“So let me get this straight,” Rainy said. “You didn’t make any of those Tumblr blog posts?”
“No.”
“But the police must have good reason to think you did.”
“So you’re saying they have proof?” Lindsey asked, the dismay evident in her voice.
“I’m saying if they think you’re involved, they’ve traced the posts to your home address using an IP address.”
“But I don’t even have a Tumblr.com account. Can somebody make an account and make it look like it’s me?” Lindsey asked.
“That’s a pretty tricky thing to do, Lindsey,” Rainy said. “But if they intercepted your wireless account, they could essentially create content online and the IP trace would lead right back to you. Do you know if your home network is secure?”
Lindsey just shrugged. “I don’t know. My dad got it working ages ago. I know that we use wireless. I can get on the Internet from, like, my kitchen without a cable or anything.”
Rainy just nodded. Home networks were often the most vulnerable to hackers. Without proper security in place, it was relatively easy to hijack those signals. It would explain why Lindsey was unaware of the Tumblr account. Somebody could have been parked on the street using the Wellses’ Wi-Fi signal to make those pages and exchange messages. Probably the same person who created the bogus Facebook profile to accelerate the spread of the rumor.
Lindsey shook her head in disbelief. “So maybe somebody snuck into my house and wrote it,” Lindsey said. “Isn’t that possible?”
“Well, it’s possible,” Rainy said. “Same as somebody hijacking your Wi-Fi signal.”
“Hang on a second.” Lindsey took out her cell phone and dialed. She held the phone to her head and waited for the other party to answer.
“Daddy, it’s me,” Lindsey said into the phone. “Did you ever put a password or anything on our wireless network?”
Rainy watched Lindsey with intent focus. Lindsey pulled the phone away from her mouth.
“He doesn’t think so. He said it was confusing enough just getting it to work. Besides, he says he forgets passwords all the time. Thanks, Daddy. I love you. Bye.” Lindsey ended the call.
Jill looked saddened by the brief exchange. Rainy felt deep sympathy for both girls, but for different reasons.
“So it’s possible somebody did what you said and pretended to be Lindsey?” Jill asked.
“If what your dad said is true, and your Wi-Fi isn’t secure, it’s definitely a possibility.” Rainy confirmed that for the girls as much as she was convincing herself of that fact.
“Jilly, now will you believe me?” Lindsey asked.
“What can we do?” Jill said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “It’s like I want to drop out of school. It’s hell around here for me.”
“For both of us,” Lindsey said.
“I mean, we just got jumped by these three girls,” Jill added. “But I’m convinced of one thing now.”
“What’s that?” Rainy asked.
“Lindsey and my father aren’t having a relationship. I don’t care what the stupid Internet says. My dad thinks that somebody is framing him. Lindsey is saying the same thing. I’m not saying my dad is perfect or anything, but I don’t think he’s, y’know, that kind of person.”
Rainy flashed on James Mann. According to him, he wasn’t that sort of person, either. But according to his computer, his claim was a lie. Maybe, just maybe, Rainy thought, both men were telling the truth.
Rainy took two business cards from her cardholder. She set the cards facedown on Osborne’s desk and wrote her home number on the back of each. She handed each girl a card. “Let me look into this for you, okay? Lindsey, I’ll check out your home network. At least confirm if you have any security set up. So don’t touch anything. Okay?”
“Sure,” Lindsey said.
“But if you need someone to talk to in the interim, you call me, okay?”
The girls nodded. They moved out from behind Osborne’s desk and returned to their prior perch up against the wall. Their expressions shifted from engaged to indifferent. Arms slipped back into tight folds across their chests, like two armadillos curling up into protective balls.
“Focus on school and I’m sure things will work out. I’ll touch base with Sergeant Murphy, too. If he tells me anything about the investigation that I can share with you, I promise I will. Okay?”
“Okay,” they both said.
Jill looked at her watch. “I’m going to be late for English.”
