It was also tough keeping his attention focused on the screen with her sitting so close. Even the smallest gesture, as she pushed a strand of hair over her ear, was mesmerizing. There was something about watching her work. The world disappeared for her. When they ordered, she barely looked up, simply mumbling that she'd have the same as him—a New York sirloin, medium rare.
"All right," she said, when the waitress had gone, "I think I got a handle on this place."
"I'm glad you do," he said.
"Sorry," she said, looking at him. Other than a bit of red around her eyes, there was little sign of her outburst earlier; a second shower and a bit of makeup had done the trick. "Didn't mean to leave you in the dust."
"I'm still with you. Barely."
She smiled faintly and squeezed his hand under the table. "You've already showed you can keep up with me in the most important way."
"I hate to admit, but I was running on fumes at the end."
"Hmm. Well, better eat that steak. You'll need that energy later." She must have seen the surprised look on his face, because she laughed. "Just kidding. I think I've done enough damage to you for one day."
"You think?"
She held his gaze for a playful second, then shifted her attention back to the iPad. "This is one popular site. Hundreds of different subforums, each centered around a different show, and inside each of those forums are hundreds of threads. The popular ones, like Star Trek and Star Wars, really dominate. The site does make you register to participate, but you don't have to use your own name. Most people post under anonymous handles."
Gage studied the screen. "Like MyBigWookiee2008?"
"Yes, they can get a bit nerdy."
"And I take it you searched for both Jeremiah and Connor?"
She nodded. "Nothing under their own names. Not really that surprising. But I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve. Take a look at this."
She tapped a few times on the screen, whizzed her way through a few pop-up menus, and suddenly they were looking at HMTL code.
"Scary," he said.
"Only if you can't read it," she said. "Lucky for you, I thought I was going to be a computer analyst at the FBI before I got hooked on field work. I'm a bit of tech nerd."
"Is there anything you can't do?"
"I can't play the piano."
"Well, that settles it, then," Gage said. "I can't be with any woman who can't play the piano."
"I'm not bad with the electric guitar, though." She pointed at the screen. "See, this site is actually fairly open. It lists their IP addresses if you know where to look. And if you have that—"
"—you can narrow down their location," Gage finished. And when she looked at him with surprise, he shrugged. "I may appear to be a Luddite, but I do try to have at least a passing understanding of things."
"That's more than passing," she said. She tapped and swiped and copied one of the addresses, then opened up another window, quickly loading another site that could identify the IP. She copied and pasted the IP address and a few seconds later had some information about its location. "See, this guy's from the Sacramento, California, area."
Gage saw where she was headed. "There's not nearly as many people in Barnacle Bluffs as there are in Sacramento."
"Right."
"So if we can find IP addresses based here, there's a good chance it's going to be Connor or Jeremiah. Or at least we'll be able to narrow it down to a handful of people."
"My thoughts exactly," she said. "The problem is, without my handy-dandy friends at the FBI on speed dial, I'm left searching these IP addresses one by one. There's thousands of users. It can take a long time."
Gage thought about it, rubbing his thumb along his water glass, leaving a moisture trail on the cold glass. "Red Dwarf," he said.
"Huh?"
"I saw a poster on Connor's wall. Red Dwarf. It looked like a British show."
"Yes, and what's your point?"
"Maybe it's not as well known. Which means—"
"—it's probably got a less active forum," she said, finishing his thought. "I get it. Fewer names to search."
"And you can also eliminate anyone who's posted since Thursday," he said. "With Connor dead and Jeremiah in jail …"
"Right. Give me a second."
Her eyes glittered with her excitement. He felt the excitement himself. It felt good to be on the trail of a solid lead. More than that, it felt good to be working with Karen. He'd never had a partner. He'd never wanted a partner. Even when he'd been starting out back in New York working for his uncle, chasing down deadbeat dads and cheating wives, he'd chafed at working with anyone else. He'd always assumed that he wasn't the sort of person who could even have a partner, but now he was at least reconsidering the idea.
