Wait.
“Kathryn, doesn’t this database have markers? Like, uh, special hooks? Don’t I remember something about that in one of the presentations early on? You or what’s his name—” Paul searched for the former staffer’s name —“Caldwell. Didn’t you or Caldwell make a big deal about the whatchamacallits that were supposed to protect from hackers?”
“Yes, that was me. Before I took over.”
“Where’s Caldwell?” Tibbet asked, looking from Paul to Kathryn. “This Caldwell knows the system well enough to do this?”
“Uh, well,” Kathryn began, obviously not sure whether to rat out a colleague she hadn’t liked to the police, or protect the firm.
“Caldwell left the firm about six months ago.”
Tibbet frowned and scribbled. “Full name?”
“Taylor Caldwell.”
Tibbet looked up. “Like the author?”
Kathryn grimaced. “Yeah, but it’s a guy. He hated that reference. Said his mom just liked the name.”
“He got any beef with your client, Jameson?”
“Huh? Caldwell? Not that I know of. Why?”
Tibbet ignored him. “Ms. Anderson, these fail-safe technologies, should they have prevented this kind of intrusion?”
Kathryn looked at Paul. He had no idea what Pratt would have done, but he nodded. Better to tell the truth.
“Yes. They should have.”
“I got something,” Johnson said. Motioning Anderson over, she detailed how she’d put in a program and how to take it out.
When she was done, she said, “I’m runnin’ a search and track program. Like a bloodhound, it’s supposed to give me a location for the sender. Like an address in cyberspace. I send the dog out, it comes back with the info.” Data stopped flowing off and on to the screen. Four lines of text appeared, but didn’t change.
“What’s that?”
“The address. Now to backtrack it.” She scrambled the keys again and the data disappeared, and was then replaced by a mapping program. The satellite maps that popped up drilled down onto a street in a suburban area of Philadelphia. “Damn.”
“What?” Tibbet demanded.
“Cybercafe. Out a ways from town, over the river. Wish it could have been something better. These places are glorified coffee shops. Make more money on food and stuff than on renting the computer time. No cameras, no paying attention to the customers. Kinda like a Starbucks or a McDonald’s. Unless we can go in there with a picture and a description, they won’t be any help.”
Tibbet turned to Paul. “You got a picture of this Caldwell?”
“Kathryn?”
“Uh, Human Resources should have something. There are those ID cards and stuff.”
“But they’re on the database, right? And it’s compromised, isn’t it?”
“Uh, no, separate system. HR demanded stand-alones.”
“Good damn thing,” Tibbet muttered. “C’mon Jameson, let’s go to your HR department.”
He paced the confines of his office. What had happened? He hadn’t been that clumsy. No one should have known the files were gone. Not for months. How could they have figured it out so quickly? He’d seen the police going back in. He’d seen the woman’s jacket. It said “Cybercrimes” on the back.
There should have been no way for his subtle tampering to be found in such a short time.
“It’s not me,” he decided, muttering the words aloud. “Nothing I did should be traceable. It wouldn’t crash anything major.” He looked out the window, noted the obvious police cars parked across the street. “Don’t panic now. This isn’t about you. Red herring. Something else,” he reassured himself. He needed to find out.
How could he get into the offices? What pretext could he use? It had to be good, normal, natural. It would be too obvious otherwise.
He’d come too far, risked too much to panic now. No one suspected him. No one would ever suspect him.
There had to be something, someone else.
The thought hit him like a bolt of lightning.
What if someone else had hacked into the law firm’s computers? None of his tampering should warrant the cybercrimes people. What he’d done was too small, too delicate. Especially at this stage. It should have been months before it was detected.
It should have simply deteriorated the files slowly, oldest documents first, with very little trace. The file names would have remained.
If someone else tampered, would it speed the process up?
“Damn.” He whirled away from the window and dropped into his chair, swiveling it to face his monitor.
Chapter Eleven
“Pam, what
