Show of Evil

'Doesn't anybody around here walk?' Meyer asked.

The lift door swung open and a short, square woman in a rigidly starched uniform marched towards them. Her stern face wore the ferocious expression of a bulldog.

'Gentlemen, I'm Eve Wilonski, night super. Sorry I'm in a rush right now, we've got a mess in Emergency.'

'We came up that way. I'm Martin Vail, acting DA'

'Yes, sir, I recognized you from pictures in the paper.'

'These are two of my associates, Ben Meyer and Harve St Claire.'

'Gentlemen,' she said with a nod.

'What happened?'

'Three-car pileup on LaSalle,' she said. 'Three dead, six trying to stay alive. A drive-by on the south side with a dead three-year-old and her mother hanging on by her fingernails. We got two heart attacks and they just brought one in for this psych ward who was standing on the marquee of the Chicago Theatre peeing on people walking by on the sidewalk. That's in the last forty minutes and it isn't even eleven o'clock yet. It's just warming up out there.'

'Sorry to bother you when things are so crazy,' said Vail.

'It's always crazy down there,' she said casually. 'Do we have a problem with the district attorney's office, too?'

'No, we do. I need to take a look at your billing office and also find out if anyone was in there at three o'clock this afternoon.'

'That office closes at two-thirty on weekends,' she said.

'I know. But we have reason to believe that someone was in there at three. It's imperative we know who that person was.'

'Maybe a cleaning person, somebody like that?' St Claire suggested.

'That's quite possible,' she said. 'If it's an emergency, I can call Mr Laverne at home. He's the billing supervisor. Someone could have been working overtime.'

'That would help a lot,' Vail said.

'May I ask what this is about?'

'A hacker,' Meyer said casually. 'We have reason to believe someone may be hacking into your billing computer. The consequences could be serious.'

'Oh, my God,' she said. She flipped through a staff telephone directory, her finger tracking down the rows of staffers and stopping at Laverne's name. She dialled the number and waited for what seemed an eternity.

'He's not home,' St Claire moaned.

'Mr Laverne?' she said suddenly. 'I'm sorry to bother you at home, this is Eve Wilonski. I have the district attorney here. He'd like to speak to you.' She handed the phone to Vail.

'Mr Laverne, this is Martin Vail.'

'Yes, Mr Vail.'

'Mr Laverne, we're checking on a computer problem and we need to know if anyone in your department worked overtime today.'

'I did.'

'You did? Were you there at three o'clock?'

'Yes, sir, I was talking to a pharmaceutical company on the West Coast.'

'Was anyone else in the room at the time?'

'Uh, yes. Hines, I think is the name. Cleans up. Is this about the hacker?'

His question surprised Vail. 'You know about that?'

'I was there when the message came across the modem line.'

'What message?'

'Well, it was crazy. Something about a fox and someone named Hydra.'

'Hydra? Do you remember exactly what the message said?'

'Let's see. First it said 'Hydra, Fox is free.' Then it repeated the name Hydra a couple of times. Then I jumped in and asked who Hydra was and who was online and the connection went dead.'