The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [114]
D.D. blinked at him. “Could you help her?”
“I was trying to. This was December, mind you, so only a few months ago, and given that she suspected her husband, we had to proceed carefully. She and Ethan had already run Pasco on her computer, but Pasco can only find what you tell it to find. It’s not nearly as powerful as, say, EnCase, the software we employ in the lab. EnCase can mine deep into a hard drive, inventorying the slack space, analyzing unallocated clusters, all sorts of good stuff. Better yet, given Sandra’s concerns, EnCase has an image carver tool that will dig out any images on the hard drive, spitting out literally hundreds of thousands of photos. Finally, EnCase also has the ability to pull out Internet browser histories—”
“So you ran EnCase on Sandra’s computer?”
“Don’t I wish.” He rolled his hazel eyes. “First off, you never work on the source. Bad forensic protocol. Secondly, Sandra needed to be discreet, and running EnCase on the family desktop for three to four days was bound to be noticed. Searching and seizing a computer is easy. Ripping one apart on the sly, however …”
“So what did you do?”
“I was working with Sandra to make a forensically sound copy of the family hard drive. I gave her instructions on what kind of blank hard drive to purchase, then how to attach it to the family computer and transfer over the data. Unfortunately, Jason had recently purchased a new five-hundred-gigabyte hard drive, and the copying time alone was over six hours. She’d made several attempts at it, but couldn’t get the job done before he returned from work.”
“Sandra Jones has spent the past three months basically plotting against her husband?” D.D. asked.
Wayne shrugged. “Sandra Jones has spent the past three months trying to outmaneuver her husband. As she has yet to get the hard drive copied, I have yet to run EnCase on it. So I can’t tell you if she has genuine reason to be afraid of him.”
D.D. smiled. “Wouldn’t you know it, as of last night, BPD became proud owners of the Jones family computer.”
Wayne’s eyes widened. “I would love to—”
“Please, your nephew is connected to the case. You touch any piece of evidence and it’ll be tossed out of court faster than you can say ‘conflict of interest.’”
“Can I get a copy of the reports?”
“I’ll have someone from BRIC get back to you.”
“Assign Keith Morgan. You want to rip apart a hard drive, he’s your boy.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” D.D. considered Wayne Reynolds for a minute. “Did Sandra believe her husband had figured out what was going on? She’d been at this for months. Long time to be living with someone she thought might be a closet pedophile. She had to be getting more and more nervous …”
Wayne hesitated, the first glimmer of discomfort crossing his features. “Last time I saw Sandra was two weeks ago, at the basketball game. She seemed withdrawn, didn’t want to talk. She said she wasn’t feeling well, then she and Ree left. I figured she really was sick. She had that look about her.”
“You know Sandra was pregnant?”
“What?” Wayne seemed to pale slightly, genuinely startled. “I didn’t … Well, no wonder she was nervous. Nothing like having a second child with a man you’re already worried might be a pervert.”
“She ever talk about her husband’s past? Where he grew up, how they met?”
Wayne shook his head.
“Ever mention that ‘Jones’ might be an alias?”
“Are you kidding….? No, no, she never mentioned that.”
D.D. considered the matter. “Sounds like Jason Jones is pretty computer savvy.”
“Very.”
“Savvy enough to use the computer to either hide a previous identity or build a new one?”
“All of the above,” Wayne concurred. “You can open bank accounts, sign up for utilities, build credit histories, all online. A sophisticated computer user could both create and disguise multiple identities using the computer.”
D.D. nodded, turning it over in her mind. “What would he need besides the computer?”
“Ummm, a mailing address, or P.O. box. Sooner or later, you have to provide a mailing address. Say, something he rented from a UPS store.