“OK, but late this afternoon you’ve got that conference call with the San Francisco product testers, they’re two hours behind us, and they always run long.” He was notorious for not remembering his own schedule. She smiled. “But dinner with a friend sounds good.” He seemed not to notice her emphasis.
“You have the phone conference call in ten minutes with Brad—he’s calling you,” she reminded him, and he nodded. She closed his office door behind him so he could prepare his notes in peace.
Maggie. One might expect or hope that two women over forty working at a software company full of twentyish programmers would be fast friends, but she and Maggie had virtually nothing in common, and Perri found Maggie distant and odd.
She walked down the hall to the darkest office, where the lights were kept dim and the reclusive programmer typed by the glow of her monitor. From the computer, an Eddy Arnold song from the 1960s softly played: “Make the World Go Away.” Maggie Chavez had interesting tastes and did not bother with headphones, but she kept the music low and unobtrusive. The song choice, however, didn’t make Perri feel more comfortable in knocking on Maggie’s open door.
“Good morning, Maggie.”
Type, type, type. Maggie didn’t glance up from her screen. Apparently she didn’t react to greetings, but awaited further data.
“I have a technical question for you.”
“Did you try restarting the system?” She still didn’t look up.
“No, I know how to fix my own computer.” She moved a towering stack of Java and Python programming books, topped by a massive tome on regular expressions and algorithms, off Maggie’s spare chair. Maggie, she was sure, kept them there to discourage visitors from sitting down and chatting with her. Most of the other programmers didn’t keep libraries of books; Perri had seen them looking up code examples online, in a corner window of their screen. But then, Maggie had been programming longer. Eddy Arnold gave way to Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” on her computer speakers.
What a self-descriptive playlist, Perri thought. She sat. She waited. A minute ticked by.
Maggie Chavez kept typing in code, but realized Perri was not going to leave. “Sorry, OK, what? Does Mike need something?”
“How would I find out who created an account on Faceplace? They’re using a fake name.”
Maggie stopped typing. She actually looked away from her computer screen to focus on Perri. “Is this a fake account using your name?”
“No.”
“Are they bullying you?”
Perri explained. Maggie listened with a surprising intensity.
“So how can I find out who Liv Danger is?”
“You need to set a little trap for your target.”
Perri waited and Maggie sighed that the explanation wasn’t obvious. “You need to get whoever is posting as ‘Liv Danger’ to click on a link. It will take them to a custom-designed page, a trap containing code that gathers data about their computer.”
“I sent ‘Liv’ a friend request, but she, or he, hasn’t answered it yet.”
“Well, if they do, send them a private message with that link. Of course you could just ask them who they are, but they might lie.”
“I don’t think she’ll be dumb enough to click on a link. Won’t she be suspicious?”
“You give Liv Danger a great reason to click on it.”
Perri could not think of such a reason, but pushed the thought aside. “And once they visit this site…”
“The customized page harvests information about the computer looking at the page. It could tell you if it’s being accessed by a computer or a phone, the operating system, the IP address…”
“The what?”
“IP address. Each device accessing the Internet has a unique address. The same computer doesn’t always get assigned the same IP address from the service provider, but the provider would know which computer had a certain IP address at a certain time. Getting them to share it with you is another matter.”
“And that would tell me who was accessing the page? It’s like a Social Security number?”
“Well, the service provider would then know the physical billing address for the account, which might be the same as where the computer was accessing the Internet. They might not share that with you, but it’s enough to complain to Faceplace that Liv Danger is an imposter account. Then you can request the information, such as who created it, what time they did so, the IP address of the computer they used, and so on.”
“And that would be definitive?”
“I would think.” Maggie started to turn back to her computer, wisdom dispensed, ready to start coding again.
“Wait, where can I get this code…how would I set up this trap page?” She was embarrassed that she knew nothing about how to set up a website.
“Oh, you want to do that?” Type, type, type. “I thought you just wanted information.”
“No, Maggie. I want to know who is saying this about my son. Please.” Her voice cracked on the final word.
Maggie stopped typing again and looked at Perri as if for the first time. “Sure, Perri, I can do it for you. I can help you craft the message, too, so this Liv Danger will want to click on it.”
“Thanks. It means a lot.”
“It would be helpful if I could sign into Faceplace as you, if Liv responds.”
“Sure.” Perri wrote down her account name and her password on a sticky note.
Maggie tucked the note away. “I’ll have something for you by tonight. Is that OK?”
“Yes, Maggie, thank you.” She couldn’t help herself, she came around the desk and gave Maggie a quick hug. Maggie said, “Yeah, whatever, OK,” but in the reflection of the monitor Perri could see a little smile from her.
She went back to the desk feeling better; Maggie would find this prankster. Perri turned to her computer, to answer the five e-mails from different parties begging for Mike’s time that had arrived while she was gone. She was good at e-mail. She always sounded warm and cheery. So while she wrote e-mail answers with a tempered verve, she thought about what she would say—or do—to the defacer of her son’s grave.
13
JANE SLEPT IN the bed that should have been assigned to Adam’s roommate. The new semester would soon be here and St. Michael’s would likely assign a new student to share the room. She had a sense of a clock ticking, that the existence she had made for herself here, this limbo, could not last. Adam, forsaking the German girlfriend, was typing on the computer, trying to figure out who had created the Liv Danger page, when she finally fell asleep.
When she woke the next morning, he was already awake and showered. The local news played on the TV. Jane sat up in the bed and noticed a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and toast that Adam had brought to her from the commons.
“Breakfast in bed. I’m touched,” she said. “Thank you.”