Never Tell

by Lisa Gardner

  “Evie Hopkins—”

  Not my married name, I notice. Even half drunk and caught off guard, my mom can still get her digs in.

  “I didn’t shoot him. We both know it. We lied to protect him sixteen years ago, Mom. Because we loved him. Because we couldn’t bear to think he killed himself. But it’s been sixteen years, and given what happened with Conrad . . . If we lied to protect Dad all those years ago, then I need us to find out the truth now, in order to save me.”

  My mom sits. Hard. Just collapses in the chair, vodka sloshing against the sides of her glass. For a moment, she looks lost, almost childlike, and it unnerves me. Then she takes a fortifying sip.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “According to the police, someone else shot Dad. Someone had to be here in the house.”

  “But we didn’t see anyone.”

  “Then the person left right before we entered.”

  “Are they sure? How can they know these things?”

  “You watch TV—”

  “I don’t watch those shows—”

  “Of course you watch those shows! Everyone watches those shows. Plus, I’ve seen them in your Netflix queue. This isn’t the time for posturing, Mom. Now is the time for truth.”

  She glares at me. It makes her look more like herself. We both relax. She takes another sip of her martini.

  “They’re sure?”

  “Yes, Mom. Dad didn’t commit suicide.” The words are harder to say than I thought. Again, my family has always been defined by the things unspoken. And suicide is such a sad, terrible word. We never talked about it. Just like myself at lunch, my mother gets a sudden sheen in her eyes. The weight of her own burden lifting after all these years. What could’ve been a shared burden, if only we’d been the type of people to share such things.

  She looks away, drains her glass. Then, without another glance at me, gets up, crosses to the cabinet, and gets the vodka back down. I don’t try to stop her. Some battles are too hard to fight.

  “Everyone loved your father,” she says at last, peeling off a curl of lemon rind. “He was a genius. Who doesn’t love a genius?”

  “Other geniuses,” I answer. “Jealous professors, overworked TAs, flunked students.”

  She frowns again but, focusing on the preparation of a perfect martini, at least doesn’t immediately dismiss my ideas.

  “It’s why your father threw the poker parties,” she says abruptly.

  I shake my head, not following.

  “The academic world is competitive. For ideas, grants, students, funding. Your father didn’t love that aspect. Especially in math, he saw everyone working alone. He thought ideas would be better if people shared their ideas and opinions. The university environment wasn’t conducive to such things, he said. So, poker nights. Invite other professors, doctorate students, et cetera. Get everyone relaxed, having fun. Collaboration would naturally follow.”

  I nod. I never heard my father dismiss another colleague’s ideas or talk down to a student. As professors went, I always thought he was ahead of his time. Or maybe, simply that secure in his own brilliance. But I hadn’t known this aspect of the poker nights and it only makes me miss him more.

  “There was a TA,” she says abruptly. “Aarav Patil. Very promising, your father said. But a loner. He rarely attended the poker nights, no matter how many times your father invited him. And while your father wasn’t one to go into detail with me, I could tell he was getting frustrated with Patil. I’m not sure the boy would’ve been his TA much longer.”

  “Okay.” Belatedly, I realize I should be writing this down. Ugly purse to the rescue. I have my pad and paper. “Did this Patil know where we lived?”

  “They all did. Your father was just as likely to have students over to his home office as the one on campus.”

  “What about professors?”

  She takes her first sip of her martini but is contemplative now, less emotional. “I’m not sure. I never heard your father say a bad word, but that didn’t mean others weren’t jealous. There were things your father could just . . . comprehend. His mind . . .” She looks as me abruptly. “There was no else in the world like your father,” she whispers. “No one else.”

  For the first time I get it, truly get it. She loved him. Probably as much as I did. We both loved him. And neither one of us has been the same since.

  “I miss him, too,” I say.

  She just smiles, but there are tears on her cheeks now. I think I should stand up, give my mom a hug. But I’m too afraid she’ll turn away. So I remain seated. She drinks her vodka. We both wait.

