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“No.”
“But it’s CNN,” Talese said.
Still texting, the detective said, “The answer’s still no. And do me a favor and sit back.”
“Sit back?”
“Yeah, away from the window. You’re putting me in the line of fire too.”
56.
“TALESE’S AT THE FEDERAL BUILDING.”
Lon Sellitto’s voice was coming through the speaker into the parlor.
Rhyme asked, “The theory? Who wants him dead and why?”
“He says he doesn’t know. But he was like sixty-eight percent he doesn’t know.”
Rhyme asked, “Can you up the dial?”
“I can try. He’s a politician. Either they’re evasive or they lie. Give me a mob enforcer any day. They sing like chickadees.”
“You stopped at the tech department, right?”
“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever done for you, Linc.”
“But you did it?”
“Yeah.”
“More on that later.”
As soon as they disconnected, his phone hummed again.
“Rhyme here.”
“Detective, I’m Ben Emery. Emery Digital Solutions? Two ofyour officers dropped off a computer for us to crack. I wanted to give you an update.”
Ah, good. Rhyme still hoped emails on Gilligan’s laptop could reveal who’d hired Hale, for what purpose and where future attacks might be. Maybe even an alternative safe house now that his primary one had self-destructed.
“Do you have anything?”
“Afraid it’s moving slowly.”
Wasn’t this the day and age of supercomputers? Couldn’t teenagers hack into a laptop while texting and playing video games simultaneously?
Emery continued, “We’re brute forcing, but he used an SHA256 hash.”
“Which is?” Rhyme’s voice betrayed his impatience.
“Secure Hash Algorithm 256.”
A sigh. “And ‘hash’ is?”
“Software that turns one string of data into another one. To passcode protect something, you create a password, right? Then you feed it into a hash generator and it becomes a string of data. Let’s say the password’s your name: Lincoln Rhyme. Loved that book about you by the way …”
“Mr. Emery,” Rhyme muttered.
