"Beats me," Matt said. "I never asked. But it's probably all pretty aboveboard. Porn's the only sure-fire moneymaker on the Net, or so they say. Eddie would have gone under without it. And even though it was the last straw that broke up the big romance with Kristyn, his girlfriend, I can't imagine her or anyone attacking him over it."

  "Kristyn knew about the porn sites?"

  "Not at first, and she went ballistic when she found out," Matt said. "You should talk to her. Only person I can think of who might be mad at Eddie."

  "Mad enough to want to hurt him?"

  "No," Matt said. "She's kind of a bitch, but I can't imagine her wanting to attack him. Of course, I can't imagine anyone wanting to. No offense, but I kind of think you're wasting your time and Mrs. Stallman's money."

  "Could be," Tim said. "At least we can give her closure."

  "Look—" Matt began, and then he stopped and frowned at Tim for a few moments before starting again.

  "I was about to ask why you couldn't just wait till Eddie was well enough to ask him if he had any idea who hit him and was it on purpose," he said. "But you're not expecting him to make it, are you?"

  "I don't really know," Tim said. "But from what Mrs. Stallman says, it doesn't look good."

  Matt nodded, looking at the gravel by his feet.

  "Look, when ... if anything happens, will you call me? If he gets well enough to have visitors or calls", or . . . whatever. In case no one else does. I mean, I'm not sure Mrs.

  Delete All Suspects 141

  Stallman would let me know, and it's not like there's anyone else/'

  "Sure," Tim said.

  "If there's anything I can do to help—like I said, I'm pretty familiar with Eddies setup.''

  "You don't happen to have access to his system?" Tim asked.

  "Access, yeah," Matt said. "But not super-user access; that's what you're looking for. I used to, but a couple of days ago I logged in to update something on my site, and I couldn't get to super-user. Guess Eddie tightened up security."

  "Did he do that often?"

  "Not as often as he should have," Matt said. "Of course, he usually restored access to the people who helped him out. Maybe he didn't have a chance before the accident."

  "So you couldn't even update your own site," Tim said, shaking his head.

  "I just did it under my regular ID," Matt said. "Wasn't something I needed admin access to do; I just tried to use super-user out of habit. Anyway, even after you get in, sooner or later something will go wrong and you'll need someone who knows how to fix it. Let me know if you need any help."

  "Thanks," Tim said. "I'll tell our tech people. We might take you up on that."

  Though probably not until they knew Danforth had nothing to do with the hit-and-run. He had a gut feeling that Danforth was okay and genuinely concerned about Eddie, but a gut feeling wasn't proof.

  Saturday! 1:M5 p-n.

  "Besidesi" I told Timi vhen he called in to report on his conversation with Danforth, "the hit-and-run may not be the only shady thing going on here. Which reminds me — could you drop by here to pick something up?"

  "Sure," Tim said. "What?"

  "Claudia struck out at the co-lo site," I explained. "So Maude is drafting a letter from Mrs. Stallman, asking them to give us access. But we don't want to wait till the mail can deliver it, and we can't find a fax number for them, and they don't answer their phone."

  "It's Saturday, you know," Tim said.

  "The whole point of a co-lo site is that it's operational twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year," I said. I realized as I said it that I sounded pedantic, and perhaps a bit cranky. "Sorry, but Maude and I have spent way too much time trying to get through to the co-lo site. Maude offered to take the letter over there, but I'm not sure she could resist telling them how inefficient and dysfunctional they are, and we need to win them over, not alienate them."

  "Inefficient and dysfunctional?" Tim said. "Sounds like Eddie's kind of place. Sure, I can drop by and pick up the letter. I'm only about five minutes away."

  "That would be great," I said.

  Of course, I wasn't at all sure the letter would work. Co-lo sites are paranoid, almost by definition, since their whole reason for existence is to guard other people's hardware and other people's data. Still, Eddie's vendor did seem to be carrying it to an extreme.

  "They probably give their customers a number to call that's available twenty-four seven," Maude said. "I'll keep my eyes open."

