An Erin McCabe Legal Thriller

Chapter 4

11

When she heard Mark get out of bed, Erin rolled over to look at the clock – five thirty a.m. She listened to him quietly getting dressed in the dark while she played back the events of the night before and how their discussion had morphed from Ann Parsons to Mark’s family and their relationship. After hearing his perspective, she was embarrassed because, had the roles been reversed, she would have been upset with him for the lack of faith and trust. The term makeup s*x popped into her mind, and even in the dark, she knew her face was flushed with the memory of how wonderful it felt to make love again.

‘I’m awake,’ she said, propping herself on her elbow.

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I just need to get home, showered, changed, and to work by seven.’

She flipped on the lamp on her night table and was disappointed to see he was already fully dressed.

‘I’ll give you a call tonight,’ he said as he came around to her side of the bed to kiss her.

She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.

When they broke their embrace, she said, ‘I’m so sorry. I –’

He put his finger to her lips. ‘Stop. Please. It’s okay. We’re good.’ He kissed the top of her head, smiled, and made his way out.

With one last look at the clock, she decided there was no point in trying to go back to sleep. She was taking her mom out to breakfast at seven thirty to see how she was doing post-surgery, so she rolled out of bed, put her sweats back on, and made her way back to her dining room table and Ann Parsons’s file.

Lost in the aftermath of her rekindled relationship with Mark was the question of Ann’s gender identity. The best she could come up with was either Ann’s mom had allowed her to transition at a very young age or perhaps Ann had an undiagnosed intersex condition. Whatever it was, it certainly didn’t impact her guilt or innocence.

After an hour spent reviewing the details with little new insight, she was just about to pack things up when she noticed a notation on the inventory sheet next to the entry for a desktop computer that had been seized from Charles Parsons’s Westfield home: ‘Warning: Do not connect to the internet – encryption software infected with rootkit.’ Encryption software? What the hell is a rootkit? she wondered.

She quickly searched it on the web and was startled by what she discovered. She went back and checked the rest of the inventory. A laptop had been confiscated, and when she checked the examination report, it described the laptop as new, and the information that was on it had been downloaded three days before Parsons was murdered. She opened the calendar on her phone – timewise, it fit. s**t. Was it possible?

Her mother was waiting at the front door when Erin pulled up. After her mom slid into the passenger seat, Erin gave her a hug.

‘Thought you’d stood me up,’ her mother said.

‘Sorry. I was working at home, and I came across something that took me down a rabbit hole,’ Erin said, giving her mother an apologetic smile. As she did, she took in how much better her mom looked than the last time they’d been together, when she came home from the hospital. Erin knew most of it was an illusion – the penciled-in eyebrows, a wig that matched the color of her normal hair – but some of it was real. Her mother’s skin actually resembled a color in the human palette as opposed to the gray pall she’d had during the chemo prior to surgery.

‘How you feeling?’ Erin asked.

‘Semi-human,’ she said. ‘I’m starting to get some strength back.’

‘You sure you’re up to going out?’

‘Yeah, I just need to try and get some normalcy back. I also seem to have an appetite again. So I’m looking forward to my egg white omelet.’

After they parked, Erin watched as her mother gingerly made her way into the booth in the diner. Her cautious movements revealed how much pain she was still dealing with.

‘Maybe we should have waited a few more days,’ Erin said.

‘Too late now,’ her mom responded with a wry smile.

Erin shook her head – was her mom strong-willed or just stubborn? ‘How’s Dad holding up?’ she asked.

‘Pretty good. He’s been a rock, but I think at this point he’s just mentally and physically exhausted.’ She gave Erin a small grin. ‘And how about you? For someone who fell down the rabbit hole, you look pretty… content.’ Her mother tilted her head slightly, and then her grin turned into a full-fledged smile. ‘Anything new with Mark?’

Erin blushed, preventing her from displaying plausible deniability.

‘You’re a terrible poker player,’ her mother said with a laugh.

‘Thanks,’ Erin responded sarcastically.

‘Coffee, ladies?’ the waitress interrupted.

After Erin agreed, the waitress turned and looked at Peg, who nodded. As she filled Peg’s cup, the waitress said, ‘This has got to be your daughter. Except for the hair color, she looks just like you.’

‘That’s funny,’ Peg replied. ‘I always thought she looked more like her father.’

Erin looked down into her coffee and tried not to laugh. After the waitress had walked away, she said, ‘You’re too much.’

‘What?’ Peg retorted. ‘Until four years ago, I never thought you looked like me.’

Erin took a sip of her coffee and marveled at how, despite everything her mother had been through, she hadn’t lost her sense of humor. Since Erin had come out, they had connected in a new way. Maybe it was a mother-daughter bond, or maybe it was just a shared love that they hadn’t expressed as openly before. Erin knew her mother had initially struggled when Erin told her that she was transgender, wondering if somehow she was the cause. But over time, as they talked through things, her mother had come to accept that Erin hadn’t chosen to be transgender; it was just who she was. And during the time after she transitioned, when Sean and her father had stopped speaking to her, her mother had never wavered in her love and support.

