by J. D. German
Chapter 6 – New Career
Lynn and Harriet opened the door to Cramer’s guest apartment and stopped in their tracks. The place was gorgeous. Floor to ceiling windows with a view of the Delaware River and downtown Philadelphia, suede upholstery for all the furniture, a built-in fifty inch TV and another smaller one in the kitchen. The kitchen had nothing but top-of-the line appliances in stainless steel and black. Glass-front cupboards for the china and glassware.
They walked through to the bedrooms and found the same kind of luxury – an eight foot round bed, another built-in TV, a huge bathroom with a garden bathtub, plush towels hanging on their racks. When they went back to the kitchen to check out the details they found a fully stocked refrigerator and freezer, a wine cooler with several high-priced bottles in it, a walk-in pantry with stocked shelves, and a marble-topped breakfast bar.
“Wow. I could learn to live like this. Your place at The Farm is beautiful, Harriet, but this place is even more impressive. And that round bed – do you think Dave provides his clients with a warm body to sleep with?”
“It doesn’t sound like something Dave would agree with. Maybe some of the clients bring their own bed warmer. Let’s put our suitcases in our rooms and have a glass of wine.”
When they were settled on the couch Harriet asked, “What’s your plan for tomorrow, Lynn.”
“I’ll go into the office about nine in the morning. I’m anxious to get started on whatever Dave has for me to do. And I set up an appointment with the psychiatrist you found, Dr. Barnett Hogue, for 4 p.m. I’ll stop off there on the way back from work. I should be back here around six. Maybe we can go to that Italian restaurant up the street.”
“You’ll probably be tired after your first day of work in quite a while, and the session with the head doctor might leave you emotionally wrung out. Let’s just call the restaurant and have it delivered.”
“I like the way you think. There are at least a dozen restaurants within delivery distance, so we can have something different every day. I saw a Starbuck’s across the street. I wonder if they deliver?”
Lynn’s first day at work wasn’t as exciting as she hoped it would be. She spent much of it filling out new employee paperwork and getting orientation briefings from the department heads. She liked her office, though. It was small but no one shared it with her. The laptop computer was the same model as the one Jack bought her. They also provided a smart phone and a tablet computer that she could link to the laptop. She hoped that before the end of the day she would get her first assignment, but it didn’t happen. Maybe tomorrow.
There was one disturbing moment when the head of the computer department introduced himself. He reached out his hand and said “O’Malley here. You must be Lynn.” She started to cry and ran to the restroom until she could get herself under control. When she went back to apologize he said “I don’t usually have that effect on people. Let’s try that again. Hi, I’m O’Malley.”
“It wasn’t anything you said to me. It’s your name. That was the name a my Irish Setter that was killed a few months ago. The name brought back memories, that’s all. I don’t suppose your first name is Jasper?”
“No, it’s Mike. Why?”
“When I wanted my O’Malley to act like a ferocious attack dog, I would call her Jasper. She sent several salesmen running back down the driveway.”
“Did you ever replace your setter?”
“No, I could no more replace her than I could my husband, Jack.”
Mike didn’t know what she was talking about, but with her tendency to burst out crying, he decided to leave it alone for now.
Lynn left work in time to get to her appointment with Dr. Hogue. Ten minutes after she entered his office she came storming out and headed for the apartment. Harriet could tell she was upset when she slammed the door.
“So, how was your appointment, Lynn?”
“Worthless! Absolutely worthless.”
“He didn’t help you at all? What did he say?”
“After I told him why I was depressed, about Jack and everything, he said ‘I can’t help you until you want to get over your depression. Here’s a prescription for antidepressants. Call me in six months’ . . . then he asked me to go out to diner – with a look that said he had something else in mind!”
“Are you serious? You need to report him to the police, or to the state medical board. He should lose his license for that.”
“I thought about that, but it wouldn’t do any good. Since it was just the two of us, he would deny it. Who would you believe, a respected psychiatrist or a crazy patient?”
“Well he certainly needs some kind of punishment. And you’re probably not the first woman he’s made a pass at. Someone needs to stop him.”
As Lynn walked to work the next day she thought about how she could pay Dr. Hogue back for his unethical behavior – make him pay for asking her, a patient emotionally devastated from the loss of her husband, to go out with him. He was taking advantage of her in a vulnerable emotional state for his own pleasure. By the time she sat down at her desk, a plan had come together in her head. She checked with Dave’s assistant, Donna, to see if she had any assignments from Dave yet and found he wouldn’t be in until after lunch, so she scheduled a meeting with him for mid-afternoon and went back to her office.
She turned on her computer and checked into the doctors personal life. She saw where he got his degrees from, what hospitals he had worked for, and . . . yes there it was. He was married to a socialite from a Philadelphia “old money” family, descendants from the earliest settlers. Her picture was everywhere – fund raisers, volunteer work, president of the Women’s Hospital Auxiliary, a high-ranking golfer at the country club, Vice President of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution . . . and here was one that showed she and her husband leaving on a cruise recently. So he had a wife, and they were still together. Maybe not for long, though.
