“What kind of system was Walker working on?” Jack asked. “I don’t mean the technical specs—what was it designed to do?”

“Financial stuff,” Ashok said. “Keeping track of vendors and contracts and generating checks and electronic payments and a lot of stuff with bank accounts and investments. Sort of a complete system for all the money stuff. Sorry,” he said, seeing both Jack and me frown. “I know that’s kind of vague, but Walker just treated me like a code monkey, and I tried to keep my head down. He didn’t like it if you asked too many questions.”

“No, if I were an embezzler, I’d try to keep my staff from learning too much,” Jack said. “Especially if I’d been lucky enough to get my larcenous little paws on the code that runs the college’s central financial systems. Talk about a gold mine.”

“But if Jasper’s been gone for two years, then he has to have a confederate who’s still on the inside, right?” I asked.

From the look on Jack’s face, I suspected he understood why I was asking.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “He could have left himself a back door. A way of getting back into the system without anyone knowing about it,” he added, before I had to ask.

Ashok looked solemn.

“That was one of the rumors that went around when they fired him,” he said. “That they’d uncovered a back door he’d coded into the system.”

“They’d have fixed that, surely, after he was fired,” Jack said.

“Yeah but what if Jasper was sneakier than any of us realized,” Ashok said. “What if he programmed an obvious back door—maybe a couple. And when someone found them and fired him, all he had to do was sit and wait till the system went on-line and he could milk it.”

“Not sure that’s plausible,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“It’s a classic game technique,” Ashok said. “Put the players off guard by giving them a trap that’s easy to avoid. They’re so busy patting themselves on the back, they don’t notice until the last minute when you spring the real challenge.”

“Yeah, but the first thing any sane IT department would do if they found one back door is search for others. Of course it’s also possible that they focused too much on looking for back doors and overlooked other sneaky things he could have done.”

“Like having a confederate to let him in the front door.”

“It’s possible,” Jack said. “Of course, it’s not the only possibility,” he added. No doubt he’d seen the look on my face at Ashok’s suggestion and remembered who Jasper’s confederate might be.

“And it’s not as if they have anyone left over there with the brains to spot a back door,” Ashok said. “Of course, I think there’s still a limit to how long you could get away with working a back door, unless you had someone on the inside to help you cover up.”

“That’s true,” Jack said. “Sorry,” he added to me. “But if I were the police . . . ”