An Inconsequential Murder (16 page)

He probed from every angle that he thought might give him an insight, a clue that Victor’s job or the people and circumstances around it might have put him in some sort of danger, or in conflict with anyone.

She answered all of his questions quietly, but negatively. She insisted that he didn’t talk much about his work and when he did, it was mostly banal stuff—about a possible raise, about someone leaving or coming into the Department. Apparently, there had been nothing really eventful in his uneventful life.

As he listened to her answers, Lombardo had made a note to ask
how this beautiful woman had married such a simple, unremarkable young man.

“
Where did you meet Victor, Mrs. Delgado?”

“
We met in the University. I was a student in the School of Accounting and he was working in the Computer Department. We were given an assignment, a project that had to do with using accounting programs and I didn’t understand much about them so Victor was kind enough to help me out.” She made a pause as if remembering something and then she said, “We became friends.”

“
So, you are a graduate of the School of Accounting?”

“
No,” she said and made another pause before adding, “You see, I was expecting my son when I met Victor. I had to stop my studies. We were married soon after I quit school.”

She looked straight into his eyes again; there was defiance, perhaps pride, maybe a challenge in her look. She had been through this before and she had not bowed her head in shame. Her penetrating look seemed to want to know how he was going to judge her.

“
I’ll spare you the embarrassment of having to ask me, Captain Lombardo, so I will tell you that because I was pregnant, I lost my job. You see, my former boss is the father of my child. If it had not been for Victor I would have had a very difficult time.”

“
Do you have no family?”

“
Yes, but my father asked me to leave the house when he found out, that is, when I told him of my condition.”

“
Did Victor know the, uh, your former boss?”

“
Yes, but if you are thinking that they might have had some sort of problem let me assure you that Victor never once mentioned him and was truly indifferent to the man.”

Lombardo busied himself putting the paper with the key back in the envelope. He got up and said, “I am going to keep this for a while before I send it on to the Dean, Mrs. Delgado. Please don’t tell anyone else about it or that you have given it to me. I think that this is a very sensitive document and it is best that other people don’t know it’s been in your possession.”

“
You mean the people that killed my husband.”

“
Yes, among others.”

“
Very well,” she said getting up, too.

“
There are no copies that you know of, are there, Mrs. Delgado?”

“
No, not that I know of.”

He extended his hand to shake hers. Her hand was long, and Lombardo held it a bit longer than was customary.

“
Again, I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Delgado. I hope the University does well by you. If there is anything I can do, please let know.” He gave her his card. “My cell phone number is there so if you think of anything else, anything at all, no matter how trivial, please don’t hesitate to call.”

“
I will,” she said. “Would you like for me to call you a taxi?”

“
No, it’s OK. I’ll just walk down to the avenue and get one.” He said goodbye and walked down the street midst the bright sunshine. He sighed as if he were relieved to have done with a difficult chore.

Once he was in a taxi, he called Lupe Salgado. “Look I have to see you right now. Where? Where is your office? OK, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

He tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder and said, “Take me to the Kalos Building.”

Chapter
19: The Keys to the Tale

The Kalos Building in Monterrey is the flagship and corporate
offices of a large real estate and business parks empire said to be owned by an ex-Governor of the State of Nuevo León. It houses not only the headquarters of the Kalos Group itself but also the headquarters or offices of a gaggle of international corporations.

Lombardo walked into the building and read the directory. He saw that “Omega IT Consulting” was on Level A-3. “Lupe must be doing good business to be able to afford this,” he said aloud.

The security guard by the elevator doors turned to look at him but said nothing.

When he walked into Lupe
’s office, he gave the secretary his name and told her he was expected. Lupe was busily typing into his computer so he greeted Lombardo without looking away from the screen and asked him to sit down.

Lombardo put the plastic bag and the paper the widow had given him on Lupe’s desk and took out his cigarettes and lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke,” he asked the busy Lupe.

“
Yes,” Lupe said, “but go ahead anyway.”

When he finished typing, Lupe turned to Lombardo and extended his hand. “Sorry about that,” he said, “but I had a lot of emails to answer.”

“
That’s a snazzy looking three-piece suit you got there, Lupe. You’ve come a long way from the computer operator I met in the Technological Institute so many years ago.”

“
Well, you know what Manolete said, ‘To be a bullfighter, you not only have to be one, you have to
look
like one’; the same goes for consultants,” he said laughing.

“
Yeah,” agreed Lombardo, “but that’s not true for cops—at least not in Mexico.”

“
I can see that,” said Lupe pointing at Lombardo’s mackintosh. He looked at what Lombardo had put on his desk and asked, “What have you got there?”

With small puffs of smoke punctuating his words, Lombardo said, “The paper in the plastic bag was in the victim’s trachea; the paper with the letters and numbers was given to me by his widow. She said he instructed her to give it to someone in authority, someone she could trust.”

“
So, why did she give it to you?” said Lupe laughing at his own sarcasm.

