Desh knew he had little choice but to trust the oversized hacker. He stared at him a while longer, and then finally began to fill him in on Kira Miller’s tenure at NeuroCure, and the events that had transpired a year earlier. Griffin scribbled notes on a large pad of paper. Desh didn’t mention anything having to do with terrorists or Swiss banks, ending his account when the trail of the elusive Kira Miller had ended at the Cincinnati airport.
Griffin whistled when Desh was finished. “Fascinating,” he said. “And very troubling.”
Desh noted approvingly that Griffin didn’t attempt to explore why Desh had taken it upon himself to look for a psychopath who was wanted by the authorities for the brutal murder of several innocents.
“So here’s where I’d like to start,” said Desh, “I’d like to know which scientific journals this Kira Miller subscribed to as of a year ago. I’m not interested in any that were sent to her work. I want to know the journals she got at home.”
“Do you have a list of probables?”
“I’m afraid not. And, unfortunately, I went online and discovered there are hundreds of scientific journals in her areas of interest.”
The giant frowned. “Then this could take a long time. If you tell me the name of a journal I can tell you if she was a subscriber. But there’s no way to start with her address and work backwards to the journals.” He raised his eyebrows. “Not unless you’re prepared to engage in a little social engineering.”
Desh was familiar with this euphemism used by hackers. “You mean get information from humans rather than the computer.”
“Exactly. Man cannot hack using computers alone. The best hackers are also the most proficient at milking information from humans—the system’s weakest links.”
Desh eyed Griffin with interest. “Okay,” he said. “I’m game.”
“Great,” said Griffin, beaming happily. He swiveled his chair to face the monitors and his fingers flew over the keyboard, calling up one web page after another as Desh looked over his shoulder. The quartet of pricey computers, linked together, operated at blazing speeds, and Griffin’s Internet connection was the best that money could buy, and included custom enhancements. The end result of this was that web pages crammed with data and pictures and graphics each flashed up on the oversized monitor, complete, faster than the eye could follow.
Griffin scrolled through nested menus and clicked on specific options before Desh could even begin to read them. Moments later he was several layers deep in the internal computer files of the D.C. police.
“I’m surprised you can breach a police system so easily,” muttered Desh.
Griffin shook his head. “You can’t. Their firewalls and security systems are state-of-theart,” he explained. “But I found a way in last year and created a backdoor entrance so I could return anytime I wanted. And I can use the D.C system to query the San Diego Police Department’s computers for their file on the Larry Lusetti murder investigation.” Griffin continued pulling up pages on the computer as he spoke, and moments later he had the file he was after. He skimmed through it rapidly, pausing to scribble a few names, a telephone number, and a date on his note pad.
Griffin took a deep breath. “I believe I’m ready,” he said. He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had written down. A woman named Jill answered, but within a minute he had Roger Tripp on the phone, the postal carrier who had long covered the mail route that included Kira Miller’s condo.
“Hello, Mr. Tripp,” said Griffin. “Do you have a minute?”
“Well … I was just about to head out on my route,” he said. “What is this about? Jill said you were a detective.”
“That’s right, sir. Detective Bob Garcia.” Griffin consulted his notepad. “I work with Detective Marty Fershtman. You may remember that Detective Fershtman interviewed you about a Kira Miller on September 28th of last year in regard to a homicide investigation we were conducting.”
“I remember,” said Tripp warily.
“Great. This won’t take but a minute. We’ve continued our investigation, and we had one additional question we were hoping you could help us with.”
“I’ll try,” said postal worker Tripp.
“Great. Do you happen to remember the titles of any periodicals that you delivered to Dr. Miller? Scientific oriented periodicals,” he clarified. “Do you know the type I mean?”
“I think so,” said Tripp, showing absolutely no curiosity as to why the police had interest in this information. “They kind of stood out, if you know what I mean. Not exactly light bedtime reading. Let me see.” He paused for several long moments to visualize these journals in his head. “Human Brain Mapping. That one comes to my memory the clearest. And then, um … the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Either that or something really close. And then, ah, … the Journal of Applied Gerontology. I wouldn’t bet my life these are the exact titles, but I’m pretty sure.”
Griffin scribbled these names on the pad beside his other notes. He winked at Desh before thanking Tripp for his help and ending the call.
“Remarkable,” said Desh, his voice filled with respect. He had wanted to begin his search for Kira Miller by identifying the scientific journals he knew would be indispensible to her, but he had been far from certain this would be possible. But Griffin had done so almost instantly, and without even breaking a sweat.
“Quite effective, wouldn’t you say? If you have the computer skills to get information that establishes instant credibility, like dropping the name of the officer who interviewed Tripp, the world is your oyster. Once you’ve laid out your bone fides, people will tell you just about anything.”
“So it appears,” noted Desh with amusement. “Thanks for the demonstration.”
“You’re quite welcome,” said Griffin with a wide grin. “So now what?”
“Can you hack into each journal’s database of subscribers?”
“I’ll try not to be insulted that you phrased that as a question,” said Griffin. “That’s like asking Mozart if he can play chopsticks. This is why you’re paying me the big bucks,” he added, and then immediately began racing through icons and menus at an Olympic pace.
“Once you’re in, ah … Amadeus,” said Desh, “I’d like to focus in on people who bought online subscriptions to all three journals, or even two of the three, about nine months to a year ago. Chances are, this will be Kira Miller.”
“This might take a while,” warned Griffin. He got up and walked the few paces to his tiny kitchen, effortlessly lifting one of two large wicker chairs from around the small dinette and dropping it beside his own chair. Desh sat down appreciatively and continued to watch Griffin as he juggled multiple screens and programs with seemingly superhuman agility.
After about an hour he was finally able to hack into the journals’ systems, but his subsequent analysis of subscriber databases was fruitless. Over the past year, in fact, not a single person had begun subscribing to more than one of the three journals, either online or by snail-mail.
“She must have decided she could live without them while she was in hiding,” suggested Griffin.
Desh pursed his lips in concentration. His best chance to find her was to count on her not making mistakes. “All right, Matt,” said Desh, “let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine she has your level of skill with computers,” he began.
Griffin looked amused at this thought. “My level of skill? My imagination may be prodigious, but that’s a lot to ask of it,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.