  “You should talk to Dr. Martin Hoffman,” she says abruptly, “the department chair. He’s retired now, but sixteen years ago, he would’ve known everyone and what personalities might have had issues with others.” She pauses a moment, then concedes: “And who might’ve been more ambitious. When your father died, that left a vacancy, of course, which had to be filled.”

  “Who got his job?”

  “Katarina Ivanova.”

  “A woman?” It shouldn’t surprise me but still catches me off guard. “Did my father know her?”

  “Yes. He’d been mentoring her for the past year. He was . . . impressed.” My mother’s face shutters up, and in her expression, I learn a few more things about Katarina Ivanova: She was very beautiful and my mother hated her.

  “I don’t remember her from poker night.”

  “Not everyone could always make it.” Or my mother hadn’t wanted her around.

  “But she’d been to Dad’s home office?”

  “Of course. That was how he worked.”

  “Thank you.”

  My mother looks at me. She still has tear tracks on her cheeks, and her fingers on the stem of her martini glass are trembling. “What good will come of this?” she asks me softly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s dead. We both paid the price. And as for what happened Tuesday night . . . How can the circumstances of your father’s death matter? You were a child. The records were sealed.”

  “The police are reopening the case.”

  “Because you stirred the pot.”

  “I have to know, Mom. I can’t keep . . . being the same person, telling the same lies. Just once, I want to know the truth.”

  My mother smiles sadly. “You know what they say, dear: Be careful what you wish for.”

  CHAPTER 23

  D.D.

  “SO WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY know about this guy?” D.D. asked.

  They’d taken over the FBI’s meeting room. Not D.D.’s favorite location, as she felt she was ceding more and more of her homicide investigation to the feds. Then again, she had two feebies at the table to her one BPD self. Add to that a rogue CI and a civilian true-crime buff, and this was getting to be the craziest investigative team she’d ever seen.

  She didn’t approve of crazy. Or the fact that she didn’t know what to do next. She always knew what to do next.

  Dr. Keynes did the honors: “Flora, did you ever see the man—Conrad or, I suppose, Conner—at another bar? Or perhaps meeting up with Jacob at one of the truck stops?”

  “No. But Jacob would often take off on his own . . .”

  There was a slight hesitation and D.D. caught it.

  “What?” she demanded.

  Flora wouldn’t make eye contact with any of them. “It was shortly after that, Jacob returned to Florida with me. Where he became . . . involved in other business. Whatever he may have been doing previously, I think once he hit Florida, that became his full-time focus.”

  D.D. understood what Flora wasn’t saying. Dr. Keynes and Kimberly Quincy should as well, meaning Flora’s oblique reference had to do with the new guy in the room. Fair enough. Everyone was entitled to their privacy, and God knows a survivor of a sensational kidnapping
case had to fight to keep hers.

  “So Jacob had definitely made a connection with Conrad. Everything about what you described was hardly a coincidental meeting,” D.D. stated.

  “But Conrad’s own intentions are unclear.” Quincy spoke up. The FBI agent wore a frown similar to D.D.’s own. Clearly, she didn’t approve of crazy either. “Was he there as a second perpetrator, or as some kind of self-appointed savior? Do you think he recognized you from TV?” she asked Flora.

  Flora shrugged. “I doubt it. By that point, I’d lost a lot of weight. My hair was hacked off. Most of the time I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. Jacob had been taking me out in public for months, and no one ever looked at me twice.”

  “Did Conrad try to make eye contact, send you any other signals?” D.D. tried again. “Morse code isn’t exactly the easiest way to establish contact. And risky, given Jacob was a long-haul trucker and had experience on the radio.”

  “I kept my gaze down. Jacob didn’t like it when I looked up. Conrad might have tried something. I wouldn’t have known. And Jacob never left us alone. He had his hand on my shoulder the whole time.”