  "It's not as if there's anything useful we can do at the co-lo site yet," I said.

  "Good, because this could take time," Maude said.

  What she didn't say, probably because humans are superstitious about such things, was that we might not get access until Eddie either regained consciousness or died. From the information I'd been finding on-line, I deduced that the longer Eddie K was in a coma, the less likely it was that he would ever wake up.

  Just then Schrbdinger butted my waldo with his head. Maude

  bad explained that this was not a form of attack, but a demand for attention. I scratched his head. I wanted to say something comforting to him — perhaps to reassure him that Eddie would still be coming back, or if he didn't, that wed make sure he was taken care of But I couldn't be sure that he'd understand; I kept finding contradictory data about cats' ability to understand human language. And I was sure Maude would laugh at my urge to reassure the cat, so I kept silent.

  When Tim arrived a few minutes later, he found the spectacle of me petting the cat hilarious.

  "You've really won over What's-his-name," he said.

  "Schrbdinger," I said.

  "Whatever," he said. "That's quite a mouthful for one cat."

  "It's based on a famous incident in science," I explained. "A way of explaining a key concept of quantum physics. Schrbdinger suggested that you imagine taking a living cat and placing it in a thick lead box."

  "And it suffocates," Tim said, shaking his head. "As soon as the air in the box runs out. Yuck. I already don't like this Schrbdinger guy."

  "No, it doesn't suffocate."

  "So there are air holes?"

  "There can't be air holes or it would ruin the experiment," I said. "It's hypothetical."

  "You can't put the cat in a box with no air, even hypothetically."

  "The air or lack thereof is irrelevant."

  "Tell that to the cat," Tim said, petting Schrbdinger, who purred and rubbed his head against Tim, the traitor. "Air's pretty important for us carbon-based life forms. Like electricity for you."

  "All right," I said. "Imagine that there is a self-contained mechanism within the box to generate air."

  "Air holes seem simpler."

  "Once the cat is in the box, you don't know whether it is alive or dead," I said, ignoring him. "Because there are no air holes. And no windows. And it's lead, so you can't X-ray it. Oh, and I forgot

  to mention, before you closed up the box, you also put a vial of cyanide in it."

  "What for? So the cat can commit suicide when it runs out of food? Or more likely water."

  "Imagine there's also a self-contained food and water system," I said. "Besides, the cat won't be in the box that long."

  "That's good," Tim said. "Cats hate being confined,"

  Tim seemed to know rather a lot about cats, but he must have been a trial to his science teachers. Schrbdinger's original example had included a rather complex gadget involving a Geiger counter and a small amount of a radioactive substance, but I decided that wasn't integral enough to the story to go through the trouble of explaining it.

  "So since you can't see inside the box, you have no idea at any given moment whether the cat is alive or whether it has broken the cyanide vial and died."

  "That's cruel. So why not open the box and find out?"

  "Opening the box would kill the cat."

  "Why?"

  "It just does."

  "That's depressing."

  "It's okay," I said. "Until you open the box, the cat could just as well be dead as alive. In quantum terms, the cat is both alive and dead."

  "That's impossible."

  "In the physical world you're familiar with, yes," I said. "But it happens in quantum physics. For example, if you're tracking subatomic particles, they sometimes appear to be in two or more places, simultaneously."

  "Maybe there are two particles, then," Tim said. "Because that sounds about as impossible as the cat being dead and alive at the same time. Unless we're talking about a vampire cat."

  Perhaps I shouldn't have tried explaining quantum physics.

  "You know, he does have pretty long fangs,* Tim said picking up Schrbdinger.

  Perhaps I should just have said I was naming the cat after a famous physicist.

  Delete All Suspects IMS

  "/ nevair drrink . . . milk!" Tim said to the cat, pitching his voice much lower than usual and using an odd accent. 'Incidentally, " he said, dropping back into his normal voice, "I think he's a she."

  "Schrbdinger?"

