her need for drama. She would use it for research. No doubt, in her next children's book, one of her characters would deal with an auto wreck. Critics again would rave about the sensitivity and wisdom of Dorothy, who mothered people she imagined much better than she did her only daughter. The fax, I found, was Dorothy's flight schedule. She was arriving late tomorrow afternoon and would stay with Lucy in my home.
"She won't be in the hospital long, will she?" she asked, when I called her minutes later.
"I imagine I'll be bringing her here in the afternoon," I said.
"She must look terrible."
"Most people do after automobile accidents."
"But is any of it permanent?" She almost whispered.
"She won't be disfigured, will she?"
"No, Dorothy. She won't be disfigured. How aware have you been of her drinking?"
"Now how would I know anything about that? She's up there near you in school and never seems to want to come home. And when she does she certainly doesn't confide in me or her grandmother. I would think if anyone were aware, you should have been."
"If she's convicted of DUI, the courts could order her into treatment," I said as patiently as possible. Silence. Then, "My God."
I went on, "Even if they don't, it would be a good idea for two reasons. The most obvious is that she needs to deal with the problem. Second, the judge may look upon her case with more sympathy if she volunteers to get some help. "
"Well, I'm just going to leave all that up to you. You're the doctor-lawyer in the family. But I know my little girl. She's not going to want to do it.
I can't imagine her going off to some mental ward where they don't have computers. She'd never be able to face anyone again."
"She will not be going off to a mental ward, and there is nothing the least bit shameful about being treated for alcohol or drug abuse. What's shameful is to let it go on to ruin your life. "
"I've always stopped at three glasses of wine."
"There are many types of addictions," I said.
"Yours happens to be to men."
"Oh, Kay." She laughed.
"That's quite something coming from you. By the way, are you seeing anyone?"
15
Senator Frank Lord heard a rumor that I had been in a wreck and called me before the sun was up the next morning.
"No," I told him as I sat half dressed on the edge of my bed.
"Lucy was driving my car."
"Oh, dear!"
"She's doing fine, Frank. I'll be bringing her home this afternoon."
"Apparently one of the papers up here printed that it was you who had wrecked and there was a suspicion alcohol was a factor."
"Lucy was trapped in the car for a while. No doubt some policeman made an assumption when the tags came back to me, and this ended up being relayed to a reporter on deadline." I thought of Officer Sinclair. He would get my vote for such a blunder.
"Kay, can I do anything to help?"
"Do you have any further clues as to what might have happened at ERF? "
"There are some interesting developments. Have you heard Lucy mention someone named Carrie Grethen?"
"They're co-workers. I've met her."
"Apparently she's connected to a spy shop, one of these places that sells high-tech surveillance devices."
"You aren't serious."
"Afraid so."
"Well, I can certainly see why she would have been interested in getting a job at ERF, and it stuns me that the Bureau would have hired her with that in her background."
"No one knew. Apparently, it's her boyfriend who owns the shop. The only reason we know she's a frequent visitor is she's been under surveillance."
"She dates a man?"
"Excuse me?"
"The owner of the spy shop is a man?"
"Yes."
"Who says it is her boyfriend?"
"Apparently she did when questioned after being seen in the shop."
"Can you tell me more about both of them?"
"Not much at present, but I have the shop's address, if you want to hold on a minute. Let me dig it out."
"What about her home address or the boyfriend's home address?"
"I'm afraid I don't have those."
"Whatever information you can give me, then."
I looked around for a pencil and wrote as my mind raced. The name of the shop was Eye Spy, and it was in the Springfield Mall, just off 1-95. If I left now, I could be there by mid-morning and back in time to bring Lucy home from the hospital.
"Just so you know," Senator Lord was saying, "Miss. Grethen has been dismissed from ERF because of the spy shop connection, which she obviously omitted divulging during her application process. But at this point, there's no evidence whatsover she was involved in the break-in."
"She certainly had motive," I said, holding my anger in check.
"ERF is a Santa's workshop for someone who sells espionage equipment." I paused, thinking.
"Do you know when she was hired by the Bureau, and did she apply for the job or did ERF recruit her?"
"Let's see. It's in my notes here. It just says here that she submitted an application last April and started mid-August."