  “When did you leave the town?” Quincy asked now.

  “The next day. Up and out. Jacob was hardy. He could drink all night, still get up at four and start driving. He’d been off the road for a week. I imagine he had to get back to work.”

  “Motel Upland,” D.D. provided. “Last time we talked, you thought you recalled a flashing motel sign that read Motel Upland. Something more for us to check out. Maybe we can even find a record of Conrad Carter or one of his aliases staying there or nearby. Of course, it would help if we had a state and not just ‘someplace in the South.’”

  “Try Mississippi,” Quincy suggested. “Given the Abita beer.”

  “I think Jacob promised Flora to Conrad, made some kind of deal.” D.D. noticed Keith didn’t look directly at Flora as he said this. He spoke evenly, his tone strictly professional. It made D.D. wonder if Flora would hurt him now or later.

  “I don’t think that’s much of a stretch,” Quincy said drily.

  While Flora added, “You think Conrad intended to take me away. Jacob would’ve thought it was to abuse me. But maybe Conrad was really trying to rescue me.”

  “Interesting thought,” Dr. Samuel mused. He nodded toward D.D. “Does Conrad have any history in law enforcement, military service? Time with at-risk kids?”

  “Not even a volunteer at a soup kitchen,” she assured him. “Which makes this all stranger still. But he did have a box of fake IDs. Meaning whatever he was doing in that bar, he was working ‘undercover,’ so to speak. The question remains, to what end? One predator networking with another? Or some lone gunman trying to save the day? But how would he know about Flora? And if this is really what he did, shouldn’t there be some record of other girls he rescued, or crimes stopped? Certainly, his wife doesn’t know about any of this. She appeared as shocked by the fake IDs and cash stash as anyone. Though again, she shot up his computer, which may prove his travel activities weren’t altruistic after all.”

  “What do you know about his other aliases, the names on the IDs?” Quincy asked.

  “Nothing yet. One of my fellow detectives, Neil, has been working on them. He’s running each name through state databases with the license number, but given how common the aliases are, he’s getting too much information. The few he’s managed to whittle down to the ‘right’ Conner or Carter or whatnot, there’s no attached credit history, criminal records, anything. He suspects the IDs are hollow—not representative of whole new lives, just literally a piece of plastic procured for getting into a club.”

  “But didn’t you say Conrad had a connection to Florida?” Quincy pressed. “And Jacob was from Florida. Surely that can’t be coincidence.”

  “I don’t like coincidences any more than the next person,” D.D. assured her. “But Florida is a big state. Conrad’s family lived in Jacksonville. Jacob Ness’s mother lived on the west coast, north of Tampa. They were hardly neighbors. On the other hand, Jacob drove all around on his job and Conrad traveled all around on his, so anything is possible. Neil will keep searching. But we just learned about the aliases today, so it’ll take a bit more digging.

  “I don’t think we should worry about Conrad’s reasons for meeting Jacob and Flora.” Keith spoke up. “We can speculate about why Conrad came to the bar all we want, but at this time we lack adequate data.”

  An IT geek through and through, D.D. noted.

  “The real question is: How did Conrad and Jacob make contact? You said Jacob had a cheap burner phone. Did you see him call anyone before you entered the bar?” Keith asked Flora.

  “No. But he could’ve done it while I was in the bathroom cleaning up.”

  “But Conrad knew exactly how to find you. Walked straight over to you.”

  “I guess.”

  “Clearly the meet was planned in advance. By a guy who didn’t really use his cell but had the Tor browser on his laptop.”

  Once again, Flora shrugged. The rest of them simply waited.

  “All the more reason to suspect that Jacob was active on the dark web and networking with other predators there. Now, Tor works to obscure a user’s IP address by encrypting internet traffic while bouncing it through odd routes. However, it’s not as anonymous as people think. A user’s information is briefly unencrypted when entering and exiting the dark web, meaning there should be some recoverable information.”

