Helpless

by Daniel James Palmer

  “Does it have anything to do with taking pictures?”

  “Good night, Dad,” Jill said with a groan.

  “Good night.”

  Tom set the cordless phone back in its cradle. He hadn’t made it back over to the kitchen table when the phone rang again. Tom answered it on the second ring, assuming it was Jill calling him back.

  “Whatcha forget?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” a man said in a raspy, monotonous tone. Tom’s pulse kicked up a notch or two.

  “Who is this?” asked Tom.

  “You don’t know my voice, but I’m pretty sure you’d recognize my face.”

  Tom’s muscles tightened like a coil spring poised to unleash. He gripped the edge of the kitchen counter hard enough to make his fingers hurt.

  “Lange? Is that you?”

  “The one and only. We need to talk.”

  “I’d say. Come on over. I’ll make us some tea.”

  Lange laughed lightly into the phone. “Can’t do that, compadre,” he said.

  “Well then, why don’t you start by telling me why you broke into Kelly’s house?”

  “You think you know what’s happening here, Tom, but I’m calling to tell you that you’re wrong. I’m not the enemy. Not even close.”

  “Funny, my friends don’t spy on me from the woods.”

  “It wasn’t me who broke into Kelly’s house,” Lange said. “And I’m not the one who chased her into the woods and down that ravine, either. But I know who did, why they did it, and why you’re being set up to look like a kiddie porn collector.”

  Tom took a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. “Who is setting me up, Lange?” he asked. “What does this have to do with what happened to Kelly?”

  “I can’t tell you that over the phone, Tom. When you see what I have to show you, then you’ll understand. And it’s not what you think. You don’t have the slightest clue why they think you’re so dangerous.”

  “Who is ‘they’?” Tom shouted into the phone.

  “Meet me at Johnny Rockets in one hour,” Lange said. “And come alone, or this time I’ll vanish for good.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  Tom thought he heard Lange sigh into the phone. “I know you’ve been looking for me,” Lange said. “You. Roland. That nosy attorney of yours. I stayed hidden because I was afraid of getting caught.”

  “Why show yourself now?”

  “Because you need to see what I have,” Lange said. “And I need you to protect me from them.”

  Chapter 46

  Rainy and Carter ordered dinner from Monument Market. It was a credit to Monument’s sandwiches, because hours earlier they’d ordered lunch there, too.

  Sergeant Brendan Murphy had set them up in the Shilo Police Department’s only interrogation room. From there they were able to conduct a second forensic audit on Hawkins’s laptop computer. Murphy had no objection to granting the FBI access to Tom Hawkins’s confiscated laptop. His only request, which had actually been relayed to the agents from the D.A. herself, was that the state be able to use whatever new evidence the FBI dug up. Rainy assured Murphy that the FBI would disclose anything new that they found. She didn’t reveal that she had a secret agenda in returning to Shilo: she needed to settle her growing doubts about Tom Hawkins’s guilt.

  The facts of the Hawkins case more than just puzzled Rainy. She found them downright troubling. First, Lindsey Wells admitted to sending pictures of herself to Tanner Farnsworth, but not to Tom Hawkins. Why not to the man she was allegedly having an affair with? How did Hawkins end up with her pictures? She had a hard time believing Tanner Farnsworth worked for Tom Hawkins, not the way he talked about the coach—dismissively, and with evident disdain.

  Lindsey wasn’t the only girl from Shilo who had lied about her sexts, either. So far Rainy had interviewed six of the ten girls from Shilo’s text image collection (the other four were away at college). Rainy got the girls to sign and date the back of the verification images while their parents looked on with disappointment. Though the girls admitted that the images were of them (hard to deny), none confessed to having text messaged them to anybody. Not to Tanner Farnsworth. Not to Coach Hawkins. Same as Lindsey, the girls claimed to have no idea how James Mann ended up with their naked pictures.

  Something that Marvin Pressman had said stuck with Rainy as well. It was the convenience of it all. Here she was, hunting for James Mann’s supplier, and Tom Hawkins literally fell into her lap. The chances that that was just a lucky break were about the same as someone breaking Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak.

