Barry and the Cyber Thief

8/14/2019 Barry and the Cyber Thief

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Barry and the Cyber Thief [DRAFT]

By Sean McClure www.SeanMcClure.com Copyright 2013

1Part 1 - Bullied

Part 1 - BulliedEvan Victor Edwards was known at high school as the boy with three first names. Lucky for him, he waspopular. He lived in a small town in which his family was the largest employer of a steel mill. This isprobably where his popularity luck came from.

His first name Evan, came from his fathers, father, and Victor was his mother ’s father. Of courseEdwards was the family name and could only be changed in a court of law, but why change it? BesidesEdwards Steel Mill had been supplying steel since the railroad days, with a long line of family historyspanning the country and the world.

Evan was a smart kid, as would be expected from such a wealthy family, but he did not attend a privateschool, mainly because there were no private schools around. He naturally enjoyed school and learning, just about as much as he enjoyed sports. This year was his senior year and he was looking forward tocollege and a higher education. Unlike most popular kids, Evan displayed humility and character in all

situations he was faced with.

While walking to his next class, Evan saw one of the poor boys being made fun of by group of rowdykids.

“Hey berry goop, you’re looking pretty goopy today. Who did your hair today, your berry god mother?”

Roy and his friends laughed at the play on words.

Barry Goupe (pronounced Go-pay) moved to town two weeks ago when his parents got a job at the mill,both as janitors. He hated his name. He hated this school and he hated these kids. But he was meek andsmall and knew that nothing he could say or do would cause these kids to stop. If he engaged it would

make it worse. His family was the poorest of all the families in town, to the point where there weresome days all they had to eat was one hamburger patty that his ma would make and split between thethree of them. They would dress it with packets of ketchup, mustard and relish from the local fast foodrestaurant.

Evan stepped between the high-fiving boys and Barry Goupe and asked nonchalantly, “Hey guys, what’s

going on here?”

Roy knew not to mess with the boy with the three first names. One wrong word or move wouldsummons the local police in probably less than 5 seconds and Roy would be in jail and his father wouldbe fired from his supervisor position at the mill. Or so he thought, but who was going to test thattheory? Not Roy.

“Noth’n go’in on here, just say’n ‘hi’ to our friend Barry.” Roy said, looking at the ground, then turning to

leave with his group of friends in toe.

Turning to Barry, Evan picked up the conversation, “How ya doing Barry?”





2Part 1 - Bullied

With dejected brown eyes, the boy with straight medium length brown hair looked up from the ground,and an inquisitive look replaced the hurt in his face, “How…how’d you know my name?”

“You are the new kid, It’s easy to remember someone new. Can’t say I know everyone else’s namethough. Besides, I have an uncle named Barry. He’s my cool uncle. Guess that means you have a cool

name too.”

“Not so sure about that. Would rather my name be John or something. ”

“Well I like it. We’re gonna be l ate for class, but I want you to join me and my friends for lunch today.We are over by the big oak tree.”

“I don’t think so. You don’t want me hang’n around. I’m not the kinda guy that brings good luck .”

“If I didn’t want you there, I wouldn’t have invite d you. I insist. My mom packed an extra sandwich forme, you can have it if you like peanut butter and jelly. I usually don’t eat my second sandwich anyway,and I hate to throw it away.” Evan realized how gaunt Barry looked and wondered if he had enough foodto eat. In reality Evan only had one sandwich, but he would gladly share and bring an extra tomorrow.

“I got my own lunch today, don’t need yours.”

“Fair enough, but I still invited you. Nobody under the oak is gonna treat you like Roy’s gang. But it’s upto you.”

“OK, I’ll think about it.” And with that, Barry Goupe walked in the opposite direction of Evan ’ class.





3Part 2 – A Friend

Part 2 – A FriendBarry Goupe watched the oak tree group from the shadows of the overgrown jasmine bush. Being newwas familiar to him, but being accepted was not. In the oak tree group was about 25 kids from what hecounted and they all smiled, laughed and talked about their day, while eating their lunches.

Evan finished his potato chips, and started in on an apple. In the past three days Barry had consumedthree quarter of a hamburger, six ketchup packets, three mustard packets and three packets of relish.Barry Goupe wanted the peanut butter and jelly sandwich more than anything. But not for himself. Hewould share it with his parents. They could eat hamburger and condiment packets for dinner and thenwrap it up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dessert.

Barry got up from the lunch spot he had occupied for the past two weeks and carefully made his way tothe oak tree group. Evan spotted Barry out of the corner of his eye and walked confidently to thedisheveled kid. With a wide smile and words of excitement Evan welcomed Barry to the group.

“Barry, glad you make it. Guy, listen up, this my friend Barry, you know, the new guy.” Friend? Barry never had a friend. He moved too many times to have a friend. If anyone from schoolwanted to come over to his house, Barry insisted that they go somewhere else. His house was emptysave it not for the rusted patio chairs and table set his p arents found in someone’s front yard with a“Free” sign hanging from it. Barry’s bed was a sleeping bag and his pillow was an old throw cushion froman old orange, plush couch. Mr. and Mrs. Goupe’s bedroom setup was no different than their son’s.

This is why Barry had no friends. And most likely in six months the Goupe ’s move again to the next job,so there was no reason to get his hopes up. Anyway, the boy with the three first names would never leta raggedy boy even touch the yard of his house, let alone walk into the town mansion. But ‘friend’ did

have a nice sound to it. Still, his guard was up. He could still be humiliated. Evan could be tricking him tocome into the group, and then everyone would make fun of him, or gang up on him and beat him up. Itwouldn’t be the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Barry, this is the gang.” And with each name called out, as if from a screen play cast, each of the oaktree gang waved a hand and smiled toward Barry.

Confused, Barry just nodded. He tried smiling and waving back, but it felt awkward. Besides, this couldall still be a ploy.

“Did you eat lunch? I have than extra sandwich for you, I was just about ready to throw it away.”

“I just ate,” Barry lied “but if you sure you’re not gonna eat it I know somebody I can give it to .”

They walked to the aluminum table under the tree and Evan grabbed the folded up lunch bag andhanded it to Barry Goupe.

“So, tell me about yourself, Barry. How do you say your last name?”






“My last name is like if you was to go pay the lunch lady for some food. Not much other to tell thanthat. ”

“What town did you live in before here?”

Evan was sincere in his questions. Barry didn’t know why he cared at all, but he did. It wasn’t just words.He left the oak tree group to talk to him. H e didn’t want the boy with the three first names to find out

how poor he was. He would be careful how he answered these questions.

“We come from all over. My parents get any job they can find. Right now they work at the mill cleaningstuff up, like floors and bathrooms and stuff. ”

“That’s an important job , have you ever been in a place so dirty you just want to leave? ”

Barry could not hide the surprised look in his face, and his eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed.“Nobody ever said my parents job was important. They just clean, you know? That’s all they know howto do. Its dirty, hard and not as important as making metal that go in cars or airplanes or other stuff itmakes .”

“What was the last down you lived in?”

“It was a small coal min ing town in North Carolina. My parents tried that but didn’t like it. Said it was toosmall in the mine and one day dad thought he wouldn’t be able to breathe. They sa id it was clausobia orsomething like that .”

“Claustrophobia? Yeah, I don’t like small places either. I couldn’t do that. I can clean though. I have

chores; gotta clean my bathroom and my room and other parts of the house. I have to sweep and dolaundry too. People think we have maids and stuff, and we do mainly to help other people make a living,but my par ents believe in hard work, and you can’t learn that if you are not willing yourself to do what

you are asking others to do.”

“You clean?” Remarked Barry, not believing what he was hearing. This kid was not the normal popular

kids he knew from other schools . Usually they were rich, mean and didn’t ever have to work a day intheir lives. Drove rich cars had rich houses and the pretty girls were their girlfriends. But Evan wasdifferent.

“Yup, sure do. There’s no free lunch at my house.” Evan watched Barry’s e yes drop to the brown paperbag he was holding in his hands, as if the food inside was a handout. “You know what I mean, it’s just

the way my family is, we work for a living, just like your folks.

The school bell rang the ten minute warning causing a stir on campus. “Gotta go to class, Barry. It was

nice talking to you. Hey, some of the gang is getting together at my house after school. Come join us andmeet some of the other kids. You will like them .”

“I don’t think so, I have to go home and study.” Barry lied again.






“We’ll call it a study group then. Tell you what, meet me in front of the school after your last class andI’ll drive you. I won’t take no for an answer.” With that the boy with the three first names turned andwalked toward the crowd moving to ward the building. Looking over his shoulder he shouted “Three

o’clock sharp, at the front of the school.”

Barry watched his new friend be absorbed into the crowd. “What just happened?” he asked himself,bewildered at how this day was turning out. This morning nobody knew he existed and now he washanging out with the most popular kid in school and the richest kid in town. It didn’t make any sense.

He felt the Sandwich in his hand and resisted the urge to devour it right there at the table under the oak.But he knew if he did, he would feel guilty that his parents would also not be able to enjoy it. He walkedtoward the boys restroom, at the back of the caravan crowd, and noticed two men talking around thecorner of the building. One was the Principal and the other wore a suit but Barry did not recognize theman.

As Barry approached the restroom door, he could hear a hushed voice and the word “Edwards , crime,arrest ”, and the final word “ tomorrow .”





6Part 3 – After School Activities

Part 3 – After School ActivitiesThree o’clock ushered i n a swarm of kids, parents and busses, leaving behind halls cluttered with paperand trash. Barry stood at the top of the steps, holding his books and the brown paper bag. His parentshad not purchased or found a backpack for Barry, so anything Barry needed to transport was with hisown two hands. He left most of his books in the school assigned locker, and only took with him whatneeded to be studied, not that he did study, but bringing home no books would cause a stir with hisparents. They would say, “You need to study and get good grades, so you can get a good job.”

Learning did not come natural to Barry. The only thing that did come natural was being unnoticed, atleast by most people. He was plenty noticed by the kids who wanted to use him as a punching bag.Today felt different. Barry had an idea what a friend was, but he was going into this cautiously.Throughout the rest of the day Barry kept playing over in his mind, “Why me? This does not happen to

people like me.”

“Hey man.” Barry heard the now familiar voice behind him. “Let’s go, follow me.” With out stopping Evan

passed on his left and kept walking toward the parking lot. Looking back he said, “Are you coming?”

Barry’s steps were slow, as the gap between him and his new friend widened, but he p icked up the paceso as to not be lost in the herd. He scanned the lot looking for the nicest car, maybe a red sports car or anew luxury car. But none existed in the parking lot.

Younger than Evan by about a year, Barry did not have a driver’s license. Wi th one car at home and notenough money to pay car insurance for a teenager, Barry knew he would have to wait until hegraduated high school and found a job to pay for his share of insurance.

Instead Evan unlocked a white 10 year old Ford F-250 crew cab. For being so old, it was in fantastic

shape, but Barry wondered why he didn’t have a new car. Two other kids Barry recognized from the oaktree group leaned on the truck waiting for their ride to the mansion. On the back of the truck windowwas about a three inch sticker with a rough looking circle and a plus inside.

Mike casually introduced himself again, but was not as energetic as the popular boy. Barry surmised thatMike could care less either way with the new addition to the group. He guessed that him and Mikeprobably would not be the best of friends. The doors of the truck were unlocked with a remote andMike jumped into the front seat, apparently claiming the spot a long time ago.

“Get in.” I nsisted the driver, directing the comment to Barry.

Barry hesitated. “What am I doing? If my parents found out I would be in so much trouble.” For amoment he thought of running out of there, but if he did, he was sure the white truck would catch upwith him. Better not make a scene.

The passenger side rear window rolled down, “You coming with us?” implored the familiar voice.

Without saying anything, Barry opened the door and stepped into the back seat of the truck. This wasthe nicest car he had ever been in. The interior looked and smelled new, rather it was not tattered and






smelling like a old garage, like his parents ’78 Chevy Caprice Station wagon that was always on its lastleg, but always seemed to get them where they needed to go. Barry almost did not put his feet on thefloor fearing his shoes were probably the dirtiest thing that had ever been in the truck.

The girl sitting next to him said, “Hi, I’m Michelle. Your name is Barry, right?” She too had a wide smile,

with slightly curly blonde hair framing her thin face and electric blue eyes. He couldn’t beli eve she wastalking to him. She was gorgeous. The prettiest girl he had ever seen, and as usual, she was with thepopular guy.

Barry sat stunned, not knowing what to say to a pretty girl. She broke the short silence. “How do you say

your last name, is it ‘goop’?”

Barry’s face flushed. Usually someone calling him “goop” was offensive, but the way she said it madehim smile.

After another few seconds the driver cut the silence. “No Meesh, it’s pronounced ‘go -pay’, like you will

go pay for a new purse.

The boys in the front laughed, and Barry smiled, but only glanced at the girl, still not able to sayanything, as if someone placed invisible tape over his mouth.

“What is your favorite subject?” persisted Michelle.

Another awkward silence allowed Barry to build the confidence to speak. “Reading, I suppose” he

responded while looking at his knees. “I like reading.”

The boys in the front had not stopped giggling from the “go pay for a new purse” comment. Barry drewfrom the little bit of confidence flowing through his veins and asked, “How long have you and Evan beendating?”

Michelle immediately looked stunned, then all three kids in the car broke out in hysterical laughter.Through gut spasmimg gasps, Michelle replied “He is my brother, we are fraternal twins.”

Again Berry felt like a fool. His eyes dropped back to the brown paper bag on his lap, and he felt like hewas blushing as red as the stoplight they were at. He was tempted to open the door and get out of thetruck and run home. He had never been this embarrassed.

Barry didn’t talk the rest of the way to the mansion, instead he could not get out of his mind the two

men talking. He wanted to tell the boy who befriended him, but did not want to say something withothers around. The truck drove up to a gate and the boy with the three first names pressed the button,causing the large wood paneled barrier to open. Barry looked up and saw the biggest house he had everseen, with a yard bigger than the park he used to play at as kid.

“Looks like Dad is home.” Observed Michelle “I can’t wait to show him my ‘A’ on my Math test. Hehelped me so much with understanding Geometry.” She directed that last statement to Barry, not in a

bragging tone, but in a matter of fact way.






Barry tensed. This was the owner of the company that his mom and dad worked for. What if he didsomething wrong and got them fired. He should not have accepted the ride study group, this was a bigmistake. His parents were going to kill him for being here with the rich folks. The Goupe’s were not part

of this educated and wealthy crowd and they never would be. What made Him think this friendshipwould work. He should have never joined the oak tree group at lunch.

As the car slowly approached the five car garage, Barry saw him. The man in the dark suit that wastalking to the Principal earlier in the day was now talking to another man. He must have been Evan’s dadbecause they looked very much alike. But Michelle did not look like him, except for the blonde hair.

The man in the suit had a different demeanor than before. This time he was smiling and laughing, as ifengaged in a casual conversation with the wealthiest man in town. But who was this man, and why washe here. His presence solidified Barry’s resolve that he should have never stepped into the tru ck. Hesmelled trouble.





9Part 4 – Rich Life

Part 4 – Rich LifeBarry Goupe exited the truck with the three other kids, and he walked in the back of the pack towardMr. Edwards and the man in the suit.

“Hi Dad.” The two siblings chirped in unison.

“Hi kids.” Their Dad resp onded looking away from the mystery man. Barry averted his eyes, fearing hewould be recognized for listening into the earlier conversation with the Principal at the school. “Who’s your new friend ?” implored Mr. Edwards.

Michelle was the first to introduc e the shy boy. “This is Barry Goupe, Dad, he’s new to school.”

Mr. Edwards volunteered his hand , “Nice to meet you Barry.”

Barry did not want to make any mistakes for fear of the potential consequence of his parents being firedfrom their job on his account. Nervously he looked up from the ground as he shifted his books and

brown paper bag with the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and offered his yielding hand, thinking backand wondering if he had ever shook anyone’s hand before. Mr. Edwards squeezed with confidence.Barry’s only response to the man was a faint, and mo destly forced, smile. He wondered if Mr. Edwardsdetected his nervousness from what felt like his whole body being overtaken by severe anxiety, but therich man did not give any hints of thinking this interaction was out of the ordinary.

“Barry, this is Don Hattfield, Mayor of this great town.” Mr. Edwards released Barry’s limp hand and

signaled toward the official.

“Nice to meet you, son.” Boomed the mayor, disp laying his politician smile with underlying straightwhite teeth that looked like they were just withdrawn from a Chicklets box and mounted in his mouth.“Welcome to our town.” The mayor continued, “What part do you live in?”

Feeling awkward with the richest man in town and the Mayor asking him questions, Barry could hardlyfind his voice. When he did, his words were unpretentious, “I live on the other side of school, by thesupermarket.”

“Oh, where by the supermarket.” Smirked the man that Barry did not tr ust anymore now than when hefirst saw him. The line of questioning was more an indictment rather than an innocent question. Thatside of town is where the poor folk live. Poor folk had food on the table and where Barry lived was thebelow poverty area, which meant no food for periods of time. Barry did not want to reveal his place of

residence in case someone was going to find his house and tell his parents where was and that he washanging around influential people.

Barry spoke almost inaudibly, “I’m acro ss the street from the store .” Indicating he was only poor folk.

Sensing his uneasiness, Michelle grabbed Barry’s arm and pulled him toward the front door. “We best

be on our way, we have lots of studying to do for our classes . Mayor, it’s always a pleasu re .”






With a slight polite bow, Don Hattfield replied, “Likewise Michelle.”

From the outside the house was a mansion, but on the inside it looked like a palace, like nothing Barryhad ever seen before. From the front door two separate half spiral staircases beckoned for someone tocome upstairs, one on the left and one on the right with a landing connecting the two at the top.

Overlooking the entry way hung a chandelier that must have been as big, or bigger, than the Goupe’scar.

From Barry’s vantage point h e could not see the first floor rooms on either side of staircases, but theywere well lit from the large windows in the front of the house. A light tan marble floor adorned theentry way from the front door to each of the unknown rooms on the left and right, and then met a woodfloor under the staircase landing.

Directly underneath the car sized chandelier the letter “E” was monogrammed in a dark brown marble

with a thin circle outlined in what must have been gold. Looking straight to the back of the lavish home,past the hardwood floors, scenic windows overlooked the enormous estate dotted with a fence of treesin the indefinite distance.

Barry guessed that three mobile home trailers, the size that Barry lived in, could fit in just the marblesection alone. What did people do with this much space?

Evan called out to Barry from under the landing, “Come’on Barry, we usually hang out in the pool houseafter school. The other kids will be here soon.”

“Pool house? Did he just say pool house? What was that, a house just for a pool?” Barry was out of hiselement. He didn’t even have swim shorts, neither with him or at home, and if he did, he did not how toswim. Sure he would spend time in the streams and in the shallow sections of lakes, but he did not go infar. Lakes scared him once he could not see the bottom, and streams were usually slippery and cold. Asfar as Barry was concerned, he’d rather not go into any water. Again, he chided himself for not justgoing straight home. Even the prospect of meeting up with Roy on the way home seemed a betteroption than this. Getting beat up and bullied was familiar. He and his parents expected that, and while itdid not feel good, he knew what to expect. Not a single thing about this experience was familiar and itwas becoming far more uncomfortable than a good old fashioned thumping.

Barry followed Evan and Mike, while Michelle went upstairs to change out of her school clothes. Barryhad school clothes too, and after school clothes and weekend clothes. Problem was he was wearingthem all right now. He had two pairs of jeans, one was his swiss cheese pair; full of holes, and the other

he had on now. He owned three shirts and unfortunately the one he wore today was the dirtiest.

