Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [53]
Swan knew she was risking a wasted trip. It was likely that Cobb’s house would have been picked clean by now, emptied and swept out ready for resale. She parked in the driveway and used her home remote to roll up the garage door. There were no cars parked inside, and she could see through the windows of the house that at least some of the furniture had been taken.
Swan put on her gloves, took a crowbar from the garage, went in the back of the house and jemmied open the kitchen door. Inside, she flicked the light switch just once, to make sure the power was still on. She put the crowbar down on the counter, then slipped a tight sportsband onto her left wrist and slid a small flashlight under it. She kept the light pointed at the floor as she moved around the dead man’s house.
She picked up the phone in the living room. No dial tone; Cobb’s relatives had done that much, at least, unless the phone company had cut him off for non-payment. The shelves in the living room and study were still packed with Cobb’s possessions. Swan wondered idly what percentage of the books – mostly chunky hardbacks – he had actually read. She hadn’t even bothered to unpack most of the books she’d moved with in her house in McLean.
She had made a mental list of the most likely places to look for the device. If he wasn’t worried about keeping it a secret, then it would probably be in his study – there was no workshop in the garage or basement. The filing cabinet was locked; she retrieved the crowbar and opened each of the drawers. Nothing but personal papers, the accumulated paperwork of life. If he was worried about keeping it a secret, then try under the bed, under a floorboard beneath a rug – no chance there, everything was carpeted except the kitchen and bathroom. Less likely were the boxes in the closets. A problem was that she didn’t know precisely what she was looking for, even how large it would be, although she was guessing it would be around the same size as she and Luis’s original purchases. Smaller than a breadbox, she thought. Around the size of her fist.
Swan worked patiently down her list. She didn’t put the boxes back in the closet, but she didn’t throw them around, either. Only people frustrated Swan. Even a chunky computer system or a badly written program couldn’t faze her: she dropped into what she thought of as her work mode, and systematically tackled whatever tangled mess she had been presented with. Chip Cobb’s house was merely another problem that required a systematic approach.
All right. Either the device wasn’t here, or Cobb had hidden it too well for her to find it in a casual search; they were both possibilities. Cobb was no longer around to ask, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t left the information where she could find it.
The study was a veranda – what the Yanks call a porch. A brand new IBM PC adorned Cobb’s tidy study desk, its Pastel Denim Binders standing to attention on a miniature bookshelf.
Swan glanced at the modem: there was a dial tone. The family hadn’t thought to disconnect Cobb’s second line.
She pushed the DOS disk into the A drive, and flipped the big red switch. She went to the kitchen to make herself some coffee while It booted up.
Cobb had written the password to his BBS account on the inside of the DOS manual. Swan systematically read through his email, including his sent-mail, which included messages to her. There were several messages which mentioned an item which had to be the third component. Swan sat forward, putting down the coffee cup.
There was mention of meetings and money. Cobb had been helping someone calling themselves The River find the missing item for a hefty fee. Had he delivered the item before he had died? Had he put it in safekeeping somewhere? There was no mention of an agreed drop, but the device might be in a safety deposit box.
Swan paged through a box of five and a quarter inch diskettes