Chapter Two (Part 1)

A/N:  And we're still in backstory.  Once again, I'm not any kind of tech geek, so I'm bluffing my way through the techno-babble.

When Benjamin arrived at the station the next morning, the entire parking lot and tiny front lawn was stuffed full of reporters and cameras. They mobbed his car, pressing against him, calling out questions in such cacophony that he could not understand a word they said past the racket and the microphones shoved into his face. He fixed his eyes on the front doors of the station and pushed through, wedging himself through the gap created by Giordo’s broad shoulders.

Agent Pine waited inside, arms folded and one hand clenched around a newspaper.
“I thought you said you wanted to keep this confidential.”

“I did.”

“What’s this, then?” The agent held up the paper - that morning’s copy of the Everyman Inquirer. 

SYCHORAX’S DERANGED DESIGNER BEHIND BARS glared up at him from the headline of the paper. Splashed across the front page were three pictures of Ariel, hands clenched around the bars of her cell screaming, sprawled on the floor, arms around her head, and the last, most disturbing, in one of the solitary confinement rooms, eyes haunted, arms wrapped around her knees where she sat in the mangled remains of several shredded and crumpled pieces of paper. Her body was blurred slightly from her rocking.

Benjamin swore polyglot, finding new and fascinating words in his vocabulary - extensive from years of dealing with angry criminals - as he skimmed the article. ‘Driven insane by a gaming drug’ and ‘true computer addict’ wove around the information spill, everything they’d hoped to keep quiet now black ink on white paper, twisted by the sensationalist, immature commentary of a hack journalist.

“How did they get those pictures?” Pine demanded.

“I’d like to know that myself,” Benjamin muttered. “This is one of our solitary confinement rooms, and we haven’t put her there.”

“We had to last night, sir.”

Benjamin looked up to see Dr. Wales, their in-station psychiatrist, hurrying over.

“And I believe I can narrow down who might have had access to her to take those pictures.”

“What happened, doctor?”

“Paul and Roger brought in a couple tourists last night. They’d had some bonfire on the beach and God knows what they were drinking, but one of them got loose and came after Ariel. Shook her up almighty good. When they wouldn’t shut up, Roger got me, and I moved her to solitary confinement where she wouldn’t be bothered.”

“And the paper?”

“Just old newspaper ads. Tearing them helped calm her down. I just checked on her, and she’s tired, but alright. I wouldn’t move her back to the main block until those others are discharged.”

“Those others wouldn’t happen to be reporters, would they?”

Dr. Wales hesitated. “Let me get Roger.”

Roger hurried in and swore himself when Benjamin repeated the question. “I should have thought.” He swore again.

“How long can we legally detain them?” Agent Pine said.

Benjamin grimaced. “Depends on the charges, but probably not much longer.”

“How long can you drag out the discharge process?”

“A few hours, at least.”

“Do it. We need to shut this down.”

“Small town, Agent,” Benjamin said. “There’s no shutting down a rumor here.”

“What do we feed the hyenas, sir?” Roger asked, jerking his head in the direction of the crowd of press outside.

“What happened, exactly, Roger, to make her act like that?”

“There’s three of them we picked up drinking on the beach. They were sloshed and aggressive when we got there. Two went in quiet, the other one, big woman, comes at Ariel, got her by the wrist. I had a time of it getting her off, and - sir, what she said to that poor girl don’t bear repeating.”

“What was the gist?”

“That she was headed for prison and would have a - ah - bad time of it there.”

“Any idea who could have taken these?” Benjamin showed him the paper, and Roger went white, then red with anger. “Vic. He was the only other guy in there. I’ll get him, sir.” He spun in his heel and left the lobby, slamming the door behind him.

***

By the time Vic had been lectured, fired, and stuck in a cell for selling illegal information himself, and Benjamin had fed the news hyenas a satisfying story about a mysterious investigation with no clear suspect and a frightened young lady being terrorized by a drunken camerawoman, he needed a whole lot more coffee.

“Sir?”

Taylor, a budding detective, tapped on his door frame with his shoe, a box of evidence in his arms and a peace offering of steaming coffee held precariously in front of it. “Thought you might want to see this.”

