Our Little Secret Ch. 07

Chapter 7 – When Worlds Collide

Jen's first three interviews went well. Windstone National Bank was in a Chicago suburb. They were looking for a senior HR specialist. It was a stretch for Jenny, who had worked in HR for seven years at Quinton. On paper she could easily qualify at the intermediate level, and she had acted in a senior role for over a year, now. Even so, the VP of HR wanted to interview her. The company had a policy of hiring the right person before hiring the right skills, and the Windstone VP thought she saw the right kind of qualities in Jenny. It didn't hurt that Susan Wenderson spoke so highly of Jenny at the DC conference.

The second interview was in Columbia, South Carolina with Mission Bell Systems, a young manufacturing company that specialized in embedding smart technology into wearable products. They were a second tier company. They sold their products to brand name companies that integrated Mission Bell's wearable technology into their own consumer products.

The last interview took place at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Jen had never considered a job in an academic setting, and found the environment refreshingly stress free. The weather was a vast improvement over Boston, and the scenery, what little she saw, was beautiful.

Any one of the prospective employers would have been an improvement over Quinton. But if she was going to take the effort to sell her house and pull up roots, it had to be better than just good. She wanted great. Jen was hoping Google was the one.

On Wednesday afternoon she was packing for the Mountain View trip, which was the following day. This time Joel arranged the flight, because he was traveling with her, and because Jenny vastly preferred flying business class with Joel. Jen had emailed ahead to Don McLean indicating Joel was coming down as well.

Jen felt things with Joel could not go better. He was attentive without being pushy. Supportive without being needy. And his business appeared to be thriving – at least, he was traveling a lot.

Joel had slept over at Jenny's four times now without becoming presumptuous or invasive, and she had slept at his downtown apartment twice without him becoming dominating or obsessive. It was comfortable and pleasant, and exhilarating and passionately romantic at the same time. Jen didn't know that was possible.

Okay, so he wasn't the best looking guy, but he was far from homely. And when it comes down to it, what did Jen really want? She wanted someone stable, trustworthy, attentive. She wanted someone who cared about her and made her laugh and feel good about herself. She wanted someone who challenged her to become a better person. Joel was all that. And whatever he might have lacked in perfect looks, he certainly made up for in bed – not that Jen was heavily experienced in that department, but she had no complaints in Joel.

- - -

Terry Machon loved her job. She was an IT specialist for Mixbury Systems in Boston, a company that installed and supported customer relationship management systems, known as CRM. Mixbury helped companies decide which CRM system to install, and then they did all the installation, training, and support.

Terry had nothing to do with any of that. She worked in the IT department. She, along with three other IT specialists, supported all the computers, cell phones, laptops, tablets, iPads, and other technologies for the employees throughout the company.

It was her first job out of technology school, and she considered herself lucky. The job was interesting and the people were good. She worked on many different platforms and operating systems. Terry was learning new things every day. In the IT world, technical knowledge was currency – the more IT knowledge you had, the more valuable you were, and the more opportunities were open to your career. Terry planned on keeping her job, but she knew the skills she had developed in just two short years would let her move to another job in a heartbeat.

The latest task was to fix an employee's laptop. She set the laptop on the test bench. It wouldn't connect to the network, she was told. She plugged it in and powered it up. More accurately, she realized, it connected to the network, but then disconnected about thirty seconds later. She checked for intermittent hardware connections, but everything checked out. She checked all the Windows network configuration and adapter settings, but everything was fine. She checked the power management settings – everything checked out. She ran a diagnostic utility on the hardware, but it reported no problems. Just in case the diagnostics didn't detect the problem, she opened up the laptop case, and swapped out the small daughterboard responsible for the networking circuitry with a new card. When she put it back together and powered up the laptop, the problem persisted. There was no reason why the network should disconnect, but it did.

Terry suspected malware, like a virus. She ran a quick scan, and nothing popped up. She launched a deep scan – it would take over an hour. Terry multitasked to another problem while the deep scan crawled through every file on the hard drive. The scan was still running when Terry went for lunch.

