Lucy was careless. The intrepid super-agent Lucy left her Treo-an ultra-high-tech palm-size communications device that is a personal digital assistant, cell phone, e-mail, camera and everything else-inside one of her helicopters. It happened almost a year ago. He’d barely started his fellowship when he had the most amazing bit of luck, was in the hangar with one of the students, an especially pretty one, showing her Lucy’s helicopters when he happened to notice a Treo inside the Bell 407.
Lucy’s Treo.
She was still logged on. He didn’t need her password to access everything in it. He kept the Treo long enough to download all its files before returning it to the helicopter, leaving it on the floor, partially under a seat, where Lucy found it later that day, having no idea what had happened. She still has no idea.
Joe has passwords, dozens of them, including Lucy’s system-administrator password, which enables her and now him to access and alter the computer and telecommunications systems of the South Florida regional headquarters, the central headquarters in Knoxville, satellite offices in New York and Los Angeles, and Benton Wesley and histop-secret PREDATOR research study and everything else he and Scarpetta confide in each other. Joe can redirect files and e-mail, get hold of the unlisted phone numbers of anybody who has ever had anything to do with the Academy, wreak havoc. His fellowship ends in a month, and by the time he moves on, and he will in a big way, he might just have succeeded in causing the Academy to implode and everybody, especially the big stupid thug Marino and the overbearing Scarpetta, to hate each other.
It is easy to monitor the big dope’s office line, to secretly activate his speakerphone so it is like having an open mic in the room. Marino dictates everything, including his hell scenes, and Rose types them up because he can’t spell, has terrible grammar, rarely reads and is practically illiterate.
Joe feels a rush of euphoria as he taps cigar ash into a Coke can and logs into the PBX system. He accesses Marino’s office line, activates the speakerphone to see if he is in and up to something.