Chapter 3 The Backwards Trail
(Author's Note: Although I program computers for a living, I don't know whether an anonymous EMail message can be traced in the way described. Please accept it for the sake of the general story)
The next morning, at the office, Will carefully read the local paper. He didn't expect to find any information that he didn't already know, but he thought it important to find out what information the public was getting. He was rather impressed to see that the newspaper was avoiding too much speculation, frankly admitting that the investigation was still under wraps.
One of the subsidiary articles had Kevin's name on it, and Will read that out of simple fatherly pride. Kevin had persuaded the editor to let him cover the fight at school (Lily's idea, according to Helen) and had interviewed several students and their parents over the phone. Will found the reaction of Rabbi Polonski, Grace's father, particularly interesting.
Rabbi Polonski If a man walks up to a woman on the street and threatens to beat her up, we call that "assault" and he gets sent to prison as a felon. But when it happens in a school it's called "bullying" and considered somehow inevitable. In this case a girl is singled out for attack simply because she is Muslim. My daughter has to go to her rescue, then she requires rescuing herself. I don't even know why those football players got involved--
Interviewer: (Kevin) The quarterback told me in an interview that he liked Miss Begh, because she let his girlfriend go horseback riding at her farm.
RPi: It was nice of him, but completely accidental. Where were the authorities in all this? They should have been creating an atmosphere of peace and tolerance, and if they failed in that, at least punished the violence after the fact..
Interviewer: Don't you think it's somewhat ironic, a Jewish girl going to the defense of a Muslim one?
(Will knew that was a deliberate leading question to get a certain response from the rabbi. Kevin knew Grace well enough to know that she would not let ethnic differences get in the way of justice, even if the bond was far less intense than the one Grace had with his younger siblings Joan and Luke. In the fiction of the article he was an objective interviewer, with no prior acquaintance with the subject)
RP This isn't a matter of Jew and Muslim, or Christian for that matter. It's a matter of oppressor and oppressed.
Will did not usually agree with religious figures, but in this case he and the rabbi were in full agreement, without even having spoke to each other. Like the rabbi, Will was simultaneously proud that his kids went to the aid of a victim, and angry that it was necessary, and that they got hurt in the process.
He hastily put the paper down as Calvin Lader came in. Lader was one of the forensic experts sent from Baltimore and Washington to help with the investigation. Fortunately he respected Will's authority rather than regarding him as a bumbling local. Although Will had a legitimate reason to read the paper, he did not want to look as if he was loafing. "Have you found something?"
Lader put a paper on Will's desk; it was a copy of the bomb warning. "We think so. Whoever put this message on the Internet was very clever about concealing its origin. However, we have been able to trace the passage of the message through various nodes of the Net, and connect the dots going backward."
"And--?"
"We think the message originated at the local high school."
Will's heart sank. He wanted to protect his kids against horrors like the bombing, yet not only had it sparked a fight at the school yesterday, but it now seemed that somebody at the school knew about the bombing before it happened. Even if the message turned out to be a conscientious warning, it meant that somebody at the school was deeply entangled in criminal activities. "Come on, we'll pay them a visit."
This was one of those occasions in which Will was glad to be a plainclothesman and not a uniformed cop. Having a recognizable policeman stride through the school corridors might scare the students, already on edge after yesterday. As it was the only one who seemed to spot them was Luke, who crossed paths with them in the hall. Will made a don't-break-my-cover gesture, one that the family had agreed on years before, and he walked past.
Will had heard a lot of rotten things about Vice-Principal Price, not only from his kids, who might be expected to dislike the authority figure, but even from Helen, who had worked in his office for one year and as a teacher for another. Nor did his first sight of the official make Will feel any warmer. Price looked very much on the defensive; apparently a lot of parents agreed with the rabbi about the fight, and had called the office to say so. As a professional investigator Will automatically disliked an official whose first instinct was to push a problem out of his territory instead of finding who was responsible. Will suggested that Lader, who had no prior contact with Price, handle the interview.
"We have two networks here," Price said in answer to Lader's questions. "One for administration, and one for the student's lab. It used to be a single network, but clever students found out how to hack into our office files."
Lader seemed to find that amusing, but maintained his composure. "Do you have specs on the two -- ah, the student lab is the one we want. Could you show us?"
Price nodded and ushered the two out of the inner office. As they passed the clerks in the other office, one spoke up: "Mr. Price, Mrs. Figlioli wishes to speak with you."
Will could guess as well as Price what that was about. Glynis Figlioli was pregnant; and obviously her mother wanted to be sure of her safety given her condition.
"Take a message," he said curtly. Out in the hallway, he asked: "What time period are we talking about?"
"10:40 at the latest," said Lader. "Maybe the fifteen minutes before that."
"We had assembly during that period," said Price. "Everybody was supposed to be in the gym, not the computer lab."
"Which would give the user all the more opportunity to work undetected," said Will. "Would there be a monitor in the lab?"
"No, they'd be at the assembly too."
"So we may end up scouring the entire student body plus employees looking for a witness."
Lader favored a more hardware approach: simply sit at each computer and look at records of each use. Price soon got bored and slipped out, though Will was sure that he would continue dodging Mrs. Figlioli. "Hmm. This one says 'Johnny Mnemonic' logged in at 10:31."
"Maybe we should talk to this Mr. Nemonnik," said Will.
"No, you don't understand; Johnny Mnemonic is a sci-fi character. It's exactly the sort of name a hacker might pick if he was anxious to stay anonymous. Over-writing his real login record would take skill, though. I'd say this is the computer used to send the message."
"Better cover all bases, though."
"Right."
Lader was about finished with the computers when Price came back in, with a relieved look. "I think I might have a suspect."
"What?" asked Will.
"There was a student passing out inflammatory leaflets last week. Some mentioned bombs."
"Do you have his name?"
"Her name. Grace Polk."
"Oh. I see." Will, who was about to take his notebook out of his pocket, thrust it back deeper. "Lader, if you're finished, we can go back to headquarters and compare notes with the other investigators. If that fails, we may have to come back here another day and look for witnesses."
Lader stayed silent until they got out of the school, but once in the police care he expressed misgivings. "I followed your lead because this is territory that you're familiar with, but why didn't you follow up Mr. Price's clue? Polk something?"
"I know Grace Polk," said Will. "Friend of my kids. Likes talking radical, but she'd never hurt anybody. She has stayed at our house a number of nights this fall." He was not going to mention that she had spent one of those nights, Luke's birthday, in the boy's bed. The kids had been cautious and promised not to do the stunt again, and Will had let it slide.
"In other words, you've got a conflict of interest."
"I just don't want an innocent to get in trouble. Price was anxious to find a scapegoat because everybody's questioning his handling of yesterday's fight."
Lader stopped arguing, and when they got into the station, he went off to talk to the forensics crew. Will went on to report to Bruson.
His boss was talking to a short, blond woman whose back was to Will. "Ah, Will. We've gotten another advisor from Washington. It's someone you've worked with before."
The woman turned around. "Hello, Will."
It was Lucy Preston.
TBC