"This is crazy;' I said, my mind running after possibilities and catching nothing.
Everyone in my office had my e-mail address. But no one except me should have my password, and obviously, no one could sign on as me without it. Rose was thinking the same thing.
"I don't know how this could happen," she said, then exclaimed, "Wait a minute. Ruth sets up AOL on each person's computer."
Ruth Wilson was my computer analyst.
"Of course. And she had to have my password in'order to do that," I carried out the thought. "But Rose, she would never do anything like this."
"Never in a million years;" Rose agreed. "But she must have the passwords written down somewhere. She couldn't possibly remember all of them."
"One would think so."
"Why don't you get inside the car before you die of exposure;" she said.
"You go on home and get some rest," I replied. "I'm going to do the same thing."
"Of course you won't;" she chided me. "You'll go right back into your office and try to figure everything out."
She was right. I walked back to the building as she drove off, and I wondered how I could be so foolish as to have gone out the door without a coat. I was stiff and numb. The night guard shook his head.
"Dr. Scarpetta, you need to dress warmer than that!"
"You're absolutely right," I said.
I passed the magnetic key over the lock and the first set of glass doors clicked free, then I unlocked the one to my wing of the building. It was absolutely silent inside, and when I turned into Ruth's office, I stood for a moment, just looking around at upright microcomputers and printers, and a map on a screen that showed if the connections to our other offices were trouble-free.
The floor behind her desk was a thick hank of cables, and printouts of software programming that made no sense to me were stacked all over the place. I scanned crammed bookshelves. I walked over to filing cabinets and tried to open a drawer. Every one of them was locked.
Good for you, Ruth, I thought.
I returned to my office and tried her home number.
"Hello?" she answered.
She sounded harried. There was a baby screaming in the background, and her husband was saying something about a frying pan.
"I'm sorry to bother you at home," I said.
"Dr. Scarpetta," she was very surprised. "You're not bothering me. Frank, can you take her in the other room?"
"I've got just one quick question," I said. "Is there a place you keep all our AOL passwords?"
"Is there a problem?" she quickly replied.
"It appears someone knows my password and is signing on to AOL as me." I didn't mince words. "I want to know how someone could possibly have gotten hold of my password. Is there any way?"
"Oh, no," she said, dismayed. "Are you sure?"
"Yes:' "Obviously, you haven't told anybody what it is," she suggested.
I thought hard for a moment. Not even Lucy knew my password. Nor would she care.
"Other than you," I said to Ruth, "I can't imagine who."
"You know I wouldn't give it to anyone!"
"I believe that," I replied, and I did.
For one thing, Ruth would never jeopardize her job that way.
"I keep everyone's addresses and passwords in a computer file that no one can access," she said.
"What about a hard copy?"
"In a file in a filing cabinet, which I keep locked."
"At all times?"
She hesitated, then said, "Well, not all the time. Certainly after hours, but they're unlocked much of the day, unless I'm in and out a lot. But I'm in my office most of the time. Really, it's only when I get coffee and eat lunch in the break room."
"What's the file's name?" I asked as paranoia towered like storm clouds.
"E-mail," she replied, knowing how I was going to feel about that. "Dr. Scarpetta, I've got thousands of files filled with programming codes and updates, patches, bugs, new things coming out, you name it. If I don't label them fairly precisely, I can never find anything."
"I understand," I said. "I have the same problem:' "I can change your password first thing in the morning."
"That's a good idea. And Ruth, let's not put it anywhere that anyone can find it this time. Not in that file, okay?"
"I hope I'm not in trouble," she uneasily said as her baby continued to scream.
"You aren't, but someone is," I told her. "And maybe you can help me figure out who that is."
It didn't take much intuition on my part to immediately think of Ruffin. He was clever. It was obvious he didn't like me. Ruth routinely kept her door shut so she could concentrate. I didn't suppose it would have been hard for Ruffin to slip inside her office and shut the door while she was in the break room.
"This conversation is absolutely confidential," I said to Ruth. "You can't even tell friends or family."
"You have my word on that."
"What's Chuck's password?"
"R-O-O-S-T R. I remember because it irritated me when he wanted it assigned to him. As if he's the rooster in the henhouse," she said. "His address, as you probably know, is C-H-U-K-O-C-M-E, as in Chuck, Office of the-Chief Medical Examiner."
"And what if I were signed on and someone else tried at the same time?" I then asked.
"The person trying would be kicked off and told someone was already signed on. There would be an error message and an alert. Now the reverse isn't true. If, let's say, the bad guy's already signed on and you try, although you get the error message, he isn't alerted at all."
"So someone could try to do it while I'm already logged on, and I'm not going to know it."
"Exactly.".
"Does Chuck have a home computer?"
"He asked me one time what to get that was affordable, and I told him to try a consignment shop. I gave him the name of one."
"The name?"
"Disk Thrift. It's owned by a friend of mine."
"Any way you could call this person at home and find out if Chuck bought anything from them?"
"I can try."
"I'll be at the office for a while;" I said.
I brought up the menu on my computer and looked at the icon for AOL. I logged on without a problem, meaning no one else had done so first. I was tempted to sign on as Ruffin to see who he might be corresponding with and if it,might tell me more about what he was up to, but I was afraid. I was chilled by the thought of breaking into someone's mailbox.
I paged Marino, and when I got him on the phone, I explained the situation to him and asked his opinion about what I should do.
"Hell," he said without pause. "I'd do it. I always told you I didn't trust that little shit. And you know what else, Doc? How do you know he hadn't gone into your mail and deleted things, or even sent things to people other than Rose?"
"You're right," I said, infuriated by the idea. "I'll let you know what I find."
Ruth called back minutes later and sounded excited.
"He bought a computer and printer last month," she reported. "For about six hundred dollars. And the computer came with a modem."
"And we have AOL software here."
"Tons of it. If he didn't buy his own, he certainly could have gotten his hands on it:"
"We may have a very serious situation on our hands. It's vital you don't say a word," I reminded her again.
"I've never liked Chuck."
"And you can't say that to people either," I said.
I hung up and put my coat on and felt bad about Rose. I was certain she was upset. It wouldn't have surprised me if she had cried all the way home. She was stoical and rarely conveyed how she felt, and I knew if she thought she had hurt me, she would be undone. I went out to my car. I wanted to make her feel better and I needed her help. Chuck's e-mail would have to wait.,„ Rose had gotten weary of running a house and had moved into an apartment in the near West End, off Grove Avenue, several blocks from a cafй called Du Jour, where I now and then ate Sunday brunch. Rose lived ir~ an old three-story dark red brick building shaded by big oaks. It was a relatively safe area of town, but I always scanned my surroundings before I got out of my car. As I parked next to Rose's Honda, I noticed what looked like a dark-colored Taurus several cars away.