Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  From the look on Jill’s face, it was clear she didn’t fully believe him, but for whatever reason, she let it go.

  The wine worked its magic, and on the way back to the hotel, the snow fell harder, blanketing Gastown in a postcard-perfect layer of white. As they strolled back to the hotel, Alex draped his arm around Jill’s shoulders and pulled her close. He felt her stiffen, and he wondered if she was still thinking about Abby’s call.

  They stopped in the hotel bar for a drink before heading back to their room. As the door closed behind them, Alex dropped the card key on the desk. Jill sat on the end of the bed to remove her boots.

  Alex hunkered down in front of her. His hands ran up the length of her legs. She shivered at his touch. Slowly, gently, he removed her boots, setting them beside the bed. His lips touched hers. He felt her hand circle around his neck and tangle in his hair, and he deepened his kiss.

  Jill pulled back, her breath catching in her throat.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she breathed, and kissed him again.

  Placing his hand on the round firmness of her breast, he felt everything fall away. Abby. The case. Everything.

  36

  Back at home in West Seattle, long after she’d made herself a quick bite to eat and straightened up the kitchen, Jill logged on to her email account from the comfortable leather armchair in the living room. The rain outside was coming down in a dense drizzle, but the cheerful fire in the hearth was doing its best to ward off the late-night chill. Molly lay on the area rug, her back edged as close to the dancing flames as possible without setting her fur on fire.

  Alex was working late. The cases that had accumulated since his return from California were finally getting some much needed attention, and that suited Jill just fine. The long weekend in Vancouver had left her with some extra work on her plate, too, and she set about scanning the new items in her inbox.

  Most of it was run-of-the-mill stuff. She deleted junk mail from her favorite online shopping places, notifications of upcoming training courses and conferences, software build notifications. After parsing through a couple of dozen emails, she had pruned the list to less than ten—all things that she needed to read.

  The latest project status reports assured her that all major work items were on track. She’d spend some time tomorrow adding a little extra color for her boss before sending it along. Rachel sent her a notification for an internal technical discussion that she should sit in on. She paused before opening the next unread message. She didn’t recognize the address. It was from a xmail account. With an email moniker like Casanova3569@xmail.com, she figured it could only be one thing: spam. Typically this was the type of thing that her junk email filter weeded out. It was odd that this one had made it all of the way to her inbox. Her finger hovered over the Delete button for a second before she dropped her hand to her side.

  Just spam, she thought again, but an uneasy feeling churned at the pit of her stomach. Unable to ignore it, she clicked on the message.

  I know your secret.

  An image. A single still frame of her face, eyes closed, made her heart lurch. Below the image, there was a link. In the few seconds it took for the video to load, Jill’s heart stopped.

  Holy shit. Peter had captured the rape on video. She could see her unconscious face slack behind Peter’s naked shoulder. She slammed the laptop screen closed and dropped it on the table as if the metal case had scorched her hands. Jumping to her feet, she started to pace.

  Molly let out a soft yelp, her feet twitching as she slept. Jill watched the sleeping dog for a moment before she shifted her gaze back to the laptop. Who sent the video, and just what exactly did he know? That she was Peter’s victim, or that he was hers? If there was someone out there who knew the role she played in Peter’s untimely death, wouldn’t they have come forward by now?

  As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t ignore the email. A few searches later, she realized that her video was not the only one posted to Peter’s illicit website. The videos, ten in all, featured three men who filmed their sexual exploits with a variety of women. The women did not all look like willing participants. Some looked drugged. A few were actually bound and gagged, eyes wide with horror as they were raped. Jill’s gut clenched. A wave of nausea washed over her.

  Three of the videos starred Peter Young as the male stud. Four starred a man she didn’t recognize. With his bleached blond hair and dark tan she guessed he lived somewhere warm. Either that or the bastard owned a tanning salon. His large teeth flashed at the camera, and Jill stopped the video feed.

  The remaining three belonged to a lithe, dark-haired man who liked to tie his victims up. Watching his videos, Jill had no doubt he liked the game. The rougher, the more painful—the better.

  Who were these women, and what happened to them once they served their purpose? Did they get emails, too? Did they pay money to make their problems go away? Did they keep silent about what happened to them? Were they all like her, married women who had their own reasons for not going to the police?

  Jill’s hands clenched into fists as she paced the hardwood floor. Was the sender trying to scare her? If so, he was doing a damned good job of it. She felt helpless. Exposed.

  Helpless? Jill stopped pacing. No. She wasn’t helpless. There were tools she could use, reverse lookups that would provide her with more info—who he was, for starters.

  Dropping back into her chair, she picked up her laptop. Choosing from a dozen email lookup tools, she typed in his email address. Seconds later the results came back. Her lips compressed in a flat line. Not surprisingly, the bastard used a fake name. The email address belonged to a Charles U Farley. She scowled, unimpressed by the flaccid attempt at wit.

  Fingers drumming the keys, she studied the report. Email accounts generated from this source were largely anonymous, and the ISP was a large hosting company, so no help was to be found there. The IP address would provide more specific information. The police could get a warrant compelling the ISP to release the name of the subscriber. But she was not the police, so, short of reporting the rape to the authorities, that route was closed to her. There was another option, though.

  The email lookup program she selected offered the option of providing more information on the subscriber for a small fee. All she needed to do was supply the email name for the reverse lookup. Fifteen bucks seemed like a small price to pay for a little piece of mind, so she authorized payment to her credit card and waited.

  Jill’s heart jumped in her chest as she viewed the results. She still had no name, but Casanova3569 belonged to several online dating sites. After saving the results to a text file on her hard drive, a few quick searches confirmed that most of the sites were dedicated to married people hooking up online.

  Casanova was looking for a woman who was married and lived in the southern US. His ideal woman fit the profile of a twenty-two-year-old yoga instructor. Yeah, well didn’t everyone’s? Jill clicked on his picture. The smiling face of a man stared up at her from his computer monitor. Her jaw clenched. She recognized him, all right. He was one of the other men featured in the sex videos on Peter’s website. Son of a bitch.

  Jill drew in a long breath as she considered this information. Somehow he had figured out her identity. But how? Had Peter sent him information about her?

  I know your secret.

  What game was he playing? Extortion? Would he come looking for money? Was it blackmail? “Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll post this for the whole world to see?”

  Jill didn’t know. Whatever the game, though, she was going to play. Just not by his rules.

  Molly groaned and stretched as the fire crackled in the grate. She stole a quick glance at the clock and noted that it was past ten. Alex would be home soon.

  Quickly, she listed out her next steps. First, she needed to get rid of the video. She could design a virus—a worm that would destroy the website. Viruses had become more sophisticated since she studied network s
ecurity at school, but it wouldn’t be that hard. Taking down the website would prevent them from sharing the link. If the videos resided on their hard drives—well, that was a problem she couldn’t solve. Not yet, anyway.

  Second, she needed to uncover Casanova’s real identity.

  Did she? A new thought dawned, and for the first time since she’d seen the email in her inbox, Jill smiled.

  Who he was didn’t matter. She knew how to find him. After all, Casanova was looking for an attractive married woman. And, staring at his online profile, Jill knew just where to find one.

  Unfortunately for him, romance was the last thing on her mind.

  37

  The next night, Jill left Alex in front of the television watching hockey and walked the few short blocks to the Alki Bakery. She was on a mission, and she couldn’t risk Alex looking over her shoulder. Besides, whatever she did on her home network would leave an IP address that could be traced back to her. She had to remain anonymous.

  Baiting the hook for Casanova should be as easy as concocting the right online persona. The tinkling of the bell rang over her head as she pushed the door open, the smell of coffee and warm croissants filling her senses.

  “Jill, where have you been?” the barista asked from behind the counter. The bakery was a typical stop after her weekend runs with Molly, but with everything that had happened lately, nothing was routine.

  “Crazy busy.”

  “California?”

  She nodded, pulling some cash from her wallet.

  “I’ve made a few trips.”

  “Must hate coming back to the rain. The usual?”

  “Thanks, Joey.” She waited while he filled a jug with milk and the steam flowed out from the frothy liquid.

  “Where’s Alex?”

  “Home. Glued to the tube.”

  “His loss. I have you all to myself.” He twitched his eye in an exaggerated wink. She grinned.

  Joey chuckled as he served her coffee. She dumped the change into the tip jar. Balancing the saucer in her hand, she crossed the room, choosing a table in the back.

  The crowd was sparse tonight. What looked to be a couple of college students were huddled in the corner, seeming more interested in each other than the iPads laid flat on the table between them. An older man sat by the window looking out into the dark night, his lined face reflected in the rain-streaked glass. A young woman hunched over a novel, fist pulling her bangs out of her eyes. Dark strands of hair poked between her clenched fingers as she read.

  Jill set her cup and saucer down carefully, the creamy liquid touching the edge without sloshing over, and dropped the bag on the chair. She pulled out her laptop and placed it on the table, powering it up.

  She sat and sipped her latte. It was bitter and creamy, just the way she liked it. Turning back to the screen, she thought about her profile. She needed to find the right name, the right look, the right everything to attract Casanova. She thought about the disturbing sex videos she’d seen on his website. Casanova’s women were blond, fit, with athletic builds and big breasts.

  It took only a few minutes to fill out the profile page. Age twenty-nine. Height, five-foot-nine. Weight, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Eye color, blue. Marital status, definitely married. Name? Her fingernails clicked on the keys. Name, Lilith, she mused with a grin.

  According to religious scholars, Lilith was Adam’s first wife—before Eve. Legend had it that Adam abandoned Lilith when he found out she was barren, moving on to Eve. But Lilith did not go gentle into that good night. She was said to bed demons.

  Jill smiled. The irony of the cheating husband and the scorned wife seemed poetic. She entered an email address that pointed to an email account she’d set up only moments earlier.

  Picking up her coffee cup, she curled her fingers around the wide bowl, savoring the heat. She thought about the cyber trail she was creating. The café had free Wi-Fi access. There would be no IP trail to her home network. She was using an assumed name and an anonymous email account. Casanova might be clever. But he’d need more than a passing knowledge of computers and network security to trace her.

  Finally, she would need to post a picture. She frowned at the thought. She could pull down a random image from the web, someone whose face fit the profile she had created. That would be one way to handle it. But maybe she could do one better.

  Opening another browser window, she entered the address for a popular social-networking site for professionals, the same one she belonged to. Logging in, she did a quick directory search and found just the face she was looking for. Dana Evans. She fit the profile perfectly. Okay, she was a little shorter and a little heavier than the woman described in the profile, but she would do nicely.

  With a quick save to her hard drive, Jill placed the image in the profile and hit the Submit button. The wait cursor twirled on the computer screen as Jill waited for the file to be uploaded.

  You know my secret, Casanova? Well, I know yours, too. A smile crossed her lips, and she sat back in her chair, glancing up.

  Her heart jumped in her chest as she saw a man staring intently at her. His dirty, shoulder-length blond hair framed his pale face, and his blue eyes bore into hers for the briefest of seconds. He sat a few tables away, and a faint smile touched his lips as he watched her. There was something odd about the intensity of his flat blue eyes. The inexplicable metallic tang of fear filled Jill’s mouth.

  The man looked away quickly, shifting his gaze back at the cell phone he held cradled in his hand. Jesus. She was going to have to lay off the caffeine if she couldn’t control her jittery nerves. The man dialed a number as he rose from his table, taking his cardboard cup of coffee with him as he strolled out of the bakery. She detected a faint hint of a southern accent as he spoke. See. Harmless, she told herself as the jingle of the bell signaled his exit. Get a grip.

  Just as she was about to shut down the computer, another thought flashed into her head. She had found Casanova’s profile on a social-networking site. Did Peter Young belong to any social-networking sites? If so, he would have a friend list. Maybe she’d be able to find the real Casanova after all.

  38

  Alex was following up on a lead in one of the five fraud cases he’d been assigned. Hanging up the phone, he scribbled notes in his spiral notebook. Each new lead spawned five others. He blew out a long breath, envisioning the tedious day ahead. Picking up his coffee, he took a sip. Cold. Disgusting. But after all of the cold coffee he had consumed in his time at the SPD, he drank it anyway. After all these years, he’d come to like the taste. Swallowing, he set the mug down with a thump, swearing softly as it slopped over the edges.

  “Hey, Boss,” Kris said from the doorway.

  “What’s up?”

  “The incoming spam filter caught something that was routed to you. I think you should take a look at it. I’m sending it through.”

  Moments later, the email appeared in Alex’s Inbox. The sender, arewehavingfunyet@xmail.com had sent no text in the body of the message, but there was an attached file.

  “I’ve scanned it and didn’t find anything funky,” Kris assured Alex as she leaned toward the screen to get a closer look.

  The attachment was a JPEG image. Alex double-clicked on the file to open it. The resulting picture was something that you might find in the waiting room of a kid’s dental clinic. A kitten was seated in a red toy car, with sunglasses resting above his whiskers. The caption read “Have a nice day.”

  “Any clue what it means or who could have sent it?” Kris asked as she hovered over his shoulder.

  Alex shook his head slowly from side to side. “There’s something weird about it, though.”

  “Or maybe you’ve been a cop too long,” a gruff voice said from the doorway. Both turned to see Jackson, his massive hands propped on the edges of the door frame. “What have we got here?”

  “Some kind of joke, but I’m not sure I get the punch line.” Alex stared at the screen for a long moment. The kn
uckles of each fist rubbed lightly against each other as he considered the possibilities. Suddenly the movement of his hands stilled, and he sat up ramrod straight in the chair.

  “What is it?” Jackson asked, catching the change in Alex’s expression.

  “Honeywell had image manipulation and steganography software on his computer, right?” He turned to look at Kris, whose face had drained of color.

  “I’ll run a steganalysis on it now.”

  Oblivious to the two detectives clustered around her workstation, Kris scanned the results of the analysis on her screen. Alex’s hunch was right: there was another image buried inside the picture of the cat.

  Alex’s blood chilled as he saw Jill’s face staring back at him from the monitor. Kris’s hands jerked away from the keyboard, and she rolled back in her chair. Jackson grimaced.

  “Honeywell?” Kris asked.

  “It’s got to be.”

  “Where was it taken?” Jackson’s voice was all business. His eyes remained fixed on the screen.

  “Alki Bakery. Jill goes there to work some nights. Free Wi-Fi.”

  “It’s not far from your house. He knows where you live.” Jackson straightened, staring at his partner.

  Alex didn’t respond. The implication was clear. The only way Honeywell could have known Jill’s whereabouts was to follow her from the house. Somehow, Honeywell had figured out who he was. Once Honeywell had a name, it wouldn’t be hard to find Alex’s personal information. His phone number. His address. You name it. It was all out there.

  His skin crawled as he thought of Jill walking through the darkened streets, laptop bag slung over her shoulder as she made her way to the coffee shop, oblivious to the danger that lurked.

  “That means he’s either in the area or has someone else doing his dirty work,” Alex said, tapping the desk with his index finger. Wanting to get a closer look at the embedded image, Alex clicked on the car. The ghosted outline of a text box showed that there was something else selected.