She checked to see if they had children – she didn’t want to bust up a family if there were kids involved. They had two – a boy and a girl, but they were both out of college and on their own. So what was the best way to cause him some grief? . . . His emails! If he was having affairs with his patients, there has to be an email trail. Jack had introduced Lynn to the Darknet, a place where a good hacker could find out just about anything about anyone. She signed on to the Darknet using Jack’s screen name and password – he was well known there for his legendary hacking skills. She hoped no one on the Darknet had heard about Jack’s death. It was front page news in the Telluride Daily Planet, and earned a half-column on the fourth page of the “Around the State” section of the Denver Post. It was unlikely that any of Jack’s Darknet buddies had heard of his death. As long as she could use Jack’s identity she had access to everything on the net.
She pulled out the notes from her training under Jack and found the site she was looking for, the USPS – Underground Secret Postal Service. She entered the doctor’s name and clicked on “FIND EMAIL ADDRESS.” A few seconds later his professional email address came up – [email protected] – and a personal account for [email protected]. To get inside his computer she needed to get his Internet Protocol address, a unique identifier of each computer that connects to the internet. To get that she had to send him an email with an attachment that he couldn’t resist opening, so her bug could invade his system and send her his IP address. Once she had that, she could enter his computer at will and control it.
Lynn thought about a title for an attachment that he couldn’t resist. Something sexy might work, but so many of those web sites carried infectious computer viruses. They gave a whole new meaning to the term sexually transmitted disease. Hogue most likely knew to stay away from those.
She thought some more. How about a headline that reads Sexual Misconduct Charges Against Mental Health Professionals On The Rise. He’ll probably open it to see if his misconduct has been discovered. Then when he double clicks on the email attachmen
t all he will see was a blank screen, but by then it would be too late – my bug will already be invading his computer.’
Lynn opened one of the false-identity email accounts Jack had set up for her and sent the infected email to Dr. Hogue. Whenever he opened it Lynn would get a return message confirming that the bug was successfully installed.
It was over an hour before he opened his email and clicked on the attachment. Lynn was organizing her new office when she heard the incoming mail alert on her laptop. Lynn said quietly to herself, “Yes! It worked. I’m in!”
She sat down in front of her laptop and opened Dr. Hogue’s password file. There were several email accounts that Hogue was using. Lynn clicked on one of the emails from [email protected], and found dozens of email exchanges between Dr. Hogue and a woman who called herself Britanie, with obscene descriptions of their activities together. From what Lynn read, Britanie was apparently an online call girl who had met with Hogue in a local hotel on several occasions over a six-month period. From the last couple of emails, Britanie wanted to raise her price for a visit from $1,000 to $2,000 and the Hogue wasn’t buying it – literally.
The next one looked more like a patient of his. Lynn opened it and found the woman’s name was Mary Goldman. There were several email exchanges between Hogue and Mary. When Lynn opened the first one she knew she had hit pay dirt:
It was nice to see you in the office today, Mary. After our ‘close encounter of the sexual kind’ last week, I haven’t been able to get you off my mind. You have enchanted me with your beauty and lovemaking skills. Can we get together Thursday for dinner and more intimacy?
Love, Barnett
Mary had answered him in less than an hour:
When I got your email, my heart fluttered and I got a warm feeling in my stomach. I felt like a teenager again. My husband used to make me feel that way, but he ignores my advances now. He is probably having an affair. I can’t wait until Thursday night. Should we meet at the usual place for dinner?
Love, Mary
We shouldn’t meet at the same place every time. One of my patients might see us and get curious. How about if we meet in the parking lot of the hotel? I’ll have a room so we can go straight to bed. I bought some intimate apparel for you and I can’t wait to see you in it . . . and then remove it slowly from your body.
Barnett
Lynn scanned the other emails and saw Hogue slowly turn down the flame on the affair. But Mary didn’t take the hint – her emails got more desperate as she saw Hogue trying to pull away. In his final message, he told her that they had to end the affair because his wife was getting suspicious. That would serve him right if she found out, Lynn thought.
But then she came across another set of emails, with another woman this time. They began two weeks after he ended his affair with Mary. So much for the suspicious wife story. He was just using that as a way to get out of the relationship with Mary.
This new email partner, Delores Thomas, used very suggestive language in describing what she planned to do to him each week, and he responded in kind. That affair went on a little longer – eight weeks instead six – then he ended it with the suspicious wife story.
Lynn found a total of five women Hogue had affairs with over the past year, but there weren’t any before that. ‘Surely he must have been doing this for more than a year. Where would those emails be on his computer? . . . Of course! – he deleted them, or thought he did.
Lynn went to his computer’s recycle bin and found emails from women going back more than three years. She scanned some of them to be sure they were about affairs, then copied a few of the steamiest exchanges to her own computer.
The next task was to see if these women had been his patients. She thought about that a bit, then concluded she would need to hack into Hogue’s business computer system and check his patient list. She was just about to start her hack when Dave’s assistant called about their two o’clock meeting. Lynn was using her personal laptop for this research, so she closed the lid and looked forward to continuing with her attack on Dr. Hogue at home this evening.