A few quick calls Tuesday evening had confirmed that Randle had indeed been in the agency offices over the weekend. Janice Denard and several other employees all remembered seeing him, though none could verify whether he'd been working at his own desk or had perhaps been in Ben Jackson's cubicle. And no one seemed to know what project Randle might have been working on.
For all Janice Denard's efficiency, Catherine had the feeling that Newcombe-Gold was a pretty loosely run ship.
When the court order came through this morning, Nick had talked Catherine out of accompanying him to take the man's fingerprints.
"Really, Cath," Nick said. "It's not just necessary-how many CSIs does it take to screw in a light bulb, anyway?"
"AC or DC? Fluorescent or incandescent?"
But in the end, she sent Nick off to Newcombe-Gold, by himself.
Probably a good call. She was still pissed at Randle for balking and making such a scene, yesterday. Sure, the man was well within his rights; but there was just something about the guy that got her hackles up. Her presence might only serve to accelerate a simple fingerprinting into another scene….
Thanks to some speedy imaging work by Tomas Nunez and his trusty compu-posse, the ad agency would be back at work some time this morning. They were using copies of their old drives, but all their information was there, and they could return to business as usual. At least that problem was out of the way, and it would encourage Newcombe-Gold to be even more cooperative in what could prove to be difficult days ahead.
While she waited for Nick's return, Catherine for the third (or was it the fourth?) time went through what they had learned about Randle, thanks to investigative work by O'Riley, who had talked to neighbors and other agency employees, and seen to the routine computer checks.
Divorced from an alcoholic ex-wife named Elaine, Randle had sole custody of their fourteen-year-old daughter, Heather; he volunteered as a youth counselor at Scenic Peak Presbyterian on Del Webb Boulevard in Summerlin. He and his daughter lived in a two-story stucco home on Crown Vista Lane, not far off Fort Apache Road and Prize Lake Drive.
Randle had originally lost custody of the girl in the divorce, but when Elaine was charged with DUI and reckless endangerment of her daughter, the father had gotten the child back with little trouble. For her part, the ex-wife seemed to have kept her nose clean since her last arrest five years ago. Court records showed that she still had contact with her daughter, through supervised visits.
Looking vaguely nautical in today's ensemble of white Polo with horizontal navy stripes and navy Dockers, Nick Stokes came jauntily back in, waving a white card. "Stop the presses-got the dude's prints, right here."
"When you say 'dude,' are you trying to make me feel young?" Catherine asked, swinging around in her chair. "Because it's not working…. Let's get these loaded in the computer."
"You got it."
They were in the corridor in seconds.
Nick said, "And I'm just saying 'dude,' 'cause I'm just…saying dude."
Catherine stopped abruptly and so did Nick, who looked at her wide-eyed as she touched his chest with a forefinger. "Nicky, never forget-it's all about me."
He grinned at her. "Sometimes that does slip my mind."
They were on the move again, Catherine saying, "I want to know ASAP if there's a match."
"Wouldn't it be nice if we could nail this guy."
Catherine looked sideways at him. "You think he's guilty?"
"I don't think anything!…I just meant…Well…he is a good suspect."
"He's a great suspect."
"That's doesn't make him guilty, Cath."
"No. Of course not."
"Only the evidence can do that."
"Right, Nicky. Hey, we're cool."
"You don't think…'cause of…your daughter…My background, and…"
"Nick! We're professionals."
They had already fed the prints of all the other employees into the computer; and of the two sets of prints on Ben Jackson's keyboard, one belonged to Ben himself, and the other set remained unknown.
"Either Randle is our match," Nick said, "or…"
"Or we're back to square one. I hate going back to square one."
Nick shrugged as they turned the corner on the corridor. "Maybe not square one. Ruben Gold left town Friday, yeah, but we should still look at him, talk to him…and Roxanne Scott was in the office on Saturday."
Catherine threw a smirk at Nicky. "And if neither of them pans out?"
Another shrug, but less upbeat. "We really are back at square one."
Catherine dreaded that-starting over, and maybe looking outside the company somehow. Newcombe-Gold employed a rent-a-cop security outfit, which O'Riley was looking into; maybe some security guard had…
But Catherine knew she was getting ahead of herself. First things first.
While Nick took care of the fingerprints, Catherine checked in with Nunez. The computer expert had returned the ad agency's equipment, but he was still sifting through the copies he'd made for himself.
She found the tall, unlikely computer geek still in the garage where he and his crew had first set up. The others were gone, and Nunez was left to wade through the mountain of information on his own.
"What's new?" she asked, giving him a smile.
Glancing up from the screen of his monitor, he said, "You clearly haven't heard." Catherine frowned. "What haven't I heard?"
"Hey-I'll tell you, but don't shoot the messenger."
"Well, not to kill, anyway. What, Tomas?"
"Mobley took me off your case…. Temporarily! Just temporarily…."
Catherine felt red-hot anger rising inside her, but she managed not to detonate all over Nunez. "And why would the esteemed Sheriff Mobley do that?"
He sighed, shrugged. "Sorry-but some thoughtless asshole hacked into a bank last night, and the sheriff's got me on that. I'll start working your stuff again, ASAP-but Mobley's on my tail to find this hacker, stat."
"Gee, I wonder if this bank has a president or chairman of the board who's a potential contributor to Mobley's mayoral campaign or anything…"
"Hey, I don't do politics!"
Her hands came up in front of her and she pressed them together, her knuckles turning white.
"Easy, Cath-it's not all bad news."
"Improve my mood. Quick."
Nunez did his best: "We imaged and processed all thirty hard drives using Encase, version four."
Catherine nodded-she'd heard of, though never used, the Guidance Software product. She knew it allowed for bit-by-bit copying of hard drives, zip disks, USB devices, even Palm Pilots.
"Then," Nunez was saying, "I verified the copies using an MD5 Hash algorithm."
"Of course you did," she said, invoking a light humor she didn't feel, both of them knowing she had no idea what an MD5 Hash whatever-the-hell was.
"It's like a digital fingerprint," Nunez said. "The odds of two files having the same hash value and not being identical is two raised to the 128th power, or 340 billion billion billion billion to one."
She shook her head. "You can't get better odds anywhere in Vegas."
"Not unless you're the house. Cath, that's about the same as winning the LOTTO four in a row."
"So, we're sure you got everything then."
"Damn sure," he said. "And that's not just the files-it's deleted files, file slack and unallocated space. If there was ever kiddie porn on any of these machines, I'll find it."
"That's good news. But when?"