A sigh.
“Help us out here. She’s a widow with a son. I believed you when you said you were sorry. Go the next step and tell us. Please. Who makes the second switch?”
“Do you have time for leisure reading, Ms. Archer?”
She was frowning. A glance at Rhyme. She said, “Occasionally.”
Pages rustled, Rhyme could hear.
The lawyer said, “I myself am a big fan of Entertainment Weekly. And Fly Fishing Today. But I still find time for Industrial Systems Monthly. I enjoyed the March issue particularly. Pages forty and forty-one.”
“What—”
“Goodbye, Ms. Archer. I will not pick up if you call back.”
She disconnected.
“Good,” Rhyme said. “From Boston Law?”
“Legal,” she corrected. “But, no. I was vamping.”
Rhyme was already online. He found a digital version of the magazine Holbrook had mentioned and scrolled to the pages cited. It was an advertisement for a product made by a company called CIR Microsystems. Much of the copy was technical, none of which he understood at first glance. Featured was a gray box with wires protruding. According to a caption, it was a DataWise5000.
“The hell is it?” Rhyme asked.
Archer shook her head and went online. A few seconds of Google and she had an answer. “Well. Listen to this. It’s a smart controller.”
“I believe I’ve heard the term. Tell me more.”
She read for a few minutes then explained: “A lot of products have them built in. Conveyance systems—escalators, elevators—and cars, trains, industrial machinery, medical equipment, construction equipment. Hundreds of consumer appliances: stoves, heating systems, lighting in your house, security, door locks. You can send and receive data to and from machinery with your phone or tablet or computer, wherever you are. And control the products remotely.”
“So maybe a maintenance worker sent a signal by mistake and the access panel opened? Or stray radio waves triggered it.”
“It’s possible. I’m on Wikipedia. And . . . oh. My.”
“What?”
“I’m just reading about CIR Micro, the maker of the controller.”
“And?”
“The head of the place, Vinay Parth Chaudhary, is being called the new Bill Gates.” She looked over at Rhyme. “And the company’s worth eight hundred billion. Let’s call Evers Whitmore. I think we’re back in the game.”
CHAPTER 17
No help from CSU headquarters on the brand of varnish or cosmetics found at the earlier scenes, or the type of sawdust. Nor had there been any more insights into trace or DNA on the White Castle napkins.
But at least the car service lead blossomed.
“Got it.” Ron Pulaski held up a pad to Sachs, sitting across from him in their war room at One PP. The young officer read from his notes. “Driver, Eduardo. He remembers the unsub, picked him up across the street from the White Castle, had a bag full of burgers. Ate them while they drove. About five or six. Maybe more. He talked to himself some. And spoke in a weird monotone. Skinny, looked down all the time. Scary. And it was the day of the murder.”
“The driver got a good look at him?”
“Not really. Just: lanky, skinny, tall. The green jacket and Atlanta baseball cap.”
Sachs asked, “How could he not get a look at him?”
“Dirty glass. The partition, you know. Plexiglas.”
He added that the driver had dropped their unsub in downtown Manhattan, about four blocks from the murder site.
“What time?”
“About six p.m.”
Hours before the murder. What had he done during that time? she wondered.
Pulaski added, “The driver stayed at the corner where he dropped him off—had some calls to make—and watched him for a minute. The unsub didn’t go to any of the buildings at the intersection near where they stopped; he walked a block away to another one. The driver could have dropped him there, but maybe our boy didn’t want to be seen going into a particular place.” The young officer went online, she could see, and called up a map of the city.
He tapped a satellite image, overhead, of a building. “Here it is. This has to be it.”
The picture view revealed a small building, terra-cotta in color. “Small factory, offices, warehouse?”
“Doesn’t seem residential.”
Sachs said, “Let’s go take a look.”
They left One PP and headed downstairs to her car. In ten minutes they were cruising through congested downtown traffic, Sachs pumping the accelerator in low gears when she could, cutting in and out of the lanes as aggressively as ever.
Wondering, as she often did, what would they learn?
Sometimes leads provided a minor fact to help in the investigation.
Sometimes they were a waste of time.
And sometimes they took you straight to the perp’s front door.
Mel Cooper was back in Rhyme’s Central Park West parlor.
Sorry, Amelia, Rhyme thought. After the discovery of the potential new defendant, I need him more than you do. We’ll argue later.