"It seems her entire career has been in computers. Hardware, software, programming. And engineering, which was partly why the Bureau was interested in her. She's very creative and ambitious, and unfortunately, dishonest.
Several people recently interviewed have begun to paint a portrait of a woman who has been lying and cheating her way to the top for years."
"Frank, she applied for the job at ERF so she could spy for the spy shop," I said.
"She may also be one of these people who hates the FBI. "
"Both scenarios are possible," he agreed.
"Ifs a matter of finding proof. Even if we can, unless there is evidence she took something, she can't be prosecuted."
"Lucy mentioned to me before all this happened that she was involved in some research pertaining to the biometric lock system at ERF. Do you know anything about that?"
"I'm not aware of any research projects of that nature."
"But would you necessarily know if there was one?"
"There's a good chance I would. I've been given quite a lot of detailed information pertaining to ongoing classified projects at Quantico-because of the crime bill, the money I've been trying to appropriate for the Bureau."
"Well, it's strange that Lucy would say she was involved in a project that doesn't seem to exist," I said.
"Sadly, that detail might only make her situation look more incriminating."
I knew he was right. As suspicious as Carrie Grethen appeared, the case against Lucy was still stronger.
"Frank," I went on, "do you happen to know what types of cars Carrie Grethen and her boyfriend drive?"
"Certainly, we can get that information. Why are you interested?"
"I have reason to believe Lucy's wreck was no accident and she may still be in serious danger." He paused.
"Would it be a good idea to keep her on the Academy's security floor for a while?"
"Ordinarily, that would be the perfect place," I said.
"But I don't think she needs to be anywhere near the Academy right now."
"I see. Well, that makes sense. There are other places if you need me to intervene."
"I think I have a place."
"I'm off to Florida tomorrow, but you've got my numbers there."
"More fund-raisers?" I knew he was exhausted, for the election was little more than a week away.
"That, too. And the usual brush fires. NOW's picketing, and my opponent remains very busy painting me as the woman hater with horns and a pointed tail."
"You've done more for women than anyone I know," I said.
"Especially this one right here."
I finished getting dressed and by seven-thirty was drinking my first cup of coffee on the road in my rental car. The weather was gloomy and cold, and I noticed very little of what I passed as I drove north.
A biometric lock system, like any lock system, would have to be picked were someone to bypass it. Some locks truly did require nothing more than a credit card, while others could be dismantled or released with various tools, such as Slim Jims. But a lock system that scanned fingerprints could not be violated by such simple mechanical means. As I contemplated the break-in at ERF and how someone might have accomplished this, several thoughts drifted through my mind.
Lucy's print had been scanned into the system at approximately three o'clock in the morning, and that was only possible if her finger had been present-or a facsimile of her finger had been present. I recalled from International Association of Identification meetings I had attended over the years that many notorious criminals had made many creative attempts at altering their fingerprints.
The ruthless gangster John Dillinger had dropped acid on his cores and deltas, while the lesser-known Roscoe Pitts had surgically removed his prints from the first knuckle up. These methods and others had failed, and the gentlemen would have been better served had they stayed painlessly with the prints God had given them. Their altered latents simply went into the FBI's Mutilated File, which, frankly, was far easier to search. Not to mention, burned and mangled fingers look a little fishy if you happen to be a suspect.
But what came to mind most vividly was a case years ago of an especially resourceful burglar whose brother worked in a funeral home. The burglar, who had been imprisoned many times, attempted to give himself a pair of gloves that would leave someone else's prints. This he accomplished by repeatedly dipping a dead man's hands into liquid rubber, forming layer after layer until the "gloves" could be pulled off.
The plan did not work well for at least two reasons. The burglar had neglected to knock air bubbles out with each layer of rubber, and this made for rather odd latent prints recovered at the next mansion he hit. He also had not bothered to research the individual whose prints he stole. Had he done so, he would have learned that the decedent was a convicted felon who had died peacefully while out on parole.
I thought of my visit to ERF on a sunny afternoon that now seemed years ago.