Passing through the kitchen area, just as ornate as the entry, Barry stepped onto the back porch andsurveyed the expanse of land they called their back yard. By the looks of it, a small town could be set upback there, or a football stadium with enough room for parking. To the right was a covered patio areawith a built in BBQ and enough seating for entertaining a multitude of guests. On the left was the






grandiose pool, and it was not in a house, more like a chateau. In any case it was bigger than anydwelling he had ever lived.

From out of nowhere a Golden Retriever bounded up the four steps made of a grand canyon coloredsandstone which spanned about fifty feet of the back patio. Barry had never seen the Grand Canyon in

person, but had admired pictures provided in school text books. Carefree and overly excited, the dog satin front of Barry with a tennis ball lodged in its mouth. Brown eyes peered over a long snout begging forsomeone to throw the ball.

Barry loved dogs, and one day would have one of his own. It would be a big dog like this one, he likedGolden’s, Lab’s and German Shepherds. Grabbing the soiled ball with little resistance from the beautifulanimal, Barry launched the ball far into the back yard exclaiming, “Go get it boy!” T he dog did nothesitate a nanosecond to claim again what was once his. For the second time today Barry felt a smile onhis face. The first time was when he met Michelle.

The two friends had already made it to the pool house by the time Barry made it to the bottom of thefour stairs which then led to a walkway that wound its way around the pool and foliate until it found itsway to the chateau.

Barry entered through the double sliding doors with full panes of glass, followed his new best friend.These were not just regular doors, but almost the size of garage doors that rolled sideways into the wallson either side, opening up the structure to enjoy the weather and having full access to amenitiesnormally found in a house. Barry supposed this kept water out of the main house, yet allowed people torelax when not swimming. The seats and couches were fancy patio furniture that would not be ruinedwhen swimmers exited the pool and took a seat.

“Head’s up!” shouted Evan. Startled Barry looked toward Evan and from the corner of his eye saw something flying at him. Hisre flexes weren’t quick enough and a Twinkie hit him on his shoulder, but Barry was able to cradle hisarms with his books and brown paper bag, allowing the Twinkie to settle on his books and not land onthe floor.

“Sorry about that, man. You can put your books over there on the table.” Evan pointed across the room where Evan and Mike had both rested their backpacks.

Mike snickered, “You don’t talk much, do ya?”

“Leave him alone, he’s new. Doesn’t know anyone.” Evan scolded, coming to Barry’s defense. “Remember when you were shy like that.”

“That was in fourth grade. I don’t mean anything by it, just making an observation.” Regressed Mike,

finishing up his Twinkie and setting the wrapper on the counter in the mini kitchen.

With eyes in the back of his head, Evan asserted “You know where that wrapper goes.”






Acting as if this was the first time at Evans house, Mike picked up the wrapper and threw it in the trashbin that was hidden in one of the cherry wood cabinets.

Barry sat his books down, and did not know what to do with the Twinkie. He thought about keeping itbut if he brought home too much food to his parents he would be in a world of trouble. “We don’t take

other folks food or money, we work for what we got .” is what they would say. As it was, bringing home asandwich was a risk, but one he could probably explain.

Evan continued, “Help yourself to anything here. We have chips, crackers, cookies, Coke, Root Beer, wellany drinks, and fruit. You don’t have to ask, that’s what it’s here for, after school snacks.”

“Why did you bring me here?” muttered Barry.

Caught off guard, Evan’s brow furrowed with a lack of understanding of the question. “What do you

mean?”

Barry repeated himself, “Why did you bring me here? I don’t understand why you brought me here, I

don’t belong here.”

“Where do you belong then?”

Holding the Twinkie in his hand, still debating what to do with the treat he had only tasted one othertime in his life, Barry remarked “Don’ t know. J ust don’t know why me. There’s a hundred kids at school,why bring me here?”

“What reason do you want me to give? We come here every day after school just to hang out. Usually

people break out in groups. Some go throw a football in the yard, others play in the arcade, some dobible study and others get into workgroups in hopes of improving their test grades . I don’t invite everykid because not every kid wants to be here. I know it can be hard to be new, and I wanted to invite youso you could meet people, that’s all.”

Mike interjected his wisdom, “Evan here wants to turn you into a church boy. He’ll invite you to his Jesusgroup, then to youth group at church, and soon you can’t leave. You’ll have Jesus in ya and you won’t goto hell.” With emphasis on the last point, as if Mike was preaching from the pulpit.

Barry detected a hurt tone in Evan’s voice but he was very uncomfortable. Probably about asuncomfortable as Evan would be hanging out at his place. “I just don’t belong. And I aint into noreligious stuff either. My folks tell me that we are good people, and if there is a God, why did he make

us…” Barry caught himself before he said ‘poor and foodless’. “I’m going home.” He asserted as hepicked up his books and brown paper bag, but intentionally left the Twinkie on the table.

“That’s up to you. I won’t sto p you, but was hoping you could meet some of the other kids, there aresome I know you will really connect with. Give it about 30 minutes for everyone to show up and if youstill want to go home, I’ll drive you.”





13Part 5 – Bible Study

Part 5 – Bible StudyKids began showing up about fifteen minutes after Evan convinced Barry to stay. According to the collaron the golden retriever, the dog ’s name was ‘Mac’, short for McKenzie, Barry would later find out. Macwas female for which Barry apologized when he called her ‘boy’ upon t hrowing the ball for the firsttime.

Dogs are man’s best friend. No matter what, a dog is faithful, joyful and does not judge a person basedon appearance, social status or the size of a bank account. That’s what Barry liked about dogs. It wasMac that convinced him to concede once again to his inhibitions about being here. There was still theissue of the Twinkie which he figured he would sneak back into the cupboard once a crowd formed andhe could sleuth it back when nobody was looking.

“I see you found Mac?” came the familiar female voice behind him while he was ready to heave the ball

into the air for the hundredth time.

Without looking back, Barry acknowledged Michelle and was surprised when he spoke in his normalvoice. “She fou nd me is more like it .” He was smiling again.

“She loves playing ball. Pra ctically sleeps with that thing if she can sneak it in the house past Mom.”

Barry laughed at the thought of the dog slipping in the house undetected. “One day I want to have a dog

like this.”

Michelle smiled as he turned to look at her with Mac running up bearing the green orb between herteeth. “Some of us are getting together for Bible study, do you want to join us?”

Without hesitation he agreed to go with her saying ‘yes’ to being with Michelle, not caring about thereligious part. Girls had never talked to him, ever. They giggled, pointed and gossiped, but never reallytalked to him, or cared to talk. He didn’t know why it was so easy being around Evan’s sister. The

Edwards ’ seemed to be truly genuine people, only wanting what was best for others.

From the first time he saw her in the truck he liked her, but he knew she would not like him back, in agirlfriend / boyfriend kind of a way. She was way out of his league. He determined this was why he wasso comfortable around her, and he had only known her for an hour.

Avoiding silence for the long walk to the bible study group, which was congregating by the BBQ area,Michelle asked, “So what is your favorite food?”

Barry hesitated, but knew Michelle would not mock or make fun of him so he diverged his favorite food,“Brats, with mustard.” Barry had not been exposed to a variety of food, but on rare occasion when hisparents could afford a little extra, his Dad would buy two beers and Bratwurst. They would build a firewith wood and branches found around the area, and that was their form of BBQ. While the brats wereroasting over the fire, his Dad would use one beer to pour beer over the brats to ‘enhance the flavor’ and drink the second. Barry never tried a brat without beer and wouldn’t know if it truly did make it

better, but brats induced more of a memory of good times rather than a preference for food. During






brat days the family was happy and they would forget about the harsh and cruel world to which theywere born.

“What’s a brat? I don’t think I have ever had one of those?”

“It’s like a big thick hot dog, but doesn’t taste like a hot dog. They are best cooked over a camp fire withbeer poured on them .” Barry added the word camp as to not to imply they cooked outside their trailer,which was the case when cooking brats.

“My parents don’t drink beer. Every once in a while they will have a glass of wine with dinner, but theyare not big drinkers. We have maybe two bottles of wine i n the house.” Michelle clarified.

Barry agreed, “Mine too. They don’t drink wine though, but only have maybe one beer a month at mostand that is when brats are being cooked. ” This was no lie either. “Your turn, w hat’s your favorite food ?”

“Don’t laugh, you are going to think I am crazy.” Michelle said shyly

“I’d never laugh at you.” He responded a little to seriously.

“Five alarm chili with marinated artichoke hearts.” She confided.

Barry pondered but could not recall what artichoke was . “What is an artichoke heart?”

“You don’t know what an artichoke heart is?”

Now he felt stupid, maybe he should have kept his mouth shut.

“That’s ok, not many people like artichoke. It’s a big flower and it is picked before it blooms. When it iscooked with garlic butter it’s amazing. M y Dad makes a five alarm chili that has been passed down fromgenerations of Edwards, and it ’s too spicy for me, but if I take a small bite of chili then chase it downwith marinated artichoke hearts it doesn’t bu rn your tongue. For some reason that combo tastes reallygood together. My dad doesn’t make it often but when he does it’s a real treat.

In an attempt to appear more sophisticated Barry added, “One time my Mom made Garlic butter andcashew broccoli. She made it once, but it was real good. ”

“Ok, favorite dessert?”

Barry really didn’t have a favorite dessert, since it was hard enough to get food on the table, and apeanut butter and jelly sandwich was probably not considered desert, so he deflected the question,“You first, I went first last t ime.”

“Easy. Hot Fudge Sundae, with nuts, whipped cream and a cherry on top.”

Barry never had one of those, but it sounded delicious. “Hey me too” he lied again.

As they got closer to the patio Michelle assured, “You will like this group. I wouldn’t hang around Mike

and those guys. For some reason my brother thinks he can get to Mike to get him to come to church, but






I think all Mike wants is the insurance policy of not being bullied at school, and Evan gives him that.Where do you go to church?”

“I… we just moved here and don’t go to church yet.”

“Well we can fix that.” Michelle proceeded to introduce the bible study group to Barry, of which only

one person other than Michelle he recognized, and that was Evan.

The patio chairs were in a circle and Barry found one closest to where they entered the patio. Mac sadbeside Barry and once she knew ball time was paused for the moment, she laid down, let go of the ballon the ground, and set her left paw on top and rested her head between the ball and the other paw.

Michelle sat at the seat to the right of Mac and next to guy named Robert, who apparently also had athing for Michelle. She smiled and chatted with him, looking a little more friendly than just friends. Barryfelt a pang of jealousy well up from his stomach and flow to his head. He knew him and Michelle wouldonly be at most friends and this felling caught him off guard.

After introducing and welcoming Barry to the group they started in prayer which was new to Barry buthe played along, keeping his eyes open and surveying the group. He didn’t get this prayer idea, itseemed odd. Everyone was so serious too. He hoped he didn’t have to say anything.

After what seemed an eternity, the group concluded and opened their eyes and started their chattingagain.

Evan kicked off the meeting, “We’ve been talking about the prophet Isaiah and how he is foretelling thecoming of Christ. We all should have read Isaiah 53 last night before bed. Anyone want to start?”

Barry had no idea what Evan was talking about. Sounded like a fortune teller but he did not sayanything, just looked at the ground at Mac in an attempt to avoid attention.

“Here’s a spare bible for you to look at.” Michelle whispered to Barry, handing him a maroon fauxleather bound book with the word BIBLE embossed on the front cover in gold.

Barry opened to the first page and whispered back, “What page are we on?”

Michelle smiled and giggled innocently, “We’re in Isaiah silly.”

Barry still had no idea what that meant. “What page though?”

“Here hand me that I’ll turn to that page for you.” Looking around Barry noticed that there were manydifferent sizes of bibles that kids had. Some were really thick like a dictionary and others so smallenough to fit into a purse. “We are right here.” She point ed to the number 53 on the page, about halfway through the book.

This was no ordinary book with two columns of words on each page. Barry was not a scholar by anymeans, but he did like to read fiction. Probably because the library was the only place he could get






something for free, and a place he could go for solitude. He was a good reader just not so good of astudent.

The girl to his left , he thought her name was Stephanie, spoke up. “I had never caught t his before whenreading Isaiah and fifty three especially chronicles Jesus’ life in a nutshell. Without going into d etail I

have highlighted a few areas. First in 53:3 it says ‘He was despised and rejected by men’ , like the highpriests and people who didn’t believe. Then it goes on in 53:5 saying ‘But he was pierced for ourtransgressions’ , talking about being crucified on the cross. And in 53:6 is reminds us that we have allgone astray, not believing in him. Also in 53:9, and this one really struck me, it says ‘He was assigned agrave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.’ Which is where he hung on the cross with thievesand was suppose to have a normal grave until the rich man gave up his tomb for Jesus’ body. I have so

many notes, but those are the highlights.”

The discussion continued for another 45 minutes and Barry soaked in all that was being said, although itdid not make any sense. He did think it was a pretty good story with murder and deceit. Like what DeanKoontz and Vince Flynn wrote about.

When the bible study concluded they decided to stay on Isaiah 53 for another week, but to search outother parts of the bible in the new testament, whatever that was, to link the events that occurred 2,000years ago with events that Isaiah’s prophesied 700 years prior to that.

Barry was getting nervous about the time. His parents would be home in about an hour and he did notwant to make up a lie for where he was at. He approached Evan and alluded to the fact that he had togo.

“I’ll drive you home, go get your stuff. Most of the other kids will be going home soon.”

“I can walk, you don’t need to drive me .”

“You live 5 miles away, it would take over an hour for you to get home. I brought you here, I will takeyou home. Mike has to go home too and he won’t walk. He lives by you. I’ll go get him while you get

your books.”

Mac followed Barry to the chateau. The Twinkie sat next to the books, right where he left it not to longago. Fortunately it was just him and the dog in the place that was bigger than any house he had everlived. The kitchen was bigger than his bedroom. Barry looked around then opened the pantry door andreplaced the Twinkie from the box in which it was removed.

He exited the pool house and found Evan walking toward him.

“Mike is catching a ride with Nick, looks like it’s just you and me. You ready?”





17Part 6 – The Drive Home

Part 6 – The Drive HomeFor the drive home Barry sat in the front seat. “What does that sticker mean on your back window, thecircle with the plus in the middle?” inquired Barry.

“My uncle owns a sign company and I came up with the design one day in school and asked him to makeit for me. It is from Psalm 62:2 which says ‘He alone is my rock and salvation.’ If you look at the graphicyou will see the ‘G’ on the left, an ‘O’ that circles the whole thing symbolizing a rock, and finally the ‘D’

in the other half. Put those together and it looks like a rock and a cross too. So it is God is my rock andsalvation. ”

Barry didn’t get it so he moved to another subject. “I told you I never went to church, and that’s true.My family don’t believe in God and all I know is that it’s because they say if there was a Go d why wouldhe treat people the way he treats our family.” He realized he put his guard down too much and tried torecover so as not to alert Evan to the fact that his family was below the poverty line . “You know like

people getting hurt and not finding jobs and such. And who is Jesus really? I know the name, but I don’t

know why people talk about him so much. ”

Evan paused slightly to gather his thoughts. “ Great questions Barry, ones that Christians get hung up ontoo. Believing in God does not take away pain and hurt but God is real. As a people we rejected himbecause we wanted to think for ourselves and be like God. Have you heard of Adam and Eve?”

“Yeah.”

“That was the first sin against God. Wanting to be like God. So God let us make choices about what w ewant to believe. But, people, even good people, kept making wrong choices and turning faith into areligion. All God wants his people to do was obey his simple rules, the Ten Commandments. However,

they turned them into rules and judgments against people and called it religion. So God had to sendJesus, his son, to this earth to set everyone straight. Is this making any sense? ”

“Not really. It’s confusing.”

“It can be confusing, but Jesus came to the earth to make it simple again. He did not come to rulenations and be a king to sit on a throne. He did not come to be a high priest and judge people, eventhough he is the only one that has the right to judge. Instead he talked to the poor and weak and sick.He talked to the people that society outcast. He was not popular for doing this because the religiouspeople wanted someone to lay down the law. But he healed people, gave people a reason to live, hegave them life and that life is eternal life with him. In John chapter 14 Jesus says he has built mansions inhis father’s house for the people who believe in hi m, repent their sins that separate them from God, andchoose to treat people like Jesus did.”

“It’s still confusing, but if it is that simple, why doesn’t everyone do it?”

“Because there are so many rel igions that are used to confuse people. Man ’s nature is to do things toearn something. They want to work a job to earn money to buy a house. Or they want to help at church






to prove to themselves that they are a good person. Now don’t get me wrong, these a ll have their place,but because of his nature, man seeks a religion of works, and Christians can fall into that trap.Christianity at its core, however, is the only religion that does not require works to get to heaven, it isthe only one by faith alone. Jesus came to show how simple it is , like riding a bike. You don’t think about

it, you just do it. If you thought about ‘how’ to ride a bike, you would probably never be able to do it.

There are too many things you need to coordinate, and that is religion. Do, do, do to get into heaven.And I think what happens is people get exhausted and disenchanted because their works are not payingoff here on earth. They pray, and prayers aren’t answered. They volunteer but God doesn’t give them a

raise at work. They go to church every Sunday, but God has not given them a job. See how that works? ”

“Yeah, it’s making sense.”

“People forget that God is simple. He loves us. He wants us to love him back, just like your mom and dad

and my mom and dad. If we love Him we will follow His rules, like we follow our parent’s rules. Andwhen we don’t love Him and when we don’t obey his rules, we have consequences from our own

actions, not His. And is it fair that we blame Him when it is our fault? Would it be fair to blame yourpare nts if you broke a window and went to jail, when they told you not to break windows?”

“No, it wouldn’t”

“That’s why Jesus came here to let us know we have it all wrong and we need to change our way of

thinking about God. That God is not evil and oppressive. God cannot be evil. So the officials hated Jesusso much that they had him killed. They hung him on a cross until he died. Because Jesus was perfect andsinless, unlike any person ever on this earth, he took our sins on the cross so that he could petition Godto accept us into heaven with him, as long as we believe. And to prove we don’t need works, in Luke 23when Jesus is on the cross, there are two criminals with him. One rejected Jesus and the other believed.

Jesus told the one who believed ‘ Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise. ’ ”

“I don’t get any of that. If Jesus just wanted to give us the message to think simply about God why did hehave to die?”

“We will have to save that for another discussion, we are at the supermarket now. Which way to yourhouse?”

“Just drop me off at the front doors, I have to grab some groceries to bring home.” Another lie.

“OK, no problem.” Evan drove to the front of the store. “Before you go, seriously think about Jesus. And

take this bible so you can read more about what Jesus did. You can start in Matthew, which if you takethe bible and go to the middle, then go the middle again in the second half of the bible, that should putyou right at the beginning of the new testament, which is the part when Je sus comes.”

Barry hesitated to take the book. “I can’t take that from you, I’ll just get one from the library.”






Evan insisted, thrusting the book toward Barry. “These are provided by our church. I always carry acouple just in case I need one, see?” He hel d up two more just like it, pulling them from the side doorpocket.

“OK, thanks. By the way, earlier today when I asked you why you invited me to your house. Is Jesus the

reason why? Because you are doing what Jesus would do ?”

