A Legal Trap Ch. 02

Author retains all rights to this original work of fiction.

Thank You for reading my story! I would enjoy hearing your thoughts, criticism, and ideas on how to make this story better. Rachel M. Moore

March 9th, 4:56 AM

Getting my bag checked was the easiest thing I'd done this morning. Just an hour before I was struggling with my hair, my makeup, and on top of those setbacks - I hated the shoes I was wearing with my Braxton skirt.

The Alaska counter agent was helpful, but this day was about to get worse. After being directed to the gate my flight was leaving from I realized I needed to get through the TSA gauntlet. How the hell did this escape every part of my planning for this trip? I had a terrible sinking feeling wash over me.

But, as I was soon to learn there was a perk of flying first class. A premium line to get through the security check and when I got there the line was nearly empty, compared to the general screening lines. I made my way to the TSA pre-check agent manning the podium and handed him my boarding pass and driver's license.

He looked over the two; looked at me, passed my documents back, "Have a nice flight..."

I should have been more panicked, but I was Xanax fortified this morning. And I'd just made it through the first hurdle. I wondered why he didn't question my appearance.

I looked at my boarding pass, 'Edward Gallagher' - it matched my driver's license, the one I was too poor to go through the legal process of getting changed. Why didn't that register last night when I checked in online? This was yet another thing I totally spaced on, a detail, a fact, lost in the swirl of crushing pressures of being me and agreeing to assist in the search for Amber.

My judgment was certainly clouded, my 'be on guard every waking second' lapsing at times I should have been in total control - albeit panicked to the edge of my ability to function. When I got back I would have to thank Kendal, or maybe she knew I would have a problem with TSA ticketed as myself, Elizabeth Gallagher, and was trying to make getting on the plane easier.

The next challenge, getting through a scan, a body scan. This was done twice.

I wasn't aware their scans were programmed to the standard genders. The first

one was done for a female's anatomy. The TSA agent at the scanner thought

she saw a female, so that's how I was scanned - unbeknownst to me. The TSA

agent behind the computer screen reading the scan flagged my original screening for obvious reasons. The female agent at the scanner was polite, asked me if I was Transgender MTF. I nodded.

She spoke a code aloud, and then turned to me, "Let's try again Miss..."

Scan - passed. No strange looks, no alarm bells went off. I picked up my purse from the other scanning process and made my way to the gate.

March 9th, 6:16 AM

Boarding began with the typical, "Those needing additional assistance..."

call. That was followed by all levels of mileage plan members and first

class passengers. I was ahead of the curve on this one though, and passed

on loading ahead of a fully booked flight.

I didn't want to be sitting there having every passenger pass by me and wondering about how I rated. I guess I could have just boarded early and stared out the window or something, but being next to last on the plane sure seemed an easier way to get on with this show. When I got to my seat I barely got a look from anyone in first class. I pushed my purse under the seat in front of me, nodded 'No' to the offer of a beverage - I probably should have gotten a

water, buckled my seatbelt. The plane pulled back from the gate at 6:47

AM.

March 9th, 11:02 AM

My room was amazing, the entire property was amazing - nothing short of being a five star resort. I thought the hotel would be some old Holiday Inn

rebranded - happily that wasn't the case. The weather was in the mid-

seventies, pure sunshine and nothing like the rain I left behind in

Seattle this morning.

I pulled things from my suitcase, hanging items, and arranging shoes in the closet. I had the AC on and over the drone there was a knock on my door. I froze for a moment, and then made my way to the door. I looked out the peephole and saw a man in his early forties, maybe late thirties.

I did not recognize him and was about to just walk away. "Elizabeth Gallagher, I'm Paul Kline, I work for Jacob Wentz." There was a pause, "Janet Larson said I could meet you here."

Nervous energy pulsed through my veins as I opened the door, "I'm

Elizabeth..." and I felt foolish all of a sudden for stating that, rather than acknowledging him. He knew who I was or he wouldn't be here - did he say he had talked to Janet?

I stood in the doorway as if we were going to have a long conversation here with him in the hallway. Realizing how stupid I must look I stepped aside and he stepped forward, offering his hand, which I shook tentatively. What is my problem?!

