From Potter`s Field

'Thank you, Frances,' I said. 'I am pleased you feel that way.'

'Excuse me a minute.'

She got up and returned to the kitchen. I heard a refrigerator door shut, water run and pots and pans quietly bang. Momentarily, she was back with the bottle of chardonnay inside an ice bucket, which she set on the glass coffee table.

'The bread is in the oven, asparagus is in the steamer, and all that's left is to saute the shrimp,' she announced, reseating herself.

'Frances,' I said, 'your police department has been on-line with CAIN for how long now?'

'Only for several months,' she replied. 'We were one of the first departments in the country to hook up with it.'

'What about NYPD?'

'They're getting around to it. The Transit Police have a more sophisticated computer system and a great team of programmers and analysts. So we got on-line very early.'

'Thanks to you.'

She smiled.

I went on, 'I know the Richmond Police Department is on-line. So are Chicago, Dallas, Charlotte, the Virginia State Police, the British Transport Police. And quite a number of other departments both here and abroad are in the process.'

'What's on your mind?' she asked me.

'Tell me what happened when the body of the unidentified woman we believe Gault killed was found Christmas Eve. How was CAIN a factor?'

'The body was found in Central Park early in the morning, and of course I heard about it immediately. As I've already mentioned, the MO sounded familiar, so I entered details into CAIN to see what came back. This would have been by late afternoon.'

'And what came back?'

'Very quickly CAIN called our VICAP terminal with a request for more information.'

'Can you recall exactly what sort of information?'

She thought for a moment. 'Well, let's see. It was interested in the mutilation, wanting to know from which parts of the body skin had been excised and what class cutting instrument had been used. It wanted to know if there had been a sexual assault, and if so, was the penetration oral, vaginal, anal or other. Some of this we couldn't know since an autopsy had not yet been performed. However, we did manage to get other information by calling the morgue.'

'What about other questions?' I asked. 'Did CAIN ask anything that struck you as peculiar or inappropriate?'

'Not that I'm aware of.' She regarded me quizzically.

'Has CAIN ever sent any messages to the Transit Police terminal that have struck you as peculiar or confusing?'

She thought some more. 'We've entered, at the most, twenty cases since going on-line in November. Rapes, assaults, homicides that I thought might be relevant to VICAP because the circumstances were unusual or the victims were unidentified.

'And the only messages from CAIN that I'm aware of have been routine requests for further information. There has been no sense of urgency until this Central Park case. Then CAIN sent an Urgent mail waiting message in flashing bold because the system had gotten a hit.'

'Should you get any messages that are out of the ordinary, Frances, please contact Benton Wesley immediately,'

'Would you mind telling me what it is you're looking for?'

'There was a breach of security at ERF in October. Someone broke in at three in the morning, and circumstances indicate Gault may have been behind it.'

'Gault?' Commander Perm was baffled. 'How could that have happened?'

'One of ERF's system analysts, as it turned out, was connected to a spy shop in northern Virginia that was frequented by Gault. We know this analyst - a woman - was involved in the break-in, and the fear is that Gault put her up to it.'

'Why?'

'What wouldn't he like better than to get inside CAIN and have at his disposal a database containing the details of the most horrendous crimes committed in the world?'

'Isn't there some way to keep him out?' she asked. 'To tighten security so there is no way he or anyone else can slip through the system?'

'We thought that had been taken care of,' I replied. 'In fact, my niece, who is their top programmer, was certain the system was secure.'

'Oh yes. I think I've heard about your niece. She's really CAIN's creator.'

'She has always been gifted with computers and would rather be around them than most people.'

'I'm not sure I blame her. What is her name?'

'Lucy.'

'And she's how old?'

'Twenty-one.'

She got up from the couch. 'Well, maybe there's just some glitch that is causing these weird messages you're speaking of. A bug. And Lucy will figure it out.'

'We can always hope.'

'Bring your wine and you can keep me company in the kitchen,' she said.

But we did not get that far before her telephone rang. Commander Penn answered it and I watched the pleasant evening drain from her face.

'Where?' she quietly said, and I knew the tone of voice quite well. I recognized the frozen stare.

I was already opening the hall closet door to fetch my coat when she said, I'll be right there.'

Snow had begun drifting down like ashes when we arrived at the Second Avenue subway station in the squalid section of lower Manhattan known as the Bowery.

Wind howled and blue and red lights throbbed as if the night were injured, and stairs leading into that hellhole had been cordoned off. Derelicts had been herded out, commuters had been detoured, and news vans and cars were arriving in droves because an officer with the Transit Police Homeless Unit was dead.

His name was Jimmy Davila. He was twenty-seven. He had been a cop one year.

'You better put these on.' An officer with an angry, pale face handed me a reflective vest and surgical mask and gloves.

Police were pulling flashlights and more vests out of the back of a van, and several officers with darting eyes and riot guns flashed past me down the stairs. Tension was palpable. It pulsed in the air like a dark pounding heart, and the voices of legions who had come to aid their gunned-down comrade blended with scuffing feet and the strange language radios speak. Somewhere far off a siren screamed.

Commander Penn handed me a high-powered flashlight as we were escorted down by four officers who were husky in Kevlar and coats and reflective vests. A train blew by in a stream of liquid steel, and we inched our way along a catwalk that led us into dark catacombs littered with crack vials, needles, garbage and filth. Lights licked over hobo camps set up on pallets and ledges within inches of rails, and the air was fetid with the stench of human waste.

Beneath the streets of Manhattan were forty-eight acres of tunnels where in the late eighties as many as five thousand homeless people had lived. Now the numbers were substantially smaller, but their presence was still found in filthy blankets piled with shoes, clothes and odds and ends.

Grimy stuffed animals and fuzzy fake insects had been hung like fetishes from walls. The squatters, many of whom the Homeless Unit knew by name, had vanished like shadows from their subterranean world, except for Freddie, who was roused from a drugged sleep. He sat up beneath an army blanket, looking about, dazed.

'Hey, Freddie, get up.' A flashlight shone on his face.

He raised a bandaged hand to his eyes, squinting as small suns probed the darkness of his tunnel.

'Come on, get up. What'd you do to your hand?'

'Frostbite,' he mumbled, staggering to his feet.

'You got to take care of yourself. You know you can't stay here. We got to walk you out. You want to go to a shelter?'

'No, man.'

'Freddie,' the officer went on in a loud voice, 'you know what's happened down here? You heard about Officer Davila?'

'I dunno nothing,' Freddie swayed and caught himself, squinting in the lights.

'I know you know Davila. You call him Jimbo.'

'Yeah, Jimbo. He's all right.'

'No, I'm afraid he's not all right, Freddie. He got shot down here tonight. Someone shot Jimbo and he's dead.'

Freddie's yellow eyes got wide. 'Oh no, man.' He cast about as if the killer might be looking on - as if someone might want to blame him for this.