Disclaimer, Summary, Rating: See Chapter 1.
THE SCENT OF YOU
Chapter 18
Sam led them out onto the nearest accessible flat roof and watched as Dean pulled a pair of binoculars out of the holdall, comprehending his brother's idea. This would give them a much better view of likely 'discovery sites' than running all over campus at ground level trying to determine which spot made the EMF shriek loudest.
Struck by a notion, Sam suggested, "See over there, two o'clock position? That's the Archaeology Department. Have a look that way."
"You think?" Dean obediently trained the binoculars in that direction, ignoring the building itself but focussing on the surrounding garden and the tree line of the park.
"One of the main problems with archaeology is that by its very nature it destroys what it discovers –"
"Sounds familiar."
"Which is one of the big scientific no-no's, so budding Indiana Jones's aren't just given trowels and told to have fun, they're trained to dig dirt properly…"
Dean grunted approval of Sam's idea, "So your think the Prof got his Archaeology 101 class turning over the sod around the archaeology department for practice and one of them dug up more than the demon was prepared for?"
"My first choice was Arboriculture & Horticulture," Sam confessed, "but it's not likely. That whole place is too regimented and monitored."
"Well, pat yourself on the back…take a look-see," invited Dean, pointing with one hand and holding out the binoculars with the other.
Putting them to his eyes, Sam followed Dean's direction and saw a flash of blue tape at the tree line behind the Archaeology lab. An area of about ten square feet looked as it had been used as play area by a group of rambunctious toddlers, with a lot of soil mounds and shallowly dug holes. One particular hole was deeper and wider than the rest and had blue tape loosely around it on those little metal poles.
"Let's divide and conquer," suggested Dean as Sam handed him back the binoculars. "I'll deal with the hole, you break into the secretary's office to steal the staff list and we'll meet back at the car."
Sam looked at his watch, which read 7:57a.m., "Works for me."
Alone he headed back into the vent system to make the trek to the admin offices; Dean could get to the Archaeology building much faster across the rooftops and without being discovered even when he had to cross open space as people rarely looked up, and once there he could just shin down a drainpipe and cut across the grass. Sam resigned himself to throwing out these jeans and buying a new pair, though the $9,000 in the hotel safe eased the pain of that prospect. He was also going to need a new pair of knees too. It was no wonder babies learned to walk so fast after they'd only just started to crawl…this hurt.
The vent duct he needed was another ceiling one in the Vice-Chancellor's secretary's office. It was empty as he eased himself down, then climbed back up on the desk and re-inserted the cover. The outer corridor had no security cameras until after a convenient side corridor led to a fire door to the parking lot and as long as he didn't dawdle Sam could be out of here with nobody any the wiser.
He pressed a kiss to his fingers then laid them momentarily against the secretary's name plaque as he found that Amalie Barker was organised and neat and everything that a good secretary should be. Helpfully personnel lists were subdivided into faculty, students and 'interior non-teaching staff' and 'exterior non-teaching staff'. Grabbing a blank CD-ROM from the stack he found in the top drawer, he copied the latter two staff lists from the computer, then shut everything down and wiped off his fingerprints as best he could, though the whole point was to not leave anything that would make Ms Barker think of dusting for prints.
Easing out of the office, Sam checked the way was clear, and ran down the main corridor, diving into the side corridor, ears straining for the sound of any approach. Reaching the exit door, he slipped out, shut it, and scurried away through the shrubbery, not slowing until he reached the Impala, where he waited for Dean. It was approaching quarter-past-eight and as he looked up the block, he could see ever increasing numbers of people beginning to arrive on campus.
Then there was the sight he wanted. Dean hove into view, walking with a deceptively speedy nonchalance and, most important, wearing that 'mission accomplished in style' trademark smirk of his.
"It's done?" Sam asked anyway.
"Taken care of," Dean popped the trunk and put their holdall back. "Applied liberal amounts of salt and Holy Water and filled in the hole. You?"
"Well, I've got the right staff lists…"
"But…?"
"They were in unsecured files on the secretary's computer and from what little I could see they're only the basic name and address stuff, nothing in-depth or personal enough to flag up someone as possibly hosting an evil entity." Sam confessed.
"So what do you want to do?"
"The college has to have a secure database with a lot more personal information on it about the staff," Sam stated, "to cover their asses in case one of the staff turns out to be a paedophile or rapist or something. I'm probably going to need to hack into that, so why don't you go back to the hotel and destroy all the papers and that chunk in the test-tube, and I'll work on the staff list from here – I can get a cab back to you later."
