When Diane calls for an update, Jimmy asks her to dig deeper into Gloria Cotton and her son. “Public records, social media, everything,” he says. “If Murphy does have seven other victims, we need to find out where he’s keeping them, and we need to do that today.”
Jimmy pauses, so I add my own request to the list. “When you’re checking social media, Diane, can you keep an eye out for any reference to the Onion King? He’s the other half of this equation. I’m guessing he’s not going to show up as one of Murphy’s Facebook friends, but you never know.”
“Onion King?”
“Yeah, welcome to our world,” I reply dryly. “At first I was thinking the Onion King might be a character from an online role-playing game, maybe even another player, but we didn’t see anything in Murphy’s trailer that suggests he’s a serious gamer. Whoever he is, Murphy has an almost worshipful admiration for him, kept going on about how smart he is, and how he’s the king of Onionland, and—”
“Onionland!” Diane says sharply.
“Yeah, does that mean something?”
“It should,” she replies. “Onionland is another name for the dark web.”
“The part of the web that’s not indexed?” I ask.
“No, that’s the deep web.”
“What’s the difference?” Jimmy asks.
“The deep web is all the stuff that’s accessible online but not directly indexed by search engines, usually because it’s contained within a password-protected database or page. Your bank account information is a good example. It’s available online, but you won’t find your balance by searching Google.”
“How’s that different from the dark web?”
“The dark web is about anonymity. It’s about preventing people from tracking your online activity and the sites you visit. It also allows access to sites that are blocked, and no one, not even law enforcement, can identify your physical location. You could be down the street or in New Delhi and they wouldn’t be the wiser.
“Think of the deep web as the ocean: you can’t see what’s below the surface, but there’s a lot there, including your bank accounts, tax records, email, and everything else that’s locked in a database behind a password or not indexed by the search engines. Now, within that vast ocean is a single submarine filled with pirates: that’s the dark web.”
I can hear her tapping her pen against the desk. “There’s a whole underworld on the dark web,” she continues in a slower, more contemplative tone. “Some of the stuff that goes on is legit, other activity includes things like pirated music, books, and movies, but then things get darker: drugs, prostitution, pedophilia, even murder for hire. It’s part of the reason that supposedly untraceable digital currencies like bitcoin have become the currency of the realm in Onionland.”
“There it is again,” I mutter. “Why do they call it that?”
“Because most people access the dark web through the TOR browser,” Diane explains, “which uses anonymizing software that bounces communications around the world on a network of relays. TOR stands for The Onion Router, named so because it buries your activity under layers of relays. You’ve seen Shrek, right?”
She knows we have. Jimmy’s six-year-old son, Petey, will sometimes hang out with us at Hangar 7, our office, so we keep a supply of kids’ movies on hand, Shrek being one of them.
“Uh-huh,” Jimmy replies.
“Remember when Shrek tells Donkey that ogres are like onions because they both have layers? Well, it’s the same thing with the Onion Router, only these are layers that no one can peel away.”
Nate turns in his seat and watches as we digest Diane’s words. “I’m guessing there’s no king of Onionland?” Jimmy eventually says.
“No.”
“So, who’s the Onion King?”
“Someone with an overinflated opinion of his computer skills,” Diane proposes, and then adds, “It’s probably just a username. And before you ask, remember what I said about the dark web being untraceable. I’ll do some checking, but unless he posted something using his real name or hometown, I’m probably not going to be able to provide much.”
“Is that kind of search safe?” I ask. “I thought the dark web was filled with hackers and identity thieves. If you start snooping around, it seems a bit like walking into a lion’s den with a pork chop dangling from your neck.”
Diane shrugs off the concern. “Anonymity goes both ways.”
“Uh-huh. I knew you were a hacker.”