It took her more than a second. It took her the entire time before their meals arrived, steaks juicy, vegetables steaming. She whirled from one screen to the next, occasionally tapping a name in an open document before whirling onto the next. Even while they ate—it was the best steak Gage had eaten in a long time, tender and succulent, but he doubted she noticed—she kept returning her attention to the iPad. He made a couple of jokes about kids living in their parents' basements, pretty good jokes if he did say so himself, but she ignored him. Finally, when he was deciding whether he was really hungry enough to eat that cauliflower, she looked at him and smiled triumphantly.
"Three names," she said.
"What?"
"Three names. Three people from the mid-Oregon coast who fit that criteria."
"Three?"
She cut into her steak. "That's right. SpockLives2008. DWR_forever. And Fireflyawesome. Firefly was a cult show in the late nineties that was only on the air briefly. I don't know what DWR stands for."
Gage remembered Connor's drawing right away, the one with DWR surrounded by a bunch of animals. He described it to Karen.
"Any idea what it means?" she asked.
"No idea, but there has to be a connection. So those three people all posted before Thursday but not after?"
"Yep. And here's something else. I'm pretty sure that SpockLives2008 and Fireflyawesome are Jeremiah and Connor. Not sure which is which, but when I scrolled through their posts, it's pretty clear they're teenagers. Every now and then one of them will drop a reference to their parents or jerks at school."
"What about the other one?"
She swallowed a bite, closed her eyes and enjoyed it. "Mmm. Nothing like a little exercise to make you appreciate a fine steak." She opened her eyes and fluttered her eyelashes at him. "I don't know, but I'm guessing he's not a kid. He made some digs about women on their periods. He made a reference to Monica Lewinsky that kind of dates him too. But here's the best part. They all made a reference to private-messaging each other—about a week ago."
"Anything else to go on?" Gage asked.
"Not so far. A lot of nerdy posts about time continuums and alien races. I went through them pretty quickly, so I can read through them again a bit more closely. It's not like they posted a ton, though. Especially DWR_forever. He was just in there a couple dozen times, all of them in the past few months."
"In other words, since school started."
"Right."
"I just thought of something. The IP addresses … would BBCC have their own unique IP address?"
She put down her fork and marveled at him. "Are you sure you weren't a computer nerd in another life?"
"I've been told I was a ballerina in another life."
"I can see that. You're quite light on your toes."
"You should see me en pointe. It's a thing of beauty."
She was already tapping away on the iPad. It took her only a few seconds and she was smiling.
"What?" he said.
"All three of them have a couple different IP addresses, but all three of them also have at least one from BBCC. Probably means they were posting from other locations, too—home, a coffee shop—but the main ones are at BBCC."
"Bingo," he
said.
"It gets better. Two of the IP addresses are almost identical. I'm guessing that's because they're in the dorm. The other one is different. It's DWR_forever."
"Could be another student," he said. "Maybe logging in at the library or the student union. He or she just doesn't live on campus."
"Or somebody who works there," she said.
"Or somebody who works there."
They let this thought settle. If the situation wasn't disturbing enough, the idea of a professor or staff member tied up in the murder definitely took it over the top. But why? That was the million-dollar question. Find out who DWR_forever was, and he had a sense that he'd be a lot closer to freeing Jeremiah Cooper from jail. The question was how. If Karen was on leave, he doubted she'd have access to her powerful friends, some of whom might be able to give him the actual names behind the handles. There was always Alex, who had his own contacts in the FBI, but Alex had his hands full dealing with Eve, and there was no way Gage was going to lean on him. There was the ever helpful Barnacle Bluffs Police Department, of course, but he very much doubted they'd agree to any kind of quid pro quo, no matter how nicely he asked.
Then Gage realized he was probably overthinking this. There might be a much easier way to find out who this person was.
"Can you post something?" he asked.
