“You been teaching your skills to Ethan?” D.D. asked.
“Haven’t had to. Kid absorbs it on his own. If I can corral his skills for good versus evil, he’ll be a hell of an investigator one day.”
“What constitutes the dark side for computer technology?”
Wayne shrugged. “Hacking, code breaking, illicit data-mining. Ethan is a good kid, but he’s also thirteen, so following in his uncle’s footsteps doesn’t sound as exciting as it once did. Join the state police or join the Internet underground. You be the judge.”
“He seems to have valued Sandy Jones’s opinions.” D.D. had finished her food; she pushed back the white ceramic plate.
Wayne was thoughtful for a moment. “Ethan believes he is in love with his teacher,” he conceded at last.
“Did he have sex with her?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t view him that way.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I was seeing Sandra myself, every Thursday night. At the basketball games.”
“Ethan contacted me regarding Sandra,” Wayne explained a few moments later. They had paid the bill, left the coffee shop. Walking and talking seemed a better idea, given the subject matter. They headed aimlessly toward the waterfront, following the red line mapping the route once ridden by Paul Revere.
“My understanding,” Wayne continued now, “was that Sandra had approached Ethan about developing a teaching module for the Internet. It didn’t take Ethan long, however, to determine that her interest in online security ran deeper than mere classroom application. He believed her husband was up to something, perhaps involving child porn, and that Sandra was desperate to get to the bottom of it.”
“You didn’t open a case file?”
Wayne shook his head. “Couldn’t. First time I met with Sandra, she made it clear that she would only accept my involvement as a personal favor. Until she learned exactly what was going on, she didn’t want the police involved. She had to think of her daughter; Ree would be traumatized if her father was jailed unnecessarily.”
D.D. arched a brow. “If Sandra suspected child porn, she should’ve been worried about her daughter being traumatized by a lot more than dear old Dad’s arrest.”
Wayne shrugged. “You know how families work. You can confront a mom with her seven-year-old daughter’s semen-stained underwear, and she’ll still insist there’s a logical explanation.”
D.D. sighed heavily. He was right and they both knew it. De Nile wasn’t just a river when it came to child sexual assaults.
“Okay, so Ethan gives you a call. Then what?”
“As a favor to Ethan, who seemed very worried about his teacher, I agreed to attend one of the Thursday night basketball games and talk to Sandra myself. I confess, I figured I’d have a brief chat, give her a detective’s contact information for follow up, that kind of thing. But …” His voice faded away.
“But?” D.D. prodded.
Wayne shrugged, looking almost chagrined. “Then I saw Sandra Jones.”
“Not your typical social studies teacher,” D.D. observed.
“No. Not at all. I figured out immediately why Ethan had taken a shine to her. I mean, she was younger than I expected. Prettier than I expected. And sitting there on those wooden bleachers, this cute little girl tucked up against her knees … I don’t know. I took one look and I wanted to help her. It felt like I had to help her. That she needed me.”
“Oh yeah. Mary Kay Letourneau, Debra Lafave, Sandra Beth Geisel. All beautiful women. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that only the pretty ones want to sleep with twelve-year-old boys? What’s up with that?”
“I’m telling you, she didn’t have that kind of relationship with Ethan.”
“Did she have that kind of relationship with you?”
Wayne gazed at her flatly. “Look, do you want to hear what I have to say or not?”
D.D. gestured with her hands. “Speak away. This is your party.”
“That first night, Ethan sat with Ree while Sandra and I took a short walk around the school to chat. She told me she had found a disturbing photo in the recycle bin of the family computer. Only that one image and only that one time; she hadn’t discovered anything since. However, she’d been learning about Internet browser histories and data storage since then, and it was clear to her that her husband was tampering with the computer, which made her wonder what else he had to hide.”
“Tampering with it in what way?”
“Ethan had taught Sandra how to track which websites are visited by a computer. That information is stored in the history file of the computer’s hard drive, and should be retrievable. She had made a number of attempts at pulling up the family computer’s Internet browser, using various online tools Ethan had told her about. Every time she did it, however, she could only retrieve the URLs for three websites—the Drudge Report, USA Today, and New York Times.”
D.D. was already lost. “Why is that suspicious?”
“Because Sandra herself had visited lots of different websites preparing assignments for her class. All of those sites should have shown up in the browser history, but none of them did. That meant someone was clearing the cache file, then purposefully building a false history by clicking on the same three websites when he was done. That was sheer laziness,” Wayne murmured now, probably more to himself than her. “Like all criminals, even the techies sooner or later do something stupid to give themselves away.”
“Wait a minute, back up: Why would someone create a false browser history?”
They’d reached the waterfront, walking along the docks toward the aquarium. It was still drizzling out, making the docks much less crowded than usual. Wayne made his way toward the railing, then turned to face her. “Exactly. Why would someone create a false browser history? That’s the million-dollar question. Ethan had already recommended a downloadable forensic computer tool, but that hadn’t been powerful enough. He suspected that Sandra’s husband was employing something called a shredder, or scrubber software, to cover his tracks. So Ethan gave me a call, bringing in the big guns, so to speak.”
