Dangerous Habits

by Susan Hunter

  “It’s not the next freaking installment of Scandal. Yes, it’s real.”

  “What were you counting on to give you answers?”

  “A URL. Really, Ben, I have to go.”

  “Wait, maybe I can help.”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean the URL doesn’t work?”

  “I type it in, and it goes nowhere. I’ve never seen one like it before. It ends in .onion. I think it might be some kind of code.”

  “Did you try the dark web?”

  “Dark web? That sounds like something Harry Potter would get caught in.”

  “No, I’m serious. If your URL ends in .onion, Google won’t get you there. You need to download the Tor browser.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, but I need your help. Now.”

  To his credit, he didn’t ask for any more explanation than that.

  “What’s your address?”

  I gave it to him, hung up, and turned to my mother.

  “Ben said the URL is part of some, I don’t know, underground web or something that you can’t get to just Googling. He’s going to come over and show me what to do.”

  When his car pulled in the drive, I was waiting with my laptop open on the bar. If he was startled to hear “Puttin’ On the Ritz” as he rang the doorbell, he didn’t show it.

  “Ben. Hi, c’mon in.”

  I took him into the kitchen.

  “Mom, this is Ben. Ben, this my mother, Carol Nash. Here’s the address.”

  “Good to meet you, Ben. You can see we’re a little anxious to get started.”

  “No problem. I’m glad to help if I can.”

  “What about the URL?”

  He glanced quickly at the paper I’d thrust under his nose. “All right, yeah, that’s part of the Tor network, I’m sure. The first thing to do is download the Tor browser on your laptop.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Like I started to tell you on the phone, the web most people use every day only accounts for a small percentage of what’s out there on the Internet. The dark web or deep web—some people call it the invisible web—is a huge storehouse of information that’s not accessible to regular search engines.”

  “Why not?”

  He had pulled up a stool next to me and was already tapping on the keyboard, checking security configurations and my computer’s RAM and storage capacity while he talked. My mother hovered on the other side of the bar.

  “Search engines send out spiders—essentially roving algorithms—that constantly scan the web, indexing pages. When you type in a query, the engine matches your query with its indexed pages on the topic and gives you a list of sites to choose from. But any password-protected sites, or private networks, or paywalled content, or pages without hyperlinks—anything like that won’t show up when you do a search, because the spiders can’t index them.

  “That’s where the dark web content lives. Most of it’s benign and boring. Academic databases, scholarly research, directories, raw data, stuff like that. But some of it isn’t. There’s criminal activity going on there too—like selling drugs and guns and pornography, and it can all be done anonymously using the Tor network.”

  “How?”

  “When you use the Tor browser, basically, you’re assigned a false identity. Your search is routed through dozens of computers in sites all over the world. Your real identity is buried under so many layers, it becomes impossible to find you. That’s where the .onion domain came from—Tor hides you behind layers, like the layers of an onion.”

  He had continued typing and now he turned the computer to face me and said, “There. I downloaded Tor, that should let you find this address. Go ahead.”

  I looked at the paper, typed it in and waited expectantly.

  “Damn it!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I turned the laptop around so my mother could see the screen. A little box blinked politely, asking me to please enter the password.

  I flipped it over to Ben.

  “You don’t have any idea what the password could be?” he said.

  “None. I don’t suppose you’re a code breaker as well as an IT consultant, are you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  Ben’s face was crestfallen, and I realized I hadn’t been as gracious as I could have been, given that he’d dropped everything and come over to help, no questions asked.

  “It’s OK, Ben, I’ll just have to come at it from another direction. But thanks for your help. And for the dark web lesson.”

  “I could stick around, see if we could play with it a bit. Maybe we’d come up with that new direction for you.”

  “No, thanks anyway. I need some time to think this out.”

  “But you haven’t told me what’s really going on.”

  “I can’t.” I stood up. “Thanks again, Ben.”

