Kay Scarpet - Cruel And Unusual Part 11

"Was he in love with you?"

"You ask too many questions, Lucy. You canat just ask people anything you want."

"Yes I can. They donat have to answer."

"Itas offensive."

"I think Iave figured out how someone got into your directory, Aunt Kay. Remember I told you about users that came with the software?"

"Yes."

"Thereas one called demo that has root privileges but no pa.s.sword a.s.signed to it. My guess is that this is what somebody used and Iall show you what probably happened."

Her fingers flew over the keyboard without pause as she talked. "What Iam doing now is going into the system administratoras menu to check out the log-in accounting. Weare going to search for a specific user. In the case, root. Now weall hit g to go and boom. There it M She ran her finger across a line on the screen. .

"On December sixteenth at five-oh-six in the afternoon, someone logged in from a device called t-t-y-fourteen. This person had root privileges and weall a.s.sume is the person who went into your directory. I donat know what he looked at. But twenty minutes later, at five twenty-six, he tried to send the note aI canat find ita to t-t-y-oh-seven and inadvertently created a file. He logged out at five-thirty-two, making the total time of the session twenty-six minutes. And it doesnat appear anything was printed, by the way. I took a look at the printer spooler log, which shows files printed. I didnat see anything that caught my attention."

"Let me make sure Iave got this straight. Someone tried to send a note from t-t-y-fourteen to t-t-y-oh seven, " I said.

"Yes. And I checked. Both of those devices are terminals."

"How can we determine whose office those terminals are in?" I asked.

"Iam surprised thereas not a list somewhere in here. But I havenat found it yet. If all else fails, you can check the cables leading to the terminals. Usually, theyare tagged. And if youare interested in my personal opinion, I donat think your computer a.n.a.lyst is the spy. In the first place, she knows your user name and pa.s.sword and would have no need to log in with demo. Also, since I a.s.sume the mini is in her office, then I also a.s.sume she uses the system terminal."

"She does."

"The device name for your system terminal is t-t-y-b."

"Good."

"Another way to figure out who did this would be to sneak into someoneas office when they arenat there but are logged in. All youave got to do is go into UNIX and type awho am Ia and the system will tell you."

She pushed back her chair and got up. "I hope youare hungry. Weave got chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a chilled wild rice salad made with cashews, peppers, sesame oil. And thereas bread. Is your grill in working order?"

"Itas after eleven and snowing outside."

"I didnat suggest that we eat outside. I simply would like to cook the chicken on the grill."

"Where did you learn to cook?"

We were walking to the kitchen.

"Not from Mother. Why do you think I was such a little fatso? From eating the junk she bought. Snacks, sodas, and pizza that tastes like cardboard. I have fat cells that will scream for the rest of my life because of Mother. Iall never forgive her."

"We need to talk about this afternoon, Lucy. If you hadnat come home when you did, the police would have been looking for you."

"I worked out for an hour and a half, then took a shower."

"You were gone four and a haft hours."

"I had groceries to buy and a few other errands."

"Why didnat you answer the car phone?"

"I a.s.sumed it was someone trying to reach you. Plus, Iave never used a car phone. Iam not twelve years old, Aunt Kay."

"I know youare not. But you donat live here and have never driven here before: was worried."

"Iam sorry," she said.

We ate by firelight, both of us sitting on the floor around the butleras table. I had turned off lamps. Flames jumped and shadows danced as ft celebrating a magic moment in the lives of my niece and me.

"What do you want for Christmas?" I asked, reaching for my wine.

"Shooting lessons," she said.

5.

Lucy stayed up very late working with the computer and I did not hear her stir when I woke up to the alarm early Monday morning. Parting the curtains in my bedroom window, I looked out at powdery flakes swirling in lights burning on the patio. The snow was deep and nothing was moving in my neighborhood. After coffee and a quick scan of the paper, I got dressed and was almost to the door when I turned around. No matter that Lucy was no longer twelve years old, I could not leave without checking on her.

Slipping inside her bedroom, I found her sleeping on her side in a tangle of sheets, the duvet half on the floor. It touched me that she was wearing a sweat suit that she had gotten out of one of my drawers. I had never had another human being wish to sleep in anything of mine, and I straightened the covers, careful not to wake her.

The drive downtown was awful, and I envied workers whose offices were closed because of the snow. Those of us who had not been granted an unexpected holiday crept slowly along the interstate, skating with the slightest tap on the brakes as we peered through streaked windshields that the wipers could not keep clean. I wondered how I would explain to Margaret that my teenage niece thought our computer system was insecure. Who had gotten into my directory, and why had Jennifer Deighton been calling my number and hanging up? I did not get to the office until half past eight, and when I walked into the morgue, I stopped midway in the corridor, puzzled. Parked at a haphazard angle near the stainless steel refrigerator door was a gurney, bearing a body, covered by a sheet. Checking the toe tag, I read Jennifer Deightonas name, and I looked around. There was no one inside the office or X-ray room. I opened the door to the autopsy suite and found Susan dressed in scrubs and dialing a number on the phone. She quickly hung up and greeted me with a nervous "Good morning."