"Nice to meet you, Janet and Jacob have high praise for you. I look forward to working with you," he said as he made his way to the couch in the anteroom of the suite.

I followed but had no idea what I should say. I hadn't even checked my work email yet, had Janet emailed me about this meeting? I should have logged into my work email account. I knew I hadn't missed any calls or text messages since arriving. Paul must be the computer forensics specialist - why didn't I ask Janet about this guy?

He was a nice looking man, maybe an inch taller than I was and dressed

business casual - it sure seemed like he was going to be all business as he was already pulling a laptop from his bag. Good, I was already uncomfortable about my role and hoping I wasn't going to be the lead on this assignment.

I wasn't even sure what I was here to offer up anyway - I knew nothing about computer stuff, I hoped he had some kind of plan. So much for getting a power nap in before jumping into work - I guess that wasn't going to happen. "I... I think the WiFi password is 'Scottsdale' and my room..."

"Yup, I'm staying here too - got here Monday. So, thought we could go over some of the basic stuff - get you up to speed on what I've gotten from her computer so far," he was pulling a portable drive from his bag and plugging it in, "This is a copy of her hard drives - from both her computers. I'm still running some scans on the laptop, to see if I can recover things that have been deleted. Nothing much on her desktop unit, but we can discuss that."

I just watched, he was clicking and opening windows faster than I could

grasp on his laptop. "Can I get you something to drink? Is there anything I can do?"

"No, I'm... Yeah, if you have water that would be good. Oh, and," he pulled a stick from his bag, "If you can plug this into your TV we won't have to crowd around this tiny screen."

I took the stick and must have looked confused, "Plug it into?"

"If you can plug it into any of the HDMI slots, there are a couple on the left side I think."

I did as requested, grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. The hotel

entertainment menu was showing. I knew enough that the stick would be

accessible via one of the TV's aux connections from his computer. I found

a Google Chrome Cast listed on HDMI - 3.

Paul looked up, then did something and the screen went black. Five seconds passed and Facebook was showing on the screen, Amber's Facebook - it was the first time I had seen what she looked like.

"Think I could get that water?"

I literally jumped, his voice shocking me, like static electricity - I was

that focused on Amber's picture on the 42 inch TV screen. She was so

much more female than I had expected for only being seventeen. I turned

reluctantly toward the full size kitchen and pulled a bottle of the 'Complimentary' water from the refrigerator. I gave Paul the bottle, he

thanked me.

When I looked at the TV it was in a split screen mode - her Facebook account on top and some other computer language stuff was zipping off the screen nearly as fast as it was displaying - 'For (i 0=0;i 0 < z;i 0++)... void tBreakImg(const double a[20])'. It looked like gibberish to me.

"I'm trying to recover anything hashed, well... lost sectors actually, from her hard drives. Sorry..." He was banging keys and obviously lost in his own thoughts.

After a couple minutes of silence, nothing moving on the Facebook side of

the TV, and lots of computer garbage flying by still, I couldn't take being

ignored, "Have, have you talked to Mr. Wentz?"

"One second... Okay, last," more typing, "There... Yeah, Jacob and I met

this morning for breakfast. He's meeting with someone from the FBI," he

looked at his watch, "Now I think. Anyway, he wants you to see what I've

found. See if we can turn any of this stuff into leads for the police or FBI if Jacob can secure some assistance. Tonight we're having dinner at the Carson's. Jacob wants you to check out her room, ask questions of the Carson's, not sure what else Jacob has in mind for the day."

Wait, what? "We're going to Mr. Wentz's sisters' house tonight?" I could

feel my voice shake.

Paul turned away from his screen to look at me, the first time in nearly five minutes, "Is that going to be a problem?"

I'm sure his tone didn't hold any malice, but he didn't get any of this - me, me being here, what I have to deal with just to function as me around people, none of it. I looked at him a few seconds, "No, but I wasn't expecting this to move so quickly."

Paul's face showed no real emotion, maybe a little confusion? "Time is of the essence Elizabeth, we're now seven days behind Amber and not much is known," he paused to study my face, "Are you going to be alright with this?"