I had sensed that Carrie Grethen was not pleased to find Wesley and me in her office when she walked in stirring a viscous substance, which, in retrospect, could have been liquid silicone or rubber. It was during this visit that Lucy mentioned the biometric lock research she was "in the middle of." Maybe what she had said was literally true. Maybe Carrie had intended at that moment to make a rubber cast of Lucy's thumb. If my theory about what Carrie had done was accurate, I knew it could be proven. I wondered why none of us had thought before to ask a very simple question. Did the print scanned into the biometric lock system physically match Lucy's, or were we simply taking the computer's word for it? "
"Well, I would assume so," Benton Wesley said to me when I got him on the car phone.
"Of course you would assume it. Everyone would assume it. But if someone made a cast of Lucy's thumb arid scanned it into the system, the print should be a reversal of the corresponding one on her ten-print card on file with the Bureau. A mirror image, in other words." Wesley paused, then sounded surprised.
"Damn. But wouldn't the scanner have detected the print was backward and rejected it?"
"Very few scanners could distinguish between a print and an inversion of that same print. But a fingerprint examiner could," I said.
"The print scanned into the biometric lock system should still be digitally stored in the data base."
"If Carrie Grethen did this, don't you think she would have eradicated the print from the data base?"
"I doubt it," I replied.
"She's not a fingerprint examiner. It's unlikely she would realize that every time a latent print is left, it's reversed. And it matches a ten-print card only because those prints are reversed as well. Now if you made a cast of a digit and left a latent print with it, you would actually have a reversal of a reversal."
"So a latent made with this rubber thumb would be a reversal of the same latent made with the person's actual thumb."
"Precisely."
"Christ, I'm not good with things like this."
"Don't worry about it, Benton. I know it's confusing, but take my word for it."
"I always do, and it sounds like we need to get a hard copy of the print in question."
"Absolutely, and right away. There's something else I want to ask you. Were you aware of a research project pertaining to ERF's biometric lock system? "
"A research project conducted by the Bureau?"
"Yes."
"No. I'm not aware of any project like that."
"That's what I thought. Thank you, Benton." Both of us paused, waiting for a personal word from the other. But I did not know what else to say. So much was inside me.
"Be careful," he told me, and we said goodbye.
I found the spy shop not more than a half hour later in a huge shopping mall learning with cars and people. Eye Spy was inside near Ralph Lauren and Crabtree amp; Evelyn. It was a small shop with a window display of the finest that legal espionag
e had to offer. I hesitated a safe distance away until a customer at the register moved, allowing me to see who was working at the counter. An older, overweight man was ringing up an order, and I could not believe he could be Carrie Grethen's lover. No doubt this detail was yet one more of her lies.
When the customer left, there was only one other, a young man in a leather jacket perusing a showcase of voice-activated tape recorders and portable voice stress analyzers. The fat man behind the counter wore thick glasses and gold chains, and looked like he always had a deal for someone.
"Excuse me," I said as quietly as possible.
"I'm looking for Carrie Grethen."
"She went out for coffee, should be back in a minute." He studied my face.
"Can I help you with something?"
"I'll look around until she returns," I said.
"Sure."
I had just gotten interested in a special attache case that included a hidden tape recorder, wire tap alerts, telephone descrambler, and night vision devices, when Carrie Grethen walked in. She stopped when she saw me, and for an unnerving instant I thought she might fling her cup of coffee in my face. Her eyes drove through mine like two steel nails.
"I need a word with you," I said.
"I'm afraid this is not a good time." She tried to smile, to sound civil, because now there were four customers in this very small store.
"Of course it's a good time," I said, holding her gaze.
"Jerry?" She looked at the fat man.
"Can you handle things for a few minutes?" He stared hard at me like a dog ready to lunge.
"I promise I won't be long," she reassured him.
"Yeah, sure," he said with the distrust of the dishonest.
I followed her out of the store and we found an empty bench near a fountain.
"I heard about Lucy's accident and I'm sorry about that. I hope she's all right," Carrie said coldly as she sipped her coffee.
"You don't care in the least how Lucy is," I said.
"And there's no point in wasting any of your charm on me because I have you figured out. I know what you did."
"You don't know anything." She smiled her frosty smile, and the air was filled with the sounds of water.
"I know you made a cast of Lucy's thumb in rubber, and figuring out her Personal Identification Number was simple since you were with each other so much. All you had to do was be observant and note the code she punched in. This was how you accessed the biometric lock system the early morning you violated ERF."
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