One Life for Another, page 16
“Tonight, I’m only interested in opening your Snapchat message to see what I can discern from it and, hopefully, figure out who sent it. Like I said, I have several programs that allow me to find the metadata contained within your message. I think I told you once, but in case you forgot, metadata is information buried within all computer files. It contains all sorts of information about the file—when it was created, where it was created, etcetera. Mirroring your entire hard drive is the only way for me to get the Snapchat message to my computer. I will delete everything except that message once I get it saved properly.”
“I thought you also told me once that nothing is ever really deleted?”
“Yeah. That’s basically true, too. I’m impressed you actually paid attention to some of the things I’ve already taught you,” Emily said with a playful smirk. “I guess you will just have to trust me not to look at it. If it helps, I can promise you that I have absolutely no desire to see pictures of your ex-girlfriends or whatever else you may have saved on your phone. Not yet, anyway.”
She said “yet” again, Steve thought. A part of him actually looked forward to the time when she would want to know about his romantic past. Possibly by the time they went to London together. Emily disconnected Steve’s phone and handed it back to him. “All done with that,” she said as she pulled up what looked to be a mirror copy of Steve’s phone data on her computer. Steve watched Emily click on the Snapchat application and open the most recent message. With a few more clicks, she was able to find the phone number associated with the unknown sender’s message. “Looks like a local number,” she said. “Do you recognize it?” “Unfortunately, no,” Steve said.
She wrote down the number, then opened a separate web browser. In her favorites, she clicked on a website that contained a reverse number directory. After she typed it in, the result showed the number was registered to the Roach prepaid cell phone company. She then hacked into Roach’s database and determined the phone had been purchased two years ago at one of their South Tulsa locations, but it was only recently used. According to the sales contract, the person who bought the phone was named Taylor Gains and had a Tulsa address.
“Do you know her?” asked Emily.
“No. I don’t know him either. Taylor could be male or female. Does the contract have a place where the person checks a box declaring their sex? We could at least eliminate roughly half the population if we knew that.”
Emily moved the mouse so they could examine the entire document. The portion for sex of the individual had been left blank. “Well, one thing is for sure: whoever sent you this is no idiot. He or she used a gender-neutral name and didn’t mark their sex on the application form. I’m sure the address at the top will lead us nowhere, so I won’t check it until later.” Emily returned to the Snapchat application. Before she played the message, she opened another program.
“What is Groundhog?” Steve asked, reading the program’s name.
“It’s one of my many fancy investigative tools. It will allow me to pause the message while it’s playing and dig into the embedded metadata.” She opened the video from the unknown number and clicked play. Then, she began typing and clicking the mouse feverishly. Shortly thereafter, she found what she was looking for.
“Do you see this number here?” She pointed at the screen.
“Yes,” Steve said.
“That is the IP address of the cell tower the person was connected to when he or she sent the message. With this number, we can find out the location of your new friend, within a twentyto-fifty-mile radius. Watch.” Emily opened her web browser and went to another site.
Steve was able to read over Emily’s shoulder that this newly opened website could give IP locations for any location in the United States. She typed in the IP address and up popped a location—Claremore, Oklahoma.
Emily looked back at Steve. “Any idea why someone in Claremore would be threatening you?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a pretty good one. That is where my new death penalty case happened. I guess my recent investigations have drawn more interest than I realized. Can you get me a more precise location than Claremore? Like an address or part of town?”
“Hold on.” She began typing away at her keyboard some more. After a few seconds, a map appeared on her computer screen with a blinking dot just to the east of town. There was a red circle about an inch in diameter with the blinking dot in the center of it. Around the red circle, there was a bigger green circle.
“The blinking dot is the tower. The red circle around it is the radius where a phone can only get a signal from that specific tower. The green circle is the maximum distance the tower can pick up a signal, period. Sometimes, your phone connects to a tower farther away even if there is one nearby. That is why you get dropped calls and bad connections on occasion. However…” Emily paused to click on something, and several dots and circles showed up on her screen. “The person was likely in the red circle. Looking around, there are enough towers out there for all of those red circles to cover areas outside of our tower’s red circle. So, if you were outside this red circle,” she said, pointing to the original red circle and tower, “you would fall into one of these other red circles and most likely get a different tower. Does this make sense?”
“I think so. Basically, if you are in a red circle, you will almost always get the tower closest to you, but in the places where there is no red, the green circles overlap, and you may get a tower close to you or one farther away?”
“Exactly. Looking at this map, I would say there is a 90 percent chance your new friend was within this circle when he or she sent the message.” As Emily said this, she clicked her mouse again, and all of the other dots and circles disappeared, leaving only the original dot and red circle.
Steve leaned forward to look closely at the map. According to the key, the red circle encompassed an area approximately thirty miles in diameter. He could see the Claremore Racino, the Whitmore Flying W Ranch, and the Fieldstone housing addition, all located within the red circle. Although he couldn’t pinpoint the threat, at least now he knew he was on the right track in his investigation.
