Helpless (30 page)

“What about Tom’s home computer?”

“That came back clean,” Rainy said.

“Because his work computer is easier to access. Somebody would have to trick him into downloading a virus or break into his home to tamper with his home PC.”

“It’s true,” Tom said. “I don’t always lock my office. People are in and out of the building all the time. There aren’t any security cameras, and people know when I’m at practice and won’t be showing up unexpectedly.”

Rainy fell silent. “What I strongly suggest,” she eventually said, with an increasingly severe expression, “is that you think about cutting a deal.”

Marvin leaned over the conference table, closer to Rainy. Tom could see the determination in his face. “Why would my client go through such extreme measures to launder the money he allegedly earned while engaged in this criminal activity, and then suddenly become reckless?” he asked.

“I’d say we’d need Tom to answer that question,” replied Rainy.

Marvin appeared unmoved by her response. He continued. “Then he risks his carefully controlled enterprise, which he’d allegedly run in secret for years, by having an affair with one of the girls?”

“Attraction can make you do stupid things,” said Rainy.

“And nobody in Shilo sees Tom coming and going,” Marvin said. “No one notices him getting close to their kids. Nobody ever raised an alarm. No police reports filed. No request to investigate. Does that really make sense to you, Agent Miles? Do you really believe that to be true?”

“I believe in following the evidence,” answered Rainy. “Not forming conclusions.”

Marvin said, “And you think Lindsey could have kept this from her mother? All the other girls?”

“Kids keep secrets from their parents all the time,” Rainy said. “Secrets are an essential part of growing up. We all have them. We all keep them. Teenagers, especially girls, are highly impressionable. They could have been convinced to stay quiet. Tom could have made these girls feel special, important, and different from the others. And they’d keep on feeling that way. They’d feel that way for as long as what they were doing stayed secret. That’s what I believe.”

“Agent Miles,” Tom said, “do you have any kids?”

Marvin shot Tom a disapproving glance. Tom held up his hand to urge patience from his attorney.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Rainy replied.

“It’s relevant because you’d think differently about me if you knew what it felt like to be a parent.”

“I still don’t see—”

“I’m not saying you’d think I was innocent,” Tom continued, “but I do think a part of you would wonder if I was like most parents. If I spent my every waking moment thinking about my kid’s well-being. If I’d sacrifice my own life for hers. If I’d do everything in my power to make sure my child had every possible advantage in life. You’d wonder that about me. I believe that’s true. And then you’d wonder how in the hell I could do what I’ve been accused of doing.”

“What is it you want from me, Mr. Hawkins?”

“Tom, please,” he said. He looked Rainy in the eyes. Something about her expression had shifted. Where before he’d seen judgment, now he saw a trace of doubt.

“What is it you want from me, Tom?”

“What I want is for you to look at the evidence again,” Tom said. “But this time, instead of hoping that you’ve miraculously found your missing link, try using a different approach.”

“What approach would that be?” asked Rainy.

“This time, try to think of me as an innocent man.” Tom held Rainy’s gaze for a moment. He felt something pass between them. It wasn’t that she suddenly believed him to be innocent. But he could see now that she wanted him to be innocent.

It was a start.

Chapter 45

T
om went out to get the mail a few hours before nightfall. He sifted through a stack of bills on his walk back up the driveway (those would have to wait), saw a promotional flyer from the Plenty Market (he’d canceled his customer loyalty card), and noticed one surprising item in the mix. It was a letter, addressed to him, from Adriana Boyd.

With his back against the kitchen counter, Tom opened the letter using a butter knife. Inside, he found a slender, hand-bordered card, monogrammed with Adriana’s name. Her handwritten note, written in purple pen and elegantly scripted, wasn’t dated.

Dear Tom,

I hope this note finds you as well as can be. I believe in you and know that you’ll soon be cleared of any wrongdoing. I also wanted to apologize for Roland’s recent behavior. I know that he’s told you to keep away from me. He’s asked that I do the same with you. I’m respecting my husband’s wishes only in part, as I’m keeping you in my thoughts and prayers each day. It is important to me that you know you haven’t been forgotten.

