Chapter 8: Life Gets Complicated

Stegcooc – Lori’s Real Story

Monday, November 29^th – Friday, December ³, 1999

This week and next week promised to be solid report writing and editing – never one of my favourite tasks, but very necessary ones. Evenings would be over at Megan’s studio, rehearsing. Of course, Friday night next week was going to be the combined end of project and Christmas dinner; maybe I was being a trifle optimistic with the end of project, with it being three weeks until the turn of the millennium, but we were very confident we had everything covered.

On the way into work, I decided that I would spend a few hours this morning with Michelle, David, Len, and Phil, reviewing just where we stood with the final report, and to make sure the messages and achievements of each highlighted project was consistent and in line with the major conclusions.

As I waited in the lobby for an elevator to arrive, Michelle arrived and stood next to me. I made a point of looking at her neck when I asked her how her weekend was.

“It was good, but not that way!” she said, poking me in the side. “How was yours?”

“Pretty good, despite all the rain,” I replied.

On the way up in the elevator to our floor, I told Michelle that I wanted to get all five of us to review progress on the report, starting around 9:30. She said she would set the appointment in everyone’s calendar.

Once my computer was up, I checked my email inbox – there was a reply from Lori, as well as several items of junk email. I deleted those without bothering to open them, and then clicked on Lori’s message.

From: Lori Earle <earlybirdlori@hotmail.com>
To: Will Morris <will.morris@itsd.nsw.gov.au>
Date: 29/11/1999 6:15:22 AM
Subject: Re: Howdy Stranger

I was so relieved when I saw your reply; I was so afraid you wouldn’t want anything more to do with me. And to make matters worse, just after I sent my email to you, I was called in for a major editorial conference, which didn’t end until well into the evening my time – trying to work out the time difference here – sometime mid-afternoon for you. And that would be a Friday for you, so bugger – you had probably already left for the weekend. Not that I had time to reply, either, I had to pack my bags, and catch the early morning flight out from here to New York City and prepare for an interview for our next issue. But I did print your email off so I could read it while I was on the plane and work out what I would say in reply. You know that I go through at least three attempts when I write a letter to you!

As soon as the interview was done, I had an hour or two to wait, then the overnight flight from NYC to Heathrow to review that with one of the main editors there. At least I had time to write up my reply on my laptop while I was waiting! With luck, I can fire this off from the office so you will have it when you get to work Monday morning. Um, Monday morning Sydney time – say 6 am would be early evening in London – I should be able to do it!

(I did do it! We took a break for lunch, and I was able to connect to the net, open my Hotmail account and copy this to the compose window. And, yes, I did take three attempts – actually, counting all the writing over the copy of your email to me, many attempts!)

Let me get some stuff out of the way first – you did behave like a real bastard towards me, and I accept your apology. Now, I did a lot to deserve most of what you said to me, too. So, let’s put all that behind us, as you said, it’s been eighteen years, and we are both adults, and not little kids fighting in the school playground. Not only that, but we also had a great, loving relationship at one time, and we shared so much back then, so even more reason to become good friends again. Anyway, apology accepted, forgiven and all that hurtfulness – from both of us – is behind us now.

A lot has happened in my life since we parted, none of it really of great consequence, unless you are interesting in the comings and goings of a journalist. USA Today has been a great place to work, I’ve steadily risen the editorial ladder, and I have been pushing to get an assignment to cover the lead up to the Olympics in Sydney – not all the sporting stuff, I’m not a sports reporter – but what the average Sydneyite things of the games coming up, how it will affect them, all stuff like that. Being an Australian citizen and having lived here for about eight years certainly helped. I am hoping (actually, pretty confident) that this will be a permanent move in the company for me, and I’ll then head up our Australia / New Zealand bureau, as a senior editor.

If that comes off – and I am reasonably confident it will – I have been thinking of moving back to Sydney. I have a few contacts here, and I can do my work just as easily there as in the US – or the UK, for that matter. I’ve had a great time living in the UK, London is a fun city – and being close to Europe is a bonus but getting very crowded. However, I’ve had enough of the place, the lousy weather, the crowds on the underground, all the cow-towing and forelock tugging to the Royals. I miss the openness of the Australian society, and the fantastic weather. Maybe with Cathy moving back there, the three of us can spend some time together – that would be interesting.

And before you jump to conclusions; I’m not suggesting that we should try to re-establish that three-way relationship we had back at High School for a while, or even what you and I had with Megan Winters. I mean I don’t know if Cathy would want to get involved with you and me that way again, and for all I know, you are in another relationship. Well, you must be, because you said, “we had Garry Lewis and his wife over”, unless you have started to adopt the royal “we”. Like I said, I guess I missed out again by being too shy to tell you how I felt before it was too late, and someone else took you. I guess that’s been the story of my life.

