Lie in Wait (11 page)

 

Chapter 22

T
EST PUSHED THROUGH
the double doors of the Canaan Public Library, relieved to have given North the slip, for now. She did not look forward to a scolding about drawing her weapon. She wondered if she should tell Chief Barrons, preempt North. It'd be best for her to inform the chief first. She'd put it in her log, of course. But the chief would never read that. It was a dilemma. If she told the chief out of fear that North might tell him first, then he'd know for sure about her drawing her weapon. And North might not have any plan to do so. Still. If she did not tell Barrons and North got to the chief first, Test would be up against it then. It would look like she was not forthcoming. Which would be true. She'd rather Barrons never discovered her actions at King's. She'd rather no one ever know.

The odor of lemon Pledge that struck her as she entered the library reminded her of her childhood. Her mother's spastic cleanups before company arrived at their Michigan Avenue town house always included tossing toys in the closet, shoving dirty clothes under beds, and squirreling dirty dishes under the sink. All accompanied by hyperbolic exclamations about the house being a
pigsty
or looking like a
bomb went off
, and all followed with a flurry of dusting with Pledge. As a girl, Test had never known what all the fuss was about just for friends or family. And, unlike her own adult friends now, who confessed they sounded just like their mothers, Test
still
did not know what the fuss was about. If her friends gave a damn about the lived-­in state of her home, they never said anything. And if they did secretly care, she could give shit.

Test ventured past the Vermont History stacks, past tables and chairs and a rack of newspapers fastened in wooden spines that somehow seemed as ancient now as a rotary phone. Behind the circulation desk, under a sign that read, A
SK (
Q
UIETLY) AN
D
Y
OU
S
HALL
R
ECEIVE
,
sat Calvin Trout. Behind Trout stood a half dozen computer cubicles. The computers were colossal and clumsy-­looking, seemed more ancient than the wooden newspaper spines, if possible. One of them, for God's sake, was a blue Mac G3. As budget-­conscious as she and Claude were, Test made a note to send the school a check. Even $50 would be a godsend.

A sign above the computers read, The Milking Parlor. Pull Up a Stool.

A few patrons sat at the computers, hunched over, faces close to the screens, tap-­tap-­tapping keys like ravenous woodpeckers attacking rotted trees.

Test strode toward Trout.

Calvin Trout was a legend in town, one of the first local characters that lifelong Canaan residents could not wait to tell newcomers about upon the newcomers' arrival.

Trout had been the librarian since card catalogs and microfilm, when the library's vinyl LP of Lenny Bruce's
What I Was Arrested For
had turned into the freedom-­of-­speech battle of Calvin Trout vs. the ­People of Canaan for Responsible Citizenship Group. Calvin had won his battle in a town meeting by instigating his chief nemesis, Gloria Marshall, into such a fury of indignation that the old woman had lost it and shouted at Calvin
shut your fucking pie hole
, thus causing a roar of laughter and undermining all her credibility to censor “indecent language.”

Test had seen pictures of Calvin back in the day. The local paper had run a profile of him once. In the pictures, he was the definition of flamboyance, with his Afro and his striped bell-­bottoms, satin shirts, clogs, and muttonchops.

To this day, his quoting of poetry, the U.S. Constitution, or a rock-­n-­roll lyric to make a point gave him an iconic stature among the kids.

“Cal,” Test said.

Trout looked up from his game of solitaire on his laptop. He ran a hand through his receding hair. His chinos and crew-­neck sweater were wrinkled, his penny loafers scuffed. He stood. He was shorter than Test by half a head.

“I wondered how long it would take you to show,” Trout said.

He must have noted Test's confusion.

“As a figure from Sir Albert Conan Doyle's work once said, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.' ” Cal puffed out his chest and offered the dour profile of Holmes smoking a pipe. “Actually, Holmes never said that. But, you know. Anyway. She, Jessica, was in here all the time. Using the Internet. I was going to call the police. But. Here you are.”