“You got it Barry. My family has been doing this for generations. For us, we have a burning desire toshare who Jesus is with as many people as possible and to let them know the difference betweenreligion and faith. Our house is a safe environment for kids, and the parents appreciate that we openour doors to the community. I can’t stand seeing kids being mocked and picked on because of whateverreason. It reminds of Jesus’ last days and I can’t stand the way people treat each other sometimes.”

“Thanks for inviting me over. I’ll take a look at the new testament too.” Barry opened the door of the

truck and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“See you at school tomorrow Barry. Remember, its Friday.” Evan beamed.

Barry had shut the door when he remembered the Mayor’s conversation with the Prin cipal. Barry heldup his hand to stop the truck, and Evan returned the gesture and gave a mighty wave, then drove off.

‘I’ll just hav e to get to school early to talk to him about it ’ Barry thought.

Watching the truck turn onto the street and out of site, Barry walked past the front door to thesupermarket and made his way to the mobile home park behind the store where he found his parentsanxiously awaiting his return home.





20Part 7 – Meet the Goupe’s

Part 7 – Meet the Goupe’s “Where’ve you been?” accused Barry’s Dad , sitting at a table drawing a mountain scene with pencil.

Barry almost blurted out where he was because he did not want to lie to his parents although this timethe punishment would be more severe if he disclosed his new friend. Not because he would have afriend rather who the friend was, the owner of the steel mill’s son. “Today was a library day, I got caughtup reading .”

“Barry,” his mom acquiesced , “we aint got noth’n to eat tonight. We get paid tomorrow but aint gotmoney or food left for today .”

Barry hated to see his mom this way. She hid her face to avoid her son seeing her cry, but her tremblingshoulders betrayed her efforts to keep the tears a secret.

“I have dinner.” Barry claimed. “I saw a kid eat the chips and apple then he threw away the rest of his

lunch. I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Unable to contain both regret and excitement, his mom turned to him and uttered, “I’m sorry Barry . Sosorry that you have to dig for other folks trash so you can eat.” This scene was a common one in theGoupe household and Barry was not touched by the sentiment. This is what they needed to do for foodsometimes. As long as it wasn’t a hand out, it was fair game.

Mr. Goupe denounced his wife’s behavior, “You knew we wasn’t gonna have any food today. St op yerantics, its just upset ’n the boy. If he keeps his grades go’in like they is, he’s gonna be gitt’n food out oftrash cans fer the rest of his life.”

Barry’s Dad, Bill, came from a long line of blue collar poverty workers who never graduated high school ,let alone college. His career started at age thirteen when he was pulled from school before his eighthgrade year started. The local diner hired Bill for half of minimum wage to do dishes. All income heearned went to the family fund to put food on the table and a roof over the heads of him and his foursiblings. It was two years prior to his first job that his Dad died of an ulcer, which was all the betterbecause he was a mean drunk who took out his wrath on this wife and kids. Bill still had scars to showfrom his encounters with his raged father. Bill’s mom said that at the age of thirteen was an able bodied

age to start working and helping to support the family.

Bill was twenty two when he met Kelly, Barry’s mom. She was fifteen when they met at diffe rentrestaurant he was working at doing dishes. She was looking for a job as a waitress and while she was

waiting for the manager, they struck up a conversation. She got the job but she did not last long as awaitress.

The area she grew up in was also poo r and her story was similar to Bill’s, however, in addition to an

abusive father, her mother had mental problems and when she could not get her hands on meds it wasalmost worse to be around her than it was her father.







22Part 8 - Arrested

Part 8 - ArrestedThe first period bell started off the school day at 8:30 and today Barry wanted to get there in time to talkto Evan about the strange conversation he overheard between the Principal and the untrustworthyMayor. He did not know what time Evan arrived, but having nothing better to do, Barry started his 20minute walk to school at 7:00 am.

His belly was empty for the lack of breakfast begging for some food. Oddly enough it was not a hungerthat overtook him and caused decreased mental capacity and a feeling of dire destitution. It was afamiliar feeling and while it was uncomfortable it is what he learned to live with. Like someone who wasblind or deaf or a war vet eran who’s foot was shot off. The thought of it was horrific and the actual act

of living through it was an inconvenience, but manageable.

Unlike yesterday, this day promised a threat of rain, one which Barry prepared for with an old PittsburgSteelers jacket that was almost too small for his growing body. It still zipped up so there was no need tofind another at a garage sale or thrift store. The jacket itself provided plenty of warmth to his torso but

was not equipped to cover his head. For snow days he wore a beanie cap, which was the only piece ofclothing he had ever received brand new. This, of course, is because his mother’s hobby afforded him

this one luxury. Today was not a beanie day, quite the opposite. The last thing to wear today would be awater absorbent helmet which would probably water log the skin, turning the head into a raisin.

Drops of water fell from the sky turning the dirt field into a mud path leading to school. A cleaner routewould have been the sidewalk to the grocery store, then a right turn at Main Street again following thesidewalk to school. The Sidewalk way added ten minutes to his commute which Barry did not consider agood use of his time. From the vantage point of the field he had a clear line of site to the main parkinglot and drop off zone of the school. In front was a patrol car with red and blue’s on the top rack, and two

undercover police cars. Barry could never understand undercover police cars. They were just as obviousas regular patrol cars. No flashing lights war ned of any pending issues instead Barry’s hunger pangs were

replaced by a foreboding sixth sense that these cars were here for the boy with the three first names.

Despite the rain, Barry camped out under a large oak off school property but close enough to theparking lot where the Ford F250 claimed its spot. Arms of branches spread out from the great treecovered by leafs and provided a feeble shelter from the increasing intensity of downpour produced fromthe darkened gray sky. Barry huddled close to the tree trunk as the temperature hung in the low fortieson this late October day.

It was 8:10 when Barry spotted the white truck entering the parking lot. Inside was packed full of kids,

obviously not wanting to brave the inevitable. Barry exited the minimal oak shelter and ducking his headas if to avoid the rain, he picked up his pace to intercept Evan. Barry reached the truck as all but thedriver’s door opened and out rushed six kids including Evan and Michelle.

“Hi Barry.” Michelle offered as she opened her golf sized umbrella and waited for another friend to exit

the truck before closing the door. “Would you like to share my umbrella ?”

With concern in his voice Barry replied, “No, I need to talk to Evan.”





23Part 8 - Arrested

Detecting his urgency Michelle questioned him, “Is everything ok? What’s wrong?”

But it was too late. Two plain clothed law enforcement officers were only steps away from the truck,umbrellas drawn and protecting them from the deluge.

“What’s going on Barry?” demande d Michelle.

Evan opened his door and stepped out of the truck, opening his umbrella but quizzically looking at theconfused look on Michelle’s face and concerned look on Barry’s face, then looking at the two men

approaching. He considered the situation was concerned for Barry, wondering what the boy had done.

“Evan?” questioned the closest man.

“Yes, that’s me.” Evan confirmed.

Removing a badge from his coat, the man asserted, “FBI. Please come with us.”

“May I ask what this is in regards to?” demanded Eva n, closing the driver’s side door.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of

law…”

Michelle looked at Barry while the cop recited the rest of Evan’s Miranda rights. Each officer walked one

either side of Evan, not forcing arrest but ensuring he would not make any moves he would later regret.Evan knew he had not done anything wrong so complying with the police would only prove there was noreason for the arrest and hopefully ensure an early and uneventful release.

Barry stood outside Michelle’s umbrella, both remaining motionless unclear of the reason for this.

Michelle instinctively moved closer to Barry and placed the umbrella over his head to stop the damagethat had already been done to Barry’s tattered hair. Stunned, they started walking but kept a distancebetween Evan’s entourage and themselves.

Barry, talking in a fast and somewhat jumbled manner, explained the situation from the previous daywith the Principal and the Mayor. “I don’t know what he meant when he said ‘ Edwards ’ and ‘Tomorrow’ ,but the way he said it was with a vengeful tone.”

“Why didn’t Don say anything to my Dad yesterday when he was at our house?” wondered Michelle.

“I don’t know. I meant to tell Evan about this yesterday, but I forgot until it was too late. I wanted to get

here this morning to let him know what I heard, but I guess that didn’t work.”

“I need to call my mom.” Michelle pulled her phone out of her pocket and with a few taps on the screen

she had the phone to her ear. A few seconds passed and she tried again, muttering “Voice mail.Come’on Mom, pick up.” This time Michelle talked into the phone, but obviously talking to a machine,“Mom, we just got to school and the police arrested Evan and are taking him inside the school. I don’t

know what is going on. Call me back ASAP .” Pressing end on the phone, she tucked it back into herpocket.





24Part 8 - Arrested

Barry stopped as the officers opened the back door of the unmarked vehicle and offered to help Evaninto the seat. Not requiring assistance. “Michelle, why would they arrest your brother?” Barry uttered.

Evans face could be vaguely made out behind the dark glass. He peered out with a look of confusion andhelplessness. Looking at Evan with equal confusion she responded, “I don’t know. He hasn’t done

anything wrong.”





25Part 9 – We Don’t Know You

Part 9 – We Don’t Know You A crowd had gathered around the scene as the three vehicles drove off the school property. Barry stoodwith Michelle under the umbrella with the sound of thumping rain above them. Barry was still soakedand thankful for the covering. Cold and wet did not mix well.

Barry noticed the looks being passed his way. Looks of condemnation and preconceived guilt. Theselooks he was used to, as uncomfortable as they were, however this time the focus was on the girl to hisright. She looked around not knowing what to say or do. He could tell she could hear with clarity theunspoken words being said around her.

Only minutes ago she was surrounded by friends who needed her for something and now where werethey? She knew many of these faces staring back at her but they all said back to her, ‘We don’t know

you’ . Sensing Barry still standing with her she looked at him and he looked back at her, not out of judgement or scorn, but that of empathy.

“Go inside everyone, there is nothing to see here. Get inside and out of the rain.” It was the voice of thePrincipal under a small blue umbrella, wearing a stylish full length rain coat and shiny black leathershoes.

Glaring eyes under umbrellas obeyed the orders and turned toward the building, walking up the stepsand into the heated and dry brick building. Barry did not move.

Barry knew the Principal had a conversation with the Mayor, and therefore he no longer trusted theman who was now walking toward him and Michelle.

As the Principal began to speak in an authoritative but degrading, sympathetic tone, Michelle’s phone

played a tone. She pulled the phone from her pocket and Barry read the name “Mom” on the top of thescreen.

“Mom, Evan was just….” She stopped talki ng and her eyebrows furrowed, then her eyes widened as itseemed her Mom also had stunning news. “…what do you mean Dad. Why did…” cut off again. Barrycould hear the frantic voice but could not make out any words. “I’ll stay right here.” She pressed end onher phone and began talking before the Principal could get in another word.

“My mom is coming to pick me up, she will be here in 5 minutes.”

“You will be more comfortable inside, where it is warm and dry.” The Principal changed his tone.

“I’m fine out here. I will not be going to classes today, my mom will call the school.” Clearly Michelle was

nervous, fighting back tears, but maintaining a sense of strength that she thought she had.

“Very well Miss Edwards, I will let your teachers know.” Turning to Ba rry he offered a less polite tone,“Young man, classes will be starting in ten minutes, I suggest you get to class to avoid being tardy.”






Barry’s gaze had dropped to the ground again, focusing on the shiny shoes with water droplets , “I’ll be

there on time, sir .” He watched the shoes turn and move away. Barry did not know what to say, healready let Michelle know about the conversation he overheard yesterday, and he wasn’t good at

conversation on a good day, let alone when there was a crisis.

“Thanks for staying with me and not treating me like a criminal.” Her voice wavered and then broke. Herdry face made way for a river of tears, bringing with it slight discoloration from mascara. Michelle didnot wear a lot of makeup, she didn’t n eed to, but was she did wear was now making way to the realityof the past 10 minutes. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s going on Barry. Please pray for me

– I mean us, my family.”

Barry broke his silence, “I will.” He said, not intending to or even knowing how to, but out of comfort forher he assured her he would.

She grabbed his arm and placed her head on his shoulder as the tears continued to flow. Barry juststood there embarrassed for her that a nobody like him was standing in the rain with a beautiful girlwhose arm was intermingled with his. He wondered where Robert, her boyfriend was. It was as if all ofher friends treated her as if she had an incurable disease that could be caught if they simply talked toher.

Kids were still finding their way into the school but not paying much attention to the two kids under thegolf umbrella. Barry had three minutes to get to class when Mrs. Edwards pulled up in a BMW. Michellelet go of Barry’s arm, then looked up at him and whispered under a sob, “Thanks Barry.” She walkedaround the back of the car to the passenger side placing her backpack in the back seat, then sittingdown in the front.

Michelle’s mom glanced up at Barry and instead of the expected quizzical look on her face, as Barryexpected, she was indifferent as to who he was. Clearly she was having a bad day too. He could not helpbut notice that Mrs. Edwards was an older version of Michelle with brown hair. Michelle got her looksfrom her mom and her hair from her Dad.

Left standing in the downpour Barry stayed in the same spot as he watched the luxury car make a rightturn out of the school parking lot toward Main Street. The school bell brought him out of his trancereminding him that he was now late for his first class. Somehow he did not think Mr. Principal, whateverhis real last name was, would excuse his tardiness.

From behind he heard a familiar but unrecognizable voice. “Stay away from her, she’s not your type.”

Robert made it clear to keep his mind off of the girl. If his words were not enough warning, the bodycheck was. The stronger football player, boyfriend, bible study guy caused Barry to stumble but did notmake him fall. As usual the tough guys always had an entourage, needing someone else to impress atsomeone else’s expense .

Pretending to tie his shoe, Barry bent down allowing a distance to form between Robert and himself.Barry kept his books in his lap in order to avoid the pages being damaged in rivers of rain flowing down






the stairs and sidewalk. Ascending the steps slowly he reached the top, opening the school doors andfeeling a rush of warm dry air from main hall. A fire engine siren could be heard in the distance, afamiliar sound on a rainy day.





28Part 10 – An Accident

Part 10 – An AccidentLightning flashed outside of the Library windows followed a few seconds later by the rumbling growl ofupset air. Rain pounded at the window as if demanding its way into the building but the invisible barriersdid not yield to the demands placed on them.

Of all the staff at the school, it was the Libra rian who knew Barry’s name and welcomed him with herwarm smile. “Hi Barry, what are you reading today?”

Barry liked Mrs. Cline, it was her grandmotherly gray hair, the knitted shawl and her stereotypicallibrarian glasses resting at the end of her rounded nose, secured by a silver chain that wrapped aroundthe back of her neck and fastened the glasses by each arm. Her shape could not hide the fact that shewas well nourished. Barry never met either of his grandma’s, or grandparents for that matter, but if hehad to pick a grandma it would be this librarian.

“‘Lightening’ by Dean Koontz.” Said Barry has he walked toward his favorite chair by the large window

facing the front of the school.“Have you read Michael Vey yet? It seems to be pretty popular aroun d here.”

“No. I’ve heard of it, just haven’t checked it out yet.”

“I’ll hold a copy for you behind the counter.” She whispered her secret to him and he responded with asmile.

Barry responded appreciatively, as he continued toward his favorite chair. “Thank you Mrs. Cline.”

This place was a safe haven for him as it was in all schools he attended. The bad kids were too bad for

the library and the cool kids were too cool. When he did not have lunch, and if it was not a nice day, hewould opt to spend his time in the world with books. Unfortunately today was a busy day, with theangry storm warning kids to stay inside, or else. Sitting down at his favorite chair, he opened the bookmarked by a torn piece of paper and began reading where he left off.

Two girls sat at the table behind him whispering. He enjoyed the quietness of the library and wasfrustrated when people used it for gossip and not homework or studying. The girl closest to him gaspedas a text message came through and she began speaking quickly above a whisper to her friend sittingacross from her.

“Oh, no, have you heard about Michelle Edwards?”

Barry stopped reading the book.

“No, what?”

“Ally just texted me and said that Michelle was in an accident this morning and is in the hospital. She is

in critical condition.”






“What?” Barry uncharacteristically jumped out of his seat, allowing his books fall to the floor and

speaking in an outside voice. “What did you just say?”

The girl was shocked by his outburst and others in the library turned to see what the commotion was allabout.

“Who are you?” probed the snob.

Ignoring her rude attitude Barry pressed “Did you say Michelle Edwards is in the hospital?”

“Did I stutter?”

Barry turned and darted toward the door. On his way past Mrs. Cline he heard her s ay “Your books,

Barry, you forgot your books.”

If his locker was not on the way out of the building he would not have stopped to grab his jacket. It wasraining too hard to not have a jacket and he knew he would regret not having one. He wasn’t sure if his locker closed all the way and if it didn’t there was nothing in there of any value. Bursting out the frontdoor he ran down the front steps where earlier the black car left with Evan and the BMW left withMichelle.

Adrenaline pushed Barry to a sprint and covered the pain beginning to develop on the side of hisstomach. He was not an athlete and only had to run when being pursued by a bully. The hospital wasthree miles away and he knew he could not keep up that pace, but it would get him closer faster. Hecould take a bus, if he had some change. Maybe he could hitch a ride. Nope, knowing his luck a copwould catch him, take him back to school and tell his parents. Oh, his parents. They would find out thathe skipped classes after lunch. That didn’t matter. What would he do when he got to the hospital? He

would figure that out when he got there, he just needed to get there.

He remembered Michelle’s last words to him, ’Pray for me…’ . So he talked to God.

“Why God? Why her? Why Evan? I don’t understand why you do this to good people. Michelle didn’t do

anything but be nice to you, and me. And what did Evan do? If you are as good as they say you are, whydid this happen, and all in one day. If anything happens to her I’ll never forgive you. But if you are real,

then do something. Do something real. Prove that you are not a figment of people’s imagination. Prove

to me that you are real.”

Lightning lit up the sky, and from crackle that erupted in less than a second after the flash, Barry new

the bolt was close. He continued to run and did not notice his legs and side was burning like it never hadbefore.

Forty five minutes after he left the school he found himself at the front entrance to the hospital, a threestory white building, recently remodeled with supermarket like doors that opened when they sensedsomeone. Barry passed the umbrella bags offered as a courtesy to ensure water would not cause aslippery floor destined to turn visitors into patients.






The lady at the front counter reminded him of Mrs. Cline and he felt a sense of calm.

“Can I help you?” she warmly smiled.

“I am here to see Michelle. Michelle Edwards, she was in…I mean she came here earlier?” He was

flustered, not knowing what to say

“Are you family?”

Barry pondered this question and decided to put his true talent to work. He lied, “Yes, I am her cousin , I just found out about her accident.”

Turning toward her computer she questioned, “How do you spell her name?”

Barry spelled her last name first, the her first, and realized he did not know how she spelled her firstname. Maybe it was different than the spelling he had assumed.

“Ah, there she is, room 316. That is intensive care and they are not letting any visitors in her room now,it says she is being prepped for surgery. There is a waiting room upstairs. Tell the nurses at the stationupstairs that you are there for her and they will let you know when you can see her. I just need you tosign in on this visitor sheet and let me know your first name so I can write you a name tag.”

He thought of writing his last name as Edwards but if she asked for some form of ID he would not beable to produce any. “My name is Barry, like the fruit.” He said looking down at the clipboard and

writing his real last name.





31Part 11 - Waiting

Part 11 - WaitingUpon arriving at the third floor over three hours ago and telling the nurses who he was there to see,they were kind enough to give him some towels to dry off. He was grateful to be dry and thankful to thenurses.

