Once I had taken care of the immediate damage control, I turned my attention to tracking down Haggerty. I came in early to work on my strategy. Despite what all the novels suggest, good detective work requires good planning. I figured that I would have to find out why he left in order to find out where he went, so that became my first order of business.
When I arrived at my office, Sherry was already there waiting for me.
"You're in pretty early this morning, Sherry. You love this job so much you can't wait to get here?" I kidded.
She ignored my remark and got right down to business.
"I called Intercontinental," she began in a very businesslike tone, "and this hacker problem looks pretty serious. There's a group that calls themselves the Masters of Veracity or 'Veracity' for short. Veracity has been hacking into corporate computers using some fairly well know security holes. They haven't done any damage so far, just pranks. For example they'll send internal email from one executive to another that says Support Veracity on the Web. Or they will hack into a web site and put their logo on the corporate homepage with the words 'We Support Veracity on the Web'. Some of Intercontinental's clients are getting pretty nervous. They are concerned that if Veracity can pull these pranks, they might be able to do some REAL damage."
"They're not going to do any REAL damage," I snapped. "It just some group of pale, skinny high school kids with complexions so bad that you have to duck when they smile. They're exploiting security holes that everybody knows about but the rest of us don't exploit because we are responsible. What do they want me to do when I catch them, give them detention?"
I shouldn't have snapped at her. She was just doing what I had asked her to do. But finding out what happened to Frank was becoming an obsession and I didn't want to waste time with some high school computer club when I should be tracking down Haggerty.
"I don't know," Sherry said. "The guy at Intercontinental thought this was more than just high school hackers. He wants you to call him right away."
"Alright, I'll call him. But first I want to spend some time on Frank's case." I paused, realizing that I had made a case out of Frank's leaving. Certainly, it was a little inconvenient for me. But I was in no way obligated to track him down. If anybody was to track him down it should be university security. Yet, I felt as though it were my problem and my problem alone. In fact it was more like a mission than an obsession.
"This is more than just getting stuck with his classes isn't it?" Sherry asked.
"Yes it is." I said, thinking about my parent's deception and how they died before I had a chance to confront them. "But this time they won't get away with it."
"They?" she questioned.
"Him." I corrected, not wanting to get into it.
Since Frank had taken all of his books and files, I decided that the best place to begin looking was on his computer. He had deleted his files and emptied the recycle bin so that that idea didn't pay off. But in detective work persistence always wins, so you try one idea after another until you get lucky. The next thing I tried was his telnet icon, which would log him onto our main academic computer where he got his email. When I clicked on the icon, it automatically logged me on to his account. It was a little spooky looking through another person's email. It was also a little too easy and it made me nervous. Frank was too smart to leave his user id and password saved on his machine unless it was a trap, or he didn't care about that account any more, or he was too busy packing up and forgot about, or he wanted me to find it. I had no idea which one so I continued. In his email folder there were some notes from students, a few from me, and one that looked a little strange because the From address was blank. I opened it.
It read:
Frankie, we finally found you. Come back to us. - CyberMasque of the MOV
It was dated last spring. The date coincided with the day we discovered the missing web pages.
Well, things were getting interesting. Somebody had found Frank and wanted him back. Maybe they had something on him and were going to expose him. That certainly would have explained why he had left. Apparently having his web page on line made him vulnerable to this exposure, so he tried to protect himself by deleting the web page. That certainly explained the missing pages and the associated behaviors. But what could Frank be hiding that would cause him to leave his job rather than being found out.
I read the message again. Someone had known him before and now they wanted him back. "Things are not always what they seem to be" he had said to me right before he left. Maybe Frank wasn't really Frank. I remembered somebody had once said that if Homer didn't write the Oddessy then somebody 'named' Homer wrote it. If this guy wasn't Frank, maybe he was just somebody named Frank. I shook my head - too much philosophy!
I read the message a third time. It was signed by CyberMasque. Hackers are a weird crew. They can be cleverly honest or cleverly deceptive. CyberMasque could be miscue. Or it could be a hint. Maybe this guy had something to do with cyber disguises. Maybe this guy's specialty was creating false identities in cyberspace. It was pretty wild speculation. But you have to set up all the possibilities and see which ones survive as you gather more information.
CyberMasque of the MOV. A chill went up my back. It could be just a coincidence, or MOV could stand for the Master's of Veracity. If that was the case, the recent series of hacking pranks probably wasn't a coincidence. There were too many things going on at once and my brain was beginning to reel. I couldn't quite grasp what was going on. But I was going to find out. Or my name wasn't Thaddeus J. Wentworth, IV - Gumshoe in Cyberspace.