“Oh my god, that is demented. That definitely sounds like a death threat to me. Does this type of thing happen to you a lot?”
“Not before I got appointed to this new case. Since then I have been getting them here and there. Each one is a little more demented than the last, but this is the first one that seemed to be a true threat.”
“Well, you are one lucky guy. In the future, you can tell people you were on a date with a computer forensics expert when you got your first death threat,” Emily said, trying to lighten the mood. “You can talk about how lucky you were to have the threat come via an electronic device and that your date ended up helping you find the person who threatened you. That should make for a good story. Now, let’s get out of here. Take me back to my office and let me see if I can figure out who wants to kill you.”
They downed their beers, gathered their belongings, and left for Emily’s forensics lab.
CHAPTER 26
Once they returned to her lab, Emily hooked Steve’s phone up to her computer. Using one of her many forensic programs, she was able to make a copy of all the data contained on Steve’s phone and transfer the information to her hard drive.
While they were waiting on the transfer, Steve noticed a small wooden wand sitting on a stand on the workbench next to Emily’s computer. “What is that?”
“That is Hermione’s wand.” Emily gestured to the bookshelf behind Steve. “I have all the other main characters’ wands over there; I keep Hermione’s near me for inspiration. I hold it whenever I am stuck on trying to crack into a locked program, firewall, website, computer file, or the like. It always seems to send me magical thoughts and outside-of-the-box ideas. Are you a Harry Potter fan?”
“Yeah, I loved the story, but I’m apparently not as big of a fan as you. I have read all of the books and have whole-heartedly enjoyed them, but I don’t own any wands. Maybe I should get one for my next jury trial,” Steve said half-jokingly.
“You definitely should. They truly are magic wands,” Emily said with a smile. “I’m obviously a huge fan. They are my all-time favorite books, and I have a whole costume at home—complete with a robe, yellow and burgundy tie, and a Gryffindor scarf. I’m going to London in the fall to see the new play, which tells a story about one of Harry’s children. It’s called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I’ve got front row seats too.”
Her blue eyes were gleaming with excitement as she recounted the tale of acquiring tickets. “I set my alarm and woke up at 3:00
a.m. last summer to get online when the tickets went on sale at 9:00 a.m., London time. The tickets to several months’ worth of performances were sold out in a matter of hours. However, I’ve created a program that refreshes the Ticketmaster feed in less than a nanosecond, with a new window for each one. The program can identify the best seats and highlight that window. I just had to make sure I logged in and started my program about two minutes before the tickets went on sale to the public; that way, I always get great seats to every concert or performance I want to see and always at face value. So that’s how I have two front row seats in the middle orchestra section to a performance in September.”
“First, that’s awesome! Now I know who to contact next time a concert that I want to see comes to town. Second, a trip to London and front row seats to a Harry Potter play sounds like a lot of fun. Who is going with you?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Emily said. “Maybe I’ll take you if you play your cards right, and this nut job doesn’t kill you first.”
They both smiled at the thought of traveling together, then sat quietly, thinking what a trip together in September would mean about their relationship five months from today. Steve happily realized the silence didn’t feel awkward for either of them.
“All right, the transfer is complete. I now have a mirror image of your phone’s memory on my computer. You did know your smart phone is actually just a small handheld computer, right?” Steve nodded; because he did now.
“Anyway, without getting super technical on you, I can go through everything on your phone using my computer, as if I was actually on your phone. Except, I can do a lot more fun stuff with the information because I have several computer programs that give me the ability to analyze the metadata contained in your messages. This technology would be too complex to even attempt to download onto your phone’s simple operating system.”
“I must say, it is amazing and a little scary how much information you can get about me from my phone. Can you see everything I have on my phone on your computer now?”
“Yes, but don’t worry. I give you my word I won’t go through any of your personal stuff, and I will delete the entire copy as soon as we are done. As I said earlier, I know this is our first date. I can tell by how calm you’ve been that you have been on your fair share of first dates in the past and might even be seeing other women right now. When I tell my friends about you, I will tell them that I even consider you a bit of a ladies’ man,” Emily said teasingly. “However, I’m not interested in your number, not yet anyway.” She looked him in the eyes for a brief second and then turned back to her computer screen.
“Tonight, I’m only interested in opening your Snapchat message to see what I can discern from it and, hopefully, figure out who sent it. Like I said, I have several programs that allow me to find the metadata contained within your message. I think I told you once, but in case you forgot, metadata is information buried within all computer files. It contains all sorts of information about the file—when it was created, where it was created, etcetera. Mirroring your entire hard drive is the only way for me to get the Snapchat message to my computer. I will delete everything except that message once I get it saved properly.”
