“Yes, I would. I’m in Marketville, so an appointment outside of rush hour to and from Toronto would be much appreciated.”
That elicited a dry chuckle. “I hear you. How’s Friday at noon? I can’t guarantee a traffic-free drive, but I can text you the address and the fastest route to get here.”
“Sounds perfect. Is it okay if I bring a friend?”
“Absolutely. I’ll look forward to meeting you both.”
I called Chantelle next. The ninety-minute drive there and back would be a lot more pleasurable with some company, and I could catch her up on the case. I hoped she’d be available, she’d been spending most of her free time with Lance.
I was in luck. Not only was it Chantelle’s day off the gym, she was keen to tag along, offering apologies for being somewhat absent, and promising to get me up-to-date on the drive.
“I do have the name of an IT guy, though. I was just about to text you. Benjamin Benedetti.”
“That’s terrific. Where did you find him?”
“I didn’t. I asked Lance. He used to work with Benedetti, called him a white hat hacker, whatever the heck that means. Lance assures me the guy can answer your questions. I’ll text you the info.”
Lance, and once again, not Lance the Loser. “That’s great, thank Lance for me. By the way, have you had a chance to work on the Ancestry.ca side of things for our case?”
“I have, though I’m afraid the results are disappointing, which is why I haven’t sent an update yet. There are more than one hundred and thirty entries for family trees, last name Colbeck, but no matches for Eleanor, Brandon, or Lorna Colbeck. I also checked the member list, again, no luck. I tried Michael Westlake on the off-chance he’d have started a family tree and included Brandon.”
“Let me guess, there were no Michael Westlakes.”
“Actually, there are four members listed, but none of them are our Michael Westlake. However, there are over four hundred records under that name. That includes everything from birth, marriage, and death certificates to voting lists and immigration documents. I’m still culling through that, but I’m not optimistic I’ll find anything to help us in the search for Brandon.”
“I have to agree, but thanks for being thorough. Can you add another name to the search?”
“Of course. Who is it?”
“David Alexander Samuels.”
“David Alexander Samuels,” Chantelle repeated. “Got it. Who is he?”
“I think he may be Brandon’s biological father.”
“Wow, talk about burying the lead.”
“I hope to have more than that to tell you about on Friday.”
“Can’t wait. In the meantime if anything pops up on Samuels, I’ll let you know right away.”
I hung up, thinking that Chantelle sounded even more upbeat than usual. It had to be Lance. I knew he’d broken her heart once before, but Chantelle was a big girl, and if her world came crumbling down around her, I’d be there to help her pick up the pieces.
I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
29
I googled “white hat hacker” before calling Benjamin Benedetti. According to Wikipedia, “white hat” referred to an ethical computer hacker, or a computer security expert. Fair enough. I punched in the phone number Chantelle had given me and waited.
Not only did Benedetti answer on the first ring, Lance had apparently told him to expect my call. He suggested meeting for coffee at Debbie’s Downhome Diner in the north end of town. I hesitated briefly, not because Debbie’s was a bit of a greasy spoon—she made a terrific cup of coffee, and the food was good and reasonably priced—but because it had been one of Royce’s favorite places to grab a quick bite. We’d met there on a few occasions, always enjoying the meal.
And each other’s company, I thought, my stomach doing a quick flip. I pushed aside my reluctance. Marketville wasn’t Toronto, I was bound to run into Royce eventually, and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life trying to avoid him. Besides, it was coming up on suppertime and I was getting hungry.
“Debbie’s sounds great. Can I buy you dinner?”
“I can definitely be talked into having dinner,” Benedetti said, “but I insist on paying my own way. Lance tells me this involved a keylogger case dating back to 2000. It piqued my interest.”
We agreed to meet in an hour, and I bustled upstairs to freshen up, apply a bit of make-up, and pick an outfit—I was thinking my moss green thigh-length sweater, black denim skinny jeans, and maybe the black suede ankle boots that Royce had always admired. I know, pathetic, right? It was my lack of commitment that led to our breakup in the first place. And in the second place, Royce wasn’t about to see my feet under the table, even if he just so happened to be there.
I slipped the boots on anyway. When you’re going for pathetic, you may as well go all the way.
The inside of Debbie’s Downhome Diner had walls lined with sponsorship plaques for local sports teams, bench seats upholstered in red leatherette, and red and white checked tablecloths topped with the obligatory stainless steel napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers, and vinegar bottle. I wrinkled my nose at the vinegar bottle. Why would anyone want to sprinkle vinegar on their fries?
I stood at the entrance and looked around the diner, and wondered what Benjamin Benedetti looked like. My money was on a dark-haired man mesmerized by whatever was on his phone.
I was about to walk over and introduce myself when the door opened behind me. I turned around to come face to face with a forty-something guy who could have been Matt Czuchry’s double. I’ve been a fan of Czuchry’s since his days as Logan Huntzberger in the Gilmore Girls. I hoped this was my white hat hacker.
“Callie?” the man asked.
I nodded, ridiculously pleased that I’d worn my black suede ankle boots. “You must be Benjamin Benedetti.”
