Prelude to a Scream (14 page)

“How's that?”

Now Giles studied Stanley for a moment. Stanley studied him back. Giles looked like a nice kid, raised by a mother of Stanley's age. A nice kid with something bothering him. What bothers a kid who grew up swaddled in a rebozo hanging from a tree limb on a commune in Costa Rica?

“Ordinarily, Mr. Ahearn,” Giles said thoughtfully, “I shouldn't be exposing internal procedure to the scrutiny of a client. But this is a public agency. And, as my mother taught me to believe, most of what public agencies do and how they do it, especially the information they accrue, should always be accessible to the public. Moreover, since that police officer was here, I've been fooling around with the computer.”

“So?”

“So I've noticed a little… anomaly.”

“A what?”

Giles cleared his throat. “A glitch.”

“A glitch.”

“I remind myself that these are your data we're talking about here, Mr. Ahearn. Not belonging exclusively, as some people would like to think, to the clinic, but to you as well.”

“That's an admirable sentiment, Giles. Easily worth a cup of coffee, along with a buck.”

Giles smiled. “Yes. Well, step around my desk for a moment, if you don't mind.”

Stanley limped around the desk.

“Is your hip bothering you?” Giles asked solicitously. “Mom had a hip replacement just last—.”

“I stepped on a nail,” Stanley said coldly.

“Oh,” said Giles. He turned back to his monitor. “Okay. Take a look at this.”

Giles' computer screen showed the agency's computerized form, requesting the client's name, address, phone number, age and sex, along with considerable additional information. The data in this particular form were Stanley's from his previous visit. Up in the right-hand corner was a long alphanumeric case number.

“You don't mind if I make a few notes,” Stanley said, jotting down the number.

“I think it's your right to have any and all information involving your own case file,” said Giles. “Most of the people who work here agree with me, although not all of them. And conditions being such, I'd appreciate your treating this matter in full confidence.”

“Mum's the word, Giles.”

“See that box holding the cursor?”

“Yeah.”

“How's it labeled?”

“
Share info (Y/N)?
”

“That's right.”

“Meaning, I take it, has this client given his or her permission to share his case information with other agencies?”

“That's correct.”

“So?”

“What's it say under the cursor?”

“
Y
, meaning
Yes
, which is a damnable lie.”

“That's true. Ms. Dunkirk asked you whether you were interested in getting on a national list of blood or organ or bone marrow donors. That's her job, she's supposed to ask you that, all of us ask our clients that. And you said
NO
.”

“Okay. So far so good.”

“Watch this.”

Giles typed a
y
on his keyboard. “You get an upper-case
Y
no matter which
y
you input.”

“So great,” said Stanley. “But
Y
isn't my answer.”

“Precisely,” said Giles. “Your answer is
N
, for
No
.”

“That's right.”

“So type it in.”

“Me?”

Giles slid his chair away from the desk. “Go ahead. Upper or lower case.”

Stanley searched the keyboard until he found the
N
key, and tapped it.

“What's it say now in the answer box?”

“It says… It still says
Y
.”

“Precisely. Try an upper-case
N
. Hold down the shift key and hit the
N
.”

Stanley tried an upper-case
N
.

“It's still comes up as
Y
.”

“That's right. Still a
Y
,” said Giles. “No matter what the input your answer is positively
Yes
: you want to be on national lists of organ donors.”

“Nobody's noticed this before?”

Giles looked evasive. “It's the first I've heard of it.”

“What are you guys, asleep around here?”

Giles ignored this. “A typical case worker would be asking the questions rapidly and filling in the answers as he or she watched the keyboard. Not only that, the blood type and test results are filled in weeks later, after the report has come back, and not by the interview clerk but by data-entry personnel. The latter are all touch typists: they watch the data sheet they're recording from, and only occasionally glance at the screen to make sure they're on the right page. What I'm trying to say is, it's entirely possible that nobody's ever noticed this quirk before.”

“Quirk? You call this a quirk?”

“If anybody else has noticed it, they haven't told me.”

“Skip it. Somebody wants my info in their database.”

“If you rule out a quirk, that's an interesting idea.”

Stanley looked at Giles. “I'm ruling out quirks.”

“Okay.” Giles shrugged. “Somebody wants your info in their database.”

“Or some part of me.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Nothing.”

“But why?”

“More to the point, who?”

“Maybe it's a cabal of intergalactic hippies, trying to stay in touch with their ever-fewer brothers on earth.”

Stanley looked at Giles a moment, tried not to smile, then looked back at the screen, which he now read in its entirety. A lot of medical stuff.

He put a finger on the screen. “Giles, my man, you see that blood category, there?”

“Sure.”

“See the blood type?”

“It says you're type O-Negative.”

“So I've been told. Change it.”

“Change it? What for?”

