“So yeah, my informant seems to be a good guy. First the Ryan Hamilton and trafficking, now this. He really seems to be a good guy.”
George paused and looked thoughtfully at Janey.
“I’ll tell you though, Janey, even if he’s a good guy, my gut is telling me that he is the murderer. It’s just too coincidental that the two mails come in so close together. I have a feeling that if we can find my good guy informant, we’ll find the murderer too.”
“Well George, I didn’t want to say anything before, but I’ve been working on something that might help. I’ll get a copy of the latest emails from your laptop and input them into my bot. With a bit more testing, I can turn it loose and may come up with an answer.”
“A bot? I know what a bot is, but how is that going to help?”
“Well, as I mentioned before, this person or these people have been remarkably clever in hiding their tracks. They generate names, create temporary DNS entries so that mail servers don’t mark them as spammers, and then remove the DNS entries before they can be traced. They are also using some clever encryption code that I haven’t seen before, and I’ve seen most everything out there.
“At first I thought it might be part of the pirated NSA software everyone has heard about, but I went through all of that code and none of it does what this does. So, I’m in the process of creating a bot that will search the Net for the program that generates these names.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes. Such power exists,” Janey joked, referring to their favorite old-time science fiction movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
“Is it legal?”
“Not the right question. But, I still have a ways to go. I didn’t have enough information before and as I said, these new emails will likely help. Then I have lots of testing to do. So far, that’s taking longer than I’d hoped. And once I do get it working, it’s going to take at least several days to do everything I have in mind. I have to hide my bots and propagate them invisibly. Then we cross our fingers that the person or people aren’t smarter than I am. Then again, I often find that really smart people get overconfident. I’m hoping to exploit that.
“Enough about my little project for now. Just trust that your loving wife has your back. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
They finished dinner and most of the bottle of wine, did the dishes and spent the rest of the evening trying to forget that there were murderers among us.
3
Sam greeted Mark warmly, but frowned at the small bag of pastries he carried.
“I thought we talked about this. I really can’t afford to indulge with every patient. I’ll turn into a blimp!”
“Ah come on. I’m sure that I’m the only patient that brings you pastries, and once a week isn’t so bad.”
Sam served tea, and bit into the warm pain au chocolate, or chocolatine as Mark now insisted they be called, and began what was becoming a familiar routine. As they consumed the tea and pastries, she checked in on medication status and how the week had gone.
Sam had decided to continue to allow more informality into their therapist-patient relationship. To proceed with the next steps, Mark needed to trust her, to have confidence in where she was taking him. It would be difficult for Mark. His nightmares would increase and the new stress of the work he was about to embark on could trigger more positive symptoms – hallucinations, voices, and perhaps worse.
But if she was there for him, just maybe he could avoid losing the control he’d developed in the weeks of work they’d done. Just maybe he could avoid falling into his former drug and alcohol habits – a new downward spiral.
It was going to be a challenge for Sam as well. While she’d trained in Psychodynamic Therapy techniques, this was the first time she’d applied them in such a serious case. But so far, it was working.
“Mark, we talked about the Psychodynamic Therapy we’ve started. At this point, it has probably seemed pretty innocuous, particularly the free associations we’ve been doing. But after our last session, I have some ideas about some of the sources of your problems. As we discussed when we first met, late-onset schizophrenia is not the most common form we see.
“Most psychiatrists believe that schizophrenia is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain and that these imbalances are the result of genetics. The bad genes are a waiting time bomb where drugs, alcohol, the environment, or just time, can trigger the disease. Once it’s started, all we can do is manage it. We can adjust the brain chemistry, and use therapy to help patients regain some control over their lives. These psychiatrists believe that schizophrenia is incurable.
“However, there are a few outlying psychiatrists who now believe that while the majority of cases are genetic and incurable, a small percentage may be the result of childhood trauma. The argument against this is that we can see that the brain is acting differently physiologically, thus it can’t be just a psychological problem.
“But, on the other side, there have been success cases with therapy. The theory, and it’s only a theory at this point, is that childhood trauma actually causes behavioral changes that result in changes to the brain chemistry. That’s why the drugs work in these cases too. But they’ve gone a step further.
“I didn’t want to give you false hope at the beginning, and I’m hoping you’ll be patient with what we’re about to start, because the chances of a cure are still small.
“Most psychological research has shown that as babies we have to learn to experience the world. We have to learn to interpret sights and sounds to create our reality. Many also believe that this is the case with emotions – that fear, envy, anger, and others have to be learned and interpreted. And we have to learn how to react and to protect ourselves. We develop patterns. These patterns become expressed in how we move, how we think, and how we react. Our bodies adapt and so do our brains.
“Bottom line – it’s possible that if we get to the root of what caused patterned thinking, feeling, and reacting, and their associated behaviors, we can change them. In the case of trauma victims, we can slowly reverse the damage and retrain the brain to be, for lack of a better non-technical word, normal.”
