1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (13 page)

Chapter Twenty

Donati took the telephone from Angelo. “Yeah.”

“This is Artscape. What are you doing? I told you to be careful with the pictures. They’re ruined.”

“You wanted the collection taken. We took it. You didn’t say anything about being neat. Besides, do you have any idea how long it would have taken us to do the job your way?”

“But it will take years to restore the pictures.”

“What’s with you? Your people are threatening to burn the damned things. What difference does it make if the paint is scratched?”

There was a pause at the other end. “My people say they don’t want to pay the full price for the goods. They’re damaged.”

“Tell them if they don’t pay, they go down—starting with you. Do you think I am stupid? Do you think I don’t know who you are, where you live? I know who you talk to, who you sleep with, and I know how to get to you. Would you like me to tell you your address? How about the name of your lover—lets see, he’s—”

“All right, all right. I take your point. What happened to Parker?”

“Wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“You might get a line on two students. Find out if they’re worth any money. You could sweeten the pot by
throwing them into the mix. You know, return the hostages, an extra five mil.”

“Hostages? What hostages?”

“Minor complication. The Parker guy went to spy on some kids in the bushes. Had to drop him and take the kids. We can kill them, or sell them back with the paintings.”

“That’s crazy. They know who you are. They can identify you.”

“They won’t.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you won’t. They will want to stay alive. They will want to be sure their families and friends do not have accidents or hurt themselves. You know drive-by shootings are a real problem nowadays. They, and you, don’t want something like that to happen, do you? No, they won’t say anything. Besides, I have an airtight alibi. Feds won’t believe it, but they won’t be able to break it either.”

“You are a monster.”

“I’m a monster? The people you represent kill women and children in suicide bombings. They drop skyscrapers full of people, and you call me a monster? Did you think this operation could be done without somebody getting hurt? People die. I have people working with me I will eliminate as soon as I get my payoff. I can’t risk having them run around loose. One talks too much, the other’s a drunk. Push me and you get added to the list. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You got a pencil? Write down these names.”

***

“Oh, Sam, come in. This is Sheriff Schwartz. He has some questions he wants to ask you about our computers. Sheriff, this is Samantha Ryder, our resident computer expert.”

Sam turned out to be a woman with mouse brown hair that clung to her shoulders, thin and unremarkable in every way except that when Ike stood to shake her hand he found himself looking at her nose. She stood at least three inches taller, in sandals. She could not weigh more than one hundred and forty-five pounds. Except for a chest that would turn a Hollywood starlet green with envy, she looked like she could be sucked up through a soda straw. She shook Ike’s hand. She had a grip.

“Sam, we need help. Dr. Harris received a letter relating to the robbery. In a minute I want you to read it and tell me if it is possible to trace it in any way, assuming someone wrote on one of the machines here. I’ve been told that something like that is possible, but I don’t know for sure. The letter is on the desk.”

Sam leaned over the desk and examined the letter. She picked it up by its edges and held it up to the light, as Ike had done earlier.

“It’s our paper and that means it was probably printed here. I can’t be sure about where though.”

“Because of the watermark? Do all of the departments or printers use this paper?”

“Yes, at the moment. The vendor who sold us our printers included a couple of hundred reams of that paper as part of the deal. I guess he hoped we’d be impressed and maybe buy more. Either way it helped with the sale. The margin we work with in purchases of this sort is pretty thin, so anything extra helps. Of course, it’s possible that whoever wrote this took paper home, printed the letter, and brought it back, but I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Well, nobody except me and the staff in IS knows about the watermark, and it’s not noticeable unless you go out of your way to look for it. As far as most people know, it’s just plain twenty-pound bond.”

“So, if the letter were typed and printed here, could you tell us who wrote it?”

“Not who wrote it, but where it was written, at which work station. We installed a very sophisticated network. All work stations are connected to a main print server in the basement. There are other servers, of course, for backup, data bases and so on.”

She looked at the puzzlement in Ike’s eyes and continued, “A print server is a machine that spools—lines up print jobs and sends them to the printer. We have thirty-five printers in the LAN…sorry, that’s the local area net, LAN. So we have one for each department or office like this one. Oh, and there are three printers in the library for student use. The job comes to the server and it sends it back to the appropriate printer.”

“Why not just send the job straight to the printer? My computer just sends the stuff straight over to my printer. It seems a lot of trouble to send it to a server and back.”

“Well, in your case, part of your hard drive is your server. Check out your printer utility sometime. It has all the features a server has and…sorry again…I tend to go on. Anyway, no matter how we set all this up, the job would have to go to a print server of some sort. It could be another computer in the department or a separate box, but unless you have a printer for each computer, like yours, you need a separate server. We chose a high-capacity server to assure that the printing got done no matter what situations came up. For example, if a departmental printer went down, or even ran out of paper, the server would route the job to an alternative printer, usually the nearest one, and then tell you where you could pick it up. Folks get ticked when their jobs get backed up.”

“Every printer in the college is connected to the server?”

“Yes, sir, every one.”

“Okay, but I don’t see how this helps us.”

“Well, as I said, we have very sophisticated servers. One keeps a log of all the documents processed. The log can tell us where the job came from, file name, and so on. We can look at the log and see what jobs have been done and when.”

“You can do all that?”

“We can. Look, this is a one-page document, so that eliminates all of the files that are larger. Next, look at the number of words in the document. The log keeps track of them too. That will narrow it down even more, and so on until we have the document and the source. Of course, if the person who wrote this knows the system, it might take some time.”

“And if they know a lot about it they could beat it?”

“Well, yes and no. It’s iffy either way.”

“What do you mean, iffy? You either can or you can’t.”

“It’s not that straightforward, Sheriff. First there is the matter of a search warrant and then—”

“A what? I’m not tossing a room here. I just want some information from you. Ruth, tell her to give me the information.”