  But how would the jury see it?

  Guilty, that’s how. Rainy knew it and Carter did, too.

  Carter spent a few hours re-creating a mirror image of Hawkins’s laptop on a machine he’d brought with him, then returned the laptop to Murphy. Mindful of maintaining the integrity of the evidence, he used techniques similar to those CART employed to safeguard the machine. Carter had run through several series of advanced computer forensic tests on the mirror image. He kept searching for that single bit of exculpatory evidence that Rainy had come to believe he’d find. So far, though, they hadn’t found a byte of evidence that suggested Tom Hawkins was an innocent man.

  “So we’ve found archival evidence that shows illegal transactions going back several years,” Rainy said.

  “Which says to me he’s been running this enterprise primarily from this machine,” Carter replied.

  “But why use his work computer?” Rainy said, recalling how Marvin drew her attention to that unusual choice. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t know, Rainy,” Carter said. The tone of his voice held a tinge of exasperation.

  He thinks I’m chasing shadows, Rainy thought.

  “All I can tell you is that there is a lot of computer evidence to say Tom Hawkins was running a business selling images that appear to be teenage girls sexting, to interested parties all over the Internet. He used Leterg to mask the IP and MAC addresses of his clients. But we’ve got transaction logs that show the dates and times during which illegal images were sent out.”

  “And?”

  “And we’ve matched those dates to when Mann downloaded images. The image batch Mann acquired equaled the cumulative file size of the entire Shilo text image collection found on Hawkins’s computer. The exact same byte size. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…”

  “But we can’t ID any other of Tom’s alleged customers,” Rainy said.

  “Oh, it’s ‘alleged’ now? How interesting.”

  “He hasn’t been convicted,” Rainy said defensively.

  Carter gave a knowing smile, which Rainy didn’t at all appreciate.

  “There’s not a direct IP link,” Carter said. “We wouldn’t have been able to link Hawkins to Mann if it wasn’t for your work with Clarence Stern. But the circumstantial evidence is more than enough to prove our case. From log analysis we know that Hawkins is the distributor here. And his text image collection of forty different girls matches what we recovered off James Mann’s machine. The exact same. Down to the image.”

  “What about the money trail? Can we trace it back to another buyer?”

  Carter shook his head. “Nope. The way he moved money through his network of shell companies makes it impossible for us to get to a source. Hawkins was clever with his use of virtual servers and ghost machines. The way he cleaned his money would make any mobster jealous. He’s that good.”

  “But think back to what Tom’s lawyer said. Why would Hawkins be so reckless now if he’s kept a low profile for so long?”

  “Maybe he wanted to get caught,” Carter offered. “Maybe he was tired. Maybe sleeping with the girl made him lazy. There are a thousand reasons to explain why he got sloppy. What’s important is that there is enough evidence on this laptop to get the D.A. a conviction. A jury isn’t going to care why he suddenly screwed up and turned reckless.”

  “But I care,” Rainy said, more to hers
elf than to Carter.

  Carter was right. It didn’t matter that Tom Hawkins got lazy about covering his tracks. What mattered was what the evidence against him said. This evidence screamed that Tom Hawkins was a guilty man, just as it did about James Mann.

  “So what now?” Carter asked after he’d run through his final series of tests.

  “I want to see that laptop,” Rainy said.

  “You like him, don’t you?” Carter said.

  “I do not.”

  “You do. I can tell.”

  “Take it back.”

  “Whatever,” Carter said. “I take it back.”

  Rainy gave Carter a stern look. He didn’t really mean it. That was fine. She didn’t mean it, either.

  Sergeant Brendan Murphy returned to the too-hot, too-small interrogation room, carrying with him the evidence against Tom Hawkins. The laptop was tucked neatly into a clear plastic evidence bag.

  “You need to wear gloves,” he said to Rainy.

  It was out of the ordinary for any agent to work with the original evidence. Rainy would document her every move very carefully.

