City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(13)
“I was planning on taking you to the attic. Here are the stairs.”
D’Agosta and Curry followed the spry man to a set of narrow stairs, which led into a half-height attic. When Marvin switched on the light, D’Agosta saw a space filled with dust and smelling of mildew. The air was stifling, and they had to crouch low.
“Over here,” Marvin said, pointing to a large, new metal cabinet, with the door open. “This is the central control of the security system. It’s essentially a large safe. No way to get in unless you have the code—and our perp did not have the code.”
“So how’d he get in?”
“Trojan horse.”
“Meaning?”
“The Sharps and Gund system is famous for being impervious to computer hacking. They accomplish this by partially isolating each security system from the Internet. You can’t transmit data into the system, ever. Not even the Sharps and Gund main office can transmit data to a security system. The security system is designed to send data only one way: out. Hackers cannot get in remotely.”
“So what if the system needs to be updated or reset?”
“A service technician has to physically go to the location, open the safe with a code that not even the owner has—that not even the technician has, it’s generated by a randomizer at the main office and orally transmitted to the tech when he’s on-site—and download new data into the system with a direct connection.”
D’Agosta shifted, trying not to bump his head against the ceiling. He could see a pair of rat’s eyes gleaming in a corner, peering at them. Even in a twenty-million-dollar house, you got rats. He wished Marvin would hurry up and get to the point.
“All right, so how’d the perp get around all this?”
“The first thing he did a few days ago. Out on the street in front of the house, he used a blocking device to interrupt the hourly fair-weather reports of the cellular. He could do this from a parked car, with a fairly inexpensive electromagnetic jammer. Just a couple of random bursts of interference that blocked the cellular signal a few times. It fooled Sharps and Gund into thinking the unit was going bad and needed to be replaced. So they sent two guys—always two guys—out with a new unit. Normally they double-park and one guy stays with the van. But your perp used a couple of traffic cones to snag a really convenient parking space for the van. Just down the street. Very tempting. So they park there and both guys go to the house, leaving the van unprotected for about three minutes.”
“You worked this all out?”
“Sure did.”
D’Agosta nodded, impressed.
“Your intruder breaks into the truck, gets his hands on the cellular device, swaps out the SD card for one with malware on it, and puts it back. The repairmen return, collect their stuff, go into the house, open the impregnable safe with the code given them from the home office, install the new cellular device, and leave. Then the malware downloads itself into the system and hijacks it. Totally. That damn malware unlocked the front door for your killer, then locked it behind him. It turned off the phones. It shut down the IR beams and motion detectors and pressure-plate sensors while leaving the CCTV cameras functioning. It even unlocked the safe so the perp could take the hard drives when he left.”
“How could some anonymous perp possibly know enough about the system to create this malware?” D’Agosta asked.
“He couldn’t.”
“You mean, inside job?”
“Absolutely no question. The intruder must have decompiled the firm’s system software in order to write this malware. He knew exactly what he was doing—and he knew the company’s proprietary way of doing business. There’s no doubt in my mind that an S and G employee or ex-employee was involved. And not just anyone, but someone with a deep familiarity with the installation process—of this particular system.”
This was a damn good lead. But this attic was getting to D’Agosta. He was bathed in sweat and the air was stifling. He couldn’t wait to get back out into the December cold. “Say, are we done up here?”
“I think so.” But instead of moving toward the stairs, Marvin lowered his voice. “Got to tell you, though, Lieutenant, when I tried to get a list of present and past S and G employees, I hit a stone wall. The CEO, Jonathan Ingmar, is a first-class obstructionist—”
“Let us handle that, Mr. Marvin.” D’Agosta fairly guided him by the shoulders to the staircase. They descended into the cooler air.
“It’s all going in my report,” said Marvin. “The technical details, the specs of the system, the works. I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mr. Marvin. You’ve done an excellent job.”
When they emerged onto the fifth floor, D’Agosta took a number of deep, grateful breaths.
8
MARTINI?”
In the apartment on Fifth Avenue, with its living room overlooking Central Park and the Onassis Reservoir, its surface gleaming in the late-afternoon sun, Bryce Harriman eased himself back on the Louis Quatorze sofa, maintaining a cool demeanor, reporter’s notebook resting on his knee. The notebook was, of course, for show only: everything was being recorded on his cell phone, tucked into the breast pocket of his suit.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Harriman was used to people breaking out the cocktails before noon—he had grown up with that sort of crowd—but in this case he was working and wanted to keep his wits about him. On the other hand, he could see that Izolda Ozmian, sitting opposite him on a chaise longue, really wanted a drink herself…and that would be something he should encourage.