The waiting room is an appropriate name for the area where Barry sat, because that’s exactly what hedid – waited. To his surprise only two people waited in the room at various times while he was there. Hethought being a rainy day that there would be more people in the hospital. Maybe there were, they justhappened to be in the emergency room and not in intensive care. One man sat quietly reading thepaper, another lady wanted to talk to Barry, but his introvert style caused her to move to the third ladywho was happy to strike up a conversation. Despite the somber mood of the third floor, the ladies hadmuch to talk about from the weather to their children to the state of the nation.

Barry sat in the corner of the all white room with fluorescent lights, about 20 seats and a self servecoffee, water and tea bar by the room entrance. A flat screen TV monitor hung from the ceiling by the

entrance showing operating room progress for only two patients identified by a number. According tothe nursing staff, Michelle was patient number 7251, and the status remained as it had been for the pastseveral hours indicting ‘in progress’ .

The coffee he served himself upon arrival sat half consumed on the table next to his chair. Barry had notyet acquired the taste for coffee and did not know if this coffee was good or bad, although his opinion ofthis black sludge was not of the same caliber as the coffee chain in the corner of the town mall.Fortunately the hospital kept enough reading material to get anyone caught up on the weekly gossip ofall of the movie stars, or what was pressing in business these days or what sports car beat itscompetitor. None of these appealed to Barry.

There was a book, however, covered by a home gardening magazine on the table across from where hesat. To his dismay it was an Amish book, and a love story. Given the other options on the table hedecided on the book. A couple of times he thought about not being at school and wondering if they hadsent out a search party for him. More importantly was when he would be able to get home. Tonight wasbrat night, and they would have Cheerios for tomorrow ’s breakfast and some food items for lunch. Itwould not cover the two weeks between pay periods, but it would get them through almost to the end,and maybe they would have enough, and maybe they wouldn’t.

He was half way through the novel where the Amish parents found out about their daughter seeing non-Amish man and their struggle was to stay true to their religion or their daughter. Barry knew the book

would favor the religious community rather than their own flesh and blood.

The nurse appeared at the doorway, “Michelle is out of surgery and it will be about 15 minutes before

you can see her. I will warn you, she does not look good, the accident took a toll on her. She is stillunconscious so don’t expect her to reac t to you being here.

“Do you know what happened?” Barry asked , marking the page with his finger and setting the book onhis lap.





32Part 11 - Waiting

“From what I hear they were making a left turn onto Main Street from the school and a big pickup truckdid not see the light turn red and it ran into the side of the car, barely missing your aunt. The kid was acollege student who was apparently texting, according to the police on the scene. That’s why he missed

the light. We see too many patients in here as a result of texting. ”

“How is my Aunt…” Barry did not know her name and he tried to cover the fact that he did not know itbut the nurse cut him off.

Pointing to the screen she indicated, “She is still in the operating room. If Michelle was wearing her

seatbelt she most likely would have been perfectly fine.”

‘Not wearing her seatbelt.’ He let the words sunk in.

“I’ll let you know when you can visit your cousin and your aunt.” The nurse left Barry alone in the room ,stunned at the seemingly innocent events that all culminated into a disaster. How many times hadMichelle been in the car with her seatbelt on. He remembered her putting it on yesterday, so it had to

be a habit. Yet the day she forgets, some guy happens to be texting, in the rain, in a big truck at theexact time they are going through a light to most likely figure out what why Mr. Edwards and Evan wereboth incarcerated.

Praying silently Barry blamed God again. “God this is your fault. All you had to do was one thing and

Michelle would have been ok. All you had to do was remind her to buckle her seatbelt. Or cause the guynot to text, or make their light stay red instead of turn green. It’s your fault.”

Barry could not get back into the book. It was a Christian novel and religion was messing up the peoplein that book to. He knew the book was fiction, but he was sure there were real situations where sonsand daughters were kicked out of the house because they would not follow religious rituals. And whywould God let this happen too? In the book, the girl wanted to be loved by a man who loved her back.Isn’t God love? Wouldn’t the family recognize that they weren’t doing anything wrong other than not

doing what their religion told them to do. This God that people talked about, his parents were right, itsbetter to just live your life and do your best. If there is a God and he is not willing to take care of peoplethen people must take care of themselves. Apparently his mom and dad were smart, even thoughneither completed a formal education.

Tired of sitting Barry set the book on the table without dog-earing the page or adding a book mark. Hepicked up his cold coffee and deposited it in the trash, then paced the room glancing up at the monitorevery minute or so to find that Michelle’s mom was still in surgery.

Sitting on the edge of the table next to the door was the daily paper with a picture file photo of Mr.Edwards on the front page with a caption that read, “ Edwards Arrested for Cyber Hacking ”

Paralyzed with disbelief Barry stood staring at the man he shook hands with yesterday. Compelled towash his hands he picked up the paper and began reading.





33Part 11 - Waiting

Steel tycoon and billionaire James Edwards was arrested this morning at his home in Brighton forconspiring against the United States and its ally countries by hacking government computersystems and selling classified information to Iran and North Korea.

Sources also tell us that his son, Evan Edwards, was the mastermind behind the code used to

extract secrets from the national and international intelligence agencies.

Barry could not read anymore. He felt the blood drain from this face and let the newspaper slip from hishand onto the table in which he found it.

“You can visit your cousin now.” Said the voice several feet away. “Are you OK?”

Apparently his shock was visible . Dazed he looked up at her, “I’m fine.” He was not convincing.

Not believing him she responded, “I’ll show you to her room.”

Barry followed the nurse to room 316 without saying a word. At the end of the hall the nurse motionedto Barry the room in which Michelle occupied. “There is a seat you can pull up if you like, and if you needanything let any one of us know.”

“Thanks.” Is all Barry could say.

He walked into the dark room, shaded from the outside by curtains covering the large window. Severalmachines were around the bed, each with a different liquid crystal display readout. On the left side ofthe bed was a metal coat hanger looking item from which hung 5 bags, two quart sized bags which werebulging, two sandwich sized bags that looked half empty and one small bag that was full but not bulging.Tubes protruded from the bottom of each bag into the digital screen, then fed back out toward the bed.

On the other side of the bed was the heart monitor machine with a line that would rise and fall with thepace of her heart. The room would have been quiet were it not for the eerie sound emitting from thebelow the bed. The sound was a click followed by a quiet rush of air, then silence for a split second andanother click, then finally the release of air. A flexible white plastic tube about the diameter of a quarterconnected to the machine and ran up the side of the bed and into a mouth. This mouth wasunrecognizable, as was the nose. The eyes were covered with closed eye lids marked with dark purplebruising and swelling. The right cheek was clearly cut, but bandaged and covered.

This wasn’t the correct room, the nurse mistook Michelle for someone else. He turned to leave andquestion the nurse when he saw the golden blond hair protruding from underneath the cap of

bandages. It was the hair she shared with her father. It was Michelle, unrecognizable and unresponsive.

He could not believe this person stood next to him this morning and rested her head on his shoulder.Her chest moved with the rhythm of the breathing machine as he fumbled for words and a voice tospeak to her.





34Part 12 – Bedside Manners

Part 12 – Bedside Manners“Hi Michelle, it’s Barry.” He whispered quiet enough to where he c ould almost not hear himself.

Increasing his volume he continued, “Bet I’m the last one you thought would be here today. If anyoneasks I’m your cousin.” He paused, taking in the sound of the breathing machine and looking at where

needles entered her arm to deliver life giving medicine. He spoke again, voice cracking and pit welling upin his stomach, traveling up his chest to his neck. He swallowed hard, vowing not to cry. “Why didn’t youwear your seatbelt? You wouldn’t be here right now if you just put o n your seatbelt. The guy who hityou was texting. Why do people do that?”

The breathing machine continued to push air into Michelle’s lungs, then relaxed so the air escaped her

lungs. Rain, with the help of wind, continued pressing against the window of the hospital. Tan and greencurtains covered the window and Barry walked over to peek out. Not many people were out, only a fewcars drove in and out of the parking structure. He turned back to the body in the bed, being kept alive bymodern medicine.

A Doctor entered the door and turned on one light switch illuminating the room enough to get a betterlook at the boy’s friend. He turned away after glimpsing the bruised neck and jaw, and seeing definition

in the closed eyes of the patient.

“Who are you?” acc used the doctor who looked more like a football player than a medical professional.Dark black hair was slicked back without a hair out of place. Standing at what must have been five inchesover six feet he towered in the small room. Were it not for the white Doctor jacket, Barry was sure theman would have had biceps the size of both of his legs put together.

“I’m her cousin, sir.” Barry said sticking to his original story.

“Your cousin’s lucky that she is only in a coma. It was the air bags that barely saved her life.” He look edup from the chart to survey the medicine backs hanging from the silver rack, but did not look at Barry.

“How long will she be like this?” Barry asked timidly.

“Like what, a coma? It’s hard to tell. She suffered a traumatic head inj ury, requiring us to drill a hole inthe base of her skull to release the pressure building up in her head. It takes some people days andothers months. It fewer cases it can be years, or they never come out of it. Each person is different.Where are your parents?” For the second time , with his head down he looked at Barry through hiseyebrows as if interrogating the boy.

“They, uh, they are still at work.” Barry looked at the clock to confirm this was true. He read 4:33 on theanalog clock. He was not lying about his parents, but the conversation made him realize he needed toget home. Eventually his parents would find out that he skipped school, but it may take a couple of dayssince they did not have an answering machine and were never home to answer the phone. The schoolwould mail a letter. Barry made a commitment to himself to visit Michelle every day while she was inthe hospital, so he would have to tell his parents about his new friend and his whereabouts. He alsorealized he needed to start for home. It would take over an hour to walk home from the hospital.






“I understand this is Michelle Edwards, the daughter of the steel tycoon, and sister of the one whobroke into government computers?” The doctor had a bed side manner equal to a bull, and Barry d idnot like him, but was grateful that he saved Michelle’s life.

“I don’t know sir.”

The doctor looked up from the board this time and glared at Barry. “What do you mean you don’t know. Is your uncle the one that stole classified information from the government?”

“No sir. I mean I don’t think he stole anything. I just read…”

“Well he wouldn’t have been arrested if he didn’t d o anything. Justice better serve him right. Ournational securi ty is at stake.” Looking back down at the clipboard and writing some notes, his tonecooled but the iciness remained. “Your aunt is still in surgery, and probably will be for a few morehours.” He replaced the clipboard and walked out of the room without l ooking back or offering afarewell to Barry.

“Jerk” Barry said under his breath. “Don’t listen to him Michelle. I don’t think your dad and brother didanything. I’ll let you know what I find out, but I have to go now so I am not late getting home. Get bett erfor me, will ya?” Barry wanted to touch her hand, but decided against it. He took one last look at the girlwho’s beauty was radiant this morning and was now hidden by bruises and cuts. “Bye Michelle.” Barry

walked out of the room and passed by the nurs e’s station.

“Leaving so soon?” Barry looked up and saw the nice nurse behind the desk with a slight smile.

“Yeah, I have to go home. I’ll be back tomorrow.” Barry smiled back and continued walking.

“See you tomorrow.” She said, getting back to her work.

Barry’s trip home was grueling, fighting the rain and splashes from passing car tiers running through thepuddles in the street. He did not remember any of this on the trip over.

He could not wait to get home and get out of these clothes. He should get home around the same timeas his parents. Today was pay day, which meant shopping day. After work they would get their checkscashed then go grocery shopping, come home and stock the shelves, then make beer and brats. Hisstomach grumbled at the thought of food. It had been almost twenty four hours since his last meal, notforgetting the half a cup of coffee. All he wanted to do was grab his blanket and read his Dean Koontzbook until bed time.

That’s when he remembered he left his books on the li brary floor when he left to see Michelle at thehospital. That was stupid, especially on a Friday. He would not be able to retrieve the books untilMonday. Now he would have to go to the Library in the morning to get another copy but that could bedone on the way to visit Michelle.






Barry liked the rain, but from the inside looking out. He did not like walking in it, especially for threemiles. His feet were soaked and most likely resembled big raisins. His Steeler’s jacket was now a spongeand he could not place a dry part of his body.

Rounding the corner to the small street where their rented mobile home was affixed to a cement

foundation, Barry looked up and recognized the car in front of his house. It was parked behind hisparents and was the same black car that was earlier at school when Evan was arrested.

Stopping in his tracks Barry offered himself several options. Run? But where to? Hide under someoneelse’s mobile home until the car left? Barry was too cold and the temperature was dropping fast. And

while the home would protect him from the rain, the ground was still wet. Fighting the urge to flee, hecontinued toward the unmarked vehicle, walked up the stairs and opened the front door to hisresidence.

His mom was in tears and his dad had a look of embarrassment and rage in his eyes. Two men wearing jackets with the words “FBI” on the front and backs of their jackets stood across from his parents. Each

had a no nonsense look on their face as they look at Barry in anticipation.

“Barry Goupe?” said the closest man, not really asking a question but confirming what he already knew.

“Yes sir?” Barry trembled with anxiety and from the wet cold weather.

“We need to take you in for questioning regarding Evan Edwards.”





37Part 13 – FBI Interrogation

Part 13 – FBI InterrogationRain attached itself to the tinted windows then moved toward the back of the FBI car by the wind of thecar traveling at forty miles per hour. The two men in front remained quiet, for which Barry was fine with.He was grateful that they allowed him to change into dry clothes before taking him to the station.Barry’s dad let him use his jacket to keep warm.

His parents did not ask questions, but quizzed him with their looks. The presence of the FBI in theirhome intimidated them into silence. Before accompanying Barry to the black car they assured theGoupe’s that they would call them when their son was ready to be picked up from the station.

“What a difference a day makes.” Barry thought to himself. “Yesterday I was a nobody, then I met some

somebody’s and now I am wanted by the FBI.”

Except for the persisting thunderstorm and silence in the car, the trip to the police station wasuneventful. Barry wondered why the FBI brought him to the police station. From reading books he

would have thought that there was an FBI building they would take him to. Being that this was real life,there must be a reason for it.

He was shuffled into the police station and taken to a room that he identified as an interrogation roomwhere the FBI agent told him to sit and they would be right back. As the door closed, Barry observed theclassical cement walls, one door, a metal table, a couple of chairs and one way viewing window forwhich Barry could straighten his hair or clothing if he had any ounce of vanity. But he didn’t, so he

looked away from the mirror, sat in the chair across from the looking glass and looked down into his lap.

He searched his memory trying to figure out why he would be picked up. It had to do with Evan, thatwas the obvious reason, but other than the few hours he spent with Evan yesterday he had no other

interaction with the family.

A woman FBI agent entered the room with a sincere smile and easy going demeanor. “Hi Barry, I amagent Hansen with the FBI. Can I get you something to drink?” Her easy going attitude remained withher while she set down a thin file on the metal table and sat in the chair across from him. She did notlook like an FBI Agent, standing at about 5’ 6”, with shoulder length brown hair, electric blue eyes and

light makeup. Her small frame could not have weighed more than 120 pounds, probably less. She waspretty even with her glasses on.

Feeling his body relax, he looked away from her magnetic eyes and caught a glimpse of himself in themirror. Maybe he should care about his appearance. Not that he was trying to impress her, rather sothat she would not think less of him. He declined the water being reminded that he was really hungryand could use some food.

“Barry, I am going to ask you some simple questions to start with. First, please tell me your first, middleand last name, as well as your address, phone number and name of your school .”






Barry answered her questions in the order she asked them, while he looked down at the table andaround the room, but did not make eye contact with the agent.

She made some notes on the notepad in front of her. “What is your favorite subject in school?”

“I guess it would be English. I like reading.”

“What do you like to read?”

“Dean Koontz, Vince Flynn, those types of books. Action books.”

Jotting down the names he gave she pressed, “Why do you like these types of books.”

“I don’t know. I like the way the authors write, I like the stories.”

“What do you want to be when you get out of high school?”

“I don’t know.” He looked up at her, her warm gaze comforted him.

“Do you know Evan Edwards?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Would you consider him your friend?”

Barry paused wondering how to answer this question. “I guess so.”

“Why do you guess so?”

“Well, I know who he is, but we only met for the first time yesterday.”

Agent Hansen paused her questioning while she jotted down notes, then she looked up from the pad ofpaper, her smile waning. “Interesting.” She said in a thoughtful tone that really said ‘I don’t believe you.’

She looked at him for what seemed like a minute. His hands started to fidget and he felt his palms startto sweat.

“Has Evan ever given you anything?”

Barry didn’t know where this was leading. “Like what?”

“Like anything? Have you ever received anything from Evan?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean, well, he gave me a sandwich yesterday. Peanut butter and jelly.”

“And that’s all? You said he was your friend and all he has given you is a sandwich?”

“Yes.” Barry paused thinking. “No. Yesterday he gave me a Twinkie too, but I didn’t eat it, I put it back in

the cupboard.”






“The cupboard at his house?” She continued writing.

“Yes at his house, in the house by the pool.” Barry sincerely had not done anything wrong. Was being

offered a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a Twinkie a crime these days?

“So you have been to his house?”

“Yes. Yesterday.”

“Can you tell me where the house is that you visited?”

He wondered if they had more than one house in the city. “You know, their house. The one on the hill. Idon’t know the address or street name. Evan drove me to his house. I didn’t pay attention to streetnames.”

“Evan drove you?” It was more of a statement to herself as she was writing. Barry did not answer. She

continued. “Is that all he gave you?”

“Yes. That’s all, just the sandwich and Twinkie, and a ride to my house.”

“We have reason to believe you received more than a sandwich and Twinkie. Are you sure that’s it?”

Barry thought about it. He traced the through the day yesterday, eyes darting back and forth across thetable as he tried to recall everything that happened from the time Evan stopped the kids from picking onhim until the time he dropped him off at the grocery store. That was it, he remember. “He gave me a

Bible too. When he dropped me off he handed me a bible. He said they were from his church and hekept extras in his truck. He showed me all of them, so I kept the one he gave me. I have it at home andcan give it back.”

“A Bible. Seems like you are having a hard time remembering all the thin gs Evan has given to you.”

“No. That’s it, that’s all there was. I have only known him for a day.”

“How long have you known his sister, Michelle?”

That question caught Barry off guard. “What do you mean? I’ve only known her for a day too.”

Taking copious notes now, Agent Hansen continued the line of questioning. “Why did you skip school

today at lu nch time?”

“Is this what this is all about, me skipping school today?” Barry was slightly relieved, even though it didnot make any sense at all.

“I’ll ask the questions for now, I just need you to tell me the truth. Because when you lie I know. So I

sugge st you stick with the truth.”

“I’m telling the truth, I have nothing to hide.”






She ignored him. “Why did you skip school today.”

“I heard that Michelle and her mom were in a car accident. I don’t know why I went, I just felt like I

needed to make sure Mich elle was OK.”

“But you have only known Michelle for one day?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why did you tell the hospital you were her cousin?”

Whoa! How did she know that? Barry thought. He shuffled around in his chair and itched the back of hisneck, then brought his h ands back into his lap and fidgeted with his fingers. “I uh, well I thought theywouldn’t let me in if I said I was a friend. I signed in with my own name.” Barry was thankful that he did

not use Edwards as his last name at the hospital. Maybe that would have resulted in jail time.

“How is it that you know someone for only one day and decide have so much concern for them. Enough

concern to lie to the hospital about who you are?” Her tone was firm now, like a court room prosecutor.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure she was ok, that’s all.”

“Have you met Mr. and Mrs. Edwards?”

“Yes. I met Mr. Edwards yesterday. I saw Mrs. Edwards for the first time today when she picked upMichelle from school, before the…accident.”

