by Frank Perry
He’d felt so helpless away from her on the island. She had some trouble sleeping that night, but her anxiety subsided gradually the next day when she attended classes. That afternoon, with the email and attachment from John, she started feeling more normal again. She didn’t have any important homework, nothing that couldn’t be put off, so she looked at the big report. She loved puzzles and she was determined to impress him. He didn’t really know much about her, so she wanted him to be impressed. She knew he was stuck on Kelly who was more his age, so Mary’s relationship would never go beyond infatuation with the guy she’d met in the store that night on the island. He had been more handsome than anyone she’d ever known on the island or at school, and, when he talked, he was obviously smart. But he was also older, and they would never have the kind of relationship she had imagined when he stayed with her family, but they would always be friends.
She focused on the big report. It was just a long list, fifty-plus pages, of alphanumeric entries that would make any normal person cross-eyed and sleepy. But, she was intrigued. Partly, she knew it contained some kind of secret, something John thought was important; maybe, something important enough to make someone a murderer.
John called after ending his discussion with Gort. “Hi, Mary. I just talked to Gort. He said you got home okay.”
They talked about the experience again, and it was clear that Mary was starting to be less emotional and more analytic. She mostly wanted to know why someone wanted to shoot at them. He explained again, just as he had rationalized to himself and Kelly that he wasn’t sure, but it had to be related, logically, to Dr. Bridger’s warning. Lorne had told him he was in danger, and it was somehow related to the report he’d now sent to Mary. Partly, it was the gravity that commanded her interest. Something about the information could be worth life or death.
“John. I mighta seen something.” Before he could respond, she continued. “Did you look at the whole report?”
“Yes, I did, Mary. But it doesn’t say anything. It’s just a bunch of long numbers.”
“John, I don’t know about what you do, except the little bit you told me. You also told me you didn’t know what the report was, right?”
“Well, I think it’s some kind of production record, but it’s not like the standard system we use. This was a manual system done in Excel by one of our scientists, one of our owners.”
“You told me he died, right?” She knew the answer.
“Yeah, he was my friend. He brought me into the Institute, and I basically worked only for him. He was one of the original three owners, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to sit in the executive offices like the others. Dr. Lorne Bridger was a true working scientist, always in the lab. He didn’t like corporate politics or meetings with investors. He just wanted to fight disease.”
She knew the doctor had been something like a father figure to John. John’s father had died just a couple years before, and Dr. Bridger had helped fill the void. “I know that you miss him, John. But, I think there’s some things about his data that you need to know about.”
“Yeah, Gort said you might have found something.” He was skeptical that a high-school girl would find anything important, but he didn’t want to be judgmental. Maybe she did find something.
She began reciting the obvious. “Okay, there are a bunch of columns with numbers. When I went through them, I noticed something. Maybe you can explain it.” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “The first column has part numbers, I guess. They look like date codes and batch numbers. The rest is pretty easy: description, quantities, bin location, shipping dates, and such. The last column is the amount in stock.”
“Where’s this going, Mary? I can read all that.” He didn’t want to be pushy, but he didn’t want to spend useless time going nowhere either.
“Did you compare the quantities: the amount manufactured, how much shipped, and what’s still in the bins?”
“No. But our processes here are bullet proof. The computers keep track of everything in and out. The record keeping is always perfect. The Institute is highly regulated, and this kind of information is error free. It has to be. This is a lot of what I do every day.”
“Look at it! They almost all add up, right? But, there’s a couple errors.”
“Mary, if you want an accurate inventory of anything, you would need to look at our corporate data. Much as I liked Dr. Bridger, you can’t expect a homemade spreadsheet to be perfect. Not with all these entries. It took him years to assemble all this, there’s bound to be errors.”
He doesn’t think it was important! She’d just spent a whole night finding a couple small errors. Is that what he thinks? “John, I think you’re wrong. Look, the math is simple. Excel formulas do it all. All he had to do was enter the starting quantities and subtract the shipped quantities to get the amount left in the bins, right? That’s a formula. Excel uses the formulas and doesn’t make mistakes. But, guess what? Dr. Bridger didn’t use formulas for every row. Most of them yes, but not all of them. He must have actually counted stuff in bins then made some manual changes. Look, I checked the last column. Almost all of the remaining stock is computed by formula, error free I bet. But there are four lines with differences where he deleted the formulas and made a manual entry. If you had five and use three, you should have two left, right? Well, there’s four “bins” that don’t add correctly. He changed the numbers manually. He must have been checking all the bins himself – at least these four. When the quantity didn’t match the formula amount, he made the entry manually. It wasn’t small errors, either. I know how this works ‘cause my work program at school is counting inventory of supplies. I compare the difference between computer math and make adjustments by hand when the actual supplies don’t match the computer record.” Yeah, like office supplies are as important as germs.
He was thinking. “Are you sure about this?”
“Why do you think I stayed up all night checking this report? It wasn’t easy. I found four little blocks in fifty pages that he changed the quantity.”
“Look, Mary, there has to be an explanation. Maybe the usage information was wrong. Instead of three on the paperwork, they actually took only two. Couldn’t that screw up the quantity?”
“Oh, yeah.” She sounded sarcastic. “Look, you just said the official Institute system records were always right … right?”
“We get audited by the Department of Health and Welfare along with the CDC a couple times a year. If there was ever a discrepancy, it’s a big deal, we would all know about it, and it hasn’t happened since I’ve been there.”
She smiled to herself, not fully understanding the implications. She was just making a point about the file he’d sent. “Okay, John, well, from what you say, all the production and shipping information on this report is originally downloaded from the Institute data base. So, the spreadsheet should be completely accurate. It’s the information taken from your official system. But, the new production bin quantities are done by your lab computer on the spreadsheet, and not taken from your system … right?”
He didn’t fully comprehend her rationale, but he was starting to understand her better. She was smart, maybe more “practically” smart than he was. He sat back and thought before answering. “Which lines are you talking about, Mary?” She read them off. Two were from two years ago, one from one year, and one recent. “These are spread across a long period.”
“What do you think, John?”
“I’m not sure yet, Mary. I need to do some more checking. You might have solved the puzzle, but I need to check some things.”
“What does it mean? I was up all night and was nearly shot for being near you. I deserve some kind of answer; what does it mean?”
“I honestly don’t know. For now, it only means you’re a genius, Sherlock. I can’t tell if this is important or not, but it could be really important. I just don’t know yet.” He didn’t w
ant to contemplate it; not yet, not until he had more proof. It could be why Lorne was dead, and why he had almost died. He had to be sure.
Danger Zone
Kelly was still afraid to leave her apartment. They sat together on her couch. “Do you think it’s safe, John?”
“I don’t know, Kelly. I wish I could be sure. We still work at the Institute, as far as I know, and nobody saw me download the file. They were all tied up with the police when we were there, so there’s a good chance that I got away with it.”
“It scares me. We could be in a trap.”
“Look. We’ve got to do this. There’s no way to know the real facts if we don’t check ourselves. Hell, I’d go into the inner lab myself if I had access. You’re the only one that can do it.” He was familiar with the bins as a concept, but had never actually seen one. They were inside the containment area and kept behind a glass partition. All activities at the bins were done by robots controlled by the scientists on the other side. Kelly had access inside the containment, but had never been involved with the