“Lindsey, could you stay a moment so we can make arrangements for me to check out your home network for that security issue?”
“Sure,” Lindsey said.
When they were alone, Rainy said to Lindsey, “Do you really want me to help you?”
“Of course.”
“Then tell me who you sent your pictures to.”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t think I can help.”
Lindsey looked as though Rainy had just punched her in the stomach. Her color drained. “That’s not fair,” she eventually said.
“No, it’s probably not,” Rainy agreed. “But I’m only going to help you if you come clean with me, Lindsey. Did you send your pictures to Coach Hawkins?”
Lindsey made that sour-milk expression again. “God, no. No!”
“Then who? Talk to me. You’re not in trouble. You’re the victim here. Remember that. You’re the victim. All I want to do is help you.”
Lindsey bore holes into the floor with her eyes. She looked anywhere but at Rainy. In a whispered voice, she said, “Tanner.”
“What?”
“You asked me who I sent those pictures to. I texted them to Tanner Farnsworth.”
“Who’s that?” Rainy asked.
“My boyfriend,” said Lindsey. “My soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, I mean.”
“Thank you for being honest with me, Lindsey.”
Lindsey paused for a beat, then asked, “Remember when you wanted to see my cell phone, and I said no?”
“I do.”
“Well, here,” Lindsey said as she handed Rainy her cell phone. “I deleted the messages. But maybe your computer people can still recover who I sent the pictures to. It’ll prove that Tanner got them.”
Rainy took the phone and glanced at the display. “Don’t you need your phone?” she asked.
“I’m getting a new one,” Lindsey said. “New number, too.”
“Mind if I ask you why?”
Lindsey made a pained expression. “When the entire school thinks you’re sleeping with a teacher,” she said, “the only way to survive is to disappear.”
Chapter 42
Tom exited his Ford Taurus and walked around to the front of his car. He locked the car doors using the remote and listened for the troubling engine pings to fade. The Taurus had been acting up quite a bit lately. It was slow to accelerate, and he heard that constant pinging every time he shut off the engine. Probably just needed a tune-up. But Tom kept checking each time he turned the engine off to see if the noise was getting any worse. It seemed the case, like a mirror to his own circumstances.
Tom had wanted to be well rested for this important meeting with Marvin, but he had slept fitfully since making his confession. The statute of limitations for Class A felonies in New Hampshire was six years, and Jill couldn’t be considered an accomplice to his crimes. Tom could justify it to himself all he wanted, Roland had left him no alternative, but it still didn’t make it any easier to burden Jill with his terrible secret.
At least they were speaking by phone now. She sounded happy to hear from him when he called. They kept their text message safety checks going, and with Vern’s help, they added a GPS tracking feature to her cell phone. Tom could monitor where Jill was at all times, but choked up when she told him that soon she’d be tracked back on Oak Street. She was thinking it was time to come home.
He’d also been thinking about Adriana. Tom had kept his d
istance to keep her—and himself—safe from Roland’s wrath. He hoped she didn’t think he was ignoring her or didn’t appreciate what she had done. It was up to Marvin to get Adriana her money back. Tom had faith that his attorney would do just that.
Tom followed the familiar route to Marvin’s office, pausing briefly to say a polite hello to his receptionist.
“Attorney Pressman is expecting you,” his receptionist said, motioning for Tom to go right in. She didn’t appear as nervous around Tom this time. Perhaps that was Marvin’s doing, Tom thought.
Tom entered Marvin’s office but couldn’t see his attorney anywhere. From behind Marvin’s desk, Tom heard a grunt, then Marvin’s labored counting.
“Eighteen ... nineteen ... twenty . . .”
“Marvin?” Tom called out.
“One hundred ten ... one hundred eleven ...”
Marvin popped up from behind his desk. He wore a tracksuit, not his usual attorney garb. His face was dotted with sweat, which he dabbed away with a white towel. “Tom,” he said with a bright smile on his face, “good to see you.”
