Silken Prey

Morgan, Lieutenant Morgan, opened them, let me see, about eight times, all in about a four-day period a little more than three years ago, in August.”
    Lucas said, “There was a trial right then. Probably for trial purposes. He was one of the people who testified.”
    Benson said, “The other three sets of files were accessed by three different machines. Each machine accessed only one file, but multiple times.”
    Marion: “Who’s assigned to the machines?”
    Benson shook his head. “They’re office machines. Maybe somebody uses them most of the time, but the rest of the time, anybody could do it.”
    ICE reached out and tapped the computer screen. “Look at this: this machine accessed the file four hundred and eighteen times over three years. They never quit looking at it . . . they’re
still
looking at it.”
    •   •   •
    ICE AND B ENSON STARTED working through it, and Marion said to Lucas, “This is gonna be a disaster. I don’t know what’s gonna happen if it turns out that a hundred guys were looking at this stuff.”
    “Maybe it won’t be necessary to bring it up,” Lucas suggested.
    “It’ll be necessary,” Marion said. “The chief will be inside my shirt, wanting to know what we found. You’ve probably got to tell your boss. Once that’s done, it’ll get away from us. If it was only us four . . . but it’s not.”
    Lucas said, “You’re probably right. I’m sorry.”
    ICE said, “All right. Machine One is in Vice, and that machine apparently dealt with the original files, and that’s where a variety of files was grouped into one, and that’s where the first duplicate was made. The duplicate had the same name as the original, but with a version number, Version Two. That was probably a legit backup. Machine Two is also in Vice, and somebody made a second duplicate on that machine, and saved it under a completely new name. That’s the one that has been accessed by Machine Three, the four hundred and eighteen accesses. Machine Three never made a dupe. Machine Four accessed the original file, but only twice. Machine Four is in Vice.”
    “What’s the latest date?” Lucas asked.
    “Machine Three has had sixteen accesses in the last month,” ICE said. “Both of the Machine Four accesses were last year.”
    “We’ve got to nail them all down,” Marion said.
    Lucas said, “This whole Smalls-porn thing feels improvised to me. It doesn’t feel like something that was planned out a year ago. So . . . it probably came off Machine Three. Where’s that one?”
    Benson said, “It’s here, in the building. Down in Domestics.”
    “How many people in Domestics?”
    Benson shrugged, but Marion said, “About twelve or fifteen, counting the shrinks. Seven sworn officers, two or three support people, and the shrinks. Some of the shrinks are part-time, but they’d have access.”
    “Is there any way to see who signed on the machine and what they did? What they looked at?” Lucas asked.
    Benson shook his head. “The only way you could figure that out, would be if Machine Three was in somebody’s locked office. But Domestics is an open bay, with people coming and going. The only way to tell would be to observe . . . figure out who was on that machine at what time.”
    “But all this is in the past,” Lucas said. “How would we do that?”
    “We can’t,” Benson said.
    “What we can do,” Marion said, “is bust some balls.”
    “Gotta be soon,” Lucas said. “Smalls is about halfway off the hook, but the media doesn’t like him, so he’s only halfway off. They’re already saying that Rose Marie never said he was innocent.”
    “I need to talk to the chief,” Marion said to Lucas. “What’re you doing this evening?”
    “Talking with a really hot chick,” Lucas said.
    “
Hot chick
 . . . that expression is so disco, so 1979,” ICE said, with disdain.
    Marion, Benson, and Lucas all looked at each other, and then Lucas shrugged and said, “Not for cops.”
    •   •   •
    T HEY HAD B ENSON SAVE the files and the information they’d turned up to a new, confidential file, and then ICE took off, after Lucas thanked her: “You’ll get the bill at your office,” she said.
    Marion went to see the chief, and Lucas walked down to the training office. Tom Morgan, the lieutenant who’d put together the original file, and had testified in the child porn case, was now the training officer. The new job could either be a matter of