'Come on, come on, come on!' she said.

She sat before CAIN, staring into the screen as the message flowed. It was one brief paragraph repeated numerous times. It said:

— - -MESSAGE PQ43 76301 001732 BEGINS- - -TO: - All COPS FROM: - CAIN

IF CAIN KILLED HIS BROTHER, WHAT DO YOU

THINK HE'D DO TO YOU?

IF YOUR PAGER GOES OFF IN THE MORGUE,

IT'S JESUS CALLING.

— - -MESSAGE PQ43 76301 001732 ENDS- - -

I looked at the shelves of modems filling one wall, at lights flashing. Though I was not a computer expert, I saw no correlation between their activity and what was occurring on screen. I looked around some more and noticed a telephone jack below the desk. A cord that was plugged into it disappeared beneath the raised floor, and I found that odd.

Why would a device plugged into a telephone jack be stored beneath a floor? Telephones were on tables and desks. Modems were on shelves. I got down and lifted a panel that covered a third of the floor inside CAIN's room.

'What are you doing?' Lucy exclaimed, unable to take her eyes off the screen.

The modem beneath the floor looked like a small cube puzzle with rapid flashing lights.

'Shit!' Lucy said.

I looked up. She stared at her watch and wrote something down. The activity on the screen had stopped. The lights on the modem quit flashing.

'Did I do something?' I asked in dismay.

'You bastard!' She pounded her fist on the desk, and the keyboard jumped. 'I almost had you. One more time and I would have had your ass!'

I got up. 'I didn't disconnect anything, I hope?' I said.

'No. Dammit! He logged off. I had him,' she said, still staring at her monitor as if the green words might begin to flow again.

'Gault?'

'CAIN's imposter.' She blew out a big breath of air and looked down at the naked guts of the creation she had named after the world's first murderer. 'You found it,' she blandly said. 'That's pretty good.'

'That's how he's been getting in,' I said.

'Yes. It's so obvious no one noticed.'

'You noticed.'

'Not at first.'

'Carrie put it there before she left last fall,' I said.

Lucy nodded. 'Like everybody else, I was looking for something more technologically recondite. But it was brilliant in its simplicity. She hid her own private modem and the dial-in is the number of a diagnostics line almost never used.'

'How long have you known?'

'As soon as the weird messages started, I knew.'

'So you just had to play the game with him,' I said, upset. 'Do you realize how dangerous this game is?' I asked.

She began typing. 'He tried it four times. God, we were close.'

'For a while you thought Carrie was doing this,' I said.

'She set it up, but I don't think she's the one getting in.'

'Why not?'

'Because I've been following this intruder day and night. This is someone unskilled.' For the first time in months, she spoke her former friend's name. 'I know how Carrie's mind works. And Gault's too narcissistic to let anyone be CAIN except him.'

'I got a note, possibly from Carrie, that was signed CAIN,' I said.