Lovely In Her Bones

it’s a little too neat to be them.”

Hamp nodded. “You expect them to take somebody out in a brawl, not sneak up behind ’em like that. And they’d probably mess him up more, too.”

“Who did you say these people are?”

They shrugged. “Nobody knows,” said Pilot. “People say they’re part Portuguese or African or Inca. I’ve heard they’re descendants of the Lost Colony.”

“Nobody knows who they’re related to,” said Hamp. “But the devil himself is related to them.”

Milo slid the replacement disk into the computer and prepared to add the Cullowhee data to the existing file of Indian data. Since there were only twenty-five skulls in the present sample, he decided to record each separate measurement as well as the final number. It might be useful for comparison later. Elizabeth had made it easy for him by labeling each set of measurements and putting them in groups according to which tool was used to take the measure.

He would enter all his figures, calculate a standard deviation and a range of variation in millimeters. When all the data were entered on the disk, he would call up the university computer to compare his data with the existing discriminate function charts. About an hour’s work, Milo decided. Maybe more if he were especially careful with his numbers and decimal points. He might as well take his time, since the skulls were in the sheriff’s office labeled as evidence. He hoped they’d be back by the next day. If not, he and Elizabeth would begin to measure other bones that might be helpful in the identification process: humerus bones and femurs. If they suspected that one of the bodies belonged to the sheriff’s nephew or some other non-Cullowhee, they could have fluorine tests run on it. No point in thinking about that until he got the skulls back.

Milo sprawled back in his chair, punching in numbers with his two index fingers. Since the process required a minimum of thought, he allowed his mind to sort the events of the past few days, looking for some detail he might have missed before. What about Victor? Milo had written him off as a pudgy fool impersonating an intellectual, but he had been genuinely angry about that scene with Alex. Of course he minded being humiliated; he told lies to make himself seem more important. But surely people do not kill for so slight an insult. Yes, they do, he thought, but he hoped that had not been the case. To lose Alex over something so trivial would be heartbreaking.

After nearly two hours of steady work, Milo finished updating the Indian file. Remembering the break-in, he inserted a blank disk and made a backup copy to take back to the site. No one would threaten the project again if he could help it. When the copy had been safely tucked away, Milo checked the time and decided that he could still compare his lists to the university’s data. They weren’t expecting him at the site until dinner time; maybe not even then. He hadn’t eaten much in the past few days.

Milo set the telephone headset into the plastic cradle and called up the campus system. “Request,” said the screen in glowing green letters.

“Archaeological File #307-Lerche,” Milo typed.

“Enter user I.D.”

Milo tapped out, “D-i-g-g-e-r.” The word appeared before him correctly spelled.

The machine paused as if digesting this tidbit. A moment later, it replied: “Enter password.”

“Carter,” Milo said aloud, suiting his action to the word. They had arranged the password between them. “Digger” symbolizing archaeology, and then “Carter” in honor of the man who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen. The password would not appear on the screen; that was a standard safety precaution.

For a moment the screen stayed blank, presumably while the university computer contemplated Howard Carter. Then it spat out: “Access denied. Password invalid.”

“I hit the wrong damn key,” muttered Milo, typing in “Carter” with painstaking slowness.

This time the computer was positive. It shot back: “Access denied. Password invalid.”

Milo began to wonder if the old King Tut curse was still in effect. Why the hell was he getting the run-around? He typed in “Howard Carter,” just to be thorough. The machine wasn’t having any. “Access denied. Password invalid.”

Milo snatched the telephone receiver from its cradle and called the university. All university prefix numbers were the same, and he had called the computer terminal often enough to remember the four-digit extension number. He supposed that the system was down, but he was going to yell at somebody about it.

“Computer center,” said a bored voice in a noisy room.

“Yeah. This is Milo Gordon, Dr. Lerche’s assistant. Let me speak to Jamie.”

“Jamie went home early today, man. He was up till all hours last night fixing the bugs in a program. Can I help?”

“Is the computer down?”

“Nope. It’s doing fine. How about yourself?”

“I need to call up some data from the mainframe, and your damned jukebox keeps telling me access denied.”

“That’s funny,” mused the voice. “Does it say why?”

“Says invalid password, but I used the same one we always had.”

There was a brief pause. “Hold on a second.” Milo heard the phone being put down. Idly, he wondered whether some hacker in the C.S. department had rigged the computer to refuse all passwords. Could somebody do that?

“Hello, Milo. Are you sure you’re using the right password?”

“Of course,” snapped Milo. “I’ve used it a hundred times. And I tried more than once today, so don’t try to tell me I made a typing error.”

“No, I wasn’t thinking of that. Tell me, when was the last time that you used that password?”

“Well, I haven’t tried to call up the university system since before Alex went back to-” An awful possibility suddenly occurred to him. “Has Alex been in lately?”

“Yeah. Earlier in the week. He was talking to Jamie about some trouble you guys had up there with vandalism. I was sorry to hear it. You got it fixed?”

“Uh-huh. Listen, did Alex change the password?”

“I don’t know. He might have. Can’t you ask him?”

Milo didn’t want to go into it with this guy on the phone whose name he couldn’t remember. “No. I’m here alone. Can you give me the new password?” He should have realized that Alex would have changed the password. It was the most logical thing he could have done after the break-in.

“Gee, I’m sorry, Milo. I don’t have access to it.” The voice was pleasantly neutral, unaware of the news about Alex. “But if you’ll call back tomorrow, Jamie can get it for you.”

“Yeah, sure. Maybe I’ll try a few guesses meanwhile.”

“Well, good luck.”

Milo hung up, resisting the urge to slam the telephone into its cradle. Another stumbling block. What would Alex choose for a password? He called the system again.

“Request.”

“Archaeological File #307-Lerche.”

“Enter user I.D.”

“Digger.”

“Enter password.”

It wasn’t Howard Carter. Maybe another archaeologist. “Schliemann,” Milo typed.

“Access denied. Password invalid.”

He repeated the process with Sir Arthur Evans, several variations of Teilhard de Chardin, and finally, in utter desperation, Indiana Jones, but the computer would have none of it. Access was politely, but firmly, denied.

Milo gave up. He could settle this tomorrow. At worst, this was a minor inconvenience to which he was overreacting, but his anger wouldn’t settle. He typed: “You are not going to stop me from finishing this project, damn it!” and flipped off the machine before it could register another coldly mindless reply.

CHAPTER TWELVE