L.A. Bytes Read Free

met Terry inside his offi ce. Signing the contract took only a minute. After Chris slid his Mont Blanc pen back into his L.A. BYTES 11
    suit pocket, he stood and shook Terry’s hand. “The only other thing I’ll need is physical and remote access to all your systems.”
    “I can do that.”
    “The sooner the better. I’ll write you up a nightly report so you can see the direction I’m taking. Does that work for you?”
    Chris waited in Terry’s offi ce while Terry collected an electronic badge that gave him access to any place in the hospital.
    Terry provided the necessary passwords; Chris committed them to memory.
    While Terry showed Chris his system, his pager went off. Terry glanced at it. “I gotta go. You’ll be okay here on your own?”
    Chris nodded. After Terry left he sat down at a workstation and logged in to the main hospital system. He quickly navigated his way through fi les and directories, probing for signs of intrusion.
    Streams of information fl ashed across the monitor from the intrusion detection programs he was running.
    Chris glanced through some captured data logs. On the surface he saw nothing unorthodox. But he’d expected that. He’d seen how good this guy was. A quick scan of the outer fi rewall revealed the software gateway that protected the inner network was being hit by a lot of traffi c, but that was standard—the Internet swarmed with packets designed to do nothing but probe for open ports. Nothing seemed to be getting past the perimeter.
    Terry had hardened his network well.
    Before he went any further he stopped and took a deep breath. What he was going to do next wasn’t entirely ethical; it was outside the bounds of his contract but he had to know.
    What had happened to David? As much as he didn’t like Dr.
    Abrahms, he knew the man was too good to make so simple a mistake as dosing David with the wrong medication. Chris knew David was allergic to the whole range of penicillin drugs. Had the hospital somehow delivered that instead of the anti-allergen he should have received?

    12 P.A. Brown
    He sent his probes into the heart of Ste. Anne’s. It took him a while to fi nd Dr. Abrahms’ fi les and even longer to locate David’s but eventually he was inside. He was able to look up past treatments David had received and compared them to the last one. The difference was immediately obvious. Whoever had hacked the system had made no effort to hide what he had done.
    Obviously no one at the pharmacy had checked the script. Why would they? They took what was delivered. He also saw the alert, warning the pharmacy of the allergy, had been removed, so there was nothing to warn anyone of the mistake they were about to make.
    He didn’t have to search much to fi nd out what had replaced the drug David had received: Amoxicillin rather than the anti-allergen. No wonder David had such a violent reaction. But...
    it didn’t make any sense. Why David? Sure he was a cop and a gay man. Both attracted the wrong kind of attention. Could the hacker have had a run in with cops? With David in particular? If he had this power he could have hit the entire hospital pharmacy records.
    Chris scrambled to his feet. He had to warn Terry. If medications were compromised time was vital. He snatched up his Blackberry and punched in the network manager’s cell.
    He answered on the third ring. In the background Chris could hear children yelling. The sound suddenly died; Terry must have moved to another room.
    “What’s up?”
    “You may have a bigger problem than we thought.” Chris told him about David’s compromised medication. There was nothing but silence at the other end.
    “You think other records might have been altered?”
    “I can’t rule it out.”
    Terry swore.
    “I’ll be right there,” Terry said.

CHAPTER THREE
    Monday, 4:45 pm Ste. Anne’s Medical Center, Rowena Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles
    “I heard about your troubles a few years ago,” Terry said.
    He had run out to