Helpless

by Daniel Palmer

  “Well, in that case, why not just check with the cell phone providers?” Didomenico said.

  “Would if I could,” Rainy replied. “But the only cell phone provider that stores that sort of information beyond thirty days is BlackBerry. So even if we did obtain a search warrant for their cell phones, we’d never be able to see the content of the messages the girls sent.”

  “I hate the idea of your questioning all these girls. News of that would spread quite quickly, I’m afraid. It could even become a national story, with lasting implications for the girls. What good will come of this, Agent Miles? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  That question had given Rainy pause. What good would come of it? The Feds had their case. Mann possessed well over a thousand illegal images, enough content to warrant federal prosecution. Add to that interstate trafficking charges, coupled with Lindsey’s official ID, and the USAO had more than enough evidence to proceed with a federal case. But Rainy had a job to do. She would be discreet, of course, but the crime needed to be investigated properly and the girls had a legal right to make their victim impact statements.

  It was the law. It was just the way things were done.

  “I promise to keep as low a profile as possible. But what if I spoke to the school as a whole?” Rainy asked.

  Didomenico looked perplexed. “That sounds worse.”

  “It may prevent future incidents,” Rainy suggested. “I can talk to them about the dangers of certain behaviors on the Internet. Perhaps then some of the girls I need to question would actually come to me. That way I wouldn’t have to do as much digging around.”

  Didomenico’s expression brightened. “That’s a wonderful idea,” she said.

  Rainy left Didomenico’s office with plans to present to the student body her well-traveled talk about cyber safety and the dangers of sexting. She made clear her post-assembly plans to Didomenico. Either the girls involved in the Mann investigation would come to see Rainy, or she’d go to see them.

  Chapter 23

  Jill was back in uniform. Tom couldn’t have been more proud of her.

  Lindsey Wells took a perfect centering pass from Lauren Grass. She pushed the ball down the right wing and centered it into the middle of the penalty box. Jill Hawkins was in the right place at the right time.

  Instincts.

  Jill unleashed a rocket of a shot that landed in the back of the net.

  “Nicely done, Jill! Very nicely done!” Tom called out.

  Jill did her best to smile at the compliment, but Tom could see his daughter’s heart wasn’t in the game. How could it be?

  With the social worker’s help, Tom had learned about the eight stages of grief. Shock, stage one, had allowed Jill to function physically in the days immediately following her mother’s death—which was now officially ruled a homicide. She succumbed to tears mixed with anger as she stumbled through the emotional release stage. She suffered frequent headaches and a seemingly endless upset stomach—the physical expression of distress. Now it was guilt’s turn to eat his poor daughter alive. He knew she felt guilty about playing soccer again. She felt guilty that she’d returned to school. She felt guilty trying to live her life. But nothing compared to the guilt she felt about letting her teammates down.

  “I’ll dedicate the season to Mom’s memory,” Jill had said to Tom. “But I’m not going to quit the team.”

  “You can come back to the squad anytime,” he had tried to reassure her. “There’s no reason to rush.”

  Jill shook her head. “Shilo hasn’t been beaten in three seasons,” she said. “That’s tied for the state record.”

  “I don’t care about records,” Tom had said. “I care about you.”

  “Well, the team cares,” answered Jill. “And I don’t need that kind of guilt on me as well. We barely beat Dover last week. We’ve got Riverside coming up this week. I’m going to be on the field for that game. And we’re gonna win.”

  My daughter’s a fighter, Tom thought, and he had never felt more proud. But hers was proving a hard battle to fight. Throughout the scrimmage, Jill ambled down the field without much urgency. Even at half effectiveness, however, she was still one of the best players on the field. Tom knew she was right about Riverside. Without Jill on the pitch, the much-hyped Shilo unbeaten streak was destined to end.

  The girls were just starting to play with real intensity again. This was the best scrimmage Tom had seen since Powers and Murphy tag teamed Tom and nearly destroyed his team’s morale over some misguided prank.

