Tibbet grinned. “For now.” When Johnson made a noise, he whipped around.
“Whatcha got, Johnson?”
“Trace. Not much. Hang on,” Johnson muttered.
“What the hell?” A new voice joined the conversation and Paul turned to see the head of the computer department for the firm, Kathryn Tryon, hurrying in. “What’s going on? Who authorized this? What are you doing here?” She turned the last question to Paul. She was fired up and mad, mad enough to get up in his face.
“Pratt authorized it,” Paul said calmly. “We got hacked. I’m here because it focused on my files from a particular client. Some others were damaged, but Detective Tibbet indicated that Detective Johnson—” he pointed at the madly typing woman—“felt they were decoys. My files were the only ones totally wiped.”
“Oh, my God.” Her face blanched. “I hope like hell the backups work.”
Paul felt his stomach churn. His antacids were in his desk. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve had trouble with the backups in the last few months. Some disruptions. This is exactly what we were afraid might happen, but the partners…” she trailed off, realizing to whom she was speaking. The firm protected its own, especially the partners, and evidently Kathryn realized that she had been about to diss them to a detective.
“Ahem,” she said, clearing her throat. “The partners have been reviewing all my requests and fail-safe plans, and were budgeting for the options we would need.”
“Does that mean we’re shit out of luck in recovering my files?” Paul demanded, not really caring that Tibbet was there.
“No, no. We have backup, it’ll work.” Kathryn shot a look at Johnson and Tibbet, then faced Paul. “It’ll work.”
“Don’t try and boot it any time soon,” Johnson said without turning around. “You got some serious cleaning up to do before you can clear and reboot with the backup.” With a last lightning sequence on the keyboard, she turned around and looked at them. “In fact, if your firm can afford it, you may want to start fresh with new drives, load the backup on them. I can’t guarantee you’ll ever be able to get these clean.”
“Really? What kind of virus are we talking about?”
“You’ve got a three-pronged attack,” Johnson began. The two women began speaking what Paul considered to be a deeply foreign language. He could figure out a lot of things, dig down into the code to a limited degree, but it wasn’t his first love. The larger databases, like the ones designed especially for the firm, weren’t the poison he’d pick.
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.
“Cybercafé. 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 is it?” Torie demanded. “What is it?”
“He’s-he’s-he’s—” she hiccupped.
“WHAT?”
“Gone,” she said on a wail.
“What? Where? Back to New Orleans?”
“I-I-I don’t know.”
Torie fishtailed around a corner, flooring the Mercedes as she got on the Schuylkill Expressway. She took a moment to appreciate the car Paul had loaned her. Maybe she’d look into a Mercedes for her next car. She hardly felt the excessive speed, and hoped the silver SUV could keep up. She found it in her rearview mirror as she scanned for police cars. She prayed there wouldn’t be any cops out looking to make their ticket quota as she sped up three exits to wind through the neighborhoods to Pam’s house. All the while trying to get Pam to stop crying, and give her some coherent information.