‘I’m so worried about you,’ Erin blurted, causing her mother’s eyes to widen. ‘When you got sick, it made me realize how important you are to me – to the entire family. I know you’re going to be fine and live for a long time, but I want you to know how much I admire you, love you, and… need you. I’m not sure I would have survived without your love and support.’ Erin reached across the table and took her mother’s hand. ‘Thank you. I know I don’t say it often enough, but thank you for being you and for loving me unconditionally.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Peg’s smile was warm and compassionate. ‘I hope I’m here for a long time too.’ She paused. ‘That said, when I was so sick during chemo, and still had the surgery ahead of me and then radiation coming my way, there were definitely times when the thought of death wasn’t so scary – the pain ending didn’t seem like such a bad option. I mean, it’s not like we can avoid it – death, that is. At some point, we’re all going to die.’

‘Geez, Mom. Thanks for sharing those upbeat thoughts.’

‘What? You almost died a couple of years ago. Were you afraid?’

‘That was a little different. I had a psycho pointing a g*n at my head. I honestly didn’t have a whole lot of time to contemplate the temporal nature of my existence.’

‘Fair,’ Peg said. ‘All I’m saying is that I think I’ve come to terms with my mortality. It’s not the dying part that scares me; it’s just not knowing what, if anything, is on the other side.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’ve come to terms with it, because I haven’t.’

Her mother squeezed Erin’s hand. ‘Hopefully we won’t have to worry about it for a while.’

‘Hopefully,’ Erin replied.

‘So tell me, what’s going on with you and Mark?’

After breakfast, Erin took her mom home, then made her way to the office. Walking in, Erin greeted Cheryl, their receptionist, secretary, and paralegal all rolled into one, and then asked if Swish was in.

‘Yeah, he was here when I got in.’

‘Thanks,’ Erin responded, making her way to his office, where she found Duane editing an appellate brief. ‘You have a minute?’

‘Sure,’ he replied, motioning her to a chair in front of his desk.

‘It’s about Ann Parsons.’

‘You come up with a defense?’

‘No. But there are a few things that have piqued my curiosity.’

‘Uh-oh,’ he said.

She began with her questions on whether the voice from the murder scene belonged to Ann. Then she told him about her conversations with Mark, and why he had questions about whether or not Ann was transgender. Finally, she told him about the fact that the laptop was only about three days old when Parsons was murdered and that the prosecutor’s inventory log indicated that a desktop computer taken from Parsons’s house was infected with a rootkit in the encryption software.

‘What the hell is a rootkit?’ he asked.

She described what she had learned from a quick internet search and a call to an acquaintance who was a computer engineer.

‘Okay. But what’s that got to do with who killed him, or more importantly, why might it help prove Ann didn’t?’ he asked, his squint conveying his skepticism.

‘I don’t know that it does – yet. But here’s why I’m intrigued. When I met with Justin Mackey shortly before he was killed, he told me that the guy he had worked for installing the update to the encryption software had warned him that there were some very nasty people who were upset and might blame him. When I asked Justin what he might be blamed for, he speculated that there might have been something in a software update that might not have been kosher.’

Duane stroked his goatee. ‘But Mackey had also told you there were a number of computers he had installed stuff on. Even assuming Parsons’s was one of them, it doesn’t mean Parsons was in on Mackey’s murder. Am I missing something?’

‘No. Not at this point, but there’s enough there that I’m intrigued. I certainly haven’t connected any of the dots – at least, not yet,’ she said, her face a study in resolve.

‘Assuming there are dots to connect,’ Duane added.

‘Of course,’ she replied with an air of innocence.

Duane stared at her. ‘Oh, I’ve seen that look from you before,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Let me remind you, Ms Quixote, before you go off tilting against this windmill, we do not represent Ms Parsons. So whatever it is that you’re thinking about doing, we would be doing it gratis.’

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I have an idea.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this?’

‘I’m going to reach out to Justin’s mother. She lives in Carteret, and perhaps she’ll retain us on a contingency basis to sue whoever murdered him.’

‘I hate to rain on your parade, but who you gonna sue? Mackey was murdered over four months ago, and as far as you know, there are no leads. Four months in a homicide investigation is a long time. It’s probably already on the cold case list.’

‘You’re right, it’s a long shot. But I’ll be honest with his mom and keep her expectations low. What I am hoping is that it will provide us with a reason to speak with Ann in jail.’

‘I don’t know, E, this seems like a waste of time.’

‘You’re probably right. So I’ll run with it for a few weeks, and if I get nowhere, at least I know I gave it a try. That okay with you?’

‘Sure,’ he replied, his tone conveying his resignation.

‘Okay,’ she said, standing up to head back to her office. She paused on her way out and turned around. ‘Could you do one thing for me?’

‘What’s that?’

‘I told you that when Mark and his boss met with Parsons, he told them his wife was deceased. Could you find out who she was and how and when she died?’

He sighed. ‘You’re going to suck me into this, aren’t you?’

‘No, you’re just a much better investigator than I am. You know, FBI-Special-Agent kind of stuff.’

Duane snorted. ‘Right.’ Then with an impish grin, he added, ‘And how is Mark?’

Her smile said more than her words. ‘He’s good.’

As she got to the door, she turned and said, ‘Oh, and thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For putting up with me. I know that over the last six months, between Mark and my mom’s situation, I haven’t been fun to work with.’

‘Hey, with your mom, no worries, you get a free pass. With Mark…’ He paused, his grin growing. ‘Glad it’s working out.’