“Are you back yet?”
George looked up, a bit surprised. “Ah, I guess not. Without a doubt, that was the best vacation of my life and it may take me a while to get back to reality.”
“Yeah. You look more relaxed than I’ve ever seen you. It looks like the enforced vacation did you some good.”
“Morris, I can’t thank you enough for making me go. In addition to a much-needed break, I had a lot of long talks with Janey and I think I’ve gained some perspective.
“I don’t know if you could see it, but I’ve been questioning what I do. I’ve been asking myself if I’m doing more harm than good, if my work isn’t inspiring these crazies to hurt people.”
“We all go through that, George, though I think you’ve been closer to some of these cases than most of us. So, where did you end up?
“As Janey has said countless times, all I can do is the best I can do. For some reason, on Tikehau, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I realized that I can step back. I may not always be completely objective, nor will I be dispassionate, but I can accept that overall, my work will do more good than harm. And I will do the best I can.”
“George, I’m glad to hear it. And I’m definitely glad to have you back. I actually haven’t had to write stories with deadlines in years. It was fun for a while, but I’m ready to hand it back.
“I hope you’re ready to hit the ground running because I’ve set up an interview with Mark Johansen for later this morning. Sorry to break your reverie, but we do have work to do!”
“Is there anything I should know beyond what’s been in the press?”
“For the facts of the case, no. However, Mike McKensey has told me ‘off-the-record’ that he doesn’t believe that Johansen did this. He’s conducting his own unofficial investigation but so far has come up empty.
“Maybe you can find something. Maybe Mark Johansen knows something he’s not conscious of. Then again, with his psychological problems, it may be tough to sort out reality from delusion.”
George sat up in his chair.
“I hate to admit it, but I’ve missed this. I want to get into the heart of this case. I’m ready to dig in.
“And since I haven’t seen any emails about new Internet Moguls, I assume there’s nothing new. Did the police find any of those emails on Mark Johansen’s computer?”
“No. If Johansen is guilty of the murders, it looks like our informant is a different person.
“Let me know how your interview with Johansen goes. I may be handing you the reins, but I admit to being hooked on this story.”
As Morris walked away, George took one last longing look at his screen then picked up the phone and called Mike McKensey. Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way to see Mark Johansen.
12
Sam left Jack and raced back to her office. It had been a frustratingly unsatisfying lunch. It wasn’t that the food was bad, but things with Jack hadn’t gone as expected.
It all started out just fine. Jack was attentive and gentle. But then Sam decided to try to play detective. She brought up the arrest of Mark and Jack just lost it. He ranted. He raved about the incompetence of the police. Then stated flatly that Mark must have been framed.
But most disturbing was when Sam asked how Jack felt about Janice Livingston.
“Quite frankly, I think she got what she deserved. Look at what she did to poor Mark. He ended up in a mental institution for God’s sake.”
Ultimately, he calmed down. She told him she’d been able to visit Mark and to continue treatment. He seemed concerned. Jack couldn’t have killed Janice and the others, right? Then again, there was something wrong here.
And now, she had an appointment with Brittany Spangler. She was going to try to play detective with a Borderline patient. Maybe she was the crazy one.
Sam made it to her office with time to spare. She poured herself a cup of hot water for tea and waited. As usual, Brittany was late. This was one of Brittany’s ways of gaining control of her situation.
Twenty minutes later the subtle buzzer indicated someone in the waiting room. Rather than playing some sort of tit-for-tat and making Brittany wait, which never works for Borderline personality patients, she opened the door and greeted Brittany warmly.
Looking at Brittany, Sam wondered if she was about to make a major mistake. She probably should have consulted Dr. Karmere before trying what she was going to do. Then again, she knew what he would have advised: Don’t get personally involved and Don’t try to play a patient with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Brittany came in and took a seat in her usual spot. She turned down Sam’s offer of tea or a soda.
“I’m sorry about last time. I know I can be a bitch sometimes, but I really do want to get better. I do need your help. This whole Schema Focused Therapy thing seems pretty solid. I’m struggling to stay with it, but in spite of what you saw at our last session, I really am trying.”
“So what goals are you focused on?” Sam posed tentatively.
“Well, I thought I’d dig into my mom’s murder, but that hasn’t gone too well. The police won’t tell me anything and the reporter following these murders is kind of leading me on, but I get it, he doesn’t want me involved either. And honestly, if this is a serial killer, I’m not sure how much my mom had to do with all of this.”
Sam almost smiled but thought better of it. Maybe this was going to be much easier than she thought. On the other hand, Sam didn’t want to fall into the trap of most BPD family members and many therapists. It was too easy to believe that good, cooperative behavior was an indication of progress. The official term was ‘variable intermittent reinforcement’. People tend to excuse bad behaviors or believe in progress because of periodic reinforcing positive experiences.
Unfortunately, many BPD patients have an innate sense of when they’ve just about gone too far and when they need to pull back and ‘play nice’ for a while. There was a good chance that this was what Brittany was doing. Nonetheless, Sam didn’t want to miss an opportunity to get more information.
