The Kill Room

Szarnek, with the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, an elite group of thirty or so detectives and support staff. Although Rhyme was a traditional forensic scientist, he and Sachs had worked more and more closely with CCU in recent years; computers and cell phones—and the wonderful evidence they retained, seemingly forever—were crucial to running successful investigations nowadays. Szarnek was in his forties, Sachs estimated, but his age was hard to determine for sure. Szarnek projected youth—from his shaggy hair to his uniform of wrinkled jeans and T-shirt to his passionate love of “boxes,” as he called computers.
    Not to mention his addiction to loud and usually bad rock music.
    Which now blared in the background.
    “Hey, Rodney,” Sachs now said, “could we de-volume that a bit. You mind?”
    “Sorry.”
    Szarnek was key to finding the whistleblower who’d leaked the STO. He was tracing the anonymous email with its STO kill order attachment, working backward from the destination, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and trying to find where the leaker had been when he sent it.
    “It’s taking some time,” the man reported, over a faint 4/4 rock beat of bass and drum. “The email was routed through proxies halfway around the world. Well, actually all the way around the world. So far I’ve traced it back from the DA’s Office to a remailer in Taiwan and from there to Romania. And I’ll tell you, the Romanians are not in a cooperating mode. But I got some information on the box he was using. He tried to be smart but he tripped up.”
    “You mean you found the brand of his computer?”
    “Possibly. His agent user string…Uhm, do you know what that is?”
    Sachs confessed she didn’t.
    “It’s information your computer sends out to routers and servers and other computers when you’re online. Anybody can see it and find out exactly what your operating system and browser are. Now, your whistleblower’s box was running Apple’s OS Nine two two and Internet Explorer Five for Mac. That goes back a long time. It really narrows the field. I’m guessing he had an iBook laptop. That was the first portable Mac to have an antenna built in so he could’ve logged into Wi-Fi for the upload without any separate modem or server.”
    An iBook? Sachs had never heard of it. “How old, Rodney?”
    “Over ten years. Probably one he bought secondhand and paid cash for it, so it couldn’t be traced back to him. That’s where he tried to be smart. But he didn’t figure that we could find out the brand.”
    “What would it look like?”
    “If we’re lucky it’ll be a clamshell model—they came two-toned, white and some bright colors, like green or tangerine. They’re shaped just what they sound like.”
    “Clams.”
    “Well, rounded. There’s a standard rectangular model too, solid graphite, square. But it’d be big. Twice as thick as today’s laptops. That’s how you could recognize it.”
    “Good, Rodney. Thanks.”
    “I’ll stay on the router. The Romanians’ll cave. I just need to negotiate.”
    Up with the music, and the line went dead.
    Sachs glanced around and found Nance Laurel looking at her, the expression on the ADA’s face both blank and inquisitive. How did she manage that? Sachs told the woman and Rhyme about the cybercrime cop’s response. Rhyme nodded, unimpressed, and returned to the phone. He said nothing. Sachs supposed he was on hold.
    Laurel nodded approvingly, it seemed. “If you could document that and send it to me.”
    “What?”
    A pause. “What you just told me about the tracing and the type of computer.”
    Sachs said, “I was just going to write it up on the board.” A nod toward the whiteboard.
    “I’d actually like everything documented in as close to real time as possible.” The ADA’s nod was toward her own stacks of files. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
    The prosecutor wielded the words “if you…” like a bludgeon.
    Sachs did mind but wasn’t inclined to fight this battle. She pounded out the brief memo on her keyboard.
    Laurel added, “Thank you. Just send it to me in an email and I’ll print it out myself. The secure server, of course.”
    “Of course.” Sachs fired off the document, noting that the prosecutor’s micromanagement didn’t seem to extend to Lincoln Rhyme.
    Her phone buzzed and she lifted a surprised eyebrow, noting caller ID.
    At last. A solid lead. The caller was a secretary at Elite Limousines, one of dozens of livery