  After donning a pair of gloves, Rainy powered up the machine. She watched the familiar Windows OS graphic go through its equally familiar boot-up sequence. She logged into the machine using the ID and password that Hawkins had used. She scanned through the folders and files. She saw where he kept the Leterg program. She opened the images of the girls that she’d first seen on James Mann’s machine. She kept looking but wasn’t seeing anything new or helpful.

  “Rainy,” Carter said, breaking a long period of silence, “I really want to go home now.”

  Rainy nodded slowly. She was closing the laptop screen when she suddenly and quickly pulled it open again.

  “Carter,” she said in barely a whisper, “our mirror image re-creates the software and operating system, right?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “But you can’t re-create the hardware. You can’t make the mirror image replicate any hardware defects, can you?”

  “No. I can’t do that,” Carter agreed.

  “Then what do you make of this?”

  Rainy pointed to the computer’s date and time display. Carter’s eyes went wide.

  The date on the computer display read January 1, 1970.

  “Why is the computer’s date nineteen seventy, Carter?” Rainy asked.

  “It’s probably an issue with the CMOS battery,” Carter explained. “The complementary metal-oxide semiconductor battery located on the computer’s motherboard is cheap, but when it goes bad, which they often do, it can bring even the mightiest PC to its knees.”

  Rainy recalled something similar happening to her machine. Several months ago her computer simply wouldn’t boot up. She had brought it to Carter for help. As she later learned, the battery that acted as the controller between the computer’s BIOS (Basic Input/ Output System) had failed. That failure prevented the CPU from communicating with the computer’s motherboard. The result was an unsuccessful OS boot-up sequence. She was ready to junk a two-thousand-dollar machine, when all it needed was a cheap battery replacement.

  “Carter, according to the logs, how long has Coach Hawkins been in the illegal image distribution business?”

  “Two and half years… thereabout,” Carter said.

  “But if this battery is dead or dying, and the date of the machine is January first, nineteen seventy, shouldn’t some of his transactions show a date in the nineteen seventies?”

  “They should,” Carter replied.

  “But they don’t.”

  Carter opened a scripting window, typed in some code, and executed the program.

  “No. It looks like they don’t,” Carter agreed. “There are lots of files with a nineteen seventy date. I’m guessing the battery went bad almost ten months ago.”

  “How can you explain that, Cart?”

  “You’d have to run a script to change the dates in the transaction logs to whatever date you wanted them to read.”

  “Why would Tom Hawkins run a script that changes the dates of his transaction logs?”

  “He wouldn’t,” Carter said.

  “Then who would?” Rainy asked. She had been leading him along this thought trail and could see the awareness ignite in his eyes.

  “Who would run that script?” Carter repeated the question. “Whoever was trying to frame Tom Hawkins, that’s who.”

  Chapter 47

  Tom ordered another cup of coffee from the bubbly waitress at Johnny Rockets. She poured and smiled. Tom wondered just how friendly she’d be if he took off his hat and sunglasses. Maybe she’d recognize him from the news. Probably wouldn’t be so smiley if she did. The jukebox kept playing fifties-era tunes, none of which Tom recognized. He figured there was a good chance the song now playing was by a Platter or a Coaster or a Lad, but didn’t bother to ask.

  Tom checked his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. Lange should have shown up by now. Tom felt a twinge of anxiety, but he had the place scoped out and his escape options planned if needed.

  Tom’s seat at the counter wasn’t chosen at random. From his perch atop the shiny chrome stool with its red vinyl covering, Tom could see both to his left and right without any obstruction. He also could see behind him through the reflection of the stainless steel vent mounted to the ceiling and backsplash behind the open grill.

  The other customers seemed harmless. He had stopped by a booth with three older gentlemen enjoying a leisurely late-night dinner. They chatted, and Tom didn’t believe they posed any danger. His waitress confirmed that they were regulars. The staff didn’t concern Tom, either. The two cooks and his waitress were young, fresh-faced, and fully focused on cleaning up their respective work areas to lock up for the night. The bathrooms, both for men and women, checked out fine as well. He had inspected the wastebaskets and paper towel dispensers, and lifted the toilet tanks.