No, I mean, I don't know, "I don't know," I paused trying to collect my thoughts, "To be honest, I'm probably way outside my comfort zone."

"How can I make this easier for you?" His voice seemed sincere.

"I just... I don't think you understand."

"I know and understand more about you than you think."

"What? What does that mean?" I went from stunned and near cowering, to

having an angry lump in my throat.

"You were born Edward Anson Gallagher in Seattle twenty-three years ago.

Got your GED three years ago and graduated from Tacoma Community College four months ago with a Paralegal certifi..."

"What the hell!" Did this guy run some kind of background on me? Why did

he run a background check on me? What else did he know? This was bullshit! This isn't right! What's going on here?

"All I'm saying Elizabeth, is I know a little bit about you and where you're coming from - it doesn't mean I understand your journey. Jacob and Janet think you are value added, so do I, because I don't quite understand a lot of things I've found. I won't pretend to know where this kid was going in life, but you probably do and you're going to make sense of way more of this stuff than I ever could. We're on the same side, with the same goal - bringing Amber home."

I wanted to bite his head off! I wanted to run. It did sound like he had just complimented me, maybe. Damn! Amber, me, this wasn't some kind of disease or something. It wasn't a game or whim or whatever he might be

thinking. God damn you! Breathe...

I needed to figure out, quickly, how to move this along without us stepping on each other or being at each other's throats? Rules, set some ground rules for working together. Go with what you know, "Ah, Okay... I'm not, not some experiment for you to try to figure out. I'm who I am and I will not apologize or walk on eggshells around you for the next however many days. Are we clear?"

Paul looked confused, "Whoa, dial it back a few notches. I'm not the enemy and I'm not saying..."

I interrupted him midsentence, "No, we're going to establish some ground rules and rule number one is I'm not part of this investigation. I'm not the subject matter, my past is mine alone, and I will not be a focus of any of this investigation. You think you know me? You're full of shit!"

My voice was raised and I probably sounded like a raspy Stevie Nicks with laryngitis. I could feel my nails digging into my clenched fists and tried to relax.

"Wow, I feel like I should leave and come back in again," he said calmly

with the slightest of grins.

I was angry, scared, scared for Amber. Scared I was going to let Janet and Jacob down. Scared that some of the pieces of my life I had to put on hold, bury deep, were going to trickle out during this whole process. Slow it down, slow down the doom speak.

"No, you don't need to leave," I said meekly, "But you need to understand none of the decisions or actions or whatever I made came without a lot of pain, consequences." I was rambling and just stopped before I started to sound preachy.

"I would never try to minimize anything you or Amber have gone through."

Paul's face, now very somber, looked away, "I know a little bit about the

pain a family goes through, the pain, the blame, and the shame." His voice

was breaking.

I wanted to say something, but was lost as to where this conversation had

just went - how could he know about the family dynamic going on with

Amber, with my family? Paul stood and looked toward the window.

"My brother came," he paused, "Came out as gay. It did not go over well with my parents." He walked to the window, "About a year later he committed suicide. He was seventeen. While not exactly the... I, I think I know some of the things you've gone through."

I felt an instant and intense empty ache in my chest. "I'm so sorry," I whispered.

Three rapid beeps from Paul's computer interrupted this posturing I was so

determined to win. I watched him as he continued to stare out the window, a hand went to his face. I thought about going over to him, but didn't. Three more rapid beeps from the computer and he turned to look at the TV screen. His left cheek was a little wet. He excused himself and went to the bathroom. I could hear him blowing his nose.

March 9th, 11:48 AM

The computer beeps turned out to be a good thing. It knocked me off the

destructive path I'd been going down the last however many minutes. Yes, I was being a bitch, but I wasn't going to be someone's pincushion or punching bag or experiment or avenue to my dark side or whatever.

Our focus returned to finding clues to Amber's disappearance as quickly as we took that detour. Paul revealing his brothers story flipped a switch in me and I started to believe that maybe he wasn't the enemy. I had an overwhelming urge to hug him, but we got back to the business at hand with nary a word to either of our positions.