  It was Angie who had stepped in and pulled the team out of a tailspin. During a closed-door meeting, Angie gave both the varsity and JV squads a lengthy lecture about cyber bullying. A long period of silence followed the lecture. Afterward, Angie changed her tune and told Tom’s players to go out and win another state championship for Shilo. The cheers had lasted a good two minutes.

  You can’t keep a good team down, Tom had thought.

  This practice was proving his assessment to be true.

  Lindsey Wells put one hand on her knee and raised the other high in the air—a signal to the coaches that she needed a rest. Vern Kalinowski blew his whistle and subbed in Jenny Fielder for Lindsey. Lindsey passed through a gauntlet of high fives before trotting over to where her head coach stood on the sidelines. She was all smiles, and her brown skin glistened with sweat from the warm September sun. Lindsey put her hands on her hips, still breathing hard from the workout.

  She lay down on the ground and began to stretch. She formed a bridge with her body, feet flat on the grass, chest pressing skyward. Tom had seen Lindsey do this stretch a thousand times. But for Tom, it was no longer an innocuous way for a player to keep loose. The stretch, Tom realized, was strikingly similar to a pose made by a naked teenage girl in a picture somebody had sent him.

  He had called the sender’s number, only to get a messaging service provider called TxtyChat.com. According to the TxtyChat Web site, the service was used to send text and images to mobile phones from a dedicated bank of phone numbers. Untraceable—that was one of TxtyChat’s featured selling points, as documented on the Web site.

  Untraceable.

  Tom had spent some of the previous day researching the legal and ethical issues around his thorny situation. He knew that what he’d received was a sext—digitally transmitted, sexually suggestive, nude or nearly nude photos. What he didn’t know was whether he could be charged with any crime for simply receiving an unsolicited image.

  The blog posts had already cast suspicion on him. Complicating matters, the legal landscape of digital laws was in a near molten stage, changing and reforming as new precedents and cases cropped up. He concluded only that his receipt was unsolicited and therefore didn’t violate any sexual harassment or child pornography laws.

  But the question still remained: what should he do about it?

  The first thing Tom did was to delete the pictures from his phone. A girls’ soccer coach’s possessing naked pictures of a female minor was like walking around with a stick of dynamite in his pocket. Bringing it to the attention of any of the school staff would launch a formal inquiry. Lots of questions would get asked. The blog posts might not seem like a prank anymore. The additional attention wouldn’t do his already struggling daughter any good, either.

  Tom decided to leave it alone.

  He hadn’t received any more pictures. Perhaps the pictures and the blog post were unrelated coincidences. Maybe this mystery teenage girl had intended those pictures to be seen by somebody else. Maybe that person’s phone number was close to his own. If so, with luck she had realized her mistake and wouldn’t make it again.

  Tom contemplated calling Marvin for legal advice.

  Not yet, he decided.

  Marvin might insist Tom make his concerns public. Document them in an official statement. There’d be a formal inquiry for sure if he went that route. And Jill would be caught in the middle.

  No, for now, the best thing for Tom to do was wait an
d see.

  Coincidence or attack?

  Prank or something else?

  He’d find out for certain before deciding his next move.

  Another question still bothered Tom. Was Jill doing the same thing as the girl who texted him?

  Tom couldn’t get his thoughts around that one. He’d gone from being the occasional father of a distant and disinterested daughter, to a full-time parent of a beautiful teenage girl with a stew of cooking hormones. How could he keep an eye on what she was doing without her feeling that he was intruding on her privacy?

  Kelly had allowed Jill to keep a computer in her bedroom. Tom knew that wasn’t a wise decision. It made it harder to keep her safe from online predators. He hadn’t planned on battling Jill to establish new and far stricter limits. She had enough on her plate to deal with. But after seeing those images, Tom’s concerns intensified.

  How could he know what his daughter was doing behind closed doors?

