The 6:20 Man(36)

“Anyway, this is the first time we’ve seen Sara’s house. We haven’t been back until now, you see.” He paused, gumming his lips. “And now we are.”

Ellen just stared at the pinecones in the fireplace. She looked like she was puzzled as to why her daughter had not yet appeared and offered her coffee or tea or a hug.

“What play did you go see?” asked Ellen suddenly, her gaze back on him—unnervingly so, Devine thought.

“Waiting for Godot. Sara actually recommended it to a mutual friend of ours.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Ellen.

Fred said, “Any good?” He seemed to latch on to this line of conversation to escape, for at least a few seconds, what was crushing him.

“It definitely makes you think,” said Devine, who was also thinking that Ellen Ewes would hate it. “So I guess she never mentioned it to you?”

Fred shook his head. “We hadn’t heard from her in a while. When was it last, Ellen?”

“The problem is the time difference. Her night, our day thing. But it had been over a week. She’s our only child. Was our only child.”

She stopped talking and commenced quietly weeping.

Devine started to think all this had been a very bad idea. He rose and said, “I don’t want to intrude anymore. Again, I’m so sorry. And if there’s anything I can do while you’re in town.” He pulled out one of his cards with his direct business and cell phone numbers on it and handed it to Fred, who took it without looking at it.

Devine glanced at Ellen, who was once more staring at him with an intensity he couldn’t quite understand. “Sara did keep a diary, as you mentioned. But it’s not on the list the police gave us. They couldn’t find one. Yet she’d been keeping them since she was young.”

“That’s odd,” said Devine. And it did seem odd. “Maybe she started keeping everything in her personal cloud. Lots of people do now.”

“I think Sara was a very good friend of yours.”

Devine felt his gut tighten under her stare. “I liked her. Everyone did.”

Ellen took the business card from her husband and gazed down at it for a tense moment. “You’re wrong there, Mr. Devine,” she said.

“What’s that, honey?” said Fred sharply.

Ellen turned the card over and over in her hands, like it was hot to the touch. “Someone clearly didn’t like Sara at all,” she said.





CHAPTER





25


WHEN DEVINE GOT BACK TO the house, Valentine was waiting for him in the living room, excitement and concern competing for equal time on his features.

“What’s up, Will?”

“Dude, the email?”

“What about it? Did you find out who sent it?”

“No. It’s untraceable.”

“Well, thanks for trying. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, it doesn’t even look like an email address.”

“No, Travis, is not that easy. I mean, I could not trace it. People I work with, they cannot trace it, either. At first, I think it is some kind of weird spoofing email or maybe hexadecimal.”

“What?” exclaimed Devine.

“Hexadecimal. A base system to simplify binary language computers use. But I dig deeper and it is not that either.”

“Okay, but people send anonymous emails all the time,” said Devine. “Don’t they?”

“There are many ways to sending such messages on internet,” said Valentine. “Cheap, not so cheap, hard, not so hard.”

Devine leaned against the wall. “You’re going to need to explain that.”

“New phone number, preferably burner or prepaid with cash or cloned credit card, fake name and info, new email account, Hotmail, Gmail. Different browser, use incognito mode, and off goes mail. Russia has Yandex webmail, no phone verification needed. Hotmail and Gmail require phone number, but that is bypassed with burner phone. Incognito mode still has location IP address sent with email. But this email has none of that.”

“So then it’s untraceable, you mean?”

“Not if person you send it to has resources. And by being cheap you create big problem.”

“What are the more expensive and better ways?”

“Use special service to do just what you want, send anonymous email. Built-in premier encryption, spoofed IP address, auto deletion from whatever server is used, password protect, no personal info required. Good shit like that.”

“Who does that?” asked Devine.

“Many platforms do proxy email. Some legit and reputable, others not so much. They all do that and do it good. Or you can jump over them and use VPN platform. But don’t do free service, they sell data to third party. Use premium service and your IP address goes poof.”

“Well, whoever sent that email must have used one of those services or the VPN method.”

When Devine eyed the Russian, the man seemed more serious than Devine had ever seen him. Gone was the pizza-and-beer caricature of a Russian hacker.

“Even with that, you can’t hide the computer’s MAC address. Every device has MAC address attached to network card. Is like fingerprint.”

“But this one doesn’t?”