Mercy

‘Ha fuckin’ ha.’

Alex walked up to see what was going on.

‘There’s something strange about this computer.’

‘Strange?’ he echoed.

‘The hard disk has been wiped.’

Alex looked at the screen. Juanita was using Norton Utilities to inspect the disk content at a raw-data and deleted-file level.

‘So how come it’s still working?’

‘I don’t mean they reformatted it. I mean that all the deleted files have been overwritten. Normally the deleted files remain on the hard drive until the space is needed. It just deletes the directory entry and tells the directory that the space is available. But there are programs that overwrite the deleted files completely—sometimes making several passes with the erase head just to make sure.’

‘And why would anyone do that?’

‘What kind of a chicken-shit question is that?’ She sounded cute when she was angry. ‘To delete any trace of the files and stop them from being recovered!’

‘That implies there was something in them worth deleting.’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

Alex leaned forward, peering at the screen with growing excitement.

‘Making it all the more important that we recover their contents.’

‘Which would be very nice, except there’s no way we can do that.’

‘Maybe there is.’ The phone was already in his hand by the time he said it. ‘Let’s call David.’

‘David?’

‘My son.’

‘The one at Berkeley?’

‘I only have one son.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked with a cheeky grin. Alex sensed that there was more to Juanita’s displays of impertinence than mere mockery. Melody had been just like that. It was her way of flirting with him. He wondered if it was the same with Juanita. She had certainly given him a few hints. He wondered how much of it was real and how much was just his imagination.

The lawyer in him knew that office romance was a dangerous game at the best of times—especially with a subordinate. If he did decide to go down that road, he’d have to tread carefully. But in any case it was a bit too early: the pain of losing Melody was still too raw…and today was hardly a day to be thinking about that sort of thing.

Juanita pressed the speed dial button and then handed Alex the phone.

‘Hi, Dave…Yes, I am, but I need your help…We have a computer with a hard disk that’s been wiped…No, I don’t mean reformatted, just the deleted files have been overwritten…How many passes?’

Alex looked inquiringly at Juanita. She shook her head.

‘We don’t know. But what I want to know is…it is? Scanning tunneling…’

Juanita mouthed the word ‘microscope’ to show that she understood.

‘You mean only if she just wiped it once? Oh I see. Okay, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’ll courier it over.’

And with that he put the phone down.

‘He can recover the data,’ said Juanita.

‘How d’you know?’

‘When I hear one side of a phone conversation, I can usually figure out the other. Read Godel, Escher, Bach.’ She started walking away.

‘I tried. I couldn’t get beyond the dialogue between Achilles and the Turtle.’

‘Besides—you’re smiling.’

12:20 PDT (#ulink_6004f6b5-8b3e-5ed9-879a-0e7d002bc886)

‘Mrs Burrow?’ Nat called out nervously through the closed door of the mobile home. No answer. ‘Anyone home?’ Still no answer.

Nat opened the door, tentatively, and gingerly stepped inside. Technically it was trespassing, but the door was unlocked and time was of the essence. He looked round nervously. The living room was a mess. Surveying the ashtrays and half-empty plates with three-day-old, dried-out food encrusted on them, the words ‘trailer trash’ came to mind.

He was about to start looking round when he was shocked to hear the sound of a flushing cistern—and he realized that he was not alone after all. For a few seconds, he waited with some degree of trepidation, looking in the direction of the bathroom and wondering if he was going to be confronted by a Stanley Kowalski type in a wifebeater.

To his relief, the figure that emerged was female, albeit the female equivalent of Stanley Kowalski. Sour-faced and borderline angry, she was closer to her mid-century than her youth. Under her eyes, the bags were noticeable, and although she wasn’t currently smoking, she looked as if she ought to have a cheap cigarette dangling from her lips.

‘Who are you?’ she sneered.

‘My name is Nathaniel Anderson.’

He held out his business card. Her eyes dropped to his outstretched hand, but she made no effort to take the proffered card, or even gave any indication that she was interested in looking at it. He put it away in his breast pocket.

‘Are you Sally Burrow?’

‘Who wants to know?’

He realized that she was just being melodramatic, but a little clarification was called for.

‘I work for a lawyer called Alex Sedaka.’

‘I don’t like lawyers,’ she snarled.

‘Neither do I,’ he replied, trying to sound chummy. ‘But a man’s got to earn a living.’

Her face remained as sour as ever. He debated making a second attempt to break the ice but rejected the idea on the grounds that the humor would probably go over her head.

‘So, are you Sally Burrow?’