Cockatiels at Seven (10 page)

“It’s okay, Timmy,” I said, leaning over and putting my arm around him. “Hal and Muriel are going to show you some computer games. Would you like that?”

Timmy nodded, a little tentatively.

“Do you like tractors?” Hal asked. “And trains?”

Timmy nodded with a little more enthusiasm.

Muriel hitched herself closer to one of the four computers crowded into the cubicle and tapped a few keys. A brightly colored, highly detailed cartoon of a tractor appeared on the screen.

“Tractor!” Timmy said, sounding happier.

Muriel tapped a few more keys and the deep growl of a tractor motor filled the cubicle.

“Oh, much better sound effects,” Jack said.

Timmy let go of my leg and took a couple of tentative steps toward the computer.

Muriel tapped a few more keys, and the view on the monitor pulled back to show that the tractor was in the middle of a kind of obstacle course littered with other mechanical objects.

His eyes glued to the monitor, Timmy walked over and leaned against Muriel, in what for him was a relatively subtle hint that he wanted her chair. A minute or so later, Timmy was installed in the desk chair with a mouse in his tiny hands and Muriel leaning over his shoulder pointing out things on the screen while Hal scribbled notes on a clipboard.

“That should keep him busy for a while,” Jack said. “And Hal’s been asking for some more kids to test the games on.”

“Great,” I said. “The baby-sitting service alone is worth whatever bribe I promised you. And if you have any information about Jasper Walker . . . ”

“I not only have information,” he said. “As promised, I have someone who used to work with Jasper. Someone who can’t stand him, which means we’ll hear all the dirt.”

“Great,” I said. “Though I might be more impressed if you’d found one of the very small number of people who actually like Jasper.”

We’d reached Jack’s office by that time. A slight young man with olive skin and a shaved head, who had
been sitting in the guest chair, popped up like a jack-in-the-box the minute we entered.

“Meg, this is Ashok, from our User Experience Division,” Jack said. I was relieved; apparently Jack had finally broken the habit of calling it the Idiotproofing Division. “Ashok, Rob’s sister, Meg.”

“Great to meet you,” Ashok said. He was wide-eyed, and the hand I shook felt a bit damp. No doubt he was nervous, being called into Jack’s office to meet the CEO’s sister. He was probably a relatively new employee, which meant he’d barely met Rob. We’d figured out that the less contact the rank and file employees had with Rob, the easier it was to keep intact their belief in the corporate myth that Rob was a business mastermind and a computer genius.

“You know Jasper Walker?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I actually worked under him for a little while,” he said. “Not that many places in Caerphilly for programmers to work. It’s a small world.”

“A small, small world,” I said. And then I winced. Thanks to Timmy’s car tunes CD, I could barely keep myself from singing those words to the increasingly familiar tune.

“When I graduated, I got a job in the college’s systems support department,” Ashok went on. “Walker was my project leader. We were taking this COTS accounting software and trying to integrate it with all the legacy systems.”

“COTS means a commercial, off-the-shelf program,” Jack translated.

“Sorry,” Ashok said, looking anxious.

“Okay,” I said. “And legacy systems, if I remember correctly, are all the programs that have been around since the dinosaurs roamed the earth that the college is too cheap to replace.”

“Yeah,” Ashok said, smiling slightly, and looking a little more relaxed. “Anyway, it was the project from hell, right from day one. And Walker was a total idiot. The only reason our boss kept him around was that Walker had an in with some woman in accounting and could get her to sign off on stuff. Stuff that didn’t actually work, or at least not the way it was supposed to. I mean, if you ask me, it was a total scam.”

I winced slightly. Did this mean that Jasper had taken advantage of Karen? Or that Karen had been unwise enough to help her husband cover up his department’s failure?

“I gather he’s not working there anymore, either,” I said. “Did he leave voluntarily or . . . ”

“Fired,” Ashok said. “I guess they finally figured out what an idiot he was. I was gone by that time—bailed as soon as I could land the job here—but I heard about it from some of my friends who were still there. It was just a few months later. Jasper was out, and a lot of other people with him, so there must have been some kind of stink, but nobody really knew exactly what happened. But I bet it had something to do with what happened today.”

