One Grave Less

you?”
    “The brother or father, perhaps,” Gregory said. “But I don’t think Simone would really trust any of them with something like that. Crime is an alien thing to her family. They are perplexed and out of their ken over this.”
    “Whoever is behind it believes the package exists. I have to believe they are right,” said Diane. “It’s somewhere, and we need to find it—first. If it is making its rounds in the postal system, perhaps that will come to an end soon and it will be delivered to me. Perhaps Charlotte will find something soon. I’m sure that’s why David wanted the names of known animal traffickers.”
    “Charlotte? I don’t believe I’ve met her,” Gregory said.
    Diane looked over at him. “David is probably going to introduce you today. He said he’s going to tell you about her. But it is a secret. Only a few of us know about her and her brother. So you must keep it a secret. He’ll make you swear in blood.”
    Gregory gave a little laugh. “I’ll keep mum. Tell me, who is this Charlotte and her brother?”
    “Charlotte and Arachnid are two of David’s programs that rely heavily on databases and complex algorithms,” said Diane.
    “Now, I could have guessed that,” said Gregory.
    “Arachnid is a program that’s like a search engine and facial recognition software combined. We used it to find information about a black widow murderer a while back. Worked quite well. You’ll love Charlotte. She’s like the network analysis you do, only with the power of a computer behind it. It not only places people in a social network, it locates degrees of separation. Like, if I know Vanessa and she has a son, and you know your father-in-law and he has a cousin, it might find if Vanessa’s son and the cousin have ever crossed paths in whatever location we are investigating. The power of it is in access to databases. David even takes it down to the level of hobbies and habits of the people in the network. You know David, if something is complex, it can always be made more complex. That’s probably why he covets a supercomputer. Can you imagine a world with David and a supercomputer?”
    “For someone who is afraid of Big Brother, he certainly likes to invent Big Brother programs,” said Gregory.
    “The irony isn’t lost on him. That’s why he keeps it all a secret. He doesn’t want anyone else to get their hands on it,” said Diane.
    “So if the names of these animal and human traffickers I gave David have crossed paths with any of us, this Charlotte will find it? That will be helpful. That actually makes me feel better.”
    “Remember, David likes to keep his programs secret,” said Diane.
    Gregory smiled and shook his head. “I wonder if he has thought of tapping into some of the social networking sites. He would get a wealth of information there. Seems like Charlotte and her brother could be put to effective use,” said Gregory. “I can see it now. Jane and Jack Smith on a family vacation just happen to take a picture with Notorious Joe in the background and post it with their vacation photos on their Web site, where Arachnid finds it and discovers that Joe was in the Bahamas when he said he was in Alaska. Cool.”
    Diane laughed. “I’m sure David has thought about that very thing. Sometimes I don’t inquire into too much detail about his computer activities.”
    Neva, one of Diane’s crime scene team members, walked into the Pleistocene Room, smiling. She wore jeans and a purple museum T-shirt with GEOLOGY ROCKS printed across the front along with a glittering picture of amethysts.
    “You look happy,” said Diane.
    Neva sat on the bench with them. She brushed her honey brown bangs back with a hand.
    “How are you, Neva?” said Gregory. “You do look happy.”
    “I’m good. I heard from Mike. He’ll be coming home soon. Has some great stuff for the museum.” She grinned.
    “I hear ‘more to the story’ in there,” said Diane.
    “His company told him they were going to an ice cave. That was just a cover because they wanted to keep the real destination a secret—you’re going to hate it,” said Neva.
    “What?” said Diane.
    “He went to the Big Deep,” she said. “They collected truckloads of extremophiles. He said it’s loaded with them.”
    “What?” said Diane, glaring at Neva.
    Neva grinned. “He said you’d look like that.”
    “He didn’t insist that he would go only if he could bring his museum boss and caving partner?” said