“I think we agree that Mr. Finch should be looked into,” Matt said hurriedly. He glanced at Leif, who shrugged.
“I’ll take a crack at it,” he promised. “And I think I know the answer to the second question. From what I’ve read, Walter G. Callivant wasn’t questioned until three days after the body was discovered. He’d suffered some sort of collapse and was in a sanitarium.”
“Convenient,” David snorted. “I bet the cops really took the gloves off — a rich kid surrounded by a phalanx of shrinks.”
“Not to mention lawyers,” Andy said.
“How about the next question?” Megan put in. “When did the cops get their hands on Walter G.’s car?”
“That I don’t know,” Leif admitted. “Although, according to what I’ve read, the police technicians gave it a clean bill of health when they finally saw it.”
“After how many trips through the car wash?” Andy asked.
“The found no blood or tissue residues, and that sort of stuff is harder to wash away than you’d think,” Leif said. “The medical examiners estimated that Priscilla Hadding had fallen — or was pushed — from a moving car. Her leg got hung up on something — probably the car door — and she was dragged for a bit.”
Megan shuddered. “Ugly.”
David nodded. “But it absolutely would have left traces of evidence on the car.”
“So why is the question being asked?” Megan demanded. “Our new virtmail pal seems to think it’s important.”
“‘Deep Throat,’” Leif muttered.
She whirled on him. “What?”
“Just a name from another old scandal — but political instead of social this time. Somebody was troubled by the way an old President had gotten himself reelected and passed on some information to a couple of journalists. It worked. The president had to resign. And the reporter’s nickname for the leak—‘Deep Throat’—became a part of history.”
“Well, our version of ‘Deep Throat’ would have to be pretty old to be troubled about something that happened forty years ago,” Megan said.
“Maybe his conscience finally started getting to him,” Andy suggested with a grin.
Leif shook his head. “More likely, this is the hacker, rubbing our noses in what he’s found.”
“Weren’t we just saying that we thought Knox was the hacker?” David asked.
“Virtmail from beyond the grave,” Andy said in a hollow voice.
“I don’t know who this is, but he or she is certainly playing with us,” Matt growled. “If two of those questions could be answered just by looking in books about the case—”
“How about the last one?” Megan cut in. “What
“It was a classic Corvette—1965,” Leif said. “A lot of people were turning to older cars in the 1980s because government regulations were adding all sorts of antismog equipment to the new ones. It took awhile before the technology got good enough so that the power drain wasn’t noticeable.”
“What a terrible idea! Antismog devices!” Megan said sarcastically.
“It wasn’t much fun at the time, if you wanted to drive a fast car,” Matt said.
“Shouldn’t be too hard to track down what happened to the Walter G.-mobile,” Leif said. “All we need is the vehicle identification number—”
He shut up when he saw Matt shaking his head. “I may not know about scandals, but I do know about cars. The V.I.N. system didn’t come into play until 1981. We won’t be able to trace the car that way.”
“That means a quiet visit to the dead files of the D.M.V.,” Leif began, then cleared his throat. “Oops, I didn’t say that. And nobody needs to hear about it from anybody in this room.”
“No witnesses,” David agreed.
“So we’re batting.500 in the ‘Deep Throat’ trivia game,” Andy said. “We had answers to about half of the questions.”
“Your ear’s blinking again,” Megan announced.
Matt activated the program again. A similar message to the previous one appeared.
Since you picked up my first message so quickly, I suspect you’re still linked in. Here’s an additional clue.
As the kids watched, an image began to appear under the words. It was a reproduction of a faded flatfilm color photograph — a young man sitting behind the wheel of a low-slung antique car, grinning through the convertible’s windshield.
“Computer!” Matt shouted. “Can you find the original source of that message?”
The computer displayed the name of a big and anonymous commercial remailing firm.
“Never mind, then. From the details available in the displayed image, can you project the make of the car?”
The computer was silent for a moment, then responded, “Probability, eighty percent or better.”
“Then enlarge the image, restore the colors, and add the car.”
Beneath the driver’s smiling face, a quick procession of ghostly cars flickered into and out of view. Matt’s hobby was virtual automobiles, and his computer had a vast collection of makes and models in its databases.
Finally the ghost car began to solidify. The faded colors grew more vibrant. The grinning young man now sat in a bright red sports car.
“Closest match — model 1965 Corvette Stingray,” the computer announced.
“Callivant’s car?” Andy asked. “Is that Callivant in the driver’s seat?”
“No.” Megan leaned forward. “Put on forty years of weight and wrinkles, take the hair away…and you’ve got Clyde Finch.”
“Finch!” Leif took a harder look, then began to nod. “You’re right. You know, we really do need to find out more about him.”
“Maybe,” Matt said. “But that’s not the person who interests me right now.”
“Who, then?” David asked.
Matt reached out as if he were trying to catch the image projected from the computer console. Of course, his fingers simply slipped through the hologram. “I want to know who the frack sent us this picture. Right now I have about as much chance of getting hold of him as I have of grabbing this image with my bare hands.”
14
“Your problem,” Leif Anderson told Matt, “is that you were thinking of the wrong tools. You don’t capture images with your hands. You use a carefully targeted computer program.”
“And you have a computer program that will catch Deep Throat for us?” Matt asked skeptically.
“I have one that will make a good try at tracing Deep Throat, if he or she virtmails you again,” Leif replied. He didn’t mention that the program would also alert him that such a trace was in progress.
In the end everybody had a job. Leif would get the tracing program to Matt — and it was unspoken but expected that he’d also try a raid on the D.M.V. records. Andy would take a whack at Clyde Finch and his background. Matt would get in touch with Mrs. Knox to arrange a look at her late husband’s computer. And he, Megan, and David would do the looking on Saturday.
Leif cut his connection, returning to his own virtual workspace, an Icelandic stave house. Wind-driven snow howled past the windows, but Leif ignored the show outside. He went to a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves, shallow ones, broken up into small niches. Each open box held a program icon.
Reaching the center of the shelves, Leif searched for and found an icon that looked like the carving of a Chinese demon in a very bad mood. Rather than picking it up, Leif hooked a finger behind it and pulled. A whole section of shelving swung away, revealing a hidden set of niches set into the wall. This was Leif’s combination