“So you know Mr. Edwards?”

“No. Yes. I mean no. I met him that’s all. Yesterday, I met him.” He felt sweat beading on his forehead.

He wiped his head with his sleeve.

“What do you know about computers?”

“Only what they teach in Computer lab.”

“Does computer lab have internet?”

“Yes.”

“Have you used the internet at school?”

Barry paused. Of course he did, it was part of the class. He was starting to get annoyed now, but stillintimidated by the line of questioning. “Yes, it’s part of the assignment.”

“What assignment?”

“You know, searching for something. Downloading things, sending email and homework to the teacher.”

“What do you download?”






“I don’t know. Pictures, files. Whatever the assignment asks us to do.”

“Are you good with computers?”

“I have an ‘A’ in that class. Computers and English. The rest of the classes I am not good at. I don’t do

good in history or math.”

“An ‘A’ in computers, impressive.” She was on her third page of notes

“If I said the word Python, what would that mean to you?”

“A snake.”

The Agent smile wryly. “ What about C + or C sharp?”

“My grade in History and sound made in music class. ” What did this have to do with anything?

“Two more. What about PERL and UNIX?”

“Well Pearls are what rich people have. I’ve heard of UNIX in my computer class. I think that is what Mac

computers use .”

She paused for a moment but continued again in a level tone. “ What do you know about computerhacking?”

The question made him angry and he immediately shot back, “Nothing !” The way he said it was out ofcharacter but it did not seem to faze the interrogator at all.

“When was the last time you were at a computer connected to the internet?”

“Just today at school, why?”

“I’m still asking the questions.” This woman who entered the room as a peacemaker turned into a shark. She wasn’t as pretty now as she was before.

“Have you ever hacked into another computer system?”

Barry was shocked. “No!” His upset posture continued . “I’ve never done anything like that and I don’teven know how.”

The interrogator did not flinch at his outburst. “Then why were you hanging out with Evan Edwards?”

“He invited me over. I told you, I only met him yesterday. He drove me to his house after school, I spent

a couple of hours there, then I came home. That’s it.”

“And what did you do at his house?” she pressed, trying to sque eze blood from a turnip.

“I threw the ball to Mac, the dog, then we did a bible study, then I went home.”






“There were reports of you being in the pool house, why were you there?”

“That’s where Evan and Mike set their stuff down.”

“Is there anywhere else you went while you were there?”

Barry was tired of this, his frustration evident in his voice. “I already told you, I don’t know anything. Imet Evan and Michelle for the first time yesterday.” His passive aggressive side came out, and in a rapidvoice he rattled off, “You want to know where I went? We drove up in the truck and parked in front ofthe garage. We got out of the truck, I shook Mr. Edward’s hand. I met the Mayor. I walked into the front

door, over the marble, under the stair case, though the back door. Met the dog, walked down the stepstoward the pool house. Threw the ball to the dog. Went in the pool house, set my stuff down, had aTwinkie thrown at me, which I didn’t eat, in case that is important here. Then I threw the ball to the dog

for about 20 minutes, then we did a bible study, then I had to go home. I walked back through thehouse, the same way I came in, would you like details about that?” He questioned, but did not leaveroom for a response. “We got in the truck, talked about religion , then he dropped me off in front of thestore, handed me a Bible, and that’s the last I saw of him until he was arrested this morning. I havenever hacked a computer, I don’t even have a computer. I wouldn’t even know the first thing aboutgetting into another computer, short of turning it on in a computer lab and clicking internet explorer andbrowsing the web for the purposes of earning an easy A in computer class.”

Half way through his diatribe, the corner of Agent Hansen’s lips curled up in amusement. She ferventlywrote as he spoke and again without any additional emotion or change in stance, she remarked, “That’squite the story Barry.”

“It’s not a story, it’s the truth.”

“Let me level with you Barry. I like your story, or your version of the truth, w hatever you want to call it.Did you know that Evan admitted to hacking company computer systems?”

Shocked, Barry’s tone changed again. “No.” He struggled to place the pieces together, not

understanding why Evan was so nice if he was a criminal, and why he used is faith as an obvious cover.How was Evan a computer hacker? Was she just saying this to get him to say something he shouldn’t?

Barry had no inclination that Evan knew how to use a computer, let alone break into companies. Thatdidn’t sound like Eva n. He realized that he only knew Evan for one day, but the idea did not connect thedots well.

“Indulge me while I divulge information we have about you, and you can tell me if it is correct.” Shetalked about his parents, where they work what town they came from, his GPA, classes he was takingand she ended with, “Your family lives below the poverty line, don’t they? It just runs in the family.”

Emotions ran through Barry, scared that they knew all of this stuff, angry that his privacy was invaded,remorse that he went with Evan yesterday, and frustrated that her questioning was accusing. Whathappened to innocent until proven guilty? “My parents do the best they can. They want me to go to

school so I can do better than they did.”






“When you met Evan for the first time, did you know his family was wealthy?”

The question seemed innocent enough. “Yes, of course.”

“So help me piece this together Barry. Why would poverty stricken boy like yourself be hanging out witha boy whose family are billionaires? Doesn’t t hat seem strange to you? ” Without allowing him a chanceto speak she continued, “Barry, what you don’t know is we have been talking to kids all day long whoknew Evan, and have a lot of credible stories. But what I don’t underst and is why you would go withEvan to his house, then to see his sister in the hospital. Want to hear my theory?”

“Not really, because I already told you the truth.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. Money is hard to come by in this economy. Your parents have had an unfortunate

life, plagued in poverty.” There she went with the poverty line again, it was starting to annoy Barry.“Your parent’s salary is just a blip on Evan’s monthly income for hacking. If he can ‘hire’ you do hack

with him, you could help your family buy a house and decent car that runs. You would have food on the

table every night.” How did she know about their eating situation? “You could live a live in the middleclass, just for typing some commands in a computer. And before you tell me that you have already toldme the truth, we have eye witnesses that say you entered into the back portion of the pool house,which by the way is where Evan has a computer for hacking, but I’m sure you already know that.”

Barry did not respond. He was perplexed at how a story like this could be developed in a day. He actuallywondered, if given the opportunity to provide his family with a middle class life in return for learningcomputer code and hacking techniques, but he brushed it off knowing if he came home with moremoney than is parents, without a valid job title, they would turn him into the cops themselves. Theywere not going to game the system, and they made it clear to him from a very young age that they are

hardworking and don’t need handouts and will not settle for any crime as a way of making an income.“How close am I on that Barry?”

Barry looked up at her with, anger welling inside, “Sounds like you made up a great story. One that is not

true”

“Then how is it that yesterday you were with Evan, and today your parents come home with a c ar full ofgroceries? Did Evan advance you cash? Maybe put it in the Bible that he gave you so that oursurveillance team that has been following Evan would miss the hand off?”

Barry never thought of that, although he really was not offered a job from Evan, he did not look throughthe Bible for money. No, there was not any money in there, why would there be? Now he wanted tocheck, but he didn’t because if there was, then it would validate the FBI’s story. Barry responded to the

first part of the question o nly. “My parents got paid today. They always shop on pay day.”

“Barry, why would a poor boy hang out with a rich one?”






Barry thought about an answer. He didn’t even know why. He had been questioning that since

yesterday, but he used the answer Evan gave hi m yesterday. “Because he invited me. The Edwards haveopened their home to kids in order to keep kids out of trouble. I guess a YMCA, but at a house.”

“That’s sounds like something Evan would say.”

“That’s because I asked him the same thing yesterday. I know I don’t belong with rich people, but he is

the only one that has ever been nice to me, so I trusted him.”

“If money is not your motivation, why did you go see Michelle today, and skip school. You know you will

get in trouble for that don’t you?”

Barry’s frustration and sarcasm mixed together, “ This may be a concept difficult for you to understand,but I went to see Michelle out of compassion and caring. Obviously something you don’t possess.” Barry

regretted the last statement as he said it, but he did not apologize.

Agent Hansen started with compassion in her voice and Barry wondered if it she was placating him.“Barry, I want to believe you I really do but credible sources witnessed you in the back room in the pool

house. How do you respond to that?”

Barry was dejected at this point. How could so many things be made up about him. Now he knew whatthe movie stars felt like being featured on the cover of newsstand tabloids. “I don’t have a response. Iwasn’t back there. Your source must have seen the wrong guy go back there. I’d like to see the video or

evidence of me doing that, because I didn’t, I swear to you.”

“Barry, I have to leave for a moment, I will be back in twenty minutes. I want to you think abouteverything we have talked about. When I come ba ck, I need the truth, ok?”

“I’ve told you the truth.” Barry slumped forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his legs and lookeddown at the floor. He heard the agent’s chair push back as she stood, then he heard her foot steps walktoward the door. A buzzing sound emitted from the door and he looked up to see her walk out with thedoor closing behind her.

Barry looked at his reflection in the two way glass with eyes that said “I know you are there.” It was thenhe noticed the pictures the agent placed on the table before she left.





45Part 14 – Evidence Found

Part 14 – Evidence FoundThe pictures were upside down from Barry’s position and regardless of their position he could see theevidence of him in the pool house with Evan and Mike, then in there alone when he returned theTwinkie to the pantry. When he was dropped off at the grocery store there he was exiting the car.Other photos showed people he had noticed at the house yesterday but did not know who they were.He then focused on the picture of him and Michelle walking to the bible study, with Mac following, ballin mouth. It was a great picture of Michelle, she was so beautiful. He starred at the picture and wasreminded of her current condition.

He remembered her plea for prayer, so he said a silent one, ‘Wow, God, nice way to treat people. You’renot even real, look at me I’m being lied to and you don’t care. Look at Michelle in this picture onlyyesterday and what you have done with her today. I don’t even know why I am talking to you, or mysel f.I guess I am talking to myself.’ Barry stopped the communication

Next to the pictures was her notepad stacked on top of the manila folder with scribbled notes. Out of

curiosity he read some words at the top which were consistent with his testimony. It was then hereminded himself that he was not alone in the room. He looked through himself in the glass, knowingsomeone was on the other side.

In an act of defyment, Barry sat back in the uncomfortable metal chair crossed his arms and looked atthe corner next to the door. His stomach grumbled audibly, it had been over twenty-four hours since hissandwich. He figured if he spent the night in jail, they would be obligated to give him food, at least hehoped so.

His mind started racing with the implications of what Agent Hansen has said. Was the purpose of Evan’s

friendship such that Barry was simply a target and he wanted to defer the blame to him? She said thatEvan confessed to hacking. Did he really or was she trying to get him to say something? Based on theway he was treated, he wondered if Evan said that under duress. When she talked about eye witnessesseeing him enter the back room, he had not gone further than the pantry. Was he being framed forsomething? Plenty of this stuff happened in the books he read, but he thought real life would bedifferent. Innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.

And why would they question him about going to see Michelle? Wouldn’t any friend visit another friend

in the hospital? The way the agent said it, she implied it was a crime to visit and accident victim at theirbedside.

Barry just thought of his parents. Oh, no, what could they be thinking right now. It was only one day andhe skipped school, met a friend, went to the friend’s house, accepted food, and then the FBI shows up.How would he explain this to his parents? He would have to start from the beginning when Roy’s gang

was picking on him. There was no other way but to tell the truth just as he was doing here. He wonderedif his parents would believe him, or if they would formulate stories like the FBI had. He was afraid ofwhat his Dad would say, and sad for what his mom would think of him.






Overall, he was a good kid, only getting into trouble when someone else caused it, like beating him up.His parents were good parents too. They wanted what was best for him. They worked hard, paid bills,put food on the table, most of the time, and they wanted him to succeed at something. Sure he didn’t

have his driver ’s license like most sixteen year olds had, but there was good reason for this. Teenage car

insurance was very unaffordable. It was hard enough for his parents to pay for life as it was, and to add

another expense was not in the budget. When Barry graduates from high school in two years, he can geta job to pay for the additional expense and then he can get his license.

His parents did not want him working at all during high school so that he could focus on good grades andgraduating, which they never did. His parents never earned their GED, which is why they continue topress Barry on his school work. They even overlooked the fact that he had a 2.6 GPA. Knowing he wasstill eligible to graduate was what they were concerned about. They figured 4.0 GPA’s and higher werefor people who wanted to go to Harvard and Yale, nothing their son would ever qualify for, or be able toafford. As it was, they talked about Junior college as if just attending was equivalent to an Ivy Leagueschool.

Barry sunk in his chair thinking about the disappointment he was bringing on his parents. He felt emptyinside. Now, if he received a criminal record, it could cause him to have a life just like his parents, exceptit would probably be nearly impossible to find a job. Who wants to hire a criminal?

The sound of the door handle broke Barry from his trance. He reacted by sitting up in his chair and tookthe firm posture of innocence. Agent Hansen did not enter, instead the FBI agent who was at hisparent’s house and informed him of hi s trip to the station entered without emotion.

“I’m Agent Horn.” Barry almost laughed at the name. ‘Honk, honk’ is what he wanted to say, but herefrained. The man was tall and as thin as a rail. He was as tall as Michelle’s doctor but as skinny as

Agent H ansen. He wouldn’t be surprised if this guy weighed 120 pounds also. “Look, we got betterthings to do with our time than talk to you. Let’s just make this easy and get you home tonight to sleep

in your own bed instead of in a cell here. We need to know what happened in the room in the poolhouse.”

This again? He wasn’t there! “I already told you, I was in the pool house to set down my books andreturn a Twinkie. That’s it. Why won’t you believe me? See this picture here?” Barry pointed to the one

with him in the chateau, “This is me in the pool house when I returned the Twinkie. I didn’t know therewas a room back there, so whoever told you that is lying.”

“The problem is, Barry, our source is credible, and so far you seem to have a couple of memory

proble ms and slight gaps in your story. Until we resolve those, you don’t leave this place.” Horn sat back

in the chair and crossed his legs as if ready for the long haul.

“Your credible source, whoever it is, is wrong. I know nothing about computers other than what Ilearned in school. I know enough to research a report on the internet, write a paper, print it out andthat’s about it. I don’t know how to program computers and I don’t know how to hack them. And






furthermore I have no knowledge of a back room, or t hat Evan is a hacker, which I don’t believe that

story either.”

“I have something to play for you Barry.” The agent pulled out a mini tape recorder, set it on the tableand pressed play. Barry heard Agent Hansen’s voice asking Evan what company computers h e had

hacked.

Evans voice was weary. It was not the chipper and outgoing boy he met yesterday, but the voice wasclearly Evan’s. “I’ve been into all the banks, airlines, phone and cable companies …” The Agent clickedthe stop button. Barry was speechless. He sat in silence thinking about what this meant. He had trustedEvan, although what was there to trust, he hardly knew him. But he did not take him for a criminal. Whywould Evan wan to steal classified information from our country and sell it to other cou ntries? Weren’t

they rich enough? Barry’s head swirled with confusion.

“Barry, we know more tha n you think we know…”

Barry cut him off, “No you don’t, if you did you would know that I didn’t go into some back room. As faras I know you are lying to me about that room. I never saw it and I was never in it. You can keep me inhere for a year and I still won’t be able to tell you anything about that room.” Barry at the edge of his

chair and put his elbows on the table. Looking spaghetti man in the face he cont inued, “Until tenseconds ago I did not believe anyone that Evan was a hacker. And just as I told the lady in here before,”Barry’s eyes moved to the looking glass knowing she was behind there, “I couldn’t code the simplest of

web pages, I’ve tried and it turned out horrible, ask my teacher.” He sat back in his chair and crossed hisarms over his chest. “I don’t know what you want from me, but whatever it is, I don’t have it.”

Agent Horn organized the notes and photos into the manila folder and nonchalantly rose from his chair

with file in hand. Nodding at the window and walking toward the door, he heard the buzz and the tallman closed the door behind him without any further comment.

Furious, Barry stood and shouted at the window, “Are you just going to leave me here?”





48Part 15 – Jail Visit

Part 15 – Jail VisitSaturday mornings were free days for Barry and work days for his parents. It was a great way to pick upsome overtime and while not all Saturdays were overtime days, today was, even it was for four hours.

He woke up with the fresh impression of what happened yesterday and last night and almost wrote itoff as a dream. After Agent Horn left the room last night they released Barry, allowing him to call hisparents to pick him up. Apparently they succumbed to the fact that Barry had no further information forthem.

Despite the difficult interrogation process, explaining to his parents proved to be much harder. Hestarted with the series of events from being bullied by Roy and finished with him being questioned bythe FBI. His parents took the news as well as they could, after some yelling from his father and cryingfrom his mother, he reassured them he had done nothing wrong and apologized that he lied about goingto the Edward’s house and lied about where he obtained the sandw ich from. Finally he swore on hisown life that he had not done anything wrong and the FBI interrogation was way off base. He promised

never to lie to them again about where he had been and what he was up to, and that he would not doanything to jeopardize graduating from high school.

On the subject of Michelle he told his parents that he wanted to visit her as much as possible, and itwould not interfere with school, but he just thought he needed to be there. They had a long discussionabout that but decided he could go unless someone said he could not be there. All they wanted to knowwas when he was leaving and when he would be back so they could either pick him up or know when toexpect him.

He had left over Brats that were fried in a pan with beer. The Goupe’s did not know how long Barry

would be at the police station and on top of that, they could not get a fire started in the fire pit with allof the rain. He preferred the way the fire pit brats tasted, but was so thankful for food that he savoredevery last morsel of the dinner his parents left for him.

He was dressed and ready to walk out the door when he remembered that yesterday was a shoppingday and there was probably Cheerios in the cupboard. His assumption was correct and he stopped to eatbefore leaving for the library and hospital. As he ate he thought about Michelle, hoping she was awakeand they could talk. He also secretly hoped nobody else was there.

As he was finishing the bowl of cereal he remembered the Bible Evan had handed him. His anger for Godstill burned but he thought Michelle might appreciate a Bible to read, so he picked up the book he hid

from his parents. Out of curiosity he flipped through the pages to see if there was any cash hidden in thebook, as Agent Hansen has implied. To his relief there was no cash payments for Barry’s un -renderedservices.

The library was half way between home and the hospital and while Barry debated about where to gofirst he decided on the Library in case he had to wait in the waiting room for another three hours. Hewas disappointed to discover that his Dean Koontz book was checked out and not available. He wouldhave to wait until Monday to get his books from the Library. That was frustrating. Barry did not like






reading two books at the same time because they both fought for his attention. He walked out of thelibrary with only the Bible, the same one with which he entered.

The police station was a couple of blocks away from the hospital and Barry questioned whether or nothe should visit Evan. He w anted to talk to Evan, he didn’t know about what, but he wanted to talk to

him. Looking at the building caused anxiety to stir in his body, causing him to want to leave. Instead hiscuriosity pushed him forward through the main doors.

Barry approached the front desk. “Can I see someone in jail?” He didn’t know what to ask for, an

inmate? That sounded like prison.

“Who are you here to see?” asked the uninterested lady behind the desk, void of any smile or

personality.

“Evan Edwards.”

“Sign in here then have a seat. It will be about fifteen minutes.”

Barry followed the instructions and sat in a chair. He didn’t feel like reading, instead he watched the

normal operations of the police department, which was not much. A phone call here and there, deputieswalking in the background, behind the counter and the receptionist, Barry would call her, filing papersand typing on her computer. He thought ‘She must be a computer hacker, she uses a computer.’ He wasbitter from last night’s conversation with the FBI. When h is parents picked him up they were assured byanother agent Barry had not seen that he was free to go and they only needed to ask him questions toget vital information on Evan’s case. That description was not what Barry remembered. Short of a

spotlight shining in his eyes and being tortured, it was not a general conversation.

