Authors: Michael Palmer
It was lunch hour. A steady flow of employees poured out from the Veterans Administration Benefits building, off to grab something to eat. Reggie Smith watched them leave from his position behind a hot dog pushcart on the other side of Vermont Avenue. Strolling leisurely to the next streetlight, the gangly teen crossed the road, then waited until another group had exited before entering the building. Junie and Nick had dropped him off a block away and were waiting there in the car.
The youth was only fourteen, and that worried his foster mother greatly, but he was physically ahead of the curve and had a survivor’s wiliness born of his disjointed upbringing and several stretches in juvenile detention. Barring anything unforeseen, he had assured her, he would be okay.
Junie and Nick had misgivings.
Reggie was five and already in foster care when his remarkable sense of computers began to manifest itself. Initially, he was deemed cute and precocious, but that was before age seven when he began charging video games and CDs to his foster parents, intercepting the shipments to the house, and storing the booty beneath the clothes in his bureau drawer. By age nine he had been caught hacking into the computer at school and changing grades. By eleven, when he moved in with Junie and Sam, he had made another trip to juvenile detention for shoplifting and for frivolous, but disruptive, cyber crime.
“Reggie has the potential to change the world… or to rule a cell block,” the judge had told his new foster parents.
With the Wrights’ steadying hands on the tiller of his life, and Nick’s role as a big brother, the boy was headed in the right direction. Junie’s rationale in asking him to become involved in the search for Manny Ferris was that no one would be hurt, and someone they both loved would be helped. In all her years as a foster parent, caring for God only knew how many children, she had never used a kid or put one in harm’s way as she was doing with this boy. But Nick was increasingly desperate to find Manny Ferris, and Reggie Smith, with an IQ measured in the 150s, was no ordinary teenager.
There was no metal detector. From yesterday’s visit to the building, Reggie knew the lunchtime crowd would distract the lone security guard, making it easier for him to pass by. He was dressed conservatively, in tan corduroy pants and a blue collared shirt, over which dangled a perfect replica of the building’s visitor badge.
Skipping yesterday’s biology class, he had ridden into D.C. with Junie and spent several hours observing people and walking up and down the granite steps to the main doors. Using his cell phone camera, he snapped several quality shots of the building’s visitor badge. It took him half the night to tweak the forgery using Photoshop, but before first light he printed his masterwork, then had it laminated at a nearby Kinko’s. It was virtually indistinguishable from the badge he had photographed, right down to the slight color fade and scratches on the laminate.
Perfectly calm, and relishing the chance for mischief, Reggie climbed the expansive steps and walked through the massive glass doors. Once inside the marble-tiled foyer, he marched purposefully, head held up, eyes solidly forward, toward the security desk. As he neared, he lifted his badge to eye level, then waved it in front of his body to attract the guard’s attention.
“My dad forgot his briefcase in his office,” Reggie said, again mindful to maintain eye contact.
Suspicion was his greatest adversary now, and to counter it, he made certain his voice did not waver in the slightest. This was the gamesmanship he missed most about his hacking days. Hacking into a computer was so much more than just writing code, but only people like him understood that. It was certainly possible to enter a system long distance, from his personal computer, but the direct route, working from a computer already in the system, was so much faster and more convenient. To avoid getting caught when taking the direct route often required serious acting skills. The guard kept his face virtually buried in
The Examiner
while holding a roast beef sandwich in one hand and a Diet Coke can in the other. He barely glanced up to check Reggie’s ID badge before waving him through.
Reggie exited the main stairs at the second floor, taking quick inventory of the layout, which he had studied on two different Web sites. It was just what he expected to find. He didn’t anticipate having to search for long before finding a cubicle that suited his purposes.
There were only a scattering of employees who hadn’t yet left for lunch. He had passed only half a dozen workstations before he found one with a yellow Post-it note taped to the side of the computer monitor. He checked inside the cubicle with the Post-it, looking for a jacket or anything that might suggest the usual occupant could be returning soon. Chances were that David Fulton, the name on the business card inserted in the plastic holder on the outside cubicle wall, was at lunch.
Time to get started.
Sitting down in Fulton’s desk chair, Reggie gave a quick flick of the computer mouse to power down the screen saver. The computer was locked, as Reggie knew it would be, and required the right username and password to unlock it. He simultaneously pressed the Control, Alt, and Delete keys on the keyboard to activate the security prompt.
