HOUR of arriving at the scene of the Petty murders, I was holed up in the Mobile Forensic Laboratory, or the M-LAB, parked on the curb. It’s just a big white van on the outside, but inside it’s a state-of-the-art facility.
I was still getting used to the whole “Angela Hoot at the FBI” role. Part of me was waiting for one of the “real” grown-ups to open the van door and shoo me out of there. But in the meantime, I’d get down to work.
I started with a basic search, looking at incoming and outgoing calls, texts, and saved images on my copy of Gwen Petty’s phone. I also checked her contact list, bookmarks, and surfing history, but it didn’t turn up anything relevant.
The next step was a full physical extraction of any hidden, deleted, or corrupted files on the operating system. That was going to take a significantly longer time than the first pass, but it was also an automated process, which meant I could start multitasking my way through this.
Once I got that scan going, I set aside the phone and did a basic social media analysis on Gwen. That’s where I could really start to get an idea of who she was. Or at least what kind of tracks she’d left behind.
The email associated with her phone turned up active accounts on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Kik, and Pinterest. Besides the usual selfies, I saw a lot of the same friends in her photos—on the bus to a field hockey game, on the beach at the Cape, dressed up for prom. There was no boyfriend, as far as I could tell, except for a guy who showed up in a spate of tagged photos from the previous summer, a kid named Drew Pintone. I stared at his picture for a long time. Could this ordinary-looking kid be the monster we were looking for? It seemed pretty unlikely. Then again, so did everything that had happened in the Petty home that night. I wrote the boy’s name down for Keats, in any case, and pressed on.
It was a shitty feeling, going through all of Gwen’s stuff like this. I understood the necessity, but what teenage girl wants her private life pried open for the world to see? I couldn’t change what had happened. In fact, I reminded myself over and over, I was at least helping to do something about it. But still, I felt racked with guilt and finally let myself cry for a few minutes. Right up until Keats came out to check on me.
“What have we got so far?” he asked. I had my back to him at first and made a quick swipe at my face before I turned around. If he noticed my red eyes, he didn’t say so.
I gave Keats a quick lowdown and explained that it was going to be several hours before I’d have a full finished scan of Gwen’s phone. I also told him about Drew Pintone, just in case.
“Yeah, we know about that kid,” Keats said. “He’s a nonstarter, been living in Michigan since September. What we’re actually looking for is an adult male. Someone at least in his twenties, if not older.”
“Does that mean you have a suspect?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said.
But my brain was already spinning around this new piece of information. There had to be a reason Keats knew something about who he was looking for. And in fact, I realized, it was probably what had brought the FBI—federal authorities—to this crime scene in the first place.
“This isn’t the first case, is it?” I asked.
I couldn’t tell if Keats was annoyed, impressed, or both. But he nodded.
“Binghamton, Albany, and now here,” he said.
Even as the words came out of his mouth, the gravity of the situation registered in my gut. This meant more murders. More dead families. And maybe more to come, too.
“Angela?” Keats’s voice pulled me back, and I looked up again. “Eve said she thought you could handle this. It’s your call, but you should tell me now if you can’t.”
Out of respect for the Petty family, I didn’t give a knee-jerk “I’m fine” in response. I really did think about it and took my time answering.
“I can do this,” I said. “Also, I want to.”
“Good,” he said, and turned to leave.
“Did you say Eve recommended me?” I asked before he could slip out of the mobile unit. I’d suspected Eve had put in a good word after my interview, but