He smiled, revealing a row of straight white teeth. “Guilty as charged, though I go by Ben. Let’s grab a seat, shall we?”
We found a vacant booth at the back of the restaurant. We had no sooner taken our seats when our server came over with laminated menus and two glasses of water.
“The dinner special is meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and mushy peas,” she said, removing an order pad from her pocket. “Soup of the day is split pea with ham or minestrone. Sandwich is roast turkey with cranberry chutney, served with a side of fries or garden salad. Or you can have a half sandwich and soup.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. “We’ll just take a minute to look at the menu, though the dinner special sounds good. Is it possible to get coffee now?”
“Milk or cream?”
“Milk for me. Callie?”
“Coffee now would be great. Milk for me, too.”
We took the next few minutes looking over the menu, a companionable silence settling over us.
“I think I’m going to go with the meat loaf,” Ben said, closing his menu.
“I’m going with the soup and sandwich combo.”
That decided, and our orders placed, we got to the purpose of the meeting.
“Chantelle tells me you were a white hat hacker. I googled it, though I’m not sure I should trust Wiki as my source.”
“What would we do without Wikipedia?” Ben asked, smiling. “The term ‘white hat’ is from old Western movies where the good guys wore white cowboy hats, and the bad guys wore black cowboy hats, or at least that’s the cliché. A white hat hacker is an ethical hacker, a computer security specialist employed to break into protected systems and networks to test and assess their security. Their job is to expose vulnerabilities before malicious hackers, known as black hat hackers, can detect and exploit them.”
“It sounds interesting.”
“It was, but not as interesting as your line of work. Lance tells me you and his ex-wife are private eyes.”
“Not exactly. We aren’t licensed investigators and we don’t do typical PI stuff, like spying on a cheating spouse or what have you. I like to think we’re hired to find out the truth about
the past, and bring it into the present.”
“What about the case you’re working on?”
I was about to tell him when our food arrived. “Let’s eat. Then we’ll talk.”
The meal finished, dessert declined, bills on the table to be paid “whenever we were ready,” and a fresh cup of coffee poured, I gave Ben a quick recap. “Brandon Colbeck was at a low point in his life. He’d dropped out of school, didn’t have a job, and lived with a stepfather who pushed all his buttons. He left home in March 2000, leaving a note saying he was going to find himself. He took some personal belongings and his laptop, but no ID. No one has heard from him since.”
“Brandon Colbeck,” Ben mused, when I was finished. “Why does that name seem familiar?”
“There was an article about him in the Marketville Post three years ago,” I said. “Maybe you remember reading it?”
Ben frowned. “I don’t think that’s it, the story doesn’t ring any bells, and I seldom read the Post. Maybe it’ll come to me later. Now, satisfy my curiosity and tell me how a keylogger in 2000 impacts your case.”
“Brandon’s stepfather, Michael Westlake, admitted to me that he had installed keylogger software onto Brandon’s laptop. Even though Brandon left in March, the Colbecks didn’t file a missing person report until August.”
“You’re thinking Michael Westlake was following Brandon’s journey via the laptop during those four months, and that’s why they didn’t file a missing person report.”
“Yes.”
Ben shook his head. “It wouldn’t have been possible. Not in 2000.”
I felt a crush of disappointment. I’d been so sure this is what Westlake had been hiding. “You’re absolutely sure it wouldn’t have been possible?”
“One hundred percent. In 2000, a lot of people that had computers were still using dial-up to connect to the web. Broadband and such was just starting to make inroads. To this day most laptops do not have GPS, and it wasn’t until 2004 or 2005 that cell phones had GPS installed. As far as tracking the location of a laptop, the first widely available software started appearing in 2005. This coincides with things moving away from dial-up and going to broadband or cable modems, or more rarely back then, wireless.”
I pushed aside my disappointment. There had to be another way. Maybe if I understood the technical side of it better…it wasn’t a perfect strategy, but at least I’d have a solid reason to visit Westlake again, to challenge him with what I’d learned.
I pulled a pen and a small gray notebook out of my purse, the cover embossed with the words, “BE BOLD.” Despite my ability to recall most conversations verbatim, my technical brain can be woefully inadequate.
“What can you tell me about the keylogger process?”
30
Ben collected his thoughts. “Okay, back in 2000, Brandon was probably using a PC, running Windows 98, maybe Windows 2000. Westlake would have had two options. Either download the software himself from his own computer or have a geek friend get it for him, though if he was trying to keep things on the down low, my guess is the former.”
“I don’t understand. If he downloaded the software to his PC, how does it get onto Brandon’s laptop?”
“There are a couple of options. In 2000, assuming they had a home computer network, Brandon’s laptop would have been hardwired in via an Ethernet cable. Computers on networks can see each other, Westlake or his tech buddy could hack Brandon’s laptop from Westlake’s computer and download the software.”
“What if his laptop was turned off? Or it was password protected?”
“If the computer was connected to the home network and plugged in, it would be easy for someone with expertise to access the hard drive. There was also a low-tech option where the keylogger software would be written onto a 3.5 inch floppy disk.”
I’d all but forgotten about floppy disks. It was another reminder of how quickly technology continued to evolve. “Go on.”
