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cursed. “But I’ve read the reporting he sent in, and most
of it was pretty limp. If there’s a tie-in to what he was doing
after he dropped out of sight, I don’t see it.” There was a sudden
increase in the volume of the voices in the background, and
Richards said, “Listen, Dawson, I’ve got special agents
interrogating half the population of Lincoln. If you’ve got
something for me, spill it. Otherwise, stop wasting my
time.”
    “All right,” Jack said, fortifying
himself for Richards’ reaction to what Jack was about to tell him.
“Here’s what I think went down...” He briefly described what he
thought had happened, based on the information from the file he’d
taken from Clement and the subsequent reporting on FIDS from the
field teams in Lincoln.
    When Jack finished, there was a long
pause on the far end of the line, and all he could hear was the
hubbub in the background. He thought for a moment that Richards had
given up on his tale and had just forgotten to hit the end call
button on his phone.
    Finally, Richards spoke.
“Shit.”
    “And here I thought you were going
to either hang up on me, or tell me that was the most ridiculous
thing you’d ever heard,” Jack said drily.
    “The only thing I wish right now,
Dawson,” Richards told him, “was that Clement hadn’t been such a
sentimental idiot and had sent you out here instead of sending you
home to cry over Crane buying the farm. We’d figured out some of
what you’ve come up with, but your story makes sense, just like it
did on the Bronsky case. You’re sharp, Dawson.”
    Jack nearly fell out of his chair.
Richards never complimented anybody on anything. But he wasn’t a
fool: Jack had helped him solve the Bronsky case, a multiple murder
spree that had spanned four states and had completely stumped the
investigators. Richards hadn’t bought in to how Jack had done his
part in putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but to him it
didn’t matter: all Richards wanted was to sort out what happened
and nail bad guys. For him, the only thing that mattered was
results. With Jack’s help, Joseph Bronsky and his brother Cain were
finally stopped, killed in a shootout after refusing to surrender.
“Can I make a suggestion or two?” Jack asked him, deciding to try
and press his advantage.
    “I’m listening.”
    “First, pull any hard drives or
other data storage devices for any of the computers in the lab and
get them to forensics to see if they can recover anything from
them. I’ll bet at least one of them was a standalone machine, not
connected to any networks.”
    “That’s going to be a bit
difficult,” Richards said slowly.
    “Why?” Jack asked.
    “Somebody already beat us to it. You
must have seen in the photos that those machines were smashed to
bits. The hard drives were literally ripped out of every single one
of them. Didn’t bother with screwdrivers. You sure your buddy Crane
didn’t yank them out?”
    “No,” Jack told him, silently
cursing that bit of bad luck. “That wasn’t his style. If he had
tampered with hardware, it would’ve been subtle, precise. Most of
what he did was with software. Unless his assailant took it, you
should find a USB flash drive...somewhere.”
    “We’ll look again, but so far we
didn’t find one, either in the lab or on his body or
clothing.”
    “The next thing is an accomplice,”
Jack said. “He had help getting into the lab, and I’ll bet it was
the same person who erased the security camera recordings and data
logs.”
    “We had that
figured out,” Richards said, his voice tinged with annoyance as if
to say, We’re not complete idiots, you
know . “And we actually have a likely
suspect: Ellen Bienkowski. We’ve found all of the university’s
security people who had the necessary access, except her. She
wasn’t scheduled to go on leave, but she hasn’t returned any calls
and her house is empty. We’re trying to track her
down.”
    Frowning, Jack told him, “The