The Cinderella Murder

15

Dwight Cook closed and locked the door to his office, located far from most of REACH’s employees. That was the way he liked it.

Dwight constantly felt all these kids looking at him, wanting to know the tall, lanky billionaire who still dressed like a teenage nerd but was nevertheless pursued by several well-known supermodels. His employees assumed that Dwight’s office was isolated because he did not want to be disturbed. The truth was that Dwight could not possibly run this business the way it needed to be run if he made too many connections to the people who worked for him.

Dwight had realized in middle school that he wasn’t like other people. It wasn’t that his own behavior was so unusual, at least not that he could determine. Instead, he was different in his reactions to other people. It was as if he heard voices more loudly, perceived movements to be bigger and faster, and felt every single handshake and hug more intensely. Some people-too many of them-were simply too much for him.

For one year, in ninth grade, his school placed him on a “special” education track, suspecting that he suffered from some form of “autism-related disorder,” despite the absence of an official diagnosis. He remained in regular classes and still dominated the grading curves. But the teachers treated him differently. They stood a little farther from him, spoke more slowly. He had been labeled.

On the last day of school, he told his parents that he would run away unless he could start tenth grade in a new school. No special treatment, no labels. Because although Dwight was different from other people, he’d read enough books about autism, Asperger’s, ADD, and ADHD to know that those labels didn’t apply to him. Each of those conditions was supposedly accompanied by a lack of emotional connection. Dwight, in his view, was the opposite. He had the ability to feel so connected to a person that the sensation was overwhelming.

Take today’s reunion with Nicole, for example. He had forced himself to sit still in his seat across from her, to not touch her. He had a hard time maintaining eye contact because to hold her gaze too long would have brought him to tears. She was a living, breathing, vivid memory of Susan. He couldn’t look at her without remembering the searing pain he had felt at Susan’s kindhearted attempts to play matchmaker between him and Nicole. How could Susan have been blind to the fact that he loved her?

He hit the space bar of his computer’s keyboard to wake up the screen. Every once in a while, misperceptions about him came in handy. Right now, for instance, the physical separation between him and his employees would ensure that nothing interrupted his activities.

He opened the Internet browser and Googled “Cinderella Murder Susan Dempsey.” He suppressed a bite of anger at the fact that even he used Google most of the time as his search engine. REACH was a pioneer in changing the way people searched for information on the Internet. But then Google came along, extended the idea a step or two, and added some cool graphics and a name that was fun to say. The rest was high-tech history.

Still, Dwight couldn’t complain about his success. He’d made enough money to live comfortably for ten lifetimes.

He clicked through the search results. He found nothing new since the last time-probably a year ago-that he had checked for any developments about his friend’s unsolved murder.

He remembered sitting at his computer twenty years earlier, knowing that he was probably among the top twenty people in the world when it came to maneuvering his way around the quickly changing online world. Back then, people still used telephones and in-person conversations to convey information. The police department produced hard copies of reports and faxed them to prosecutors. He had wanted to know the truth about the investigation into Susan’s death so desperately-who knew what? What did the police know?-but his skills could only get him so far at the time. The information simply wasn’t digitized.

Now every private thought had a way of casting a technological footprint that he could track. But he was the founder, chairman, and CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and hacking into private servers and e-mail accounts was a serious crime.

He closed his eyes and pictured Susan. How many times had he sat outside her dorm, hoping to catch a glimpse of her as she led an entirely separate life from the one they had together at the lab? This television show would be a onetime opportunity-every suspect on camera, questioned anew. Frank Parker, the man who seemed to care more about the success of his movie than Susan’s death. Madison Meyer, who always seemed resentful of Nicole and Susan. Keith Ratner, who never realized how lucky he was to have a girl like Susan.

Being on this television show would be a small price to pay. He would know far more than even the show’s producers. Dwight spun his office chair in a circle and cracked his knuckles.

It was time to get to work.