Dean frowned at this idea; of course he and Sammy weren't joined at the hip and they often split up to do different tasks on a job, such as when Dean had gone to Cassie's newspaper and Sam had gone to the local library to research what turned out to be Cyrus Dorian's killer truck. But they were never more than about half-a-mile or a couple of minutes away from each other if necessary, whereas it was a considerable distance and time round-trip wise from Amarillo to Lake Meredith even on a clear road with no snarl-ups.
Seeing Dean's look, Sam explained, "With hacking into any secure system there's always a risk of tripping a firewall. I'll use the campus library computers and that way if I do set off any bells and whistles, they'll backtrack it to the college library and just assume it's a student prank, and they won't investigate any further."
"The last thing we need is for them to track a hacker back to our room at the Lake Meredith," Dean acknowledged; that would lead to all sorts of undesired interest in him and Sam and their activities. "Okay, but don't be late back."
Understanding this code phrase for 'be careful because I worry', Sam kept his face straight as Dean got into the Impala and discreetly drove away to go back to the hotel, where he would ensure that all the data on the 'rock' and the tiny sample they had removed would be destroyed.
Four years of practice enabled him to use the strolling groups of students as camouflage as he made his way to the campus library, 'hitching a ride' in the 'backwash' of one walking cluster of students and then another so from a distance he looked like part of the group, making sure he was never so far behind that he was obviously on his own, but never close enough to intrude on their dynamic.
Entering the library past the fountain and keeping his eyes averted from the little side garden where one of the demon's victims had killed himself, Sam's sharp eyes scrutinised the layout as he pretended to pause as a flyer on the notice-board 'caught his eye'. Getting his bearings he made his way to the computer that was situated as far as possible in the corner, away from the Librarian's desk but also positioned so that few people would have cause to walk back and forth behind Sam and possibly nosy at what he was doing.
Placing his jacket on the chair he quickly gathered some 'props', weighty tomes of Torte Law from the bottom shelf of the Law Section that he opened up or stood on the table around the computer so that their spines were clearly displayed. Not only did they provide an extra bulwark of camouflage but anyone who clapped eyes on something that read along the lines of 'Texas Agricultural Taxation & Torte Law: Appellate Court Decisions 1973-1974' would immediately veer away with that 'Geek Alert!' look on their face.
Sam quickly looked at one of the CD-ROMs he'd copied, but as he'd suspected, they were merely the academic variant of name-rank-serial-number, with nothing to differentiate other than that. He would need to access the personal personnel files for clues as to who was a devil in disguise.
Sam proceeded cautiously but was able to work almost as fast as he had hoped. While these databases were designed to be secure, there were loopholes, especially as the one common flaw was money – or rather the reluctance to spend it. Like any other business colleges wanted the highest return they could get for their dead presidents, and so often used the same computer companies to supply both their hardware and software systems. It was common for programmers and engineers to install 'back door systems' to allow remote access, or quick access in such a situation as being called by an irate university secretary at ten to five on a Friday because the system had gone down. As long as he didn't get cocky, Sam should be able to explore the database without leaving any footprints.
Keeping a weather eye on what was going on around him Sam made it into Amarillo's staff database. His chances of getting caught were less also because he was ignoring both the students and the faculty, and instead focussing on what were, to be brutal, the non-important cogs of the machine. He was much more likely to trip an alert trying to access a professor's personnel file or one of the students than 'Phyllis the cleaner'.
Unlike the secretary's computer list, the personnel file was a straight A-Z of all ancillary workers both internal (cleaners and cooks) and external (gardeners and plumbers) rather than separate. He clicked on the first name: Abrams, Josef, Assistant Caretaker (East Block) and scanned it quickly, finding it was what he needed – detailed and comprehensive yet without meandering on for pages of irrelevancies. He checked again to see who was where, knowing that it was imperative he not be discovered ogling this database by one of the librarians or a passing student. These files contained such juicy details as Social Security numbers, and credit ratings, home addresses and so forth that would be a godsend to identity thieves and illegal-immigrant gang-masters.
As Sam had told Dean, they had to contain detailed personal information to ensure the safety of the teenagers and young adults from paedophilic or exploitive types, but they were also there to protect the staff from unscrupulous or vindictive actions. Just a week before Sam had first met Jessica at Stanford, it had been national news about how a vindictive Sophomore used a virus to remote access the home computer of one of his college professors and download child pornography onto the man's machine, before anonymously tipping off the FBI that the man was a paedophile. It was pure luck that the man had been in hospital with his wife and one of his children for a medical test on a day and time his home PC had him supposedly downloading the vile filth, enabling the Operation Ore FBI task-force to track the real culprit. When arrested, the Sophomore had evinced no remorse or indeed any comprehension that he done anything wrong, at his trial instead blaming the professor in question for bringing it upon himself by not giving the grade the student 'deserved' in the first place.