Evers Whitmore was present too.
The three men were staring into a dark portion of the room, where Juliette Archer sat in front of a computer, verbally commanding her computer to do her bidding.
“Up three lines. Right two words. Select. Cut . . .”
So very difficult to live life without shortcuts, Rhyme thought. Being disabled put you in a very nineteenth-century world. Everything took longer. He himself had tried eye recognition, voice recognition, a laser-emitting device attached to his ear that activated portions of the screen. He had returned to the old-fashioned way, using his hand on a joystick or touchpad. This was clumsy and slow but the technique approached normal, and Rhyme had finally mastered it. He saw that Archer needed to settle into an artificiality that was right for her.
In a few minutes she wheeled about and joined them. On the screen nearby were the fruits of her work but she began to report verbally on what she’d found, without glancing toward the notes glowing on the monitors.
“Okay. CIR Microsystems. Vinay Chaudhary’s company. It’s the number one manufacturer of smart controllers in the country. Revenues of two billion annually.”
“My, that’s helpful,” the understated Whitmore said.
“The controller’s basically a small computer with a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection or cellular one mounted in the machine or appliance it controls. It’s really pretty simple. Say it’s mounted in a stove. The controller is online with the stove manufacturer’s cloud server. The homeowner has an app on his smartphone to communicate with the stove from anywhere in the world. He logs into the server and can send or receive signals to and from the controller—to shut the stove off or on. The manufacturer also is online with the stove, to collect data from the controller: usage information, diagnostics, maintenance scheduling, breakdowns—it can even be alerted to burned-out lights in the oven.”
Cooper asked, “Any problem with the DataWise Five Thousand controller in the past? Activating when it shouldn’t?”
“None that I could find but I was playing Google Roulette. Give me some time and I might find something more.”
“So how did it open the panel?” Rhyme mused. “A stray signal ordered the controller to open the door, something in the mall itself. Or from the cloud? Or did the DataWise just short out and send the open command itself?”
Archer looked up from the computer and said, “Have something here. Take a look at this. It’s from a blog about two months ago. Social Engineering Second-ly. That’s ‘second’ as in the unit of time, I think. Updated every second. As opposed to Monthly or Weekly. Doesn’t quite work.”
Rhyme said, “Sometimes you can be too clever for your own good.”
He and the others read:
INDULGENCE = DEATH?
THE DANGERS OF THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)
Will consumer indulgence be the death of us?
From self-foaming soap to portion-controlled, calorie-specific meals delivered to consumers’ homes in time for dinner, manufacturers are increasingly marketing products geared to take over people’s lives. The justification is that they are helping busy professionals and families save time—and in some instances money—and make their lives easier. In reality, many of these items are simply desperate attempts to fill the pockets of companies facing markets saturated with competing products or in which brand differentiation has all but vanished.
But there’s a dark side to the expediency factor.
I’m speaking of what is called the Internet of Things, or IoT.
Thousands of appliances, tools, heating and air-conditioning systems, vehicles and industrial products, sport internal computer controls that allow consumers to access them remotely. These have been around for some years in the form of home security systems, in which video cameras are, in effect, mini computers connected to your Wi-Fi or cellular service. When you’re away, you log onto an Internet site—supposedly secure—and make sure no burglars are prowling through your living room or to keep an eye on the babysitter.
Now the proliferation of these “embedded devices” (that is, containing computer circuitry) is increasing exponentially.
They help us save money and make our lives so much more convenient.
Now you can turn your oven on from a remote location, turn your furnace up when you’re on your way home, tell your door to unlock for an hour when the plumber’s expected (and watch him at work on your security camera!), start your car remotely on below-zero days . . . How convenient! What could be wrong with that?
Who can argue with this?
Well, I can.
Let me tell you two dangers:
ONE: IS YOUR DATA SAFE?
The way most smart controller systems work is that the appliances in your house are online with cloud servers run by the manufacturers of those appliances. While they “assure” you your privacy is important, all of them collect data about their products’ performance and your usage history, often without your knowledge. That information is routinely sold to data miners. Some effort is made to keep your identity anonymous but just consider: Last week a thirteen-year-old in Fresno got the names, addresses and credit card numbers of everyone who owned a General Heating furnace equipped with a smart controller. It took him six minutes to download that data.
