Chapter 1

“I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but my brother was a great disappointment to the entire family. He had such potential ... and what did he do? He ran an Internet order business out of a one room office,” Dr. Patricia White, a nationally known neurosurgeon said, earning a nod of agreement from her brother, Charles Moore.

Rebecca Moore, wife of the late Peter Moore, growled, “You never understood him.”

Waving a dismissive hand through the air, Charles said, “We understood him well enough. I guess we shouldn’t have been too surprised by how he turned out. Pete was always a thinker rather than a doer.”

Patrica asked, “Do you remember when Carl Dewitt was bullying him?”

“Yes, I do. That guy was bad news.”

“Pete was lucky that Carl lost control and turned on his father.”

“I’ve always wondered just how much Pete had to do with that.”

“I’ll admit that whole affair was strange. He always denied any involvement in Carl’s arrest, but I don’t know...”

With the remains of a black eye, Pete subserviently approached Carl Dewitt and his gang of toughs. He was there to deliver the latest set of completed homework assignments. Every morning, he delivered completed assignments and every afternoon he was informed as to what homework was due the next day. He spent his evenings, well ... he spent twenty minutes of his evening, doing his and Carl’s homework. It was price he had to pay to keep Carl from beating him again, although it didn’t always turn out that way.

His nemesis, Carl Dewitt, was huge. At 6’4”, the guy towered over most of the people around him. He wasn’t just tall, but muscular as well. Every day at school, he spent his entire gym period in the weight room working out. He spent several evenings a week studying martial arts at a dojo that emphasized developing a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude.

Despite the popular misconception that big men like him were stupid, Carl was intelligent. There was absolutely no reason why Carl couldn’t do his own homework and make good grades. Unfortunately, his intelligence wasn’t supported by a sense of morals that could have made him a force for good. He had no restraint in getting what he wanted, even if it belonged to someone else. Carl used his smarts to cheat, and his strength to intimidate.

All of the way to the other extreme was Pete Moore. He was not a big guy, standing in at a mere 5’3” and weighing a light 114 pounds. He had delicate features that would sharpen when he grew older, but at the time his fine bone structure gave him an effeminate appearance. That alone would have merited a beating from someone like Carl, but his real crime was even worse than that – Pete was the smartest guy in school.

Pete stopped just within listening range of the gang and stood there submissively waiting for Carl to finish his morning business. He watched Carl hand out small plastic packets, each containing a white powder. He had two different styles of packets, one with a red zip and one with a clear zip. Pete knew that the one with red contained cocaine and the clear one held heroin. Carl owned the drug trade at the high school.

Once the drug business was over, most of the guys there left. One of them remained with Carl. He glanced over at Pete with distrust. Pete acted like he didn’t notice and remained standing there, submissively looking down at the ground.

Ignoring Pete, Carl asked, “Did you get a date with Jenny?”

“Yes. I’m picking her up at seven Friday night.”

“Good. I’ll make the arrangements and let you know where to bring her,” Carl said.

“Okay,” the guy said.

With a wicked grin, Carl held out a plastic packet, one with a red zip, and dangled it there. The guy’s eyes covetously tracked it like it was the most valuable item in the world. Pete glanced up at him. He didn’t know who the guy was, but he would learn his identity soon enough. He wasn’t sure what the deal was with him, but knew that he’d learn the details in time.

“Here’s a little something for you.”

The guy grabbed the packet and said, “Thanks. I really need that.”

Now that his business was concluded, the guy ran off as if he wanted to put as much distance between himself and Carl as he could. Pete didn’t blame him for that.

Carl walked over to where Pete was standing. He held out a hand. Pete, knowing what he wanted, delivered the stack of homework papers. Carl placed it into his backpack. Pete was about to turn away when Carl straightened up, turned to face him, and, without warning, hit him in the stomach. Taken by surprise, Pete bent over and vomited. Fortunately for Pete, Carl wasn’t in the path of his ejecta.

“I don’t want you to get any bright ideas.”

Bent over at the waist, Pete kept gasping, trying to get control over his body. Carl reached over, put a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him so that he was standing fully upright.

“You do know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Pete managed to get out.

Carl picked up his backpack and walked off. Pete slowly collapsed to the ground holding his stomach. He fell into the pool of vomit. He knew that he was going to be late to school once again.

It was Sunday afternoon at the end of that same week when Pete returned from a visit to the local branch of the public library. The time had been well spent, but it was going to take a lot more time to organize his thoughts around what he had learned. He dropped his backpack off in his bedroom before heading into the kitchen to grab a soda. He was almost to the kitchen when he ran into his eighteen year old sister, Patty. She looked pale.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just got a call from Cindy. She said that Jenny Conrad committed suicide Friday night.”

