Laura Cardinal - 01 - Darkness on the Edge of Town

A flurry of chimes. Four new names lit up the board.

Amber: well see how old r you?

Gitmo: you ever had sex?

Amber: I had a bf last year

“Bf?” asked Laura.

“Boyfriend.”

Gitmo: Did bf getta bj?

Amber: You sonud mean!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gitmo: can’t handle a joke LOL

More chimes, the board lighting up with suitors. Jay opened another instant message box.

Smooth Talk: Amber u a little girl?

Amber: im thrteen how old r u???????????????

Smooth Talk: let me see a pic

Amber: I have 1 at shchol school – not here

Smooth Talk: where d you live

Amber: I live in az

Smooth Talk dropped out. Back to Gitmo:

Gitmo: I want a pic

Amber: not fair if u don send me pic toO

Gitmo: you playing games little girl

Amber: fairs fair my pic for yours

Gitmo: if you don’t want to fuck your wasting m time

Gitmo’s name went from red to black.

Jay sat up straighter, twisted, adjusted himself against the back of the chair. “That’s what you’re dealing with. These creeps are on these boards all day, trolling for kids.”

Laura was about to say that she didn’t think any child would fall for that, and then shut her mouth.

Children would fall for it. Teenagers would fall for it. Because they had not yet developed that distrust life ground into you over the years, like grime into clothing.

“We did a survey,” Jay said. “Among parents. They think of computers as just another appliance, like a TV set. They don’t realize it’s like leaving the back door to your house open. Anybody can come in, and some of these guys are really smart. They know how to push the buttons.”

“How do you find someone like this? Can you find his ISP?”

“Doubtful. Guy like that, he’d use one of the big servers, like earthlink, hotmail—it’s easy to be anonymous. There are search engines that you can look on, but I’m pretty sure this guy wouldn’t have a local ISP.”

“Oh.”

“But there’s an easier way. That’s what’s so interesting about technology. Sometimes the best things are simple. You know the photo you have of him? We can probably trace him through that.” He hit a couple of keys and a beach scene came up on the screen.

“This is why you need me.” Sounding cocky. “Not many people can get their hands on this kind of software.”

He explained that there was something called image recognition software, which could break up every photograph into its elements, then run each element against all kinds of databases, looking for a match. He zoomed in on a man on the beach. “See this guy’s T-shirt? With the software I’m going to use, I can run a search for exact matches. It’s like a search engine, instead of searching for like words, it searches for images. I’m going to need the original photo, though.”

“From what Endicott said, it was a digital photo, and the only thing we have is an inkjet picture.” She nodded to the black-and-white photocopy. “It’s not all that much better than that.”

Jay looked troubled. “It might be harder, but we can still do it. Where is the original?”

“Endicott’s FedExing it—I should get it today.”

 “What we’ll do,” Jay said, “is re-scan the picture using high resolution. Then I’ll compare it to the databases. It might take a few days, though.”

“You sure you can’t find him with the ISP?”

“I’ll try that, too. I’m warning you, though, this guy isn’t your average Internet user. I think you know that.”

“But this image recognition software, it’ll take a few days? That’s a long time.”

“How many days has it been so far?”

Too many, she thought.