TWO: IS YOUR LIFE SAFE?
More troubling is the potential for injury and death when a smart system malfunctions. Because all functions of smart appliances are managed by the controller, not just data collection, it’s possible in theory for a water heater, for instance, to receive a signal to turn the heat up to 200 degrees, WHILE YOU’RE IN THE SHOWER! Or, in the event of fire in your house, the controller could lock your doors and trap you inside your dwelling and refuse to send a signal to the fire department reporting the blaze. Or it might even contact the authorities and report a false alarm, leaving you and your family to die a hideous death.
Representatives for the manufacturers say no. There are safeguards built in. Network keys, encryption, passcodes.
But Your Blogger recently purchased one of these controllers. The DataWise5000 by CIR Microsystems, one of the most common, found in everything from water heaters to elevators to microwaves. It was possible, by bombarding the device with ambient radio waves, to cause it to malfunction. Had the unit been installed in a car, a medical instrument, a piece of dangerous industrial machinery, a stove, the results of that malfunction could have been disastrous.
Ask yourself, is convenience worth the price of your and your children’s lives?
“Bingo,” Archer said, smiling.
More sedately Whitmore mused, “We could argue that the controller is defective because it wasn’t shielded from ambient signals.”
Rhyme said, “Who posted that? We should talk to him.”
The blog gave little personal information and no address.
Rhyme said, “Rodney.”
“Who?” Archer asked.
“You’ll see,” Rhyme said. A glance at Cooper, who smiled knowingly and said, “I’ll get the volume.” And turned down the control on the speakerphone.
And despite the reduced decibels, when the phone was answered a moment later, relentless rock music pounded into the parlor.
“A bit more,” Rhyme called to Cooper, who complied.
A voice from the other end of the line, “’Lo?”
Archer frowned in curiosity.
“Rodney! Can we lose the music?”
“Sure. Hi, Lincoln.” The chugga-chugga bass diminished to a whisper. It was not, however, lost.
Rodney Szarnek was a senior detective with the NYPD’s elite Computer Crimes Unit. He was impressively brilliant at collaring perps and helping other investigators with the computer side of a case, though irritatingly in love with the worst music on earth.
Rhyme explained that the detective was on speaker, then told him about the case. The smart controller in an escalator might have malfunctioned, resulting in a gruesome death. “But it’s not a case, Rodney.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s civil. Mel Cooper’s here but only on vacation.”
“And I’m confused.”
“I’m not working with the department, Rodney,” Rhyme said patiently.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“If you’ve quit, why have you not quit? I ask only because we’re having this conversation.”
“I resigned from criminal practice. I’m consulting on a civil case.”
A pause. “Oh. Well. In that case I can’t really help you. You understand, Wish I could.”
“No, I know that. All I need is for you to tell us how to find the physical address of somebody who’s written a blog about these controllers. We want to talk to him, maybe hire him as an expert witness. Pretend we’re at a cocktail party, you and me.”
“Well, finding somebody online? That’s easy enough. A WhoIs search. W-H-O-I-S. Run the .com or .net name through that. Of course, he might be using a privacy service as the domain registrant. That’s so pissed-off ex-wives or pissed-off ex-husbands can’t find out where the registrant lives.”
Rhyme looked to Cooper, who typed at the keyboard in front of his monitor. He nodded at the results. Rhyme read them. “It says Privacy Plus, New Zealand.”
“Yep, that’s a service to mask the physical address. And New Zealand? No court order. You’re screwed.”
Rhyme said calmly, “But we can’t afford to be screwed, Rodney. Let’s think harder.”
Szarnek cleared his throat. “Well, speaking theoretically, you catch that word? The-o-ret-i-cally? To get past a privacy service, one might go online and download and install—on a flash drive, of course, to be burned later—a program like, let’s just say, HiddenSurf. Then one would run that and then do a search of Russian websites for a program called, let’s just say, Ogrableniye. Means ‘robbery’ in Russian. Don’t we love our Slavic friends’ subtlety? Ogrableniye is a hacker code. Completely illegal. Terrible. I don’t approve one bit. Because it allows people to hack into a, say, a privacy service even in, oh, say, New Zealand, and look up the physical address of someone whose IP—internet—address you know.”
“We’d better hang up now, Rodney.”
“I’m in favor of that. Although how can we hang up if you and I haven’t even been talking?”