A knock at my office door interrupted me; David stuck his head around the corner and wanted to know it I would like to read through the draft of his section of the report. I told him that I would wait until the meeting, and he could walk all of us through it. Better to let others express their views knowing that I hadn’t already made up my mind on what I thought; that way they tend to be freer with their comments and suggestions. Back to Lori’s story...

That’s happened three times already, and maybe I have learned my lesson. Of course, the first time I was too slow was back at high school, and Cathy got you. I know we did share you, at least for a while, but we really couldn’t make that work, not at school with everyone else around. But I guess you know all about that, anyway. What you probably don’t know is the second time I lost you; of course, that was after that huge fight, and we weren’t speaking to each other. I came back in December 1980, for Cathy’s wedding, and for my sister Mary Beth’s as well. Which I’m sure you remember, even if only because of my atrocious behaviour towards you.

Back to Cathy’s wedding – that made me think back around where I grew up in Newport, and think of you, and how silly I was to still be mad with you. So, I decided that, since we would both be at Cathy’s wedding, I would try to make up with you. But of course, I should have contacted you right away, and not waited, and when I saw you there with Janelle, well, I felt crushed, and could barely get myself to say hello to you. But you weren’t to know how I was feeling; once again, my delays had caused me to lose you.

And, of course, last year, when I heard from Cathy that your wife had died, I almost sent you a letter – actually, I wrote about three or four, but tore them up before I got around to posting them. And I was back there for Christmas last year; well, up at my parent’s place at Coffs Harbour, and I almost tried calling you up, but I lost my nerve. Stupid, I know; you would think that someone who has no problems contacting political and industry leaders and putting them through a probing interview should have no trouble calling up an old school friend! God, I was like a nervous schoolgirl, wanting to have a dance with one of the popular guys, but too scared to say a word. I guess I still am, in a way.

So, that’s probably enough heartache for one lifetime, I have to accept that the thoughts I had of you and I being together for the rest of our lives was just a silly teenage girl’s fantasy. Now, that wasn’t what I originally intended to write to you about. The first draft was all about what work I have been doing over the last seventeen or eighteen years, the places I have been to, all that stuff. But I read through it, and it sounded like I was boasting, you know “I’ve been everywhere and done all this great stuff”, and I junked that without a second thought. There’ll be a time for us to tell each other all of that later.

Now, that’s probably enough for the time being. At least now you know how I feel about you, and I hope you can accept that I would really like us to become friends again. I can assure you I’m not going to try to rekindle our relationship from back in the late 70’s; that now I’m going to be back in your life, I would somehow expect you to drop everything for me. I learned that lesson – in a very hard way – back in 1980, and I promise I will never do that to you again.

Just for the record, as I guess you are curious (although I know you would never admit it to me!), I haven’t married, although I have had two longish relationships, but the last ended over four years ago. My work doesn’t make a relationship – let alone a marriage – work all that well, not with all the travelling, rushing off at the last minute, sometimes living out of a suitcase for a few weeks at a stretch. Plus, I never found that person that I really wanted to commit fully to, which is why the two relationships I had were not destined to long-term success. But in both cases, in was a mutual decision to end them, and we parted on reasonably amicable terms. The first was when I was in the UK for several years, back in the late 80’s, and that ended when I returned to the States for several month’s work. In truth, I returned to the States because the relationship had pretty much ended. The other was with another journo, and eventually we realised that we were seeing each other less than five days in each month, and it would be better to part while we were still friends.

Well, there’s at least some of my life since we parted. There’s lots more to tell, and I would love to know what you have been doing – from what Cathy told me you have done well in your computer consulting work, and you have even released several CDs of music. Do you still use that crazy name, what was it, Robert and the somethings? I would love to hear about all of that; I always told you that you should try to make a career in that field.

Now, time for me to end this – I must prepare for the editorial meeting and try to get a few minutes sleep!

By the way, I’ve attached two photos for you, I recall you telling me about your ancestor whom you are named for, William Turney Morris, who lived in London before emigrating to New South Wales in 1829. His brother, Joseph Morris, was the vicar at the Church of England church in Feltham, just outside of London – St Dunstan’s. William T’s father, John Morris, was a senior warden of the church. One photo is of the church itself, the other a brass memorial plaque for John Morris. Feltham is now an outer suburb of London, not the semi-rural village it was back in those days. Our mutual friend, Alexa Ramos suggested you might like some photos for your information.

Thank you for replying, and still being a friend.

