A few days later, I found myself alone in the big house. Dad had a lunch date with the woman he’d met while we were scouting for our roommate. And Earl? He was already back to his old routine, volunteering at China Camp. But he’d also had several visits from a bunch of suits who never smiled. Whenever they showed up, they just disappeared into his office like a clutch of Armani-clad robots.
I relaxed on the deck, eyes closed, head lifted to the sun when the front door opened. Tyler had stopped by to take The Babe for a walk.
“You plan on coming back this time?” I asked with a smile.
“Ha ha. Funny. Come on, pup.” He picked up the dog’s leash, then walked over to the deck and sat on the rail.
“I can’t thank you enough. I was a total jerk for getting involved with that shit, those people. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I hope the money was good while it lasted,” I said.
“Not enough to put Grandpa and his friend—”
“And you …”
“And me, in danger,” he said.
“You did this for the money?”
“I wanted to buy a new car.”
“Seriously? All this for a car?”
“Well …”
“Your grandfather would have loaned you the money, I’m sure.”
“I have no excuse.” He spread his arms and shrugged. “The people I worked for were … um …very persuasive. And to be honest, they didn’t have to push all that hard. They dangled so much money in front of me and it sounded exciting. How did you find us?”
“Modern technology, if you can believe it.”
He laughed. “See ya.” He waved as he and The Babe headed for the door.
All that upheaval because he’d wanted a car. I was drugged, ended up in the hospital and stuffed into the trunk of a car a so he could ride around in some hot wheels. Unbelievable.
I had a chance to speak with Earl the next afternoon in his office.
“Hey, Trisha. Things back to normal, right?”
“Your opinion. Not mine. You have to tell me what was going on.”
“I can’t. But on the positive side, Ty is at the radio station and Bernard is in good health and home in Oregon. Where they both belong.”
“And Frida the hackable fridge has been replaced with a standard, not-so-smart refrigerator. I know. You’ve told me. But there is so much more you haven’t said,” I said.
I sat down on the leather couch across from his desk.
“Earl, I think I deserve an explanation.”
He glanced out at the deck for a moment, then walked over and sat down next to me. “There’s not much I can tell you,” he said. “Legally.”
“I wouldn’t call that fair, would you? You knew Tyler wasn’t missing.”
“Well, he was … at least, for a little while.”
“I know you and this Popolare guy met years ago. He was your student.”
“Something like that. I was more of a mentor. When he came to work for me, I recognized a unique talent. Gifted, I’d say. He wrote the most beautiful code I’ve ever seen. One evening, he and I were working late, and we began discussing backdoors—a way to bypass a network’s security, sneak into a computer system. I had developed a string of methods—I called them parlor tricks—to make a backdoor attack not only possible, but completely invisible. And relatively easy to do, as things go.”
“And?”
“He took my parlor tricks and improved them, a hundred-fold. But we disagreed about their application. I thought they should be used to test a system’s capability of fending off attacks, use them to identify holes in their security. Popolare had other, less … uh, benevolent ideas, and we had a knockdown, drag-out fight, and went our separate ways. He turned up contracting with the City of San Francisco and creating their computer network. You know the rest, I think.”
“When did you reconnect with him?”
“I was asked to keep an eye on him. Find out what he was doing.”
“Who did the asking? Tyler? Bernard?”
“Neither. I was in contact with an organization.”
“Shadowcorp.”
“What?”
“That’ what I called them.”
Earl smiled. “That’s a pretty good name. Anyway, Shadowcorp and I laid the groundwork that brought in Tyler first, then Bernard. At my request. Obviously, they didn’t know I was already involved. Remember when Bernard said he’d been assigned to watch a typical suburban family?”
“Yes, the day I tackled him. I remember.”
“It was a sham. They were ordinary people. But it gave me some time so I could connect with Popolare and regain his trust.”
“And Tyler never knew you were a counterspy?”
“No, he didn’t. When he figured out the people in the house over the hill weren’t competition, but Shadowcorp’s own employees, he thought we were doing something morally wrong. That’s when he stopped delivering the Coyote Ridge bottles to Jason.”
“Chang? He works for Shadowcorp?”
“Right. Tyler has seen too many spy movies and he became concerned about the reaction from Shadowcorp when they didn’t receive their mini microchip. He wasn’t worried that much about himself, but what the organization might do to me. Due to my reputation, mostly.”