  “Well, OK,” he said, standing finally and moving toward the door as I all but pushed him there. He seemed surprised, but then a guy who looked like him probably didn’t get shoved aside very often.

  “Ben, thanks so much for your help,” my mother said, adding her own polite verbal nudge.

  “Yeah. Sure. Call me if I can do anything.”

  Thirty-Eight

  “OK, OK, Mom,” I said when he left. “Help me think. What do people use for passwords? Birthdays, anniversaries, their mother’s maiden name … none of which we know for Palmer.”

  “What about a pet?”

  “As far as I know he doesn’t have one.”

  I sat staring morosely at the blank screen on my computer. And then I turned to her.

  “Mom, maybe it has something to do with the eagle. That’s why Lacey didn’t just write the URL down, she replicated the eagle sketch because both things were part of it—the URL was hidden, and the eagle is the password!”

  I opened the Tor browser and typed in the dark web URL again. When I reached the password box I typed Eagle. Nothing. OK, just a setback. I started on a round of variations. EagleGanymede, EagleZeus, ZeusEagle, GanymedeEagle. Nothing. ZeusGanymede. GanymedeZeus. All caps. All lower case. Alternating upper and lower case. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. It had to work. But it didn’t. My brilliant idea was a bust.

  I started to exit the site in defeat. Then, though I never told my mother this, I heard a password in my head as clearly as if Lacey were whispering it in my ear. I typed SLBeagleganymede1978.

  Bingo. I was in. And immediately wished I was out. The screen was filled with thumbnail images of boys and men in various states of arousal, engaged in a variety of sexual positions. A click on any one led to video footage. Most of the boys looked to be between 10 and 14. Their faces were clearly visible. However, the men, who seemed to be mostly middle-aged, judging by the flabby muscles and sagging posteriors, had their backs to the camera, or their faces blocked, or were so far out of the center of the frame that it was impossible to identify them.

  My mother came up behind me, and I heard her gasp. I kept checking video, hoping for something that would connect with Palmer. I half-heard her cell phone ring, and after a few minutes she came back over and touched my shoulder.

  “That was Paul. I forgot he offered to help me pack up more of the files. I just want to get done and out of that office. We were going to grab a late pizza when we finished. I told him to skip it tonight.”

  “What? No, Mom, seriously. The sooner you’re done with everything to do with Karen, the better. Go ahead. I’m fine, there’s nothing for you to do here, really. Call Paul back. Have him come and get you. There’s no reason both of us have to make ourselves sick looking at this garbage.”

  “You’ll be all right? You’ll call Detective Ross, and tell him what you found? Or at least Coop?”

  “Yes, absolutely. As soon as I really have a handle on this.”

  “I’ll call Paul.” I didn’t hear any of her conversation, but a few minutes later she tapped me on the shoulder ag
ain.

  “Paul’s coming by to pick me up. Will you meet us later? Say around 10 at McClain’s?”

  “Mmmm, maybe. Depends on how long this takes me. Maybe I can grab something with Coop, when I fill him in. Who knows, I might still be going over files when you get back.”

  “Leah, you are going to turn this information over? You’re not going to pursue this yourself?”

  “Of course. I just—”

  “I know. You just can’t let go.”

  “It’s not that, really.”

  “Yes. It is. Really. I’ve half a mind to call Coop myself.”

  “No! Mom, I’ll call him. I will, all right? When I’m ready.”

  A horn tapped lightly in the driveway. She sighed. “I have to go. But if you don’t call him, I will. This is too big and too dangerous for you to be playing around with on your own.”

  I nodded, but didn’t look up as the door closed behind her. I turned back to the videos. After a few more minutes of viewing the sad, sick variations on a theme, I admitted the truth. Palmer was way too smart. I was not going to find anything on that site that would remotely link to him. I shut it down.

