“Benton, I have to clear my name.”

“It is exactly what I would do. Where do you want to start?”

“With a feather.”

“Please explain.”

“It's possible that this killer went out and bought some specialty item filled with eiderdown, but I'd say there's a good chance he stole it.”

“That's a plausible theory.”

“We can't trace the item unless we have its label or some other piece to trace back to a manufacturer, but there may be another way. Maybe something could appear in the newspaper.”

“I don't think we want the killer to know he's leaking feathers everywhere. He's sure to get rid of the item in question.”

“I agree. But that doesn't preclude your getting one of your journalist sources to run some trumped-up little feature about the eider duck and its prized down, and how items filled with it are so expensive that they've become a hot commodity for thieves. Maybe this could be-tied in with the ski season or something.”

“What? In hopes someone out there will call and say that his car was broken into and his down-filled jacket was stolen?”

“Yes. If the reporter quotes some detective who supposedly has been assigned to the thefts; this gives readers someone they can call. You know, people read a story and say ‘The same thing happened to me.’ Their impulse is to help. They warn to feels important. So they pick up the phone”.

“I'll have to give it some thought.”

'Admittedly it's a long shot.”

We began walking to the door. “I spoke briefly with Michele before leaving the Homestead,” Wesley said. “She and Lucy have already been conferring. Michele says your niece is quite frightening.”

“She's been a holy terror since the day she was born”

He smiled. “Michele didn't mean it like that: She says that Lucy's intellect is frightening.”

“Sometimes I worry that it's too much wattage for such a fragile vessel.”

“I'm not certain she's all that fragile. Remember, I just spent the better part of two days with her. I’m very impressed with Lucy on many fronts.”

“Don't you go trying to recruit her for the Bureau.”

“I'll wait until she finishes college` That will take her, what? All of a year?”

Lucy did not emerge from my study, until Wesley had driven off and I was carrying our glasses into the kitchen.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” I asked her.

“Well, I hear you got along famously with the Wesleys.”

I turned off the faucet and sat at the, table where I’d left my legal pad.

“They're nice people.” “

Rumor has it they think you're nice, too.”

She opened the refrigerator door and idly stared; inside. “Why was Pete here earlier?”

It seemed odd to hear Marino referred to by his first name. I supposed he and Lucy had moved from a state of cold war to detente when he had taken her shooting”

“What makes you think he was here?” I asked.

“I smelled cigarettes when I came in the house. I assume he was here unless you're smoking again.”

She shut the refrigerator door and came over to the table.

“I'm not smoking again, and Marino was here briefly.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to ask me a lot of questions,” I said.

“About what?”

“Why do you need to know the details?”

Her eyes moved from my face to the stack of financial files to the legal pad filled with my indecipherable penmanship. “It doesn't matter why since you obviously don't want to tell me.”

“It's complicated, Lucy.”

“You always say something's complicated when you want to shut me out,” she said as she turned and walked away.

I felt as if my world were falling apart, the people in it scattering like dry seeds in the wind. When I watched parents with their children, I marveled over the gracefulness of their interactions and secretly feared I lacked an instinct that couldn't be learned: I found my niece in my study sitting before the computer. Columns of numbers combined with letters of the alphabet were on the screen, and embedded here and there were fragments of what I assumed were data. She was making computations with a pencil on graph paper, and did not look up as I moved next to her.

“Lucy, your mother has had many men in and out of your house; and I am well aware of how that has made you feel. But this is not your house and I am not your mother. It is not necessary for you to feel threatened by my male colleagues and friends. It is not necessary for you to constantly be looking for evidence that some man was here, and it is unfounded for you to be suspicious of my relationship with Marino or Wesley or anyone else.”

She did not respond.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “I may not be the constant presence in your life that I wish I could be, but you are very important to me.”

Erasing a number and brushing rubber particles off the paper, she said, “Are you going to get charged with a crime?”

“Of course not. I haven't committed any crimes.”

I leaned closer to the monitor.

“What you're looking at is a hex dump,” she said.

“You were right. It's hieroglyphics.”

Placing her fingers on the keyboard, Lucy began moving the cursor as she explained, “What I'm doing here is trying to get the exact position of the SID number. That's the State Identification Number, which is the unique identifier. Every person in the system has a SID nun including you, since your prints are in AFIS, too. Fourth generation language, like SQL, I could a query by a column name. But in hexadecimal the language is technical and mathematical. There are no column names, only positions in the record layout. In other words, if I wanted to go to Miami, in SQL I would simply tell the computer I want to go to Miami. But in hexadecimal, I would have to say that I want to go position that is this many degrees north of the, equator and this many degrees east of the prime meridian. “So to extend the geographical analogy, I'm figuring out the longitude and latitude of the SID number also of the number that indicates the record type. Then I can write a program to search for any SID number wheel the record is a type two, which means a deletion, or y type three, which is an update. I'll run this program through each journal tape.”

“You're, assuming that if a record has been tampered with, then, what was changed was the SID?” I asked.

“Let's just say it would be a whole lot easier to with the SID number than it would be to mess with the actual fingerprint images on the optical disk record, that's really all you've got in AFIS - the SID number the corresponding prints. The person's name, his and other personal information are in his CCH, Computerized Criminal History, which resides at CCRE, or the Central Criminal Records Exchange:”

“As I understand it the records in CCRE are linked to the prints in AFIS by the SID numbers,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Lucy was still working when I went to bed I fell right to sleep, only to awaken at two A.M. I did not drift off again until five, and my alarm roused me less than an hour later. I drove downtown in the dark and listened as one of the local radio announcers gave a news update. He reported that police had questioned me, and I had refused to disclose information pertaining to my financial records. He went on to remind everyone that Susan Story had deposited thirty five hundred dollars in her checking account just weeks before her murder.

When I got to the office, I had barely taken off my coat when Marino called.

“The damn major can't keep his mouth shut,” he said right off.

“Obviously.”

“Shit, I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault. I know you have to report to him.”

Marino hesitated. “I need to ask you about your guns. You don't own a twenty-two, right?”

“You know all about my handguns. I. have a Ruger and a Smith and Wesson. And if you pass that along to Major Cunningham, I'm sure I'll hear about it on the radio within the hour.”