Mark looked at Sam and tried to think. He racked his brain. He tried to remember. They passed a few moments in silence.
“Gee Sam, this all sounds great. There’s just one problem. I didn’t experience any major, life-changing childhood trauma. I had a pretty normal childhood, I think.”
“Mark, as I said, therapy is difficult. I could be wrong about this, but after carefully studying our last sessions, I believe that you did experience some significant trauma in your childhood. And if I’m right, the therapy is going to be challenging. It will be the hardest work you’ve ever done. You’re going to have to work really hard to maintain the control you’ve developed and to stay clean no matter how bad things seem to be getting.
“I can’t promise a cure, but there is a possibility, and I think you’re up to the challenge of giving it a shot.”
Mark thought about it. He still didn’t see how his childhood could be the cause of his condition, but if Sam thought so, he had to trust her. She’d helped him get this far. Maybe he could get his whole life back. He’d been through some pretty difficult challenges in his life. Why not one more?
“Okay. I’m in. Where do we start?”
“Mark, tell me about your family.
“There isn’t much to tell. My dad was a great guy, super intelligent, and always joking around. He worked for military intelligence for many years and was away a lot while I was growing up. And then, he died suddenly while I was away at college. My mother was quiet. I did sometimes wonder how they ended up together. She worked to support me and never remarried after my dad died. Unfortunately, she died of cancer a year or so before Janice and I separated.”
“Then let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about your earliest memories of your mother.”
“My mother?”
4
Juli
a Lewis took a sip of her champagne and looked out over the crowd that had gathered at the Palace of the Legion of Honor with its spectacular views of San Francisco.
It appeared that most everyone she had invited was there and most had brought guests. This was her big charity event of the year. Last year she’d raised over half a million dollars for humane animal farming. This year, they were going to try to help stop the needless slaughter of kangaroos in Australia.
Although protected in most of the national parks, the Australian government had authorized the ‘culling’ of over a million kangaroos this year and in their trade negotiations, the government was pushing kangaroo meat to partner countries. The number of kangaroos was dropping fast. Extinction was a real possibility and the environmentalists were decrying the fact that the longer-term impacts on Australian lands were unimaginable.
Several months before, Julia had watched a documentary on the subject and then heard an interview with the filmmakers on NPR. Apparently, they had just started out trying to document the life of kangaroos throughout Australia, following several families. They were shocked when their families were ruthlessly slaughtered, the young defenseless joeys left to starve or to be killed by predators. And so, the filmmakers changed their focus. They researched the environmental impacts, the governmental plans, and as expected, they filmed horrible scenes of gruesome massacres of hundreds of kangaroos. Julia decided to take this on as her cause this year. She knew the pictures and videos would tear at her guests’ heartstrings and that their purses would open wide. Given the pace so far, she would certainly beat last year’s take. With the silent auction still to come, who knows, maybe she’d break a million dollars.
As she gazed out across the City’s lights, she couldn’t help but reflect on how she got here. She’d married young, too young. The children came along before she could finish her graduate studies in marketing communications and she’d spent the next twenty years being a mom. Shuttling the kids to after-school events, to music, dance, and gymnastic lessons, she didn’t have time to miss her independent life. But as the kids became more self-sufficient and moved away to college, and her workaholic husband was increasingly absent, Julia made up her mind to make a change. Her husband Marshall had just left his prestigious high-paying job at Xerox Research Park to launch a startup. He’d started dipping into their substantial savings to fund the company and Julia knew that if she let this continue, he’d burn through it all in pursuit of a dream that only he could understand.
She planned carefully. Using the social contacts she’d made through Marshall’s business associates, she lined up a product management position with a well-known high tech firm. They even offered to pay for her MBA.
She told Marshall that now that the kids were on their own, she needed to build her own career. He happily agreed, already worried that his wife had too much time on her hands as he dove headlong into his new company.
And once the job was secure and she had a decent income, she filed for divorce. He never saw it coming. Of course, he was devastated. In his pain, he didn’t fight for his half of their wealth. Instead, because he ardently believed in his new venture, Julia had no problem arguing that Marshall’s startup was worth as much as the rest of their properties and savings. He wanted his company and certainly didn’t need her as a partner, so he caved. She took it all.
At first, the girls supported their mother’s quest for independence. Their father had always worked too much and their mother was clearly a distant second to his passion for new technologies.
But then, as they saw the impact of the divorce on their father and as they discovered what their mother had done to him financially, they turned against her and tried to save Marshall from the abyss that he was about to fall into. To no avail.
Just as Julia had known all along, Marshall’s company failed. He started drinking and eventually drank himself to death.
Her daughters hadn’t spoken to her since.
That was a disappointment, but it wasn’t devastating. After giving up the best years of her life to raise them, Julia needed to take care of herself.
