Did Hawkins come clean about the images he received because he knew the walls were closing in?
Was there a connection between James Mann and the high school coach?
A little bit of background checking should give her an answer.
Rainy had access to classified databases. Many of them contained the sort of information privacy advocates feared the U.S. government collected on its citizens. Thank you, Patriot Act. Tom Hawkins, Rainy soon learned, served his country, had a daughter, and as Didomenico said, used to have an ex-wife. He had never been arrested and, aside from his divorce, had never been to court.
Mann had a similar history of walking on the right side of the law. Married his college sweetheart. A respectable businessman. His only courtroom appearances had been for jury duty. Rainy made a fan of the photographs from James Mann’s Text Image Collection on the surface of her workstation. She studied the images with a steady focus. She looked for connections that didn’t seem to exist.
The two men hadn’t attended any school together. Their paths had never crossed at work or in the service (Mann had never served). From what Rainy could gather, these two were no more connected than motorists passing on the highway. Rainy could ask James Mann these questions herself but doubted his lawyer would allow it.
Plenty of investigative work remained to be done, even without Mann’s help. Rainy reached for a yellow legal pad. She jotted down the facts as she knew them.
Ten girls from Shilo H.S. took pictures of themselves.
Who did they send them to? Where did they post them?
Four of the girls had graduated but were students when Hawkins was coach.
Six were still students.
Hawkins coached Lindsey Wells!!
Rainy circled that statement several times.
There were forty different girls in James Mann’s Text Image Collection.
All the other images on Mann’s computer were from known series per the CVIP.
Very unusual!
None of the images in the Text Image Collection were known.
Did the girls text the images? Did they post them online? They texted them.
Rainy circled that statement several times as well and next to it wrote in parentheses:
(Conclusion, not fact, that’s my guess!)
Beneath that she wrote in all capital letters—HOW DID MANN GET THESE PICTURES? She drew a large question mark beside it.
Did he have people working for him? Online recruiting?? Did he know these girls?
She let out a heavy breath and sat quietly. She didn’t want to force herself into any more conclusions. If she opened herself up to possibilities, flexed her mind enough, a workable theory would come to her. At least, it sometimes did.
Instead, her phone rang.
“This is Agent Miles,” she said.
“Agent Miles, my name is Sergeant Brendan Murphy with the Shilo Police Department. I called the New Hampshire FBI office, and they directed me to you.”
Rainy felt her pulse accelerate. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“We’ve been conducting an investigation into some suspicious activity involving a student and a teacher in our high school. A coach, specifically.”
“Go on,” Rainy said. She wanted Murphy to talk first. She’d tell him what she was investigating if it seemed connected.
“Well, our forensics guys have come back with some pretty interesting stuff.”
“What sort of interesting stuff?”
“Have you ever heard of a program called Leterg?”
Rainy’s whole body tensed. “I have,” she said.
“Look, normally we like to do our own homework,” Murphy said. “But we’ve had to pull in computer forensic help from the state police. They’ve taken a couple cracks at figuring out what this guy was up to, and we’ve hit a couple of roadblocks.”
“What are you asking?”
“Wondering if you might be able to spare some of your computer expert’s time to help us gather the evidence.”
“Who’s the coach?” Rainy asked, though she already knew the answer. Her head was spinning with possibilities. Connections were beginning to appear.
“The guy’s name is Hawkins. Tom Hawkins.”
“When do you need us?”
“Soon as possible. We want to move on this thing.”
“Hold on a second,” Rainy said. She covered the phone’s receiver with her hand and looked over at Carter.
“Do you have any plans tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m taking Gigi out to dinner and a movie. Why?”
“Cancel them, send your wife flowers, and grab your coat,” Rainy said. “We’re taking a drive north to Shilo.”
Chapter 26
In just over an hour, Tom would coach his first soccer game since the Facebook scandal broke. Tom tried his best to stay focused on the upcoming match. He anticipated this game would be a brutal and physical battle of wills. But the last practice had been a disaster, and his team was in shambles.
The Riverside bus arrived thirty minutes before game time. The Riverside girls were dressed in red jerseys and spread out across their half of the field, already doing stretches. Some kicked the ball around for warm-ups. Soon after, Vern showed up, and so did the kid with the video recorder.
Tom saw Mitchell Boyd and a bunch of his friends loitering on the hilly rise on the opposite side of the field. Mitchell had never come to a Wildcats home game before. Then again, Jill had never before been dropped off at her house by Mitchell Boyd—and hours past her normal curfew. Tom wasn’t a math whiz, but he could quickly solve this equation and didn’t much like the answer.
His daughter was potentially Mitchell Boyd’s next conquest.
Tom pushed Mitchell Boyd out of his thoughts, in the same way Boyd and his horsing-around pals were shoving each other. He returned his focus to the game at hand. The team. The win. The forty-ninth straight victory of his tenure. It was a great accomplishment, but one the girls deserved all the credit for achieving. He was just a guide. A map for them to follow. They had to walk the long and difficult trail to each “W” themselves.
Tom’s Wildcats began arriving. They were dressed in their Wildcat whites and looked ready to play. Jill led a group of girls onto the field. He noticed Jill stop and wave to Mitchell. Tom didn’t detect much oomph in Jill’s greeting to Mitchell. She didn’t look happy or the least bit enthused. Tom noticed Mitchell give a slight thumbs-up salute in return.
Cool kid, thought Tom.
Tom flipped to the attendance sheet on his clipboard and checked the players in with a pencil mark next to their names. Vern’s girls… Lauren Grass… McAndrews… Adamson… Wells…
He counted them. Seven in total.
Where’s the rest of the team? Tom wondered.
He had a nagging suspicion but refused to believe it could be true. Jill came trotting over to him. Tom patted her on the shoulder. “You going to bring it to them, Jill?” Tom asked.
“Can we talk?” Jill said.
Tom’s insides went cold.
Seven players had taken the field.
“What’s going on here, Jill? Where’s the rest of the team?”
“They’re not coming,” she said. “Either they’re quitting the team or their parents won’t let them be on it anymore.”
“Why?”
“You know why. They all think the Facebook thing is true.”
“Okay. Okay,” Tom said. He was thinking. His mind started to race. But the jumble of emotions and concerns narrowed down real quick when he thought about what mattered to him most.