‘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.’

Sixty-Nine

‘There are several ways to block a viewer from watching a live online broadcast,’ Michelle said as they boarded the elevator back up to the Cybercrime Division’s floor. ‘The easiest one is by identifying the viewer’s computer IP address.’

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 Enterprise-looking office.

‘OK,’ Michelle continued. ‘So just like a cellphone, if a person calls out, but doesn’t activate caller ID secrecy, the cellphone receiving the call can easily see the number that’s calling in, right? It appears on the caller display.’

‘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 caller ID secrecy feature for people to activate on their computers.’

‘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 very.’

‘When we couldn’t connect to the broadcast after you called us,’ Michelle explained. ‘We started trying to figure out how he managed to block us out. We came to that same conclusion. In order for him to do so, he needed to know the specific IP addresses for the computers in your office.’ She shrugged. ‘But how did he get them?’

‘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.’

Seventy

When Hunter got to the Police Administration Building the next morning, Garcia was already at his desk, reading over the last of Christina Stevenson’s emails. Despite the freshly ironed shirt, the clean-shaven face and the hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail, he looked tired. Hunter doubted he’d had more than a couple of hours’ sleep.

‘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 was bumped. That was how the killer got access to the house. The exam on the fibers found in her room has, so far, proved inconclusive. They could’ve come from any garment inside her wardrobe, but they’ll carry on testing.’

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 LA Times.’ As the officer handed Hunter a small, sealed envelope, his gaze wandered past the detective’s shoulder toward the pictures board on the south wall. His body tensed, and his eyes lit up with a mixture of curiosity and shock.

‘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 LA Times complimentary slip with a handwritten note.

Here are the files you asked for. I hope they help. Pamela Hays.

‘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!’

‘Phew,’ Garcia whistled.‘Six hundred and sixty-nine files?’ He half chuckled, half coughed. ‘Good luck with those. I hope they’re at least more interesting than her emails.’ He gestured back toward his computer.

‘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.