I believe in you.

With care and concern,

Adriana

Tom reread Adriana’s card before slipping it back in its envelope. He tucked the card and envelope inside the kitchen junk drawer, buried underneath a couple rolls of Scotch tape, pens, pencils, an address book, and one partially used disposable camera.

The phone rang. He answered it and smiled before the caller could finish her greeting.

“Hi, Dad,” Jill said. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m over at Lindsey’s house. We’re studying for a chem test tomorrow.”

“Hey!” Tom said. “I was just about to text you, but it’s a lot nicer hearing your voice.”

The conversation that followed wasn’t anything more extraordinary than a parent and child playing catch-up: “How are you? What’s new at school? What have you been up to?” After about ten minutes of back-and-forth chitchat, Tom got the sense his daughter wanted to end the call. It was just one of the many ways that he’d come to know Jill’s personality better.

“I hope you’ve been eating well,” Jill said to him.

“Hey, who’s the parent here?” Tom replied. “Anyway, I’m eating fine.”

“Dad, you can’t cook.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“Whatever. I should probably get back to studying with Lindsey.”

Tom glanced over at the kitchen table, where he’d been doing some studying of his own. On that table were six large legal tomes, each splayed open, plus a bunch of printed-out documents and spiral-bound notebooks filled with Tom’s research on child pornography and legal defenses. He’d drawn only one conclusion based on the cases he’d studied: Marvin really had his work cut out for him.

“I’m so glad you and Lindsey have reconciled,” said Tom.

“Me too,” Jill said.

“You know you can come home anytime,” Tom said to her. “You don’t have to stay at the Kalinowskis’ if you don’t want to.”

Jill went quiet, and Tom allowed her to process without interruption.

“Maybe I will,” she eventually said.

“Your room is waiting.”

“Okay. Well, I really should keep cramming ... unless you happen to know anything about the photoelectric effect.”

“Does it have anything to do with taking pictures?”

“Good night, Dad,” Jill said with a groan.

“Good night.”

Tom set the cordless phone back in its cradle. He hadn’t made it back over to the kitchen table when the phone rang again. Tom answered it on the second ring, assuming it was Jill calling him back.

“Whatcha forget?” he asked.

“Nothing,” a man said in a raspy, monotonous tone. Tom’s pulse kicked up a notch or two.

“Who is this?” asked Tom.

“You don’t know my voice, but I’m pretty sure you’d recognize my face.”

Tom’s muscles tightened like a coil spring poised to unleash. He gripped the edge of the kitchen counter hard enough to make his fingers hurt.

“Lange? Is that you?”

“The one and only. We need to talk.”

“I’d say. Come on over. I’ll make us some tea.”

Lange laughed lightly into the phone. “Can’t do that, compadre,” he said.

“Well then, why don’t you start by telling me why you broke into Kelly’s house?”

“You think you know what’s happening here, Tom, but I’m calling to tell you that you’re wrong. I’m not the enemy. Not even close.”

“Funny, my friends don’t spy on me from the woods.”

“It wasn’t me who broke into Kelly’s house,” Lange said. “And I’m not the one who chased her into the woods and down that ravine, either. But I know who did, why they did it, and why you’re being set up to look like a kiddie porn collector.”

Tom took a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. “Who is setting me up, Lange?” he asked. “What does this have to do with what happened to Kelly?”

“I can’t tell you that over the phone, Tom. When you see what I have to show you, then you’ll understand. And it’s not what you think. You don’t have the slightest clue why they think you’re so dangerous.”

“Who is ‘they’?” Tom shouted into the phone.

“Meet me at Johnny Rockets in one hour,” Lange said. “And come alone, or this time I’ll vanish for good.”

“Why should I trust you?”

Tom thought he heard Lange sigh into the phone. “I know you’ve been looking for me,” Lange said. “You. Roland. That nosy attorney of yours. I stayed hidden because I was afraid of getting caught.”

“Why show yourself now?”

“Because you need to see what I have,” Lange said. “And I need you to protect me from them.”

