lock, then sprayed it with a fine mist of dry powder.
He blew the excess dust off, then used a second aerosol can on the
lock, this one a kind of liquid glue.
Yeah, okay, so he brought maybe a little more attention to detail to
his constructs than was necessary. A man had to have some standards.
Several fingerprints appeared as the chemical reaction from the two
sprays took place. Jay pulled a clear strip of transfer tape from a
roll in his handy satchel, carefully pressed it against the lock,
peeled it off, and stuck it onto a white plastic card.
Just for fun, he took his pick gun and a torsion tool and opened the
padlock. Took all of about six seconds, a piece of cake.
The lockbox had stacks of papers, money, some coins-all virtual
representations of various kinds of electronic files. Jay picked up a
couple of papers and scanned them, but he wasn't as interested in what
they had to say as he was in who had broken in before him. He closed
the box, relocked the padlock, and headed for the back door.
He would take the prints back to the office and check them. Of course,
what he would really be doing was backtracking e-codes and running down
servers and all, looking to see who had left traces of their visit. If
the thief had been stupid enough to do it barehanded. Jay would have
him. Probably he hadn't been that stupid, but you never knew.
Generally speaking, if crooks were smart enough so they wouldn't get
caught, they were smart enough to make more money honestly than they
could by thievery. Not always. Some were smart, but lazy. Some liked
the adrenaline rush of doing something illegal. Jay remembered one
case where the head of a large computer software corporation got his
thrills hacking into private computer systems and copying crap, like
employee addresses or financial records, stuff he could have legally
gotten elsewhere. He didn't even use the material, just stashed it in
a booty file. The thief never did any damage, and never took anything
of value--it was the electronic equivalent of petty shoplifting, and if
he'd wanted, he could have bought most of the companies he plundered.
When Jay had run him down, the corporate prez had laughed, paid the
fine, and was probably back at it the next day. A thrill junkie.
Jay ran into guys like that all the time, hackers who thought they were
faster or smarter or better, and who wanted to test themselves. He
could understand that--if he hadn't gotten into Net Force, he'd
probably be doing it himself. But now it was his job to nail 'em.
Jay had gone up against the best/ and while he hadn't always beaten
them easily or fast, in the end, he had beaten them. Well. At least
the ones he knew about. There might be crooks out there who were so
good they could commit the perfect crime, that being one that nobody
ever realized had happened. But truth be told. Jay didn't believe
there were many, if any, who were that good. And he didn't think
whoever had broken into HAARP's computer was one of the best, or they
wouldn't have left scratches on the lock. This would be a walk in the
park.
Now he had to go and find out about Dr. Morrison. If anything, that
ought to be even easier.
Saturday Portland, Oregon