“Westlake would have needed access to Brandon’s laptop for long enough to plug in the floppy disk and run the installation program for the keylogger software. Then he’d eject the disk and dispose of it. That’s what I would have done in his place.”
“The man I met wouldn’t be sloppy with the floppy.”
“Good one,” Ben said, laughing. “Anyway, once installed, the software would launch itself each time Brandon turned on the machine. Once running, it would write every keystroke into a text file. It would not alert the user, Brandon in this case, to the fact that it was running in the background.”
“When you say everything Brandon typed on his laptop would have been written into a text file, what does that mean exactly?”
“When Brandon opened a web browser, any web address he entered into the browser would be recorded. If he went to a website that had a login page which required him to type in a name and password, that would also be recorded by the software.”
“How would Michael Westlake gain access to the text file?”
“He would once again need access to Brandon’s laptop to copy the text files to another floppy disk. Once he had the files, he could open it at his leisure on another computer and review the file to see everything Brandon had been typing since the software had been installed.”
I thought about that for a moment. If the files were in his browser history or his documents, Brandon would assuredly have discovered it almost immediately. “Where would the text files be stored?”
“Excellent question,” Ben said. “When the software was installed on Brandon’s laptop, Westlake decides where to put the files created. The default location could be in a folder called ‘Logs’ on the hard drive. This would be indicated as ‘c colon backslash Logs.’ Each day a file would be created in this folder with the date as the name. When Westlake plugged in his floppy disk, he could copy all the files in the Logs folder to his floppy, or just specific ones based on the date. After he copied them, he would then be able to delete them, leaving behind no trace.”
I wrote “floppy disks” and “c:/Logs” in my notebook, pondering the ramifications of what Ben had told me. “If Brandon discovered this invasion of his privacy, that could have provided the impetus for him leaving home. But, if the files were hidden away where no one would think to look, or they were deleted without leaving any trace, then that theory is quashed.”
“Unless Brandon discovered it before the files were deleted,” Ben said.
I considered that for a moment, a nugget of an idea forming. “Let’s say Brandon discovered the keylogger software, how would he have done it?”
“It could be as simple as Brandon thinking that this laptop wasn’t running as fast as it used to. If defragging the hard drive didn’t speed things up, he’d run antivirus software. The software would alert him that keylogger software had been installed on his laptop.”
The nugget was getting bigger. “Could he tie it back to his stepfather?”
“There would be no direct link, no signature, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I slumped back into my chair. For a moment I…
“There’s always Occam’s Razor,” Ben said, interrupting my thoughts.
I leaned forward. “Occam’s Razor? Is that some sort of spyware?”
“Nothing so sophisticated. It’s a problem-solving principle where the simplest solution tends to be the correct one. In other words, consider the options and select the solution with the fewest assumptions. Scenario one, Westlake or a tech friend hacked Brandon’s laptop via the home computer system. Scenario two, Westlake asked Brandon to borrow his laptop.”
Select the solution with the fewest assumptions. “I think that’s unlikely. Brandon despised his stepfather. I can’t imagine Westlake asking to borrow Brandon’s laptop. He would immediately have raised Brandon’s suspicions.”
“In that case, scenario three, Westlake waited until Brandon was out of the house and left his laptop in his bedroom. If Brandon had his laptop password-protected, he’d have to guess at
the password. That’s easier to do than you might think.”
I tapped my fingertips on the table. “I’m going to have to think on it. In the meantime, thank you. This information will really help.”
“There’s something else you may not have considered,” Ben said. “If Brandon discovered the keylogger software, he may well have led his stepfather on a wild goose chase.”
“In other words, he deliberately planted false clues by visiting websites he had no interest in.”
I was mulling that over when I noticed our server bustling around, manning multiple tables. There wasn’t an empty booth in sight. “We should probably pay up and get going.”
“You’re right.” Ben shifted in his seat. “I know we’ve just met, but I wondered. Would you…would you like to get a drink sometime?”
I could do a lot worse than have a drink with a Matt Czuchry lookalike, but I wasn’t quite ready to go down the dating road again. Or was I?
I was still debating the answer when the door opened and Royce Ashford walked in, Mercy Dellacorte by his side.
31
I tried to slink further into the booth, hoping Royce wouldn’t notice me. Notice us. No such luck. The pair sauntered over, a fake smile plastered on Mercy’s face.
“Hello Royce,” I said, forcing my own fake smile. “And you must be Mercy Dellacorte. Lovely to finally meet you.”
“Lovely to meet you as well,” Mercy said, her tone suggesting it was anything but.
Royce was assessing Ben, his gaze unabashedly curious. “I’m afraid we haven’t met. Royce Ashford. I’m an old friend of Callie’s.”
Ben, bless his bleeding heart, took me by the hand, the gesture gentle and possessive, as he helped me up from the table. “Benjamin Benedetti. It’s so nice to meet you both, though I’m afraid we can’t stay and chat.”
I murmured a quick goodbye and allowed Ben to usher me out onto the street, his arm wrapped possessively around my waist.
A Fool's Journey Page 16