Helpless

Chapter 41

Rainy heard a knock on the open door of Principal Lester Osborne’s office just as she was gathering up her things to leave. Two girls entered. Rainy was delighted to see that one of them was Lindsey Wells. She glanced over at the other girl and recognized her from a picture in Murphy’s police report as Coach Hawkins’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Jill.

Rainy’s pulse jumped. She had wanted to dig deeper into the Coach Hawkins case, but aside from identifying other girls from Mann’s unusual text image collection, she didn’t have any jurisdiction, let alone reason to investigate. Perhaps Lindsey was going to change all that.

“Hi. Are you still talking to students? Answering questions, I mean,” Lindsey said in an uncertain voice.

“Of course. Of course I am,” Rainy replied, her pulse still hammering away.

Rainy didn’t know what information, if any, Lindsey had shared with Jill about the sexting incident and its connection to Coach Hawkins. Rainy suspected that Lindsey had willingly shared her pictures with the coach, but, of course, that was only her theory and not yet an established fact.

“Let the evidence take you there,” Tomlinson always said.

Whatever the truth, Rainy knew to keep her knowledge of Lindsey’s naked pictures a secret between them. Lindsey didn’t seem to be here to rehash that, anyway. She had a fresh urgency. “Do you girls want to sit down?” Rainy asked.

Lindsey gave her head a quick shake no. “If it’s all right with you, we’d rather stand.”

Both girls shuffled on their feet, and neither would make eye contact with Rainy.

“Okay. Then I’ll stand with you,” Rainy offered. “So, can you tell me your names?”

Rainy looked at Lindsey, her way of communicating that their secret was safe with her.

“Sure, I’m Lindsey Wells.”

Rainy nodded, then looked to Jill. “And you are?” she asked.

“My name is Jill,” the sweet-voiced girl answered. “Jill Hawkins.”

Rainy moved out from behind Principal Osborne’s steel desk. She wanted no barriers between herself and the girls.

The girls leaned their lithe bodies against the concrete wall, looking to Rainy like crookedly hung paintings. Their expressions simultaneously conveyed boredom, nervousness, indifference, and concern.

Teenagers.

“What is it you want to talk about?” Rainy asked.

The girls glanced at each other, then at Rainy, but neither replied. Do you want to tell me why you sent Coach Hawkins your picture? she silently asked Lindsey. Rainy gripped the edge of the desk hard enough to make her fingers ache. “Girls, do you have something to ask me?” Rainy said again. Her investigator’s mind swirled through the many possibilities and connections.

Lindsey broke free from her perch and took a cautious step forward. “Well, in that assembly you were talking about things not being like they seem on the Internet. That story you told about chatting with a boy, but it’s not really a boy. It’s a man.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m just wondering, um… How does somebody make it look like you were doing something on the Internet that you weren’t doing?”

Rainy bit her lower lip. She could guess what Lindsey might be getting at.

“Well, that depends. Can you be more specific?” Easy, Rainy. Easy.

Jill let out an exasperated sigh, as though anticipating how long this was going to take without her intervention. Unlike Lindsey, Jill kept her shoulders rooted against the wall and her arms folded tightly against her chest. “Look, the police think Lindsey wrote these blog posts on Tumblr.com about my dad,” Jill said. “They confiscated her computer.”

“And that’s what you wanted to talk to me about?” Rainy asked. Her heartbeat shifted into fifth gear from fourth.

“I want to know if you can do that,” Jill said. “Lindsey says she didn’t write any blog posts, she doesn’t even have a Tumblr.com account, but the police are saying they can trace the posts back to her home computer. How is that even possible?”

“Well, they’d do it through IP addresses,” Rainy explained. “There are logs that your Internet service provider keeps. We can match those logs up and use it to pinpoint an address.”

Jill’s expression contorted in a way suggestive of someone having eaten something unpleasant. Rainy glanced to Lindsey. “Lindsey is a minor,” Rainy said, “and her identity is legally protected.”

“Yeah, right,” Jill muttered. “Protected.”

“Do you mind telling me how people linked Lindsey with your father’s case?” Rainy asked.

Rainy knew the link was there but couldn’t believe that connection had leaked out to the rest of the Shilo community. Some safeguards.

“Because of Facebook,” Lindsey said. “Somebody created this bogus Facebook profile, and they’ve been using it to spread rumors about me and Coach Hawkins online.”

I’m not so sure they’re rumors, Rainy thought.

“People have been writing really disgusting things about me on my Facebook page,” Jill said. “I had to delete my profile. And forget about the text messages I’m getting.”

“We’re wondering if maybe somebody is trying to get at both of us,” Lindsey suggested. “But it’s nobody on the soccer team. We’re sure of that.”

“How can you be sure?” Rainy said.

It was Lindsey who made a face this time and probably would have said, “Duh! Because we know,” if she and Rainy had been peers.

“So let me get this straight,” Rainy said. “You didn’t make any of those Tumblr blog posts?”

“No.”

“But the police must have good reason to think you did.”

“So you’re saying they have proof?” Lindsey asked, the dismay evident in her voice.

“I’m saying if they think you’re involved, they’ve traced the posts to your home address using an IP address.”

“But I don’t even have a Tumblr.com account. Can somebody make an account and make it look like it’s me?” Lindsey asked.

