At the bedroom door, he shoved the feeling aside and tried to decipher the portrait of unease on Dermott’s face.
The man glanced around Gurney and down the stairs. “Is Lieutenant Nardo gone?”
“He’s downstairs. What can I do for you?”
“I heard cars driving away,” said Dermott accusingly.
“They’re not going far.”
Dermott nodded in an unsatisfied way. He obviously had something on his mind but seemed in no rush to get to the point. Gurney took the opportunity to pursue a few questions of his own.
“Mr. Dermott, what do you do for a living?”
“What?” He sounded both baffled and annoyed.
“Exactly what sort of work do you do?”
“My work? Security. I believe we had this conversation before.”
“In a general way,” said Gurney, smiling. “Perhaps you could give me some details.”
Dermott’s expressive sigh suggested that he viewed the request as an irritating waste of his time. “Look,” he said, “I need to sit down.” He returned to his armchair, settling into it gingerly. “What kind of details?”
“The name of your company is GD Security Systems. What sort of ‘security’ do these ‘systems’ provide, and for whom?”
After another loud sigh, he said, “I help companies protect confidential information.”
“And this help comes in what form?”
“Database-protection applications, firewalls, limited-access protocols, ID-verification systems-those categories would cover most projects we handle.”
“We?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You referred to projects ‘we’ handle.”
“That’s not meant literally,” said Dermott dismissively. “It’s just a corporate expression.”
“Makes GD Security Systems seem a bit bigger than it is?”
“That’s not the intention, I assure you. My clients love the fact that I do the work myself.”
Gurney nodded as though he were impressed. “I can see how that would be a plus. Who are these clients?”
“Clients for whom confidentiality is a major issue.”
Gurney smiled innocently at Dermott’s curt tone. “I’m not asking you to reveal any secrets. I’m just wondering what sort of businesses they’re in.”
“Businesses whose client databases entail sensitive privacy issues.”
“Such as?”
“Personal information.”
“What sort of personal information?”
Dermott looked like he was evaluating the contractual risks he might be incurring by going any further. “The sort of information collected by insurance companies, financial-service companies, HMOs.”
“Medical data?”
“A great deal of it, yes.”
“Treatment data?”
“To the extent that it is captured in the basic medical coding system. What’s the point of this?”
“Suppose you were a hacker who wanted to access a very large medical database-how would you go about it?”
“That’s not an answerable question.”
“Why is that?”
Dermott closed his eyes in a way that conveyed frustration. “Too many variables.”
“Like what?”
“Like what?” Dermott repeated the question as though it were an embodiment of pure stupidity. After a moment he went on with his eyes still closed. “The hacker’s goal, the level of expertise, his familiarity with the data format, the database structure itself, the access protocol, the redundancy of the firewall system, and about a dozen other factors that I doubt you have the technical background to understand.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that,” said Gurney mildly. “But let’s say, just for example, that a skilled hacker was trying to compile a list of people who’d been treated for a particular illness…”
Dermott raised his hands in exasperation, but Gurney pressed on. “How difficult would that be?”
“Again, that’s not answerable. Some databases are so porous they might as well be posted on the Internet. Others could defeat the most sophisticated code-breaking computers in the world. It all depends on the talent of the system designer.”
Gurney caught a note of pride in that last statement and decided to fertilize it. “I’d be willing to bet my pension there aren’t many people better at it than you are.”
Dermott smiled. “I’ve built my career on outwitting the sharpest hackers on the planet. No data-protection protocol of mine has ever been breached.”
The boast raised a new possibility. Might the man’s ability to stymie the killer’s penetration of certain databases have something to do with the killer’s decision to involve him in the case via his post-office box? The idea was certainly worth considering, even though it created more questions than answers.
“I wish the local police could claim the same degree of competence.”
The comment brought Gurney back from his speculation. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” Dermott seemed to be thinking long and hard about the answer. “A murderer is stalking me, and I have no confidence in the ability of the police to protect me. There is a madman loose in this neighborhood, a madman who intends to kill me, then kill you, and you respond to this by asking me hypothetical questions about hypothetical hackers accessing hypothetical databases? I have no idea what you’re trying to do, but if you’re trying to settle my nerves by distracting me, I assure you it’s not helping. Why don’t you concentrate on the real danger? The problem is not some academic software issue. The problem is a lunatic creeping up on us with a bloody knife in his hand. And this morning’s tragedy is proof positive that the police are worse than useless!” The angry tone of this speech had by the end spun out of control. It brought Nardo up the stairs and into the bedroom. He looked first at Dermott, then at Gurney, then back at Dermott.
“The hell’s going on?”
Dermott turned away and stared at the wall.
“Mr. Dermott doesn’t feel adequately protected,” said Gurney.
“Adequately prot-” Nardo burst out angrily, then stopped and began again in a more reasonable way. “Sir, the chances of any unauthorized person getting into this house-much less ‘a lunatic with a bloody knife’ if I heard you right-are less than zero.”
Dermott continued staring at the wall.
“Let me put it this way,” Nardo continued. “If the son of a bitch has the balls to show up here, he’s dead. He tries to get in, I’ll eat the son of a bitch for dinner.”
“I don’t want to be left alone in this house. Not for a minute.”
“You’re not hearing me,” growled Nardo. “You’re not alone. There are cops all over the neighborhood. Cops all around the house. Nobody’s getting in.”
Dermott turned toward Nardo and said challengingly, “Suppose he already got in.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“What if he’s already in the house?”
“How the hell could he be in the house?”
“This morning-when I went outside to look for Officer Sissek-suppose when I was walking around the yard… he came in through the unlocked door. He could have, couldn’t he?”
Nardo stared at him incredulously. “And gone where?”
“How would I know?”
“What do you think, he’s hiding under your freaking bed?”
“That’s quite a question, Lieutenant. But the fact is, you don’t know the answer, do you? Because you didn’t really check the house thoroughly, did you? So he could be under the bed, couldn’t he?”
“Jesus Christ!” cried Nardo. “Enough of this shit!”
He took two long strides to the footboard, grabbed the bottom of it, and with a fierce grunt heaved the end of the bed into the air and held it at shoulder height.
“Okay now?” he snarled. “You see anyone under there?”
He let the bed down with a thud and a bounce.
Dermott glared at him. “What I want, Lieutenant, is competence, not childish drama. Is a careful search of the premises too much to ask?”