“Did your mom know the other victims? Maybe there’s a link there.”
“Yeah, my mom knew both Janice and Julia. In fact, more than once my mom bragged about her high-tech ex-wives club. I don’t think it was an actual club, but I know that Janice, Julia and my mom got together pretty often after their divorces. Truth be told, they got together before the divorces too. I sometimes wonder if they plotted the timing of the exits from their marriages. Julia went first, then my mom, then Janice. And all of the husbands were destroyed. Marshall drank himself to death. Michael killed himself, and Mark went crazy.
“But as I think about it, there was one more member of the club. Mindy Hatch, the wife of Mark Johansen’s partner Richard. She also plotted to leave her husband. I’m sure of it. However, Richard seems happy with her gone.”
“I’m sorry for asking,” Sam began cautiously. “But it sounds like you knew all of these people pretty well.”
“Ah, sure. They were at our house all time, or we were at theirs. We went camping together, skiing. It was a nice group until everything went south with the first divorce. Then everything changed. Our extended family came to an end. And with Michael’s death and my problems, everything has gotten even worse. Three brilliant technologists are either gone or had their lives ruined. And as for my mom, Janice, and Julia, maybe they had it coming and got what they really deserved.”
Not rising to the bait, Sam asked objectively, “And does talking about all of these people give you any ideas, any possible leads on who might have wanted to harm your mom and her friends?”
Brittany thought for a second. She looked up at Sam and realization passed over her face.
“You don’t think? No! I’ve gotta go.”
Brittany stood up and raced out of Sam’s office.
What was it Brittany had suddenly realized? Did she have an idea who the murder was? Or, and Sam hated to think she might have triggered this, but did Britt
any think that Sam had concluded that she was the killer?
Sam double checked her clock and her calendar and saw that she had almost an hour before her next appointment. She poured some tea into a thermos and stopped by the bakery downstairs to buy one of their luscious eclairs.
Yes. In spite of what she tried to convince her patients (and herself), the bakery was a guilty pleasure that she couldn’t resist when she needed an escape.
She walked down to the park and took her place in front of the duck pond. She bit into the éclair, wiped the excess cream from her lips and took a sip of tea.
What had she learned? They all knew each other. Brittany knew them all. Three technologists’ wives. What about the fourth? What about Mindy Hatch? But then again, Richard was apparently happy with the divorce. Could he be the killer? He could have been angry at the wives for ruining their husbands’ lives. Sure. Maybe he could have killed Janice as revenge for what she’d done to Mark. But if Mike McKensey was right, Mark was being framed. It didn’t make sense that Richard would frame Mark. It just didn’t make sense.
Sam asked herself if she had learned anything that could help Mike McKensey. Even if there weren’t confidentiality issues, she was pretty sure she hadn’t uncovered anything that the Detective didn’t already know. All the victims were connected. He knew that.
13
George had to admit it. He was glad to be back. And this time, it was real investigative reporting. For now, his articles on the serial murders would follow the official party line. Mark Johansen had killed the three women. At the same time, George knew how to introduce subtle doubts in his copy. His readers would have a sense that all wasn’t right with this particular case.
His meeting with Mark Johansen did not go quite as expected. In spite of Mike McKensey’s prep, somehow George was expecting to encounter a tech titan with an ego to match. He’d met quite a few in his somewhat short career at the Sentinel, and all of the successful CEOs exuded disarming charm combined with a self-confidence that assured their credibility.
Mark Johansen seemed like a regular guy who was terribly confused. Maybe it was the medication. Maybe it was a superb act. But ultimately, George came away convinced that Mark Johansen was innocent and that he was being framed. Mark didn’t have any resemblance to whoever sent the emails to George.
And this frame, if there was one, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Mark, or a better time for the real killer. Mark was fragile.
After his psychotic episodes, Mark didn’t trust his own perceptions. He explained to George that this was part of his therapy, that he had to question what was actually real. But George couldn’t help but think that Mark was just too easy a target. Mark couldn’t, in good conscience - and George believed that Mark was a man of conscience and principal - Mark couldn’t claim innocence because he didn’t know if his reality was reality. George couldn’t imagine how you could get through the day if you couldn’t believe what you saw, heard, or thought.!
Now George had to figure out how he was going to help Mark.
During his debrief with Mike McKensey, George had offered to pursue things that might be difficult for Mike given the politics of the SFPD and the DA’s office. Mike started to refuse, but by the end of the call, it was clear he was considering it. At this point, Mike was looking into Richard Hatch, Mark’s partner, Jack Trageser, one of Mark’s associates and friends, and he suggested to George that he couldn’t completely rule out Brittany Spangler either.
Running through the possibilities, George almost didn’t see the letter in his inbox. He picked it up and realized that there was more than paper inside. Feeling around, it was obviously a thumb drive.