When Terry came back, the deep scan had completed without finding any problems. She had never seen this problem before. Terry was in uncharted territory, but she wasn't giving up. She put a protocol analyzer between the computer and the network, and discovered the computer was releasing the IP lease thirty seconds after the network connection was established. Something inside the computer was releasing the network. She ran a Windows process and services scanner. Nothing was unusual. She ran a memory scan. Again, nothing unusual there. Now Terry was stumped. What could be doing this?

Not knowing what else to do, Terry viewed the status of the hard drive. "That's strange," Terry said. All the company laptops had a one terabyte drive, but it was only showing 950 gigabytes. Fifty gigabytes were missing from the hard drive.

"Bob," Terry called over to her more experienced counterpart, "do we ever partition drives?"

"Never," Bob said. "Not allowed."

Terry looked at the disk partition table, and there it was – a second partition. She found the missing fifty gigabytes. But that didn't explain the network problem. Still, it was a mystery, so why not investigate? She had no better ideas. She couldn't access the directory structure in the second partition – someone had locked out all user access. No problem. As a Windows administrator, she took ownership of the drive. Now she had access into the phantom partition. There was one hidden directory, which is not to say she couldn't see it, but it had the hidden attribute flag set on them, which was strange. She went into that directory, and found five hidden subdirectories, namedA,B,C,D, andE. She pickedA, and saw a collection of files. She opened one. "Oh Jesus! I'm going to be sick!" Terry screamed.

Bob dropped his sandwich and walked over. "Oh my God," he said, looking at the image. He remembered a course he took five years earlier. They spent half an hour on this very topic. He never thought he'd have to use it. "How many are there?" he asked.

"I don't know," Terry shivered repulsively. "I just saw the one."

"Change your Windows Explorer to display medium icons," Bob said. She did.

"Terry, stand back," he ordered to the junior employee when he saw there had to be hundreds of like pictures. "This laptop is a crime scene."

Bob called Jason, his boss, on his cell. "Jason, you need to get back to the shop now. Now, I mean now. I mean right fucking now. I mean run!"

"Hi Julie," Jason said into his cell phone five minutes later. Julie was George Plank's executive assistant. George Plank was VP of facilities, including IT, and including security. "I need to talk to George ... Yeah, I know he is in a meeting. Julie, go into the meeting, interrupt him, and tell him it's me, and tell him I have a firestorm, not a drill ... that's right. Firestorm. He'll know what that means. Julie, do it now. I mean right now."

Five minutes later, George Plank walked into the IT center. "Jason, you pulled me out of a meeting with the board of directors. This better be good." Jason just pointed to the laptop.

"Oh fuck me!" George cringed. "Whose laptop is that?"

"Brent DiGarnio," Terry said.

George buried his forehead in his hand. "Nobody says a word!" George angrily pointed his menacing finger at each one of the IT employees. "Not to your fellow employees, not to your spouses, not to your dog. No one! I will fire the person who leaks this." Terry had never heard a Mixbury manager speak so menacingly before. For the first time in two years working there, she was afraid.

George pulled out his cell phone. "Yeah, Julie. I need Bruno the instant he's done in that meeting. I mean directly – no distractions by anyone else ... Tell him it's firestorm. In fact, go in and tell him that now." Bruno Arledge was the company president.

George turned to Jason. "Every account, every phone number, every email, every everything that we have for Brent DiGarnio is shut down right fucking now."

"Sir," Terry Machon piped up, "he'll know you're on to him. Maybe he'll destroy evidence."

"Terry, right?" George said to her, confirming her name. She nodded. "You found this?"

"Yes, Sir. I was investigating an unrelated problem, and I came across this."

"Where is Brent DiGarnio right now?"

Terry called up an app on her workstation across the room. "According to activity logs, he is using his loaner laptop at his desk."

"Lock that door," George pointed to the main entrance to the IT center. George didn't want anyone wandering in and seeing this picture. Jason locked it. "Terry, I want your finger on the trigger. When I say now, you shut down everything Brent DiGarnio has. I mean every fucking thing."

