The Match

Chapter Twelve

Rola said, “Peter Bennett is most likely dead.”

“I know.”

“I don’t get why you’re looking for him.”

Rola Naser, Wilde’s foster sister, and her family lived in a classic 1970s split-level with a bloated addition on the back. A muddled mishmash of children’s play equipment — bicycles, tricycles, pogo sticks, bright orange plastic baseball bats, a lacrosse goal, dolls, trucks — was scattered across the front yard as though someone had strewn them from a great height.

They sat at the kitchen table. One of Rola’s kids was on Wilde’s knee. Another was eating a jelly donut, wearing a lot of it on her face. The two oldest were in the corner working on a TikTok dance, which involved repeatedly playing a song that asked the musical question, “Why you so obsessed with me?”

Wilde bounced the kid on his knee to prevent him from crying. “You spent years pushing me to find out about my biological family.”

“Truth.”

“Nagged me ad nauseam about it.”

“Truth.”

“So?”

“So Peter Bennett’s sister — what was her name again?”

“Vicky Chiba.”

“Right. She said she would make up a family tree for you, right?”

“Yes.”

Rola turned her palms toward the sky. “She’s older than her brother, probably knows more about the family than he does. So that’s all you need, right? I read about Peter Bennett online, and he sounds like a major-league douchenozzle. Why do we need to help him?”

Explaining would take too long and probably not make sense, even to him. “Can we just skip my motivations for now?”

“If you want. Can I fix you something to eat? And by ‘fix’ I mean, should I order more pizza?”

“I’m okay.”

“Doesn’t matter. I already ordered an extra pie. What can I do to help?”

Wilde gestured with his chin toward the laptop. “Mind if I use that?”

Rola hit a few keys and turned it to face him. Wilde snaked his hand around little Charlie’s waist, so he could type and balance the kid at the same time. He brought up Gmail.

“What’s up?”

“I watched Vicky Chiba type in Peter’s email address and password.”

“Let me guess. You memorized the password.”

He nodded.

“Without her knowledge?”

He nodded again.

“What’s the password?”

“LoveJenn447.”

He typed that into the password field, hit return, and bingo, he was in. Wilde started scanning through the emails. It was just as Vicky had said — nothing useful, nothing personal. Wilde checked the trash folder. Again nothing. He would take a deeper dive later.

“Any idea what the 447 stands for?” Rola asked.

“Nope.”

“Do you not trust the sister? Or should I say, your cousin?”

“It’s not that,” Wilde said.

He explained how Vicky had gotten a little queasy over the privacy invasion when she’d realized that her brother had changed his Instagram password. Using the LoveJenn447 password, Wilde tried to sign in to Peter’s Instagram.

No. Incorrect password.

Wilde had expected that. Below the message was the common link asking him if he’d forgotten his password and would he like to reset it. He clicked on it. When he did, Instagram, like pretty much every website after a password reset request, sent a link to the email on file.

The email on file was, drum roll, the Gmail account Wilde had gotten access to by watching Vicky Chiba sign in.

“Clever,” Rola said, when he explained it to her. “Primitive. But clever.”

“My epitaph,” Wilde said. He waited for the email to come in from Instagram. When it did, he changed the password to something benign. Then he signed back into Instagram with the new password. He hit the message icon. There were tons in the “All Request” messages, but Wilde clicked to the “primary” category.

The messages from DogLufegnev were right on top.

Rola was reading over his shoulder as Wilde clicked on the conversation.

DogLufegnev then sent a photo — a more graphic photo than the ones Marnie had produced for that podcast. Under the image was another message.

There were no time stamps, so it was hard to say how fast Peter Bennett replied.

Rola was covering little Charlie’s eyes. “Wow.”

“Yes.”

“Nice lighting on the dick pic too,” she said.

“You want me to print it out for you?”

“Just send me a screenshot. So that’s it? DogWhatever didn’t reply to Peter’s offer to meet?”

“Not on here. But Peter gave him or her his cell phone. He may have called or texted. Any way we can trace down DogLufegnev?”

Rola opened the refrigerator, grabbed an apple, tossed it to her son Elijah. “Our best hope is that this guy — or girl, we don’t know, do we? — our best hope is that DogWhatever sent a text message or called Peter Bennett’s phone.”

“And if Dog didn’t?”

Rola shrugged. “We can try to track them down via the Instagram account, but it’s harder. We do this work a lot nowadays, mostly on a corporate level. So many fake accounts are created to slander and harass. Like, I mean, look at your cousin’s account. People are making death threats. It’s crazy. Why do these trolls care about people they don’t know? Anyway, we get stuff like this all the time, though for more concrete reasons.”

“But can you still find their real identities?”

“Sometimes. There are always digital footprints. We can often do metadata tracing or link analysis or advanced search tools, stuff like that. If the case is severe, like a real death threat, we can get a subpoena and try to provide the guy’s IP address. I assume you want to find this DogWhatever guy.”

“I do.”

“Let me get my best people on it.”

“Thank you.”

“But Wilde?”

He waited.

“You don’t owe Peter Bennett a thing.”