On Tenterhooks (14 page)

W
hy would someone go to such lengths? 
H
ow did they know that he was going to visit the site last night?  Did they monitor his Internet traffic that closely?
Had they
written this fake response after he had
submitted his message?
How had they fabricated it so quickly and so accurately in six hours
’
time? Steve read the letter again. The typical scam would keep up the façade until the thieves got what they were after: your identity, your credit card number, your bank account info. Yet this message seemed to be attemptin
g to close communication
.
T
he words were so strange and out of context: “
There is so much at stake here
,
and we are all watching, listening and praying.”
What was that supposed to mean?
T
he
letter
even ended with lyrics
from
“
Better Together
”
by an obscure alternative country duo called Sex ‘N Cigs.  Steve and Julie’s first real date had been to see them at the Ready Room in downtown Charlotte
more than
a decade ago
.
“
Better Together
”
had jokingly been their “first song
,
” although it
had
disappeared from their music library in later years.
It was the song playing on the radio in Steve’s recurring nightmare about Julie’s death.
No
trash-
digging or
computer-
hacking could have produced that information
.
How could they possibly know that?

Steve could taste the bitter bile of anger in his mouth
.
He felt naïve and violated
.
Someone was in his space
—
picking through his trash, hacking into his computer and maybe even burglarizing his
home
.
He hadn’t had the foggiest idea this had been going on
,
and now he was realizing how truly “out of it” he had been these past few weeks
.

For
the next hour
,
he checked
and re-
checked
the bank’s information security systems and his own computer’s logs and defenses
.
He could not find any evidence of tampering
.
His machine was clear of
t
rojans, worms and any type of known virus.
He found nothing
that pointed to even a marginal flaw in the
bank’s technology defenses. He
spent time researching online
to see what he could turn up on
this targeted type of retro
-
style cybercrime. He submitted countless descriptions to the search engines and information security databases describing the crime style at hand: “phishing scam with forged printed note
,
”
“
hackers with handwriting
,
”
“
identit
y theft + link website to handwritten note
.
”
None of his dozens of searches yielded anything useful or even similar to his situation.

T
his had to be a targeted attack
.
There was too much manual effort involved for
it
to
b
e some faceless
,
bored
,
teen tech prodigy in his parents’ basement or one of the commonplace cybercrime gangs from Russia or Eastern Europe
.
This was a very cunning, very local criminal who had Steve in his sights
.

“But why me?
If this guy is
that skilled and that jacked in
to everything about me, why not take it to somebody with something more to offer?”

Should he call the police and report it?  No. For one thing,
technically
no laws had been broken yet
.
In
fact,
the response letter hadn’t asked him for anything.
A
side from that, Steve had seen enough in the media to know that justice often
got the shaft,
thanks to a technicality or a procedural loophole that could
cause
the prosecution
to lose
an otherwise slam
-
dunk case
.
He wanted there to be no doubt as to the intentions of the person behind the messages
before he involved the police
.

It was nearly noon now
.
Steve decided to skip lunch, take care of a few of his more pressing networking issues and then head out early
.
At quarter after two, he called Randy’s office and
the
secretary put him
right
through
to Randy
.

“This is Randy,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

“Hey Randy, it’s Steve,” said Steve.

“Steve! Glad you made it in,” said Randy
.
“How’re things?”

“Great, thanks,” said Steve. “Listen, Randy, I’ve
set up the new virtual test server for the apps group
and
the
upgrade for
the
mail server for the so
uthside branch is done
.
The box
is
in the workroom
,
packed up and ready for delivery
.
I’ve
already let the
mailroom
know
.”

“That’s great Steve
.
How’re we doing on those quarterly virus numbers? I still haven’t got those yet.
”

Steve was chagrined.
“
Oh, damn
.
I’m sorry
,
Randy.  I forgot. I’ll get them to you soon, but I really
need to leave now to take care of some personal matters.”

