Look Closer

And neither did my father, until that day, nearly a year later, late October of 2004, when Dad came home and burst into tears, desperate and ashamed, and admitted that he’d put Lauren’s name on the account with all the money, adding her as a signatory with full rights and access, and now all the money was gone. “She said she felt like a second fiddle,” he told me through sobs. “She just wanted to feel like something of mine was hers.”

And that something had to be the account that held all our money?

But that’s what you do with the people you love. You trust them. You trust them until they prove you wrong. Until they betray you.

And then, you react however you’re wired to react.

—

“Happy Halloween!”

Well, turns out, it’s an exaggeration to say everyone in Grace Village comes out their doors at seven, at least this year, but many people do, calling out the finale to trick-or-treating.

But they’re pretty consistent with the lights. Within a second or two, virtually every light on every house goes out, the Village plunging into near complete darkness, only a few measly streetlamps at the intersections.

Not Lauren’s light, though. It’s still on. What happened? What’s going on in there?

I walk along Lathrow, on the opposite side of the street, trying to be casual, the cool-customer Barack Obama, and look to my right. Lauren’s front door is closed, the outdoor light on.

What’s going on in there?

I slow my walk, as best I can. Visibility is poor, but it works for me, cloaking me in darkness with the contrast from Lauren’s outdoor light.

I head down the street a bit, craning my head back, wondering how long I can just “casually” stroll up and down the same side of the same—

The porch light on Lauren’s house goes out, leaving the outside of her house in darkness.

Then a broad gust of light—the front door opening?—disappearing just as quickly, as Christian emerges from the canopy and walks briskly down the walkway onto the sidewalk. He heads north, the direction opposite me. He’s walking too fast. He needs to slow down, look more casual.

But that only matters if anyone notices him, and they probably won’t. Anyone like him, like me, trick-or-treating in a town that has ended trick-or-treating, would probably be heading for the exits, anyway, as they say.

I turn and head north, too, just so I can pass her house again. The house light is off. That’s good. The front door is closed. Also good. Is that door locked? Does it have a knob that locks? Hard to know. I’ve never been inside that house.

I let out a long breath as I keep walking.

Thank you for your service, Christian. Even if you didn’t realize you were doing it for me.

THE DAYS AFTER HALLOWEEN

78 Jane

“Thanks for this, Dee. I owe you big time.”

“No worries. Sounds like time is of the essence, so let’s get to it.” Special Agent Dee Meadows shows Jane Burke and Andy Tate into a conference room at the FBI field office. “You guys deal with CSLI much?”

“Don’t have too much occasion to,” says Jane. “But we get the gist. Your cell phone sends a signal, it pings off a cell tower, usually the nearest cell tower, and that cell tower keeps a record of the ping—which phone and when, down to the minute and second. So we can track a phone’s movements, which means we can track its owner’s movements. The phone company gave us the historical cell-site location information for Lauren Betancourt’s pink burner phone and for the phone she was communicating with. And we gave it to you for analysis.”

“Yep, that about covers it.” Dee Meadows works mostly in forensics these days but, once upon a time, did a fair amount of field work with Jane’s mother. “So first off,” says Meadows, “let’s talk about the history of their communications but leave out Halloween night, which seems different.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, aside from Halloween night: These two burners communicated with each other and only with each other,” says Meadows. “Not a single other communication.”

“Got it.”

“And as you know, their communications were carefully planned. At ten a.m. Monday through Friday, they would text each other. And eight p.m. Monday through Thursday. They took Friday nights and the weekends off.”

“Yes.”

“And they kept their phones off at all other times.”

“Interesting,” says Jane. “Didn’t know that.”

“No way you would until you look at the historical CSLI. But you’ll see that their phones aren’t sending any signals except at those times. So that right there—those synced-up times, turning off the phone otherwise—these are obviously the classic signs of two married people having an affair. Who really didn’t want their spouses to know.”

“We know Lauren was married, Dee. But we don’t know about the man.”

“Fair enough,” says Meadows. “Well, here’s another thing. Every one of Lauren’s communications took place at her home. I mean, down to the last one. And the other phone? The offender’s burner? Other than Halloween night, which was different—”

“Right, Halloween is different.”