Fatal Reaction

immediately went upstairs to talk to the security guard. To my dismay I found Paramilitary Bill on duty. He was sitting at the security console, frowning with great concentration at something he was reading. When I got closer, I saw that it was a computer printout of some kind.
    “How long do you keep the tapes from the security cameras?” I asked, pointing to the lenses mounted high up in the corners just below the ceiling.
    “That’s classified,” he replied promptly. I examined his face for some indication that he was kidding and found none.
    “I need to see the tape from two Sundays ago,” I continued, in no mood to put up with any psycho bullshit. “Where are they kept?”
    “I can’t show them to you without a direct order from my supervisor.”
    “And who is that?”
    “Mr. Goodnall.”
    “Is he working tonight?”
    “No ma’am. He’s on days.”
    “Then who is his boss?”
    “Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t rightly understand the question.” Apparently Bill was easily stumped.
    “Do you think it might be safe to say Dr. Azorini is Mr. Goodnall’s boss?” I continued, trying very hard not to lose my temper. Bill might be a borderline moron, but he was a card-carrying-militia-member kind of moron—not to mention armed.
    “Dr. Azorini is the president of the company,” replied Paramilitary Bill uncertainly.
    “Now, Bill, I don’t know if you listen to office gossip, but you’ve seen Dr. Azorini and me leaving together enough nights to have formed your own opinion about whether the stories that we are sleeping together are true. Dr. Azorini is downtown right now at a very important dinner for our Japanese guests. I have no problem calling him at the restaurant and having him get on the phone to give you permission to show me those tapes. But I’d think it would probably be safer in terms of career advancement if you just told me where the tapes are kept.”
    “In a closet in the back of the guards’ room,” he replied, apparently convinced.
    “Do you have a key?” I asked.
    “Right here,” he said, opening the cabinet underneath the desk to display a peg board hung with rows of keys, all neatly labeled.
    “Could you please see if you could find the tape from two Sundays ago for me?”
    “I’m not allowed to leave my post,” he ventured. Oh shit, I thought, here we go again.
    “What if I stay here while you go and look?” I offered sweetly. Bill thought that one over for a while and finally agreed.
    While I waited for Paramilitary Bill to fetch the tape, I watched the bank of video screens mounted in the console in front of me. Every thirty seconds the images changed, flicking from one set of empty corridors to another, covering the entire building every four minutes or so. I remembered what Elliott had once told me about the limits of video surveillance. While the presence of cameras may act as a deterrent and the tapes themselves provide evidence, their effectiveness in stopping crimes in progress is very limited. The simple truth is that no one can stand to watch nothing for very long. They’d done studies where they’d sent naked women running in front of the camera. The women had gone completely unnoticed by the guards whose brains had been blitzed out by the sheer boredom of monitoring the screens.
    “Did you say last Sunday or the Sunday before last?” Bill asked, reappearing a few minutes later.
    “The Sunday before,” I replied.
    “That’s what I thought you said.”
    “Did you find it?”
    “No, ma’am,” he said, scratching his skinhead haircut. “The box is right there on the shelf where it belongs, but it’s empty.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes ma’am. I looked real good.” Now that I’d gone through the trouble of exerting my authority he seemed afraid that he was in some kind of trouble.
    “Not to worry, Bill,” I reassured him. “It’s no big deal. If it’s not there, it’s not there.”
    “I think it’s a conspiracy,” confided Bill seriously. “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “Someone’s been messing with the security data.”
    “Messing with it how?”
    “I’ve just finished printing up the swipe-card log for the day so it’s up-to-date for Harry, who’s scheduled to relieve me at midnight. But there’s something wrong with it.”
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “You know how you have to use your swipe card to sign in and out of the building?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, everybody’s swipe card has a number assigned