Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Tuesday, April 19

My sibs have been using the computer lab for the last two nights, so I've been frustrated in my attempts to dig deeper into Father's whereabouts on March 16th. I even considered asking around, seeing if anyone knows anything about it, but I figured that word would get back to him and the last thing I want is for him to have a clue about what I suspect.

Tonight, though, the lab's windows are dark. I skirt around the edge of the campus wall, avoiding everyone, then slip into the Learning Center through the back doors. The muffled wail of a trumpet floats down the hallway, telling me Janet is in the admin office tonight. Hopefully, she's exactly as attentive tonight as her blue-haired counterpart has been on my previous evening sessions.

I leave the overhead lights off this time. I don't want a repeat of Chad seeing that someone is in here and swinging by. I get settled and pull up a command console on Mom's laptop. My fingers dance across the keyboard as I route my secure shell connection through its series of misdirections. Finally, I pop Father's email open and start digging.

Nothing that was received or sent on the day of Mom's death looks suspicious. Emails back and forth to a whole bunch of people that I don't care about. Standard philanthropy and do-goodering, setting up scholarships and schmoozing with the elite. Nothing that gives any indication of where he was that day. I scan through the few days before. No luck there either.

I sigh, frustrated. There's got to be something somewhere on this network that will tell me what he was up to. One of the expense reports in Father's email catches my eye. Andrea bought a pair of new shoes that day. Not a useful fact on its own, but it makes me realize that if he went somewhere, he would have paid for something there. If I can figure out a way to access those expenses, that could be all I need.

I get the email address that the expense report came from and do my trick to access its account on the mail server. Nothing incoming, which is what I'd expect for an automated reporting tool, but the sent mail is a treasure trove. Just by glancing at today's expense reports I can see that this thing mails out every time a purchase is made with Institute funds. Copies of the reports go to a half-dozen names that I don't recognize, maybe accountants or auditors or something.

I filter down to the notifications that went out on March 16th. Andrea's shoes are there, along with standard-looking expenses for food, cleaning supplies, and a whopping ten million dollar payment to someone named Adelina Kalchik with a justification line that says "Genetic Contributor Contract Fulfillment." I'm not sure what that means, but it doesn't sound like what I'm looking for.

Junk, junk, junk. So many expenses to keep a place like this running, and no good way to tell what I'm looking for without checking each one. More junk. Wait. There!

A landing fee at the Denver Airport. Of course Father doesn't fly commercial. Father's private jet must have been at the Denver airport the day she died. He was there! Why, though? Did he kill Mom? Why on earth would he want to?

My tablet beeps its warning—I've been here too long. Culling through all those emails took forever and it's nearly lights out. I think I might be at the end of what I can find out on the email server anyway. I'm probably going to need to actually hack into his personal files to figure out what exactly he was doing in Denver.

I should go before my absence arouses suspicions, but I take the risk of running a quick sweep through the network to see what services are running. That will give me a place to start researching what might be vulnerable. With all respect to Janet and Roxanne, I've cracked tougher networks than this one. It's just a matter of finding the right gap in the armor.

Once the scan is done, I stash the results, cover my tracks, and slip quietly back to the dorms where I join my unsuspecting siblings just in time for homework and a movie.