“Barry Goop.” Called the woman behind the counter

“It’s Go -pay” he corrected.

She paid no attention to the pronunciation. Go through that door on your right and an officer will escortyou.

He did as she said and walked with the officer to the jail where they had Barry empty his pockets andremove all metal material. They held his Bible too, it could only be him. They told him he could not giveEvan anything, unless approved by the guards, and he would be monitored the entire time. He could talkto Evan through a phone and see him through a thick sheet of Plexiglas, and their phone call would be

recorded. Fine with him, he had nothing to hide.

Barry sat in the chair looking into an empty seat on the other side. He saw the guards bring Evan to thechair, un-cuffed him and allowed him to sit down. Both boys picked up the handsets. Evan started.

“Hey Barry, what are you doing here?”






“I was here all night last night.” Accused Barry. He didn’ t know what this conversation would be like, andhe regretted that it started off this way.

“You waited all night to talk to me?” Evan looked puzzled.

“No, the FBI brought me in to ask questions.”

“Really? Why?”

“They thought I had something to do with hacking computers because I went to your house.”

Evans eyes dropped to the table top in front of him. “I’m sorry Barry, you didn’t even do anything.” Helooked back up again. “Have you heard about my sister and my Mom?” his eyes were red and moist.

“Yes, I did. I went to see Michelle in the hospital yesterday afternoon, I skipped…”

Evan interrupted, “You, what? Why?”

“You both were so nice to me, I felt like I owed it to her to make sure she was ok.”

“How is she? Did you see my mom too?” His eyes regained a glimpse of hope.

Barry thought of the image of Michelle in his head and wanted to lie and say she was doing well, but hevowed not to lie, especially since the conversation was being recorded. He did not want to go throughmore questioning because of a loo phole. “The nurse said she was not wearing a seatbelt and if she was

she would be fine right now. She is in a coma, at least yesterday she was. The doctor told me he did notknow for how long. She didn’t look so good, but she is alive.”

Evan’s hand covered his face as he looked to the floor sobbing. “It’s all my fault. If I was not arrested,

Michelle would have been at school and my mom would have been at home getting ready for her day.”

“The guy who hit them was texting and missed the light. It’s not your fault. Your mom was still in surgerywhen I left, the doctors sounded positive that she would be fine too.” That wasn’t too much of a lie.They didn’t say they were concerned about her dying, so the obvious conclusion is that she will live.

Barry allowed E van time to take in the news and compose himself. He treaded lightly but asked, “Is it

true what the FBI told me about you being a computer hacker? And what about the newspaper sayingthat you hacked in to classified information and sold it to other countr ies?”

It was clear Evan had been emotionally beaten down by his interrogation, as his answer was almostmonotone. “No, it is not true that I hacked into government agencies and sold info to the Russians and

Koreans. It is true that I am somewhat of a secur ity guru.”

“Is that supposed to mean that you are a hacker?”

“Yes, you could say I am a hacker. ..”

“So you are a criminal.” Barry followed up.






“I’ve always liked computers and electronics. I started programming when I was 8 years old, HTML pagesand stuff. But that was too easy so I started figuring out other programming languages like Java andVisual Basic. Then I found PERL and it opened up my world. When I was about 12 or 13 I overheard myDad talking about their company being hacked and information stolen. I realized then what I wanted todo with my life. I wanted to be a security expert and protect companies from security threats. I asked

my Dad what happened and what information was taken. He blew me off for a few weeks but I keptpestering him. He finally gave in and confided in me how the breech happened. I told him I would try tofigure out how they did it and see if I could figure out a patch.

“He just patted me on the head and didn’t believe me that I could do it. It took two months but I brokeinto the system at the mill and provided him with usernames and passwords to his employees. He wasdumbfounded. I offered a suggestion for a patch, but it wasn’t good enough. It was like I was sword

fighting with a butter knife, compared to what other hackers were doing. Through online hackercommunities I found the guy I was up against and reverse engineered his program and made it workagainst him. It was actually funny what I did. When he hacked into our system I sent him an email that

said to pick up the phone. When he opened the email an outbound call was made to the local police, butit also dialed his line, so when his phone rang, it was really the police calling him.” Evan was smiling and

proud of the work he had done.

“So you are a hacker. That’s bad stuff.”

“It is if you use it for the wrong purpose. Most network engineers only know what their systems vendors

tell them to do to prevent hackers, but most of them have no idea what hackers are capable of. I thinkthe best security is to employ a good hacker to keep you systems up and running. I want to attend MITwhen I am out of High School and I would never do anything to jeopardize that. All of my hacking hasbeen legal, if you can call it that.”

“How is hacking legal? And the FBI played back a recordin g to me where you confessed to hacking intobanks and stuff.”

Evan looked surprised and concerned that the FBI would be playing recordings back to people, but hedismissed it an answered the question. “My Dad owns a large company and he has a lot of friend s inhigh places. During one of his social circles he told the CEO of a bank about the hacking incident at hiscompany and how I was able to hack in and then stop the other hacker. The CEO asked if he could hireme as a consultant to do the same. My Dad asked me if I wanted to do that and I accepted the job. Ihave signed legal contracts to show that the companies asked me to do this work for them. My first paid

job was to hack the bank, it was easy. Took me two days and I was in, downloaded usernames andpasswords to employees, and as a bonus I retrieved customer information including account numbersonline passwords, account balances, you name it.”

Barry about fell out of his chair. “How do you do that?” Now he was intrigued by this line of work,

forgetting about the classified information sent to Russia and North Korea.






“There are many components, but when you know what to look for and find people to talk to, pieces

just fall into place. The problem is that Network Security guys are just that, trained in how to loadsoftware that monitor the network. Sure, some of them do good work, but when you have peoplefinding ways in that are uncommon, that’s when they get into trouble. It’s amazing what people tell you

over the phone if you just call a company asking for information. You just have to ask for it the right way.

Like a puzzle each new piece gets easier and easier until the puzzle is complete. Anyway, that is what Ido, and that is where I want my career to go, but Barry, you have to believe me when I say that I did nothack into the government and steal classified documents. Think about it, why would I do that? I don’t

need money . I don’t have anything against America and I sure don’t want to see it fall.”

Barry could see the hurt in him. He wanted to believe him, but along with the truth can be buried lies.“I’m so confused right now, I don’t know what to think. I’ve only known you for two days, and I told you

yesterday I don’t fit in with your group. You were just so nice to me….” Barry didn’t finish. T his was not atherapy group session.

“I see where you are coming from, I don’t know if I would believe me either if I were you, but I promiseBarry that I did not do what they say me and my Dad did.”

Barry looked at his friend and saw sincerity in his eyes . He didn’t know what to believe but he had to

find out, one way or another.

The guards indicated they only had a minute left. Evan looked at his new friend and broke the silence.“Barry, please tell my sister I love her and that I am ok. Tell her my Dad and I will get out of here, wedidn’t do anything wrong. She knows about my hacking jobs, it’s not secret in our family. And please,

keep me posted on how my Mom and Sister are doing, I would really appreciate it.”

Barry agreed to fulfill his wishes and said his goodbyes. He hung up the phone and proceeded to reclaimhis possessions from the guard.

If Evan was truthful how could Barry prove it? Barry recalled Evan’s statement about hacking being small

pieces of a puzzle and with each step it would become easier until the puzzle was solved.

Who could he trust to help him? He knew who it was, and they would be his first puzzle piece.





53Part 16 – In a Coma

Part 16 – In a ComaIt was noon by the time Barry made it to the hospital. The friendly receptionist was working today andgreeted him with her warm smile.

“Who are you here to see?”

“Michelle Edwards, room 316”

“Your name?”

“Barry Goupe, I’m her cousin.” He wasn’t nervous this time about being a fictional family member.

She handed him his sticker name badge and wished him a nice weekend. He thanked her and continuedhis way to the elevator and the third floor.

The blond nurse was at the nurse’s station again today.

“Hi.” She commented as he walked toward the desk. “There are some other people in there, f riends Ithink.”

Uh oh, Barry didn’t really like being around other people and he didn’t want the weird looks and

comments that may come from them . He played it off. “How is Michelle today?”

“She is stable but still in a coma. Her body has been reacting well to the medication and that is a positivesign.”

Barry breathed a sigh of relief. “How is my aunt doing?”

“She came out of surgery last night a couple of hours after you left. She is not doing as well as yourcousin, but she is stable. She is in a coma too. Air bags saved her life as well, but with the truckbroadsiding them even the airbags can’t protect against the front of a truck that is at head level.”

“Can I see her?” Barry was relieved that she was in a coma. He would hide out in her room until the friends left Michelle’s room.

“You sure can, she is in room 314, right next to Michelle.”

Barry started to walk toward the room but stopped to ask another question, “By the way, do you know

what happened to the guy driving the truck?”

“I heard that there was not a scratch on him. He was wearing a seatbelt and his airbags deployed. Hewalked away uninjured. Although, I bet he is a little achy today.”

“Did they arrest him? I mean he could have killed them.”








He picked up the jacket and the Bible from the chair and made is way next door to room 316. Nothinghad changed in Michelle’s room except for the open curtains.

“Hi Michelle, it looks like you had some visitors today. I bet you are excited to have your friends dropby.” Barry spoke knowing she would not have a response. The breathing machine was all that spoke,

while Michelle lay lifeless just like her mom.

“It’s a beautiful day today. The sky is blue with a few clouds and it ’s about sixty-five degrees outside. ”

Barry paused, looking at how the light from outside accented the colors from the cuts and bruises on herface. It looked like Hollywood makeup, never imagining this could happen to a real person. Her chestcontinued to rise and fall with each breath the machine gave her.

“I saw Evan today. He wanted me to let you know that he loves you and he is doing fine. He plans onbeing out of jail soon. After I left yesterday the FBI took me in for questioning.” He explained last night

to her starting with finding the FBI at his house and finishing with the part about lying to his parents butpromising to be truthful in the future. “Your mom is next door and she is doing well too. Everyone wa ntsto talk to you again, so you have to get better, OK?” Barry felt the emotion well up in his throat, but his

voice did not crack this time.

“I brought you a Bible to read, the one Evan gave me when he dropped me off the other day. I wantedto give it to you to read because I know how much you like to study the Bible. But I guess you won’t be

reading it right now.”

Barry moved to the chair by the window and sat down, holding the bible in his hands. It was a paperbackand on the front under the word ‘Holy Bible’ with a ray of sun in the background it read ‘ESV’ . Heopened the front pages for something to do and discovered the acronym meant ‘English Standard

Version’ . Barry thought, “That’s good, because I can’t read any other languages.” “If you would like, I can read the Bible to you, until you can read it yourself.” Michelle did not protest,

and neither did Darth Vader’s brother.

Flipping through the pages he was looking for Isaiah 53 since he remembered the Bible Study groupwanted to read that portion again and look for prophesy fulfilled in the New Testament. On Thursdaywhen Evan dropped him off at the supermarket he recalled that he could find the New Testament in theback, the part where Jesus was on the earth.

Finding Isaiah was not as easy as Michelle made it look so he turned to Table of Contents in the front

and found it referenced on page 604. Turning to the appropriate section, he found 53 and beganreading:

Who has believed what he has heard from us?And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,






and no beauty that we should desire him.3 He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefsand carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,smitten by God, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,and with his wounds we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned —every one —to his own way;and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,so he opened not his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who consideredthat he was cut off out of the land of the living,stricken for the transgression of my people?

9 And they made his grave with the wickedand with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,and he shall bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,






and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors

After his discussion with Evan in the truck on the way home last Thursday, this made a little more sense,although he thought the Bible study group said this was written before Jesus’ time. He read it again a

couple of more times finding new intricacies each time, but not knowing what they meant.

Then he moved on to the New Testament since that is where Evan suggested he start reading from.Referencing the Table of contents again he found an Introduction to the New Testament on page 911.Turning toward the end of the Bible he found the page and began reading out loud to Michelle.

“Introduction to the New Testament. Sin and death are twin powers that rule over all people, sothat they stand in need of the redemption Christ brings. Sin does not merely constitute failure tokeep the law of God but represents personal rebellion against God’s lordship . The essence of sinis idolatry, in which people refuse to give thanks and praise to the one and only God, andworship the creature rather than the creator.

“But sin is not the last word, since Jesus Christ came to save sinners, thereby highlighting the

mercy and grace of God. The fundamental response demanded by God is faith and repentance.Indeed, the whole of the New Testament can be understood as a call to repentance and faith.Those who desire to be part of Jesus’ new community (the church) and part of the kingdom ofGod (God’s rule in people’s hearts and lives) must forsake false gods, renounce self -worship andevil, and turn to Jesus as Lord and Master. The call to repentance is nothing less than a

summons to abandonment of sin and to personal faith, whereby people are called to trust in thesaving work of the Lord on their behalf instead of thinking they can save themselves. Even thosewho are already believers are to exert themselves in faith and repentance as long as life lasts,for this is the mark of Christ’s true disciples.”

Turning the page he found ‘Matthew’ and continued reading to Michelle.

It was ten after five when Barry looked at the clock. He had been reading for over four hours,interrupted only a couple of times by nurses who were doing rounds and updating the chart at the endof the bed. Barry stopped after reading Luke and bookmarked the page with the name John at the top.Reflecting back on what he had read, he had more questions than answers but was surprised as whatthe bible was. Only hearing about rules and begats, he subconsciously thought it was like a law booktelling people how they have to live their lives, but it was more like a story. He was intrigued to continuereading with Michelle.

His parents knew he would be at the hospital today and they offered to pick him up at 5:00 tonight so hesaid his goodbyes to Michelle and the nurses and rushed downstairs to meet his parents.






During his drive home he thought about his plan to investigate Evan’s arrest and anxiety crept up on him

as he inventoried his thoughts for the information he would need. Time was against him knowing hecouldn’t start until Monday.





59Part 17 – Attorney Alliance

Part 17 – Attorney Alliance“God why me? I’ve been faithful to you, to my family, to my company and to my community, why is allof this happening to me? Please, God, don’t take my wife away from me. I ask that you heal her. Shehasn’t done anything wrong. And don’t take my daughter away from me either. She has the rest of herlife ahead of her, don’t deprive her of that. And give Evan strength to endure this legal process and giveus success in the end.” James Edwards sat at the edge of his bed in his jail cell in prayer and confusion.Since his arrest yesterday and then learning of the accident involving his wife and daughter, his worldwas crumbling around him. He didn’t understand why this was happening to him. What was God trying

to teach him? What was going to happen to his family? Would his wife and daughter pull through fromtheir comas? Would Evan be prosecuted for criminal activity? None of it made sense.

James was well respected in this community from all walks of life. His family’s history of philanthropy continued with him at the helm. Whether it be to local food banks, church ministries and communityevents or giving that spanned the globe, the Edward’s made it a point to give money to make the worlda better place. At Christmas it was a family tradition to hand out gifts to kids whose parents were unableto afford gifts for their kids. At the same time they would provide a Christmas meal to the family. Andnot just one family, but many. They volunteer their time serving food to the homeless, help peoplemove and fix things around someone’s house.

Without the background of their home and property the Edwards family exuded normalcy. They werenot flashy with clothes, although their clothes were not raggedy, or jewelry. The last thing they werewas superficial. James’ humility and integrity defined him and is why he was privileged to be leader notonly in his community but all over the world. He was an elder at his church and from a spiritualstandpoint was a rock for the congregation, occasionally being asked to preach a message.

What was being said about the Edwards family was in complete contradiction to how they led their life.This news was sure to tarnish their reputation, cause dissention between friends and colleagues andtake some time to mend the words being said in the media.

“James Edwards, you have a visitor. Your attorney is here.” Shouted a guard walking toward the cell. He

would escort James to the visiting area where their conversation could not be recorded. James wasexpecting the attorney earlier and was glad he had finally made it, even if it was later in the evening.

The disheveled leader and now treated like a crook, wiped the tears from his eyes, combed his blondehair with his fingers and attempted to compose himself. A buzz sounded, then a click and the steel dooropened. James exited his grey cell and walked in front of the guard to the visiting area where he

recognized his attorney standing at a bare table next to a barred second floor window overlooking theparking lot.

Chuck Finkelstein announced his retirement last month to James claiming he would hang his hat up atthe end of the year. Age would have alluded the career attorney for the Edwards, were it not for hisgreying hair. Standing at six feet two inches the avid biker spends most of his free time riding his S-Works Tarmac, keeping a toned body and more importantly a youthful spirit. His retirement would take






him to the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California next May to ride cross-country with a group ofbiking enthusiasts where their journey would end at the Atlantic Ocean in Massachusetts. This lifetimedream may have to be postponed with the current events taking place.

It was James’ father that gave him the opportunity over thirty years ago to join the company as a

corporate Attorney. He owed it to the Edwards family to be there for them to help them out ofwhatever mess they got themselves into, even though he was beginning to move legal matters off of hisplate to the new Chief Council of the company. His internal struggle was strong and he would do his bestto represent the family while ensuring a successful retirement.

Standing in his classic blue striped Ralph Lauren button up shirt, Chaps khaki slacks and Johnston &Murphy brown oxfords, Chuck extended his hand, “James, how are they treating you’re here?”

Shaking his friend ’s hand he responded, “It’s not the Ritz. I’d venture to say it’s not even Motel 6.” They

both shared a laugh. “How are my girls doing?”

Chuck motioned for James to sit down as he took a seat in the uncomfortable school like metal chairwith plastic seat and gave him an update on the current status of Jill and Michelle. James couldn’t help

himself from breaking down, placing his hands on his face while his shoulders shook with each sob.

Chuck filled in additional information he had received since talking to James yesterday. “ Jill’s left

clavicle, by her shoulder, is fractured which doctors typically let heal on its own. Alternatives are toinsert a pin to align the bone, however, since she is in a coma its best at this point to let it heal on itsown. Additionally she had some spinal damage. The doctors do not yet know the extent of those injuriesand will keep me updated as they find more information.” He paused allowing James time to processthi s new information, then he continued, “Michelle was the most fortunate. Despite the fact that she

was not wearing a seatbelt, her injuries are far less severe. The doctors attribute this to the accidentoccurring from the driver’s side. She does not have a ny broken bones or spinal problems.”

Adding a positive note Chuck provided some reassuring words, “The doctors say they have a goodchance of recovery. With successful outcomes of each surgery it is a matter of time to see when theyawake from their comas. The good news is they are alive.”

James was a broken man, and in his shoes Chuck imagined he would be taking this the same way. It wasdifficult for him to hold back his emotions since they were close friends. His three kids were grown andout of the house, but his wife Nancy was close to Jill and together their friendship had blossomed overthe years. Together they had participated in missions trips with and without their husbands. Both being

very active in church and ministries. Jill’s love and compassi on for teenagers led her to Groundwire.netwhere she gave both financially and of her time chatting with kids online who are lost and needsomeone to talk to. Her passion for this ministry flowed to Nancy and together they would spend hoursas online coaches helping these kids. Although there was an obvious age gap between the attorney andhis employer, their friendship spanned that gap.