D.D. blinked at him. “Could you help her?”
“I was trying to. This was December, mind you, so only a few months ago, and given that she suspected her husband, we had to proceed carefully. She and Ethan had already run Pasco on her computer, but Pasco can only find what you tell it to find. It’s not nearly as powerful as, say, EnCase, the software we employ in the lab. EnCase can mine deep into a hard drive, inventorying the slack space, analyzing unallocated clusters, all sorts of good stuff. Better yet, given Sandra’s concerns, EnCase has an image carver tool that will dig out any images on the hard drive, spitting out literally hundreds of thousands of photos. Finally, EnCase also has the ability to pull out Internet browser histories—”
“So you ran EnCase on Sandra’s computer?”
“Don’t I wish.” He rolled his hazel eyes. “First off, you never work on the source. Bad forensic protocol. Secondly, Sandra needed to be discreet, and running EnCase on the family desktop for three to four days was bound to be noticed. Searching and seizing a computer is easy. Ripping one apart on the sly, however …”
“So what did you do?”
“I was working with Sandra to make a forensically sound copy of the family hard drive. I gave her instructions on what kind of blank hard drive to purchase, then how to attach it to the family computer and transfer over the data. Unfortunately, Jason had recently purchased a new five-hundred-gigabyte hard drive, and the copying time alone was over six hours. She’d made several attempts at it, but couldn’t get the job done before he returned from work.”
“Sandra Jones has spent the past three months basically plotting against her husband?” D.D. asked.
Wayne shrugged. “Sandra Jones has spent the past three months trying to outmaneuver her husband. As she has yet to get the hard drive copied, I have yet to run EnCase on it. So I can
’t tell you if she has genuine reason to be afraid of him.”
D.D. smiled. “Wouldn’t you know it, as of last night, BPD became proud owners of the Jones family computer.”
Wayne’s eyes widened. “I would love to—”
“Please, your nephew is connected to the case. You touch any piece of evidence and it’ll be tossed out of court faster than you can say ‘conflict of interest.’”
“Can I get a copy of the reports?”
“I’ll have someone from BRIC get back to you.”
“Assign Keith Morgan. You want to rip apart a hard drive, he’s your boy.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” D.D. considered Wayne Reynolds for a minute. “Did Sandra believe her husband had figured out what was going on? She’d been at this for months. Long time to be living with someone she thought might be a closet pedophile. She had to be getting more and more nervous …”
Wayne hesitated, the first glimmer of discomfort crossing his features. “Last time I saw Sandra was two weeks ago, at the basketball game. She seemed withdrawn, didn’t want to talk. She said she wasn’t feeling well, then she and Ree left. I figured she really was sick. She had that look about her.”
“You know Sandra was pregnant?”
“What?” Wayne seemed to pale slightly, genuinely startled. “I didn’t … Well, no wonder she was nervous. Nothing like having a second child with a man you’re already worried might be a pervert.”
“She ever talk about her husband’s past? Where he grew up, how they met?”
Wayne shook his head.
“Ever mention that ‘Jones’ might be an alias?”
“Are you kidding….? No, no, she never mentioned that.”
D.D. considered the matter. “Sounds like Jason Jones is pretty computer savvy.”
“Very.”
“Savvy enough to use the computer to either hide a previous identity or build a new one?”
“All of the above,” Wayne concurred. “You can open bank accounts, sign up for utilities, build credit histories, all online. A sophisticated computer user could both create and disguise multiple identities using the computer.”
D.D. nodded, turning it over in her mind. “What would he need besides the computer?”
“Ummm, a mailing address, or P.O. box. Sooner or later, you have to provide a mailing address. Say, something he rented from a UPS store. And a phone number connected to that name, though in this day and age, he could buy a disposable cell phone for that. So he would need some tangible items to support the identity, but nothing too hard to manage.”
Post office box. D.D. hadn’t thought of that. Either in Jones’s name or Sandy’s maiden name. She’d do some digging….
“Sandy ever mention the name Aidan Brewster’?”
Wayne shook his head.
“And can you swear to me, as an investigator and law enforcement officer, that to the best of your knowledge, Sandra Jones was never alone with your nephew?”
“All Ethan ever talked about was meeting with Sandra in the computer lab during free period. Yeah, they were alone for a lot of those sessions, but we’re talking in the middle of the day, in the middle of a public school.”
“She ever talk to you about running away from her husband?”
“She would never leave her daughter.”
“Not even for you, Wayne?”
He shot her that look again, but D.D. didn’t withdraw her question. Wayne Reynolds was a handsome man, and Sandra Jones one very lonely young woman….
“I think Jason Jones killed her,” Wayne said flatly. “He came home Wednesday night, discovered her trying to copy the hard drive, and blew his top. He was up to something, his wife figured it out, so he killed her. I’ve been thinking that since the second I saw the press conference yesterday, so if you’re asking if I’m personally involved in this case, yeah, I’m personally invested in this case. I was trying to help a young, frightened mother, and in doing that, I may have gotten her murdered. I’m angry about that. Hell, I’m pissed off beyond belief.”
