“So Mom wanted you to sell the drugs and you wouldn’t? That’s why she hated you?”
“That’s why. She kept pressuring me to get the drugs. When our finances were in shambles, she’d say I could fix it. She became single-minded. Lange got his sentence. Twenty-five years to life. He was going to be locked up for a long time. That only made your mom more determined. Eventually, she gave up hope and asked for a divorce. Then she used the only weapon she had left to get what she wanted. She used you to hurt me.”
Jill sucked in a breath.
“It’s all my fault,” she said repeatedly.
“No, honey. None of this is your fault. It was a bad situation to begin with, and we made it worse. But I don’t regret it. I can’t. Because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t have had those years with Mom.”
“So it was Lange in the woods that night,” Jill said.
“I’m pretty sure it was, yeah. He got out early on a technicality. We didn’t know.”
“You think he was the one who broke into the house?”
Tom nodded. “My guess is he came here looking for the drugs. Your mom saw him and panicked. There was a struggle. She ran. You know what happened next. Until I find Lange, I can’t be sure of anything I just told you. But I have to think Kip Lange is somehow connected to the charges against me. I just don’t know how, or even why.”
Jill was quiet for a long while.
“Do you believe me?”
Jill shrugged. “I don’t know what to think right now.”
“I understand. I really do,” Tom said. “But I didn’t make all this up just to keep you from seeing Mitchell Boyd. I told you the truth because I need you to trust me on this one. Will you do that, at least for now? Things aren’t safe here. Roland Boyd is dangerous, and Kip Lange is still out there, somewhere. You need to keep away from the Boyds, and never go anywhere alone. You go to school, and you come home. That’s it.”
“I’m not ready to move back here, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Tom looked away to hide his disappointment. “I can drive you back to Vern’s, if that’s what you want. But no more sneaking out. Understood?”
“I don’t get it. Why would Kip Lange want to make it look like you’re sleeping with Lindsey?”
“I don’t know,” Tom admitted. “I thought maybe Lange was going to blackmail me, but that didn’t happen.”
“Because maybe it’s true.”
“It’s not.”
Jill kept her interlocked hands between her knees and held her father’s gaze. “This is a lot for me to process,” she said.
“Now you know why I kept this a secret from you.”
“I think I do,” Jill said.
“Jill, I’m so very sorry,” Tom said.
“For what?”
“Because now it’s your secret to keep, too.”
Chapter 39
Shilo High School’s 250-seat auditorium was almost filled to capacity. Rainy peered out at the settling crowd through a part in the heavy auditorium stage curtain. The sound of students’ voices was overpowering in the high-ceilinged room. Rainy wondered how the outnumbered teachers would ever quiet these kids down. Waiting with her backstage were the other speakers for the mandatory student assembly: Shilo High School principal Lester Osborne and police sergeant Brendan Murphy. Murphy apparently had learned his lesson and kept his hands appropriately to himself. Angie Didomenico, who had put this assembly in motion, had a schedule conflict and had sent regrets.
Rainy checked her watch. In five minutes, Lester Osborne would step onto the stage to make his introductory remarks. Shortly after, he’d bring out Sergeant Murphy to say a few words before commencing with the afternoon’s main event—a cyber safety seminar presented by FBI special agent Loraine Miles.
Earlier in the day from his office in Boston, Walt Tomlinson had sent Rainy an email commending her initiative and praising her willingness to sacrifice a much-needed off day. This sort of community outreach, she knew, improved public perception of the FBI, and the positive public relations helped bolster Tomlinson’s budgeting requests . In that same email he also issued a terse reminder about her role in the Hawkins investigation, which was none.
Tomlinson had begrudgingly allowed her to use Carter’s time and expertise in assisting the Shilo PD with its investigation, but her request to take over the Hawkins case or, at the minimum, establish a federal nexus to it was denied. With the FBI, it was always a matter of resource allocation, and Tomlinson guarded his resources like precious gems.
The State of New Hampshire was going to prosecute Tom Hawkins, and that was that. It was a politically motivated move, something Rainy knew even before she’d been told. Such occurrences happened occasionally with high-profile cases. By controlling the pretrial press and media coverage, the New Hampshire D.A. could demonstrate to the voters his tough stance on sex crimes between teachers and students. It would go a long way to help with the D.A.’s reelection efforts.
The FBI preferred to not behave like bullies by taking over cases that the states wanted to prosecute themselves, and did so only when such action was legally necessary or beneficial to the FBI. Rainy didn’t let go of the Hawkins case easily. During a closed door meeting in Tomlinson’s office, she tried again to change his mind.
“The line connecting the state’s case against Hawkins to my case against Mann is becoming increasingly clear,” she had said to Tomlinson.
“By clear, you mean… ?”
“Tom Hawkins is the one who supplied Mann with the text images of Shilo girls and others.”
“Did you check with the deputy U.S. attorney prosecuting Mann?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And she agrees with you. The state can prosecute Hawkins without impacting her case against James Mann. We’ve already given her most of what she’ll need for trial.”
“So why do you want to take on the Hawkins case as well?”
“Because I’m worried that a lack of continuity between the state and Feds could damage both investigations,” Rainy said.
Tomlinson flipped through the Hawkins case report Rainy had provided. “Can you prove the interstate nexus in the Hawkins case?”
“Not with that Leterg program masking the IP addresses, we can’t. We have no idea where those images were sent, no. But we’ve got enough circumstantial evidence to prove that he was Mann’s supplier. He had the exact same images that Mann had. And we know that Mann was a receiver, not a distributor.”
“I appreciate all you’re doing, Agent Miles. I really do. But trust me on this one. The state will do a fine job, and he’ll spend just as much time in state prison as he would in a federal,” Tomlinson had said. “This is a big deal case for New Hampshire, and the D.A. wants to prosecute it. Unless you give me something better, I’m going to let him.”
Rainy knew when to walk away from a battle she couldn’t win. She still had one task to complete before her work on the Mann investigation could conclude. She needed to make an official ID of as many of the forty girls in the Text Image Collection as possible.
Rainy hoped her seminar would impart more than just wisdom to these developing minds. She wanted to inspire some of the girls photographed in the Text Image Collection to come to her without her having to go find them. There’d be fewer questions asked that way. The added discretion might help address Didomenico’s concerns that a highly visible FBI investigation in a small town would stir up unwanted media attention.
Rainy also wondered if Lindsey Wells might change her mind and come clean with her. It was obvious the girl had lied about her images—of course she’d sent them to somebody. Maybe this seminar would convince Lindsey to stop protecting whoever had betrayed her. And she believed the betrayer to be either Tom Hawkins or a boy Hawkins had recruited to help him build up his merchandise inventory.