Innocent Mistakes

by Melissa F. Miller

  “No kidding. So that’s what I’m up against, and I need to get started. I’m hoping I can make enough headway to reach out to the district attorney today.”

  “It’s Saturday,” he points out.

  “Justice never sleeps. Like a colicky infant.”

  His belly laugh warms her from the inside as it always does—even when it’s been digitized and traveled over radio waves to reach her.

  “Call after dinner to say good night to the kids?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you more.”

  “Not possible.”

  She ends the call, pulls out a legal pad, and writes ‘Sting Operation: Bolton and Science Grl’ at the top of the sheet. Then she taps her pen against her teeth and thinks. Colin and Mallory, what are you up to?

  28

  Lainey’s a stress cleaner, always has been. When she was in school, her dorm room sparkled and smelled like Pledge during finals week. So, she’s not surprised to find herself on her hands and knees in her kitchen, an old toothbrush in hand, applying a baking soda-vinegar paste to her grout. As she scrubs back and forth, she forces herself to focus on the white lines and not the fact that her baby girl is, right this moment, at Hunter Dalton’s house doing who knows what.

  The sound of the door opening jars her out of her worry spiral.

  “Take off your shoes,” she calls.

  She stands and brushes her hair back from her sweaty forehead, then walks to the mudroom to confront her daughter. Only, it’s not Mallory. Instead, Doug stands inside the door, balancing on one foot, while he removes his right sneaker.

  She gives him a peck on the cheek. “I thought you were Mallory.”

  “I figured. But I also figured you washed the floors, so I’d better comply.” He flashes her a grin.

  “I did, and they’re still damp, so be careful when you walk through. How was your round?”

  He pulls off the other shoe and tosses the pair into the shoe bin under the bench. “Fine. Sean McCandless canceled on us, though. So we just had a threesome. Probably for the best, considering.”

  She frowns. “I stopped by their place this morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to go in. It’s so awkward.”

  He grunts in reply, then says, “Where’s Mallory? Did she go out?”

  Another frown, deeper this time, creases her face. If she keeps this up, she’s going to need a filler for the lines around her mouth.

  “She’s at Hunter’s.”

  “Huh. Saw his father at the club.”

  “Did Paul try to sell you a car?”

  Doug chuckles. “No, he hit me up for a donation to Leigh’s school board campaign.”

  “You can trust me—vote for Leigh!”

  “What?”

  “It’s her campaign slogan, apparently.”

  Doug shakes his head. “I need to hit the shower. Then I’m going to mix up a pitcher of margaritas. Interested?”

  “In the middle of the day?”

  “It’s Saturday, Lainey. Relax for once.”

  He heads up to the bathroom, and she finishes cleaning the kitchen grout. The shower’s still running when she puts away her cleaning supplies, so she takes a peek at her monitoring app. Science Grl has been messaging with ‘Bolton’ again, even though she’s with her boyfriend. Interesting. Lainey scans the exchange:

  We need to pull the trigger. Can U meet me tomorrow while ur mom’s at church?

  * * *

  Yes. Am with Target now. Will c u @ 7 tomorrow. I’ll have what we need.

  Mallory and Bolton’s messages are so stilted and weird. Lainey usually can’t make heads or tails of them. Bolton, whoever they are, popped up in Mallory’s in-box right after Colin broke up with her.

  At the time, she hadn’t started dating Hunter yet, and Lainey’s main concern was that her daughter might be depressed. She’d become withdrawn and quiet. She stopped playing her favorite game and got secretive. Lainey thought she was sad about Colin. It was never clear to her what happened between them. Lainey even asked Siobhan about it once when the girls were watching a movie, and Mallory got up to use the bathroom. But Siobhan shook her head and raised her palms to the ceiling. She didn’t know any more than Lainey.

  Now Mallory’s making plans to meet up with this Bolton person? Lainey rereads the messages. Is Hunter the ‘Target’? He must be. ‘I’ll have what we need’ to pull the trigger. Mallory doesn’t sound like a robot-girlfriend in these messages. What she sounds like is a girl who has a plan.

  Maybe, just maybe, she hasn’t given her daughter enough credit. The shower switches off. Lainey hums softly as she reaches up to pull the tequila down from the liquor cabinet. Maybe Doug’s right, and she should just relax.

  29

  Siobhan’s phone buzzes while she’s writing an essay about the symbolism of the color green in The Great Gatsby. Eager to stop spewing speculative BS, she grabs it right away. She’s hoping for a text from Mallory, but it’s Aunt Sasha:

  Please call me when

  you get a chance.

  She rolls her eyes. Aunt Sasha’s pretty cool, but she texts like an old person with capitalization and punctuation and everything. She hits the call button.

  “Hi, Aunt Sasha.”

  “That was quick.”

  “Anything to get a break from trying to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mind,” she tells her.

  “The Great Gatsby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I remember having to write a paper about the metaphorical meaning of the valley of the ashes and the two eggs.”

  “We’re doing color symbolism,” Siobhan says flatly.

  “I see nothing’s changed in twenty years. I won’t keep you too long. I just need to know where you were at twelve minutes past six on Thursday morning.”