Love,
Lori

After I had read that through twice, I sat back to think about things. I never suspected about Lori wanting to make up when she was back for Cathy’s wedding. I knew, of course, she would be there, and was dreading what she might say to me. If only I hadn’t been stupid enough to ask Janelle to go with me; that was a huge mistake. Not that I had a huge list of women I had sex with – less than thirty (and the last three of those were in the previous six months) – but Janelle was one that I truly regretted. No, that wasn’t true, it wasn’t Janelle that was a mistake, or I didn’t regret the time I spent with her. But she was closely involved in the one, the “big mistake fuck” of my life. Actually, there was more than one fuck in that big mistake, but now wasn’t the time to be technical about it all. Not much I could do about that now anyway, but I guess I should explain all that to Lori. That would be hard, explaining what happened to Janelle and me, and why that didn’t work out. That involved things that I was ashamed of and would upset Lori, too, once I told her about it all, given the timing of when that happened initially.

But now, there were more pressing things to attend to. I sent a brief reply to Lori, telling her I did get her email, and how much I appreciated her telling me what she did, and I would send a complete reply in the next day or two, when I had the time to think about things properly. I printed off a copy, and put it in my filing cabinet, quickly making a new folder for “Lori” – next to ones for Cathy and Sue.

I downloaded the two attachments; they were interesting photos of the Church and the memorial plaque. I was curious about why she would choose this time to send them to me ... until I re-read that section of the email. She mentioned Alexa’s name, and I knew Alexa had send Lori a copy of my ‘steganography’ encryption utility. Alexa used that for some of the more sensitive company information, information that she wanted to hide from prying eyes, and she had asked me if she could send a copy to Lori, for when they exchanged emails relating to O’Rourke. I had a copy on my computer, time to fire that up, and see if there was anything in those two photos.

There was, now, just what password would Lori have used ... I had suggested to Alexa that the title or subject of the photo be used as the encryption password. I tried ‘feltham’, ‘st dunstans’, ‘church’. None of them worked, and I had only one chance left to get it right. Damn me for putting too much security in my program! I then realized that Cathy, being a journalist, was a stickler for correct punctuation. I tried St. Dunstan’s – with the right capitalization and punctuation, and that worked.

I started to read the first ‘hidden’ letter.

Well, if you are reading this, then I know your fancy encryption program worked. Before you do anything else, can you reply to me and say, ‘I got those two photos of the Church, thank you’, so I know you’ve got them. It goes without saying that I don’t want you showing what’s in them to ANYONE. You will be only the second person, behind Alexa Ramos, to know the full story. I assume you know from your discussions with her just how dangerous these people can be.

I’m not sure just how much of my story Alexa has shared with you, so I’ll take it from the very beginning, which was when I got my first job out of University, working for the sports section of the Daily Mirror in Sydney. The chief editor of that group was Frank O’Rourke, retired corrupt NSW Police Officer, and good friend of the arch-corrupt cop, Bumper Farrell, and under the protection of the corrupt commissioner, Norm Allen.

You probably knew that I was unhappy working at the Mirror, but there was so much that I didn’t – I couldn’t – tell you. O’Rourke wasn’t just a filthy, sexist pig, but a serial rapist, sexual predator, child molester, and even worse. There were always degrading sexual conversations in the work area, only to be expected when most of the staff were boofy-headed sports journalists. I made a complaint, and I was told to get used to it, that’s how they are, and they are not going to change, and if I didn’t like it, I was free to find a job elsewhere. But it was made clear to me that O’Rourke had lots of contacts in the local industry, and if he didn’t like me, he would make sure I was black balled, and my chances of getting another job in Australia would be zero.

Then the sexual assaults started – after a week, he called me into his office, and said that if I wanted to progress, I would have to ‘show my appreciation’. I quickly learned that ‘appreciation’ mean giving O’Rourke oral sex on a regular basis. He had a tiny, putrid prick, the only salvation was I could make him come quickly. After two weeks, that quickly developed to him having sex – basically, raping me – in his office. When I told him that I was leaving, for a job with a ‘real newspaper’, he just laughed, and told me that he would make sure no news organization in Australia would employ me, he would see to that. I told him I would be working overseas, and I would make it my life’s ambition to see he was punished for his crimes. That made him laugh even louder, and said ‘You stupid slut, you should know by now I’m untouchable!’.