“Okay.” D.D. nodded. “You understand I’m going to need you to come in, give an official statement?”
“Absolutely.”
“This afternoon, three o’clock? BPD headquarters?”
“I’ll be there.”
D.D. nodded, started to break away, then one last question came to her. “Hey, Wayne, how many times did you and Sandy meet?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Eight, ten times maybe. Always at the basketball games.”
D.D. nodded. She thought that was a lot of times to meet, given that Sandra had never had a copy of the computer’s hard drive to share.
| CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN |
Jason woke up to a slow building hum, then a slash of bright lights across his eyes. He peered groggily at his watch, saw that it was five A.M., then peered at his backlit blinds with fresh confusion. Sun didn’t rise at five A.M. in March.
Then he got it. Klieg lights. From across the street. The news vans had returned and were powering up for their morning visuals, everyone filming a fresh report from the crime scene, aka his front yard.
He let his head fall back against the pillow, wondering if there was any breaking news he should know about from the past three hours when he’d actually slept. He should turn on the TV. Watch an update of his life. He’d always had an overdeveloped sense of irony. He waited for it to kick in, appreciate this moment. But mostly, he felt tired, stretched in too many directions as he sought to protect his daughter, find his wife, and keep out of prison.
Jason extended his arms and legs, taking inventory after last night’s pounding. He discovered that all four limbs appeared to be working, though some hurt more than others. He tucked his hands behind his head, peered up at the ceiling with his one working eye, and attempted to plan for the day ahead.
Max would return. Sandra’s father hadn’t come all the way to Massachusetts just to sit quietly in his hotel room. He would continue to demand access to Ree, threatening … legal action, exposure of Jason’s past? Jason wasn’t sure how much Max even knew of Jason’s previous life. It wasn’t like he and the old man had ever sat down. Jason had met Sandra in a bar, and she’d kept to that routine as much as possible. Only good girls take boys home to meet their fathers, she’d told him that first night, clearly wanting to establish that she wasn’t a good girl. Jason would take her back to his little rental, where he would cook her dinner and they would watch movies together, or maybe play board games. They did everything but what she clearly expected them to do, and that kept her returning, night after night after night.
Until Jason began to notice her growing stomach. Until he started asking more questions. Until the night she broke down in tears and it became clear to him the solution to both of their problems. Sandy wanted away from her father for whatever reason. He just wanted away. So they’d taken off together. Fresh city, new last name, clean start. Right up until Wednesday night, Jason would’ve said neither one of them had ever harbored regrets.
Now Max was back in the picture. A man with money, brains, and local legal connections. Max could hurt Jason. Yet Jason still couldn’t grant the man access to Ree. He’d promised Sandy that her father would never touch Ree. He wasn’t going back on that now, not when his daughter needed him more than ever.
So Max would stir the pot, while the police continued to dog his heels. They were tearing apart his computer. Probably digging into his financial records. Interviewing his editor, perhaps even touring the Boston Daily offices. Would they spot the computer he’d left there, put two and two together?
How long could this game of high stakes poker go on?
Jason had taken basic steps when he’d become a family man. His “other” activities existed under a different identity, with a separate bank account, credit card, and P.O. box. Payment confirmations and the single credit card statement went to a suburban post office out in Lexington. He visited once a month, retrieving the paperwork, sorting throu
gh it, then shredding the evidence.
All good plans, however, had at least one central flaw. In this case, the family computer contained enough damning evidence to send him to prison for twenty to life. Sure, he employed a decent scrubber software, but any web visit generated far more temp files than one scrubber could cover. Three, four days tops, he decided. Then the forensic specialists would realize that something was wrong with the computer they had seized, and the police would return in earnest.
Assuming they hadn’t already discovered Sandy’s body and were even now standing on his front porch, waiting to arrest him.
Jason got out of bed, too keyed up to return to sleep. His ribs protested when he moved. He couldn’t see out of his left eye. His injuries didn’t matter to him, however. Nothing mattered, except one thing.
He needed to make sure Ree was still sleeping safely in her room, a tiny, curl-topped form with a bright orange cat at her feet.
He padded quietly down the hall, senses alert. The house smelled the same, felt the same. He cracked open the door to Ree’s room, and discovered his daughter lying straight as an arrow in her bed, hands clutching the top of her comforter, big brown eyes staring up at him. She was awake, and, he realized belatedly, she had been crying. Damp lines of moisture smeared her cheeks.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said quietly, coming into the room. “You all right?”
Mr. Smith looked up at him, yawned, stretched out one long orange paw. Ree just stared at him.
He took a seat on the edge of the bed, where he could brush tangles of brown hair off her damp forehead.
“I want Mommy,” she said in a small voice.
“I know.”
“She’s supposed to come home to me.”
“I know.”
“Why doesn’t she come home, Daddy? Why doesn’t she?”
He didn’t have an answer. So he crawled in bed beside his daughter and pulled her into his arms. He smoothed her hair while she cried against his shoulder. He memorized the smell of her Johnson & Johnson skin, the feel of her head pressed against his shoulder, the sound of her tired little sobs.
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