By anyone’s measure, she was a success. She had climbed the ranks in her company and now made mid-six figures as their Executive VP of Marketing. Socially, anyone who was anyone in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley knew and respected her marketing skills. And they all came to her fundraisers which boosted their esteem of her while cementing her reputation as one of the elite.
On the romance side, she was glad to be single. She’d never marry again. She’d never play second-fiddle to a man again. Instead, with her money and not-so-bad looks at fifty-one, she bedded pretty much whoever she wanted. She tried to stay away from married men, but sometimes the temptation was too great. She loved to make the power elite beg for more.
Yes. She had it all.
As the moon rose above the East Bay hills, she turned to go back inside. A clumsy waiter carrying a tray of champagne-filled glasses bumped into her, causing her to spill her drink but he somehow balanced the tray of glasses without spilling a drop.
“Watch where you’re going!”
“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Lewis. Here’s a fresh chilled glass.”
Julia looked at the not-so-young man offering to replace her now empty glass. He looked contrite. He also looked a bit familiar, but she wasn’t sure where she could have seen him before. Maybe she’d just noticed him earlier that evening.
She set her glass on the tray and as charmingly as she could, admonished him with, “Please be more careful.”
As she made her way back inside, Marie, her partner in crime, was calling the crowd together to announce the results of the silent auction. Julia needed to join her. But for some reason, she kept thinking about the waiter. About her age, he had gorgeous gray-green eyes, was well-built, and well, who knows? Maybe they’d hook up later. Many of the people working the fundraiser were volunteering their time. For all she knew, he could be a billionaire.
Julia gulped the glass of champagne as she joined Marie on the podium in front of the crowd. You could almost feel the anticipation. This was fun! Julia loved to watch them hanging on her every word. And then, she felt a pain run down her left arm. She found she was sweating profusely and a wave of nausea overtook her. She couldn’t breathe. She clutched her arm and fell to the floor.
As she lay there, she couldn’t help thinking that she shouldn’t have ignored her doctor’s advice. She couldn’t believe that she was a candidate for a heart attack and so she’d refused to change her lifestyle or take the medication that she’d been prescribed. But most people survived a first heart attack, right?
She looked up and saw Laney Sampson, her doctor, bending over her.
“You’ll be fine,” Laney assured her as she began CPR.
5
Forty-eight hours passed and the murder hadn’t happened. At least nothing had been reported, and if rtuf-whatever was to be believed, there would be another explosion. That wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
George started to hope. Maybe something happened to rtuf. Maybe he or she had a change of heart. But as soon as he thought it, George knew that couldn’t be the case. Rtuf was just screwing with them. The forty-eight hours was just a distraction. George was sure that Mike and much of the police force were doing whatever they could to protect possible victims. But a part of him knew. Rtuf was going to murder someone, probably very soon.
New email came in and after ignoring it for a few minutes, George decided to go through it. The email about trafficking was slowing down, but it wasn’t gone yet. And at least he felt useful directing victims and those suspicious of trafficking to the right places to get help.
Scanning the list of emails, he saw it. A part of him wasn’t surprised. He double-clicked and read the message:
______________________________
From: fu6o03qplkmr2< [email protected]>
Date: November 16, 20XX 07:01 AM PDT
To: George Gray
Subject: Kaboom!
George ol’ Buddy,
It’s done. Sorry for the misdirection. I can’t make it too easy for you and the cops, can I? I hope you all didn’t go to too much trouble chasing packages or women that you know. That would have been a waste of time.
I was much more subtle this time. Her name was Julia Lewis. You’ve probably heard about her husband, Marshall Lewis. He worked at Xerox Research Park years ago and was really the father of everything we think of as user interfaces. Others made billions off of his ideas. He might have done pretty well himself if his wife hadn’t declared him a workaholic failure and left him, taking pretty much everything they had. He drank himself to death and we lost one of the truly great geniuses of our age. Don’t cry for her George. We don’t need women who derail the technologies that will save mankind. At least she won’t do it again.
I’ll be in touch before I rid us of another viper.
fu6o03qplkmr2
______________________________
George forwarded the email to Morris and to Mike McKensey and raced to Morris’ office.
“He killed a woman named Julia Lewis, wife of someone named Marshall Lewis. Have you ever heard of him?
Morris typed the name into a search engine. “Yeah. I vaguely remember a story we did about him a few years back. Yeah, here it is. It was in the History of the Silicon Valley series.”
Morris’ phone rang. “Levinberg. Yeah Mike. Yeah Mike. Sure. See you in fifteen.”
George looked at Morris expectantly.
“As soon as he got your email, he and Bob Simpson made a few calls and found Julia Lewis – or her body. From what he could gather, she collapsed at a charity event last night and was rushed to Community Hospital where she was declared DOA from an apparent heart attack.
“Your buddy timed it perfectly. Another hour or two and she would be in Colma.”
The Misogynist Page 10