  I had gone as far as I could. I had to turn over everything, I knew. I felt a pang about Danny—once Ross got onto him, there was scant hope he’d be able to hide his current life from his brother. But he was key to bringing down Palmer and the rest, maybe some of the St. Lucian’s Boys as well.

  I picked up my phone and hit Coop’s speed dial number, but I got his voice mail. I didn’t leave a message, instead I called Melanie to see where he was.

  “He’s over to a meeting with the prosecutor, then he’s got a Law Enforcement banquet in Omico. He’s not coming back in the office this afternoon. Did you try his cell?”

  “Yeah, it went to voicemail. I’ll just text him later.”

  “Hey, after Miller’s press conference this morning, it looks like you’re not the big story anymore. Think you’ll get your job back?”

  “I don’t know, Melanie. I really don’t know.” In truth, I hadn’t thought about it at all. The stalking fiasco was the last straw for Max, but he’d been building up a steady list of my offenses for a while. Maybe the fact that I wasn’t guilty wouldn’t matter that much to him. “Well, I gotta go. I’ll catch you later.”

  I tried to imagine what Coop would say when I told him about the site. I tried to address all of Ross’s potential objections. The voices on the MP3 player could be anybody. My star witness was, by my own admission, a teenage hustler.

  The dark website was real. They might even be able to identify DeMoss boys on it, but there was no other connection to Palmer or Sister Julianna. If I was right, and Lacey picked the address out of the sketch in Palmer’s office, that would be a direct connection, provided I could get the original.

  And really, why couldn’t I?

  Thirty-Nine

  OK, I probably shouldn’t steal the sketch. Palmer would notice that immediately. But I could get a good photo of it, sitting on the shelf in his office. Good enough so a person could pick out the numbers and letters. If they were there. They had to be there. An idea took shape. I made a quick phone call and got the information I needed. Then I paced back and forth down the hall between the kitchen and my room, waiting for darkness to fall.

  Finally, a little after 9, I left a note for my mother telling her that after viewing all that filth, I needed to get out in the open air. I was going for a drive to think and clear my head. And not to worry. I might stop by Coop’s before I came home. That way, by the time she started to worry, I’d be back. I had to take her car, though, because she’d blocked me in.

  I grabbed the lanyard with her car key from the hook by the door and put it around my neck, then hopped in her Prius and took off. My plan was simple, and if I was lucky, easy. I would enter the Catherines’ property at the Baylor Road entrance and park at the rock, the same spot where Lacey had met Cole. Then I’d walk down the road, which was little more than a track, to the administration building. As long as Sister Margaret hadn’t been busted yet for leaving her window open “for a bit of fresh air,” I should be able to slide into the building that way.

  I cut the lights as I left the main road. I pulled in next to Simon’s Rock and turned off the car. The night was cloudy and cool and it was lightly sprinkling. I looked at my watch as I started out. I thought about Danny, shivering there as the night turned cold, and the snow fell along with his hopes, as he slowly came to believe that Lacey had abandoned him. I pictured Lacey hurrying along the trail, black hair flying behind her, determined to get Danny out, not realizing she was running toward the last few minutes of her life.

  I felt a fresh surge of anger. Anger that my smart, brave sister and a scared little boy were crushed by that triad of ruthless hypocrites. The fury powered me forward so that I practically flew down the unfamiliar terrain. The bony fingers of slender branches caught in my hair and snapped on my cheeks. I flung them away impatiently. Something small and furry darted in front of me and I jerked, my heart thumping. I flashed my light, and it scurried into the bushes.

  When I reached the building, I checked my watch again. Twelve minutes—and I was really hustling. It would have taken Lacey at least that long. I surveyed the scene. Security lights in the drive lit the front of the building, and in the rear more illuminated a small parking lot for staff. Darmody’s brother, Delbert, a security guard at DeMoss, had happily divulged his entire nightly routine when I’d called him earlier.

