Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(63)

Dirty4


The page had fields for entering a username and password.

“Based on what I read in the pages I was able to figure out Hammond’s keywords,” Rachel said. “His online name was The Hammer—that was easy—and for the password I started feeding keywords from an online incel glossary into the log-in. His password was Lubitz.”

“‘You bitch’?” Emily asked.

“No, Lubitz,” Rachel said. “It’s the name of a hero in the incel movement. A German airline pilot who intentionally crashed a plane he said was full of sluts and slayers.”

“Slayers?” Myron said.

“What incels call normal men who have normal sex lives. They hate them almost as much as they hate women. Anyway, there is a whole vocabulary within the incel movement, most of it misogynistic, and it’s traded in online forums like Dirty4.”

Rachel typed in Hammond’s username and password and entered the site.

“We’re in the dark web here,” she said. “And this is an invitation-only site that identifies women with a specific genetic pattern called DRD4, or dirty four.”

“What is it?” Myron said. “What does it determine?”

“It is a genetic sequence generally believed to be associated with addictive and risky behaviors,” Rachel said. “Sex addiction being among them.”

“Hammond was buying only female DNA from Orange Nano,” Emily said. “He must have been identifying women with DRD4 in his lab. Women who had sent their DNA into GT23, never realizing it would be sold down the line to someone like him.”

“Exactly,” Rachel said.

“But wasn’t it anonymous?” Myron asked.

“It was supposed to be,” Rachel said. “But once samples were identified as having the DRD4 sequence, he had some means of reversing the anonymity. He was able to identify the women and put their identities, details, and locations on the Dirty4 website. Some of the profiles have cell numbers, home addresses, photos—everything. He sold them to his customers, who could search for women by location. If you are one of these creeps in Dallas then you search for women in Dallas.”

“And then what?” Myron asked. “They go out and find these women? I don’t—”

“Exactly,” I said. “Christine Portrero complained to her friend that she met some creepy guy in a bar and he knew things about her he shouldn’t have known. She thought she was being digitally stalked.”

“Dirty4 gave its members an edge,” Rachel said. “The women identified through DNA analysis by Hammond had the genetic makeup believed to be linked to promiscuity, as well as drug use, alcohol abuse, and other risky behaviors.”

“Easy marks,” Emily said. “He was telling his customers exactly who they were and where to find them. And one of those customers is a killer.”

“Exactly,” Rachel said.

“And we think that same customer is the one who killed Hammond,” I added.

“It appears from the printouts that Hammond had a partner in this,” Rachel said. “And they somehow became aware that women listed on the Dirty4 site were dying—were being killed. I think they looked at their subscriber base and figured out that there was at least one who had bought and downloaded the details of all the dead women. All of this is conjecture at the moment, but I think they warned him or told him to stop.”

“And that’s what got Hammond killed?” Myron asked.

“Possibly,” Rachel said.

“Who was the customer?” Myron asked.

“The Shrike,” Rachel said.

“What?” Myron asked.

“It’s the dark web,” Rachel said. “People use alternate names, IDs. If you are going to download names off a site like this, you don’t give your real name and you don’t pay with a credit card. You use an alias and you trade in cryptocurrency. The customer they identified as having downloaded the names of all four of the dead women went by the alias ‘the Shrike.’”

“Any idea what it means?” Myron asked.

“It’s a bird,” Emily said. “My father was a birder. I remember him talking about shrikes.”

Rachel nodded.

“I looked it up,” she said. “It silently stalks and attacks from behind, gripping its victim’s neck in its beak and viciously snapping it. It is considered one of nature’s most formidable predators.”

“All the women had broken necks,” Myron said. “And this guy Hammond.”

“And there’s something else,” Rachel said. “We think he may have hacked Hammond’s computer or made him open it before he was murdered. He then started printing. We repeated the last job he sent to the printer. It was a file that had the IDs of all the women.”

“How many names?” Myron asked.

“I didn’t count,” Rachel said. “But it looks like a hundred or so.” “Did you check to see if the four victims we know about are on the printout?” I asked.

“I did but they’re not on there,” Rachel said. “They could have been removed when it was determined they were dead.”

“So he kills Hammond and gets away with what?” Myron asked. “A hundred names of potential victims?”