The laptops first beep told Paul that the process of file recovery on Amber's desktop hard drive was complete. There were a few files, mostly selfies of her trying on various outfits in various boutiques - at least three different stores. They were older according to the date-time stamps Paul said, a year and a half at least. One of the pictures had caught Amber's mom, Stephanie, in a mirror smiling about something. They looked very much like the mother / daughter pair you would expect, both of them smiling, giggling possibly, and seemingly enjoying shopping together.

Paul had already met Amber's parents and said he didn't sense anything but

support for their daughter's chosen path. From the little I had seen of her

Facebook account - which had a hundred or less posts, the last being well

over three months ago - she was getting more than enough support from her

parents.

Not so much from her friends - in fact for a teen I expected much more communication on this wide reaching social platform. There was nothing, not even bullying - I thought that was odd. She had less than fifty friends in total, wasn't following anything Trans or LGBTQ related, and the posts of pictures of herself were only about ten - all very tasteful ones of her in outfits from cute dresses to pajamas.

It all seemed excessively sterile. I wondered if someone had made changes to her account, posts being deleted before we could inspect what was there. Was there a way we could find out? I'd have to dig for the answer to that.

In comparison to her account, my Facebook account had every Trans related or LGBTQ group out there - especially the local Seattle one's. I had hundreds of friends and my last post was from last weekend where I had commented on some legal action against the city of New Orleans discriminating against a lesbian passed over for a promotion.

While nothing in any of my posts was wild, it didn't take a genius to know where I stood on the issues facing my Trans community. I didn't flaunt my sexuality or try to force it down anyone's throat. Facebook was my attempt at being the legit woman I wanted people to see and hoped they would see me as anything but a threat. My account was a long cry from the swamps I used to troll online.

It was probably obvious looking at the few pictures I had posted of myself that I was Trans. The last picture was of me on my first day of work at Brandt, Wentz, and Larson three months ago. I hated pictures of myself because they screamed 'dude in drag'; the wide shoulders, long legs - with shorter torso, hair never quite right. Augh! STOP IT!

Okay, it would be a lie to say I wasn't envious of Amber. She looked as female as if she was actually born female. She also had the support of her family - which boiled down to her family's love for her. There was of course the money aspect and that certainly helped with the support of her transition.

I had struggled in comparison and I made it to where I was today all by myself - no piles of money backing me up. Yes, it sucked to be disowned by my father and brother. Sucked I barely had a speaking relationship with my mom - that was a different assortment of problems. Mom was like Forest Gump's box of chocolates - only each chocolate tasted like shit, generally speaking, and I was reminded that I owed her for the taste.

I owed my mom money for college and whatever else it took to survive this past year. She loaned me money secretly without my dad's knowledge - she reminded me of the risks she took to help me. I was paying her two hundred a month and promised to increase that in the months to come until I had paid her back the nearly four thousand dollars I owed. Relevance? I wanted to kick myself. None! Grrr!!! Focus!

I tried to suppress my jealousy, but it was really beginning to eat at me and Paul's comments about Amber's appearance, how cute she looked, weren't helping. To distract him I got him talking computer forensics stuff. He was pretty easily distracted for someone who thought they were so smart. Paul explained there was a bulk of disk space that couldn't be recovered on her

desktop computer hard drive, due to the read / write operations of the

computer's operating system and it plunking down data where ever the hell

it wanted.

I didn't pretend to understand half the shit he was spouting off, but at least I didn't have to hear more compliments about Amber for a couple of minutes. In his estimation, the desktop wasn't used much - so whatever we couldn't recover was likely more of the same, pictures of Amber. I wrote down a question - When did Amber get her laptop?

The second beep of Paul's laptop signaled the completion of the recovery

process of anything deleted from Amber's 1TB laptop hard drive. It was a

haul of over one-thousand files consisting of Word files, pictures, and

MPEG video files - along with some system files of course.

The earliest deleted file was from a year ago and Paul mentioned that was when the laptop was first used - initial Windows update from the factory-installed operating system was a week before the date of the first file deletion

date. Okay, so that's was the answer to the when did she get the laptop. So, why a laptop a year ago? Was it a gift? Shit, present! I blurted out, "Do you know when Amber's birthday is?"