EQMM, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  It had started out okay. When his mother had found out that Kyle was late coming home because he had called the police, she had wrapped him in her arms and pulled him close.

  "I'm so proud of you, Kyle,” she had said—whispered, really, as if expressing her opinion in that apartment was against the law.

  That was when his dad had come home. And his dad wanted to know what Kyle had done that was so praiseworthy. Kyle had defaulted to his usual “Nothing, sir,” but his mother had to go and explain it all.

  His father glared at him, then walked into the at-home office, turned on the wall screen with its twenty-four available channels to see the damage.

  Kyle followed him to the door.

  The damage wasn't national, not yet, but NY1 already had the story: The mutilated body of a young girl was found this afternoon by Kyle Worthington, only son of billionaire Jackson Worthington. Young Worthington was walking through the neighborhood with friends when he caught sight of what he called “a girl in the trash,” and called 911. The girl, who has not been identified, had been beaten, stabbed, and mutilated, in what police call one of the most graphic crimes the city has seen in a decade....

  "You realize what this is going to do, don't you?” his father had said. “The entire press corps will descend. This story is about you, Kyle, and because of you, it'll be about me."

  His father pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and hit a button with one finger. Kyle had used that moment to retreat.

  But he hadn't been able to go to his room—not yet. He'd had to eat with both parents, because they insisted. Families eat together, his mother always said in that whispery tone, as if even that firmly held belief might have to change under his father's dictates.

  Kyle wished it would. Dinner consisted of more beratings from his father. Kyle had to stay through the coffee and more recriminations. Then his mother wanted more time with him, and because his father was so furious, Kyle had complied, even though it meant watching reruns of Desperate Housewives on the big screen in the den.

  By the time he had gotten to his room, he was tired and shaking. He put one of the continuous loops he'd taped into the cameras’ programming so his dad couldn't spy on him, careful to chose the one that went with this shirt, and then he logged onto the computer. He was desperate to prove to his father that the Breck Girl wasn't famous because Kyle had found her. She was famous in her own right, first for her YouTube video and then for tallystipsforhair.com.

  No one knew it was her in that alley. No one except him. He hadn't even told the cops, figuring they would find it on their own. Besides, he didn't want to seem like he knew too much about her. He'd watched enough crime shows to know that the guy who found the body was often under as much suspicion as the friends and relatives of the deceased.

  Kyle went to that website now. She had a studio portrait on one of the pages, and he wanted to see that. He was going to compare it to the video he'd taken that afternoon, just to make sure his own memory wasn't faulty.

  He logged onto the site and there she was, a living, breathing human being, brushing her long black hair. It was the video opener she had put up earlier in the week. He'd already watched it half a dozen times with the sound off. Much as he liked her slightly husky voice, he'd grown tired of the instruction:

  Forget that myth about a hundred strokes. A hundred strokes won't give you shiny hair. Only the proper care will do that. The proper care and thirty minutes of slow brushing with a soft-bristled brush every single day...

  He stared at that face, with its slight color in the cheeks, the knowing black eyes, the small dimple on the left side of her mouth, a dimple that only appeared when she smiled.

  He clicked on the link that led to her studio portrait and looked at the shot. Her eyes stared into the distance, her delicate mouth was partly open, and her hair flowed around her as if caught in a gentle breeze.

  He grabbed his cell phone, opened the video file, and froze it on the closeup he'd taken of the dead girl.

  Except for the open eyes, the staging was exactly the same. Particularly the hair. It was identical, down to the positioning of the strands.

  The killer had been to the site. He had used this photograph as his template.

  He had been sending a message.

  A message that only Kyle had received.

  * * * *

  Kyle paced around his bedroom for an hour. His bedroom was big. He had his own bathroom, and a sitting area that had been a second room until his father's on-staff designer had gotten ahold of it.

  Everything was open and airy, or so she said, as if in creating the illusion of openness, she could force the family into being open.