Chapter 15
After dinner, Gage decided to make a run to the Turret House to check on Zoe. Karen didn't ask if she could tag along. She simply did. The sky was dark. The air felt heavy and thick. A few pinpricks of water appeared on the van's windshield, but otherwise the rain had mercifully stopped—at least for a short while.
"Does it always rain this much?" Karen asked.
"It is Oregon," Gage said. "Technically, a lot of East Coast cities get more rain than us, but we just get it in lots of little drizzles instead of the occasional big storm. Spreads out the joy."
"How can anyone stand it? It'd drive me crazy after a while."
"It's exactly because it drives other people crazy that a lot of us like it. Keeps away the less committed."
"Maybe you should all be committed."
"Let me guess, you're from Nevada?"
"Arizona, actually. But mostly I was a military brat. Traveled all over the world. I saw all kinds of weather, but I guess I'm still a sun worshipper at heart."
She sounded as if she were on the verge of saying something more, but then she lapsed into silent contemplation, gazing out the passenger-side window as they buzzed over the highway. He didn't press. He saw what pressing got him, and he trusted that she'd come out with it in time. And if not? Well, he liked being with her, and he'd take whatever he could get.
That was an odd thing for him. He wasn't good at avoiding mental land mines. He was more the kind of guy who jumped on them with both feet. As they drove, he kept glancing at her, and each glance stirred up the same butterflies in his stomach. The headlights of the passing cars swept across her face, the shadows deepening and receding, accentuating cheekbones and jawline, eyes shadowed and then revealed. The fluttering in his stomach, the flush on his face, the quickening pulse—Gage had to force himself to stop looking at her or he was going to drive himself nuts.
She pulled out her smartphone, the screen giving her face a bluish glow.
"Any response yet?" Gage asked.
Karen tapped and swiped a few more times. "It has just been ten minutes, you know."
"Yeah, but you were thinking the same thing, weren't you?"
"I was just going to play Solitaire."
"Liar."
"Maybe we should have written something else. It was pretty vague."
"Nah, I think it'll work."
They'd settled on the screen name TheOneWhoKnows. They'd debated for a while what to write DWR_forever in a private-forum message and finally settled on "I have information you don't want people to know." They thought about adding more, perhaps demanding to meet, but Gage figured it was better to leave the person wondering about their intentions. Gage had learned it was often better to play it tight for a while until you had a better read on your opponent, like in a poker game.
They turned west, dropping past stores crowding the highway, winding along a road lined with green Scotch broom, a few sad fir trees, and only a couple of small cottages. Every year, the Scotch broom, which would be blooming with explosive yellow flowers in the spring, encroached a little more, strangling what was left of the natural vegetation. The three-story Turret House Bed and Breakfast lay at the end of a long winding road with sweeping, expensive houses on either side, nestled on one side by a grassy dune. Brown shake siding, blending into the darkness, made the glowing windows that much brighter. The two wraparound decks and the turret, which was technically a fourth story, gave the place the appearance of a castle.
There were two cars parked in the gravel parking lot in front of the Turret House: Zoe's white Toyota and a teal F-150 with black mud flaps. He didn't recognize the truck, and he felt a creeping anxiety. Alex had told him there wouldn't be any guests. When he parked along the street, Gage saw Zoe talking to a man at the front door. The man, dressed in a baseball cap and a green windbreaker, was tall and lean, a bit thicker in the waist than in the shoulders, like a slim pyramid. Gage recognized the windbreaker. It was just like the one Arne Cooper wore.
Hearing the Volkswagen's noisy motor, they both turned and looked at him. It wasn't until Gage got out of the van, stepping into the wind, that he recognized the man. It was one of the assistant coaches who'd been on the football field when he'd talked to Arne Cooper earlier that day. Zoe, dressed in a baggy black T-shirt and black jeans, didn't look unhappy; in fact, she looked almost pleased.
The wind was strong enough that Gage didn't dare leave his cane in the car, even though he was sorely tempted. He hated looking weak around the macho types.