Lombardo did not laugh and continued, “After the long series of letters and numbers, in that paper she gave me, it instructs the Dean of the University that this is a ‘private key.’ Now, I have a general idea of how encryption keys work, which I think this is what these are, but more importantly, I have a hunch that this has something to do with what he was doing at work, maybe what he was doing the night he was murdered.”

Lupe picked up the paper the widow had given Lombardo. He looked at it carefully as if he were an archeologist looking at old parchment. Then he picked up the plastic bag gingerly, as if afraid it would stain his fingers, and looked at the paper inside.

“
I think the guy knew he was doing something that could put him in some kind of danger, that’s why he gave that paper to his wife.”

“
Well, if he was using it as insurance, it didn’t work,” said Lupe glibly.

“
I don’t think it was insurance. I think he just wanted someone to know what had happened to him, in case something
did
happen to him.”

“
He must have had a pretty fatalistic outlook on life,” said Lupe after putting down the plastic bag. “Why didn’t he just deliver the thing himself instead of this roundabout, mysterious way?”

“
I think he was setting the thing up and maybe doing some last minute work that night with the intention of giving the key to the Dean the next day. He never got the chance, but something or someone must have told him that what he was doing was dangerous so he made sure the Dean would get the key.”

“
A loyal employee, eh?”

“
Yeah, too loyal for his own good—and loyal to the wrong people. I think the Dean is fooling around with stuff he shouldn’t and Victor was just carrying out orders. So, do you agree that these are keys? Have you used stuff like this before?’”

“
Of course that’s what they are. What you have here is a set of encryption keys, alright. The one in the paper the widow gave you is the private key; the one in the plastic bag is the public key. The public key is used to encrypt information—anyone can use it and it is usually freely distributed. The private key is used to decrypt information encrypted with the public key.”

“
I see,” said Lombardo and was silent for a moment as he thought about what Lupe had said. “So, I am probably right in assuming that he set this up
before
he went to work that night—or maybe that same night. He gave the paper to his wife to make sure it reached the Dean in case something happened to him, but why would he hide the
public
key from his abductors? It would not have helped them.”

“
Unless they wanted to send an encrypted message,” said Lupe snickering.

“
No, the killers were sure he had the private key on him,” said Lombardo reflectively.

“
How could they know that?”

“
Someone told them,” said Lombardo. “Someone who knew what he was doing that night.”

“
An inside man! But, how in the world did that paper get into his trachea?” asked Lupe picking up the plastic bag again.

Lombardo lit another cigarette. He was more relaxed now because he now understood what had happened and why.

“
There was water in his lungs,” he said leaning back while staring at the paper in the plastic bag. “I think he somehow managed to put the paper in his mouth as he was being beaten up. He must have fainted or maybe they tried to ‘waterboard’ him, I don’t know; in any case, he aspirated water, dirty water, and the paper went into his lungs with it.”

“
Damn! That’s horrible,” said Lupe putting down the paper.

“
Yeah, that’s horrible,” repeated Lombardo. “The thing is, he was either pretty foolish or pretty brave to take such a beating,
but he took it for a purpose. He knew the public key was useless to them but the fact that he tried to hide it was meant to convince the killers it was the private key.”

“
Man, that
was
either pretty foolish or pretty brave of him.”

“
Both,” said Lombardo. “Lupe, how could we get hold of what he was encrypting that night, or at any other time?”

“
Talk to the system managers; get them to show you the logs. But, I am sure they’ll know if there are encrypted files or volumes in their machines.”

“
I questioned David López yesterday. Do you know him?”

“
Yes, I met him once when I was trying to sell the University on some network security software. He worked for Victor; he should know exactly what Victor was doing.”

“
I asked him if he knew what Victor was working on that last night and he sort of shrugged it off saying that Victor was probably going about his normal duties.”

“
That’s bullshit. Most system managers know what the other guys are doing. There’s reports and logs one looks at, and meetings. Big servers keep lots of logs, so many, in fact that they have a guy, a log manager, dedicated to that. They keep a record on everything: user logins, file activity, security measures being applied, you name it. Lots of stuff is recorded and system managers systematically look at logs to see what’s going on. You have to know where to look for things, but then when you are familiar with your machines you basically know where to find information. When you’ve got a problem, the main tools for finding out what went wrong are the system logs.”

“
I suppose I should get that David guy to show me some of the logs but I wouldn’t know which ones I should see. Will I be able to read them or are they, you know, in computerese?”

“
They’re not like a handwritten diary, I can tell you that,” said Lupe. “You’ll need help to understand just what the information means.”

“
Will you have time to come along with me if I go to the University tomorrow?”

Lupe sighed. “I’m pretty busy with the report I am preparing for my client in Mexico City; it depends on when you want to go. Look, why don’t you go and see him and if you find he’s being unhelpful, we can then go together and I’ll have a look at the logs, too.”