“I thought you also told me once that nothing is ever really deleted?”
“Yeah. That’s basically true, too. I’m impressed you actually paid attention to some of the things I’ve already taught you,” Emily said with a playful smirk. “I guess you will just have to trust me not to look at it. If it helps, I can promise you that I have absolutely no desire to see pictures of your ex-girlfriends or whatever else you may have saved on your phone. Not yet, anyway.”
She said “yet” again, Steve thought. A part of him actually looked forward to the time when she would want to know about his romantic past. Possibly by the time they went to London together. Emily disconnected Steve’s phone and handed it back to him. “All done with that,” she said as she pulled up what looked to be a mirror copy of Steve’s phone data on her computer. Steve watched Emily click on the Snapchat application and open the most recent message. With a few more clicks, she was able to find the phone number associated with the unknown sender’s message. “Looks like a local number,” she said. “Do you recognize it?” “Unfortunately, no,” Steve said.
She wrote down the number, then opened a separate web browser. In her favorites, she clicked on a website that contained a reverse number directory. After she typed it in, the result showed the number was registered to the Roach prepaid cell phone company. She then hacked into Roach’s database and determined the phone had been purchased two years ago at one of their South Tulsa locations, but it was only recently used. According to the sales contract, the person who bought the phone was named Taylor Gains and had a Tulsa address.
“Do you know her?” asked Emily.
“No. I don’t know him either. Taylor could be male or female. Does the contract have a place where the person checks a box declaring their sex? We could at least eliminate roughly half the population if we knew that.”
Emily moved the mouse so they could examine the entire document. The portion for sex of the individual had been left blank. “Well, one thing is for sure: whoever sent you this is no idiot. He or she used a gender-neutral name and didn’t mark their sex on the application form. I’m sure the address at the top will lead us nowhere, so I won’t check it until later.” Emily returned to the Snapchat application. Before she played the message, she opened another program.
“What is Groundhog?” Steve asked, reading the program’s name.
“It’s one of my many fancy investigative tools. It will allow me to pause the message while it’s playing and dig into the embedded metadata.” She opened the video from the unknown number and clicked play. Then, she began typing and clicking the mouse feverishly. Shortly thereafter, she found what she was looking for.
“Do you see this number here?” She pointed at the screen.
“Yes,” Steve said.
“That is the IP address of the cell tower the person was connected to when he or she sent the message. With this number, we can find out the location of your new friend, within a twentyto-fifty-mile radius. Watch.” Emily opened her web browser and went to another site.
Steve was able to read over Emily’s shoulder that this newly opened website could give IP locations for any location in the United States. She typed in the IP address and up popped a location—Claremore, Oklahoma.
Emily looked back at Steve. “Any idea why someone in Claremore would be threatening you?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a pretty good one. That is where my new death penalty case happened. I guess my recent investigations have drawn more interest than I realized. Can you get me a more precise location than Claremore? Like an address or part of town?”
“Hold on.” She began typing away at her keyboard some more. After a few seconds, a map appeared on her computer screen with a blinking dot just to the east of town. There was a red circle about an inch in diameter with the blinking dot in the center of it. Around the red circle, there was a bigger green circle.
“The blinking dot is the tower. The red circle around it is the radius where a phone can only get a signal from that specific tower. The green circle is the maximum distance the tower can pick up a signal, period. Sometimes, your phone connects to a tower farther away even if there is one nearby. That is why you get dropped calls and bad connections on occasion. However…” Emily paused to click on something, and several dots and circles showed up on her screen. “The person was likely in the red circle. Looking around, there are enough towers out there for all of those red circles to cover areas outside of our tower’s red circle. So, if you were outside this red circle,” she said, pointing to the original red circle and tower, “you would fall into one of these other red circles and most likely get a different tower. Does this make sense?”
“I think so. Basically, if you are in a red circle, you will almost always get the tower closest to you, but in the places where there is no red, the green circles overlap, and you may get a tower close to you or one farther away?”
“Exactly. Looking at this map, I would say there is a 90 percent chance your new friend was within this circle when he or she sent the message.” As Emily said this, she clicked her mouse again, and all of the other dots and circles disappeared, leaving only the original dot and red circle.
Steve leaned forward to look closely at the map. According to the key, the red circle encompassed an area approximately thirty miles in diameter. He could see the Claremore Racino, the Whitmore Flying W Ranch, and the Fieldstone housing addition, all located within the red circle. Although he couldn’t pinpoint the threat, at least now he knew he was on the right track in his investigation.