“Here I am,” Test said. “And it's
Arthur
Conan Doyle, not Albert.”

“He knows,” an elderly man with a cane said as he creaked past. “It's a game. To see if
we
know.”

“Do you have a sign-­in log?” Test said.

“We do. But I don't need it. Jessica used one computer, the one in the farthest corner.” He wiggled a finger toward the Milking Parlor. “She used it every Tuesday and Thursday, three thirty to five.”

“I'd like to get on the one she used and see if I can bring up any history during the times she was here,” Test said. “And I'll need the logs.”

Cal rubbed his jaw. “I don't know,” he said.

“I can get a subpoena.”

“I could check the history during her visits myself, give you an idea, see if she was surfing any porn or weirdo dating sites.”

“Porn? In a public library,” Test said.

“Freedom of Speech.”

“We expose kids to that crap in the library?”

“I've mixed emotions about it,” Trout said.

“We never had hard copies of
Hustler
in the library growing up. Just because it's electronic doesn't mean kids need access to the adult world at every turn.” Her voice was clipped and, unexpectedly, if not unjustifiably, nasty. Kids saw too much shit these days. She minimized George and Elizabeth's screen time to a half hour on Friday night and an hour each weekend day. No screens, no iPad or computer or TV Monday through Thursday. They'd get their fill of staring at screens soon enough. She and Claude had raised their kids thus far in believing that their TV only worked on weekend days, if it rained. Which had proved an issue when they got rain all weekend, and as George wised up from exposure to friends with more lax parents.

Porn in the library. It scalded her. Saddened her. The library was supposed to be a safe haven. “Mixed feelings,” she muttered.

“OK,” Cal said, “OK.”

“Don't OK me.”

Cal put his hands up. “I'm guilty.
Freedom of Speech.
What a crock. If that girl was lured by some predator.”

“Forget it,” Test said. “And forget you looking at her history, if there is one. That's my job. I'll be getting a subpoena for the computer anyway, to take it and have it scoured by professionals.” Who those professionals would be, Test had no idea. Normally such work was outsourced and Test would be the one to whom the consultant reported findings. But since it was in connection with Jessica Cumber, it'd be given over to the state police, and be out of her hands. She could allow that, but not until she gave it her own best effort. She'd call Sheila Silvers. Sheila would help. Sheila would not say a word.

“If you'd show me the computer,” Test said.

Trout nodded, his face clouding. “She was a pleasant girl,” he said. “Serious. I've never seen a young girl set her eyebrows so straight one second, then, just when you were about to forget she was a kid, burst into a giggle. They don't make kids like her anymore. They never have, actually. She was one of a kind. I—­” He stopped himself and tugged at the hem of his sweater to straighten it. “We close in five. I'll clear the kids out, then you can have at it.”

Test pulled her cell phone from her backpack.

“No reception here,” Trout said. “Outside, on the green, you can get a bar or two if you stand near the cannon facing west toward Mount Monadnock. But you can go ahead and use my office phone.”

S
HEILA
S
ILVERS SAT
in the cubical named Johnson Farm.

Test sat beside her like an expectant niece waiting for an aunt to produce a goodie. Sheila was a widow in her late fifties. Her husband had passed ten years prior and left her money enough to never work again. Instead, she'd begun an education, eventually gaining her PhD in computer science, and starting a part-­time career. She wore eyeglasses on a chain, though Test had never actually seen her put the glasses on her nose.

Sheila clicked away at keys to reveal the computer's history against the times in the library log Trout had left with them. “There.” She pointed at the screen without touching it with her pink fingernail.

Test leaned closer.

“Her history for the last day she was here. Tuesday. She was logged on for one hour and forty-­two minutes. She browsed an e-­mail account, Veterinarians Society of America, Equine.com, Yahoo, Tufts University. We'll want to get into that e-­mail account.”

