Helpless

Chapter 78

Rainy couldn’t wait to have her little chat with Mitchell Boyd. Depending on his reaction to her questions, she’d decide the next best move. The federal magistrate might already have enough probable cause to issue an arrest with the watermark evidence alone, but Rainy didn’t want to burn through the opportunity. She’d present Mitchell with her findings, ask for another consent search, and fully expected him to become much less cooperative. That little turnaround should be more than enough to guarantee Mitchell’s federal arrest warrant on child pornography charges.

Rainy rang the front door bell and waited. Seconds passed. She rang the bell again. Mitchell opened the door, but only a crack. Rainy flashed him her badge.

“Hi, Mitchell,” she said. “Mind if I come in and have a word with you?”

“Why?”

“Are your parents at home?”

“My mom’s here.”

“Good. Can we come in and talk?”

Mitchell pulled the door open wider. Rainy and Carter stepped into the high-ceilinged foyer of the Boyds’ grand residence, with the majestic corkscrew staircase at its center. Rainy looked up to see Adriana descending the stairs.

“Who’s the daytime soap star?” Carter whispered into Rainy’s ear.

“That’s Mama,” said Rainy.

“Mamma mia!” Carter whispered back.

“Hello. Can I help you?” Adriana asked the agents as soon as she reached the landing.

Rainy and Carter inadvertently synchronized the flashing of their badges.

“We met at Cathleen Wells’s house a few weeks ago,” Rainy said. “My name is Special Agent Loraine Miles, and this is Special Agent Carter Dumas. We’re with the FBI’s Innocent Images National Initiative. We’d like to have a few words with your son, if that’s all right with you.”

“What’s this all about?” Adriana asked, her face long with worry.

“We’d like him to explain something we’ve discovered as part of an ongoing investigation.”

From within a manila envelope, Carter extracted a color printout of the once hidden digital watermark. He handed the glossy paper, ink still fresh, over to Adriana. The three huddled close.

“What is this?” Adriana asked.

“It’s a watermark,” Rainy said. “We believe the creator of this watermark is also a distributor of illegal images. We also think the same distributor automatically applied Internet addresses to these watermarked images to keep track of who was downloading the content and from where.”

“And you think Mitchell had something to do with this, because the watermark matches his tattoo?”

“We’d sure like to ask him a few questions.”

“Mitchell, do you have anything to say about this?” Adriana asked in a harsh tone, turning around to address her son.

To Rainy’s surprise, Mitchell didn’t answer her back. Alarmed, she realized why.

Mitchell Boyd wasn’t with them in the foyer anymore.