Ashok paused dramatically. Jack and I looked at each other and then back at Ashok. Jack broke down first.

“And what happened today?” he asked.

“The police,” Ashok said.

“Police?” I echoed.

“They showed up at the college data center an hour ago,” Ashok said. “And they’ve been seizing files and hardware and interrogating people ever since. And they’re asking a lot of questions about Walker.”

“Damn,” I said.

Ashok’s face fell and he looked at Jack as if for reassurance.

“Sorry,” I said. “That was directed at Walker, not you. How did you hear about this so fast, anyway?”

Ashok visibly relaxed.

“Some friends texted me the news about an hour ago. They couldn’t even IM me because the police had seized their computers.”

Text, IM—I found myself wondering if it would ever occur to any of them to pick up the phone and call each other to gossip, which would be my first instinct. And was the fact that I thought this a sign of culture clash or generation gap?

“What could he possibly have done?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, it must be something big, or the police
wouldn’t be that hot about it, but if it’s big, it’s hard to believe it took them two years to discover it.”

Unless, of course, someone who still worked at the college had been covering it up for two years. Someone like Karen. Had she disappeared because she’d been covering up for Jasper and knew the police were about to pounce? Or had the crime come to light because her disappearance interrupted her cover-up? Of course, it was always possible that she’d disappeared for some other reason, and the police raid on the data center happening just after her disappearance was only a coincidence. Possible, but not, alas, very likely.

“What kind of system was Walker working on?” Jack asked. “I don’t mean the technical specs—what was it designed to do?”

“Financial stuff,” Ashok said. “Keeping track of vendors and contracts and generating checks and electronic payments and a lot of stuff with bank accounts and investments. Sort of a complete system for all the money stuff. Sorry,” he said, seeing both Jack and me frown. “I know that’s kind of vague, but Walker just treated me like a code monkey, and I tried to keep my head down. He didn’t like it if you asked too many questions.”

“No, if I were an embezzler, I’d try to keep my staff from learning too much,” Jack said. “Especially if I’d been lucky enough to get my larcenous little paws on the code that runs the college’s central financial systems. Talk about a gold mine.”

“But if Jasper’s been gone for two years, then he has to have a confederate who’s still on the inside, right?” I asked.

From the look on Jack’s face, I suspected he understood why I was asking.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “He could have left himself a back door. A way of getting back into the system without anyone knowing about it,” he added, before I had to ask.

Ashok looked solemn.

“That was one of the rumors that went around when they fired him,” he said. “That they’d uncovered a back door he’d coded into the system.”

“They’d have fixed that, surely, after he was fired,” Jack said.

“Yeah but what if Jasper was sneakier than any of us realized,” Ashok said. “What if he programmed an obvious back door—maybe a couple. And when someone found them and fired him, all he had to do was sit and wait till the system went on-line and he could milk it.”

“Not sure that’s plausible,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“It’s a classic game technique,” Ashok said. “Put the players off guard by giving them a trap that’s easy to avoid. They’re so busy patting themselves on the back, they don’t notice until the last minute when you spring the real challenge.”

“Yeah, but the first thing any sane IT department would do if they found one back door is search for others. Of course it’s also possible that they focused too much on looking for back doors and overlooked other sneaky things he could have done.”

“Like having a confederate to let him in the front door.”

“It’s possible,” Jack said. “Of course, it’s not the only
possibility,” he added. No doubt he’d seen the look on my face at Ashok’s suggestion and remembered who Jasper’s confederate might be.

“And it’s not as if they have anyone left over there with the brains to spot a back door,” Ashok said. “Of course, I think there’s still a limit to how long you could get away with working a back door, unless you had someone on the inside to help you cover up.”

“That’s true,” Jack said. “Sorry,” he added to me. “But if I were the police . . . ”

“You’d be looking closely at Karen,” I said. “So would I.”

“Wow,” Ashok said. “Maybe Walker was smarter than he looked after all.”

“Smarter, no,” Jack said. “Just sneakier. Look, if you hear anything else juicy . . . ”

“I’ll tell you, right away.”