“Thank you for your help,” Steve said. “This map at least lets me know who probably sent the message, and I obviously never could have obtained this much information about where this message came from without you. Thank you so much.”
“Not a problem. I’m just sorry I couldn’t get you a more precise location. A fifteen-mile radius is not exactly small.” Emily glanced at the time in the upper right of her computer screen. It read 12:38 a.m.
“It’s late,” she said. “I will come up here tomorrow and try to get more metadata out of this message. I know, at a minimum, I can figure out where the video was filmed. But I am not sure how much that will help us. I would guess your new friend just downloaded the file from the web. But if he or she recorded it themselves, then we will know at least one place this person had access to.”
She handed Steve a zip drive. “This contains a copy of the Snapchat message and everything we discovered tonight: the Roach phone application, the cell tower map, etcetera. Follow me out.”
Steve stood nearby as Emily locked the door to the lab behind them. After she tested the door to make sure it was locked, she turned, leaned in, and gave Steve a short, soft kiss on the lips. After she was done, she immediately walked away, saying over her shoulder, “I had a great time tonight, Steven Hanson. Call me if you want to try a second date.”
Steve watched as Emily got into her car. When she drove by, she gave Steve a quick wave goodbye and sped away with a smile on her face. From the time she kissed him until her taillights sped away, Steve had stood in the same spot, dumbstruck. The aftershocks of the kiss still ran up and down his body. He couldn’t believe how much attraction he felt toward her after just one date.
She is truly one amazing woman, he thought.
A second or two after she drove off, Steve regained his composure. He needed to focus. He texted Booger to let him know something major had happened in the case. The message told Booger to call him first thing in the morning.
Steve went home and fell asleep thinking about Emily, then dreamed about what the future might hold with her. But occasionally, Steve’s dreams were interrupted by the waking realization that he was now at risk of losing his life at the hands of a psychopath.
CHAPTER 27
The phone rang at 6:30 a.m. Steve sleepily reached for it.
“Good morning, young man,” Booger said dryly. “What momentous piece of information arose in the wee hours of last night that required this morning’s urgent phone call?”
Steve quickly explained what happened the previous night with Emily.
Booger said, “Okay, I’m on my way.”
After they met up and Steve had shown the investigator the contents of the zip drive Emily had given him, Booger said, “Well, we definitely got someone’s attention. Too bad all of our suspects live within a few miles of each other.”
“True. What do you think our next move should be?” Steve said.
“I think we definitely keep it our secret for now. Can you trust Dr. Babbage not to tell any of her friends at the district attorney’s office?”
“Yes, I think so. I will ask her to keep this on the down low. I do think the threats might help us in getting the police file though. I would like to prepare a second motion to the court including this information.”
“Good idea, just make sure you get the court’s authority to file it under seal in order to keep it out of the public realm. You know that, otherwise, everything you file can be found online from the court’s website,” Booger said.
“Yeah, I know,” Steve said, nodding. “I will definitely ask the court to let me file the motion and exhibits under seal. That is the only way to let the judge know what is going on, but make sure no one else knows what we know.”
“Damn lucky you were on a date with a computer forensics expert
when you got this threat,” Booger said with a chuckle.
“Yeah. Especially since they sent it via Snapchat. Not sure if you know this, but once you watch the video twice, it’s gone forever, and it’s gone in twenty-four hours even if you don’t watch it twice. I doubt many people would have even believed I got this message if not for Emily’s quick thinking and expertise.”
“True.” Booger paused, then said with a grin, “I don’t suppose you want to give me five numbers between one and thirty-six and your favorite number? I’m thinking a dollar for the purchase of a lottery ticket might be in order.”
After Booger left to work on some cars, Steve hunkered down to prepare his motions. First the motion to seal and then his addendum to the motion to see Blackburn’s police file. He asked the judge to move up the hearing. He used the threat to support his argument that he needed the file as soon as possible for his own safety, as well as for the fact he now strongly believed an innocent man was sitting on death row.
Steve persuasively told the court that since there was no possible way Scottie sent the threat, someone else must be worried about the investigation. He further alleged that the unknown someone could be the person who actually killed Ashley Pinkerton. There was no other logical reason for anyone to be concerned enough about their investigation to issue a death threat. Moreover, that unknown someone might kill Steve if he or she wasn’t apprehended quickly.
Steve finished the brief by late Saturday evening; he then filed everything that day using the court’s online filing system. As he clicked through the process, Steve thought about how frustrating it must have been to be an attorney in the past. Less than ten years
CHAPTER 27
ago, he would have had to wait until Monday morning and taken copies in person to the court clerk’s office to file his motion. Now, thanks to technology, he could relax for the rest of the weekend, work on other cases, and wait to see what Judge Henry had to say about his motion on Monday morning.