  The Godfather was one of Tom’s all-time favorite movies.

  Tom had surveyed the back of the restaurant as well, had seen the Dumpster there and a tall galvanized fence bordering the back-lot perimeter, but nothing had appeared out of the ordinary. The six cars parked out front matched the six people Tom had counted inside.

  Tom sipped his black coffee and waited for Lange. It actually felt nice to get out of the house. He didn’t let his thoughts sink into speculation, aware such thinking could quickly turn into a distraction. Tom needed to stay in the moment, clear-minded and hyper-aware of his surroundings. He could wait for Lange to show himself, wait to know who Lange feared, and what he believed “they” wanted.

  He texted Jill and she texted back: Green.

  Good luck on your test, he wrote.

  Thanks! Gonna ace it! :)

  Tom was ready weapons-wise as well. Still no gun, but Tom did have the knife he’d brought to the James Mann hoedown. Even though the blade was small, Tom thought it big enough to get him out of any trouble Lange might bring his way.

  Tom was well aware that Lange might be using psychological operation tactics on him. If that was his game, he’d done it well. Lange offered only the vaguest explanation for events and hadn’t provided any real information to back it up. He implied the exchange would be mutually beneficial. He insisted Tom come alone.

  Deceive to achieve the objective.

  These were tactics Tom knew so well, because he’d used them himself on many occasions. His involvement with Operation Imminent Thunder during The first Gulf War was now the stuff of psyops warfare legend. Imminent Thunder had been designed to deceive the Iraqi command as to the direction of the coalition’s ground attack. Tom led a six-man demolition team, which had set off a series of explosive charges between the Saudi border and Ra’s al Qulay’ah on the Kuwaiti coast. Six Navy SEALs and some aerial bombing were convincing enough to send several Iraqi divisions south to protect the beaches while coalition forces moved north into Kuwait.

  Distract to evade the enemy.

&nbs
p; The bell above the restaurant’s front door chimed twice. Tom swiveled in his seat and saw a man enter. The face was the same one he’d seen that night in the woods.

  Unmistakable.

  Kip Lange.

  Lange had on a pair of blue jeans and wore a black T-shirt underneath a dark blazer. Tom kept his eyes locked on Lange. He watched Lange approach, saw him take off his blazer. He carried no gun that Tom could see. Lange did a 360-spin move, presumably to show Tom that he didn’t have a weapon tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Didn’t mean he didn’t have a weapon tucked someplace else.

  Tom kept his gaze fixed firmly on Lange. Any slight move would put Lange on the defensive. Tom was ready to strike. Lange kept his hands where Tom could see them—smart move—and sat down on the empty stool to Tom’s left. Tom slipped the knife back into his boot.

  “You can search me,” Lange said. “I’m unarmed.”

  Tom checked Lange’s ankles and turned the stool to see his back again. Clean enough for now.

  The waitress came right over. “Sorry, sweetie,” she said, “but we’re closing for the night.”

  “No problem,” Lange said. “We’re heading out, anyway.”

  “Oh? Where are we going?” asked Tom.

  Lange slapped his right hand onto the counter, palm facing down. He lifted his hand slowly, revealing to Tom a small plastic flash drive, the kind that stored digital computer files.

  “What’s that?” asked Tom.

  “That’s what they’re after,” Lange said. “And it’s what you need to see.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Lange shook his head and pushed the flash drive over to Tom. “Not here. We need to move.”

  Tom scooped up the flash drive and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He waited for Lange to stand. Lange motioned with his head for Tom to lead the way.

  “After you,” Tom said, pointing his outstretched arm toward the front door.

  Tom dropped a ten on the counter. He followed Lange to the door, keeping a safe distance behind. Tom took a glance outside the restaurant’s front windows. He saw no detectable threats in the parking lot. Still, Tom maintained his careful watch over Lange.