The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [42]
First mission accomplished, he then opened up AOL and logged in as his wife. He had figured out her password years ago; she’d gone with LilBun1, the name of Ree’s favorite plush toy. But if he hadn’t cracked the code with good guesses, he would’ve used a computer forensic program such as AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit or Technology Pathways’ ProDiscover to do the same. These were the kinds of things he did. This was the kind of husband he was.
Had Sandy figured that out? Was that why she had left?
He didn’t know, so he started scrolling through her e-mail, looking for clues regarding his wife’s final hours.
Her account registered sixty-four e-mails, the majority of which offered penile implants or urgent requests to transfer funds from third world countries. According to Sandra’s e-mail folder, she was either obsessed with male genitalia or about to become rich assisting some faraway colonel with a financial transfer.
He worked his way through the spam, then through the phishing, then finally hit six e-mails that seemed actually intended for his wife. One was from the preschool Ree attended reminding parents to save the date for an upcoming fundraiser. Another was from the school principal, reminding teachers of an upcoming workshop. The final four were replies from an original mass e-mail from one teacher asking other teachers if they’d be interested in forming a group to walk together after school.
Jason frowned at this. Last time he’d checked, several months ago, she’d had at least twenty-five personal e-mails, ranging from notes from students to information from various mom e-mail loops.
He checked his wife’s old e-mail folder. All he found was the spam he’d just deleted. He tried the sent e-mail folder. Also empty. And then, with a growing feeling of dread, he began to search in earnest. Her address book: cleared. Favorite places: cleared. AOL buddies: cleared. Browser history of most recent Internet searches: cleared.
Holy crap, he thought, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He was the deer caught in the headlights, feeling the panic in him grow and grow until it threatened to spiral out of control.
Date and time, he thought frantically. Nail down date and time. It all boiled down to date and time.
He clicked back on her old e-mail folder, scrolling to the oldest dated spam with a hand that was starting to tremble again. Sixty-four clicks and there it was: Oldest e-mail sent had been delivered Tuesday at 4:42 in the afternoon, over twenty-four hours before Sandra had disappeared.
Jason sat back, hands clutched against his knotted stomach while he sought to make sense of this.
Someone had systematically purged Sandra’s AOL account. If it had happened Wednesday night, the same night as her disappearance, one logical conclusion would be that whoever had taken Sandra had also cleared the account, possibly as a way of covering his tracks.
But the purging had come first, by nearly twenty-four hours. What did that imply?
Occam’s razor, right? The simplest explanation is generally the correct explanation. Meaning Sandra herself had probably purged her account. Most likely because she had been doing something online she now felt a need to hide. An Internet flirtation? A genuine physical relationship? Something she didn’t want him or anyone else to find.
That explanation was less ominous than the image of a shadowy man, first attacking Sandra, then sitting smugly at the kitchen table and covering his computer tracks while Ree presumably slept overhead.
And yet that explanation hurt him more. It implied premeditation. It implied that Sandra knew she was leaving, and had wanted to ensure that he wouldn’t be able to find her.
Jason lifted a weary hand. He shielded his eyes, and for a moment, the flood of emotion that choked his throat surprised