Early that morning, Steve was in the office, trying to occupy himself with work that needed to be completed on his other files. He had caught up on the majority of them Sunday but still wasn’t comfortable with where he was on a few of them. Mostly though, he wanted to stay busy to keep his mind off the motion he filed Saturday evening and what response he thought it might garner from the judge. Shortly after 11:00 a.m., Carol buzzed his intercom. “Judge Henry’s office on line three, big shot.”
Steve picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Steve Hanson.”
“Hello, Steve. Gail from Judge Henry’s office. The judge reviewed your motion to seal, your motion to obtain the police file and your application for emergency hearing that you filed over the weekend. He is granting your request to keep the second motion under seal. He is also granting an expedited hearing on your motion requesting access to the police file. He is going to stay through
lunch and hear your case tomorrow at noon.”
“Thank you, Gail. I will see you tomorrow.”
“See you then.” Before Gail hung up, she said under her breath, “One more thing, Steve… Stay safe. You know we are all fans of yours around here. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to our favorite young attorney.”
“Thanks,” Steve said. “Will do.”
As soon as he hung up with Gail, Steve called Booger.
“We are set for a hearing tomorrow at noon,” Steve said. “Noon?” Booger asked.
“Yes. I guess that threat got the judge’s attention. He often skips lunch when he has a matter he wants heard quickly but can’t find any open time slot on his docket otherwise. Also, we still have our trip to McAlester on Wednesday to visit Scottie. Hopefully, we will have some good news for him.”
“Well, that worked out mighty nicely. I think I am definitely going to run to the corner market and buy that lottery ticket. Can you give me the numbers to pick?
“In all seriousness,” Booger continued after they’d shared a laugh, “it sounds like you have a lot of work to do in the next twenty-four hours. You know the state is not going to just roll over and let you get that police file without a fight. This threat may have gotten you a quick hearing, but the state won’t care. They will still fight you tooth and nail on this one. They don’t like turning over investigative files in any case, let alone a murder investigation.”
“Yes, I know. See you tomorrow at the courthouse.”
Steve had a divorce mediation set that afternoon and some DUIs set for plea the next morning. He was able to move them to a later date by telling the state court judges he had just been informed that Judge Henry, a federal judge, had set an expedited hearing the next day, and he needed to prepare. It was common for state court judges to defer to federal court judges when it came to conflicting schedules. Steve went home to his war room, which until the Scottie appointment had merely been his dining room. He spent the rest of the day preparing for the hearing.
First, he printed copies of the relevant case law he wanted to use in support of his arguments. He had done all of the necessary research while preparing the motion, so it was easy to find the
CHAPTER 27
cases. Next, he highlighted and tabbed the specific sections of those cases he wanted to read to the court.
Having read numerous briefs while working for judges, Steve knew that, oftentimes, rather than making up the wording of your entire argument from scratch and citing cases, the most effective way to persuade the court was to use direct quotes from a similar case or situation, especially when the case had come from a judge who was superior in the judicial system to the judge you were appearing in front of. Luckily, Steve had already found a few cases that he thought fit squarely behind his position.
He finished his oral argument preparation by outlining his thoughts and organizing the quoted material in conjunction with his outline. He did this so he could easily shift from the specifics of his case to the quoted material in support without delay.
Once he had his argument in focus, he put an empty box on his dining room table. He arranged his notes and copies on it to simulate the lectern he would be standing behind in the courtroom. He practiced over and over until he essentially had the entire argument memorized.
Steve did not usually practice this much for a simple motion hearing, but he knew the police file contained the key to finding the true killer. If he and Booger were not allowed to see the file, all would be lost. It would be almost impossible to investigate the murder seven years later without knowing everything that had been discovered when the investigation was still fresh.
If you don’t win this case, your client will die. This was the thought that kept popping up in the back of Steve’s mind; this was the thought that drove him to work as hard as he could. He had to win tomorrow.
CHAPTER 28
Steve arrived at the federal courthouse at 11:45 a.m. He checked in with the clerk’s office and made his way to Judge Henry’s courtroom where he saw Booger sitting on a bench in the hallway. The investigator mockingly looked at his watch as Steve approached him.
“Are you always this late to court, son? Or is it just when you appear in federal court?” Booger asked with a grin.
Steve smiled back as they shook hands. “I guess my ‘early’ is not everyone’s early,” he said as Booger opened the door to the courtroom.
Judge Henry was the senior federal judge at the courthouse for the U.S. Federal Court of the Northern District of Oklahoma. His courtroom was on the third floor of the federal building in downtown Tulsa—the same floor Steve worked on for two years just before going into private practice. The courtroom itself was a much larger and more ornate version of the floor plan used in the Rogers County courtroom where Scottie was originally convicted. But instead of the seal of Oklahoma above the judge’s bench, there was a large seal of the United States of America.