Of course, I started to check him out, once I was with USA Today. You probably have some sort of idea what I discovered that he’s part of an international sex trafficking ring, specializing in underage girls – and when I say ‘underage’, I don’t just mean say, seventeen or sixteen. This is majorly underage, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Really sickening stuff; they are tied in with seriously wealthy and powerful clients, people who have hundreds of millions of dollars, property moguls, media, politics, finance, and banking. Leaders of countries, people who have not just their police force in their pockets, but their country’s intelligence and military forces to back them up. I know personally of four other investigative journalists who have ‘disappeared’ investigating this group. They have ties into the political power of the UK, USA, Australia, and many other countries.

That’s why everything must be done very secretly; you probably recall the time when I was investigating someone in New York, with big ties to the media and entertainment industries there. I started to notice people following me – Alexa’s contacts over there took care of them, I think the last thing these guys got to see was some pig farm around West Virginia.

That was the end of the document hidden in the first photo, so I started to read the second one.

You can imagine how surprised I was in late 1983 when I was contacted by Alexa, through my sister, about O’Rourke, and I found out that her cousin Sophia had worked for him, after I had left. O’Rourke had got her pregnant, and when she told him about it, and how she expected him to marry her and support her and the baby, he had her killed. The actual hitman, Christopher Flannery, came to an unfortunate end, thanks to the Ramos’s, but by then O’Rourke had moved to London.

You wouldn’t believe the stuff I turned up here in England, I guess you heard about the Jimmy Saville fracas. There were those on the periphery of all this – your local shock jock Alan Jones – when I heard that Tom Domican blew himself up, trying to car bomb Jones’s roller, I laughed so hard I cried. But you and I know the real story about that. Of course, you have some of your local paedophiles, Frank Houston, Frank Arkell, numerous Roman Catholic priests, but they aren’t tied in with the international group I’ve been getting dirt on. Now, there is some overlap; when Alan Jones got into trouble in London getting caught in a public toilet with a young boy, he called on some contacts to help cover things up, and O’Rourke pulled some strings there. But I believe all of that came out on air on his radio show, and now no one will have anything to do with him.

Anyway, that’s enough about these perverted activities and the people who carry them out and organize them; when I’m back, we can meet with my sister and Alexa and go over all that I’ve discovered. I have some trusted colleagues in several countries who are better placed to carry on the investigations further, and make sure those involved are brought to justice.

Something that I also discovered is that O’Rourke will be in Sydney for the Olympic Games as the head of the Fox News reporting team. That’s another reason why I’ve finagled myself back to Sydney. I’ve been planning with Alexa, and when he’s here, even before the games start, she and I will exact our revenge – he won’t live to see any of the events. We’ve both vowed to kill him with our bare hands, so he knows exactly who is taking revenge, and just why it’s being done. I know that might sound brutal to you, but frankly, this guy is a cancer on the world, and the only way to treat a cancer is to cut it out. Sure, we are bypassing the justice system – but he’s been found guilty by one of the communities he has wronged – Alexa has sufficient information proving his guilt and involvement in the killing of her cousin Sophia, and I know exactly what he did to me, and to other women. He will pay for his crimes, with his life. For obvious reasons, you can’t tell anyone about this – so far, you are the only person, outside of Alexa and myself who know of our plans. Now, you can show these notes to my sister, Mary Beth has been working with me on all of this, initially as the liaison between Alexa and myself, but also as someone that I know I can trust implicitly and talk things over with. Maybe you can set up your encryption software for her, too.

I know this is something heavy to dump onto you, but I know you’ve been involved with the periphery of all this for some time, and I can’t think of anyone else I know who I trust enough to share this knowledge with. I hope that you don’t think any less of me because of what I’ve told you, Will.

Take care, and I’ll see you in the New Year

Your loving Friend,

Lori.

Damn. What a gut punch. I knew there had to have been something bad that happened to her that caused her to leave the way she did. Sure, she wanted that USA Today job, but there was so much more to what happened than just a better (overseas) job. Now things made sense – or at least started to. I knew that O’Rourke was a scumbag of the first order, but now ... I was with Lori, given half a chance, I’ll kill the bastard myself, with my own hands, and spit on his dead body. I would have to make time to see Mary Beth, show her what Lori had sent, and set up ‘stegcooc’ on her computer. The application name was originally Alexa’s, the ‘cooc’ an abbreviation for coocoo – since the coocoo will lay their eggs in another bird’s nest and have them raise the coocoo chicks.

I sent off a quick reply to Lori, - ‘I got those two photos of the Church, thank you’ – so at least she knew that I had found and decrypted the two concealed messages. I called Mary Beth to tell her that I had received an email from Lori, and I wanted to talk it over with her. She suggested that I drop into her office later in the afternoon, around 3pm, and we agreed on that.