“We’ll make t hat happen. Your initial appearance is tomorrow, delayed because of the weekend, whereyou will enter your plea in with the Judge and where we will get you released on bail.” Chuck paused,then changed the subject. “Speaking of the hospital, they have let a few people in t o see Jill andMichelle, but when hoards of people started showing up they only allowed family. I convinced them Iwas close enough, and it helped that I am your attorney, however the nurse mentioned a nephew that

had been visiting, mostly spending time with Michelle, but I did not recognize the name. It was BarryGoupe? Is he a nephew of yours?”

“He is not but the name sounds familiar. It is probably one of her friends that I met in passing. Is hecausing problems?”

“Just the opposite. He has been reading the bible to her. Apparently I had just missed him by the time Iarrived. Today he was there for over four hours. Goupe is not a name I recognize from church. Anyway, Ithought I’d ask.”

“Thanks Chuck. My family needs all of the prayer it can get. How is the company handling this? ”

“PR is working overtime to field questions from the media and post information to news agencies sothings won’t get too out of hand. They are doing what they are supposed to. Don’t worry about thecompany now, you have a top notch executive team. I’m confi dent we can get a quick bail hearing andget you out of here. ” Chuck stood to leave and reassured James, “I will be back Monday morning so we

can go over the case and our plan of action.”

James stood also and shook his friend ’s hand, “Thanks Chuck, I’m glad you are on my side.” Then heturned toward the far guard who was standing and protecting the entrance to the jail cells as if it wasthe door of a bank vault of which James was sure nobody was eager to break into.





63Part 18 – Principal Encounters

Part 18 – Principal EncountersMonday arrived slower than Barry had hoped. Sunday was spent with Michelle, reading to her foranother 4 hours from the Bible her brother gave him, he finished Philippians and book markedColossians. This time he brought some paper to take notes and ask questions about things he read in theBible.

The first order of business back at school was to recover his books from the one person in this town hecould trust, Mrs. Cline.

Arriving at school early, this time with a lunch, he avoided the crowds and would hopefully have sometime to talk to the grandmotherly librarian. Fortunately she was in the library when he entered at 7:45A.M.

Delighted to see him she welcomed him. “Barry, good to see you. How are you? You left in such a hurry

on Friday. ”

“I went to se e Michelle Edwards at the hospital after I found out she was in her accident. I’m sorry I left

my books and did not take them with me, d o you have them?”

“I’m afraid not. I returned them to the office where they would be safe until you claimed them.”

Oh, no, not the office. He did not want to deal with explaining why his books were sent there after hisabrupt departure. “OK, I will drop by and get them before class.” Looking around to make sure nobody

was around he leaned in closer to Mrs. Cline and lowered his voice. “Can we talk about the stuff that hashappened over the past couple of days?”

Sensing his desire for secrecy, she motioned him away from the door and further down the counter sotheir conversation would not be heard clearly should someone enter through the front door. “What’s on

your mind?”

“First of all, please don’t tell anyone about this conversation. I feel you are the only one I can trust right

now. You have heard what has happened to the Edwards family?”

“You mean Mr. Edwards and his son h acking into government systems, and Mrs. Edwards and Michellein the car accident?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“I have read about it in the newspaper but do not know much more than that.” She shifted her weight inorder to lean on the side of the counter and take weight off of her feet.

“How long have you been in this town?”

“Why, I was born and raised here, like my parents before me and their parents before them. We have

quite a history here.”






“How much interaction have you had with Evan and Michelle?”

She pondered t he question and responded. “Their mother and father both attended at this school, ohI’d say about twenty five years ago. And I attended this school with Mr. Edwards’s father. I was a seniorwhen he was a sophomore. That is when the steel business was boom ing here.”

“Do you believe Evan and his Dad hacked government computers?”

“Well, I can’t answer that, I don’t have any evidence for or against it.”

“Not from a legal standpoint, but if you have known the family for this long do you think they are the

type of people who would do something like this? I mean, if they are so rich, why would they want tobreak into government systems and sell information to our enemies?” His voice became louder, so he

lowered his tone, looking at the door to make sure nobody was there.

“The article had a good point about the steel company not doing as well as it was before the badeconomy hit. For people to maintain their lifestyle and status they will sometimes do anything.”

Barry thought about that but he could not reconcile i t with Evan’s statements at the jail. He pressedfurther. “Regardless of news or anyone’s opinion , what is your opinion of the family? Would THEY dosomething like that? If Evan told you he didn’t do it and admitted to hacking but was paid by largecompanies in an effort to protect their systems, but he would never break in and steal national securityinformation, would you believe him.”

“My opinion of the family is that I have a high level of respect for them, always have. We go to the same

church and they are actively involved there. My initial reaction was that it isn’t true, however, peopleare people and sometimes they have secrets that they hide.”

Barry proceeded to tell Mrs. Cline about the conversation he overheard with the Principal and theMayor la st Thursday, and meeting the Mayor at the Edwards’ house . Her eyes narrowed as she listenedintently. “What do you know about the Mayor? Personally when I met him on Thursday I was…afraid ofhim.”

“I am not the gossiping type and will not spread rumors abo ut anyone. I will give you some facts aboutMayor Hattfield and if you would like to research him you are more than welcome to. He came to thistown about ten years ago from somewhere in California. I believe he owned a business out there as anexporter to other countries. His company shipped anything that would fit on a boat. He worked with Mr.Edwards shipping steel products and developed a working relationship with him. According to hiscampaign speeches he came to Brighton, Pennsylvania to get away from the crime and deterioratingschools for his kids. You may have met his son, Mike? He and Evan are good friends.”

“What? Mike was the Mayor’s son? Why didn’t he say anything to his Dad when he saw him onThursday?” Barry’s mind reeled with this new set of information. He was relieved he did not sayanything about the Mayor’s conversation around Mike. “Yes, I know Mike.” Barry said, trying to sound

unwaverd by the revelation.






“Anyway, Don, Mayor Hattfield, won the election during his second year in town, and has won by alandslide every year since.” Her demeanor changed when she spoke about him, with an obviousdisappointment.

Treading lightly but prying for information he questioned, “Did you vote for him?”

Choosing her words carefully she said, “He was not my first choice.”

They both stood there soaking in the words, Barry’s mind processing information.

A cheerful vo ice, belonging to the Principal, entered the library. “Good morning Mrs….” He was caught

off guard with Barry’s presence.

Mrs. Cline straightened up and grabbed a book from under the counter. “Here is the book you asked forme to reserve, let me just enter it into the system. And don’t forget to pick up your books from theoffice.” She carried the book with her to the computer and Barry followed her.

Principal Taylor’s tone changed to formal and authoritative. “Good morning Mrs. Cline, I trust you had anice weekend?”

“I did, thank you, how about yourself? How is Barbara doing?”

They engaged in small talk while she finished checking out the next novel for Barry to read. It would be awhile before he got to this one.

“Here is your book Barry.” She said, handing the book to the student.

“Thank you Mrs. Cline, and again, I’m sorry for leaving my books here Friday.” Barry began walking out

the library when the Principal interrupted his departure.

“Mr. Goupe, we need to have a discussion, I’ll walk with you to the office.” Turning to the librarian heencouraged her, “have a nice day Mrs. Cline.”

As they walked in silence toward the office Barry thought of “Mr. Goupe” and decided he did not likebeing addressed formally with the use of his last name. He expected his Dad to be spoken to that way,but he knew his Dad felt uncomfortable as well thinking that title should be reserved for educated men.

Principal Taylor ushered Barry into the large office with filled bookcases on the back and left walls, witha large window on the right, curtains drawn. He motioned to sit. Barry obliged and sat nervously in the

cheap cloth chair on the other side of the large wooden desk that looked like it has been there sinceMrs. Cline was attending as a student.

In an attempt to appear friendly and concerned Principal Taylor forced a smile and asked, “How longhave you been at this school, Mr. Goupe?”

“About two weeks, Sir.” Barry kept his answer short and made eye contact with the bookshelf behind

the principal, but did not look at the man behind the desk.






“Where did you transfer from and where do your parents work? ”

Barry thought the Principal should already know this information and imagined he was makingconversation in an attempt to make him more comfortable. If that was the trick it wasn’t working. Barry

gave him a short version of his life story. Principal Taylor was untouched by the life of Barry Goupe.

“Barry,” this was the first t ime he had addressed Barry by his first name, “Let me cut to the chase. I’m

not sure what you are hoping will transpire with your interactions with the Edwards family, but mysuggestion to you is that you stay away from Michelle and Evan.” Forcing the smile back on his face hecontinued. “I have witnessed this behavior before where the poor kids latch onto the gracious

personality of Evan in hopes that his Father will promote the parents and somehow the money will flowdownhill into their bank accounts. But let me tell you, Mr. Goupe, you are in for a disappointment. Thatis not how the Edwards family works. My suggestion is that you cut ties before you or your parents arenegat ively impacted.” He paused for effect by resting his elbow s on the armrest of his leather chair andplacing his hands together at the finger tips in front of his face where he looked over his fingers intoBarry’s soul.

Barry did not keep eye contact, instead he looked down on the clean desk which stood a phone,computer, inbox, outbox and an office store calendar book. He was not going to respond to thePrincipal.

“Why did you skip school on Friday?” the tone was accusing.

Barry thought through his response, but did not want to lie. “I went to see Michelle Edwards at thehospital.”

“That’s a chivalrous act, Mr. Goupe, one that would be expected from her boyfriend.” The last wordpierced Barry. He liked Michelle and knew she would never like him back but the thought of her withanother guy made him mad.

The bell rang signaling the ten minute warning to get to the first class. Saved by the bell, Barry spoke up.“I better get to class, sir. May I get my books from the front desk?”

Ignoring the question the Principal continued where he left off, placing his hands on his desk and leaningforward as if ready to deliver an urgent message. “I cannot tell you what to do, Mr. Goupe, but I can

strongly, and I mean strongly, suggest that you stay away from the hospital and the police station.”

That caught Barry off guard. “How did you know I was at the police station?”

With a look that suggested he was caught, Principal Taylor quickly composed himself and gave a patheticanswer. “As the principal of this school it is my duty to make sure students who tend toward truancy are

monitored as much as possible to avoid any questionable behavior that could compromise the safetyand security of the student body.”






Barry chewed on the blatant lie and pressed the last statement with sarcasm. “I must be important if I

have a spy assigned to just me. Why would you need to check on me? I have no history of any badbehavior. I’m sure you know that from looking at my records.”

“I only have your best interest in mind, and if I were you I would stay away from the Edwards.” The

Principal’s cell phone chirped with an incoming call. He looked down at the phone, then back at Barry. “Ihave to take this, you can see yourself out.”

Barry stood up, looked at the Principal and before walking out, responded, “I appreciate your concern

for my wellbeing and will take your comments into consideration as I decide what to do with my time.”

As he walked toward the double doors to the office, Principal Taylor provided the last words. “Just know

I have my eyes on you Mr. Goupe. Leaving school in the middle of the day is cause for disciplinary action,and next time I will not let it go with a simple warning.”

Reaching the door, Barry turned to the Principal and nodded his acknowledgment to the man. Hand on

the door handle he decided to leave the door open behind him. He heard the Principal answer thephone addressing the caller as Don. Barry paused slightly turning his head slightly to catch theconversation. The door shut behind him and Barry heard the muffled words, “I just talked to him and…”






Part 19 – Evidence FoundJames slumped in his chair as Chuck delivered the news. “Looks like the FBI has found evidence in yourcomputers that lead to the documents obtained from government sources and sold to terroristcountries. With this evidence I doubt the judge will grant bail for fear you could be a flight risk.”

“Where would I go?” asked James. “I have nowhere and no reason to leave. Tell me this makes no senseto you. ”

“That’s not all they found.” Chuck’s tone was serious, like that of an attorney instead of a friend. Jam eslooked puzzled as he stared into the man’s eyes across from him. “One of the main reasons for the

judge’ s decision to dismiss the bail hearing was due to uncovered evidence of the purchase of a home inBrazil, North of Rio de Janeiro, overseas bank accounts linking funds from the countries who boughtAmerica’s secrets, and passports for your family under new names. Drivers licenses, credit cards and apayment to the Brazilian government for expediting and approving citizenship in their country underyour new identity.” Chuck leaned back in his chair in obvious disbelief and what seemed to James a hint

of disappointment.

“Do you believe them Chuck?” James questioned. “You know me, this is not who I am.”

“I’m your lawyer, here to represent you, I am not here to judge.” Chuck responded unconvincingly andcautious as if he didn’t know whether to believe the man he thought he respected. Just becausesomeone claims their own innocence does not mean they are innocent. Like the moment in a court TVdrama where the defendant pleads his case and at the end a video is shown with him committing thecrime he adamantly opposed. As James’ lawyer, however, he had to put personal ideas aside and

represent his client based on facts and information, which at this point might as well be a video cameracatching the thief. “Let’s talk about what you know, based on the evidence found so far.”

“I told you, Chuck, I don’t know anything about any of this. I am aware of Evan’s abilities. I put him intouch with clients so he could hack into their systems and reveal to them vulnerabilities in theirsystems.” James was angry and exasperated. “We did not have any government clients, but that does

not mean Evan did not hack into the government. But I do know Evan did not hack in to stealconfidential information and sell it to other countries. Come’on Chuck, even you have to admit that

sounds ludicrous?”

Chuck finished up some notes on a yellow legal sized note pad and kept his Mont Blanc in his right hand,prepared for the next set of notes. In the calming voice of a Psychiatrist, not an attorney, Chuck probed.

“I will talk to Evan later to collaborate stories. For the sake of consistency between testimonies, if you orEvan did not put those files on your computers, wh o do you think would have and could have?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that since they brought me in. We have service staff, maids,

gardeners, pool guy. It could be any of them. Jill is computer savvy but she is a user, not a hacker.Michelle i s the least knowledgeable computer user in our family.” James talked as if these were internalthoughts spoken aloud. “The kids have their friends over frequently. I wouldn’t be surprised if over a






hundred different people enter our house on a weekly basis .” In a retaliatory tone, to get back for the

lack of trust by his friend James chided, “It could be you Chuck.”

Dismissing the comment, Chuck wrote more words on his notepad and flipped the page uncovering anew blank page with blue lines, and continued to fill the next two sentences. Without looking up from

the page he followed up, “What about the passports, ID’s, credit cards, bank accounts and houses inforeign countries?”

Hesitating and lost in thought James mulled over the question in his mind. The silence caused Chuck tolook up from the pad of paper. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” His response was filled with defeat and

following the last word he sunk into his chair.

“Is there anyone who is out to get you? Have you received any threats?”

“No.” Ja mes was looking out the window at nothing in particular, yet wondering when the next time hewould walk in his back yard. Sleep in his bed. Pet his dog. Hug is wife and kids. He knew there were far

worse places than here, but getting a taste of what hell must be. Being kept from everyone he loved.Knowing that his wife and daughter were hanging onto life by a string and he could not be there to holdtheir hands and be there for them. He was unable to see his son and assure him this would be oversoon. The absence from the one he loved. That was hell enough.

“James. James?” the attorney caught his attention, bringing him back into his new reality.

“What?” Again, he was distant.

“If you didn’t do this, and your family didn’t do it and you don’t have any idea w ho would set you up likethis, how do you think this looks for you and Evan.”

“Not good.”

Setting down the black pen with white a white snowcapped tip, Chuck leaned forward. “James, I’m not

going to pretend that I know what you are going through. In your shoes I can’t imagine what I would do,

but you have to talk to me if we are going to get anywhere. The questions I am asking you are all onesthe Court will be asking on the day of your trial. Whether or not you are innocent until proven guilty, theFBI already has you pegged as guilty. The government hacks occurred from your computers, evidence ison your computers, in your files, it is all over the place. These might as well be digital fingerprints withyour name written all over it. The more this news spreads into the media, the harder it will be to get youa fair trial. I know you don’t want to hear that from me, but I also you know already know that.”

Chuck stood and walked toward the window, peering out into the blue sky. Covered with steel grates,the closed windows kept fresh air out and the stale jail air in. The room had a clean but stale aroma. Atile floor that must have been over 50 years old looked worn and the metal tables had seen better days.Two other inmates were taking advantage of visitors today. One was talking to his wife, or girlfriend,evidenced by the way they held each other’s hands over the table. The second appeared to be talking to






his attorney as well. Guards dotted the room maintaining authority and pretending to not pay attention,providing what little privacy each criminal may have been entitled to.

Chuck’s tone became that of a friend again. “People talk. They speak foolishly about information theyreceive from unreliable sources, and worst of all, they believe it. In turn they become the carrier of bad

and untrue news, as though they were a flu virus attaching itself to everyone it comes in contact with.Information turns into stories, which turns into gossip, which turns into a belief and then ultimately itbecomes truth. And in reality, it was a lie to begin with.” He turned to look at James, sitting like aconvicted man in his jail chair, staring at the young couple in the middle of the room. “People perceive

information as power, regardless of where that information comes from. If enough people believe theworld is flat, then it is. Send man to the moon and people will find reasons to believe it was all done in aHollywood set, rejecting the countless firsthand accounts of what it took to get one man to the moon.”

Walking ba ck toward the visitor chair, Chuck sat again. “What I am trying to say is that it doesn’t matter

what we say in here, or in court or what we plaster on billboards, people are forming opinions of youand your family as we speak. People who are close to you, and especially people who don’t know you.

The only way to hedge the truth and change some people’s mind, including the media, w e have to havea compelling reason, or an alibi if you will, proving you and Evan did not commit this crime. ” Chuckpaused another moment. James caught the pause and looked at Chuck but did not say anything. Thefriend continued, “This situation is big. It’s growing like a weed, infecting the nation. You have made

front page news across the nation, and America thinks it is their du ty to decide your fate.”

Another long pause hung in the air as the young couple departed from each other, the prisoner beingescorted back to his cell and the woman walking into freedom. For a short moment James envied theman for the simple reason that he was able to hold hands with the one who meant the most to him. Hewatched as the excitement and energy weaned from the man and James wondered what the man had

done to be here.James’ mind swirled with thoughts of an alibi, or proof that would absolve him and his son of theseaccusations. “This apparently is not a typical alibi where I can prove I was at the movies while a crimehappened.” Crafting his last words he finished with, “I have no alibi, I have no proof.”

“Today is your initial appearance in fro nt before your appearance, so shower up and look presentable.”

James dismissed Chuck’s preconception about the Judges Bail decision, he needed to see his wife anddaughter. God willing, he would be released on bail if the Judge was sympathetic to him. With a newresolve he stood and replied, “See you in court Chuck.”

of the Judge, we will plead not guilty and request to release you on bail, but like I said the Judge willmost likely reject bail for two reasons. One, you are perceived as a flight risk and second you may besafer in jail than in public where people can take action into their own hands based on mis-information,placing your life in danger. ” Chuck concluded, “I brought a suit for you to appear in, the guard will allow

you change





71Part 20 – Hacking In Action

Part 20 – Hacking In ActionArmed with two Dean Koontz books, one of which was half way read and the other provided by thelibrarian as a ploy this morning, Barry passed the library in favor of the computer lab for his lunch timeresearch. His mind raced during morning classes as he tried to piece together why the FBI accused himof knowing about Evan’s hacking, why Principal Taylor is telling him to stay away from the Edwards and

his obvious interactions with the Mayor, and what they are trying to hide.

Deciding to spend time in computer lab at lunch was a far departure from the library and hopefully hecould find anything that could give him confidence that Evan was truthful in his claim of innocence.Google might be the only place he could find answers, but where to start?