  “At 6:12 exactly?”

  “Yep.”

  She purses her lips and thinks. “I slept over at Mallory’s because we’re working on a project. Student Council’s putting together a booth to raise two thousand dollars for pediatric cancer programs at the Spring Carnival. So Mom and Mrs. Fuller let me sleep over on a school night because it’s for a good cause.”

  “It’s for a great cause. Put me down for a matching donation—whatever you bring in, the firm will match.”

  “Really?!”

  “Really. So, 6:12?”

  “I was probably in the shower. No, I was definitely in the shower.”

  “Where was your phone? In Mallory’s room?”

  “No. Mrs. Fuller has a rule. All phones charge in the kitchen overnight—even Mr. Fuller has to hand his over. She’s kind of hardcore about sleep hygiene.”

  “What was Mallory doing while you were in the shower?”

  “Um … I don’t know. Because I was in the shower.”

  Aunt Sasha laughs. “Fair enough.”

  “Is that all you wanted?”

  “For now. Did you give any thought to that other thing we talked about?”

  The deep fakes. Siobhan’s excitement about the matching donation evaporates, and the helpless shame that lives in her belly flares up like a grease fire.

  “I gotta go, Aunt Sasha. Bye.”

  She ends the call and tries to steady her breathing. After a minute, she turns back to her essay. But there’s no way she can make up some stupid crap about Fitzgerald’s use of green now. What she wants to do is hound Colin until he tells her why Mallory called him, but he’s being extra annoying about it. She knows he won’t tell her.

  She paces around her bedroom, restless and anxious. Finally, she decides to log into Society with her burner account and watch the gameplay. She hasn’t played since the Castle Rock thing, but sometimes she likes to watch, to see if any new players are using her strategy to beat the destructive players. It’s fun, but it also makes her sad because she misses being part of the community.

  Just for a little while, she promises herself.

  All the fresh air, water, a
nd sunshine work their magic on Finn and Fiona, and Leo finds them sacked out on the bunk beds after lunch. An unscheduled early afternoon nap? It’s a gift from the parenting gods.

  He wanders around the lake house trying to decide how to put his unexpected free time to good use. Sasha’s not here to beat at Scrabble. He doesn’t have his files to work on the West Coast investigation. They’re too sensitive—even for Homeland Security’s nearly impenetrable system—so he and Hank agreed to go old school on this one. No electronic copies. Tomorrow, Hank’s sending his oldest daughter up to drop off copies of some materials. But today? He has nothing to do.

  He glances through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the lake. It shimmers and shines in the sunlight. He could go fishing, maybe, from the dock. But he doesn’t love the idea of leaving the kids alone in the house, even though he’ll only be yards away. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, thinking.

  Then his gaze falls on his laptop. Or, he could go fishing from right here. He grabs a beer from the fridge and scoops the computer up under his arm. He heads out to the deck, leaving the sliding glass door open so he’ll be able to hear if the twins call for him, and settles into an Adirondack chair. Then he twists the cap off his beer, cracks his knuckles, and downloads Society to his laptop to check out this world-building game that his niece is such a pro at playing.

  The first order of business is to create a gamer tag and an avatar. He pulls on his beer bottle then types Gurl Pwr15. A quick image search yields a busty cartoon cheerleader with pink hair and he downloads it with a mental apology to teenaged girls everywhere.

  “Now we’re in business.”

  He keeps August’s explanation of Siobhan’s style of game play in mind and ventures out into the meadow to clear a plot of land and plant some vegetables.

  Hunter’s bored within minutes of Mallory leaving. They made out some, but she’s surprisingly prudish. All above the waist and over the shirt. Although she’s warming up. She asked him to take off his shirt this time. Maybe she’ll be worth the time he’s invested after all.

  He eyes his geometry book. He should work through the problem set now and then it won’t be hanging over him for the rest of the weekend. But he feels his insides collapsing at the thought of struggling with theorems all afternoon. He could go to the basement and lift weights. Or play Criminal Enterprise.

  Yeah, Criminal Enterprise is the most appealing option. He boots up his desktop and puts his headphones on. As he’s logging into Criminal Enterprise, he gets a notification from Society. He smirks and switches tabs. He hardly plays at all any more, but he has notifications set up to make sure Siobhan keeps her end of the deal. Any time a new player shows up and starts playing with her hippy-dippy style, he keeps an eye on them.

  “What are you up to, Gurl Pwr15?” he purrs.

  When he sees Gurl Pwr15’s avatar, he cracks up. Whoever she is, she’s not Siobhan. Siobhan would never use a sexy, feminine avatar. But this chick is just like Siobhan. She’s busy giving away newly grown vegetables to anyone who wants them. No payment. No barter. Nothing. Just giving them away. Hell, this could be fun for a while. He activates Castle Rock and gets in line to ask her for some beets.

  Siobhan’s watching a new player who intuitively understands how to build community. She’s cleared a plot of land, planted and harvested vegetables, and is giving them away to all comers. It’s a solid strategy. Some of the characters she feeds will remember her and give her medicine and fire when she needs them. She’ll be wrapped into a collective in no time. Siobhan’s a little worried about her avatar, though. She risks getting some gross, unwanted attention with the sexy cheerleader schtick, but she’ll learn.