Benjamin took the coffee off him and sipped. Taylor must have brewed this pot himself. The young man made the best coffee in the station, and Benjamin felt far more inclined to listen with the hot cup between his palms. “Go on.”

“It isn’t her. Ariel Minster, I mean. Whoever framed her threw up a good smoke screen, but it doesn’t take much to get behind it.” He set the young woman’s laptop down on the table.
“First thing is, and it’s a good thing too, she built this herself. So I’ve got her signature all over the place.”

“Signature?”

“The way she designs programs and software. The data mining program isn’t anything like what she does. It’s like…like code goulash. I’m shocked it works, honestly.

“Second thing, on those emails and other stuff, I managed to trace the IP addresses, and then I asked Maria to track her locations over the past few months using her other internet and cell phone activity and receipts, and we added them up about 4 a.m. this morning, and they don’t match. I listened to her interrogation with Agent Pine, and she’s telling the truth. This computer hasn’t accessed her university email in a couple years, and never went to that online bank account with North Bank. She’s got a debit card with a local credit union, and that’s it. There’s loads of transfers out of the North Bank account, but none of them went to her that I can see.”

“Could she be using another computer to protect herself?”

“I don’t think so. I read through some of the emails, and she definitely didn’t write them. And the data mining program, sir? That was child’s play. It was installed on her laptop two days ago. All the data files were dumped on her computer at about the same time, like someone had ‘em on a thumb drive. And then Maria goes through the apartment, right? Why’s somebody who makes several hundred thousand dollars every couple months selling folks’ identities living on ramen noodles?”

Benjamin took another deep swallow of coffee and let Taylor happily shuffle his papers around.

“So then I went and got the business files from Sychorax Studios that we had for investigation, right? And guess what I found.” He proudly laid out two bank statements, side by side.  “Exact amounts that come out of that North Bank account go into their business account - numbers match on the transfer information - and then get paid out to one Cal Blackburn. If Ariel Minster saw a penny of that money, I’ll eat my research, and if she had anything to do with the data mining, I’ll have my desk chair for lunch today.”

“You make a good case,” Benjamin allowed. Taylor beamed. “What’s Maria say?”

“She agrees,” Taylor said of his mentor. “She’s over at the apartment now, and talking with everybody who knows Ariel. I know her too sir, and she couldn’t have-”

Benjamin held up a finger. “Son, I’ve heard that plenty of times from a lot of folks. But. This is enough for me to call in Mrs. Blackburn and her son to answer a few questions.”

Taylor bounced in his chair. “Can I be there, sir?”

The young man looked like a lab retriever waiting for Benjamin to throw a tennis ball.

“You can question them yourself,” the police chief said. Taylor beamed all over the room and scrambled his papers back into their box.

“Let me know when they come in, sir. I’ll be ready.”

***

Mrs. Blackburn did not take kindly to being asked to come to the station for questioning. She took even less kindly to being ushered into the interrogation room and turned a bitter, icy glare on Taylor as he shut the door. She was elegantly dressed in a cream skirt and blouse, pale pink jacket with a gold pin on the lapel, nude pumps and pearl earrings, but Benjamin could not help but agree with the whispered description of Mrs. Blackburn. She was a hag. Her lips were too wide, her nose too long and crooked, and her eyebrows shaved off and drawn back on in the wrong places and shape. She wore too much makeup in colors that did not fit her, and even the thick foundation and rouge did not cover the ill-placed warts. Both her shoulders hunched, giving her the posture of a vulture, and her feet turned out when she walked.

“Taylor Welsh, ma’am,” Taylor said, extending his hand and dropping it without awkwardness when Mrs. Blackburn refused to shake it. “I understand you’re the owner of Sychorax Studios, and figure you’re the most qualified to clarify some questions I have.”

“You have already confiscated my personal and business files. I hardly see why you think it necessary to inconvenience me further.”

“Ma’am. Someone was running a major data-mining operation out of your business that has inconvenienced a few thousand people. It’s my job to help see that any illegal activity is shut down, and I’d prefer to work with the owner of the business rather than against, since I know you also want to see the perp caught and restore Sychorax’s good reputation just as quick as may be.”

Benjamin smirked and put his feet up on the desk in the observation room to watch. Taylor would manage well enough, looked like.