“Tell Jack and me,” I said. I pulled a sheet from my notebook, scribbled my cell phone number, and handed it to him.

“You bet,” he said, beaming again. “I’ll text some of my friends right away.”

“Thanks, Ashok,” Jack said.

Ashok shook hands with me and left with a positive bounce in his step, his fingers already flying over the keys of his cell phone.

“Not good news,” Jack said.

“No,” I agreed. “But useful news. Hang on, I need to make a call.”

“I’ll check on Timmy.”

“You don’t have to leave,” I said.

“No, but I want to make sure your temporary toddler
hasn’t traumatized my programmers too badly,” he said.

He slipped out of the office as I dialed Sandie’s number.

“Financial Administration,” she said.

“Hi, Sandie,” I said. “It’s Meg Langslow.”

“I’m sorry, you have the wrong number,” Sandie said.

“No, Sandie, remember me—I was in there this afternoon.”

“It’s okay, Nadine, it’s only a wrong number,” Sandie said, her tone slightly muffled.

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. You can’t talk right now. Can I call you back at another number?”

“Just a minute, let me get my college directory,” Sandie said. “Do you have a pen?”

After I assured her that yes, I had a pen, she recited a number. I jotted it down, Sandie reassured me that it was no trouble at all, urged me to have a nice day, and hung up.

“Now that was weird,” I said aloud. “Something’s up.”

“Up where?”

I looked up to see that Jack was back.

“At Karen’s office, by the sound of it.”

“The police show up there, too?”

“I don’t know—my source there wouldn’t talk to me. She did give me a phone number, though. I’m wondering how long I should wait before—”

My cell phone rang. The display showed the number Sandie had just given me.

“Hello?”

“What did you do?” Sandie exclaimed. “Half an hour after you left, the police came in and they’ve been going through Karen’s files ever since and Nadine is just about ready to spit tacks!”

To my relief, she didn’t sound mad. In fact, she sounded as if she was having a lot more fun than she had been before my visit.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I went home so Timmy could take his nap. I was just calling to see if Karen was back.”

“Well, you must have done something. Did you talk to anyone before you came over here?”

“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming over to see you,” I said. “That was an impulse. Poor Nadine! After she was so welcoming and helpful, too.”

Sandie giggled.

“Look, I should get back,” she said. “I’m only out here having a smoke, which I shouldn’t be doing because I’m supposed to be trying to quit, but that was the only way I could leave the office without it looking odd, and I guess backsliding’s a pretty normal thing to do, with all this going on. But Nadine will get antsy if I take too long.”

“I appreciate you calling me back,” I said. “Let me know if anything else happens.”

“Will do,” she said. “Yipes, I think some more cops are arriving. Bye.”

“Damn,” I muttered. I looked up to see Jack raising one eyebrow quizzically. “The cops are also swarming all over Karen’s office. This is not looking good—Karen dumps Timmy on me, then disappears, her apartment is burgled or vandalized, and now they’re searching her
office and her husband’s former place of employment and—damn!”

“You’re thinking she’s involved in whatever Walker did, then?” he asked. “And dumped Timmy on you while she makes a getaway?”

“It doesn’t sound like Karen, but who knows?” I said. “There’s always the possibility that it’s her husband who has done something wrong, and she’s getting dragged in because of him. By the way, how’s Timmy?”

“Timmy’s fine. In fact, Timmy’s over the moon. Hal has invented a simple game that allows the player to drive a truck or a tractor around and crash it into things.”

“Sounds like something Rob would love.”

“Oh, he does,” Jack said, with a grin.

“Timmy’s going to hate it when I try to drag him away,” I said, with a sigh.

“So why rush?” he said. “Surely you can do some of your sleuthing from here?”

“If I were cyber-savvy, I could.”

“Or if you had a cyber-savvy assistant.” Jack pulled his chair up to his desktop computer and twiddled his fingers over the keyboard as if impatient to begin.

“Okay,” I said. “Can you find out where Jasper lives? Or if he’s not findable, his uncle, Hiram Bass?”

He could, quite easily. Jasper wasn’t in the phone book, but Hiram Bass was listed, at 14953 Whitetail Lane. Jack even printed a map to get me there.