  Of course, it hadn't worked.

  Nothing was working, not even Kyle's brain. If he hadn't been Kyle Worthington, only son of billionaire Jackson Worthington, he would have resolved to call the police first thing in the morning, no matter how much suspicion it would have cast on him.

  But he'd already received a new asshole for doing the responsible thing and calling 911. He couldn't imagine how his father would react if Kyle actually cast suspicion on himself by showing that the dead girl wasn't some random victim.

  And he couldn't ask one of his friends to do it. He knew how that would work. The police would ask them how they knew the Breck Girl wasn't a random victim, and they would say that Kyle Worthington told them. That would be even worse than telling the police himself.

  Kyle sat on the edge of his king-sized bed, the satin spread bunching against his legs. He picked up his phone and played the video again, heard his startled voice sounding digitized and small as it said, Christ! Next came Mason, his voice even clearer as he said, Dude, what the hell? Then there was Devin's Crap, man, accompanied by the sound of vomit spattering all over the concrete.

  Recognizable, clear. The sounds of the boys who had found a dead body on their walk home.

  What the paparazzi wouldn't give for a bit of that tape. What his dad would do if it were made public.

  But it had a couple of things, things that the police needed to solve the crime, things that the police didn't know they needed.

  Like the way her hair mimicked the hair on her pro shot. The way her fists were clenched as if she'd been fighting. Or maybe as if she'd been holding something, something someone had taken away.

  He was shaking. He lacked the skill to send an encrypted e-mail message—the kind that would truly be anonymous. The NYPD had a dedicated computer crimes unit now, one that had been able to track pedophile rings all over the world, which meant that they knew how to go through layers and layers of masking technology.

  And he couldn't go to a cyber cafe because those things used monitoring now too, just like his dad did. They recorded whoever sat at the screen from the screen's internal camera, as well as on the external security system.

  He could try a call from a pay phone if he could find one, and if the one he found wasn't near an ATM or any other private security camera. He could even use a prepaid cell, but he'd have to buy one, and most small stores now had sophisticated security as well.

  He was being watched everywhere, just like everyone else.

  Finally, a glance at the clock convinced him he wasn't going to find the answers here. It was nearly two a.m. If his father got up for his middle-of-the-night pee, then he'd check the cameras and see that his number-one son—his only son—hadn't gone to bed yet.

  There'd be another round of recriminations. It wouldn't matter if Kyle said it was normal for a guy who discovered a dead body to have trouble sleeping. His dad would start in on him again for calling 911, and the entire nightmare scenario would replay.

  Best side of valor was to shut down the continuous loop, turn on the live cam, and go to bed. Then his dad would think he was asleep, and Kyle could think with a reasonable expectation of privacy—or at least, an expectation of not being interrupted.

  He reset the cameras, went through his bedtime routine, and crawled between the silk sheets,
shutting out the light. He'd been afraid that the Breck Girl's face would peer at him in the darkness, but it didn't.

  Nothing did.

  * * * *

  Lunch was the most painless part of the school day. Kids sat at white linen-covered tables. Waiters actually took orders and served food, food that was better than the crap served at his dad's private men's club.

  Kyle always sat at the same table, with Mason and Devin and a revolving group of casual friends—whoever showed up before the table got filled. They were all coming to sit with him, the mysterious Kyle Worthington, but he'd long ago given up on trying to figure out if they were sitting with him because they liked him or because they wanted to get to know someone whose dad was one of the richest people on the planet.

  Kyle stared at his usual lunch table, already filled except for the chair he usually sat in, then veered away from it. He went to the table in the back where the Geek Squad hung out.

  "You mind?” he asked as he pulled out the chair closest to the window.

  The Geek Squad—a group of four of the most brilliant guys in class and the only two girls who weren't afraid to show that they could keep up—stared at him in shock.

