The Stranger Inside. Lisa Unger

       FIVE

      Turkey tenderloin rubbed with herbs and sweet potatoes in the roasting pan, cooling on the stove, a kale salad tossed, wrapped and sitting in a bright red bowl in the fridge. Table set for three. Lily happy nearby with her blocks on the living room carpet—gotta love the open-plan room.

      At the kitchen table, laptop open, Rain scrolled through her contacts and paused when she came to the name that had been kicking around in the back of her head.

      She took a deep breath and dialed.

      “Well, well,” he answered. “I’m surprised, and I’m not surprised.”

      “Hey, Henry,” she said, already regretting her choice.

      “How’s the weather, Rain Winter?”

      “No complaints.” Rain watched Lily contented at play in their pretty living room; she didn’t have any but the most banal complaints. She was happy, mostly. Happier than most, maybe. Just a little restless. Still with that belly of fire.

      “I saw that a-dorable picture you posted on Facebook last night of your little princess covered in sweet potatoes. How cute.”

      A little jangle of unease. “Are we friends on Facebook, Henry?”

      “Uh, no,” he said. “We’re not.”

      He laughed a little into the silence that followed. “Oh, wait! Did you think it was private? Your little personal page under your married name? Come on, Rain. You know better than that, don’t you?”

      She didn’t even want to ask. “How do you have access?”

      He made a little tsking sound with his mouth.

      “I can’t tell you that, Rain. Sorry. Or should I say Laraine? Laraine Mitchell, your suburban mom avatar.”

      She smiled despite his obnoxiousness. She knew, of course, that her Facebook account, or really anything she did online, wasn’t secure. There was Firesheep, spyware, cloning software. A keylogger could capture each keystroke you made on your computer, revealing every password and login. Henry, dark web mole, probably had a hundred back alleys around the social media sites. She logged on quickly and scrolled through her friends. There he was, his wide face and glasses, Cheshire cat grin filling the thumbprint photo. She didn’t remember adding him. But maybe she had. He was likely just messing with her.

      Most people couldn’t stand Henry. But she kind of liked him. He was out there. He was smart. He said what he meant, right or wrong. He had skills—information, access, contacts.

      “Meanwhile,” he went on. “The Twitter feed of Rain Winter, former writer, editor and producer of National News Radio, former crime journalist extraordinaire, daughter of once-lauded-Pulitzer-Prize-winning-now-disgraced-writer Bruce Winter, lies fallow except for the occasional lackluster retweet. Weekly. Friday afternoons usually. Very little on Insta, but you were never great with that. Too cute for you, right? Following your digital footprints, or lack thereof, I’d say you had dropped out completely.”

      “Maybe I have,” she said.

      “So, this is a social call?” he said. “You want to grab a pumpkin spice latte and trade parenting tips?”

      She was pretty damn sure Henry Watt wasn’t married with children. She clicked on his page and it was totally blank except for the ID photo. “This account is private,” read the gray type.

      “Wait, let me guess,” he said. “Markham.”

      “Know anything?”

      She pulled up Henry’s website, started scrolling through. He was a professional news troll, a tipster with varying degrees of accuracy, and the owner, writer and editor of a blog that focused on crime and conspiracy theories, a newsletter that reached hundreds of thousands, and more than one person she knew went to him when all their other leads ran cold. Rain thought of him as a kind of mole, round-bodied and beady-eyed, connected through a network of murky tunnels to other creatures of the dark web. His tips had led her into mazes that came out nowhere, but sometimes he was dead-on.

      “Who’s asking?”

      “I am.”

      “I mean—why? For what organization?”

      Guys like Henry were the very reason real journalists didn’t consider indie blogging or podcasting. Because news, real news, was about facts and nothing else. It wasn’t about theories, and maybes, and best guesses. It wasn’t about running a story because you wanted to be the first to tell it and checking your facts later. It wasn’t about having an idea and finding people who agreed with you. You didn’t write and print your ideas. In fact, as a news journalist, you didn’t have ideas at all. You reported the facts, and let the facts tell the story. That simple. Something that had been lost in the fake news, social media information age. Still, sometimes you needed a renegade, especially when legitimate sources had closed to you. Or when you were on the outside looking in, like she was now. “I want to know,” she said. “Just me.”

      “It’s personal?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’m not sure I believe you,” he said. “I didn’t think the whole stay-at-home-mom thing was going to work for you. You have too much baggage.”

      A little jolt of annoyance caused her to act on impulse.

      “You know what, Henry? Just forget it.”

      She ended the call, heart thumping with frustration. He called her right back. She let it ring and go to voice mail. But when he called again a minute later, she answered.

      “Don’t lose your temper,” he said. His voice had lost some of its smugness.

      “What do you know, Henry?”

      “I might have someone on the inside.”

      Henry’s network was invisible, an army comprised of the people who didn’t get noticed. He wouldn’t know the coroner, for example, but he might know the coroner’s assistant, or even the janitor. He might not know the detective working a case, but he’d know the IT guy working at the precinct.

      “Who?”

      “Let’s just say he’s in cleanup.”

      “Okay.”

      “Except there wasn’t much to clean up.”

      “Meaning?”

      “Whoever did the job on Markham laid down tarps, almost as if he was trying not to make a mess, was meticulous about the scene. There was little physical evidence, some blood splatter from the victim. Obviously, they’re still waiting for the trace evidence analysis. But they aren’t hopeful that anything significant will come back.”

      She realized suddenly that she was holding her breath. She released it, loosened the grip she had on the phone.

      “How did he die?”

      She asked but she had a feeling she already knew.

      “He died the way Laney Markham died,” he said, his voice low and solemn. “Bound, gagged and stabbed more than twenty times with a serrated hunting knife.”

      She stared out the window to the street outside; a blue minivan cruised by, turned into her neighbor’s drive. The branches of the oak swayed, raindrops tapping at her window, and Lily stacked blocks with intent focus.

      A toxic brew of disgust, anger, relief bubbled. And, yes, that dark excitement—a feeling that shamed her somewhat. And was there also a not-so-small part of her that was glad Markham got what he deserved?

      “Like the Boston Boogeyman,” she said. “Killed the way he killed.”

      A pause, the tap,