He couldn’t help but laugh a little when he pulled the Post-it note off of the side of the monitor. David Fulton had written “Pword” on the yellow square and then just underneath, the characters “ABC123abc.” Information technology departments that enforced top-notch security protocols were notorious for frequently mandated password changes. Often they made employees change their password every week or two. It was smart security, Reggie would agree, but it also made it difficult for workers to remember their passwords. Instead of dealing with a help desk to retrieve a forgotten password, the office drones, most of them dealing with nonclassified material, often simply wrote their passwords on a Post-it or slip of paper every time it changed.
Taking advantage of the Post-it technique was one of the oldest and best hacker tricks for accessing secure systems. If the password wasn’t kept in plain sight on a Post-it note, chances were good that it could be found under the keyboard, or taped either to the side of a nearby filing cabinet or on the bottom of the upper desk drawer. Finding a valid password on his first attempt was a lucky break, but not an unexpected one. Still, Reggie’s pulse rose a notch. He had promised when he moved in with Junie and Sam that he would keep his skills under wraps, but using them was always going to be a rush.
Next, the username.
If the security was typical, Reggie knew, he would have three chances to get the right combination of username and password before the system would lock up and he would have to find another cubicle. He typed “David. Fulton” in the username field-a common naming convention adopted by many information technology departments to uniquely identify each employee-and then he entered the password “ABC123abc.” Bingo! It had taken less than five minutes from the moment he started his timer to access every system and file David Fulton’s security profile allowed.
“I love it,” Reggie whispered.
Seconds later, the teen had the VA intranet open and had clicked over to the bookmarked Veterans Information Search Web page. As Nick had instructed, he typed “Manuel Ferris” into the search field, then hit Return. Five matches instantly appeared on the screen, along with basic identifying information. Reggie downloaded each of the files onto his portable data storage USB key, which he had plugged into the back of Fulton’s computer. Whatever information Nick needed, Reggie felt confident, was either now on that key or simply didn’t exist.
Reggie slipped the small plastic unit containing the stolen files into his front pants pocket. Then, his racing heart nearly stopped. From down the hallway he heard a loud conversation, two voices, maybe three, followed by a burst of laughter. He was certain somebody had said the name Dave. Chances were fifty-fifty it wasn’t David Fulton returning early from lunch, but if it was, Reggie’s explanation regarding his father’s briefcase would be of no help.
Time to leave.
He stepped outside the office with no more than a glance to his right, and proceeded to walk confidently away from the central staircase and what turned out to be two men in suits.
Slowly… slowly…
Somehow, he managed to resist the temptation to look back.
“Hey!” Reggie heard one of the men shout. “Was that guy just in my cube? Hey you, stop!”
Reggie had had enough close calls in his hacking life to know that sometimes the best option was not to try and talk his way out of a jam, but to run from it. With a sprinter’s acceleration, he raced down the seemingly endless corridor, headed for the lighted exit sign. The commotion and shouts of the two men in pursuit encouraged several employees to poke their heads through their doorways or above their cubicle walls like prairie dogs.
Reggie risked a quick glance behind him to assess his advantage. The men trying to chase him down, both of them overweight and running in their suits, were not nearly as agile as he was in his loose-fitting corduroys and New Balance sneakers.
He was turning back to gauge the remaining distance between him and the exit door when a blond woman in a jacket and gray skirt, oblivious to the chase, emerged from her cubicle and stepped directly into his path. Shifting his weight in time to avoid a full-force collision, Reggie clipped the woman, spinning her sideways and down to one knee. She screamed loudly as the papers she was carrying flew up against the ceiling and then rained down on her.
“Sorry ’bout that, lady,” Reggie said. “You okay?”
The blonde nodded, clearly confused by the collision and possibly the boy’s congeniality. The delay was costly, however. Reggie’s chances of making it to the exit without getting caught had all but vanished. Improvisation was often the hacker’s best friend, and even in the worst of situations, he had never been one to panic.
Operating on instinct, he spun around to face the two men, who were now just a few cubicles away. Surprise was all he had. As he often did when playing tackle football in the yard with Nick, he dashed directly toward them. Their eyes widened.
