Helpless

Chapter 57

Rainy made Carter go with her to Mann’s apartment. She carried a firearm and knew how to use it, but she wasn’t stupid, either. She’d be happy to look at the evidence James Mann claimed to have, but only with armed backup at her side.

Mann’s new residence was a far cry from his former home. Rainy knew that Mann and his wife had separated, and that Mann had spent a week or so at a Motel 6 after he posted bail. Other than that, she didn’t know much about his life after his arrest. She didn’t know he had found this place to live. Mann’s apartment building was in deplorable condition and was located in a rather sketchy section of Brighton, a neighborhood of Boston.

Rainy pushed her finger against the apartment’s grimy buzzer. The door unlocked, and they entered a dark foyer. They climbed two flights of paint-chipped wooden stairs.

James Mann opened his apartment door when they reached the second landing. Mann looked tired. His skin color looked gray; his eyes were sunken and marred by dark rings. Rainy gave Mann and his rail-thin body three months to survive in prison. Four at the outside.

The floor to Mann’s dingy apartment was littered with file folders stuffed with papers. She saw pictures of his wife and kids scattered about the room, in dull or dusty frames. It looked like a haphazard attempt to restore order to a disordered life.

Furniture in the poorly lit studio apartment was bleak at best. Mann had laid a mattress askew on the varnished wood floor. A patchwork fabric couch and orange velvet armchair took up one corner of the room. The armchair had enough holes to make it look spotted. The whole apartment smelled like an animal.

“Thanks for coming over,” Mann said. He gestured over to the couch, inviting Rainy and Carter to sit.

“We’re fine to stand,” Rainy said. “Let’s get to the point. What evidence did you want to show us?”

Mann walked over to his laptop computer and took out a flash drive. He handed the storage key to Rainy.

“I used to be a real person,” Mann said. “With a wife I loved. Children I cherished. A job I was a passionate about—”

“You were arrested for a crime against children, Mr. Mann,” said Carter.

“Let me finish,” Mann said. “I have a rather extensive network of people I’ve met along the way. People from my career who still believe in me. Who believe, despite my current situation.”

“And what’s your point?” Carter asked.

“I’ve spent every minute since I posted bail trying to figure out how I can prove to you that I didn’t do this.”

Carter just scoffed. “And…”

“I’ve got a lot of enemies. I climbed the ladder. I’m sure I stepped on plenty of toes along the way. A friend of mine, somebody I’d rather not name, encouraged me to take a different approach.”

“What approach would that be?” Rainy asked. She had to admit that he’d managed to get her interest. She could hear the conviction in his voice. She understood now that his apparent disregard for himself was the result of an intense and focused effort. This was a man who was possessed with getting to the truth. A man who reminded her, in some ways, of Tom Hawkins.

“He told me to try to clear my name the same way you were going to try and prove my guilt. I took his advice to heart. I learned all about your methods. I know about the Child Victim Identification Program. The clearinghouse, if you will, for child pornography cases, like mine.”

“Okay. Good for you.” Carter looked and sounded frustrated. Rainy touched his arm to urge him to stay patient.

“CVIP analysts use the Child Recognition and Identification System to help them identify children and then coordinate a response. Rescue efforts. Evidence for trials.”

“You’ve done your homework,” Rainy said.

“I know that the software generates a digital fingerprint for each image—a hash value, I believe it’s called. It’s that identifier which helps to match images to a known series, or if there is no digital fingerprint match, then it is used to designate a new one.”

“Where is this going?” asked Rainy. “What’s on the flash drive?”

“My friend gave me some names to look up. Girls whose images I supposedly bought from someone. The plan was simple. By figuring out where I could buy the real images, I’d be able to find the real source. Hopefully, I’d be able to get us both out of trouble.”

“You did what?” Rainy said.

“Yeah, I have no idea how to procure that type of garbage. But I took the money I could have used for a nicer apartment and paid a computer professional to help me figure it out.”

“What did you reel in?” asked Carter.

“A lot of pictures.”

“So you re-created our case against you? And you’re confessing to another crime in the process. Do you know that?” said Rainy.

“I was in a learning mode,” Mann said. “I wanted to know who distributes these images. Who buys them. Who sells them. How they do it. How they keep from getting caught.”

“So?” Now it was Rainy’s turn to sound frustrated.

“When I say I wanted to learn about it, I mean I treated it like a job. I found out how these predators hide in a web of virtual servers. I learned the questions they ask to get the police to reveal themselves. I know how money gets secretly exchanged. My computer guy made me a database of everything he found and where he found it.”

“You want to give us a bunch of new sources of child pornography in exchange for our dropping the case against you?” Rainy asked.

“No. I’ll give you that, anyway,” said Mann. “But in the process we found something unusual that I thought you should know about.”

“And that would be?” Rainy inquired.

“My own Lisbeth Salander generated digital fingerprints, those hash values, for all the images he found, just like you guys do. He did it to keep all the images organized. We could tell by looking at the digital fingerprint of each image how many different sources were distributing the identical image.”

“We’re not hiring, if that’s what you’re after,” Carter said.

Mann returned a weak smile. “There are images on this flash drive, dozens of them, that look to be the exact same to me. Same composition. Same background. Same subject. But these here are not like the other duplicates we found,” Mann said.

“And why is that?” asked Rainy.

“Even though these images appear to be exact duplicates of one another, their digital fingerprints, the hash values each image generated, were all different. All the other duplicates my guy sourced generated identical hash values. These didn’t.”

“That’s your proof?” Rainy wondered.

“These pictures appear to be identical in every way. So, logically, they should produce an identical fingerprint.”

“Like I said, that’s your proof of innocence?” said Rainy.

Mann’s expression revealed an infinite sorrow. “My friend told me not to ignore any outliers.”

Rainy felt the flesh on the back of her neck begin to rise.

That sounds like something Tom’s lawyer would have said.

“I don’t know if this will in fact prove my innocence. I needed something to lure you into coming over here and taking a look. But I do know that these images are outliers. They’re the only duplicates that don’t generate the same hash values. I need to understand why. No stone left uncovered. This is my life on the line, Agent Miles.”

“Okay, we’ll do that for you,” said Rainy. “But you and this jock of yours are going to turn over all the evidence you’ve gathered.”

“I’ve got it ready to send to you,” Mann said. “But first you’ll have to promise that there will be no charges against him, or new ones against me.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Rainy said.

“And there’s one other thing,” Mann said. “The images with the hash values that don’t match but should—they look similar to me.”

“Yeah? In what way?” asked Carter.

“They all look like they were taken with a cell phone camera.”