  Quincy shook her head. “I already told you, the FBI turned the computer inside and out. Nothing.”

  But Keith wouldn’t be denied. “To access anything, dark web, deep web—”

  “What’s deep web?” D.D. interrupted.

  “Any site you need to log in to—banks, e-mail, e-commerce. Social networks, too, such as Facebook or Twitter. But there are members-only forums for just about anything and everything these days.

  “Most people start on the deep web—visiting sites where they feel they’re safe—then move on to the dark web. But either way, Jacob would have to have a username and password for some of these online accounts, which would be stored in his hard drive’s SAM—Security Account Manager. Unless, of course, he remembered to remove that data. The Tor browser, for example, includes a screen asking the user if he really wants to save the information, as a way of prompting him not to store the info. Not all accounts are as helpful, however, and it’s not uncommon for even the savviest IT guru to miss a stored password here or there.” Keith stared at Quincy.

  “I already said,” the FBI agent bit out tightly, “our computer techs are the best in the business. As a matter of protocol, we ran the password cracker against the computer’s SAM file and, yes, we discovered stored credentials for a single Gmail account, JNess. Except none of the recovered e-mails revealed anything of a criminal nature. Certainly nothing related to the dark web.”

  “What about a domain name? Most bad guys love to register vanity domains, BadAssDude.com, whatever.”

  “No.”

  “Then he had another e-mail account,” Keith stated. “He left the first as a reward for prying eyes, better hid the second. There are plenty of ways.”

  “Not that someone with Jacob’s background should know about.” Quincy clearly wasn’t convinced. “You’re giving him too much credit.”

  “But again, once on the dark web, the experts he could’ve met, the lessons he could’ve learned. Flora said he was clever and driven when it came to hiding his habits. And we’re not talking about complicated programming. Get one tech nerd in a chat room, and the rest becomes paint-by-numbers security steps. Jacob would just need to do what he was told.”

  Keith spoke matter-of-factly. Flora looked interested, while Kimberly appeared even more pissed. At least D.D. was now having some fun.

  “What would you suggest trying next?” D.D. asked Keith
. The man did seem to know his stuff, and as long as the “best in the business” FBI techs were coming up empty . . .

  “Work on figuring out a second username. Just because there’s no record of one on his laptop doesn’t mean we can’t use old-fashioned deductive reasoning to come up with some possibilities. We could then plug and play those options on known websites till we get a hit.”

  “You mean given Jacob’s own background and history.” Dr. Keynes spoke up. “We determine what online identity would appeal to him?”

  “We did every version of Jacob Ness possible,” Quincy argued. “JNess Jacnes. NJacob, et cetera. Hell, one of our techs wrote an algorithm just to run all possible name combos.”

  “He’d never use his own name to access the dark web,” Flora stated immediately. “Too obvious.”

  “We tried Everett, too,” Quincy reported. “Fake Everett. Any detail we could glean from your interview with Dr. Keynes. Including your name, your father’s name, even your brother’s name. Jacob had a sly and cruel sense of humor. We all can agree on that.”

  “Hang on.” D.D. raised a hand. “Forget username for a minute. Given this Tor browser, we can be sure Jacob was accessing the dark web?”

  Quincy and Keith nodded.

  “Meaning if Conrad was connecting with the likes of Jacob Ness or other predators—either as a fellow abuser or a naïve avenger—he’d have to be part of the dark web as well.”

  More nodding.

  D.D. smiled. First real break all day. “Meaning, Conrad’s wife may have destroyed his computer, but there should still be traces of his activities on the dark web, right? You said every time a user logged in and out, there’s a moment when their data is unencrypted. Meaning, we figure out Conrad’s username, log on through Tor, and . . .”

  “We should be able to identity frequently visited sites, maybe even some chat rooms,” Keith supplied. “Basically, identify this Conrad guy’s username, or Ness’s evildoer username, and the amount of data we could suddenly recover . . . Contacts, activities, identities of other predators.”