It struck Test that none of the browsing history revealed anything that might be of help to schoolwork Jessica had told her mom she needed to do at the library. Neither were the sites at all suspect from what Test knew of Jessica.

“Can we do that here? With no password?” Test said.

“Child's play,” Sheila said. “And if she didn't delete history from the last time she logged on, odds are she didn't delete it any other time. ­People tend to think they're anonymous on a public computer. Leave their history up when they might not on a work computer for instance. Or a home computer, say if a wife is running up the credit card on Internet shopping or the husband is deep into offshore gambling.”

“What if they erase the history?”

“It's there. Desktop History is just a superficial interface to help the user see where she was previously. There's pretty much no way for a layperson to delete anything from a computer. That's the first mistake ­people make using their PC for illicit means. Everywhere you go on the Internet can be traced by someone who knows what they're doing. Which, I do.”

Her fingers worked like a concert pianist's as she typed a complex series of keys.

“Getting a password to get into e-­mails and the like, however,
is
hard. You normally need a warrant or subpoena for one.”

This was true, but that was in the case of investigating a living suspect, not a dead victim.

In the case of a suspect, subpoenas were acquired so law enforcement could approach the carrier, Yahoo or Hotmail or whoever, and they would then retrieve the password from their server, or even get into an individual's e-­mail without a password.

“Getting a password for Jessica, frighteningly, will be much easier than normal, I suspect.”

“How?”

Sheila noted Jessica's e-­mail provider as seen in the history browser and brought up the log-­in page.

“What's her e-­mail address?”

Test didn't know.

“Call someone close to her who does. And keep them on the line.”

Test went to the cordless phone at the circulation desk, dialed 411 and asked for the telephone number for Olivia. She waited as she was connected. A woman answered and Test asked to speak to Olivia. The woman sounded guarded and suspicious, and asked who was calling. Test told her who she was. The woman's tone altered to one of concern and soon Olivia came to the phone. Test kept it brief and pointed, passed along her condolences again, and asked Olivia to remain on the line. “I may need you for a minute or two but it's important,” Test said and returned to Sheila.

Sheila typed in the address, then clicked the link for
forgot password
.

A page came up that asked security questions:

Mother's maiden name:

Test told Sheila, Cumber.

Sheila typed it in.

Name of first pet:

Test asked Olivia.

“What do you want to know that for?” Olivia said.

“I need to know. Please. I can call her mom if you don't know or—­”

“Baxter,” she said. “An old cat she adopted.”

“Baxter,” Test relayed to Sheila, who typed in the name.

“And, last one,” Sheila said, “dream job?”

“Thank you for your help,” Test said to Olivia. “I'm very sorry for—­”

“You're going to get them right, whoever did this?”

“Your help got us closer,” Test said.

She heard Olivia begin to sob and Olivia's mom got on to say that was enough. Test wished her good night. “Veterinarian,” she said to Sheila.

Sheila typed it.

A new screen came up for Sheila to enter a new password in two separate fields.

She did so.

Then she logged in.

“Scary,” Test said.

“Not only that, but now we have a password that, if the user herself were alive, would not know in order to get into her
own
e-­mail. We could then change all the security questions so the owner of the e-­mail could never access their own e-­mail again. Pretend we were that person. Read and respond to all new e-­mails, and old ones.”

Test made note to change all answers to her security questions to ones that made no sense and had no real personal connection to her.

Sheila scrolled down the in-­box. She shook her head in disbelief.

“What?” Test said.

“Barely two days of inactivity and she's flooded with spam. I can print out the in-­boxes to get a line on incoming e-­mail addresses to start, before we go into the body of e-­mails.”

Test knew she should have included North in this. But if something good came of it perhaps it would be good enough information that he'd overlook her leaving him out. If nothing came of it, she'd tell him she did not want to waste his time on a long shot. “Print the addresses,” Test said and took out her notebook and pencil and wrote herself a note.