“What I don’t get is that, if Popolare thought you were working with him to develop these codes, why the drone? You could have just walked in the front door.”
“I did that occasionally. The drone was for surveillance. It saw things that I didn’t. I couldn’t be there all the time.”
“Who or what is Shadowcorp?”
He shook his head.
“Earl, I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“When I didn’t know what was going on, I searched through your office. And I found the activation codes for the ransomware. But I didn’t know what they were until later. I gave them to the police.”
Earl’s face morphed into a mask of stone. Not a twitch. Not an eye blink. “Go on.”
“Why didn’t you stop the first attack if you knew it was going to happen?”
Earl’s face softened. “The Marin group discovered they were compromised.”
“How?”
“The mini-chip. It was Burk. He spotted one at Jason’s house. Brought it back to Marin and viewed it. That set everything in motion. Didn’t take long for them to figure out that Tyler, Bernard and I were connected. Once they did, they pushed the launch date up for the first attack. They kidnapped the three of us, packed up, and left.”
“You’ve been working with the feds or some other agency, haven’t you? That’s who has been visiting you recently.”
“I can’t talk about that. But I will say that you’re on the right track. Trisha, I’m sorry you became so deeply involved. They wanted to use you to get to me.”
“The guys visiting you. Are they Secret Service? National Security? CIA?”
“Trisha.”
“I deserve an answer. I was drugged because of you. I was kidnapped and stuffed into a trunk, because of you.”
“Them, Trisha. Drugged because of them, not me.”
“Did Tyler and Bernard know what you were doing?”
Earl hesitated again. “No,” he said.
He moved over to the bookcase and picked up the photo of him at Woodstock. He smiled slightly and placed it back on the shelf.
“I’m not a cybercrime fighter. Or with the FBI or the CIA. I’m retired. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time when computers were springing to life. That’s it. That is who I am.”
“But—”
“I still know people—good people—in the industry. I lend a helping hand when I can. Nothing more.
“One last thing,” he said. There was a long pause. “Stay out of my office.”
He pointed to the door.
Earl left the house not long after our conversation. I walked back to my room, thinking about what he’d said. I had been spinning my wheels, and he had been in charge the whole time. I moved to the deck and stood there alone, watching the sun splash through the redwoods stretching down into the Canyon.
While I’d been hunting down Tyler and Earl, my energy level switched on to ultra power mode, my body and brain fueled by a constant flow of adrenaline. But now, the switch had clicked off and I was tired to my bones. And it didn’t feel over. I’d never get the complete story from Earl. So infuriating. I needed to talk to someone who knew what had happened inside the Marin house.
Burk. He would have the answers I wanted. But would he give them to me? He now resided in the Marin County Jail. Before I just showed up and requested visitation, I needed advice. I called Inspector Burrell.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Confused. I need some information and I think the only person who can help me is Burk, but he’s in custody, as you know. I’m thinking of visiting him.”
There was a long pause. “Trisha, you’re a victim. You were kidnapped and drugged by this man. If there is a trial, you will be asked to testify. He has been charged with these crimes against you, as well as half a dozen more for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. His lawyer may want to talk to you, but it would be highly unusual for you to visit him, especially by yourself. His lawyers could make something of it. I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I guess I didn’t think of that,” I said. “Being his victim.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you’re not thinking that way. But promise me you won’t go to the jail. And talk to a lawyer before you do anything else.”
“Ok. I promise. But I want to know why I was targeted. Only he can tell me that.”
“Maybe it’ll come out at trial,” said Inspector Burrell. “Sorry, but I have to go. Remember, you made a promise.” She hung up.
So Burk moved out of the picture. But maybe, Jon would listen. I texted him after we met that night but had kept it light. I promised myself I wouldn’t involve him or see him until this case was solved. My phone pinged. It was Uly. He’d sent me a photo of a slender man at the checkout counter of a big box tech store.
This is your guy. Pretty sure he stole your identity.
On my way over.
Uly opened the door before I had a chance to ring the bell. He wore a Dead Kennedys tee shirt. For the first time, his hair, which was pulled up again in a neat man bun, looked clean.
“Come in,” he motioned. He put a straight-backed chair by his three monitors.
“How did you find him?”
He smiled. “In-store cameras and such. And I had a little help.”
I started to ask another question, but he shook his head. “That’s all you need to know.”
