Page 16 of Watch Me

Over the next few days, Shawn and I retraced every hour of the day and night Amy was murdered. The downstairs neighbors heard nothing, and Heather’s and her boyfriend’s cell phone records put both of them at his apartment from 5:30 p.m. until about twenty minutes before the 9-1-1 call was placed by the next door neighbor. Amy’s cell phone put her in her apartment at the same time. She’d apparently never left, and we had nothing. Abso-fucken-lutley nothing.

“I don’t like this,” I sighed, throwing my pen onto my desk and leaning back in mychair.

Shawn glanced up. “I don’t either. It’s too clean.”

All we had to go on was the number of stab wounds. The ME would take at least four weeks to get us a tox screen, so we could see if anything in Amy’s system might indicate if she was lucid during the attack. For it to be such a clean murder scene, so to speak, I was almost certain she had to be either restrained orunconscious.

Will from our cyber unit walked up to our desks. “I have something.”

I perked up. “What is it?”

“Well, a little something,” hereplied.

“Spit it out, man,” Shawncoaxed.

“Amy had a malware program installed on her computer, and someone was using it to access her webcam.”

My eyes widened. “Someone was watching her?”

“I need to dig further, but yes.”

“Who?” Shawnquestioned.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. It’s going to take me some time because it seems like this guy knew what he was doing. The data was being routed and re-routed all over the place.”

“Could it be more than one person?” Iasked.

Will nodded slightly. “Possibly.”

“Where are they logging in from?” Shawninquired.

“That’s the thing,” Will replied. “The first IP I ran, traced back to Japan. The second one traced back to the Netherlands.”

“We don’t think her killer is from overseas, do we?” Shawnasked.

“Or, this guy’s a pro and knows how to make the IP addresses ping from those places, but he’s really here in Chicago.”

“Can you find out?” Iasked.

“I’m going to try, but it will take me some time,” Willstated.

“Keep us updated,” Shawnadvised.

“Will do.” Will turned and left.

“Well”—I stood—“I need to head out.”

“Going to your girlfriend’s?” Shawn sang as though to mock me. He knew about Reagan because Shawn and I were close given we’d been partners for seven years.

I chuckled. “No. Got the boys tonight for dinner.”

“Oh, right. It’s Wednesday.”

“But after I take them home, I’ll be going to Reagan’s.” I shrugged on my suitjacket.

He stood. “I should head home too. Julie’s making fajitas.”

Ever since my divorce from Jess, Shawn had made it a point to be more of a family man. We still had our work to do and thought about cases at home, but he didn’t want Julia to feel like Jessica had felt. Jess had said she was leaving me because I was never there. I wasn’t the husbandsheneeded me to be. I might not have been the husband I should have been for her, but I was a damn good father. I made sure to always go to their sporting events, school functions—whatever—because we were a family, but I hadn’t realizedsheneeded a part of metoo.