‘But if it was deleted how come it was recycled?’
Tracy looked skyward and said, ‘Oy. Where did I leave my handy brain-brightener? Let’s see if you can wrap your mind around this not-very-difficult concept: it’s true that in the sordid realm of solid waste you must decide to trash or recycle; either/or, as Kierkegaard was so fond of saying.’
‘Dear me.’
‘Yes. But in Geek World, the system gods decided it was safer to make the button that says it’s Delete but doesn’t really delete anything at all. Thus saving your hard work from your poor ignorant and fallible self, you see? So until you also empty your recycle bin, each of those bits you delete from your hard drive waits around to see if maybe, after you start running around the room shouting obscenities and kicking the wall, you might come to your senses and reach down and grab it back. Isn’t that compassionate?’
‘Gosh, yes. It would be even kinder if they’d explained it to me, just once, ever.’
‘Oh, it’s in there, in the instructions all you wooden-heads can’t be persuaded to read. Can we quit talking about how I did it so I can tell you what you really need to know?’
‘Oh, yes. Please.’
‘The email says it’s from Frank Martin but I’m sure it was sent by somebody else.’
‘You are? How?’
‘The display name was the same, in the inbox, as for all the other emails that came from Frank. But when I opened the message, I noticed a difference. Frank’s email address was “frank.r.martin.” But this one message was sent from “frank.r.r.martin.”’
‘Oh, flaming hot spit.’
‘Eee, please, dear lady. No need to get gross.’
‘Sorry. But I see how this could work. The eye just slides right over the extra r, doesn’t it? Ed wouldn’t have noticed the difference.’
‘Yes. And no one ever looks at the return address – you know who sent it when you open it. Anyone can make a new email address. And this shrewd person, whoever he is, realized that Ed Lacey was not going to spend a lot of time scrutinizing the email address, particularly on a message as devastating as this one.’
‘And he knew that we see what we expect to see.’ She gazed at the shoddy old ceiling of the support staff room and mused, ‘I was right. He may be very foolish but he’s not stupid.’
‘Who?’
‘Hmm? Oh, I better not say yet. Tracy, you just moved the ball a long way down the field.’
He made a face. ‘Disgusting epithets are not enough for you? You have to use sports metaphors too?’
‘I was trying to give you a compliment – but let it go. Can you print me up a copy?’
‘Well, I wanted to ask you about that. I try not to change a machine while I’m working on it for you. But it doesn’t look like there’s ever been a printer driver installed on this machine. So what I thought I might do is take a screenshot of the open email, save it on a thumb drive, and print the jpeg on my own machine. Would that be good enough?’
He had lost her at ‘printer driver.’ Sarah took a deep breath and said, slowly, ‘I really don’t care how you do it. I need a paper copy of that email that shows the “wrong” address visible, and a copy of another of his emails that shows the “right” address. Can you do that for me?’
‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll have them on your desk.’
Walking back to Delaney’s office, she chuckled contentedly, thinking about what he’d found for her. But by the time she’d reached the door of Delaney’s office, she’d started to think about the questions that still remained.
She told the detectives what Tracy had found, and then asked them all, ‘Why would anybody do that? What would anybody have to gain by tormenting Ed Lacey that way, pretending to be his uncle?’
‘I can’t even imagine,’ Delaney said, ‘but before we try to answer that, I wish you’d find out for me how the message got into Eisenstaat’s case file, and from there to the newspapers. I can’t believe Ed Lacey volunteered information as personal as that. That wasn’t his style at all.’
‘I’ll see if I can find the name of the information officer who handled the case,’ Sarah said. ‘He must know how the papers got it, at least.’
She caught Pam, the information officer of the day, in a rare moment of calm, checking case files at her desk. She was surrounded by bright pictures of her gleefully grinning grandchildren, playing games and crawling on their dad.
Subject entirely to the whims of fate, information officers had to take calls at all hours. Officers nearing retirement liked the assignment because they logged a lot of overtime, and retirement pay is based on their take-home in their final years. Except for that advantage, though, the job was sometimes so hectic that it was known as a marriage-breaker and younger officers generally avoided it.