Free Bombshell (AN FBI THRILLER) by Catherine Coulter Page A

ought to be in a criminal institution. Where does that leave us?”
    Lucy and Coop were sitting side by side on the sofa,
both in sweats. She said, “It leaves us with the fact that Palmer Cronin wasn’t the one who was murdered. It was Tommy, a twenty-year-old, who for all we know never did anything wrong in his short life. If Tommy was targeted by some kind of deluded out-there anarchist to make a statement, that isn’t a reflection of any justified anger still circulating in society, it’s a Timothy McVeigh kind of insanity.”
    Savich said, “That’s assuming the crime was a political act, Lucy, but that’s not a trail I’m ready to commit to unless the investigation points us that way. All right, we’ve all had a chance to vent. Let’s move along to the photos of Tommy uploaded to YouTube. We’re going to treat the photos as part of the crime scene, since anyone close enough to upload a photo of Tommy may have been a witness, and we’ve been tracking those uploads to find those witnesses. Mr. Maitland?”
    He saw Mr. Maitland turn around at the shouts and groans coming from his sons, who were glued to the play-off game, then back again. He said, “Ben Raven has been handling that. Most of the photos that have been uploaded aren’t relevant, they’re from around Magdalene College, yearbook photos, or photos with friends horsing around. We’ve found several photos of the crime scene, though, most showing no real detail because of the snow or because the cops had already established a solid perimeter around the Lincoln Memorial by the time they were taken. There was one, though, that was very close and very clear.”
    “This is the photo,” Savich said, and brought it up onto the screen. “It’s the one Mrs. Cronin saw on the Internet that led Mr. Cronin to call us. It’s a close-up, straight-on view of Tommy’s face. Was it taken by Tommy’s killer or an accomplice, as a way of assuming credit and publicizing his killing? Or by someone who happened by at the right time and thought it would be cool to post it? There were no comments posted with it.”
    Ollie said, “Or maybe even a cop.”
    Savich said, “No one wants a cop to be the source. Believe me, Ben Raven is all over it. We’re dealing with all the photos by tracking down the IP addresses they were posted from. We have all of them already, except for this one.”
    “What’s the holdup?” Coop asked.
    Savich said, “Our techs have run into a roadblock, because whoever posted this photo used a bogus YouTube account and a proxy server to hide his tracks. We’re up against a computer nerd who knew we’d be trying to track his posting and knew how to protect himself. It’s the strongest reason we have to believe the killer or killers posted this picture, and not someone who happened by.”
    Mr. Maitland said, “So why not get Spooner in on this? You’ve said yourself, Savich, it takes one to catch one.”
    “You’re right,” Savich said.
    Ollie said, “We’ve all heard about surfing the Web anonymously, using what they call anonymizers. What do they do exactly, Savich?”
    “They’re a sort of privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Web, so you can protect your personal information by hiding your computer’s identity.”
    Lucy said, “I read that a lot of the child pornography on the Internet is accessed through anonymizers.”
    Savich said, “Like a lot of tools, anonymizers can be used for good or bad. If you lived in Iran or China, for example, where the Internet is severely restricted, using an anonymizer could save your life unless you make a mistake, and believe me, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. It gets even more complicated when you’re posting something—like a photograph. Then you need your own software to create a Web proxy and establish connections between chains of servers to hide your tracks. We’ve got a shot, though. I’ll get Spooner on it right away.”
    Mr. Maitland said,