"Hey there," the guy said, tipping his baseball bat. He flashed a wide grin, and despite a few crooked teeth, it was a handsome smile. "Just returning a book to Zoe."
Zoe held it up, a thick, well-worn paperback. "It's Stephen King's The Stand. I'd let Jeremiah borrow it. Mr. Weld was just bringing it back."
"It's autographed," Weld said, as if that explained everything. He extended his hand to Gage. "Paul Weld. I don't know if you remember me. I taught Zoe in biology three years ago. Figured because it had King's signature, Zoe really would want it back."
Gage shook the man's hand. He was expecting a macho grip for a macho man, but instead the handshake was like his smile, warm and welcoming. "I'm still a little confused as to why you ended up with the book."
"I've been a family friend of the Coopers for a long time. Jeanie found it, and she asked if I could return it. I emailed Zoe, and she said I could drop it off here. I hope that was okay?"
"It's fine," Zoe said, before Gage could reply. "I really appreciate you stopping by, Mr. Weld."
"It was no problem." He extended his hand to Karen. "Ma'am, I'm Paul Weld. Did I hear that you're an FBI agent, or is that just a crazy rumor?"
"It's not a crazy rumor," Karen said, shaking his hand. "But I'm not here representing the bureau. The name's Karen Pantelli."
"Vacationing?"
"Something like that."
"Well, I wish we could have given you better weather."
Nobody said anything for a moment. They stood there in the wind nodding at each other.
"I guess I better get going," Weld said.
"Sounds good," Gage said a bit too eagerly.
"Look," Weld said, "I know it's probably not my place here, but I wondered if maybe I could give you some advice."
"Uh-oh," Gage said, "this never goes well."
Weld's jovial smile faded a bit. "Excuse me?"
"People giving unsolicited advice," Gage said. "For some reason, the advice usually comes out as some sort of warning or threat."
"Garrison," Zoe warned.
"No, no, nothing like that," Weld said. "Look, I've known the Coopers for a long time. Bot
h Arne and I grew up here. Both of us graduated from Oregon State. Me and Arne started teaching the same year. I even met Jeanie before I met Arne, in Bible school as a kid. I like the whole family. I know Arne doesn't have the warmest personality in the world—"
"Right off, I pegged him for a member of Toastmasters," Gage said.
Weld chuckled and adjusted his baseball cap. "Witty. I like that. No, listen, I just wanted to say maybe to cut him a bit of slack. This is very tough on both Arne and Jeanie."
"And Jeremiah," Gage added.
"Right. Of course. And Jeremiah. I'm just saying, Arne may not show it very well, but he really does love his son. I was with Arne the night before Jeremiah was arrested— we had dinner at my house, and we were watching video from the last game. He actually talked about him, how he really hoped Jeremiah would find his way now that he was on his own. If you could have seen his face … well, there'd be no doubt about how much he really cares about that kid. He just doesn't understand him. They're very different. You know that. And this whole thing, this is killing him. It doesn't help you riling him up all the time."
"Well, I'm truly sorry for riling him up," Gage said, "but you see, I'm working hard to prove his son's innocence, and it's not easy when nobody else seems to believe it except for me."
"I believe he's innocent," Weld said.
This surprised Gage. "You do?"
"Without a doubt. No way he could have done this. I don't have kids of my own, but if I did, I'd want a son just like Jeremiah. He's smart as they come. And brave in his own way. Did you know he once published an article in the school paper titled ‘Ten Irrefutable Reasons Evolution Is a Fact'? That's pretty bold in this town. A lot of Bible thumpers around here. And with his own mother being such a fundamentalist Christian, well, it was even more brave …"
"I forgot about that," Zoe said. "It was neat to see Jeremiah come out of his shell a bit. I remember him talking to you about evolution a lot. He was really passionate about it."
Weld nodded, and when he spoke, his voice took on a new roughness. "Although he seemed to lose his way a bit his senior year, I still thought he would have found his way to a career in the sciences."
The Lovely Wicked Rain: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series) Page 15