“Dr. Harris, there is a whole new corpus of law covering electronic data. Information of this sort is viewed the same as paper files and property. If I give the sheriff the information and it leads to an arrest, and if there was no search warrant issued to obtain it, it would be inadmissible in court.”

“Sam, I appreciate the point. How do you know all this anyway?” Ike asked.

“I had a double major in college. The second was criminal justice. I hoped to be in law enforcement, computer forensics. Got turned down by the FBI—bad eyes.”

“She’s right, Ike, we can’t let you have the information without a warrant.”

“I don’t believe this. It’s Saturday night. It’ll be Monday before I can find a judge and get that warrant. Here’s a chance to cut through a lot of details and you are going to scruple over this?”

“Have to, Ike. Matter of principle. How long is that whatever…how long before the data will be available, Sam?”

“It depends. The library files are backed up and the system rebuilt every night—they tend to get corrupted. But these files will be logged in for ninety days. All the data will be there on Monday.”

“I can’t wait until Monday,” Ike shouted. “Sam, you want police work? You got it. I am hereby deputizing you into the Sheriff’s department. Under county law, you don’t get a choice in the matter if it is clear that we are in a state of emergency, smoking gun and so on. Determination of that state is left to the prerogative of the instituting officer—that’s me—subject to appeal and review, and so forth. Now, as my deputy, you will go and find me the source of this letter.”

“You can’t do that,” Ruth protested.

“Can, and just did.”

“Do I get a badge?” Sam asked.

“What? A badge. Well yeah, but—”

“Does it mean I can carry, too?”

“Carry. You want to carry? You own a gun, Sam?”

“Yes, sir, a Glock 17.”

“Well, I don’t think you’re going to need one, but yes, as a deputy, you can carry.”

“Sam,” Ruth interjected, “You can’t be serious. What about search warrants? What about the—”

“Well, you’re right, Dr. Harris, but as his deputy, I have to do this. Sheriff, there’s something else you should know—something that will make this easier.”

“What? There’s more? Look Sam, in case you hadn’t noticed, I am a computer ignoramus. I just want to know if you can get me what I need.…What should I know?”

“I, um…don’t know how to say this, but I can get your guy—absolutely.”

“Now you can, five minutes ago you said iffy. What happened?”

“Well, as your deputy, I am required to inform you of some things that I…um, the truth is, I installed a root kit last week and with the right password I can tell you the activity level of every computer in the net.”

“A root kit? It sounds like something a plumber would use.”

“In a way I guess it is.” Sam looked at the floor.

“There is something about root kits I should know?”

“They are hacker tools, Sheriff, not routine additions to systems—illegal maybe—depending on policy and federal restrictions.…I’m sorry, Dr. Harris, but I have this interest in forensics and I told myself that as your IS guy, I should have the capacity to find out things, if the need ever—”

“Well, it has. You haven’t been using the college’s facilities to hack.…” Ruth’s eyes began to signal early storm warnings.

“Oh, no, ma’am, I just, you know…to keep my hand in, I sometimes…see, anyone can hack, if they know how. I thought we ought to be prepared if one of our people took it up, that’s all.”

“It’s all right,” Ike cut in. “Given the history of college hackers and…very sensible.” He did not know what he was talking about but the last thing he needed was an angry Ruth Harris.

Sam looked relieved. “How about I secure the data and begin processing it in anticipation of a warrant?” she said. “Then, when it comes, I will have everything you need. It’s going to take that long anyway.”

“You can’t get it now?”

“No, sorry, but I can start now. Whoever sent this letter knew what we were up to. I haven’t counted the words but I’m guessing it’s two hundred and forty-seven.”

“Why two hundred and forty-seven?”

“Well, we printed out a big mailing this weekend, a letter to all of the students scheduled to enroll in the fall, about the collection not being on campus. That letter ran two hundred and forty-seven words. To speed up the printing, we sent it to all the departmental printers over the weekend. Whoever wrote this letter knew a little something about our setup and I think ran this letter through with the others.”

“That explains the wording. The writer tried to force the word count. So, we can’t trace it after all.”

“No, I didn’t say that. There are more features on the log that he might not know about. The first is character count. The log tells us source, pages, words, and characters. It’s unlikely he got the same number of characters as the form letter, but even if he did—there’s spaces.”

“Spaces?”

“Yes. The log keeps track of spaces, like between words. The probability that he got that right, too, is astronomical.”

“Not that it would mean anything to me, but what is the third feature?”

“Keyboard logger.”

Ike began to feel the same way he did when he tried to read Hawking’s
A Brief History of Time
. “And it does what?”

“It logs the keystrokes into the main log. If I can narrow down the choices, I can have it type the letter over again—if you want me to. It all depends on how much the writer knew about our system and how to beat it, but I’m sure whoever it was didn’t know everything. We’ll find your writer.”

“Ruth…you satisfied?”

“No, but I’m too tired to argue. How about you bribe me into silence by taking me out for a cheap dinner and then take me home.”

“Happy to. Deputy Ryder, you may proceed.”

“One last thing. Dr. Harris?”

“Sam?”

“About the picture IDs. When do you want me to start putting that online? I thought you would want to start next term. If we do, we will have to have the locks and card swipe units installed and that, with the wiring and all, could take all summer.”

“What picture IDs are you talking about? What locks?”

“It was all in the committee report you approved. We are to issue picture IDs to the students and the swipe stripe on the back will activate the new locks on all the building doors so that we can keep track.…” Sam’s voice trailed off.

“Report? You mean the Information Services Committee report had that as a proposal?” Ruth’s face was thunderous.

“Yes ma’am, toward the back.”

“Thank you, Sam. I’ll let you know about the IDs.”

Sam left, closing the door behind her.