"You got it," she nodded confidently. Terry sat down at her computer console and wrote an automated script to disable Brent DiGarnio's access to the many services across the enterprise network. Literally, one push of the button would launch the script, and Brent would cease to exist in the Mixbury network. She asked Jason to review her improvised script to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. He reminded her of the VPN access. She nodded, and added that to the shutdown script. Then she linked the script to her smart phone, allowing her to activate the script from anywhere.

"Denise," George was on his cell phone again. "I need you in the IT Center now. We're in lock down. It's firestorm. Bring your crime kit." He hung up without waiting for a response.

Denise Whyte knocked at the door two minutes later. She was the facility's chief of security. She was carrying a black toolkit. "Not one of ours, please!" she implored when she saw the laptop screen.

"Brent DiGarnio," George said.

"Brent! Oh no!" she cried. "He's got kids. How the fuck ..." She didn't finish. "Normally I take pictures of the scene, but in this case ..." George nodded. She stretched some yellow and black Do Not Cross tape across the room, blocking access to the workbench Terry was originally working on. "Can we evacuate the room, or do we need someone in here?"

"We can go until someone calls for urgent support," Jason nodded.

"Where is Brent now?" Denise asked to anyone.

Terry checked her logs again. "Still at his desk."

Denise pulled out her cell phone, and speed dialed. "Post a guard outside the IT Center door. Nobody one gets in without my okay ... no, now ... I don't care, that can wait ... as in right fucking now or else ... thanks."

Denise looked at Terry. "Is there only the one file or are there more?"

"Hundreds," Bob answered for Terry. "Probably thousands."

"George?" she looked at her vice president. They had rehearsed this. The both know what was next. George drew a long, labored breath, and then nodded. She pulled out her phone again, and looked up a number in her contact list, and dialed. "Detective Brian Lewis, please," she said into the phone. After a moment, she said "Brian, its Denise Whyte at Mixbury ... Good. Listen, I have a live one. I need you to make an arrest quickly and discretely ... Child pornography ... Yeah, we have the evidence secured ... Brent DiGarnio ... On a laptop ... We think thousands ... Twenty minutes? Okay, I'll meet you at the side entrance. Don't come in the front." She listened for a long time. "Alright" She hung up.

"Okay," Denise briefed the people present. "Detective Lewis is coming here, to this room. He'll have two uniforms who'll stay in their car outside. They won't come in until he views the evidence. Once he looks at it, he'll decide whether to make the arrest or not, but from the looks of that one ..." she pointed to the laptop. "Have you looked at any other pictures?" she asked the group in general.

"No," Terry shook her head. "But we put Windows Explorer into preview mode, and I saw small icons of maybe a hundred others. They were tiny images, but you can tell what's in them."

There was a knock at the door. Jason opened it. "Good," Denise said when one of her staff members arrived. Terry didn't know him. "You guard this door. If you need to leave, you get someone to cover for you first. You do not leave this door unattended, and no one gets in this room without my say so, or you're fired, and I'm not kidding. The president doesn't get into this room. Clear?"

"As a bell," he smiled nervously, for the first time noticing Vice President George Plank of security in the room had just witnessed her edict.

"I need everyone out," Denise gestured. "No!" Denise barked at Terry who was grabbing her purse. "This room is a crime scene. Everything stays exactly where it is." At least Terry had her cell phone in her pocket.

Denise shepherded the group out the room, and watched Jason lock and test the door. "I need that key," she said to Jason, holding her hand out. He pulled it off his key ring, and handed it to her. "I'm going to go talk to Cheryl now," Denise said to Charles, and started walking down the hallway.

"I'm coming with you," George added, catching up with her. Cheryl was the company's director of communications. Someone at the firm was about to be arrested for a heinous crime, and the company better start working on a communication strategy now.

"Holy shit!" Terry said to her boss, Jason, thirty minutes later in the cafeteria, making sure they were out of earshot of anyone. "That was the most incredible response." They were waiting in the cafeteria, as instructed, for Denise Whyte, who would accompany them to the police station where they would both provide formal statements. "We went from detection to police on scene in about half an hour."

