Doubt (Caroline Auden #1) - C. E. Tobisman Page 0,51
the position of the letter in the alphabet.
Caroline’s heart pounded.
She scribbled Franklin’s final text message vertically along one margin of the legal pad. Then she counted which letter each number corresponded to and wrote the letter on the pad: 620-16.5-14-9-7-13-1 became FTP.ENIGMA.
Caroline almost shouted with joy. The text message was an FTP address! That meant Franklin had an FTP site—a secret repository of document files.
To confirm her hypothesis, Caroline typed the words “FTP.ENIGMA” into the URL pane of her web browser. The page instantly changed, revealing that she had, indeed, found an FTP site. A site that now asked for a username and password. Caroline had neither. Yet.
Grabbing her phone, Caroline pulled up the picture of Franklin’s workout targets again. She knew what to do now. She needed to apply Fermat’s code to what she now knew were not aspirational gymnasium targets.
Caroline’s eyes grazed the clock on the dashboard—11:55.
Forcing her hands to stop shaking, she turned back to the workout goals. Fermat had designed a code that only worked on numbers. That meant that the words in the list of Franklin’s workout targets were irrelevant noise. The letters were there just to hide the code.
Just as she had done with the text message, Caroline wrote the string of numbers corresponding to the upper-body workout targets vertically on the legal pad. Using Fermat’s code, the string of numbers in the upper-body workout targets became OVERLORD.
Encouraged by the resolution of the numbers into coherent plaintext, she moved on with confidence to the lower-body targets. The numbers became CHECKMATE.
Caroline typed the words OVERLORD and CHECKMATE into the password and username fields on the FTP server’s log-in page. Then she waited an eternity of seconds to find out if she’d gotten it right.
“Come on,” she muttered at her laptop as the password page processed.
Finally, the screen changed. She was in!
Franklin’s FTP site appeared on the screen. There she found three documents.
The first was Heller, F. and Wong, A., “A Comprehensive Analysis of the Damaging Effects of SuperSoy on Human Kidneys.”
“Yes!” she shouted so loudly that anyone within ten feet of her car would have heard her.
As the information unfurled on the screen, Caroline almost cheered again. Dr. Heller’s findings were stronger than she’d hoped. In meticulous detail, he’d described the precise mechanism whereby SuperSoy caused kidney cells to perish. The evidence was irrefutable. Dr. Heller’s studies were larger than those in any of the other articles Caroline had reviewed. His supporting footnotes on methodology were clearly designed to permit others to verify his work.
Dr. Heller’s article was gold. If only she could get it filed on time, it would radically improve their chances of winning.
Moving on to the next file on the FTP site, Caroline discovered the backup data supporting Dr. Heller’s conclusions—159 pages of hospital records, questionnaires, assay results, reports, and other notes.
As she propelled herself down through the data, she recognized its significance. Dr. Heller’s article might not have been peer reviewed, but she had no doubt it would pass muster with even the most stringent publication standards.
Caroline allowed herself a brief moment of joy. She’d found the key that would let thousands of plaintiffs all across the country have their day in court.
In her excitement, she almost didn’t notice the final document in Franklin’s FTP site.
Named “For Yvonne,” the document took up only three kilobytes. Caroline narrowed her eyes at the file. Had Franklin written a final message to his wife? Had he known he was going to die?
Caroline pushed the questions from her mind. She had no time to probe the dead man’s final missive to his wife. The message would have to wait. Right now she needed to get the article and supporting data filed.
The clock on the dashboard ticked down toward the end of the court day in New York. All evidence had to be filed by 1:00 p.m. Los Angeles time. The glowing red digital numbers read 12:02. That meant she had less than an hour to make everything happen.
She needed help.
Grabbing her phone, Caroline dialed her firm’s number.
“I need to talk to Louis,” she said when the receptionist answered.
“He’s not here. Would you like his voice mail?”
“No. How about Eddie Diaz? Is he there?”
“Yes. Hold on.” The receptionist clicked off.
Eddie’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”
“I’ve got the missing article,” Caroline said.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
“Find the editor of the Fielding Journal. Tell him we need him to sign a declaration explaining that he’d arranged to publish Dr. Heller’s article on SuperSoy, that Heller’s