“Wow,
y
ou ta
ke this ‘banker’s hours’ thing
to heart
,
don’t you?” asked Randy
.

Steve
forced a half-laugh
. “Yeah, I know
.
I appreciate
your
being so flexible lately. I have a lot of things still on my mind
,
but I think that soon I
—
”

“Steve,” Randy interrupted
.
“
I’m kidding
.
Look
,
you have
a solid record at this bank.
Everybody makes mistakes.  A little forgetfulness is understandable these days. Take the rest of the day off
.
J
ust get them to me soon, okay?”

“
I will.  Thanks
.
I
appreciate it.
”

“Take care,
man,
” said Randy.

Steve hung up the phone
.
He packed up his desk, shoving his laptop and the latest letter in his rucksack
.
His plan: go home, plug in and do some hacking of his own
,
if need be
,
in order
to find the answers and the evidence he needed
.
He
was no longer tired
, and
the caffeine had nothing to do with it.

Chapter
18

“
June, loo
k,” said Martin, into the phone, “i
t’s not like that.”

“Then what is it ‘like’
Martin
?
” June snapped
from the other end.

“I miss her
,
June,”
he
replied. “I want to remember her the way she was.”

“Of course you miss her,” June,
sighed, softening
a little. “I miss her
,
too
.
But having some public memorial makes no sense. Why do we want to linger over it
,
and let other people talk and assume so much?”

“Let them assume,” he said
.
“She was
our
daughter
!
We are entitled to remember her however we want.”

Trying hard to keep her voice even, June explained:
“Exactly my point
.
I don’t want to remember her by listening to a whole bunch of people coming together
,
weeks
after she died,
to
tell us how special she was
.
Because then
they will
all talk about
how she died and why she died. A
nd
,
Martin, I don’t want to continue to go through that.
”

Martin heard her pause and take deep breath before continuing.

“
Maggie
was our beautiful and lovely daughter
.
I don’t care how senseless and horrible
these last few weeks have been
.
I don’t care that we’re divorced
.
No matter what else happens,
she will always be that brilliant spark that we made and raised. I
just
don’t want the public spectacle of it all.”

Martin was silent
.
He felt the all-too-familiar tightening in his throat and stifled the tears
threatening
to
escape from
his eyes
.
He did not want
his former wife
to hear him crying again. Several silent seconds passed
.
Both clung to the
phone, neither speaking
,
yet n
either wanting to hang up.

W
ith a sniffle, June continued
,
“I don’t want us to forget her
,
Martin
.
I don’t want
you
to forget her
b
ut let’s do it in our
own
private way.”

“I know
,
June,”
said
Martin, struggling to hold it together
,
“
b
ut I miss our baby. I can’t let her go.”

June was openly sobbing now. She breathed deep and spoke through her sobs.
“You have to
.
You have to let her go.
You have
to move on
.
We’ll always remember our sweet
Maggie
, but we’ve got to let her go now.”

Martin shook his head
.
He could no longer speak. He mustered enough voice to
end
the conversation.
“Okay, thanks
.
I have to go,” he said
, and
punched the button on the cordless phone without waiting for her reply.

He shuffled to the desk and
turned on
what Maggie had
dubbed
his “ancient PC
.
”
His preferring
to spend his money on expensive kitchen appliances like a
bread
-
maker
and a professional mixer
,
while his computer
grew long in the tooth
,
had been a foreign concept
to his daughter.
Nowadays those appliances and the computer were getting very little use.

He reached into the bill basket on the desk and pulled out the crumpled handwritten note he had found on the pharmacy counter. It wasn’t June’s handwriting, but had she sent it to him?

He
wasn’t going
to call her back to ask
.
That would
only make things worse
.
Whenever he called
June
, he thought about
Maggie
, and when he thought about
Maggie
,
it reminded him of
how lonely he was
.
It had been a year since
their
divorce
had been finalized
.
They both had known it
was
coming for some time, but they
had
made an unspoken pact not to act on it until
Maggie
was out of the house
and
off to college
.
Somehow,
her
being old enough for college had seemed like the “right” time to drop the sham that their marriage had become
.