"We practice it," Jason nodded. "I don't necessarily mean about ... you know," he said quietly, looking around. "There are lots of reasons you need to respond to an IT emergency. We run a drill every year or so. We call it firestorm." Jason paused. "You did good in there, Terry," Jason smiled. "George knows you by name now."

As if on cue, Terry's phone rang. She looked at the incoming number. It was Vice President George Plank. "Yes Sir," she answered.

"Now!" George said, and disconnected. Terry knew that, at her suggestion, they were waiting for the police to arrest Brent before shutting down his network access. She activated the shutdown script from the app on her smartphone. At the touch of Terry's finger, Brent DiGarnio ceased to exist.

Unemployment was the least of Brent DiGarnio problems. Terry and Jason watched out the cafeteria side window as two uniformed police officers led Brent in handcuffs to a squad car, while two other men in suits – one of whom presumably was Detective Brian Lewis – were climbing into an unmarked car. Meanwhile, a forensic team was on its way to collect the evidence sitting on the workbench in the I.T. Center. Mrs. DiGarnio and her three children were in for a rude, life altering shock, starting with a team of police officers arriving at her house armed with a warrant to search the premises for evidence of child pornography. And they would find it on Brent's home computer.

- - -

Later that night, Christina Carroll was watching the evening news with her parents. She didn't normally watch the news on TV, but since Joel Winkman came over last week with an array of pictures, she thought she would pay more attention to local news. She just knew the third item of the night was hers.

Earlier today, Boston Police arrested a thirty-nine year old man at his place of employment for possession of child pornography with intent to distribute. Mr. Brent DiGarnio was taken into custody by Boston police this afternoon, and then later charged. According to a statement released by Mixbury Systems, Mr. DiGarnio's former employer, the files were detected by a routine scan conducted by its I.T. department on a company owned laptop computer issued to Mr. DiGarnio, and police were then immediately notified. Mixbury went on to say they are cooperating fully with the police investigation.

The Boston Police Department's public relations office released a statement today stating police officers executed a court ordered search of the home of Mr. DiGarnio, where they seized several items as evidence. The police statement continues to state that the nature and magnitude of evidence collected provides more than sufficient grounds to convict of Mr. DiGarnio for the receipt, possession, and intent to distribute child pornography. The District Attorney's office said it is too soon to comment on this particular case, but noted in other recent similar cases, the DA has sought, and won the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. If convicted, DiGarnio faces a minimum mandatory sentence of five years, and up to twenty.

Mr. DiGarnio is being held in custody overnight, and appears in court tomorrow for a bail hearing. The DA said it will request very high bail considering the predatory nature and socially destructive elements linked to this crime.

Mr. DiGarnio is married with three school aged children. The DiGarnio family could not be reached for comment.

Christina burst into tears when she saw Brent DiGarnio's picture broadcast on the evening news. That was the man who talked to her, Kelsey, and Mary before they all jumped up on the bar. She picked his face from an array of over fifty men's pictures when Joel Winkman came over to her house a week ago. She pointed to him the instant she saw his face. Joel asked if she was sure. She was absolutely certain he was the man who talked to them. Joel later showed the same photo array to Kelsey and Mary, and they all picked out the same man. Now this man was going to go to prison for twenty years.

Christina's parents didn't understand. They thought Christina was crying tears of agony and shame. Christina couldn't explain why they were tears of joy – tears of glorious retribution. Joel had commanded Christina and the other two young women to never talk about the Brent DiGarnio – the man in the picture Joel showed them. They were only allowed to talk among themselves, and with Joel, and even then only when they were certain they could not be overheard. Joel figured they could use each other as a support group.

Christina went upstairs to her room, closed the door, and sent a text message to Joel Winkman.

For the first time in months I can breathe again. Thank you forever.

- - -

Jenny left work at noon on Thursday, and drove home. When she pulled into her driveway, Joel was already inside her house. Mrs. Farmington, next door, had agreed to look after the corgis, and she and Joel were chatting about movies they had recently seen.