I dug into my bag, pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, and ripped out a sheet of paper. I flipped through it until I found the URL of the porn site I'd seen Roger tending and wrote that down on the sheet. Then I flipped through some more until I found where I'd stuck the sheet of paper with the IP addresses I'd found in Ted's basement, and copied those down, as well.
“Here,“ I said. “Check these out.“
“What are they?“ he asked.
“Porn sites,“ I said.
He looked up, surprised.
“At least two of them are,“ I said. “I have a feeling maybe they all are. I want to know for sure, and I don't want to look at them if I can help it. And I want to know everything you can find out about them.“
“Like what?“ Luis asked, puzzled.
“Who owns them,“ I said. “Where they're located. And most important, whether anyone at Mutant Wizards has any connection to them.“
“Okay,“ he said.
“And don't tell anybody,“ I said. “Not Rob, or Jack, or anyone else at Mutant Wizards, or even your own mother.“
“Right,“ he said. “This has something to do with the murder?“
“Maybe,“ I said. “Or maybe I'm just on a crusade to stamp out pornography.“
“You going to stamp out Nude Lawyers from Hell while you're at it?“ he asked with a rare, fleeting smile.
“Maybe,“ I said. “Do you know who programmed it?“
He didn't say anything for a moment, and it suddenly hit me that I might have solved another of the small mysteries that plagued Mutant Wizards.
“If I knew, it probably wouldn't be smart to tell you,“ he said finally. “Look, on this porn thing – how far do you want me to go?“
I was opening my mouth to say, “As far as you need to go to get answers, for heaven's sake,“ but something stopped me.
“I'm not sure I understand what you mean,“ I said instead.
“Do you just want me to get what I can from legitimate sources?“ he asked. “What we could turn over to the police without getting in trouble? Or do you want me to go all the way? As far as it takes?“
“See what you can get legitimately first,“ I said. “If that's not enough – well, we'll worry about that later.“
“Right,“ he said. He looked relieved.
I wondered if he'd have agreed if I'd said, “As far as it takes.“ Did he now have qualms of conscience about illegal hacking, or was he just running scared?
And what should I do if he couldn't find out everything I needed from legitimate sources? I confess, I didn't feel too guilty about using any means necessary to stop Roger's porn operation, which if not illegal was certainly distasteful and potentially risky for Mutant Wizards. But could I live with myself if I got poor Luis into trouble? Was encouraging a supposedly reformed hacker to relapse as morally suspect as, for example, serving bourbon balls to an alcoholic aunt?
And, of course, what if Luis was in cahoots with Roger?
“By the way,“ I asked. “What exactly does Roger do, anyway?“
“He's the sys admin,“ Luis said.
“And that is –?“
Luis blinked as if it had never occurred to him that someone might not know what a sys admin was.
“That stands for systems administrator,“ he said. He was talking in the same overly loud, slow way tourists talk when they can't quite believe that the hapless foreigners around them don't understand English. “He's in charge of all the hardware and software that runs the network.“
“Oh, is that why he's always sitting around in the computer lab?“ I said.
“Yeah, that's more or less his job,“ Luis said. “Not that it really should take as much time as it seems to take him. He even had Ted helping him with some of the stuff lately, and it still seemed to take him forever to do anything.“
“Are you suggesting that perhaps Rob needs to hire a more competent sys admin?“ I asked.
“Don't quote me on that,“ Luis said. “But yeah. Roger's pretty lame, not to mention a head case. As you found out last night.“
Interesting. Maybe Ted had been the one in cahoots with Roger.
I was still pondering this when we arrived at Luis's destination. Good thing I'd finished interrogating him. He was heading for the College Diner, a Caerphilly institution most people outgrew by their senior years, except for the occasional trip down nostalgia road. Or the occasional case of munchies at 3 A.M. since the diner was the town's only twenty-four-hour restaurant.
“Catch you later,“ I said. I continued on to a small deli that made an edible ham-and-swiss sandwich.
Then I headed over to the courthouse to joust with bureaucracy.
In the office of the Recorder of Deeds I learned that the house where Ted had lived – if you can call his basement lair “living“ – was still listed as belonging to Mrs. Edwina Sprocket.
“How often are these records updated?“ I asked the clerk.
“They're updated as soon as we get the information.“
“This property is listed as belonging to someone who died a couple of months ago,“ I said. “At least I think she died.“
“Then it probably still belongs to her estate,“ the clerk suggested.
“How can I find out for sure if she's dead,“ I asked.
“Environmental Health Office,“ he said. “Room 414.“
“Why the Environmental Health Office?“ I asked. “As far as I know, she died of old age, not pollution.“
“That's the name of the office that keeps all the death certificates,“ the clerk said with a shrug.
For eight dollars, the ominously named Environmental Health Office gave me a copy of Mrs. Sprocket's death certificate. Cause of death was heart failure, which wasn't particularly helpful, but at least I had the attending physician's name and could sic Dad on him if it seemed useful.
And then, down in the Circuit Court office, I managed to find out the name of the attorney who was handling her will.
It all took an hour and a half, which seemed maddeningly long to me, even though I had the feeling it would have taken twice as long if Caerphilly were a larger, busier county. Of course, a larger, busier county might have bothered to air-condition its offices. I felt I'd done a whole day's work and had an overlong stay in the sauna by the time I headed back to the office to eat my wilting sandwich.
The world hadn't come to an end while I was away from my post, so I decided I'd repeat the experience later in the day. As soon as I figured out something useful I could do with my time away from the switchboard. And I could check out what kind of construction was going on; I'd heard hammering from someplace in the back when I walked in.
But for now, I cleared out the accumulated messages and started on my sandwich. I'd picked up a copy of the
Slim pickings as usual.
“Damn, and here I was going to see if I could whisk you away to the steak house for lunch.“
I looked up to see Jack in the doorway.
“Thanks,“ I said. “But I'm trying to stick pretty close to the office except for really important things. Like