The next few hours were swamped in a deluge of project reporting – the meeting with the others to discuss the various sections, reviewing the status of all the financial and statistical information, looking at various photographs to include, all details great and small. Slowly, tasks were getting checked off on the master list on my office whiteboard.

Somewhere in all that activity I found time to do a bit of Christmas shopping; I went to a jewellery shop near the office and got the gift I wanted to give Michelle to thank her for all her work on the project; a fine gold chain necklace. I knew she didn’t wear a lot of jewellery, but what she did wear was gold. As well, I found what I wanted to give Angie, too; a sliver necklace with a teardrop emerald setting, and two matching drop earrings.

Mid afternoon I walked to the Wynyard station and caught a train to St Leonards, then went up to Mary Beth’s office.

“Great to see you, Will, so what has my sister been up to now? I’m glad she’s starting to react back out to you,” she said.

“I got an email from her this morning, she contacted me last Friday, I replied, and we’ve basically apologised for how we treated each other when things broke up,” I said. “She also sent me two photos from Feltham, outside of London, where an ancestor of mine was the vicar – the original William Turney Morris’s brother.”

I showed her a printout of the main email, and the two photos. She quickly read the email, making appropriate sounds as she scanned it.

“That’s all very interesting, and I’m glad you two are finally coming to your senses. But I’m sure there’s more to her email than just that, and some interesting photos of an old church.”

“There is, did you notice the reference to Alexa Ramos about the photos? You know I provided Alexa with some copies of my steganography program that she used to send sensitive material securely in emails, and she used that to communication stuff about Frank O’Rourke to Lori with. I guessed that Lori had encrypted something in those photos, and I was right ... read this, it’s a tough read, but it tells us a lot that we had wondered about.”

I passed the two unencrypted messages to her, she read them – and as she got into the details, I could see her face hardening.

“That utter bastard!” she muttered under her breath. “Oh, my poor little sister, what she had to endure.”

When she finished reading them, she sat back in her chair, there were tears in her eyes.

“Why couldn’t she tell us what she was going through? Why didn’t she think that she couldn’t confide in us, and that we wouldn’t do what we could to help her. I can understand why she wants that bastard dead; the world will be a better place with him gone!”

“Maybe she didn’t want us caught up in all the danger, as she’s said, she knows of several people investigating this group who have been killed. Remember she told you when she was first investigating them not to let me get involved? Now, let me set up stegcooc on your computer, so you can exchange information securely with her.”

The installation program was in a secure directory on one of our servers, it only took a minute or two to run it to get the program installed on her computer. I entered the shared password that I had set up for Alexa’s communications – ‘Bitola7000+38947’. After the city name was its population and telephone country and area code.

“All done, it’s ready to go. I guess you know Lori’s email address?”

“Yes, we email each other once every week or two. I’ll let her know I’ve got the program on my computer. Can I keep a copy of these?” she asked. “I’ll make sure they are stored securely, I have a secure filing cabinet, I’m the only person who can get into one of the drawers.”

“Sure, they are all yours. What do we do now?”

“Fucked if I know, Will, reading this has really shaken me up. I mean, I had some sort of suspicion about some of it, but hearing it – I mean, reading it – directly from my sister, it’s hard to wrap my head around it. I think we must do what she asked us to, keep this strictly between you and me, and when she’s back in town, we can talk to her, let her know that we’re behind her one hundred per cent, and we will do everything we can to support her. I think that’s the least we can do.”

“Yeah, I wish I had known at the time, I would have understood what she was going through and done what I could to support her,” I said. “At least we know the full story now, and as soon as she’s back here, we can do everything we can to help her. I feel so terrible, if only I had known what she was going through, I would have been more understanding, and less of a selfish prick.”

“But if you hadn’t gone through all those problems back in 1980, we wouldn’t have spent those wonderful times together, Will,” she said. “I still look back on the times we had, the love making, how we were completely connected to each other. I wouldn’t want to give up that for anything, I have never had a more fulfilling and beautiful experience in my life. But we know we probably can never replicate that, it was a one in a lifetime experience for us, and I’m so incredibly happy that I got to share it with you.”

“Um, that’s probably something that your sister really doesn’t need to know about,” I said.

“Absolutely! Now that Lori and I are back talking to each other again, I don’t want to jeopardize that. She would go apeshit if she knew what we had done! And I wouldn’t want Chris to know just how wonderful making love with you was.”

“It was one of the most magical times of my life,” I said. “Initially, that first time, when I had thought somehow you were Lori back with me ... and I realized it had been you in bed with me all along ... I was shocked. But it worked out so well. Anyway, that’s all in the past, it doesn’t help us work out how to deal with Lori’s situation. Has she mentioned to you where she plans on living when she first moves back here?”