Pete froze suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. Hoping against hope, he asked, “What happened?”

“The story that I heard was that she was kidnapped and raped after the guy she was with was attacked during their date. The guy is in the hospital.”

“How do they know it was suicide?” Pete asked.

“She left a note.”

Pete looked down at the floor marshaling his thoughts. It was with mixed emotions that he stood there. He was sad for Jenny. He was angry at Carl. He was mad at himself for not realizing what the exchange between Carl and Ted meant.

“She was such a pretty girl and had so much going for her. It’s a real shame.”

“Maybe she was too pretty.”

“I suggest that you don’t go on any dates for a while,” Pete said.

“I can take care of myself!”

Pete sighed. He should have known that would be her response. The one thing no one could accuse his sister of was a lack of confidence in herself. Of course, she did have three years of training in the martial arts and could defend herself if prepared.

“Anyone, including you, can be surprised. There are people who are bigger and stronger than you. More importantly, there are people who are more ruthless than you can imagine.”

“You’re talking about Carl, aren’t you?”

“He’s a good example.”

“Just take a Taser to him. When he’s down, cut off his balls. The sudden and permanent absence of testosterone will calm him down ... forever,” Patty said.

Shaking his head, Pete said, “If life were only that simple...”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Do you know what your problem is?”

“I wasn’t aware that I had a problem. What is it?”

“You never stand up for yourself.”

“I’m not exactly built like Conan the Barbarian.”

“Mom and Dad have offered to pay for you to learn Karate. In two years, you could defend yourself against anyone.”

“Not every problem in the world can be solved by getting medieval on someone’s ass.”

“Anyone who tries anything with me is going to have to work at it,” his sister said hitting her right fist into the palm of her left hand.

Unimpressed, Pete said, “I’m going to get something to drink and go to my room. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“What work?”

“Stuff,” Pete answered sharply.

Lisa Clark strode across the library heading for the public use computer, MCPL-10048. The little bastard was still at the machine and she was going to catch him before he had a chance to get away. So far whoever it was hadn’t done anything all that wrong. She figured a stern warning would perhaps scare the kid who, based on the clumsy attempts to get into the system, was still a novice at hacking. At least, she thought that until she saw who was sitting at the computer. It definitely wasn’t six year old Jimmy Smith. She stopped just a few feet short of the workstation.

“Pete! Did you just get here?”

Everyone in the library knew Pete. He was one of the few kids who spent hours every week at the library perusing material that wasn’t readily or cheaply accessible on the internet. Sure, the technical journals the library carried were on the web, but some of the websites required stiff fees or memberships to the organizations which published them to access the articles.

“No. I’ve been here for a while,” Pete answered with a knowing smile.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was stomping around in your system, trying to get your attention. Based on your presence here, it would appear that I’ve been successful. A better question is: why am I here?”

Lisa folder her arms across her chest. She knew he was smart, but based on what she’d watched him do breaking into her network, he wasn’t all that good of a hacker. At least he wasn’t claiming innocence.

“I’ll bite. Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I’m wrestling with a moral dilemma. I thought that I would get your opinion, since the outcome of what I decide will affect you. Actually, it will affect your reputation more than affecting you, personally.”

“Affecting my reputation does affect me personally.”

“Would you prefer to maintain your sterling reputation as an IT watchdog for the county or...” he paused significantly, “ ... would you prefer to get revenge on the men who raped you eight years ago?”

“Fuck!” she said unable to control herself.

She angrily stomped her foot while glaring at Pete. She’d thought she had put that behind her, but his question had blindsided her. Apparently, she wasn’t as over it as she had thought.

After logging out of the account he was using, he said, “I think we should talk somewhere more private.”

With a bitter chill in her voice, she said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

She turned and stalked away. Pete picked up his backpack and followed behind her. At sixteen, he wasn’t above appreciating a well shaped derriere, and he had to admit that she had a pretty fine one. She marched into one of the meeting rooms and turned to glare at him.

Calmly, he took at seat at the conference table. Tensely, she stood there looking down at him ready to unload on him.

“Please, sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”

Standing like a marble statue, she asked, “How did you find out about my rape?”

“Please, sit down. I’ll explain everything.”

No one was supposed to know about her rape except for her and the people who raped her. How did this kid find out about it? She had to know. Based on how he was calmly waiting for her to sit down, she decided that she’d have to play the game his way. She moved around the table and sat facing him. She crossed her arms.

