Miller had been in his office when his secretary had called through to say that there was a man there to see him who wouldn’t give his name, all he would say was that it was about MemoryofChloe. Bemused Miller had agreed to see the man and a minute or so later his secretary had led the man into his office.
Miller had a tendency to choose his secretaries based more for their looks than their resume’s, something that wife number two had become painfully aware of and wife number three had actually cited in her divorce petition. The tall brunette in the Armani skirt that now led his visitor in did so with obvious disdain, the man was, Miller guessed, in his mid-thirties. His clothes and hair as poorly kept as his overweight body. He was obviously in an agitated state and was sweating profusely. From the look on the secretary’s face it was clear that she felt that dealing with such people was not something she considered covered in her job description.
Miller stayed put behind his desk but stood and reached out his hand in greeting. The man looked from Miller’s face to his hand and then back to his face. Miller considered withdrawing his hand, caught between his in grained manners and not wanting to make the awkward situation worse. Just as he was about to withdraw his hand the man seemed to come to a decision and shook it profusely in his own clammy palm.
Miller resisted the temptation to wipe his palm instead sitting back down saying. “Please take a seat but I’m not sure who…”
He left the question hanging, realising as he did that this man was so socially backward that he may not appreciate the inferred question.
“You hired me to perform the network traffic analyse in the Sophie case and then look for.”, the man hesitated before continuing in a hushed voice. “To look for the user MemoryOfChloe.”
Now Miller understood, the second internet consultant he had employed, if he remembered correctly his name was Jethro, though they had never actually met and Miller suspected it was an alias. A colleague had recommended him and had implied that he was a bit strange, never meeting anyone in person, conducting all of his communication on line.
“Of course I understand now, I was expecting you to email me your report. I was led to believe that you tended not to have face to face meetings?”
“Can’t email this, too sensitive for that. Had to meet in person.” the man blurted out. He was clearly very agitated but Miller wasn’t sure if that was his normal state.
“Perhaps you should explain from the beginning.” he said in his most calming voice, the one that he used with his most distressed clients. Glancing at the clock on his wall as he did and thinking the man was clearly deranged in some way.
“I tracked the conversations that Claudia1974 had with MemoryOfChloe”. Jethro spoke in a staccato fashion, delivering the facts with no emphasis or emotion.
“That was easy, very simple, standard practice. Then I downloaded the conversation IP logs from the social media site. They think they can’t be requested but I know how, not difficult, standard practice. Got an admin account that they don’t know about, created it at the start, before they got big, before they got smart with their security.”
Jesus, Miller thought to himself. This guy had the forethought to hack into a multi-billion dollar social media company when they were still just a tiny start up and now still had access.
“So I cross referenced the IP logs with the service providers, not difficult, standard practice, got a contact, costs but that’s in your bill, itemised. But they didn’t match which can’t be right so I checked again and they didn’t which is weird. So I checked again but this time I used my logs.”
