I nodded. “It does seem like we’ve turned some kind of corner since the San Bernardino and Paris shootings.”
“And since Donald Trump made racism and fascism seem patriotic,” she said, her voice venomous. “Anyhow, finally I found a picture of a bloody body. The post said ‘See sand nigger. See sand nigger die. Die, sand nigger, die. Die, die, die.’ Somebody replied, ‘Would LOVE to see that!’ and so WhiteKnight gave him some clues for how to find it. A sort of lame, half-assed version of code. I managed to break it in a few hours. I had just found . . . this”—she made a face of revulsion as she nodded at the computer—“when I called you. You should watch the whole thing. The whole thing—the whole crime—is on here, edited down to ten minutes. It shows the poor kid being beaten and chained to the tree. It shows the killer—wearing a mask, so we don’t see his face—throwing food at the kid and calling him all sorts of vile things. It shows the poor kid begging for his life when he’s being smeared with the bear bait and the bacon grease.”
“Miranda, you’re amazing,” I said. I felt sickened by the video, but proud of my assistant. And I felt excited about the breakthrough. “No way the FBI can say this isn’t a hate crime now,” I said. “I can’t wait to see Price’s face when she gets a look at this.” As soon as I said it, I felt bad—turning the torture and death video into a trump card I could play, an I-told-you-so I could rub the FBI agent’s nose in. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I told Miranda. “Not that way. I do think the FBI needs to see it, but first I want to show Jim O’Conner and Waylon.”
She nodded. “That seems right. It is their case, after all. If the feds come storming in, they’ll shove the locals aside and end up getting all the credit.”
“You’re the one who should get all the credit,” I said.
Miranda blushed. Her glowing look was only slightly undercut by the small, sparkling droplet dangling, earringlike, from the tip of her nose.
O’CONNER AND WAYLON DIDN’T SPEAK DURING THE video, but occasionally I heard what seemed to be sounds of dismay from the sheriff—sighs and clucks and tsks—accompanied by low, menacing growls from Waylon. When the bear made its entrance, Waylon’s growls blended with those of the animal, creating a bizarre, stereophonic duet that, because of its oddness, made it easier for me to endure the gruesome footage the second time around. Miranda, I was relieved to notice, had an easier time of it as well, emitting no sobs or wails, and requiring only one tissue at the end.
“The FBI might—might—be able to track down who shot and uploaded this,” I said, “but it’s a long shot.”
“Very long,” Miranda agreed. “The guy who posted about it, ‘WhiteKnight,’ would be easy to find, but he’s probably not the one who shot this. Just the one who blabbed about it.”
“The trouble with this dark web stuff is that it’s anonymous and untraceable,” I added, “because it’s all locked up behind something called door software.”
O’Conner looked puzzled. “Door software?”
“Tor software,” Miranda corrected, smiling slightly at my garbled explanation. “T-O-R. The letters stand for ‘the onion router.’ It’s an encryption program—like a computerized combination lock, created by thousands of different computers, and each computer has only one digit of the combination.”
“Oh, right,” said O’Conner. “Waylon was telling me about this not long ago.” I was surprised and mortified to be the least informed of the group. “The FBI found a way around the encryption—they busted a bunch of child pornographers by exploiting some sort of weakness—but then the Tor programmers fixed that, so now it’s virtually impossible.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it. Why would anybody want to shield child pornographers and drug merchants and other scum of the earth?”
“Hey, Tor’s not all bad,” Miranda said. “It was created and funded by the U.S. military—the navy and DARPA, I think—so classified intel could be sent online. It’s not just used by kiddie-porn perverts; it’s also used by whistleblowers and investigative journalists and groups like Human Rights Watch to protect their sources. That’s the thing about free speech and privacy and other constitutional rights: we’re all for them when people like us want them, but not when folks we despise want them.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Please tell me you’re not about to launch into your ACLU pitch now.”
“No, I am not,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “I’m saving that for the drive back to Knoxville.”
“Goody,” I said, then turned to O’Conner. “What do you say, Jim? Shall we take this to the FBI and push for a hate-crime investigation? They can’t say no this time—not if they see this video. Maybe they could crack the encryption and track down the person who made it.”
It was Waylon, not O’Conner, who responded, and his words floored me. “Hell, ain’t no need to go to the FBI for that. I can tell you who done it right now.”