CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cynthia Mallory retrieved the mail from the box in front of their two-family house in Hollis, Queens. She could hear Dennis out back, trying to get the lawn mower started. She smiled as each pull of the starting cord was followed by chugging, then silence, then some swearing. She entered the house through the front door and proceeded to leaf through the envelopes. One, addressed to her, from Queens Metropolitan Hospital Neurologic Institute, caused her breath to catch slightly. She stuffed it into the pocket of her housecoat. An unfamiliar envelope, addressed to Dennis, caught her eye. She headed out the back door to see her husband adjusting a screw on the top of the uncooperative mower.
“Come on ya piece of … junk,” he barked as he whipped the cord so hard this time it snapped. “Ahhh … crud!”
“Denny, why don’t you just go down to Sears and get a new one?”
“Do you know what they’re asking for one that’s not half as good as this?”
“No, I don’t. But how much do they want for one that works?”
That stopped him. She could always stop him. He threw in the towel and the broken cord, smiled, and asked, “What’s up?”
“There’s a letter addressed to you from GlobalSync.”
“Junk mail?” he asked, wiping his hands and heading toward her.
“No, I don’t think so. It looks serious.”
He grabbed it and tore it open. “Holy Christmas!”
Cynthia was glad that he’d been heeding her admonishments to cut down on the swearing. “What dear?”
“Look at this!”
It was a check. There, next to a big greasy thumbprint was the computer-printed amount of $100,000.
“Holy shit!” Cynthia said, violating her own edict. “What’s this for?”
“I dunno. Probably some computer screw-up. I never heard of this company.”
“My God, that’s an awfully big mistake.”
“Let me go call them and see what this is all about.”
“How about we cash it first and wait ’til they call us?”
He smiled and kissed her on the forehead. “Sometimes you exhibit the heart of a jewel thief, you know that?”
“Just think of the shiny new lawn mower we can get you with that. You deserve it.”
“Don’t cozy up to me just because I’m suddenly rich.” He put his arm around her as they headed toward the house. His hand dropped to her behind where he stole a few soft pats then held on, adding, “A small fortune in my hands.”
Six frustrating minutes later, Dennis hung up the phone having made no progress. He decided he needed to go to the GlobalSync offices himself. Cynthia went with him, the letter from the hospital forgotten for the moment.
Janice and Hiccock were escorted by two-uniformed Madison, Wisconsin, cops past the crime scene tape into Martha Krummel’s home. Although the local police already broomed the house, Hiccock and Janice flew here to see it firsthand. There was a chance that Janice could pick up some psychological clues as well. Once inside, the smell reminded Hiccock of his grandmother’s house: it evinced the same Cashmere Bouquet — scented memory. He fingered through a candy dish, found and unwrapped a cherry red sourball, and took one more nostalgic deep breath. They studied each room. The kitchen was locked in a time warp, every appliance the cutting edge of 1960’s Westinghouse technology. Hiccock imagined a woman dressed in a Pat Perkins day dress or in Capri pants like Mary Tyler Moore in the old Dick Van Dyke Show, with a casserole and pink oven mitts, singing a song from the 1964 World’s Fair. “The future will be dandy. The kitchen will be handy. At the Westinghouse hall of …”
The living room possessed the quiet comfort of a cozy place where someone smoked a pipe while Martha read or did needlepoint. As he appraised the room, his eyes were drawn to the huge RCA furniture console color television and hi-fi stereo unit. Then, it struck him. In the whole house there wasn’t a stick of furniture, or anything else for that matter, that was acquired after the 1970s. Bill examined her collection of books, all garden-related, while Tyler searched through the drawers.
“There’s nothing here,” he said, his head tilted sideways, reading spines.
“So how did a seventy-something grandma master railroad signaling and control?” Janice asked as she rummaged through a drawer full of hatpins and hair combs.
Out of frustration, Hiccock collapsed in the chair behind Martha’s desk situated in front of the picture window overlooking her garden. To Janice, who was standing behind him, it appeared that he was looking through the window at the now abandoned flowers and shrubs. He wasn’t.
“What’s wrong with this picture?” he said.
“Nothing. She had a great life. I’d like to have it set up like this when I’m her age. Without the federal charges, of course.”
“C’mon, we’re looking right at it!”
“Carly Simone, the White House. Back to you Brian. How was that?”
“You blew it at the end by asking me ‘how was that?’ Never break your attitude until the cameraman says ‘cut!’ You just showed 10 million Americans that you are worried. Now let’s try it again and here’s a trick. Practice a completion face, the face that you will put on when you are finished. It should say, ‘there I’ve told you, but I stand ready to answer any questions you might have on follow up.’ Okay. And camera’s rolling, speed!”
Carly counted down to two then silently to zero and began, “…in 3, 2, … Good evening, Brian. In a move that caught Washington by surprise today, the White House was sold at auction to a bidder from Boulder, Colorado on Ebay!” As she read another gibberish story into the camera that was only feeding a tape machine for her review, Carly’s rehearsal for her new job as White House science beat reporter for MSNBC was taking shape. She was learning “on camera” etiquette, in a crash course, from one of the best field producers at NBC. He had been flown in specially from his ranch in Montana and out of semi-retirement. The network was hot on Carly and wanted her “on-air” in record time. They worked for two days on when to smile and when not to smile. She mastered the skill of listening to the earpiece and talking at the same time. Eventually they moved on to audio prompting, where she practiced becoming a ventriloquist’s dummy for a producer who would put words in her ear only to be regurgitated a split second later.
Hiccock and Tyler came blasting through the doors that identified the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Electronic Crimes Lab as an “authorized personnel only” area, pushing Martha’s computer on a rolling cart. Kyle Hansen, thirty-two and already the top computer expert for the FBI, followed.
“Is that all of it?”
Hiccock nodded yes. “What’s a seventy-year-old gardening grandmother need with a computer?”
“Careful, Bill. You’ll have the AARP all over you for that insensitive remark,” Janice said.
The technicians hooked up the machine and rebooted it in record time. Hansen got to work.
“You’re looking for any activity that would bring her close to railroad info and practices,” Hiccock said.
“One of our Cyber Action Teams obtained a warrant and secured the ISP’s records from her account. We know when she logged on and for how long, but we only know the material that she downloaded, which was supplied by her internet service provider,” Hansen explained as he typed away.
“We’re going to need more than that and maybe her hard drive will tell us.”