Marvin came around his desk to shake Tom’s hand.
“You lost another pound,” Tom said.
“Two!” Marvin announced proudly. “But who’s counting? Okay, take a seat. We’ve much to discuss.”
Marvin walked over to his desk, where he proceeded to study a tall stack of folders like a Jenga master contemplating a move. His hand reached into the middle of a stack, and almost without looking, he extracted the folder that he’d sought.
Taking a seat at the conference table across from Tom, Marvin said, “The game plan is to go over the discovery with you. But first, how is Jill holding up?”
Tom nodded and tried to show Marvin his appreciation. “She’s fine,” he said. “We’ve been taking things day by day but talking at least once a night. She’s been staying with Vern and Sylvia Kalinowski. They have twin girls who are Jill’s age.”
“Good. That’s good to know.”
“How’s the salt intake?” Tom asked.
“Lower.”
“And you’re taking a protein with every workout?”
“That nut mix you gave me is a good one.”
“Soybeans, sunflower seeds, and almond slices. My favorite. We’re hitting that goal weight, Marvin.”
“First your case—”
“And I’m getting you a date with Rebecca Bartholomew.”
“I might write off half of my fee if you make that happen, buddy.”
“It’s a done deal. Just say the word.”
“I’ll say it in another fifteen pounds.”
“Ten,” Tom said.
“Ten it is.”
Marvin flipped through the pages of the open folder and scanned the documents within. “So, as we discussed, I waived your right to have a probable cause hearing in exchange for the D.A. speeding up my access to their discovery materials.”
“Is it unusual they’d agree to that?” Tom asked.
“No, not really. It’s sort of a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ protocol that we use a lot. But it does tell me they’re eager to make a case and not at all worried about tipping their hand early.”
“Why do you say that?” Tom asked.
“The D.A. has a mountain of evidence,” Marvin said as he again sifted through the pages of an alarmingly thick set of papers. “They’ve got tons of computer forensic reports here, too. They even got the FBI involved.”
Tom nodded. “I told you about the agent who questioned me after my arrest,” he said.
“Right,” Marvin said. “I know that the D.A. had promised to crack down on teacher-student relationships, and I think they’re out to make a pretty big example out of you.”
“Well, what do we do now?” Tom asked.
Marvin picked up a pencil on his desk and twirled it between his fingers like a baton. “Tom, we need to think about a plea bargain before this goes to trial,” he said.
Tom shot Marvin a surprised look. “Doesn’t that mean pleading guilty?”
Marvin nodded. “That it does. But it also means keeping you out of prison for ten-plus years.”
“We haven’t even started to prepare for the trial,” Tom objected. “What the hell is in those discovery materials?”
“We’re going to try and prove to the jury the evidence against you was planted.”
“Right,” Tom said, acknowledging the defense strategy that he believed was not only the best, but also the truth.
“Well, the D.A. is going to try and prove, via your alleged relationship with Lindsey Wells, that you’re a sexual offender.”
“That’s insane,” Tom snapped, his eyes growing narrow. “Of course I’m not. In all my years as a teacher and coach, not once has anybody ever suspected me of that sort of thing.”
“Which is precisely why your involvement with Lindsey Wells is so critical to the prosecutor’s case. Lindsey will be proof to the jury that the evidence on the laptop wasn’t planted there. Once they think you’re having sex with a minor, a jury can be convinced of just about anything.”
“And why will they think I had a relationship with Lindsey in the first place?” Tom wanted to know.
“Well, according to the preliminary computer forensic audit, you’ve exchanged e-mails with Lindsey Wells. Graphic ones, at that.”
“E-mails?” Tom stammered. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about both of the state’s computer forensic specialists matching up IP addresses that link you and your laptop to Lindsey Wells’s home address.”
“That’s crazy. Lindsey’s just a kid. She’s my daughter’s best friend, for goodness’ sake!”
“And then there is this Leterg thing.”
“Yeah, you mentioned something about that to me. Explain that again,” Tom said.