“Just change it. You can change it, can't you?”

“Sure.” Giles rolled his chair back under the keyboard. “Change it to what?”

“How should I know? What's your blood type?”

“AB-Negative.”

“So type in AB-Negative.”

Giles changed the blood type to AB-Negative.

“Now Giles,” said Stanley, “go back up to the consent box and put in a positive answer.”

Giles arrowed the cursor back up the screen to the consent box and typed a
Y
.

“Now look…”

“It says Y. I just typed
Y
.”

“Put in a negative answer.”

Giles typed an
N
.

“Look at that!”

“It says
N
.”

“Yes…?”

“Works just like it's supposed to work. That is interesting, isn't it.

"Now how about changing the blood type back to O-Negative?”

Giles arrowed back down the screen and changed the blood type.

“Look at that, Giles…”

“The
N
changed back to a
Y
!”

Just to check, Giles arrowed up to the consent box and typed in a lower-case
n
. The upper-case
Y
remained unchanged.

“It's keyed to the blood type!”

“Which is filled in after the tests come back. Right?”

“That's correct. No less than two weeks later. Usually three.”

“So the case worker filling in the form wouldn't even notice the wrong answer appearing in the consent box. The
Y
only appears in the consent box after a blood type O-Negative is entered two or three weeks later by other personnel. The clerk's got no reason even to look at the consent category.”

Giles considered the screen. “But what does this mean?”

“Giles,” Stanley said, standing up straight and scratching his shirt over his scar. “It means that somebody is interested in people with a certain blood type.”

“I guess so. Say, are you sure you're not a policeman?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly is your interest in this?”

Stanley considered Giles for a moment, then countered with a question of his own. “Could you get me a list of the accesses to this file?”

Giles nodded thoughtfully. “The sysop is a friend of mine. Tommy's the only one I could go to who would have enough security clearance to read the list. In fact the reason I haven't mentioned this Yes/No anomaly to anybody is that I figured it was some little game that Tommy was up to.”

“Well?”

“Well, but now I see that it's keyed to the blood type.…”

Stanley waited.

Giles tapped the keyboard. “It couldn't be Tommy. It's not his style. Anybody with enough programming know-how to finagle this information form would be able to access the results without leaving a trace.”

Stanley considered this. “How well do you know this sysop guy?”

Giles thought for a moment, until his eyes widened and he exclaimed, “No way!”

“You sure?”

“No way Tommy would.… Why should he?”

“Money. Think about it, Giles. Is the guy in trouble? Paying child support? Driving too nice a car? Does he gamble?”

Giles shook his head. “Tommy's highly overpaid as it is. He likes to work at night. We hardly ever see him. In fact, he's not on the regular payroll, he's here as a consultant. He works for about ten government and corporate offices like this one. Does it all. Wires the place, sets up hardware and software, writes custom modules and subroutines, does network maintenance, installs upgrades.… He's a re-seller, too. Guy's smart and he's good. No.” Giles shook his head. “He doesn't need money. As far as I know, he doesn't even care about money. What he cares about is computers. In fact, if he knew there was somebody fooling around on one of his systems, he'd go ballistic. Right through the roof. I guarantee he wouldn't sleep until he figured it out. That's the kind of guy he is.”

“You trust him, then.”

“I trust him.”

“And me?”

Giles looked at Stanley a moment, then looked away. “I've eaten a lot of goat-cheese pizza with Tommy,” he said. “He's not like most of these other clowns around here, always goofing off, just waiting to get home and smoke some pot and watch
Star Trek
.”

“What do
you
do after work?”

“I go to the gym. Work out.”

“Yeah. What about this guy Tommy?” said Stanley. “What's he do after work?”

“Other than eating pizza, I have no idea.”

“Okay. So you don't really know what he's up to, outside of his business and his pizza habit.”

“But messing around with this computer system, we're talking about a couple of people's jobs, here. This is a government-sponsored clinic, after all. There's about ten watchdog agencies that will come down on this place like a ton of bricks if they think something funny's going on.”

“There'll be a time I'd like to see that,” said Stanley coldly. “But not just yet.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But… Mr. Ahearn, I guess my question is… supposing that you're an honest man… why is this important enough to you to ask me to risk Tommy's and my job for you?”

“Forget about me. What about that little glitch we've just discovered? Doesn't that make you wonder?”

Giles glanced at the computer screen. “That's a start.”

“So?”

Giles turned to face him. “It definitely makes me curious.”

But it wasn't quite enough. Stanley thought about this for a moment.

Then he took a step backwards, raised his shirt, and turned his back to Giles.

“Jesus Christ,” said Giles, almost inaudibly.

“There used to be a type O-Negative kidney under that mess,” said Stanley, watching Giles' expression over his shoulder. “I want to find the people who took it.”