“If I hear that or something like that one more time, I will scream.”
A screenshot of a man at a checkout counter spread across his monitor. Three little children, two boys and a girl, stood next to him.
“That’s him? Why does he have to be a father?” I covered my eyes with my hands.
Uly held out a piece of paper with the screenshot. “I scrubbed all my identifying information. Before you jump to conclusions, I doubt he’s the one who hacked your computer. From what I could find out, he’s a construction worker. My guess is he bought a couple of fake credit cards, had his name put on them, but your account information was embedded.”
“So, someone sold my identity to him?”
“That’s my guess,” Uly said. “You’ve had a few credit card hacks, right?”
“Yeah.”
“This would be from the last one. The guy used the card in the Bay Area. Easier for me to pinpoint the location and when it was used. Can’t help you on the first, however.”
“Can I ask you a question? It’s about something else.”
Uly closed his eyes. I guess that meant ‘yes.’
I started out awkwardly telling him about meeting Burk at the open water swim, running into him on the trail, at the ballpark, then Coyote Ridge, Earl’s drone, my drugging, and Tyler and Earl’s kidnappings. By this time, Uly’s eyes were open and as big as the owl’s I’d seen in La Cruz Canyon. “Is there more?”
“Oh, yes, but you know all about that, already. Popolare and the codes and the ransomware.”
“What’s the question in all this?” he asked.
“Why me? Why did he choose me as a target?”
“I wouldn’t know for sure, but I guess you and your Dad had been thoroughly researched and the Popolare crew decided that you’d be the easiest to manipulate.” Uly’s comments were littered with ‘uhs,’ and ‘ums’ and pauses that went on forever.
“They were wrong about that,” I said.
“True. But if he thought he could get in the house through you …”
“Still doesn’t make any sense. Earl, and certainly Dad, would have just invited him in,” I interrupted.
Uly kept talking. “Maybe get upstairs to your bedroom or into Earl’s office, plant some bugs, some cameras. Heavy-duty surveillance, both from afar, and up close. Find out if he was friend or foe.”
“Burk came to my rescue at the one-miler to ingratiate himself with me. That’s when it started.”
“Before that. Bet he’s been tracking you for a while,” he said.
“Uly,” I paused and zeroed in on his expressionless face, “how did you know that my bedroom was upstairs?”
He hesitated. Then, he stood up, walked around the room, came back to his chair, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, he tilted his head. “Your refrigerator.”
“Frida told you my room was upstairs?”
“Well, there have been some complications with the fridge,” he said, changing the subject.
“Oh? Like what?”
“It was hacked by two people, both the audio and video.”
“Two people!”
I tried to make sense of what he said. Two people. Uly stood there watching and waiting.
“And you know this, how?”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“No. Uly! You were one of the people spying on me? That’s how you knew I lived on the second floor. Why would you do that?”
“When you stabbed the camera and broke the … uh … lens, you didn’t disengage the audio at that time. I heard you call me a … uh … uh … perv. Never thought about it like that before. Sorry. It was then I realized that your refrigerator had another stalker.”
“Who was it?”
“I couldn’t find out. Maybe Burk or one of his co-workers. I wanted to shut it down, but you managed to do that when you cut the wires. I hope this info about your fridge’s hacker … hackers … and your credit card hacker … uh …”
“Makes up for you? No, it doesn’t. Not at all. You spied on me in my bedroom, while I was on the phone, visiting with my family, playing with my nephew. You watched me getting dressed. Getting undressed. You … you invaded my privacy. I trusted you. How could you?”
I walked over to the hall entrance.
“I trusted you,” I said again.
“I made a mistake. I apologize.”
“I’ll get the wire back to you and here’s your video watch.” I took it off and threw it at him as hard as I could.
“Friends?”
“You’re unbelievable. No. We’re not.”
I wanted to say something else but Uly turned around, moved over to his computer, sat down and put his headphones in place. Soon his head was bobbing to his music, his fingers flying across the keyboard. He never saw me leave.
Before heading home, I stopped at the San Rafael Police Station to drop off the screen shot that showed the store name and time of purchase to the Cyber Crimes officer. I wrote the case number on the top with my name and phone number. The woman behind the bulletproof glass took the papers and disappeared into the back of the station. I didn’t want to talk to another police officer, so I dashed to the glass door and left.