Chapter 46

R
ainy and Carter ordered dinner from Monument Market. It was a credit to Monument’s sandwiches, because hours earlier they’d ordered lunch there, too.

Sergeant Brendan Murphy had set them up in the Shilo Police Department’s only interrogation room. From there they were able to conduct a second forensic audit on Hawkins’s laptop computer. Murphy had no objection to granting the FBI access to Tom Hawkins’s confiscated laptop. His only request, which had actually been relayed to the agents from the D.A. herself, was that the state be able to use whatever new evidence the FBI dug up. Rainy assured Murphy that the FBI would disclose anything new that they found. She didn’t reveal that she had a secret agenda in returning to Shilo: she needed to settle her growing doubts about Tom Hawkins’s guilt.

The facts of the Hawkins case more than just puzzled Rainy. She found them downright troubling. First, Lindsey Wells admitted to sending pictures of herself to Tanner Farnsworth, but not to Tom Hawkins. Why not to the man she was allegedly having an affair with? How did Hawkins end up with her pictures? She had a hard time believing Tanner Farnsworth worked for Tom Hawkins, not the way he talked about the coach—dismissively, and with evident disdain.

Lindsey wasn’t the only girl from Shilo who had lied about her sexts, either. So far Rainy had interviewed six of the ten girls from Shilo’s text image collection (the other four were away at college). Rainy got the girls to sign and date the back of the verification images while their parents looked on with disappointment. Though the girls admitted that the images were of them (hard to deny), none confessed to having text messaged them to anybody. Not to Tanner Farnsworth. Not to Coach Hawkins. Same as Lindsey, the girls claimed to have no idea how James Mann ended up with their naked pictures.

Something that Marvin Pressman had said stuck with Rainy as well. It was the
convenience
of it all. Here she was, hunting for James Mann’s supplier, and Tom Hawkins literally fell into her lap. The chances that that was just a lucky break were about the same as someone breaking Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak.

But how would the jury see it?

Guilty, that’s how.
Rainy knew it and Carter did, too.

Carter spent a few hours re-creating a mirror image of Hawkins’s laptop on a machine he’d brought with him, then returned the laptop to Murphy. Mindful of maintaining the integrity of the evidence, he used techniques similar to those CART employed to safeguard the machine. Carter had run through several series of advanced computer forensic tests on the mirror image. He kept searching for that single bit of exculpatory evidence that Rainy had come to believe he’d find. So far, though, they hadn’t found a byte of evidence that suggested Tom Hawkins was an innocent man.

“So we’ve found archival evidence that shows illegal transactions going back several years,” Rainy said.

“Which says to me he’s been running this enterprise primarily from this machine,” Carter replied.

“But why use his work computer?” Rainy said, recalling how Marvin drew her attention to that unusual choice. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know, Rainy,” Carter said. The tone of his voice held a tinge of exasperation.

He thinks I’m chasing shadows,
Rainy thought.

“All I can tell you is that there is a lot of computer evidence to say Tom Hawkins was running a business selling images that appear to be teenage girls sexting, to interested parties all over the Internet. He used Leterg to mask the IP and MAC addresses of his clients. But we’ve got transaction logs that show the dates and times during which illegal images were sent out.”

“And?”

“And we’ve matched those dates to when Mann downloaded images. The image batch Mann acquired equaled the cumulative file size of the entire Shilo text image collection found on Hawkins’s computer. The exact same byte size. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck ...”

“But we can’t ID any other of Tom’s alleged customers,” Rainy said.

“Oh, it’s ‘alleged’ now? How interesting.”

“He hasn’t been convicted,” Rainy said defensively.

Carter gave a knowing smile, which Rainy didn’t at all appreciate.

“There’s not a direct IP link,” Carter said. “We wouldn’t have been able to link Hawkins to Mann if it wasn’t for your work with Clarence Stern. But the circumstantial evidence is more than enough to prove our case. From log analysis we know that Hawkins is the distributor here. And his text image collection of forty different girls matches what we recovered off James Mann’s machine. The exact same. Down to the image.”