  "You can have the chair,” Loiree said. She was pudgy with chapped lips that she always kept biting. Her glasses didn't fit right. They slid down her nose, and she kept pushing them up with the knuckle of her left forefinger.

  She'd been his chem partner for all of a day before the teacher separated them, saying that the pairing would allow Worthington to coast. A valid assumption based on his past history, but nowhere near the truth.

  If Kyle applied himself, he could be a member of the Geek Squad. He just never saw the point. All it would do was force his father to push him even harder, something Kyle didn't ever want to suffer through.

  "I don't care about the chair,” Kyle said. “I'd like to sit here."

  They stared at him as if flames had shot out of his nose. He straddled the chair and sat, resting his elbows on the table.

  "Mr. Worthington,” said one of the waiters. “May I assume you're eating here?"

  "You may assume that,” Kyle said. “And give me the usual."

  The waiter nodded and vanished toward the back without taking orders from the rest of the Geek Squad. No one else seemed to notice. Everyone in the entire lunchroom was staring at him.

  He decided to ignore them, and only concentrate on the six people at this particular table. “I got some questions,” he said, “and you guys are the brilliant ones, so I thought you might have some answers."

  "We don't let anyone crib homework,” said Nellie Evans, the other girl at the table. She'd actually be pretty if she didn't hunch and if she had taken the Breck Girl's advice and paid attention to her hair. “And we don't send answers to cells, even for a fee."

  "Bully for you,” he said drily. “I can do my own homework, thanks."

  He tried to bury his annoyance. Why did everyone think he was stupid anyway?

  He knew how to do the work. He just chose not to, mostly to piss off his old man.

  But he didn't say any of that. Instead, he said, “I just want to know some technical stuff."

  The Geek Squad boys still hadn't moved. They were watching him with more than a little fear. People usually weren't afraid of him.

  It took him a moment to realize they thought this was some kind of prank—that they'd be made the butt of a particularly ugly joke—and they weren't participating in any part of the conversation for that very reason.

  "Look,” he said as calmly as he could. “This is on the level. You guys know more about everything than anyone else. And I have some questions. I'm not going to embarrass you. I promise."

  They were saved from answering him by a different waiter, one Kyle had never noticed before. He didn't realize until that moment that the lunchroom waiters had their own sections and, presumably, their own customers, just like the waiters at his dad's club did.

  He shivered. He hadn't even noticed the de facto segregation until he'd broken protocol. He wondered how many other things he had missed.

  "I just want to know,” he said after the Geek Squad ordered, “if it's possible to send an e-mail that no one—and I mean no one—can trace."

  "Just go to an anonymous e-mail site,” said Loiree. She rolled her eyes at one of the male Geeks, a scrawny kid named Najib.

  "If I send an e-mail from one of those sites, it can be traced to my computer, right?” Kyle asked.

  Loiree tilted her head, her glasses catching the light and hiding her eyes. Still, Kyle could sense her surprise.

  "That's right,” Najib said in his high-pitched voice. He was two years younger than the rest of them, a scholarship student whose family couldn't even afford to buy him the school uniform. He'd had to borrow old ones that the principal's office kept for just such emergencies. “There's no way to send an untraceable e-mail. I mean, even if you go to some cyber cafe or use a friend's computer, someone would eventually find you. If they were that motivated."

  The Squad had leaned forward as a unit, all except Nellie, who was still hunched in her chair, chewing on a strand of her black hair. Kyle was beginning to realize that he freaked her out.

  "What about a text message?” he asked. “What if I used a prepaid cell?"

  "Those can be traced too,” said Najib. The other boys were nodding. “Especially if you bought it recently."

  "But if you have an unlocked prepaid cell,” said the other scrawny kid at the table, Taeo Domingus, “you could put in a foreign SIM card like a Turkish one or something, and then send the text."

  "Yeah,” said Najib. “If you send it to a few other unlocked cells with swapped-out SIMs, the tracker would have to go through not just the cell but the supposed country of origin. A lot of those countries, if you chose the right one, keep their cell records confidential."