A few years back,
the district attorney’s office
had
promoted
June
to
senior litigator
.
She had always had a rare gift of being able to think on her feet and
out-
argue anyone who dared to lock horns with her, including Martin
.
She lived by the law of black and white
—t
here was right and there was wrong
,
no room for
an
in
-
between
.
If you did wrong, she would p
ro
secute you to the fullest extent of the law, with vigor. Martin
categorized her as
an extreme Type A
,
reserved but tenacious, professional
yet
at times unyielding
.

“It’s the career
,
Martin,” she’d argue. “Being detached and methodical is a job requirement.”

A
s her career took her further up, it also took her further from home and family
.
Martin had been at the same drugstore for
22
years
.
He knew the names and the faces of his customers
.
He knew their preferences, the names of their grandchildren, and even their finances to a degree
.
To him, that was loyalty, quality and customer service
.
That was success
.

“You can be so much more than that,
”
June had
said, during
one of their many arguments.
“
Why do you want to be
a bump on
a
log?”

“Beca
use
,
June,
that
log
is what people rely on!
  I am not just the guy who gives out pills!  Some of these people need that conversation and that stability in their lives. I can be that for them.”

“But what about you, Martin?
What about your life? Don’t you want more?”

“No, I don’t
.
I think what I’ve got is pretty damn great
.
I don’t
want
any more!”

“Well, I do
!
”

She
had
fared far better than
he had,
when it came to dealing with
Maggie
’s death
.
She could cut off emotions when she needed to
,
and she had a
bustling
career and
a
circle of close friends to keep her elevated. For the first time in his life, Martin was jealous of June’s “gotta go, gotta run, gotta do something” style
.
He knew it
left
little time for wallowing
in grief
.

And, deep down, he
knew
she
was right.
He needed to let them go,
both
his wife and his daughter
,
and he needed to s
trive for something.
It was the first step in trying to make h
is life whole again. Could something as simple as writing a letter
be that
helpful? His father would’ve thought so.

Martin had grown up along with Suffolk, Virginia. He’d watch it grow from a sleepy rural town into a good-sized, modern
c
ity
,
complete with an active “downtown revitalization” program
.
By the time
he
was
born,
his father
was
already
known
as one of the most successful
peanut growers
in the state.
Robert Abingdon
had thousands of acres to manage
,
with several large crew
s
of young
farm
hands
,
all eager to learn the
secrets
to
their employer’s
success.

Each year, during the spring planting season,
Robert
would pack up the whole family
and join other
area farmers
in a simple
prayer
service
to ask
for rain
. This greatly frustrated Martin. The weather was warming up
,
and t
he catfish in the pond
near their farmhouse
were itching to munch on his homemade
dough
-
ball
bait
.
The last place he wanted to be was church.

When
Martin was
eight
-years old, on the way to a mid-week service
, he asked:
“Daddy, why do we have to go ask God for rain?  It’s not like it’s dollars or something we can spend.”

His father chuckled, removed his pipe
,
and replied
:
 
“Martin, to a starving man, bread is gold. To a cold man, a blanket is money. And to our crop
s
of goober peas, water is better than any dollars we could hope for
.
Water grows ‘em, keeps ‘em fresh and gets us our blankets, our bread
. It
also pays
for them fancy
steel
hooks for a certain someone’s fishing rod
.”

Mart
in
flushed
, embarrassed that the reason for his questioning was so obvious.

“What you need, and why you need it, is all a matter of p
erspective in this world, son.”

Even at that young age,
Martin
had known that
this was something to remember.  He
pondered it and smiled,
like
he
was smiling now
,
remembering nearly 50 years ago.
 
“And to a grieving father, closure is gold,”
he
said aloud. “Thanks Dad.”