“I’m waiting.”

“If knowledge is power, then, at the moment, I may well be one of the most powerful people in the city.”

She was very tempted to call him a pretentious little shit, but she managed to keep control over her mouth.

“A couple of weeks ago, a young woman went out on a date with a guy she thought was a nice fellow. She didn’t know that he had agreed to take her to a place where she would be abducted and raped. After being serially raped, she was dumped near the high school. I don’t know how she managed it in her battered condition, but she made her way home, sneaked past her parents, and committed suicide that night by slitting her wrists in the bathtub.”

Lisa looked ready to explode upon hearing the story. She knew only too well how that young woman felt. She had experienced it herself. She had seriously considered suicide after her rape. Nothing that she had ever experienced before that night had prepared her for humiliation she had felt, and the abuse she had taken. She knew how the girl had arrived at home. She had crawled, leaving a trail of tears behind her.

“The idiot who sold her out had actually helped set up her kidnapping. He believed that he’d get a couple packets of cocaine from the main drug dealer working the local high school. All he got was one little packet on the day when he informed one of her rapists that she had agreed to go out with him. Instead of getting more packets on the night she was taken, he got beaten up so bad that he’s still recovering from it.”

“I only know about how the boyfriend sold out the young woman, because I was there when he received the packet of cocaine. I was there because...”

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The pretentious shit knew it was going to happen, and did nothing! Furious, she jumped up from her seat. Her action was so abrupt that she knocked over the chair on which she had been seated.

She shouted, “You son of a bitch! I’m calling the police right now!”

Holding up a hand to stop her, he said, “The person who planned and executed that rape, is Carl Dewitt, Junior.”

On hearing the name, she gasped. She started to sit down, but realized that the chair had been knocked away. She moved over and sat down in the next chair. She could feel the onset of a panic attack building.

“I see that you recognize the name. You’re right, he’s the son of one of the men who raped you.”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening you, Lisa. I just want you to be aware that if you call the police, you will be raped again, and by the same guys who raped you eight years ago. I know they’ve done that in the past when one of their victims tried to expose them. They might even kill you, this time. I suspect they’ve killed people in the past.

“I expect that you have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving if you call the police. The odds could be worse, since you won’t have me to protect you. If you make that call, I’ll be dead.”

She sat back and stared at him.

“We live in an age of corruption. The whole system is corrupt. It’s corrupt beyond redemption. We are no longer a nation of law. There are those of us who must live within the law and there are those for whom the laws no longer apply. Carl Dewitt and his family believe that they are among those for whom the law doesn’t apply. For all intents and purposes, they are correct in their belief. They are above the law because they own the law.

“The first time I was assaulted by Carl Dewitt Junior, I went to the principal of the school and complained. That afternoon, I was given another brutal beating by Carl. The second one was even worse than the first one. The principal stood there and watched.

“I learned a very important lesson that day.”

Bitter, Lisa said, “You got away cheap. I was beaten and raped.”

“If nothing happens to Carl, then my turn at being raped is coming. You see ... Carl lives to humiliate people. One day Carl will realize that rape is an even more effective way to humiliate a guy, than beating him. I suspect he’s quickly coming to that conclusion. I’ve got a couple of months, maybe less, before he has me bent over.”

Lisa Clark stared at him incredulous at how calmly he was talking about the possibility of getting raped. If he really knew how horrible it was, he’d be shivering in fear.

“Of course, that assumes that he’s still around.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Me? No way! I’m a non-violent kind of guy. When I go after someone, they’re completely destroyed by their own actions, not mine. I merely facilitate their downfall.”

“What are you going to do?”

He opened his backpack and retrieved a ‘thumb’ drive. With exaggerated care, he placed it on the table between them. She stared at it like it was a viper. It took her a moment to realize that it was the largest USB drive, in terms of storage capacity, she had ever seen.

“On that drive are four imaged files ... that is, exact copies of the hard drives of four computers. One of them is the personal computer owned by Mayor Stephenson. Another is owned by councilman Carl Dewitt. The other belongs to Gary Dewitt, owner of Dewitt Contracting. The last one belongs to the computer of Mayor Stephenson’s secretary, Susan Hill.

“The contents of those four drives should represent sufficient evidence to get those four people life in prison for the crimes they’ve committed. They’re guilty of accepting kickbacks, bribes, dozens of rapes, assaults, and, possibly, murder. You asked how I learned about your rape. Simple. There was a video of it on one of their computers.”

“Oh ... My ... God.”