While he didn’t get a lot of mail – most things came in via email these days – some enterprising readers sent him thumb drives with pictures and documents for possible stories. This looked like one of them.
George opened the envelope carefully, holding it at arm’s length, then sensing no danger, he poured the thumb drive onto his desk and removed the letter inside:
Hi George,
I’m sorry for any confusion or any concerns you might have had with this letter, but unfortunately there are some major security issues which we need to address. Read on and you’ll understand.
Marcus Jameson is CEO of Unbreakable Security Systems. As you probably know, Unbreakable is the world’s largest supplier of anti-virus, anti-spyware, and identity protection software. Millions of individuals and most companies use one or more of Unbreakable’s products. Unbreakable has been ruthless with their competitors, killing off any technology or company that challenges theirs. While many of their tactics are unethical, they’re unfortunately not illegal. But Jameson has gone beyond unethical practices.
Before founding the company, Jameson was a well-known white-hat hacker. These are the guys that break into systems to discover security vulnerabilities, then inform the companies of the problems so that they can be fixed, hopefully before attacks take place. He hired several of his cohort hackers, some not so ‘white-hat’, and together they have built a security empire. They’re now all quite wealthy.
However, for Jameson, what he made off the IPO of Unbreakable wasn’t enough. He wants wealth for wealth’s sake and above all, he wants political power. What he’s done to achieve his goals is shocking. He has hidden a Trojan in every copy of his software. He has gotten away with this because his security software embeds itself in the lowest layers of an operating system and thus his Trojan has visibility to everything running in that system: files, emails, web browsing, video and audio conferences, even encrypted files – he sees the content before and after they’re encrypted.
This Trojan looks for specific activity and reports back to Jameson. When Jameson finds an interesting target, he can direct the Trojan to filter for specific information. Thus far, he has used that information for insider trading to make even more money, and for blackmailing adversaries and politicians.
The enclosed thumb drive includes three programs. These contain software that you can install and run on any computer. The first removes the Trojan. I suspect you will want to do this with your system and on those of anyone you work with on this. Your IT department should be able to help decrypt, install, and run it.
The second will watch the system it’s installed on and will report when Jameson’s Trojan goes live and transmits or receives information. I suggest you give this to your IT department and to the police and or FBI when you’re ready. They can use it to not only verify what I’ve said, but perhaps also to set up a sting for Jameson.
The third gives you access to the logs that show what the Trojan has sent or received. These are kept in hidden encrypted system files that cannot be found through normal directories.
I’ve also attached a list of offshore accounts that Jameson is using as well as a list of surrogate traders that he employs to funnel other monies into those accounts. And finally, I’ve provided contact information for Larry Samuelsson, the former CEO of Zyzyx Technologies. Jameson blackmailed him and forced him to close his business. Larry will talk to you once you’re sure you’re ready to move ahead and are confident that you and the police can get Jameson.
I’d love to see a big story exposing Jameson. I suspect he’ll find himself under indictment soon after.
Last and not least, be careful copying this letter. Just to show you how pervasively insidious Jameson can be, many copy machines include his software.
This is our biggest catch yet so enjoy. It may be a while before I get back to you with our next target.
--------------------
George grabbed the letter and the thumb drive and raced to Morris’ office. He didn’t even knock.
“Morris, you’ve got to see this!”
Morris looked up over his reading glasses and smiled.
“I guess you’re really back from vacation. Okay. Let’s see what’s got you so fired up.”
Morris read the letter carefully and George observed wryly as
his boss’ face transformed from Morris’ usual dispassionate interest to complete shock.
Picking up his phone and punching a button. Morris commanded, “Joyce, get Miguel in here stat! Tell him it’s urgent!”
“George, I’m going to spend a few minutes with Miguel. Then I’ll come by your cubicle and we can go for a walk. In the meantime, don’t say a word about this to anyone.”
“But…”
“No buts. Get out. I’ll be there within thirty minutes.”
George wandered back to his cubicle stopping along the way to spend a few minutes with his coworkers reminiscing about Tahiti. Several claimed they were making plans to take similar vacations. That killed about twenty minutes.
Arriving back at his desk, George just stared at his computer screen. If the informant was right, Marcus Jameson could be tracking everything George did, everything he wrote. His sources could be compromised.
George stared in awe at the image of Tahiti and a part of him wanted to go back and avoid this story. It seemed overwhelming.
“Let’s go!”
Morris’ command startled George from his reverie, or was it stupor?
They headed towards the elevators in silence and started walking towards the Embarcadero once outside. It appeared they were going to take their usual loop.
“I explained the situation to Miguel in utmost confidence and asked him to verify the claims in the letter and to test out the programs included. Given the solid track record of your informant, I don’t have much reason to doubt what he or she said. So, I called Marsha Washington who immediately brought in Sterling Rockwell.:
Marsha Washington was head of legal for The Sentinel and with Sterling Rockwell involved, George hadn’t underestimated the significance of this story.
The Misogynist Page 18