Two doorways were all that separated them now. Reggie, arms pounding, was at full speed. The men raised their arms like Nick would have done, either protecting themselves or readying to make a tackle. Reggie waited until the outstretched tips of one man’s fingers were almost to his chest before making his favorite move. Ducking and sidestepping simultaneously, he skidded to his right, shifting past David Fulton and his coworker. Instead of open lawn, though, he was looking at an empty cubicle. Moving instinctively, he leaped onto the desk. Then, grasping the top of the wall divider with both hands, he swung his legs around, vaulting himself up and over the divider and into the adjacent office.
Neither of the men was inclined or able to duplicate his maneuver.
“Help!… Stop him!” they hollered.
Reggie, smiling now, had already reached the stairwell door from which he had entered the second floor. There might have been enough distance between him and the men to take the stairs, but instead he launched himself over the stairwell railing and dropped onto the stone landing below, crying out in pain as his ankle rolled beneath him. Limping, he reached the main foyer just as the two men were entering the stairwell.
“Hey, slow down, there, kid!” the security guard barked as Reggie hobbled past his desk.
“Sorry, sir,” Reggie shouted back. “Sorry.”
He hurried as best he could manage out the huge glass doors and down the outside stairs. He was in pain and breathing heavily when he reached Junie and Nick. Behind him, he sensed more than saw the security guard racing down the stairs.
“Go! They’re coming!” he managed, scrambling onto the backseat.
“Are you hurt?” Nick asked as Junie accelerated and turned at the next intersection.
Reggie patted the USB key in his pocket. “Not really,” he said.
It was going to be hard to thank Junie for the rush.
Koller kept pace behind Jillian Coates, close enough to breathe in her apricot-scented perfume. His shadow, stretched long and thin by the midday sun, occasionally overlapped hers. He liked touching her that way. Sometimes he walked in perfect synchronized step. She of course had no idea that for blocks she was being followed. Wearing a different disguise, far more doughy Robert Greene than urbane, intelligent Paul Regis, Koller felt confident that even if she did make eye contact with him, he would be unrecognizable to her. At worst, she would think he was just a typical letch, testing how close he could get to her and thinking dirty thoughts.
How wrong she’d be.
The Landrew non-kill had been a masterpiece, flawlessly researched, planned, and executed. Now, Koller’s bank account reflected his reward for that effort. There was no way of knowing how much more work Jericho intended on sending his way, but Koller had been in this business long enough to develop a sense for when a client’s well was about to run dry. Jericho’s pockets were extradeep, though, and he believed the work was far from over.
He decided it would be a wasted trip to return to the Panama City estate, his condo in Taos, or back to California to resume his life as a sedate but colorful substitute chemistry teacher. More jobs were bound to come his way and probably soon. Meanwhile, he was content to use the downtime to get to know Jillian Coates and see for himself how motivated she was to further investigate the cause of the fire that had ravaged her condominium. He applied simple mathematical logic to his plan on how best to deal with her: the pushier she was in her efforts, the less time she had to live. Even the students at Woodrow Wilson High could handle that equation.
Jillian left the crowded sidewalk and headed toward Anne Marie Cosco Hall, a nursing school dorm according to the signpost Koller read.
Perhaps she’s living there now
, he mused. His mind flashed on the chaos and havoc he could wreak if left to his own devices on a floor full of student nurses. The images, more horrible than any circle of Dante’s inferno, aroused him.
Koller occupied himself with
The Washington Post
, which he read on a nearby park bench while waiting for his quarry to reappear. She did so twenty minutes later and proceeded to head off at a more accelerated pace. He liked her choice of clothes-not flashy or excessively tight, but not at all dowdy. Her breasts, beneath a cotton blouse, were totally enticing-a nice C cup, he guessed. But it was her behind, moving unself-consciously in her chino slacks, that he found most appealing. The way her hips swayed with each step was inspiring. Koller moved even closer to her than he had been before, wanting to take in another whiff of her intoxicating perfume. He decided then and there that he would have her, a willing sex partner or not, before he killed her. He considered it a bonus for a job well done.
The notion made him smile.
Jillian took a left onto Twentieth Street and walked a few blocks north, stopping underneath a green awning. Koller walked past her, but turned just in time to see her slip inside Madame Jessica’s Psychic Readings Studio.
“Communing with the departed, are we?” Koller muttered to himself.
He wished it had been a private investigator she was visiting and not some medium who would take her money and toy with her emotions. Perhaps she could use someone to comfort her-someone like Paul Regis.
He was rock hard from following her, and from the taste of his last non-kill still fresh in his mind.