“As I said, the evidence on those computers should put them in prison ... Unfortunately, it won’t. The local and state police are powerless, because the prosecutors at the local and state level are corrupt. There are even a number of corrupt police who have participated in some of the crimes documented on those computers.

“As I learned when I went to the principal, you’ve got to be careful who you approach when complaining about being a victim of a crime.”

“What can you do?”

“There is one agency that is ... special.”

“The FBI?”

“No. The IRS. The fools failed to declare their ill-gotten gains. Very few people are high enough in the food chain to be protected from the IRS. These guys aren’t anywhere near that level.”

“So what’s your moral dilemma?”

“I’m planning on hosting the image files on the library’s computers for the IRS to download as a result of a tip. There are two problems with my plan.”

“What problems?”

“The first is that it will make you look somewhat incompetent at your job. The press will report that someone hacked into the computers here, left the files to be available to the IRS, and opened up a back door for them to enter your system.”

“I don’t like that.”

“The second, and more serious problem, is that there is evidence on one of those disks concerning your rape. Some people might conclude that you are the person responsible for breaking into their computers.”

“I really don’t like that.”

“With adequate preparations, we can protect you against both charges. I just want your permission to do it.”

“Are you asking my permission to host those files on one of my computer?”

“Yes.”

“The answer is no.”

Pete sat back in his chair and sighed. “So be it.”

She asked, “Why one of my computers?”

“It’s government property of a very special kind.”

“What? I don’t follow.”

“Your computers are public property, not private property. Although the chances of getting prosecuted for hacking into a private computer are slim to none; the fact is, it is against the law. I know it will sound stupid considering that I hacked into four computers already, but the way I figure it is that if they want to stand outside the rule of law, then their computers are standing right there with them. When you place yourself outside the rule of law, you also reject the protections of the law. Most people won’t see it that way, but I do.

“However, I digress. Getting back to the subject of your computers...

“Your computers are public property, owned by the citizens of this county. They aren’t federal computers. There are federal laws about unauthorized access to federal computers. They aren’t state property, either. There are state laws about unauthorized access to state owned computers, too.

“The fact that your computers are owned by the county is where things get tricky. There aren’t any laws in this county against unauthorized access of county computers, other than those used for law enforcement, financial, and education records. Even then, the crime isn’t gaining unauthorized access to the computer unless it involves physical trespass. The crime is in accessing confidential records of citizens under right to privacy protections. The laws were very poorly worded and, since they were written in the eighties, they didn’t take into account the internet.

“Your computers fall into an even less protected category than your average county owned computer. Your computers exist for the sole purpose of providing services to the residents of this county. You provide access to anyone with a library card. As a result, it is virtually impossible to be an unauthorized user. It gets even better. You even provide temporary storage space for users as a result of a policy dating back to when the library computers were used by the high schools for programming classes through dumb terminals.”

He laughed, “This is where it gets really funny. Those areas were explicitly exempted from any educational record access protections. Anyone can do anything they want on those machines without violating any laws.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Believe it. Your computers are not protected by any kind of law except for the standard pornography laws.”

“Why are you even bothering to ask my permission?”

“Because it affects you.”

“And that worries you?”

Pointing a finger at her and then himself, Pete said, “You’ve been a victim of some very unscrupulous individuals. Unlike them, I have scruples. I won’t make you a victim. I am giving you the choice of protecting your reputation or going for revenge.”

She thought back to eight years ago when she had been asked to attend a ‘business’ dinner with Carl Dewitt to discuss improvements to the city’s computer systems. It wasn’t a business dinner. Rather than heading to a restaurant, he had taken her to a warehouse where five other men were waiting for her. When she protested, Carl backhanded her hard enough to fracture her cheek. Then it got really ugly.

The memories of what she had been forced to do that night brought bile to her mouth. They joked about making her air tight. She thought that was bad until they started on ass to mouth comments. She lived through six hours of absolute hell that night. It still gave her nightmares.

She jumped up and ran from the room, hoping to reach the bathroom before bringing up her lunch. Pete watched her run off. He had a good idea of where she was headed.

“They are going to pay. I promise you that, Lisa,” he muttered.

He carefully placed the hard drive into his backpack. Regardless of her answer, he was going to leave when she returned. His plan didn’t depend upon her cooperation, although he wanted to give her the chance to take back a little of her own. There was always the computer at library of the community college. The security on those machines really sucked.

Twenty minutes later, Lisa returned to the room. She handed him a piece of paper.

“The library computers at the community college actually belong to the library except I am not the administrator of them. The security there is horrible. I think the Russians use it as a training ground for their fledgling hackers.”