“I had to research that myself. Leterg is ‘Gretel’ spelled backward. Every click on the Internet, every file sent or Web site accessed, is composed of broken-up data packets that originate from the sender and get reassembled by the receiver. IP addresses are what tell these broken-up data packets where to reassemble. Instead of leaving a single bread-crumb trail showing the actual route that the raw packets of data travel from point A to point B, Leterg manufactures bogus data routes, making it impossible for a computer forensic specialist to determine the exact path these data packets took.”
“And the state believes I know how to use this Leterg thing?”
“They were able to crack part of the Leterg encryption algorithm. Because of that ... call it a ‘breakthrough’ ... the state now believes you’ve been collecting images of naked teenaged girls. The FBI has been cooperating with the Shilo and state police investigation. According to this affidavit,” Marvin said, holding up a piece of paper, “the FBI believes these multimedia format images were sent originally as text messages.”
“That’s ridiculous. The only text messages I send are to Jill!”
Marvin continued, “With the help of the FBI, the state has been able to ID ten of the forty girls whose images they found on your laptop. In their opinion, thanks to the Leterg program, the part of the encryption they couldn’t crack, you were able to conceal the identities of the people to whom you sent the images.”
“But I wouldn’t even know how to install a Leterg program, let alone use one,” Tom said.
“It would appear that isn’t the case,” said Marvin. “But that’s not all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Money, Tom. According to the indictment, you were being paid for these images. And it’s been going on for quite some time. Three years or so. The timing links you to all the girls from Shilo. The D.A. is going to ask for your help in identifying the girls they can’t.”
“I’m assuming one of those girls is the one who sent me her picture,” Tom said.
“That’s right. They were able to pull the deleted image from your cell phone provider’s network. It hadn’t been purged yet.
Her image was there. They didn’t find any others.”
“This is insane, Marvin. Please tell me you believe that I’m innocent of all this.”
“Remember what I said about professing your innocence to me?”
Tom nodded dully.
“The state looked into your finances, Tom. They’ve attached the records here. Did you know you have a bank account with over a hundred twenty thousand dollars in it?”
Tom’s mouth fell open. “I what?”
“It’ll take some time to untangle where the money came in from. But it looks like a lot of offshore accounts and shell businesses. It would appear you were very good at hiding the money trail.”
“A hundred twenty thousand dollars?” Tom buried his head in his hands. “Oh, Marvin. This sounds bad.”
“Well, like I said, that’s the evidence detailed in these discovery documents,” Marvin said, holding up the packet. “I mean, you don’t usually see this many pages for a capital murder case.”
“Do they have any sworn testimony?” Tom asked. “Has anybody questioned Lindsey yet?”
Marvin scanned through the pages, but his expression suggested that he already knew the answer. “They have,” he said, “ and she’s denied, in sworn testimony, ever having any sort of sexual relationship with you, or having made wanted or unwanted sexual advances toward you, and she denies claims that you made wanted or unwanted sexual advances toward her.”
“Well, so that’s good. We’ve got a case. If Lindsey denies it all under oath, it could throw the rest of the charges against me into a tailspin. That Leterg thing, those images, this money that I didn’t even know I had.”
Marvin frowned. He set down the indictment, picked up his pencil, and twirled it even faster. “I’m not sure a jury is going to care about a fifteen-year-old girl’s testimony,” Marvin said. “They’re going to see computer logs and other forensic archives that the D.A. will insist prove your guilt. I don’t know a single superior court judge who won’t give you the maximum sentence allowed if you’re convicted. Prison for sex offenders is an ugly place. Uglier still for child pornographers. That’s why I’m suggesting we plead. Maybe do a couple years, tops.”
“And live my life as a convicted sex offender? No thank you,” Tom said. “I can’t believe what you’re even suggesting. You’re my lawyer, Marvin. I’m innocent of all these charges!” Tom slammed his hand against Marvin’s conference table for emphasis.
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