  "Yeah," Tim said, holding Schrbdinger up so the cat's hind legs were level with his face. "Definitely a she. Do you still want to call her Schrbdinger?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Not a very pretty name for a girl."

  "She's not a girl, she's a cat," I said. "Schrbdinger's a cool name. It's like being named after . . . Newton's apple or Thomas Edison's first lightbulb."

  "Nice Apple," Tim said, scratching the cat's head. "Pretty Light-bulb/'

  "I hate to interrupt the history of science," Maude said, coming down the stairs. "But have either of you seen Mrs. Stallman recently?"

  "No, sorry," Tim said.

  "She hasn't been down here today," I said.

  Maude cocked her head and thought for a moment.

  "You're right," she said. "I hadn't noticed."

  "I had," I said. "You've been much happier without her underfoot. *

  "Do you think something's happened to her?" Tim asked.

  "Not necessarily," Maude said. "She left a note on the kitchen table saying she'd gone out to run some errands. No time, of course, and no idea when she'll be back."

  "So she's not around to sign the letter to the co-lo place," Tim said.

  "No," Maude said. "Damn the woman."

  Though I suspected, from her expression, that she was more relieved than worried by our client's absence.

  "No problem-i" Tim said- "I can drop by later." Although maybe, if he was lucky, Claudia would get

  to visit the co-lo. He'd been a little nervous about his ability to communicate with the techies who ran it.

  "While you're here," Turing began, and then halted in mid-sentence.

  "Tur?" Tim asked.

  "This is bad," Turing said.

  "What's bad?" Maude asked.

  "Someone is sending spam through an open relay on one of Eddie's servers," Turing said.

  "Isn't there anything you can do to stop it?" Maude asked.

  "Not without some kind of access to his system," Turing said. "If I had a password to his machines, I could close the port. If we had physical access to the machine, we could disconnect it from the Internet. But right now, no, I can't really do anything."

  No one answered. A clomping noise announced that Claudia was back, and taking the steps down to the basement two at a time.

  "Hi guys," she said. Then she noticed the frowns on Maude's and Tim's faces. "What's wrong?"

  "Someone's sending spam through Eddie's servers," Tim said. "Without a password, Turing can't stop it."

  "It's worse than I thought," Turing said. "They're not just spamming—they're phishing!"

  Lucky thing they'd explained phishing to him last night, Tim thought. From the looks on their faces, he didn't think anyone wanted to take the time now.

  "People don't really fall for those anymore, do they?" he asked.

  "You may know how to spot a phishing e-mail now," Turing said. "But you're in the minority. And someone just sent out half a million phishing e-mails through an open relay on Eddie Stallman's servers. They're vfake e-mails from Paypal rather than eBay, but it's the same idea."

  "Can you stop them?" Maude asked.

  "Not without access," Turing said.

  "We should tell Sam," Maude said. "For all I know, since we were operating the system when it happened, technically, we could be accessories to the crime."

  "We didn't know about it," Claudia protested.

  "Just how can we prove that?" Maude asked.

  "Especially since it looks as if the crooks have also put their fake site on another one of Eddie's servers," Turing said. "Any minute now, one of the sites we're theoretically controlling will start collecting credit card numbers from gullible Paypal customers."

  "Can't you do something to stop it?" Maude asked.

  "With neither physical nor virtual access, no," Turing said. "I'll tell KingFischer to give that server priority."

  Nothing worse, Tim thought, than knowing a crisis was happening and being unable to do anything about it. Except maybe knowing a crisis was happening and not even understanding what was going on. Apparently, KingFischer and Turing were scrambling to determine who was really responsible for sending the spam, and not having much luck. There was nothing mere humans could do at the moment but wait.

  Which was what he, Maude, and Claudia had been doing for fifteen minutes now. Though it seemed like as many hours. He'd begun to wonder if he was the only one feeling completely lost. Did Maude and Claudia really understand more of what was going on than he did? Or were they just better actors?

  If nothing else, they knew the buzzwords. When Turing mentioned that she and KingFischer had been sniffing the network, Maude noticed Tim's puzzled frown.

