“Prob’ly. He says this is the only way he’ll be vindicated. I’m telling you, the guy has a big grudge and an even bigger ego.”
That explained the media invasion. This wasn’t the first time Twitter had been hacked, but it took a well-known name to draw so much attention. If the man behind that name was media himself, he might not even have to pull in favors to do it. His colleagues would look at him, realize that it could have been them, and jump on the bandwagon in no time flat.
This was human nature.
So was my own sense of dread as the severity of the situation seeped in. This wasn’t something we could shrug off as a local incident. It went beyond the town limits, beyond anything that had happened in Devon during my time here, and it wouldn’t be going away tomorrow or the day after that.
Feeling slightly panicked, I was relieved when Kevin took over the questioning.
“So Chris is back home. What happens now?”
“He registers with a pretrial probation officer. They talk on the phone once a week to make sure the boy hasn’t skipped town.”
“He could call from anywhere on a cell phone.”
“No cell. Has to be a landline.”
“Grace doesn’t have a landline,” I said.
“Then he uses one at the school or the Spa or my office. Boy calls officer from a validated number, officer calls boy back at that number to make sure he’s there. Oh, and he isn’t allowed to use computers, tablets, or phones.”
“Not even a cell phone to call his mother?” I asked. Grace liked knowing where Chris was, and a cell phone was crucial for that.
“Yeah, sure, of course. But he can’t use the phone to surf.”
“How would they know?” Kevin asked.
“He’s in the system. They’ll track what he does. They’ll be combing through his electronics to see what he used, where he went, and when.”
“Collecting evidence for trial.”
“Right. They’ll talk with Chris’s teachers and people at the Spa. They’ll look for motive, why he targeted the people he did.”
“There were others?” I asked. Grace and Nina had both implied as much, but I didn’t want to believe it. One voice might be called a blowhard. A chorus was more damning.
“Zwick says so. He has his own investigators, and if he got names of other victims, you can bet he’s given them to the Feds.”
So Chris had two factions working to lock him up, the government and a powerful member of the press. Feeling Grace’s pain, I pulled out my phone and, on the off chance she still had hers, sent her a text, then set it on the table to wait for a reply.
Our burgers arrived, but I could only nibble. My stomach was in knots. Jimmy ate half of mine before his own appeared, telling us between bites who all had come for the show. I tried not to resent his excitement. Crime in Devon rarely went beyond noise complaints, so the police station had to be a sleepy place to work. Now, it would be alive with big-time law enforcement officers, not to mention the media arriving from hotspots from DC on up. If Ben Zwick had his way, I feared, the invasion would grow.
When the conversation turned to speculation about the kind of money the press attention would bring to the town, I tuned out. When it turned to their own plans for Sunday brunch in Hanover, I sent Grace another text.
“Where is she?” I muttered under my breath, setting the phone down again and staring at the screen.
“Isn’tthatthe pertinent question,” Kevin remarked.
Feeling a twinge, I looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Where was Grace while her son was doing all this?”
“Uh, working?” I was mildly offended. “Struggling, like single mothers do?”
“Where’s the father?” Jimmy asked.
“I don’t know. He’s never been in the picture.”
“She could always call him.”
