Doubt (Caroline Auden #1) - C. E. Tobisman Page 0,42

scoured it for all copies of the article. At the very least, someone should have stolen his computer . . . or hacked it.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your husband’s computer?” Caroline asked.

Yvonne’s eyes narrowed in distrust.

“I used to be a software engineer,” Caroline explained. “My dad’s a cybersecurity consultant. I might be able to figure out what happened to that article.”

After another second of consideration, Yvonne nodded her assent.

“The password is ‘Turing,’” she said.

“Like the British cryptographer?” Caroline asked.

“Yes. My husband loved all things World War II.”

Caroline sat down in the faded leather armchair and fired up the dead scientist’s computer. His desktop held links to research apps and spreadsheets. No sign of the article.

She checked his documents folder. Still nothing.

Everyone knew the article had once been on Franklin’s computer. The question was: Where did it go? With quick keystrokes, she began probing the possibilities.

“What are you doing?” Yvonne’s voice floated from over Caroline’s left shoulder.

Caroline startled at the sound. She’d forgotten that Yvonne was there.

“When you delete something, it isn’t really gone,” Caroline explained. “It just goes to the unallocated space on the hard drive.”

Yvonne fell silent.

Caroline was glad the widow hadn’t pried into how she had learned to search places most people wouldn’t—or couldn’t—touch. Or why she was so good at it.

Using the GREP utility, Caroline scanned the unallocated space for bits containing three words: SuperSoy, kidney, and injury. So long as those words appeared somewhere on the bits of the hard drive, she’d find them.

When the utility finished running, Caroline sat back, her brow wrinkling. “There’s nothing in Franklin’s unallocated space.” Not only had GREP failed to retrieve anything, but all of the bits were zeroed out.

Eyeing the overwritten bits, Caroline shuddered. No one had yet been able to say for certain that Dr. Heller had been murdered. And yet here, in the zeroed-out bits, was proof that someone had destroyed data on the dead scientist’s computer. It was an ominous sign.

“What’s wrong?” Yvonne asked.

“Someone ran a tool to overwrite the unallocated space. They were very thorough. Whatever was once on this computer is now gone.”

“Did someone hack it?” Yvonne asked.

“Maybe,” Caroline said, moving quickly to check the computer’s event logs. Hackers avoided leaving tracks. They wiped event logs, router logs, and IDS logs to remove all records of remote connections. Empty event logs would bolster the conclusion that someone had accessed Dr. Heller’s computer remotely.

But to Caroline’s surprise, none of the logs on Franklin’s computer had been cleared.

She stared at the intact logs in dismay. If the computer hadn’t been hacked, that meant that someone had sat down in the same chair where she now sat and had deleted the articles, right here on this computer.

“Who had access to this office?” Caroline asked.

“Almost no one,” Yvonne answered. “Franklin. Me. Franklin’s research partner, Dr. Wong. You can’t get in here without going through security.”

Caroline remembered the guards they’d passed. Franklin had taken security seriously. Far more seriously than most research scientists. Not that it had helped him in the end.

“What about lab techs?” Caroline asked. “How did they share research with Dr. Heller?”

“They shared links.”

Caroline pivoted around to make eye contact with Yvonne. “Would those links contain data used in the article?”

“Yes. They’re over here,” Yvonne said, pointing to a folder on the monitor.

Caroline quickly navigated to the list of links. Her fingers tingled with the possibility of retrieving some part of the lost article. Even without the article itself, perhaps the data would allow her to show a direct connection between SuperSoy and kidney failure . . .

She opened the first link.

A message flashed onto the screen: Error 404—page not found. The page you are trying to reach does not exist.

“Damn it,” she muttered, opening the next link and getting another 404 error.

By the third link, Caroline knew she’d find nothing.

“These links are all dead,” she said, turning back to Yvonne. “Someone took them down.”

In response, Yvonne just shook her head.

Caroline sat back in the chair and let out a long breath. Her eyes wandered across the objects on Franklin’s desk. A hardbound copy of the Physicians’ Desk Reference lay on one corner. A bust of Winston Churchill sat next to it. On the other side of the desk were two framed pictures covered in a thin coating of dust. Untouched. Undisturbed. Just like the rest of the room.

The office had given up its secrets, the article, without a fight. But why? How?

Leaning forward, Caroline lifted a framed picture of Franklin