  She leans back in her chair and studies the group gathered around Gurl Pwr15. She smiles when she recognizes a bunch of players who helped her set up the tool-lending library back when she was playing. Gurl Pwr15 is going to be just fine, and Siobhan should get back to her English paper. She’s about to log off when Castle Rock joins the cluster of players by the vegetable stand.

  Her heart thumps hard in her chest, and her hands start to shake. “No,” she whispers.

  Castle Rock hasn’t played in over a month. Why now? Why this player? But, in her heart, she knows why. He’s going to destroy Gurl Pwr15 the same way he destroyed her.

  Warn her.

  Stay out of it.

  No, you have to warn her.

  Stay out of it. Leave the game. Write your essay.

  The voices in her head are fighting. She feels sick to her stomach. She can’t let this girl become Hunter’s latest victim. But if he finds out she interfered, she knows what he’ll do. He’ll blast those disgusting pictures to the entire school.

  Alone in her bedroom, Siobhan begins to sob. Her shoulders shake, and she shoves a pillow over her face to stifle her wails. Then she throws herself across her bed and bawls like her heart is broken.

  Leo’s on his second beer and is growing cotton to make clothes to give away when he gets the notification that he has his first in-game direct message. He clicks on the link to open it, and pumps his fist when he sees who it’s from:

  Castle Rock: Hi, I see U R a new player. Want some friendly advice?

  Leo channels his inner fifteen-year-old girl and responds:

  Gurl Pwr15: Sure!!! :)

  * * *

  Castle Rock: U R doing it wrong. The goal of the game is 2 dominate.

  * * *

  Gurl Pwr15: O? But if I help peeps, theyll help me. Rite?

  * * *

  Castle Rock: Wrong. U need to raid someone. Take their stuff. Burn down their house. Trust me. I’m on the leader board.

  * * *

  Gurl Pwr15: Hmm … but that seems mean.

  * * *

  Castle Rock: It’s just a game. I’m a good guy in real life. But online is different.

  * * *

  Gurl Pwr15: I no!!! Can I tell U a secret?

  * * *

  Castle Rock: Yes.

  * * *

  Leo’s fingers hover over the keyboard. He has to get this just right. He has Hunter on the line. Now he has to reel him in without letting him slip off the hook. He pauses, then types:

  Gurl Pwr15: I trolled 1 of my teachers once. It was soooo mean!

  * * *

  Castle Rock: Rly? What did U do?

  * * *

  Gurl Pwr15: I found out her address and ordered 15 pizzas. LOL.

  * * *

  Castle Rock: Good 1! But that’s nothing. I swatted a secret agent.

  “Gotcha,” Leo cackles.

  Gurl Pwr15: No U didn’t.

  * * *

  Castle Rock: I did. I can prove it.

  “Yessss, come to papa, you moron.”

  Gurl Pwr15: How?

  * * *

  Castle Rock: I send U the audio clip of the 9-1-1 call. U send me a topless pic. Deal?

  * * *

  Gurl Pwr15: Deal. U first.

  * * *

  Castle Rock: K. Hang on.

  The chat dialogue blinks and an mp4 file appears in the box. Leo listens to the beginning of the call, just long enough to hear a panicked voice give the emergency dispatcher his address, and downloads the file to his machine.

  Castle Rock: UR turn.

  Leo whips his t-shirt off and snaps a picture of himself grinning at the camera. This kid’s about to soil his pants, and Leo has rock-solid evidence tying Hunter Dalton to a federal crime. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

  30

  Sasha doesn’t enjoy being wrong. Who does? After she hangs up with Siobhan, she wastes half an hour trying to craft a narrative that doesn’t involve Mallory taking her niece’s phone and posting the ‘kill yourself’ comment. But, while she can’t think of a good reason for Mallory to have done it, she also can’t think of a more likely explanation.

  Siobhan was showering a floor away from her phone at the time the post was made, so she definitely didn’t post it. Mallory had access to the phone while Siobhan was in the sh
ower, and it’s plausible that she would know her ex-boyfriend’s user name and password for the school website. Sasha doubts Colin would have thought to change it post-breakup. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way.

  She picks up her phone and calls the district attorney’s office.

  “Joe Donaldson.”

  “You answer your own phone, deputy chief?”

  “I do on the weekend. And when the caller ID says McCandless, Volmer & Andrews. I’m just relieved it’s you and not Will.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he only ever calls to strong-arm me into joining some committee or volunteering for a worthy cause.”

  “That sounds like Will. I’m not asking you to volunteer for anything, I promise.”

  “Are you calling to apologize for your little stunt about Siobhan’s phone number?”

  She winces. His tone is light, but there’s an undercurrent of irritation. And he’s not wrong. It was a stunt, and that’s not really her style. But there’s nothing to do now except plow forward.

  “I don’t know what you mean. The number that the Commonwealth used as the factual predicate to charge my client doesn’t belong to him. That’s beyond dispute. And you asked his parents if it was assigned to either of them. It wasn’t. Where’s the stunt?”