Yet right now all Sean was hoping was that he could hack a teenage boy’s email.
Sean and Michelle hopped out of the truck and approached. Both tall, they still had to stare nearly straight up to come close to an eyeball-to-eyeball with Edgar.
Edgar nodded at both of them and then turned his gaze fully to Michelle.
“I didn’t say this the last time we met but I’m glad you’re doing so well, Ms. Maxwell.”
Michelle had tried and failed to get him to call her by her first name.
“Thanks, Edgar. But I should be doing the thanking. You’re the one who saved my life. And we appreciate your taking the time to meet with us. It won’t take long.”
Sean said, “I’ve got an email account here that I’m hoping you can hack into. We need to see some of the most recent flow.”
Edgar looked at the email address. Sean knew that he had instantly memorized it. He sat down with his laptop on a nearby bench, opened it, and started hitting keys.
“You don’t have to do it now, Edgar,” said Sean. “When you get a break from whatever it is you do in there, you can work on it, not sit out here in the cold. And then—”
“Here,” said Edgar.
He had turned the laptop around so that they could see the screen. On it were Tyler Wingo’s email postings.
“How did you do that so fast?” asked an amazed Sean.
“I’m not sure you would understand,” said Edgar politely.
“You’re right there,” said Michelle. She sat down next to Edgar while Sean perched on the other side of the bench. They ran their eyes down the screen. There weren’t many emails.
“I don’t see it,” said Sean. “He might have deleted it. That means we’re SOL.”
“Highly doubtful,” said Edgar. “There are ways to fry drives. Unless you do, simple deletions mean nothing.”
Edgar hit some more keys, and a new list of posts appeared. “He also deleted it from his trash, but there was another cache it was copied to that wasn’t so apparent. Easy enough if you know where to look.”
“I’m glad you know where to look,” said Sean.
“There,” said Michelle, pointing at the third email from the top. “It’s from Sam Wingo.”
Sean and Michelle read it and then looked at each other. Sean said, “I don’t see anything in that message that Tyler wouldn’t want us or anyone else to know. It’s pretty short, and it’s just his dad talking about school and Tyler’s swimming.”
“Maybe that’s why he merely deleted it and didn’t truly erase it,” suggested Edgar.
“Did he reply to the email?” asked Sean.
Edgar hit some more keys but finally shook his head. “No.”
Michelle said, “Sean, look at the time stamp. It was sent after they told him his father was dead. Just like Tyler said.”
Sean ran his eye over the message again and an idea occurred to him.
“It might be in code, Edgar. Think you can help us out?”
“Right.” Edgar ran his eye over the message, his pupils flicking back and forth at speed. His lips were moving but no words were coming out.
He opened another screen and typed the letters IASPFM.
He said, “I ran it through the typical hundred or so initial possibilities. Looks to be an every seventh word, initial letter substitution cipher. Low security value point, but it’s so old and seldom used that it could have some worth. Useless against a real cyber strike, of course. And any legitimate code breaker would have had no trouble with it. But it is a bit more sophisticated since it spells out an acronym and not actual words, meaning it’s a double-layer encryption.”
“But what does the acronym mean?” asked Michelle.