"Glad you made it in." I unb.u.t.toned my coat, regarding her curiously.

"Ben gave me a lift," she said, referring to my administrator, who owned a Jeep with four-wheel drive. "So far, weare the only three here."

"No sign of Fielding?"

"He called a few minutes ago and said he couldnat get out of his driveway. I told him we only have one case so far, but if more come in Ben can pick him up."

"Are you aware that our case is parked in the hall?" She hesitated, blushing. "I was taking her over to X ray when the phone rang. Sorry."

"Have you weighed and measured her yet?"

"No."

"Letas do that first."

She hurried out of the autopsy suite before I could comment further. Secretaries and scientists who worked in the labs upstairs often entered and left the building through the morgue because it was convenient to the parking lot. Maintenance workers were in and out, too. Leaving a body unattended in the middle of a corridor was very poor form and could even jeopardize the case should chain of evidence be questioned in court.

Susan returned pushing the gurney, and we went to work, the stench of decomposing flesh nauseating. I fetched gloves and a plastic ap.r.o.n from a shelf, and clamped various forms in a clipboard. Susan was quiet and tense. When she reached up to the control panel to reset the computerized floor scale, I noticed her hands were shaking. Maybe she was suffering from morning sickness.

"Everything okay?" I asked her.

"Just a little tired."

"You sure?"

"Positive. She weighs one-eighty exactly."

I changed into my greens and Susan and I moved the body into the X-ray room across the hall, transferring it from the gurney to the table. Opening the sheet, I wedged a block under the neck to keep the head from lolling. The flesh of her throat was clean, spared from soot and burns because her chin had been tucked dose to her chest while she was inside the car with the engine running. I did not see any obvious injuries, no bruises or broken fingernails. Her nose wasnat fractured. There were no cuts inside her lips and she hadnat bitten her tongue.

Susan took X rays and slipped them through the processor while I went over the front of the body with a lens. I collected a number of barely visible whitish fibers, quite possibly from the sheet or her bed covers, and found others similar to the ones on the bottoms of her socks. She wore no jewelry and was naked beneath her gown. I remembered the rumpled covers on her bed, the pillows propped against the headboard and gla.s.s of water on the table. The night of her death she had put curlers in her hair, gotten undressed, and at some point, perhaps, had been reading in bed.

Susan emerged from the developer room and leaned against the wall, supporting the small of her back with her hands.

"Whatas the story on this lady?" she asked. "Was she married?"

"It appears she lived alone."

"Did she work?"

"She ran a business out of her home."

Something caught my eye.

"What sort of business?"

"Possibly fortune-telling of sorts."

The feather was very small and sooty, clinging to Jennifer Deightonas gown in the area of her left hip. Reaching for a small plastic bag, I tried to recall if Iad noticed any feathers around her house. Perhaps the pillows on herbed were filled with feathers.

"Did you find any evidence she was into the occult?"

"Some of her neighbors seemed to think she was a witch," I said.

"Based on what?"

"Thereas a church near her house. Allegedly, the lights in the steeple starting going on and off after she moved in some months ago."

"Youare kidding."

"I saw them go on myself when I was leaving the scene. The steeple was dark. Then suddenly it was lit up."

"Weird."

"It was weird."

"Maybe itas on a timer."

"Unlikely. Lights going on and off all night would not conserve electricity. If itas true they go on and off all night. I saw it happen only once."

Susan did not say anything.

"Possibly thereas a short in the wiring."

In fact, I thought as I continued to work, I would call the church. They might be unaware of the problem.

"Any strange stuff inside her house?"

"Crystals. Some unusual books."

Silence.

Then Susan said, "I wish youad told me earlier."

"Pardon?"

I glanced up. She was staring uneasily at the body. She looked pale.

"Are you sure youare feeling all right?"

I asked.

"I donat like stuff like this."

"Stuff like what?"

"Itas like someone having AIDS or something. It ought to be told up front. Especially now."

"Itas unlikely this woman has AIDS or -"

"I should have been told. Before I touched her."

"Susan -"

"I went to school with a girl who was a witch."

I stopped what I was doing. Susan was rigid against the wall, hands pressed against her belly.

"Her name was Doreen. She belonged to a coven and our senior year she put a curse on my twin sister, Judy. Judy was killed in a car wreck two weeks before graduation."

Bewildered, I stared at her.

"You know how occult stuff creeps me out! Like that cowas tongue with needles stuck in it that the cops brought in a couple of months ago. The one wrapped up in a list of dead peopleas names. It was left on a grave."

"It was a prank," I reminded her calmly."

The tongue came from a grocery store, and the names were meaningless, copied from headstones in the cemetery."