“That’s a pretty tricky thing to do, Lindsey,” Rainy said. “But if they intercepted your wireless account, they could essentially create content online and the IP trace would lead right back to you. Do you know if your home network is secure?”

Lindsey just shrugged. “I don’t know. My dad got it working ages ago. I know that we use wireless. I can get on the Internet from, like, my kitchen without a cable or anything.”

Rainy just nodded. Home networks were often the most vulnerable to hackers. Without proper security in place, it was relatively easy to hijack those signals. It would explain why Lindsey was unaware of the Tumblr account. Somebody could have been parked on the street using the Wellses’ Wi-Fi signal to make those pages and exchange messages. Probably the same person who created the bogus Facebook profile to accelerate the spread of the rumor.

Lindsey shook her head in disbelief. “So maybe somebody snuck into my house and wrote it,” Lindsey said. “Isn’t that possible?”

“Well, it’s possible,” Rainy said. “Same as somebody hijacking your Wi-Fi signal.”

“Hang on a second.” Lindsey took out her cell phone and dialed. She held the phone to her head and waited for the other party to answer.

“Daddy, it’s me,” Lindsey said into the phone. “Did you ever put a password or anything on our wireless network?”

Rainy watched Lindsey with intent focus. Lindsey pulled the phone away from her mouth.

“He doesn’t think so. He said it was confusing enough just getting it to work. Besides, he says he forgets passwords all the time. Thanks, Daddy. I love you. Bye.” Lindsey ended the call.

Jill looked saddened by the brief exchange. Rainy felt deep sympathy for both girls, but for different reasons.

“So it’s possible somebody did what you said and pretended to be Lindsey?” Jill asked.

“If what your dad said is true, and your Wi-Fi isn’t secure, it’s definitely a possibility.” Rainy confirmed that for the girls as much as she was convincing herself of that fact.

“Jilly, now will you believe me?” Lindsey asked.

“What can we do?” Jill said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “It’s like I want to drop out of school. It’s hell around here for me.”

“For both of us,” Lindsey said.

“I mean, we just got jumped by these three girls,” Jill added. “But I’m convinced of one thing now.”

“What’s that?” Rainy asked.

“Lindsey and my father aren’t having a relationship. I don’t care what the stupid Internet says. My dad thinks that somebody is framing him. Lindsey is saying the same thing. I’m not saying my dad is perfect or anything, but I don’t think he’s, y’know, that kind of person.”

Rainy flashed on James Mann. According to him, he wasn’t that sort of person, either. But according to his computer, his claim was a lie. Maybe, just maybe, Rainy thought, both men were telling the truth.

Rainy took two business cards from her cardholder. She set the cards facedown on Osborne’s desk and wrote her home number on the back of each. She handed each girl a card. “Let me look into this for you, okay? Lindsey, I’ll check out your home network. At least confirm if you have any security set up. So don’t touch anything. Okay?”

“Sure,” Lindsey said.

“But if you need someone to talk to in the interim, you call me, okay?”

The girls nodded. They moved out from behind Osborne’s desk and returned to their prior perch up against the wall. Their expressions shifted from engaged to indifferent. Arms slipped back into tight folds across their chests, like two armadillos curling up into protective balls.

“Focus on school and I’m sure things will work out. I’ll touch base with Sergeant Murphy, too. If he tells me anything about the investigation that I can share with you, I promise I will. Okay?”

“Okay,” they both said.

Jill looked at her watch. “I’m going to be late for English.”

“Lindsey, could you stay a moment so we can make arrangements for me to check out your home network for that security issue?”

“Sure,” Lindsey said.

When they were alone, Rainy said to Lindsey, “Do you really want me to help you?”

“Of course.”

“Then tell me who you sent your pictures to.”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t think I can help.”

Lindsey looked as though Rainy had just punched her in the stomach. Her color drained. “That’s not fair,” she eventually said.

“No, it’s probably not,” Rainy agreed. “But I’m only going to help you if you come clean with me, Lindsey. Did you send your pictures to Coach Hawkins?”

Lindsey made that sour-milk expression again. “God, no. No!”

“Then who? Talk to me. You’re not in trouble. You’re the victim here. Remember that. You’re the victim. All I want to do is help you.”

Lindsey bore holes into the floor with her eyes. She looked anywhere but at Rainy. In a whispered voice, she said, “Tanner.”

“What?”

“You asked me who I sent those pictures to. I texted them to Tanner Farnsworth.”

“Who’s that?” Rainy asked.

“My boyfriend,” said Lindsey. “My soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, I mean.”

“Thank you for being honest with me, Lindsey.”

Lindsey paused for a beat, then asked, “Remember when you wanted to see my cell phone, and I said no?”

“I do.”

“Well, here,” Lindsey said as she handed Rainy her cell phone. “I deleted the messages. But maybe your computer people can still recover who I sent the pictures to. It’ll prove that Tanner got them.”

Rainy took the phone and glanced at the display. “Don’t you need your phone?” she asked.

“I’m getting a new one,” Lindsey said. “New number, too.”

“Mind if I ask you why?”

Lindsey made a pained expression. “When the entire school thinks you’re sleeping with a teacher,” she said, “the only way to survive is to disappear.”