  "And they're hard to hack.” Nellie had stopped chewing her hair. “It's not untraceable, but it would take a long time."

  "You worried about a hacker?” Loiree asked.

  "Worried about my dad.” Kyle had meant that as a lie, but in essence it was true. If his dad wasn't such a grade-A control freak, then Kyle could do the responsible thing without resorting to trickery. “Worried about his security people and any authorities they might contact."

  The girls and Najib nodded. But Taeo was frowning. “Money can buy a lot of information. Your dad would find it."

  "But,” Najib said, “it would take a lot of time, finding the right official to bribe in the right place."

  "And you'd have to know the text was sent too, right?” Kyle asked. “I mean before you start looking for it."

  "Yeah,” Najib said. “You'd have to want to find the source of that particular text."

  "Pretty badly, as a matter of fact,” Nellie said with a sideways glance at Taeo.

  "Is your dad the kinda guy who'd go through the trouble to find all of that?” Taeo asked.

  "He wouldn't go through the trouble,” Kyle said. “He'd pay someone else to."

  But first, his dad would have to know the police had received a text. And then his dad would have to suspect him of sending that text.

  Kyle felt pretty safe that neither would happen.

  "I know where to get an unlocked cell,” he said. The spy shop where he had gotten a lot of his other gear had unlocked cells. “Tell me how they work."

  "Pretty simple,” Najib said. “American cell phones are locked. In most countries, the cells aren't. If you take the battery out of your cell, you'll see a flat surface. Beneath that surface is your SIM card. It's the brains of your phone. Remove that and the phone doesn't work. You lose everything from your phone numbers to your saved texts. Put it back in and those things return."

  "Like the memory card for a camera,” Kyle said.

  "Exactly.” Najib stopped as their waiter brought the rest of the food. Kyle didn't recognize any of the items. He wondered if they had a different menu than he had too—one that
wasn't as expensive.

  When the waiter left, Najib continued. “The SIM card is proprietary to your cell-phone provider. If you had an unlocked cell with service from, say, Verizon, you could remove the SIM and put in an AT&T SIM. You'd lose all your Verizon memory and your Verizon number and you'd replace it with an AT&T number. If you put in a British SIM card, you'll get a British phone number from a British provider."

  "But don't you need a credit card for that?” Kyle asked.

  Najib and Taeo both laughed.

  "Don't you live in Manhattan, dude?” asked the third boy, whose name Kyle didn't know.

  "Yeah,” Kyle said, not understanding.

  "Have you seen how many guys sell electronics on the sidewalk?” the kid asked.

  "Yeah,” Kyle said. “But they're illegal, often stolen merchandise."

  "Or at least untraceable,” Taeo said. “I doubt any of those guys has a machine for your credit card, even though they'd want your card number."

  "Hell,” Najib said. “I want your card number, at least for a day."

  "Stop it,” Nellie said.

  She'd been picking at her food, and Kyle thought she had stopped paying attention. Obviously, she hadn't.

  "The key is,” she said, “that you need a lot of SIMs and you need to send that text from phone to phone to phone. Then you have to toss everything."

  "Phones and SIM cards,” Najib said. “Get rid of all of it."

  "And not garbage cans, either,” Taeo said. “Smash the cards, toss them in the river."

  Kyle bit the inside of his lower lip. He wasn't stupid. But he wasn't going to let these kids see him as defensive either.

  "No one'll trace that text, man,” Taeo said.

  "Except...” Loiree let her voice trail off dramatically.

  "Except?” Kyle asked.

  "You already screwed up by asking us. We know your plan now. If your dad wants to know about some text, we can tell him how you sent it. We won't have the phone numbers, but we'll have the plan. That's good enough."

  In spite of himself, Kyle felt another shiver run through him.

  "For all you know,” he said as nonchalantly as he could, “I'm researching a paper."