  Guards walked the perimeter of the campus, checked doors of the main buildings—academic, counseling center, library—every two hours, starting at 9. By 9:30, they were back in the maintenance building watching video feed from the newly installed security cameras and eating junk from the vending machine. He didn’t question why I was asking. He even volunteered the location of the security cameras.

  It was just on ten o’clock, so I had over an hour before a guard was due. And I knew just where to go. The security camera in the back of the building was mounted on a light pole and aimed at the back entrance. I wasn’t planning on using the back door, and as long as I didn’t cross in front of it on my way to Sister Margaret’s secret window, I should be golden.

  I slipped around the back, staying close to the wall. Sister Margaret’s window, cracked just a few inches, was well away from the security cameras. Keeping my body pressed along the side of the building, wary of motion sensor lights Delbert may have neglected to mention, I crept to the opening. The sash lifted easily and silently, no doubt from regular illicit use by Sister Margaret.

  I tossed my flashlight through but getting in myself took a little more effort. Even opened as far as it would go, the window was small and required some origami-like body folding and flattening. For a few minutes, it looked like I might be found lodged half-in and half-out during the next security guard rounds. I gave a final desperate push with the leg I’d managed to get onto the floor, and that popped me through like a cork shooting out of a bottle. I landed in a heap and added yoga classes to my mental list of future fitness activities.

  I picked up my flashlight and paused in the doorway. My breathing and the thumping of my heart were the only sounds. I moved forward out of the small copy room and patted Sister Margaret’s chair for luck as I passed it on my way to Palmer’s office.

  I’d come prepared to jimmy his office lock with a credit card trick that a source once taught me. No need. Not only was Palmer’s door not locked, it wasn’t even shut. Arrogant bastard. As though no one would dare violate his sacred space. No ambient light from the parking lot or plugged in electronics relieved the cave-like blackness of his office.

  I took a couple of steps inside and shined the beam of my flashlight on the far end of the room. There it was. The eagle sketch sitting on its easel. I hurried over, grabbed it and focused the flashlight on it. I stared at it with single-minded concentration, until gradually the distractions of the dozens of fine lines, cross-hatching and shadows fell aw
ay, and the numbers and letters of the deep website came into clear view.

  I dug my phone out of my pocket. Took a second to double check that the ringer was off. Then I set my flashlight on the shelf and angled it toward the picture. I zoomed in and took a shot. Not great, but I could make out the letters. I zoomed out and took another shot that showed the sketch sitting on the shelf with the rest of Palmer’s tchotchkes to put it firmly in context. For good measure, I emailed the pictures to myself and copied in Miguel.

  I turned to leave the office. My eyes were hit with a blinding flash as the overhead light flicked on. I was still blinking and squinting when Sister Julianna said, “Hello, Leah. I’m surprised to see you. Especially since Reid is in no condition to visit.”

  She nodded her head to the left, and I turned in the direction of what had been the darkest corner of the office when I entered. Sitting at his desk was Reid Palmer. And he was very, very dead.

  I couldn’t take my eyes away from the gaping hole in his head, out of which oozed blood and brain matter, or from the spattered wall behind him. I swallowed back a sudden urge to throw up.

  “Leah, do you feel faint? Help her, Sean.” I turned and saw that Hegl was standing in the doorway as well.

  I waved him away, and shook my head. “I’m all right. What happened?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Reid has committed suicide. After leaving a note confessing to heinous crimes. Including killing your sister and engaging in pedophilia with some of our most troubled students. It’s truly shocking.”

  I wasn’t firing on all cylinders. “Palmer confessed? How? Why?”

  “Well, I think you have to take some of the credit, Leah. Your relentless pursuit of your sister’s death really put a great deal of pressure on him. He was extremely depressed and despondent and apparently—at least according to his note—he had a great deal to answer for.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re saying that Palmer was responsible for everything?”

  “Who else?” It was then I saw the glint of mockery in her eyes and realized just how much trouble I was in. Did she know I’d pieced together everything—including her embezzlement?