Page 32 of Jon's Helter Skelter Cold Case

“Sure. That’s a great idea.”

“And we want to sue Solomon for damages.”

“Ohhellyeah.” Donovan’s smile stretched from ear to ear, lines sparking with joy. “You just put a sparkle in my day, which we need because from what Sho mentioned to me, this is about to get weirder.”

My high fell about three notches. “Nooo, this case is already weird to begin with! We don’t need more weirdness!”

“I know, but…Sho?” Donovan turned to him, indicating the floor was now his.

Sho had the projector on and his laptop hooked up, so he brought up what seemed to be the first forensics photo of cleaning supplies. It was one of the more damning pieces of evidence, used to show the murder was premeditated.

“First, this can’t be proven.” Sho sounded irate merely saying those words. “There’s no financial history for Dwayne proving he bought these supplies. Ever. I went back two years and couldn’t find any trace of this exact purchase. It’s possible he pulled out cash and paid for them, but I’ve yet to find a cash withdrawal that would cover all the supplies bought. I’m, like, ninety percent sure these supplies are in the same category as the murder weapon—made on the spot.”

I felt a sort of surreal sense of resignation crash over me. “Solomon didn’t even check purchase history, did he?”

“Doesn’t look that way. From what I can tell, no one did. They were in Dwayne’s house—ergo, he must have bought them. Literally as far as the thought process went.”

Abby bristled at my side, outraged on behalf of her friend. “We need to sue Solomon for alot.”

I offered a fist and she bumped it. We were united in the cause of making Solomon exceptionally sorry for this.

“Gets better. For us, at least.” Sho pulled up another window. “Now, one of the things that puzzled me was the GPS history showing Dwayne went to the house that day at the time he did, because we have eyewitnesses swearing he was at work since seven-thirty, right? Not to mention security footage putting him at work. So I really dug into this GPS history and…there’s nothing attached to it.”

I didn’t get what he was driving at. But then, my understanding of tech was at a kindergarten level at best. “Nothing…what’s nothing?”

“Ah, right. You don’t get metadata. I’ll dumb it down.”

“Appreciated.”

“So when you do any kind of search on a computer, it’s connected to the internet, right? We tech people refer to it as an IP address. It’s like a physical address of what internet connection you were using for the search.”

That much I understood, so I nodded.

Warming up to his genius, Sho pulled up the details of the search block. “See here? There’s nothing listed for the IP address, which isn’t possible. You can’t search out an address using the ether, it has to connect tosomething.”

Now I got it. Damning evidence, right there.

Abby burst out, “Wait, even the GPS history was made up? Duuuuude.”

“Now that takes skill.” Donovan leaned back in his chair, frowning at the screen. “I can see how it was overlooked, though. No one really thinks to look that deeply into online history.”

“Except Sho.” Abby beamed at him. “Sho, you’re really smart.”

He blushed a little under her praise, lines sparking with pride and pleasure. “I live to serve. But if you think this was a cool trick, just wait. There’s more.”

I couldn’t imagine how there’d be more, but knowing Sho, he had another rabbit to pull out of the hat.

“Some of the other evidence they used against Dwayne were a few volatile text messages between him and his sister. Dwayne swore he didn’t send any of them. Now, here’s the metadata behind the texts. Also the metadata behind his GPS history of him ‘dumping’ the body in the river—which is why the body was never recovered, or so Solomon argued—and the GPS history of him leaving and going back to work. See anything in common?”

I was looking but not seeing. Other than the fact that none of it was connected to an IP address.

Donovan abruptly let out a whistle. “My god. They all happen within seconds of each other.”

Eh?

I narrowed my eyes and really focused, skipping from one box to another, checking out the time stamps. Only to see what Donovan had just said. The GPS history was seconds apart from each other. The text history was actually the last of them, done thirty secondsafterthe GPS history showed Dwayne supposedly returning to work.

Now that was friggin’ impossible.

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