  "That's the cybernetic equivalent of having someone on surveillance at the door of a house, watching everyone who goes in and out," she explained.

  "Not only watching everyone, but opening their mail and searching their cars," Claudia added. "The packet sniffer can read what's sent to and from the server."

  "Of course, it doesn't help a lot when no one's sending anything worth reading," Turing grumbled.

  Tim nodded. Okay, he understood sniffing the system, after a fashion. He also understood the gist of it when Turing reported that they'd traced the spam to a server in Bulgaria and couldn't go any further. Evidently Bulgaria, for some reason, had become a haven for maverick hackers and rogue spammers.

  As he sat waiting to hear what happened, he couldn't help thinking that if this was a scene in a TV show or a movie, he'd give the director a D-minus for suspense. In a movie, you'd probably have a tousled but handsome hero typing frantically on a keyboard, while the monitor periodically displayed a flashing red "Password Incorrect" message every time he typed something. To crank up the tension, he'd already have set off some kind of alarm that would call the police or launch the missiles in sixty seconds—one of those nice, picturesque alarms that featured a bunch of flashing lights and maybe a Klaxon horn to add a note of excitement to the scene, along with a helpful digital readout to count down the precise number of seconds until the hero was toast. Then, at the last second, the hero would figure out the secret password, the screen would flash, "Password Correct!" and the digital countdown would stop with one second left. Or maybe frozen with the one already halfway flipped up to reveal the zero. The hero would shove his chair back and collapse with relief, while his entourage cheered and gave each other high-fives and generally carried on enough to indicate what a difficult task the hero had just completed.

  The real-life equivalent just wasn't as dramatic. Occasionally, Turing's ever-so-slightly mechanical voice would give them an update on what she and KingFischer were doing, while Claudia paced up and down, taking an occasional swig from her Dos Equis, and Maude kept htrself busy

  scrubbing off the unidentified bits of crud dried onto the outside of Eddie's refrigerator.

  Must remember to add an item on Mrs. Stallman's bill for cleaning services, he thought, with a smile.

  The cat was sitting on the bar, her tail twitching from time to time, visibly bored and baffled by the lack of any amusing activity in the basement and, unlike Tim, not afraid to show it.

  Tim grabbed a sheet of paper from the trash can, wadded it up, and tossed it for the cat to chase. The cat ignored him.

  "This is bad," Turing said. "If the phisher had used one of the machines here in the basement, we could just unplug the cables, but it's at the co-lo site. We either need a password or some way to prove we're authorized to act for Eddie."

  "Yeah, they're pretty paranoid out there," Claudia said. "Wouldn't even let me in the door."

  "If Mrs. Stallman ever gets back to sign the damned letter," Maude said.

  Tim tried another paper wad. This time the cat deigned to bat at it as it went by.

  "I suppose Tim and I should get back out and keep digging," Claudia said. "The more data we have, the better your chance of guessing his password, right?"

  "KingFischer would rather you say deduce his password, but yes," Turing replied.

  Tim's third paper wad excited the cat so much that she scampered down the bar after it, knocking things aside on the way. A box of small metal parts hit the floor and scattered; a pile of papers spilled onto the floor. The wad landed right in front of one of Eddie's computers and when the cat pounced on it, something slid out of the computer and whacked the cat on the nose, causing her to leap back and knock over more papers.

  "For heavens' sake," Maude exclaimed. "Will you and the cat please go play somewhere else?"

  "Sorry," Tim said. The cat, looking completely unrepentant, turned her back to Maude and went to sniff the thing that had tried to attack her.

  "I had that stuff sorted," Maude said.

  "Someone check the CD drawer," Turing said.

  "Check what?"

  "The CD drawer the cat just pushed out," Turing said. "Get the CD and put it in the laptop."

  Tim picked up the CD. Someone had labeled it with a Sharpie. Eddie, apparently. It read "Eddiel/etc backup" followed by last Sunday's date.