sigh.
All right. So the police had seized his garbage. Now what?
Sergeant D.D. Warren, and her sidekick, Detective Miller, had returned to the house shortly after eight-thirty P.M. to execute the search warrant on his truck. He’d met them at the door, skimmed the warrant as was his right, then dutifully handed over the keys.
Then he’d pointedly shut and locked the front door, spending the rest of the time tucked inside with Ree. Let them stew on that, he thought. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about his truck. He just needed something to keep them occupied so they didn’t focus solely on his computer.
Speaking of which… He glanced at the clock. It was 1:52 A.M. Now or never, he decided, and headed quietly upstairs.
It pained him to wake Ree. She looked at him with bleary eyes, still groggy and disoriented from sleep, let alone the emotional toll of missing her mother and her cat. He had her sit up in bed, slipping her arms into her winter coat, producing boots for her bare feet. She didn’t protest, just leaned her head against his shoulder as he carried her downstairs, her blankie and Lil’ Bunny clutched in both hands.
He stopped by the door to grab a dark green duffel bag, tucking it over his shoulder. He positioned Ree and her blanket to shield the bag from prying eyes. Then he opened the door and carried both the bag and his daughter out to Sandy’s Volvo station wagon.
He could feel the eyes of the patrolman upon his back. No doubt the officer was now picking up a notebook and writing urgent notes:
Jason latched Ree into her booster seat, sliding the duffel bag unobtrusively onto the floor by her feet. Then he closed the back passenger door and headed straight for the unmarked police car.
He tapped on the driver’s-side window. The cop lowered the glass a notch. “I have to go to work,” Jason stated briskly. “Wrap up a few things before I take time off. You want the address or are you gonna stay here?”
He saw the officer debate his options. Watch the subject or watch the house? What were the officer’s orders?
“Late to be out with a child,” the officer observed, obviously stalling for time.
“Got kids, Officer? This won’t be the first time I’ve had to drag my daughter to the office. Good news is, she can sleep through anything.”
Minute Jason said those words, he wished he could call them back. ‘Course, it was too late, as he observed in the officer’s responding smirk. “Good to know,” the officer said, and proceeded to make a very long entry into his logbook.
Jason gave up, returning to the station wagon and firing it to life. As he drove down the street, he didn’t see the officer pulling out behind him. But then, around six blocks later, a police cruiser suddenly nosed out from a side street. His next handler, he supposed, and gave a silent salute to Boston’s finest.
The offices of the
Jason entered the building with a dozing child cradled against his chest, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and now effectively covered by Ree’s giant fleecy bear blanket. He looked like a man carrying a heavy load, but then, one glance at the fairly large four-year-old collapsed like dead weight in his arms, and no one thought to question it. He swiped his reporter’s ID across the various door pads, and made his way into the inner sanctum.
Most of the reporters worked both at home and in the office, so guys like Jason shared space with more than one person, in a system called “hoteling.” Basically, there were desks and computers everywhere. You found an available space and used it. Tonight was no exception.
Jason took refuge in a corner cubicle, kicking the dark green duffel bag under the desk, while sliding Ree onto the floor and making a little nest for her with her blankie and her bunny. She was awake now, staring at him somberly.
“It’s okay,” he whispered to her. “Daddy’s just gotta do a little work, then we’ll go home.”
“Where’s Mommy?” Ree asked. “I want Mommy.”
“Go to sleep, honey. We’ll be home shortly.” Ree obediently closed her eyes, drifting back into slumber.
Jason watched her for a moment longer. The smudge of her dark lashes against her pale cheeks. The purple stain of exhaustion rimming her closed eyelids. She looked small to him. Delicate. An impossible burden that was also the most important purpose of his life.
He was not surprised by how well she was holding up. Kids did not externalize their bone-deep terrors. A kid could scream for ten minutes over a small bump received on the playground. The same child would clam up tight when confronted by an armed stranger. Kids understood instinctively that they were small and vulnerable. Thus, in crisis the majority of children simply shut down, focusing on becoming even smaller, because maybe if they disappeared completely, the bad man would leave them alone.
Or maybe, if a four-year-old girl slept enough, when she woke up, her mommy and her cat would have returned and life would magically be back to normal.
Jason turned his attention to the desk. The newsroom was quiet at this hour, the neighboring workspaces unoccupied. He decided this was as good as it was going to get, and slowly unzipped the dark green duffel bag to reveal the desktop computer from the kitchen table.
Technically speaking, Jason owned three computers: his laptop, which he used for work; the family desktop, which sat in the kitchen and was shared by all; and finally, an older desktop, once the primary family computer, but relegated to the basement last year when he’d upgraded to a newer Dell. Jason was not worried about his laptop. He used it solely for reporting, understanding the risks inherent in a portable computer that could be lost or stolen at any time. He was slightly more concerned about the old computer in the basement. True, he’d used an official Department of Defense program to overwrite the hard drive with meaningless strings of ones and zeros, but not even the DoD trusted such specs anymore. For the really classified stuff, they incinerated the hard drives, turning the internal workings to powder. He didn’t have an incinerator handy, so he’d done the basics. Ninety-five percent of the time, that should get the job done.
Unfortunately, the family computer, the relatively new 500-gigabyte Dell desktop used by him in the early hours of the morning while Sandra slept, scared the crap out of him. He could not afford for the police to seize this computer; hence he had sicced them on his truck. Now, glancing at his watch, he estimated he had approximately three hours to run damage control.
He began by inserting a memory stick into the E drive. Then, he started moving files after files. Program files, Internet files, document files, jpeg files, pdf files. There were lots of them, more than could be transferred in three hours, so he was strategic in his focus.
While those files started to copy, he logged on to the Internet and did some basic research. He started with registered sex offender Aidan Brewster. Always good to know the neighbors, right? He found some basics and lots of jargon, such as “sealed files.” But he was a reporter, not one who stalled out every time he hit a shut door. He jotted down some phone numbers, did a little more digging, and got some happy results.
First mission accomplished, he then opened up AOL and logged in as his wife. He had figured out her password years ago; she’d gone with LilBun1, the name of Ree’s favorite plush toy. But if he hadn’t cracked the code with good guesses, he would’ve used a computer forensic program such as AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit or Technology Pathways’ ProDiscover to do the same. These were the kinds of things he did. This was the kind of husband he was.
Had Sandy figured that out? Was that why she had left?
He didn’t know, so he started scrolling through her e-mail, looking for clues regarding his wife’s final hours.
Her account registered sixty-four e-mails, the majority of which offered penile implants or urgent requests to transfer funds from third world countries. According to Sandra’s e-mail folder, she was either obsessed with male genitalia or about to become rich assisting some faraway colonel with a financial transfer.
He worked his way through the spam, then through the phishing, then finally hit six e-mails that seemed
