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?”