Look Who I Found
Previously: Jeannie has an unsettling encounter.
4:45 PM - Tuesday, November 4, 2014
US Park Police Office, Ft Winfield Scott, The Presidio
What was that, a warning? Jeannie stood at the top of the metal stairs, not ready to go inside quite yet. She looked out over the tree tops as the where the golden sun was setting. It was chilly again and she shivered with the sweat on her back. She wasn’t sure what had happened in the last hour, but she felt entirely disoriented by it. Not to mention disturbed. She felt out of breath all of a sudden, and stood there letting the breeze clear her head.
Paco heard the metal door bang and Jeannie soon made her way into the conference room. She looked pale.
“Hey Jeannie…you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just an interesting afternoon.”
“Same here, but we made some good progress.” Paco couldn’t suppress his smile. “Amanda and I think we know what happened to Alexa. Found a lot more on the trails today, and it’s starting to add up.”
“Wow - that’s amazing.” Jeannie flopped into one of the chairs at the table. “Are you going to keep me in suspense, or what?”
“Amanda is working on a map and some modeling so it’s more ironed out and complete.”
“Ah okay.” Jeannie heaved a sigh. “What about you, Raj? How is it going with Pr3pSF?”
“Keeping an eye on it.” He didn’t even look away from his multiple laptops.
“Okay. Our boy Tyler should be doing his work pretty soon.”
“Yup. Starting around 5 when after school traffic picks up. He just logged in.” Raj’s eyes watched the monitor.
“Who logged in?” Mark asked, joining them from the hallway. His eyes were narrowed landing on Raj.
“Your little double agent Tyler Shea. He just got online.”
“Oh good. Let’s see what he does.” Mark took the chair next to Raj and pulled up to the monitor eagerly. Jeannie leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes briefly, almost falling asleep in a few quiet minutes. “Oh! There he is…setting the bait.”
“”Had a visit from lady cop and the FBI today at Xavier. They say they have a photo of the last person Alexa saw before she died.”...wow, the comments are already coming in.”
“If anything jumps out, flag it, but we’re just interested in the Admin for the moment. Do you have a trace on the IP addresses?”
“Yup.” Raj pivoted another laptop toward him. “This IP is Tyler Shea —” he pointed at a line in the tracker. “Check the monitor - if you see an Admin appear, let me know the second you see it.” The two of them alternated between scanning the two laptops, somehow making sense of the information on the front page of the site and behind it within the coding.
“This could be a while.” Mark said, sighing.
“Yeah, that’s usually how it goes.” Raj offered wryly.
“Jeannie — what took you so long?”
“I stopped by the station and ended up having an impromptu briefing with the Cap. I got us some help though. Owen and Steph will be here with us tomorrow. I think Steph for the tip line and Owen can help Raj.”
“I hope he knows his way around a computer.” Raj tossed out.
“He’s a smart guy, I promise.”
“Cap say anything else?”
“Ummm - not really.” Mark pushed back from the screens to look at Jeannie.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Jeannie heaved herself out of the chair and made her way into the kitchen, hunting down a box of mint tea.
“Jeannie?” Mark was in the doorway, Paco behind him.
“What is it?” Jeannie sighed, heading for the electric kettle.
“Call it a hunch.”
“About?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t mention that we were working on a warrant for the Hartman’s when I briefed the Cap —”
“What? Why? We need him to know —”
“Do we? Because I think it would be bad to let anyone at the PD know that’s happening. I don’t think we go through the DA’s office on this Mark, I think you have to keep it in-house with the FBI.” In a low whisper, Jeannie relayed what happened in her briefing and the surprise car ride she’d been given by the Sergeant. Paco looked at Mark and back to Jeannie, while Mark’s face was bent with a mix of anger and confusion.
“Jesus, are — are you insinuating he’s bought off cops in the PD?”
“Mark, I don’t know what he has — “ Jeannie’s whisper was a yell. “All I know is he has a lot of golf buddies who seem to be very well connected and it may be better that they don’t hear about it.” She looked at him, eyes wide. Paco rubbed his forehead. “And the golf buddies apparently have minions to do their bidding.”
“Fuck…this stinks.” Paco whispered.
“Yeah, no joke. It scares me. I don’t even know who I can trust in my own command.” Jeannie sipped her tea.
