The Devil's Code

want you to know about—could get them in two minutes,” I said.
    “So let’s get them,” she said.
    “I have to go out to a pay phone,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to call that number from here.”
    “And if we go out to a pay phone, then I won’t know it,” she said. “It won’t be on my long-distance bill.”
    “That, too,” I said.
    W e went out to a mall and I hooked up my own laptop at a pay phone using a pair of old-fashioned acoustic-adapter earmuffs. After going through the security rigamarole, I got Bobby online and asked him to get me the numbers dialed from all phones at Jack’s house on Sunday night, and then on Friday night, when he was killed. He said it would take a few minutes, but he should have them by the time we got back to the house. I said fine, and then added that I needed a mailing address to send him a package.
W HAT ?
    4 2- GIG J AZ DISKS . N EED MORE EYES LOOKING AT THEM . C OME FROM S TANFORD .
    S END TO J OHN . H E WILL BRING TO ME .
    L ane was looking over my shoulder and said, “So he doesn’t mind calling in, as long as we don’t call out.”
    “If you managed to trace the incoming call, it’d probably go back to the local bagel bakery, or Pontiac dealer, or something. He’s weird about telephones,” I said.
    “What does this guy do for a living? Bobby?”
    “Databases. Thousands of them. He still does some phone work, but mostly to cover up his database entries. About the only things he can’t get into are the ones without an outside connection, and that’s damn few of them, anymore. Maybe some military or national security computers; stuff at that level would be pretty tough, though I know he’s in some of them. He’s been there forever. He’s like an unknown, unofficial systems administrator.”
    T he phone was ringing when we got back to the house. Not Bobby—it was an air freight place: Jack’s body would arrive the following day, and would be taken to a local funeral home. Lane put the phone down to say something, but it rang again almost instantly. Again, not Bobby.
    “Yes, this is Lane . . . yes? What! What do you mean? Burned down? Well, how much is left? Did it get all of his personal stuff? Well, how bad? Aw, jeez. I told you guys—I hold you guys responsible, I’m gonna talk to an attorney, you never let me in there and then I told you somebody killed my brother, and now they burned his house, and you guys didn’t even have time to look into it  . . . Bullshit. BULLSHIT! I’m gonna come there, I’m gonna come there as soon as the funeral is over, and I’m going to want to talk to whoever is in charge . . .”
    “Was I good?” she asked when she hung up.
    “You were very good,” I said.
    B obby called ten minutes later. We got the tone, I hastily slapped the muffs on, and two columns of numbers popped up. Between six and midnight Sunday, Jack made three phone calls. On Friday, he made a long-distance call to California at seven o’clock, that lasted twenty minutes: “That’s our ISP, I have the same one,” Lane said. He made another call at nine forty-five, and nothing later.
    “So the nine forty-five call must be the one to the security computers,” I said. “We can check that.”
    “But he didn’t call that number on Sunday night,” Lane said.
    “Which means he didn’t turn off the camera on Sunday night,” I said.
    “Which means that maybe he hadn’t found the security system. I wonder if the camera’s out in the open?”
    I scratched my head and thought about it for a couple of minutes, and finally said, “You know, I think maybe they killed him.”
    “I’ve been telling you that.”
    “Yeah, but I didn’t believe you,” I said. “There was too much weight on the other side. But if Jack knew about the security system on Sunday, he would have turned it off before he went in. If he found out about the system between Sunday night and Friday night, he’d have known he was in trouble—that the camera would have picked him up. If he knew all that, then why didn’t he add anything to the letter he sent me? If they scared him, and he knew he was in trouble . . .”
    “I just thought of something else,” Lane said. “They say he broke into the secure area on Friday night. Well,if he went in there on Sunday night . . . why didn’t he have to break in that time? Why was the first break-in on Friday, when we know he was there on Sunday?”
    “One of the first things we do is try to figure