  Tom blew his whistle to signal practice was over. The girls, as usual, dashed for their gym bags stacked on the sidelines. They didn’t go for water bottles or snacks; they went for the first thing they always went for when practice ended.

  They took out their cell phones.

  Tom was gathering his belongings when he heard a loud shriek. He looked and saw some of the girls huddled together, talking anxiously. He saw more girls being drawn toward the huddle. They were all looking at Lauren Grass’s cell phone.

  He saw them pass her phone around. The chatter become more fevered. The girls made a sudden break, collected their bags, and took off for the locker room. Jill came over to Tom, panic on her face.

  “Dad, what is going on?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know what that was all about?”

  “No,” Tom said. “But I assume you’re going to tell me.”

  Jill tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. Tom could tell she was trying to keep from crying. “Lauren said she friended somebody she didn’t know last night,” Jill said, her voice shaky.

  “Friended, as in school?”

  “No, friended as in Facebook.”

  “Oh.”

  Jill continued, “The friend request said, ‘Do you want to know a secret?’ She was curious. Normally, she doesn’t accept friend requests from people she doesn’t know.”

  “And what was this secret?”

  “They posted it on her wall during practice.”

  “Wall?”

  “Her Facebook wall,” Jill said with exasperation.

  “Oh? And what did they post?”

  Now the tears came. “That they know for a fact you’re sleeping with somebody on the team,” Jill sobbed. “And they know who it is, too.”

  Chapter 24

  “Do you want to know a secret?”

  That was the message delivered in a mysterious friend request from somebody who called themselves Fidelius Charm.

  Rebecca was good friends with Ellen Grass, Lauren’s mother. Lauren’s sister, Julie, and their father, David, were at home when Tom and Jill came over to get a look at the Facebook posts that had ignited a firestorm of controversy. Judging by the way David Grass glared at Tom upon opening the door to his house, he thought it doubtful the Grasses would have been so accommodating without Rebecca having smoothed the way. In contrast to David, Ellen Grass, dark haired, slim, and pretty, gave Tom a strained smile and a compassionate look more befitting a wake. The Grass family represented a microcosm of the opinions about Tom spreading around town.

  “What kind of name is Fidelius Charm?” Tom asked Rebecca.

  Rebecca did a quick Google search.

  “Fidelius Charm,” Rebecca said, reading from Wikipedia, “is a spell from the Harry Potter books. It’s a charm used to keep secret information hidden. This information stays hidden until the Secret-Keeper chooses to reveal it.”

  “Great,” Tom said with an exasperated sigh. “So we’re looking for someone who’s a Harry Potter fan. That should narrow down our list of suspects.”

  “How many people do you think have seen the posts?” Rebecca asked Lauren.

  Lauren took the mouse from Rebecca and, leaning over her shoulder, opened up her Facebook page.

  “Fidelius Charm sent a friend request to every girl on the varsity soccer team with a Facebook account,” Lauren said. “Ten of my friends are also friends with Fidelius.”

  “So how many saw the wall post?” asked Tom.

  “The privacy setting on the content was set to ‘Friends of Friends,’ ” Lauren explained. “So any of my friends who aren’t friends with Fidelius Charm can see it.”

  “How many friends do you have?” Rebecca asked.

  “Eight hundred and fifty-five,” Lauren said.

  “That’s pretty normal,” Jill said.

  “Who has eight hundred and fifty-five friends?” Tom asked Jill.

  Jill and Lauren looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Tom, some of these kids are Facebook friends with their teachers.”

  “As if the blog post wasn’t bad enough,” Tom said.

  “There’s no easy way for us to know how many people saw the wall post,” Rebecca said.

  In a small town like Shilo, a few could mean a lot.

  Looking over Rebecca’s shoulder, Tom reread the wall post on Lauren’s Facebook page, doing his best to temper his anger and frustration.

  Coach Hawkins is sleeping with a player. And I know who it is.