“Okay. Okay. I hear you.” Mark conceded. “I get what you’re saying. Alright. I’ll talk to the DOJ and see what they think. We can keep it buttoned up.” Jeannie nodded at him, holding his gaze. A metallic tap sounded from the door down the hall. Paco moved to answer it.
“That’s probably Chris - I told him to stop by here so he could see the photos on that damn website.” She blew out an exaggerated breath. “I didn’t know how to explain it to him.”
Paco opened the door to see Jeannie’s boyfriend Chris, looking much more professional than he did on Sunday.
“Hey man — come on in.” He held out his hand with a smile, which Chris accepted, looking relieved somehow. He had a checked shirt on with one of those fleece vests that Spiro Thomas had worn the other day. “Jeannie’s in the kitchen.” Jeannie popped out of the doorway, face lighting up. “Look who I found.”
“He usually finds where he needs to be.” Chris stopped next to her, planting a soft kiss on her cheek. “How was your day?”
“Okay…good, I guess. Why am I here? You didn’t say.”
“Yeah, well, it’s something to do with the case and it sort of involves you.” Chris’s eyes narrowed.
“How is that even possible?”
“Because of me. It’s to do with these teenagers, there’s a lot of online bullying happening, and someone thought it would be a kick to try and bully me too.”
“Who did?”
“Um — maybe I should explain?” Mark jumped in. “Paco - maybe flip the boards in the conference room? We’ll be right behind you.” Mark explained the general idea behind Pr3pSF to Chris, while Jeannie settled in to lean against the doorjamb. “It took some patience, but we used an active account for the site to login, actually, our victim’s account, and unfortunately the first thing we saw was images of Jeannie…and you.” Mark lead them back to the conference room.
“Chris, this is Raj — Raj this is my boyfriend Chris.” Raj barely glanced up from his multiple laptops. “Can you bring up the post about me, please?” Raj clicked around.
“Any Admin yet?” Mark asked.
“Nothing so far…” Raj he answered quietly, scrolling upward to the post with Jeannie’s picture. Chris leaned in closer to read some of the comments. Raj scrolled down to reveal the vacation photo. Chris went pale.
“What the fuck is this?” He asked softly, belying the steely glint in his eyes.
“What we’re trying to find out is where they may have sourced this photo.” Mark answered.
“Jeannie — that’s that was in Greece. That was five years ago.”
“I know. And I know both of our Instagram accounts are private.” Chris looked furious. “So, I’m wondering if you know if you have this photo stored somewhere, or sent it to someone, or…I don’t know, we’re trying to figure out where they found it.” Chris wound his arms above his head.
“Fuck. Jeannie. What the fuck? Where did they get that?”
“I don’t know, Chris.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
“I — I don’t know. I haven’t seen it in a long time. I was shocked when we saw it up there. I still am. It’s not something I’d put up on my Instagram, even though I’m private.” Jeannie loved the photo though: they were both so beautiful and fit, laughing, deeply in love. It made her wistful which made her hate that someone had dug it out and posted it online for everyone to see. It was such a lovely photo of them and now it was tainted.
“It’s - it’s a violation. How can people do this, put our private lives online like that?” Raj scrolled a little bit, and Chris’ graduation photo appeared. “What the — why is that there too? What the FUCK?”
“Chris — “ Jeannie hissed quietly. “Please, calm down a little bit. I’m upset too but you’re here to help us narrow the field. These kids looked us up in the Xavier yearbook, that’s the easy part. The photo from Greece though —” Chris was pacing.
“It’s my fault,” Mark began. “I introduced Jeannie, trying to get her on a level with the kids, so I mentioned she’d been to Xavier — that seemed to give them permission to dig out whatever they could.” Chris looked at him, shaking his head.
“It’s not your fault, Mark.” Jeannie countered. “They would have found some other way…” Chris’s pacing slowed but his anger was palpable. He looked at the computer screen, mouth parted.
“Wait, Jeannie. That picture — I know where I’ve seen it.” All of them looked at him. “You sent that picture to your mother, remember? She said she wanted them for that photo app on her iPad? Where’s that iPad now?” Jeannie’s face contorted, looking back to Mark.
“Oh my God — that’s that’s one of my Dad’s iPads now.”
Omg!