Page 62 of The Catcher
“Well, for starters, it turned out it wasn’t Hailey Matthews’ cell phone that we found. Mitchell had cloned her phone and obtained the SIM signature. Phone cloning has been used in the past as a way to spy on individuals. By copying the phone’s identity and data, including the SIM card, a person can access and intercept phone calls, online messages, and other communications without the original owner’s knowledge. Cloning the SIM signature also allows someone to track the location of the original phone.”
“Okay,” Noah said. “So he cloned it. He had access to lockers. You heard the teacher. Phones were regularly taken away in class when students used them and given back at the end of the day. That would have given him plenty of opportunity.”
“For sure. But he must have known he was playing with fire, turning that phone on after knowing the Matthews girl was found deceased. Why would anyone trying to fly under the radar do that? If he had the technical know-how to clone a phone, he must have known that we would be working with the network to ping her phone.”
“McKenzie, criminals make mistakes all the time. In the post-arrest interview, did he lawyer up?”
“Well, that’s the second part. No. He denied killing the teens.”
“And the fake account?”
McKenzie nodded. “He admitted to creating a false social media account to communicate with girls and solicit them for sexual content. It wasn’t like he could deny it. Some records show he was communicating with the Matthews girl days before the night she went missing via Instagram and Snapchat. He was trying to get her to meet him. His profile snapshot was of some young kid from Texas. He never even used a VPN to cover his IP with the social media profile. Think about that, Noah, and then think about those geocaches. It makes no sense. He’s willing to plead guilty to felonies that are going to land him in prison but not to murder? Something doesn’t add up.”
“Well, if he was already in CODIS and had done time, he probably swapped jailhouse stories. I imagine he knew that solicitation and exploitation and possession of images wasn’t going to land him anything more than six, maybe seven years inside. But murder? He would be going away for life.”
McKenzie shook his head. “I don’t know. It all seems a little convenient. The shoeprint, the hair, and the fingerprint — each one found at a different crime scene — are sloppy, especially when you are trying to toy with us. I would understand if he never intended the bodies to be found. But he did. He wanted us to find them.”
“Almost like it was planted,” Noah said.
McKenzie met his gaze. “Yeah. And then we have Nicholas Wilson. That kid can be directly linked to those teens by a video. A history of run-ins and fights. Drug use. I got access to his school file. Get this, he was suspended once for spray-painting on lockers.”
“Teens do dumb shit.”
“Sure, but what he wrote caught my interest.”
McKenzie dug out his phone and showed Noah a photo he’d taken from the file.
“Chad and Stacey? Who are they?”
“Not who are they. What are they? Have you ever heard the term incel?”
Noah frowned. “Refresh my memory.”
“It’s a term that is short for involuntary celibate. It’s used to describe an online subculture of individuals who express frustration and resentment due to their inability to get a romantic or sexual partner. Those who are part of it are usually loners, socially awkward guys who hold extreme misogynistic views. There have been some incidents over the years of them striking out. A guy shot up a street in California back in 2014, another plowed through pedestrians, and other incidents have happened.”
“All right, but where do this Chad and Stacey fit into this?”
“They’re terms used by the incel community to describe stereotypical individuals who are perceived as being conventionally attractive, socially successful. Everything they aren’t. Chads are confident, muscular, andalways have a girlfriend, while Staceys are women who only go for attractive and popular guys.”
“And so you think Nicholas is one of these incels?”
“His past would suggest it. Look, I dug a little deeper and found out that he attended after-school learning. Tutoring and coaching because of learning disabilities. Who’s to say he didn’t snag a set of keys to the school? Do you remember what that teacher said when I asked why he locked his drawer? ‘My students have light fingers.’ Doesn’t that indicate that he caught them trying to lift things from his desk? Who can say he didn’t leave a door unlocked or enter the janitor’s room at the school and swipe a few things there? We both know how easy it is to transfer a print or find a hair follicle on a jacket.”
Noah leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, anything is possible, but there is the glaring problem that he would still have to control the teens. I saw that kid. He couldn’t have been more than 150 pounds wet. Maybe he could have handled the Matthews girl, but Landry and Banning? They were football players. Well-built. You saw that video. It was easy for them to hold him down. He barely fought back.”
“Sure. But what if he wasn’t working alone?”
Noah nodded, his mind chewing over the possibilities. “Maybe. Or maybe Terry just got it right this time.” He took another swig and headed into the kitchen. “You hungry?”
“Famished.”
Noah pulled out a large bag of nachos and a couple of plates. He grated some cheese on top and melted it in the microwave.
“So what is all of this?” McKenzie asked, looking at the box.
“Homework. Roughly eight years ago, the Ashford Royale Casino came under scrutiny. It ended up on State’s radar for gaming and fraud investigations. Thomas O’Connell, the senior investigator assigned to the case, was looking into a potential money laundering angle.”
The microwave dinged. Noah took out the plate and brought it over to McKenzie.
