Above them is a poster that reads: “Financial Scams Targeting Seniors are the Crime of the 21st Century.” I wonder if that’s why they are here, but it could be anything. A robbery, a stolen car.
There are so many things that can go wrong in life.
Every once in a while, the door next to the reception window opens and someone leaves, but no one seems to go inside.
I take my laptop out and browse through the Applications folder, then the one marked Downloads, although I’m not sure what I expect to find. Something on this machine has betrayed me. There have to be clues here somewhere.
What did Dustin say? If someone messes with you online … there’s going to be crumbs left behind.
I want a name—a face—to pin to all this. I remember what Madeline said about her mom knowing Paul Adamson’s wife. It’s a long shot, but I tap out a quick text reminding her of her promise to ask her mom.
“Ms. Ross?”
A mustachioed man in his mid-fifties stands in the doorway. He’s rangy, except for a potbelly the size of a bowling ball that droops over his brown slacks. When I approach, he shifts some folders so he can stick out his hand. “Detective Gabe Khoury, Computer Crimes. Follow me, please.”
I follow Detective Khoury into a conference room with a long oval table and blue upholstered swivel chairs. Despite the chill outside, the air-conditioning is on full blast. I pull my coat tighter around me. A wall of windows looks out at a brick office building across an alley. “Sorry it’s so cold, but at least we can have some privacy here.”
The detective sits and motions for me to take a seat as well. He takes out an iPad and a stylus.
“Can you tell me what’s going on, Ms. Ross?”
“What’s going on is that someone is trying to ruin my life.”
“Can you be more specific?”
I take a deep breath. “First, someone made a fake Tinder account, complete with an inappropriate picture of me. A guy approached me at a party, thinking I had been texting him, which of course I had not been. Then they made a fake account and posted on my neighborhood Facebook group.” I pause to see if Detective Khoury is getting all this. He narrows his eyes at the small screen in front of him, tapping away with his stylus like a chicken pecking for grub worms. When he doesn’t look up, I continue. “And finally, someone hacked into my computer and posted photos from my work onto Facebook. I got fired for that. Today.”
Still no response.
“Did you hear me, Detective? I’ve lost my job because of this.” I feel that focusing on the damage done to my career, rather than my relationship with Mark and my neighbors, will appeal to the detective. Khoury doesn’t strike me as the touchy-feely type. “Do you understand?”
His face betrays no reaction. He seems neither surprised nor disbelieving. “Any requests for money? Strange invoices or bills?”
“No.”
“No unusual recent emails from your bank? Credit cards arriving that you never ordered?”
“No, nothing like that.” The jumbo reverse mortgage springs to mind, but mentioning Sharon’s house will just muddy the waters. This is about me. “I don’t think this is about money. This feels more personal.”
Tap-tap-tap. “Any ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands we should talk to? Disgruntled coworkers? Employees?”
I start to shake my head, but then stop. “There is someone from my past, a man I was involved with. But it was years ago.”
“Why don’t you give us his name?”
“Paul Adamson.”
“And what makes you think this Paul Adamson may be involved?”
It’s a good question, one that I am not sure I have an answer to. “Maybe because he lost his job due to our relationship.”
Khoury’s eyebrows shoot up. “And why is that, Ms. Ross?”
“That,” I say, ice in my voice, “is because he was my high school teacher at the time.”
“I see.” He turns to his iPad. “And was he arrested and charged?”
I shift in my seat, uncomfortable. The details on this matter are muddy for me. “Yes, but charges were dropped.”
“And when is the last time you had contact with Mr. Adamson?”
I press hard on my temples. “When it happened, which was more than sixteen years ago.”
I don’t tell Detective Khoury that every moment of the last day I ever saw Paul Adamson is seared into my memory.
He doesn’t need to know that I had planned to meet Madeline at the movie theater that Sunday afternoon in May, but instead at the appointed hour I was miles away, wading into the Long Island Sound with Paul.
He doesn’t need to hear how our brief excursion, to dip our toes in the water, had found us driving up the Connecticut coast in his rusted old BMW looking for a public beach that wouldn’t charge us twenty dollars just to pull into the parking lot.
Or that by the time we finished dinner at a seafood shack overlooking brackish water, I was drunk on two beers and sucking the melted butter off my fingers.
Or that I never made it to the movie theater to meet Madeline. That Paul and I stumbled across the restaurant parking lot to a motel.
That my mother did not notice that I never came home.
“I realize this is a sensitive topic, Ms. Ross. But can you think of someone else, maybe someone you’ve crossed paths with more recently?”
“No.” I shake my head, clearing it of thoughts of long ago.
“If there is someone you are, or were, involved with more recently—romantically, that is—we won’t have to share that information with your husband.”
He twists the stylus in his slender fingers, a light smirk causing