Barker, Amalie – ah, secretary lady - Barnes, Keely; Bertolucci Alfredo; Bryant William…the left front pocket of Sam's jeans began to vibrate, making him start. He had to shove his hand deep into the pocket and it took a good couple of hard tugs to get the cell phone out and it wasn't until he tilted the chair onto the two back legs in frustration and instinctively thrust his hips upwards slightly as he braced his feet flat on the floor to put some slack in the tight material of the denim that Sam caught a faint glimpse of himself in the distorted reflection of a polished support pillar and realised his movements were inadvertently suggestive to the point of being publicly obscene…Ohmygod I look like I'm jacking off!
Blushing furiously, a quick glance around showed that mercifully nobody was looking at him, so he yanked the cell phone out and cringed back down in the chair, seeing that it was Dean calling; he answered, his voice little more than a whispered squeak of mortification. "Y-y-he-huh?"
"Sam?"
He cleared his throat, managing to speak softly but normally, and willing the heat he could feel emanating from his cheeks to go away, "Yeah, yeah I'm here."
"I'm calling from the hotel parking lot-"
"Just?" Sam glanced up automatically at the large wall clock above the front desk that he had checked against his own wristwatch for accuracy. It had both a circular clock face and a smaller LED in the middle along with the day and date. It currently read 12:32…which explained why Sam was feeling hungry – where had the time gone…and what on Earth was Dean doing taking nearly four hours to get back to Lake Meredith?
"Apparently a rig's overturned on I87 southbound between Machovec and Dumas," Dean explained, his voice clipped with irritation, "so everyone and their great-aunt Maud is trying to get off the Interstate and go around."
"Is it bad?"
"Looks like there could be gridlock for most of the day, so just make sure you have enough cash to cover when you grab a cab back here in case you end up in a tailback," Dean instructed. "Anyway, there are some walking trails around the lake, so I've decided to take an afternoon constitutional with my Pebble of Evil and those papers we took; I'll find a quiet glade and have myself a nice little camp fire."
"Okay."
"How're you doing that end?"
Sam blew out a raspberry of disgust. "I'm currently up to the Cartwright brothers, Ben and Joe."
Dean snickered in response. "Cartwright? Ben and Joe? You're kidding…"
"Nope, and before you ask, I've just checked to make sure there isn't a third brother called Hoss."
"I used to love that show…" Dean reminisced briefly. "So did you. Do you remember how you used to call Michael Landon Will Woe instead of Little Joe?"
"Don't remind me," Sam mock-pleaded, also smiling at the recollection, but for a different reason.
As it happened, Bonanza hadn't been his favourite TV show at all, only Dean's, but Sam had liked it because for a long time after Dean started saying he was 'too big' to snuggle up on Dean's lap anymore, when Dean watched Bonanza he was so wrapped up in the show that Sam had been able to get away with doing just that. It had also helped that anytime one of the show's male characters encountered a remotely attractive female, the woman was dead within three episodes, regardless of the improbability of her demise. It had eventually led to the phrase 'Bonanza woman', referring to any female character obviously brought into a TV show for no other reason than to die tragically and thus spur on the hero's righteous quest for revenge or enable him to fall in love with a younger, hotter starlet-of-the-moment to boost ratings. Sam had soon found that doing the 'big-eyed/trembling lip' little boy lost routine when it came to the actress's death scene led to even more cuddling and hugging and earnest reassurance from Dean, unaware that his baby brother was wrapping him around his little finger.
"Anyway, it sounds like fun…see yah later, Sammy."
"It's Sam –" but he was chiding the dial tone as Dean had already rung off.
Shifting his butt in the chair to try and stave off 'numb bum' syndrome, Sam tried to get comfortable. His stomach grumbled and he hesitated indecisively…But if he took a break for lunch he would have to hack into the database again and there was no guarantee he wouldn't set off alarm bells the second time, plus the library was now very busy and he could lose this prime place for privacy if he risked going to refectory, where by the time he'd queued for food, found a seat and eaten it he'd have lost nearly an hour, not to mention the risk of some students recognising an interloper into the herd and homing in on him to find out his who/what/where/when/why. So regretfully he turned back to the list.
Continued in Chapter 19…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart