The Haunting

by Kathi Daley

  “Thanks; I’ll do that. One last thing on an unrelated topic: I know you work in the attendance office and I totally forgot my computer password. I don’t suppose you can look it up for me?”

  “Sorry. I forget mine every time I have to change it, so I feel your pain, but student aides don’t have access to passwords. You’ll have to ask Mr. Pruitt. You’ll have to suffer through a ten-minute lecture on taking responsibility for your own password, but it’s the only way. I even asked the principal if he could help me out the last time I forgot the sucker, but he said he didn’t have access to the system without contacting the IT guy.”

  “Okay; thanks. I guess I’ll suck it up and talk to Pruitt.”

  I was late to my next class, but I felt like the conversation I’d had with Karina was totally worth it. I was sure I could eliminate her from our suspect list; it didn’t seem at all as if she was hiding anything, and she’d also answered my question about someone using the principal’s access code to get into the system. At this point my main suspects were Art Dupree and Mike Walker. I supposed Mr. Pruitt could be a suspect as well because he did have access to everyone’s passwords, but he didn’t seem like the type and his name hadn’t come up in any other context.

  Despite the fact that I was dead tired after my ordeal the previous evening and just wanted to head to the library for a nap at lunch, I could see both Trevor and Mac were feeling a bit desperate about last night, so I promised to meet them in the lunchroom. I could see my tail was bored, bored, bored, but I didn’t have a lot of control over these things, so I tried to go about my day the best I could.

  “So, who’s that hunkalicious guy watching your every move?” Chelsea asked as she slid onto the bench across the table from me.

  “New guy,” I answered without turning around.

  “Have you met him? Can you introduce us?”

  I took a spoonful of my yogurt. “I haven’t met him, but he’s in a couple of my classes, so I know his name is Chance. If you want to meet him why don’t you waddle yourself over and say hi?”

  “Waddle? I’ve never waddled in my life. And I will say hi, but first I want to find out where you are with that thing we can’t talk about.”

  I glanced around the table. Mac and Trevor were listening intently and seemed amused by Chelsea’s interest in the new guy, but no one else was playing any attention to us. “We’ve narrowed things down to two possible suspects at this point: Art Dupree and Mike Walker, the IT guy.”

  “Art didn’t do it and I don’t think Mike did either. I think you need to widen your search. There has to be someone else you haven’t considered.”

  “We’ve been looking pretty hard.”

  “Well, look harder.”

  “I have a couple of people to talk to today, but if they don’t pan out and I don’t come up with any other suspects I’m going to insist you talk to your parents.”

  “You know I can’t. They’d lock me in my room for safekeeping, completely destroying my social life. We’ve discussed this.”

  “I know we have, but if your stalker is an adult rather than a student, you could be in real danger. Heck, even if it’s a student you could be in serious trouble. The only reason I haven’t gone to your parents myself is because I think it most likely is one of the many people you’ve managed to piss off messing with you. Having said that, it might not be someone pulling a prank at all. Have you received any new photos?”

  “None since the ones I showed you yesterday. Maybe whoever is doing this knows I’m on to them.”

  “Except you aren’t.”

  “Maybe, but they might not know that. Everyone knows you like to stick your nose into everyone’s business and people probably have seen you lurking around talking to people. Most of them probably won’t have any idea what you’re up to if you’ve stuck to our agreement, but the guilty party probably knows we’re friends and may suspect we’re on to them. The best thing that can happen as far as I’m concerned is if the lowlife just stops following me.”

  I scraped the bottom of my yogurt container and put the last bit in my mouth. “Maybe you’re right and your stalker will just go away, but if you do receive any more photos remember to forward them to me.”

  Chelsea signed. “I’m a woman of my word and you’re helping me, even though you don’t have to, so I’ll do what you say. In the meantime, I’m going to go see if the new hunk in school wants yours truly to give him a tour.”

  I had to suppress a chuckle. “Good luck with that.”

  “Boy, she’s really something,” Mac, who had thankfully held her tongue while Chelsea and I were talking, commented. “She could be in real danger and the only thing she’s concerned about is how it might affect her social life.”

  “I can relate,” I said.

  Mac looked at me and frowned. “Yeah. I guess you can. Sorry.”

  “Let’s just find the stalker and put this whole mystery to rest,” I said. “I’m going to see if I can find Art. Once I speak to him we’ll have eliminated all the student suspects, unless he turns out to be the guy.”

  “I’ll take another look around during my internship to see if there’s an angle we’re missing,” Mac volunteered. “We can meet up after school. I’d love to get an update on the other matter we can’t discuss.”

  “I have practice,” Trevor reminded us.

  “Let’s just meet at the field,” Mac suggested. “We can chat and watch Trevor at the same time.”

  “Okay. My bodyguard and I will see you there after school.”

  I left the cafeteria and headed to the computer lab. I had a feeling antisocial and very uptight Art Dupree could be found either there or in the library. I’d spent a lot of time in the library lately and hadn’t seen him there much, so I assumed the computer lab was his lunch time hangout of choice. Luckily, I was right and, even better, he was alone. I sat down at the computer next to his and logged on. I tried to look at the image on his screen without making it obvious I was doing so. It looked like he was writing code, most likely for a class he was taking.

  “It looks like you really know what you’re doing,” I said as casually as possible.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty good.”

  “Maybe you can help me. Someone hacked into my student account and sent emails that look like they’re from me, but they aren’t.”

  Art paused and looked at me. “Did you change your password?”

  “I tried, but it seems that whoever broke into my account changed it, so when I log on the system asks me for my password, which I don’t know. How am I supposed to change my password if I can’t even get into the system?”

  “I can get you in. Hang on.”

  I watched as Art’s fingers flew over the keys. “Your name is Alyson Prescott and you have Harwin for homeroom, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  In less than two minutes, Art stopped typing. “Your password is Tucker.” Art frowned. “It’s odd that someone would hack your account, change your password, and then use the name of your dog.”

  “Tucker is the password I created,” I admitted. “I guess I must have been doing something wrong when I tried before. That’s so weird.”

  Art shrugged. “As long as you’re in the system you should change your password anyway.”

  “I will.”

  Art punched some keys on the computer nearest to me, bringing up the page where passwords could be changed. He instructed me to choose a new password with both numbers and letters.

  “How did you know my dog’s name was Tucker?” I asked.

  I noticed the FBI agent sitting at the very back of the room, paying close attention to our conversation. He didn’t look very stealthy. He was staring right at us instead of looking at his own screen.

  “I guess I must have overheard you talking about it.”

  I smiled. “Sure. That must be it.” I frowned at the FBI guy, then returned my attention to Art. “So how did you get the password anyway? Are you that good a hac
ker?”

  “I’m pretty good, but I didn’t hack the system. My sister is dating the district IT guy and she happened to find out the password to the student file. You won’t say anything? Mike could get in trouble. I need you to keep this just between us.”

  I smiled even bigger, although I wanted to frown. “Sure.” I did the silly blond hair flip thing and then said, “As long as you’re in the system, can you help me find out who sent the email from my account? I’m really upset about the whole thing. Something like that can ruin friendships.”

  “Sure, I can probably help you. Who was the email sent to and when was it sent?”

  I grimaced when I realized I didn’t have an email for Art to inspect. “Oh shoot. I already deleted it.”

  Art shrugged. “Sorry. I’d need the email.”

  “You know, the same thing happened to Destiny Pilsner,” I quickly improvised, remembering one of the emails sent to Chelsea. “Can we check her account? If we can trace her email we might be able to figure out who sent mine.”

  “Were the emails sent to the same person?” Art asked.

  Chelsea was going to kill me, but I had to know what Art knew. “Yes. Chelsea Green. Destiny’s account was used last week on Thursday.”

  Art logged into Destiny’s account. It didn’t take him long to pull up the right email. “It looks like Destiny logged into her own account using her own student ID and password.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t Destiny. She told me so.” I just hoped Art wouldn’t check with Destiny; I’d never talked to her about the email and wasn’t sure she even knew it was sent from her account.

  “The email was sent from a computer here in the lab at twelve-twenty, which would be during lunch. I was in here on Thursday.”

  That grabbed my attention. “Do you remember who else was in here?”

  Art paused. “I think it was just Mike and me. He was doing an update, and I’ve been working on a secret project during lunch every day for the past month. There must have been someone else in the lab I didn’t notice.”

  Or, I realized, either Mike or Art was the stalker.

  I thanked Art and left the room.

  On one hand, Art could access the student passwords, so he could totally have sent the email; on the other, why would he tell me that he was alone in the room with Mike if he was the stalker? I also suspected he wouldn’t have admitted he had the student passwords if he’d been using them to stalk Chelsea.

  “Do you want me to take a look at the IT guy?” my tail asked as we walked down a deserted hallway.

  “Would you?”

  “I’d be happy to. It’ll give me something to do while you’re in class. I’ll find a way to let you know what I find out.”

  Suddenly I realized that maybe having a gorgeous guy watching my every move would turn out to be a good thing after all.

  Chapter 14

  Mac was waiting when I arrived at the football field. I sat down next to her and my FBI tail headed toward the top row of the bleachers, where he pretended to be watching the guys go through their drills while messing around with his phone. I did feel bad he’d been stuck babysitting me. I was sure when he decided to join the FBI he’d had more exciting assignments in mind. I wasn’t even sure what he’d been told about my situation. Probably not a lot. I supposed he was used to carrying out assignments with only minimal intel. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been told to follow me, but obviously he couldn’t tail me forever, which meant that decisions of some sort were going to need to be made sooner rather than later.

  “So, any news about the creepy-photos-in-the-house situation?” Mac whispered.

  “I know Donovan is looking in to things and trying to assess whether an immediate danger exists. He sent some crime scene guys to gather the photos and take prints and feels fairly certain neither Mario nor Clay Bonatello have been in the house. He suspects they hired someone to track me down while they remain safely in hiding back in New York.”

  “I guess that’s something.”

  “Yeah. I guess. I’m pretty sure there’s no immediate danger, although I did feel like I was being watched last spring, just prior to Donovan whisking me away in the middle of the night. I suspect the photos were taken then. In fact, if you look at things like background images and the length of my hair, I feel certain the more recent photos were taken then.”

  “Did the guy who was sent to find you just leave after you disappeared?” Mac wondered.

  “Probably. Although now that I’m back, it’s most likely only a matter of time until he or someone else returns to finish what was started.”

  “Are you going to run again?”

  I shrugged as a great sadness filled my soul. “I don’t know. I don’t want to have to run forever, but it isn’t only me I have to consider. My mom gave up her marriage, her family, her career, pretty much her whole life, for me. I owe it to her to make good decisions.”

  “Is Donovan on his way to Cutter’s Cove?”

  “Not yet,” I answered. “He’s in New York, rattling some cages. He seems to think that putting pressure on the mob family might help flush Mario and Clay out of hiding. That’s where they’ve been since the murder I witnessed, and Donovan has reason to believe the family isn’t at all happy about all the attention their situation is bringing to them. Donovan’s also hoping he can find the person they hired to take the photos and convince him to provide information on the brothers.”

  Mac crossed her arms over her knees and leaned forward just a bit. “Does Donovan know the identity of the person who took the photos?”

  “As of the last time I spoke to him, no. The crime scene guys managed to pull some decent prints from the house, though. Donovan seemed to think it was only a matter of time until an identification was made. Once he has the ID he’ll still need to track him down, but Donovan has a lot of resources at his disposal and he’s very good at his job.”

  Mac glanced over her shoulder. “Is your tail with us for the long haul?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “My sense is that whatever’s going to happen will be in the next few days. It’s making me crazy that all I can do is wait to find out what my future will look like, but the reality is, waiting is all I can do. Which is why,” I added, “I’m happy to have two other mysteries to occupy my mind.”

  “Okay, so where are we on the other two?”

  I filled Mac in on my conversation with Art.

  “Art has access to the student passwords?” she verified what I’d just told her.

  “Yup.”

  “I find that disturbing.”

  “So do I. However, my overall impression was that he wasn’t using the passwords for any sort of wrongdoing. He said he had a secret project he was working on, though he didn’t go into detail. I suppose it could involve the use of student IDs. And he admitted to being one of only two people in the lab at the time the email Chelsea received on Thursday was sent.”

  “So it could be him,” Mac said.

  “It could. It seemed odd that he’d admit to having the passwords and to being in the computer lab when the email was sent if he’d done it, but he might have suspected what I was really up to and confessing to having the means to have sent the emails could have been his way to diminish my suspicion of him.”

  “So is he our number one suspect at this point?”

  I shook my head. “He’s still on the list, but not number one. My FBI buddy checked out the IT guy, Mike Walker. On the way over to the field, Chance informed me that Mike had a juvenile record that’s been sealed. It would take a court order to unseal it, but Chance did some digging and found a school district report that said Walker was expelled from the high school he attended after he was accused of harassing two classmates. Walker finished his education at an online high school, then applied to college, where he studied technology. Chance didn’t find any evidence that Walker had been in trouble with the law as an adult.”

  “So it sounds like Mike could be the g
uy,” Mac stated.

  “Maybe. The thing is, why would Mike be stalking Chelsea? According to Art, Mike is dating his sister. He has a decent job and probably makes decent money. Why would he risk that to follow Chelsea around? It makes no sense.”

  “She does have a way of putting people down and making them feel small. I’m not surprised someone would have an urge to mess with her.”

  “I agree, but I’m not convinced that someone is Mike Walker. Look at the time commitment involved. Whoever is stalking Chelsea has put a lot of hours into setting up those photos and waiting for the opportunity to catch her unaware. To me, that makes it seem as if Chelsea’s stalker is obsessed with her. Mike spends a good deal of time on campus and could very well have met her here. It’s even possible he could have become obsessed with her. But it seems like a long shot.”

  “So what now?” Mac asked.

  “Chance and I discussed it, and the easiest way to eliminate Mike as a suspect is to determine whether he has an alibi for the time when one of the photos was either taken or sent.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “I cut sixth period and took the time to create a timeline of when all the emails from the computers on campus were sent. All we need to do is get a look at Mike’s work schedule and place him at another facility during the time one or more photos were sent.”

  Mac raised a brow. “You want me to hack into the school district employee files and find out where Mike was working on every day in question?”

  “No. Chance will get the information.”

  Mac laughed. “Suddenly, I feel expendable.”

  “Don’t. Chance has nothing to do while I’m in class. He sits in the back of the room and pretends to be participating, but he isn’t. He’s happy for something to do, and he has resources we don’t.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I thought you said you weren’t supposed to interact with him. It seems like you’ve been doing a lot of interacting.”