“Me?”
“Yeah. Anyone on your end we should talk to?”
“Gosh, no. Wow, I didn’t even think about that. I just assumed this was some crazy person. It happens, you know?”
“So you don’t have a boyfriend? Even an ex?”
Heather shook her head. “No, I just transferred here from Arizona, and NYU’s been kicking my ass, you know? I haven’t even had a date. I can write down my schedule or something if that would help.”
“Yeah, sure, if you’re up to it. Anything you can think of.”
“Is everything all right in here, Heather?”
Ellie turned around to see the young doctor lingering in the doorway.
“Detectives, I can make sure that any notes Heather writes get to you, but if you’re about done—”
Ellie felt her cell phone vibrate against her waist, flipped it open, and saw a text message from Max Donovan: “Call me about Campus Juice.”
“How much do you love me?”
Max used a four-letter word that had not quite been uttered yet between them, but Ellie knew he hadn’t meant
“I take it you’ve got good news?”
“How soon can you get to the courthouse?”
“We’re in the heat of this thing right now.”
“Trust me. It’ll be worth your time.”
Max’s office was on the fifteenth floor of 100 Centre Street, home to many of Manhattan’s criminal courts and most of its five hundred assistant district attorneys. Ellie and Rogan breezed past the receptionist for the homicide investigation unit and headed directly to Max’s open door, adorned by a bulletin board plastered, as usual, with the various news clippings and cartoons that Max had found sufficiently amusing to earn a spot on his office mural of humor.
As Ellie rapped her knuckles against the fake wood grain of the door, she noticed the board’s latest addition —a story in this morning’s
Max rose from his desk and shook Rogan’s hand. “Good to see you back here, man. After this morning, I thought we’d soured you on this building for at least a month.”
“I was tempted to wait in the car, but Hatcher swore you said this would be worth our time.”
“It will be. You want a Coke or something?”
“Max,” Ellie said. “We’re in the hunt.”
“Just a few minutes. I promise. In the meantime, take a look here.” Jiggling the mouse on his desktop, he awakened the computer screen. “This is the Campus Juice Web site you were telling me about.”
He clicked on a menu bar that read “Choose Your Campus,” and then scrolled down a long list of university names until he reached “New York University.”
“Typical format for a message board. A big list of topics, which are the titles of original posts, and then anyone can click on a subject and reply.”
“We got the gist.” Rogan pointed to Ellie. “She’s got a verbatim printout of the posts about our vic from the girl’s parents.”
“Right,” Max said. “But you probably didn’t see this.”
He clicked on a link labeled “Privacy and Tracking Policy.” “This site knows precisely the kind of harassment it’s inviting with these kinds of terms. Look here, in bold letters: ‘Campus Juice does not require identifiable information from users who read or post messages to our Gossip Board.’ And down here, again in bold to make sure no one misses it among the legalese: ‘We share aggregate traffic information with advertisers and potential advertisers, but this does not identify individual users.’ And you’ll love this.”
He scrolled down the screen farther, to a heading entitled “IP Addresses.”
“That’s what we need,” Ellie said. An IP address identifies an individual computer’s connection through its Internet service provider. It was their best shot at determining the author of the posts about Megan.
It was only then that she read the fine text beneath the subject header: “If you are particularly concerned about your online privacy, there are several services that offer free IP cloaking. Just do a quick search on Google and find one you like.”
“This is beyond belief.”
“Like I said, whoever set up this site did it in a way that invites cowards to stay in the shadows.”
“So now what?” Rogan asked.
A young, slender woman in high heels, a fitted navy dress, and a sleek black ponytail slipped into the office and handed Max a stack of papers. Ellie caught herself watching Max to see if his eyes followed the woman out of his office. She was unsurprised, but still pleased, when they did not.
“Perfect timing,” Max said, flipping through the pages of the printout. “So here’s the deal: I ran the domain name registration for Campus Juice, and the owner lives out in Long Island. That means I’ve got subpoena power.”
“And is that what I think it is?” Ellie asked.
“Signed, sealed, delivered,” he said, handing the document to her. “I tracked down the ADA who researched this issue for the Sixth Precinct. Your vic wasn’t the first NYU student to complain about the Web site. Apparently there were enough reports last year that we finally took a closer look. The Web site’s not a company as much as just some dude working out of his basement. The ADA who called him said he’s a total prick who prides himself on all the pain he’s causing. Payback for all the spitballs hurled his way on the playground.”
“And you were able to get a subpoena?” Rogan asked.
“We didn’t stand a chance when it was just a vast graffiti board of anonymous insults. But your homicide nails it down to one specific person and the people who posted messages about her. Judge Jacob agreed that was a narrow and compelling enough request to sign on the dotted line.”
Watching Max beam, she remembered what had initially drawn her to him when she’d first met him here six months earlier. The broad shoulders, curly dark hair, and cute smile probably helped, but there was more to it than looks. Max had an ease about him that showed in his every movement.
The Columbia law degree could have opened any career door he had chosen, but the diploma hung in a simple wooden frame on a wall that hadn’t seen a new coat of paint for a decade. Before she moved to New York, Ellie had once dreamed of a life different from her parents’. Taking prelaw classes in Wichita, she imagined herself in a firm like Ramon Guerrero’s, with all the attendant perks. When she’d briefly lived with an investment banker, she had enjoyed the six-course meals and occasional tickets to Lincoln Center. But for reasons she might never understand, she always found herself uncomfortable with people who occupied that world she would never be a part of.
But Max never let any of it faze him. The son of a shoe salesman and a dental hygienist, he never seemed tempted to cash in on his education, but was never a martyr about it either. Supremely confident and unflinchingly modest, he would never let a man like Sam Sparks get to him. And Ellie saw the way women looked at Max, even the one who had handed him the subpoena. But Max being Max, he never seemed to notice.
“Thanks, man,” Rogan said, extending his fist for a friendly tap.
Max called out to them as they left his office. “Enjoy the drive to Long Island.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
2:45 P.M.
Like every other Web site on the Internet, campusjuice.com was required to register its domain name and
