by J. D. German
Chapter 8 – Payback
Lynn hurried home from the office so she could work out the details of her payback attack on Dr. Hogue, the philandering psychiatrist. After a quick shower she opened her laptop and retraced her invasion of Hogue’s patient data. The woman from the first email exchange, Mary Goodman, was near the top of the list – she was the most recent. Lynn mumbled “If I had been more vulnerable I might have been his latest. . . . But I can’t imagine myself giving in to his indecent proposal.”
She checked the list of women who traded emails with him regarding sexual encounters and found every one of them on the doctor’s patient list. After some thought Lynn wondered if Hogue went after a particular type of patients, maybe based on his diagnosis of their problems. She went to the patient files section of his office computer system to learn more about his victims and found the connection – they had all lost their husbands. The emotional hole left by the deaths was wide open, waiting for a man to step in and fill it. As she pulled up some other victim’s files she found one for Phyllis Porter that was marked “Deceased May 12, 2011.”
“I wonder if her death had anything to do with her affair with the doctor.” Lynn went back and checked the dates of the emails between her and Hogue.
“The first email was dated February third and the final one from Hogue, ending the relationship, was dated May eighth – four days before her death! There has to be a connection.”
Lynn went to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper web site next. She typed Phyllis Porter into the archives search box and a few seconds later saw the headline on her screen.
Prominent Socialite Found Dead in Her Home
Autopsy Reveals Prescription Drug Overdose as Cause of Death.
“Oh my gosh. She killed herself because Hogue dumped her. He should go to jail for that. I’ll bet he even wrote the prescription for the pills that killed her.”
Lynn scanned the short article and found it was an overdose of Xanax. When she went back to Hogue’s file on Phyllis to check, she found that he had prescribed the Xanax. “There it is. And he prescribed it a week before she overdosed. That’s terrible!”
Lynn went back to the Inquirer site to see if there were any follow up stories, but apparently there was no police investigation – at least none that made the papers. She still hadn’t decided exactly how she would make the doctor pay for this, but now that she knew everything he had done she was thinking about something more serious. Maybe I could get him arrested for something else. Plant some digital evidence of criminal activities. . . . I could hack the police department computer and put out an all-points bulletin for him as armed and dangerous. He would get released as soon as they realized there wasn’t any reason to arrest him, but it would scare the crap out of him.
She thought about that for awhile and realized that she had no idea what kind of intrusion security the police computer system had. She might be able to get in, but it would take her too long to find where the APBs were entered. Jack’s cardinal rule was get in, get what you need, and get out – all in less than three minutes if you can. You could stay longer if all you needed was to download some records, but if you were going to make changes in data files, their electronic bloodhounds would detect the intrusion and come sniffing up the internet back to your computer. Jack did all of his hacking under different names and IP addresses, but all that did was buy him a little more time.
“Whatever I do, his wife needs to know about these emails. I’ll start with that and then maybe cancel all his credit cards.” Lynn hacked back into Dr. Hogue’s computer, found his wife’s email address, and then went through all his emails, forwarding a handful of the clearly sexual ones to his wife. For good measure she put links to the emails on his wife’s Facebook page so all her friends could read them too.
After a short break for supper, she went to the Darknet and found the account numbers of Hogue’s six credit cards. She hacked into the banks one at a time and made some changes to his accounts. On two of them she added fictitious charges for huge amounts that would push the accounts way past his credit limit. On the third one she figured out how to delete all records of his last four monthly payments, so she repeated that for the last three. Finally, she left a message that would pop up on his computer screen the next time he turned it on: PAYBACK TIME! He wouldn’t have a clue who did all the damage and posted the message. It would drive him crazy. More importantly it would take him months to straighten it all out, and his marriage may never get straightened out.
Lynn pushed herself out from her desk and saw that it was after midnight. “I have to watch these late nights. I don’t want to be dragging at work tomorrow. But getting revenge on sleazy people like Hogue and Alexis gives me a real high.” She thought why don’t I feel any sympathy for Hogue . . . or his wife?
She undressed and put on one of Jack’s long-sleeved shirts. It was the one he called his ‘old blue shirt.’ He wore it mostly around the house because it was soft and comfortable. Lynn found it in his cabin closet and brought it with her to Philly, and now she slept in it every night. The sleeves were too long and the hem came down to her knees, but it smelled like him and she loved it.
By 3 a.m. she was in the middle of another nightmare. This time it was about Selena, her granddaughter who had been killed in the attack on Jack. In the dream she and Selena were hiking in the woods near her mountain home in Telluride. Suddenly a woman dressed in black combat gear jumped onto her back from the tree above and slammed her to the ground. Lynn used a fighting move Jack taught her to break free but the woman was too quick for her. She slammed Lynn in the chest with the palm of her hand and knocked the wind out of her. As she fell backwards she could feel her heart fluttering, trying to recover a regular beat. Lynn opened her mouth to warn Selena to run but nothing came out. The woman rolled Lynn onto her stomach, put cuffs on her wrists and ankles, and sat her up against a tree, next to Selena who was also in cuffs.
Lynn’s heart thumped back into rhythm and her head began to clear. Who is this woman’ She thought. She looks familiar, but I can’t remember her name. Why is she doing this.
As if in answer to her thought question, the assailant pointed a gun at Selena’s forehead, looked Lynn in the eye, and said “This is for what you did to him.” Lynn screamed “Nooooo. Nooooo. You can’t do this to me. I already lost Jack and Selena. Don’t kill her again.” Then the woman pulled the trigger and vanished.
Lynn’s own scream woke her up. She was shaking and soaked with sweat. She looked around, trying to separate the remains of the dream images from the reality of her bedroom. In a few moments the complete memory of Jack and Selena’s murder came crashing down on her. She curled up on the bed crying, big sobs that she couldn’t stop, not even long enough to get a breath. She managed to shout “Jaaaack. I need you!” before the next set of sobs started. After awhile the crying retreated, but not the thoughts of Jack.
“How could you leave me? You got yourself killed, and now I’ve lost you. Why did you do that to me?” As she lay there the memory of Jack’s spirit telling her “I will never leave you, Lynn” the other night at Harriet’s came back to her. She felt an immediate calming of her emotions and a peace flowing into her. She sat up and looked around . . . and there he was, standing at the foot of the bed, that ghostly image of him. He was wearing his old blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, just like he used to do. He had a gentle smile on his face, and his eyes were smiling too. She loved the way his eyes crinkled up when he smiled. “Oh Jack, what can I do? How do I get rid of these terrible dreams? It’s like living through it all over again. I can’t stand the pain.”
“Trust me, sweetheart. These dreams will fade and be replaced with dreams of the great times we had. We weren’t together very long, but we had so many joyful times. Focus on those and the bad memories will lose their grip on you.”
“Come hold me until I fall asleep.”
“You are asleep, Lynn, or else I couldn’t be here. I’ll sit wi
th you for awhile and rub your back. You always liked that.”
Lynn thought she felt the mattress sag a little when Jack sat down beside her. She lay face down and soon could feel the warmth of Jack’s hands on her back.