  “Can I see Fidelius Charm’s Facebook page?” Tom asked.

  Lauren pulled it up. The page contained only the default Facebook settings, no pictures, nothing personalized, no way to know who had created the profile.

  “Kids make bogus online profiles all the time,” Lauren said. “They bully other kids with them all the time. They’ve gotten pretty good at not getting caught, but don’t ask me how they do it.”

  Jill looked at Tom with wide, panic-filled eyes. “Dad, what are you going to do?”

  Tom thought. “I’m going to call Angie Didomenico right now,” he said. “And then I’m going to call the police.”

  Angie scheduled an emergency meeting at her office for the next morning. Attending that meeting were Angie, Tom, Craig Powers, Principal Lester Osborne, and Officer Richard Fox. Tom was glad the Shilo police captain had granted his request to have any officer other than Sergeant Murphy assigned to investigate. Tom had expressed concern that Murphy would be biased, given his ongoing involvement with Kelly’s homicide investigation.

  Tom started the meeting with a confession. He told the gathering about the text messages he had received the night before.

  “And do you have pictures of this mystery girl?” Fox asked after hearing Tom’s account.

  “No. I deleted them,” Tom said. “I would have saved them if I’d known about this next wave of attacks.”

  “Mind if we check out your phone?”

  “Of course not,” Tom said. “Mind if I get my work computer back?”

  “It’s still with the state computer forensic guys.”

  “Great. What about my home computer?”

  “It’s with them as well.”

  “No reason you shouldn’t have my phone, too,” Tom said, making no effort to conceal his displeasure.

  “Thanks,” Fox said.

  “I haven’t made any solicitation attempts,” Tom said. “It’s not like I’ve been chatting online with a teenage girl who’s really a cop. Guys, somebody is trying to destroy my reputation. That’s what’s going on here.”

  “We’re doing everything we can to sort this out,” Fox said. “Just stay patient. We’ve already made some progress.”

  That got Tom’s attention. “Such as?”

  “We know that the Facebook profile was made at a Panera Bread in Millis. They have free Wi-Fi. The friend requests and wall postings were sent from there as well. Facebook helped us with the IPs.”

  “Surveillance tape?” Tom asked.


  Fox shook his head. “Nothing for us to match the time the profile was created to any customers in the store. And it was a busy day, too. Lots of customers. Lots of laptops. Lots of lattes. We asked.”

  “Tom, there’s no hard evidence that you’ve done anything wrong,” Angie said. “And kids texting inappropriate pictures of themselves is an epidemic in this country. We have a problem with that very same thing here in Shilo.”

  “We do?” said Tom.

  “Yes, and we’re investigating,” Angie added, with an end-of-discussion finality.

  “You haven’t tried to download any illegal images,” Fox chimed in, “or, like you said, tried to meet up with an underage girl.”

  “Right now, we’re treating these incidents as just rumors,” Angie said. “Vicious and very damaging rumors.”

  “And the pictures? What about those?” Tom asked.

  “A coincidence,” Powers suggested.

  Shrugs and blank stares from around the table suggested that nobody could come up with a better explanation. Tom’s concern only intensified.

  He couldn’t come up with a better explanation, either.

  Chapter 25

  Empty containers of Chinese food were strewn about the Lair. Half that number of discarded cans of Diet Coke had been tossed into the recycle bin. Rainy used chopsticks to nibble at the remnants from a sixth container, a spicy chicken and oyster sauce dish, which she ate simply for want of something to do. Carter typed with one hand as he slurped out the last drops of his soda. Even one-handed, Rainy figured Carter was doubling her productivity.

  Rainy had just finished a quick phone conversation with Angie Didomenico that left her feeling charged up, but puzzled.

  “I thought you should know,” Didomenico had said, “that there have been some new developments pertaining to our longtime girls’ soccer coach, Tom Hawkins.”

  “Developments?”

  “There have been some escalating allegations that he’s been sexually involved with one of his players.”