Chapter 9: The Wicked College Teacher

Two months into her posting, Tess fully understood the punitive character of her posting. Apart from the elusive counterfeiter(s), the cases were boring. Stupid people stupidly posting stupid stuff on the ‘net, with easily traceable identities. Mostly, they got off with lenient fines, but some culprits did not learn and continued, using laughable tactics to conceal their identities. Well, it was deer-in-the-headlights time when Tess or her fellow agents knocked on their doors again, waving federal search warrants. After the second brush with federal courts, they all toed the line, or perhaps their parents or spouses locked away their computers or smartphones. For Tess, this was all an exercise in futility and a waste of resources.

Then there were the instances when some unsuspecting business owner tried to deposit one of those fake twenties that were circulating in their bailiwick. They had to drive there and question the person who, of course, had no idea which of their customers had paid with which $20 bill.

At least in one instance, this netted a prescription drug dealer who had been paid in fake Jacksons, but the DEA swooped in and got the credit. He was small fry anyway.

Still, Tess learned the procedures and she got to know her colleagues. After a month on the job, Tess also got loaned to other field agents and once even to the DEA as support in a sting operation. The operation went smoothly, and Tess was sent back to Gorman with a pat on her head for spending an uneventful three hours on a street corner, wearing huge on-ear headphones and nodding to a non-existent rhythm while listening to the tactical channel.

At least, on her home front, everything was okay. Living with Lydia was pleasant. She was a real darling, good-natured and with an even temper. Plus, she could really — really — cook well. Tess served as bus-girl, gofer and financier of their culinary exploits.

The news from Eileen was good, too. She was enrolled at a small municipal four-year college, aiming for a pre-law degree, now working evening shifts at a DiRosa-owned drugstore. She assured Tess that the house was in spic-and-span shape, and that she had become good friends with Deirdre and Joey. She had, at Maureen’s suggestion, also given a deposition of the abuse she had suffered from her father and from the local preacher, who, incidentally, had been featured in a semiprofessional documentary as the child molester he was. He had sued the producers, but withdrew his complaint in the face of mounting evidence against him, and he was now in the focus of an investigation by the State Attorney’s office. She would spend the summer in NC with her brother, aiming at hitting the beaches.

Her brother Craig also sent her regular updates about Eileen, but also on Mona. She was doing eleven months in a federal penitentiary and having a hard time of it. Apparently, her fellow inmates were a lot tougher than seventeen-year-old runaways and unimpressed with her bullying. She was learning to toe the line, but apparently, it was a painful process.

Lisa wrote emails regularly, too. She was, of course, at the Brooklyn, NY, field office, and she bitched about the drudgery of the job and the living costs. She was sharing a three-bedroom with two other probies and still having a hard time buying the groceries. She wrote that by now, she envied Tess her posting.

That did not cheer up Tess very much. She was bored stiff over the piddly stuff they did. Yet, a change was coming. She was assigned to SA Ball until further notice, who was trying to trace another asshat spewing threats against the President, but also against the Supreme Court Chief Justice and against the Speaker of the House, for unspecified grievances. Graphology, text analysis and the profiler in DC concurred that the unsub — unidentified subject — was a White Female, a rare animal for this type of offense, with at least college education and reasonably well off. The unsub was also using proxy servers via the TOR network to mask his/her identity.

The NSA, which was already heavily infiltrating the TOR net, had traced the postings as far as southern Idaho, the Boise area to be more precise, and that was where Ball and Tess drove. From the selection of intended victims, they had the suspicion that their unsub was an activist, possibly a gender rights activist, unhappy with the current legislation and blaming President, Congress and Supreme Court for their perceived disregard for gender issues.

Tess also surmised that the unsub was not hoping to succeed in making changes. This was deduced from the fact that he/she did not make specific demands towards the targeted officials. It was likely a form of punitive harassment, making the system pay for its shortcomings.

They started by examining all local lawsuits filed against gender discrimination in workplace, family courts, state and city administrations around Boise. There was a surprisingly large number, easily in the lower three digits. They whittled the number down by filtering out heterosexual plaintiffs and arrived at only twenty-seven, a far more manageable number. They screened those people again by education, profession and taxable income, according to the profile, and ended with five candidates.

Two of them had won or settled their cases and were dismissed for the moment, leaving three possible suspects: a male-to-female transsexual teacher who wanted a unisex bathroom at her school after being barred from using the women’s room, a gay man who had sued his employer for creating a hostile work environment by not removing homophobic graffiti in the men’s room or making efforts to identify and censure their creator, and a non-binary teacher at a community college whose demand to be addressed with a gender-neutral prefix was ignored by the administration.