Helpless

Chapter 25

Empty containers of Chinese food were strewn about the Lair. Half that number of discarded cans of Diet Coke had been tossed into the recycle bin. Rainy used chopsticks to nibble at the remnants from a sixth container, a spicy chicken and oyster sauce dish, which she ate simply for want of something to do. Carter typed with one hand as he slurped out the last drops of his soda. Even one-handed, Rainy figured Carter was doubling her productivity.

Rainy had just finished a quick phone conversation with Angie Didomenico that left her feeling charged up, but puzzled.

“I thought you should know,” Didomenico had said, “that there have been some new developments pertaining to our longtime girls’ soccer coach, Tom Hawkins.”

“Developments?”

“There have been some escalating allegations that he’s been sexually involved with one of his players.”

Rainy’s ears perked up, and she asked Didomenico for an explanation. Rainy jotted down Tom Hawkins’s name in her notebook as Didomenico filled in the background information. It was certainly an interesting development. Perhaps more so if the Shilo police were able to ID whoever wrote the blog posts and created the Facebook account.

Most interesting to Rainy, Tom Hawkins himself had mentioned having received a sexually explicit text message from an unknown teenage girl.

“Now, I should say that the school board is fully backing Tom Hawkins,” Didomenico went on. “He’s been a standout coach and guidance counselor for our school system for years. We have tremendous confidence that this will all be sorted out, but in light of your investigation, I thought you should at least be aware of what’s going on here.”

“Is there any evidence that clears the coach?”

“Unsure,” Didomenico said. “But Coach Hawkins has an impeccable reputation. The students love him. His ex-wife recently died. Police believe she walked in on a robbery, and things escalated from there. But Coach Hawkins’s relationship with his ex was less than cordial, and there’s been talk. He came in to speak with me about all this just a while ago. He’s convinced somebody is out to destroy his reputation, but no one has any idea why. He’s won the state championship for the past several years. Perhaps it’s someone from a rival program, jealous of his success.”

If Rainy’s FBI training had taught her anything, it was never to overlook a coincidence. Mann had downloaded a large collection of sexts from an unknown source. Hawkins came forward about receiving a sext, but only after he’d been accused online of sleeping with a player on his team.

Did Hawkins come clean about the images he received because he knew the walls were closing in?

Was there a connection between James Mann and the high school coach?

A little bit of background checking should give her an answer.

Rainy had access to classified databases. Many of them contained the sort of information privacy advocates feared the U.S. government collected on its citizens. Thank you, Patriot Act. Tom Hawkins, Rainy soon learned, served his country, had a daughter, and as Didomenico said, used to have an ex-wife. He had never been arrested and, aside from his divorce, had never been to court.

Mann had a similar history of walking on the right side of the law. Married his college sweetheart. A respectable businessman. His only courtroom appearances had been for jury duty. Rainy made a fan of the photographs from James Mann’s Text Image Collection on the surface of her workstation. She studied the images with a steady focus. She looked for connections that didn’t seem to exist.

The two men hadn’t attended any school together. Their paths had never crossed at work or in the service (Mann had never served). From what Rainy could gather, these two were no more connected than motorists passing on the highway. Rainy could ask James Mann these questions herself but doubted his lawyer would allow it.

Plenty of investigative work remained to be done, even without Mann’s help. Rainy reached for a yellow legal pad. She jotted down the facts as she knew them.

Ten girls from Shilo H.S. took pictures of themselves.

Who did they send them to? Where did they post them?

Four of the girls had graduated but were students when Hawkins was coach.

Six were still students.

Hawkins coached Lindsey Wells!!

Rainy circled that statement several times.

There were forty different girls in James Mann’s Text Image Collection.

All the other images on Mann’s computer were from known series per the CVIP.

Very unusual!

None of the images in the Text Image Collection were known.

Did the girls text the images? Did they post them online? They texted them.

Rainy circled that statement several times as well and next to it wrote in parentheses:

(Conclusion, not fact, that’s my guess!)

Beneath that she wrote in all capital letters—HOW DID MANN GET THESE PICTURES? She drew a large question mark beside it.

Did he have people working for him? Online recruiting?? Did he know these girls?

She let out a heavy breath and sat quietly. She didn’t want to force herself into any more conclusions. If she opened herself up to possibilities, flexed her mind enough, a workable theory would come to her. At least, it sometimes did.

Instead, her phone rang.

“This is Agent Miles,” she said.

“Agent Miles, my name is Sergeant Brendan Murphy with the Shilo Police Department. I called the New Hampshire FBI office, and they directed me to you.”

Rainy felt her pulse accelerate. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

“We’ve been conducting an investigation into some suspicious activity involving a student and a teacher in our high school. A coach, specifically.”

“Go on,” Rainy said. She wanted Murphy to talk first. She’d tell him what she was investigating if it seemed connected.

“Well, our forensics guys have come back with some pretty interesting stuff.”

“What sort of interesting stuff?”

“Have you ever heard of a program called Leterg?”

Rainy’s whole body tensed. “I have,” she said.

“Look, normally we like to do our own homework,” Murphy said. “But we’ve had to pull in computer forensic help from the state police. They’ve taken a couple cracks at figuring out what this guy was up to, and we’ve hit a couple of roadblocks.”

“What are you asking?”

“Wondering if you might be able to spare some of your computer expert’s time to help us gather the evidence.”

“Who’s the coach?” Rainy asked, though she already knew the answer. Her head was spinning with possibilities. Connections were beginning to appear.

“The guy’s name is Hawkins. Tom Hawkins.”

“When do you need us?”

“Soon as possible. We want to move on this thing.”

“Hold on a second,” Rainy said. She covered the phone’s receiver with her hand and looked over at Carter.

“Do you have any plans tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m taking Gigi out to dinner and a movie. Why?”

“Cancel them, send your wife flowers, and grab your coat,” Rainy said. “We’re taking a drive north to Shilo.”