‘Can you explain how come we could see the Internet broadcast earlier today, but you couldn’t?’ Garcia asked, not wanting to waste any more time.
‘Sure,’ Michelle said. ‘But let’s get away from this noise first.’
Garcia looked at Michelle blankly.
The elevator doors opened and they made their way down the corridor.
‘Remember when I said that a computer’s IP address is like a license plate or a telephone number?’ Michelle asked. ‘Every computer has a unique identifying one.’
‘Um-huh.’
Harry swiped the security door before typing in the code and allowing everyone back into the cold, starship
office.
‘OK,’ Michelle continued. ‘So just like a cellphone, if a person calls out, but doesn’t activate
‘Yes.’
‘Same with computers. The difference is, unless you’re an expert with some clever gadgets, you can’t hide your computer’s IP address. There’s no
‘In fact,’ Harry jumped in, ‘every time you connect to any website on the World Wide Web, the host computer records your IP address. It’s their first line of defense against fraud. With an IP address, it makes identifying where the connection came from a lot easier.’
Garcia thought about it for a second. ‘So if you’re a computer programmer, and you know the computer’s IP address in question, you could write some code to block it, whenever it tries to connect to the site.’
‘Or in our case, the opposite,’ Hunter said. ‘The killer could’ve written some code that allowed only one IP address to connect – ours – blocking everyone else’s. That’s why we could see the broadcast but no one else could.’
‘Exactly,’ Michelle and Harry said in unison.
‘But that means he has to know the specific IP address to the computers in our office,’ Garcia said. ‘How easy is it to obtain them?’
‘Depends on how clever you are,’ Harry replied. ‘And this guy is
‘The first-ever broadcast,’ Hunter said, thinking back.
‘Bingo.’ Michelle smiled.
Garcia looked at Hunter. ‘The first-ever broadcast?’
‘It wasn’t open to the public,’ Hunter said. ‘Only to us, remember? He called us, gave us an IP address and asked us to type it into the address bar. We were the only ones watching that broadcast. No one else.’
‘So if you were the only ones,’ Michelle said, ‘and the killer knew you were the only ones connecting to his server, the IP address, or addresses, the host computer recorded that day must belong to you.’
‘Sonofabitch,’ Garcia whispered.
‘Dead simple,’ Harry said. ‘And dead clever. Without you guys suspecting a thing, he singled your IP addresses out right then. It seems he’s been playing you from the start.’
‘How’s Anna?’ Hunter asked.
‘She barely slept last night,’ Garcia said, pushing himself away from his desk for a moment. ‘And the few hours she did were punctured by nightmares.’
Despite sensing the hidden anger in Garcia’s words, Hunter knew there was nothing he could say that would make any sort of difference. He stayed silent.
‘I can see you didn’t sleep much either,’ Garcia said, moving the subject along.
‘Well, no surprise there,’ Hunter replied. ‘Still nothing interesting from the emails?’
Garcia shook his head and shrugged. ‘I’ve got through all of them now. Not a damn thing, but we did get an email from forensics this morning. Just like they expected, the lock on the glass door to Christina Stevenson’s bedroom
Hunter nodded, fired up his computer, and while it booted up he poured himself a strong cup of coffee – the third one this morning, and it wasn’t even 8:30 a.m. yet. As soon as he sat down, there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ Hunter called out.
A young uniformed police officer pushed the door open and stepped inside. ‘Detective Hunter?’
‘Right here,’ Hunter said, lifting his coffee cup as if toasting something.
‘This just came for you. It was delivered by someone from the
‘Is there anything else?’ Hunter quickly said, gently stepping to his left to obstruct the officer’s view.
‘Um . . . no, sir.’
Hunter thanked the young officer and escorted him back to the door.
Inside the envelope he found a USB pen drive and an
‘What’s that?’ Garcia asked.
‘About two years’ worth of articles by Christina Stevenson.’
Hunter connected the pen drive to his computer.
Garcia walked over to check it out.
As the contents loaded onto Hunter’s screen, he let out a frustrated breath. ‘Damn!’
‘
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
The immediate problem Hunter faced was that the files weren’t searchable text files. Every document in that USB pen drive was actually a scanned image of the newspaper page with the published article. No file titles, just published dates. He would have to read through them all.
Hunter sat back and took a deep breath. The first thing he wanted to do was to find the article Christina Stevenson had written about Thomas Paulsen, the software millionaire. Pamela Hays had told him that Christina had written the article about four months ago, so that’s where he started, opening and quickly scanning through every file where its publishing date was within that time bracket. It didn’t take him long. He hit the jackpot on the twelfth file he opened.
The article had been a two-page spread. Christina Stevenson had spent two months gathering information and interviewing past and present employees from PaulsenSystems. The result had been an open book on sexual harassment, bribery and intimidation. Christina Stevenson made the fifty-one-year-old software magnate look and sound like a sexual predator.