The computer lab consisted of about twenty-five computers, obviously old and abused, but in workingorder for the purposes of teaching kids the basics. Resembling the library it was open at lunch forstudents to get caught up on homework, or more likely a reason, to provide solitude to the schooloutcasts who did not have a social circle to which they belong. A disinterested balding teacher with

graying hair on the side sat at the front reading the paper while his sandwich waited in front of him onthe desk. This room was to a geek as the library was to Barry, a place to escape from people and get lostin your own world.

Three kids sat apart from each other, all in separate rows and scattered about so as not to be closeenough to each other ensuring a conversation would be unlikely to ensue. Barry found a spot in the backrow by the corner, opposite a kid in the row in front of him. As he sat in the chair it made a scrappingsound on the floor with an echo throughout the room. Nobody looked up for the source of the noise.

The brown lunch bag broke the silence again as Barry extracted his entire lunch onto the table next tothe keyboard in order to avoid another noise. A peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich fell from bag followedby a red apple. When his mom packed him a lunch it never contained a drink. Water was free at theschool and juice boxes were not.

Setting aside the lunch for now Barry turned his attention toward the Windows desktop on thecomputer screen in front of him. Thinking of what keyword to search, he opened a browser and typed in‘google.com’ in the address bar. The famous page displayed the trademarked words with a single searchbox underneath. In the box Barry typed ‘Evan Edwards, hacker’

As Google returned immediate results, Barry reached for his sandwich and took a bite. News storiesfilled the front page of Google from well-known papers such as Wall Street Journal, New York Times,

Huffington Post, as well as some local papers. He click on and article from the Wall Street Journal andbegan reading while enjoying generic smooth peanut butter, grape jelly and white bread.

This article focused on Mr. Evans and included a slant that he made his bright son perform the workwhile the profits from foreign countries were funneled into an overseas bank account. It questioned thesustainability of the Steel Mill with a quote from the Chief Financial Officer that the company has beenobserving shrinking profits for the past five years, causing shareholder concern and a drop in stock price.CFO Sam Miller was quoted saying, “The Edwards family continues to build on a strong foundation, and






while I have no comments about activities that Mr. Edwards engaged in outside of company business, Iwill say that I am shocked at the allegations presented against the CEO. Rest assured the leadership atEdwards Steel Mill is the best in the business and we are committed to our shareholders and employeesto continue moving the company forward while this situation works itself out.”

‘That was lame’ Barry thought as he clicked the back button and opened the article from HuffingtonPost. It too contained a similar slant than that of the Wall Street Journal article, even posting the lastpart from the quote from the CFO. Evan’s name was listed in the article however all fingers pointed tohis Dad.

Next on Google search was from USA Today. Their interpretation of the hacking incident placed moreblame on Evan and talked about cybercrime and International security. The journalist expressed concernabout covert CIA and military operations that were now apparently in the hands of the wrong people.Apparently the FBI found incriminating evidence on the computers they pulled from the Edwards’ home,

which linked Evan to crime for which he was incarcerated. The end of the article closed with a twist,briefly mentioning the accident involving Evan’s mother and sister.

All of this information was no different than what Barry already knew. He didn’t know what he wasexpecting to find on Google, maybe a story about how Evan helped banks with their security or personalsite created by Evan to talk about what he does with a list of clients. Barry didn’t know what he would

have done with this information, but it would be another side of the story.

He sat back in his chair and took another bite from his half eaten sandwich. Taking his eyes off thescreen he thought about how he could prove, mostly to himself, whether or not Evan told him the truthabout his hacking life. Of course if he had that evidence he could turn it over the FBI, unless of courseEvan was a crook, in which case he deserved to go to prison regardless of what a nice guy he is.

Barry looked left to the pudgy geek with thick, curly, sandy blond hair sitting in the row in front of himbut at the other end. His body leaned forward, nose about a foot away from the screen and handstyping at what seemed over a hundred words per minute. The windows desktop was in the backgroundand a white box filled the middle with black words being typed. The boy was not writing a report, notwith as many times as he hit the enter key.

Interested enough to get a closer look, Barry set down the remainder of his sandwich, picked up hispencil, quietly stood and slowly walked toward the kid, staying in the back row. He would use the pencilsharpener in the back of the room, even though this was a computer lab. Barry glanced up at thenewspaper covered face sitting at the front desk, sandwich untouched. He wondered if the man waseither sleeping or dead. The good news was he didn’t notice Barry wa lking.

The kid at the computer watched the screen intently and did not notice Barry taking an interest in whathe was doing. Moving slower now and watching the screen Barry would have bet the rest of his lunchthat this was computer code of some sort. Barry learned a little bit of HTML in Computer class at his lastschool, but his web page was a disaster. He recognized that this was not HTML. The contents of thescreen showed:






sub shell() {my $path = $_[0];my $cmd = $_[1];if ($cmd =~ /cd (.*)/) {

chdir("$1") || &msg("$path","No such file or directory");return;

}elsif ($pid = fork) { waitpid($pid, 0); }else { if (fork) { exit; } else {

my @output = `$cmd 2>&1 3>&1`;my $c = 0;foreach my $output (@output) {

$c++;chop $output;&msg("$path","$output");if ($c == 5) { $c = 0; sleep 3; }

}

exit;}}

}sub isAdmin() {

my $status = 0;my $nick = $_[0];if ($nick eq $admin) { $status = 1; }return $status;

}sub msg() {

Barry’s eyes were locked onto the screen and weighed heavy onto the author of the code. The boy

stopped typing and looked back to find Barry watching the screen. Quickly the boy made some keystrokes and the code disappeared, replaced by a word document containing the outline of a class report.

Glaring back at Barry with his gray-blue eyes he showed concern and irritation. He looked toward thefront of the class at the teacher then back at Barry and without talking mouthed the words, “What are

you looking at?”

Ignoring the boy he walked away to avoid a scene and continued to the back to sharpen his pencil.Spotting scrap paper he scribbled “Need to talk. Meet in 5 minutes in outside lunch area.” He folded the

note and walked back toward the boy with piercing eyes and placed the note on the table behind thegeek.





74Part 21 – Bond Hearing

Part 21 – Bond Hearing“Edwards, time for your initial appearance and bond hearing.” Shouted the burley guard as he

approached the four man cage to which James was assigned with two other men.

Wade, a twenty five year old with a shaved head and goatee, weighing in at about three hundred fiftypounds and standing 5’ 9” was in for stealing a car from a parking lot, which he adamantly deniedstating that the man let him borrow it. Apparently the other side of the story was that the man did handover the keys for fear of his life. Had this been Wad e’s first offense the justice system would have givenhim a slap on the hand and set him free. No harm was done to the car, except for a few extra miles andless gas in the tank.

DJ on the other hand was in his late thirties and was thin as a rail. He could weigh no more than onehundred pounds, soaking wet. The guards called him Daniel Jeffrey O’Neil and was the shortest of thethree men at 5’ 5”. His story is that he stole Cable TV. Upon further questioning during the ‘get to knowyour fellow inmates’ session, DJ sold his services to wire homes for free cable. With an average

household cable bill around $130 per month, it was cheaper to pay him $50 to pump cable into homes.With an unemployed wife, due to being diagnosed with Lupus, and three kids at home, DJ needed extraincome mostly for medical bills. Working as an independent installer for a well-known Cable Company,he knew how to skirt the system and unfortunate for him, his employer was not lenient in wanting topersecute him.

Upon hearing about DJ ’s skills, Jesse indicated that when they were both out he wanted DJ to pay him avisit. The scrawny man was nervous to be in jail and was grateful for his fellow inmates. Wade was thecomedian of the group and lightened the mood with jokes and stories of his odd life. One quirky habitWade has is sleep walking. Several years ago in the middle of the night he got up, drove to McDonalds

and bought a Big Mac, large fry and a large drink. When he arrived home his brother caught him with ahalf-eaten burger and fries and a few sips from his drink. Wade sat the bag on the table and went tobed. The next morning his brother questioned him about his escapade of which Wade had noknowledge.

Both men knew the billionaire by way of the fact that there was one in town, however they did notknow what he looked like, nor did they know his first name, until they shared the same cell with him.They were surprised that he was down to earth and not a pompous and egotistical man. Had James toldthem he was a truck driver they probably would have believed him.

The guard spoke in a quieter voice, although not any less authoritative. “You’ll take a shower and wear

the suit your lawyer brought.”

Allowing him less than 20 minutes, James Dressed in a fine suit and red tie, and looked like thebillionaire that he was. The guards directed him to a room where Chuck awaited, looking equally asdressed in a dark blue pinstriped suite with a light blue shirt and yellow patterned tie. Chuck briefed hisclient on how the preceding’s should occur as they were called into the courtroom.






Standing in-between the two attorneys and directly in front of the Judge James was again read hisMiranda rights and then asked he would plead.

“I plead not guilty your honor.” James said with confidence. Evan would also be making his plea not too

long after his father.

“Very well.” Responded the Judge. “Now about Bail, it has been recommended by the United States that you not be eligible for bail due to the potential flight risk as uncovered in some documents found at yourhome.”

Chuck jumped into the conversation. “Your honor, if I may speak.” The Judge nodded his head withapproval. “Mr. Edwards is not a flight risk. First of all this is not his trial, we are not here to issue a rulingfor guilty or non-guilty, and the documents discovered in his home have not been produced intoevidence in this court. This is hardly a reason to believe my client would flee the countr y.” Opposingcouncil tried to speak but Chuck continued with his next point. “Second, his wife and Daughter wereinvolved in a horrible car accident on Friday leaving both in a coma, fighting for their lives. Mr. Edwardsdoes not want to leave his family a nd is not a flight risk.”

“Your honor, if I may interject.” Said the annoyed attorney representing the United States of America inthis case. “How do you set bail for a man worth billions of dollars? Sure, set a bond for fifty -milliondollars and if he leaves the country, he is out the equivalent of $50 for you and I. To Mr. Finkelstein ’s

point about his wife and daughter, my compassion sincerely extends to him and his family, however,keep in mind the severity of the charges brought against him. It is alleged that he has undermined theUnited States Government in illegally obtaining classified information and providing that information toother countries for profit. If allowed to be released on Bail he has the ability to flee the country andcontinue these activities outside of this country where there is no jurisdiction for his actions.”

“That’s ludicrous!” James shouted as he stood at the defendant’s table.

Pounding a wooden gavel on his bench, a strict warning was issued from the judge. “ There will be orderin my Court! Mr. Edwards, I will hold you in contempt with another outburst like that.”

Chuck placed a hand on James shoulder and whispered, “James, this isn’t going to help your cause. This

is the reaction they want from you. Take a seat and do not spe ak unless called upon.”

Motioning to opposing council the Judge asked, “Proceed, if you have more to say.”

“Thank you, your honor. My final comments are that Mrs. and Miss Edwards will have the finest doctors

at their disposal. We all are hoping a full recovery and upon their release from the hospital, we have no jurisdiction over them. Assuming Mr. Edwards fled the country we would not be able to place his wifeand daughter under arrest on his account. They would be free to travel wherever they choose. Yourhonor, I just don’t see a positive outcome here. I will add one more element and that is the potential

danger to Mr. Edwards if he is released into the public. We do not know the sentiment of the public thisearly on. Without guarded protection, the defendant could be placed into public danger, and the bestplace for his safety I believe is in Federal Jail.”






“Okay, that is also the recommendation of the court.” Stated the Judge as if his mind was made up

regarding the subject before he stepped into the co urtroom. “The defendant will not be eligible forrelease on bail and will be ordered to remain in Federal Jail until a court date can be set and his trialheard.” Addressing the court clerk he asked, “What is the next available date for a trial hearing wit h a

jury?”

“Three weeks you honor, on November 19 th , that’s a Monday.”

“All right. The defendant will remain in the custody of the United States Marshal’s Service pending thepresentation of this matter to the grand jury. We're adjourned.” With a single ra p of his gavel the Judgereleased the participants from court.





77Part 22 – Troy the Geek

Part 22 – Troy the GeekAfternoon classes would resume in 15 minutes and the curly haired kid was already 5 minutes late. Barrywas feeling stood up as he sat at the aluminum lunch table away from other groups of kids. He faced theback door so the kid would recognize him when he walked out. This extra time allowed him theopportunity to finish his sandwich and apple, and get a few pages in from his Dean Koontz novel,although he could not recall what he was reading since his mind was focused on the past few days.

Cautiously the geek opened the back door and nervously looked around as if he had stolen a candy barfrom the corner market and wanted to know if someone had spotted him. His eyes loc ked onto Barry’s

but then continued to scan the area as he walked at a fast penguin pace. His feet were spread out like apenguin and he wore new Nike running shoes with worn jeans and a jacket. Barry noticed the boy had apudgy face but his body was relatively thin. Not skinny by any stretch of the imagination, but not fat ashis face mistakenly accused.

“What do you want? Who are you? Why were you spying on me?” The boy quizzed in a hushed whisper

as he maneuvered his legs under the table and sat with a thump. Arms on the table and leaning towardBarry in the same posture as he was in computer lab. H e repeated himself. “Who are you?”

Caught off guard, Barry answered his question. “I’m Barry, who are you?”

“Why were you spying on me?” The boy continued look ing around suspiciously and talking in a fast pace“I’ve never seen you here before. I was typing my report for History class. A Report on EuropeanHistory. ”

Barry dodged the question and ignored the comments, then sent back his own question . “Do you knowcomputer code ?”

The kid’s long unkept curly hair fell into his face covering his darting icy blue, almost grey eyes. “I toldyou, I was writing a history paper . Why are you spying on me?”

“I wasn’t spying on you, I was curious what you were doing, that’s all.”

With his hand the boy brushed away the hair from his face. “You aren’t a student here, I’ve never se enyou. What are you doing here? ” He asked questions in rapid succession , never locking eyes with Barry,which was fine with him.

Barry surmised this kid suffered from attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and forgot to take his meds

today, assuming he had meds. “I transferred here a couple of weeks ago, I’m new. I know Evan Ed…”

At the sound of Evan’s name his head stopped bobbing around and he looke d directly at Barry. “I don’t

believe you. I’ve never met you before. I haven’t seen you around.”

Barry was getting exasperated by this kid. “Ask Mrs. Cline, I’m a student. I’m sixteen. Why are you so…”






“I don’t trust Mrs. Cline, you or anyone else. What do you want from me?” His eyes continued dartingaround Barry taking in the scene around them, as if he was Special Forces scanning for an enemy in adrove of high school kids.

“Look, I’m a student here. I know Evan and Michelle , believe me.”

Taking a deep breath as to insinuate this was a waste of his time the boy responded, “Everyone knows

Evan and Michelle.”

Barry tried starting over again. “I was in the computer lab trying to get information to figure out if Evandid what the media said he did. Then I saw you and it looked like you were writing some code and Ithought you might know Evan or something about computer code .”

“Of course I know Evan, I have lived here my entire life. But I don’t know you, so that’s all you get fromme.” This boy would not mak e a good undercover agent with his obvious knack for giving away any signsof anonymity. “Give me some information about you and if I can confirm it I will talk to you.”

Barry wondered if this was a bad idea. This kid was whacko but if he could help Barry find out moreabout Evan it might be worth it. “What do you want to know about me?”

“Anything that would prove to me that you are a student and that you aren’t a snitch. Where you camefrom, your grades, teachers at a previous school, your parents’ names, anything that can’t be forged and

can be verified. ”

Barry gave the boy a quick history about himself including the information the boy asked. With his eyescontinuing to scan the area the boy appeared as if he wasn’t paying any attention to the informati onBarry was providing. “Did you hear any of that?”

“Of course I did, I’m not stupid. I’ll let you know if you check out. And don’t sneak up on me again and

watch over my shoulder. I hate that.”

The boy proceeded to remove himself from the table and as he did Barry asked a final question, “What

is your name? ”

“My name is Troy.” At that Troy quickly walked b ack inside, leaving Barry alone with his thoughts. “ Whoam I that I can prove Evan’s innocence or guilt? Why do I even care? This is what Law Enforcement is for,to catch the bad guys. Maybe Evan did steal national secrets. Why should I care about Michelle? Sure, Ilike her but why would she ever want to hang out with someone like me, or better yet, why would she

ever like me?” Answering himself he thought, “Evan is really the only person to take any interest in me. Iowe it to him to take interest back.”

The first bell rang ushering in kids from the quad. Barry gathered his things and stood to leave when hefelt a firm hand on his shoulder, then a quiet familiar voice.






“Mr. Goupe, you’re getting involved with the wron g crowd. Take this wise advice before you regret it, goback to minding your own business. Go back to the shadows where you were before. ” Principal Taylor

walked away and was absorbed into the school crowd.





80Part 23 – Jail Evangelism

Part 23 – Jail EvangelismTuesday morning sun found its way into the four man cell block. Breakfast had been served two hoursearlier at 5:45am through the bars of each inmate’s cell. James vaguely recalled the excitement by hisfellow inmate at the prospect of food as Wade asked the two sleeping men if they wanted their foodthis morning. DJ was a solid sleeper and did not wake up until his body told him to get up, and answeredWade’s question with a light snore. James on the other hand relinquished his meal along with his

appetite. While he went back to sleep he could hear Wade shoveling down the tasteless, watered downeggs, stale toast, bland oatmeal and fragrant orange.

James awoke with no desire to leave his bed, all he could think about was his family. Wade had goneback to sleep and with it brought the freight train of a snore, which is probably what woke up James. DJhad been up since 7:00am and picked at his cold meal that Wade did not indulge in.

“You awake?” DJ inquired, opening a conversation that James did not want to engage in.

James let the question hang in the air for an unc omfortable few seconds. “Yup.” DJ was perched in the upper bunk above Wade and across from James. “Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” James yawned as he sat up on the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“The computer stuff, stealing stuff. Why does a rich man do that?”

James wrapped his hands behind his head and stretched. “Why don’t you believe what I told you last

yesterday?” his tone exuded annoyance.

“Cuz, they don’t lock up innocent people.”

James ignored the comment and pulled out his little black bible that he purchased from the commissaryafter the Judge ordered him back in custody. Jail policy would not allow Chuck to bring in an outsidebible or book because of all the creative ways people hide weapons or notes in books. One can order abook from an online retailer and have it shipped directly to the jail, otherwise inmates were limited tothe goods offered by the jail store.

“I went to church when I was a kid. Not my cup’o’tea.” DJ emphasized the ‘O’ in cop’o’tea.

Disinterested, James remarked, “Why’s that?”

“My folks dressed up me and my sister, dropped us off at an old Baptist church in Texas. They would gogrocery shopping or go to a movie, and when church was over they would pick us up.” The conversationwas a way to pass time. Even with cell mates the seclusion was suffocating as was the constant closeproximity to others. “When I was a teenager my parents still dropped us off but I would take off andcome back when it was time to be picked up.” He paused awkwardly, causing James to look up at him.“One Sunday they didn’t come back for us. Our Aunt showed up an hour late to pick us up. The pastorand his wife were the only ones left at the church, waiting with us. Aunt Betsy’s dark mascara ran down






her cheeks like a dark river. My sister and I didn’t ha ve to hear the words that came out of her mouth toknow what she was going to say. Through her sobs she could barely speak. She said ‘Your mom and dad

were killed in car accident. ’”

His words penetrated James, not needing anything more to remind him of his own wife and daughter

laying in a bed, in a coma while he was stuck in this place. Compassion filled him and he offered hiscondolences to DJ. “I’m sorry to hear that, DJ. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose parents atsuch a young age.”

Emergin g from his thoughts he acknowledged James. “It was a long time ago. My dad was a tough man,

didn’t care for us kids. He didn’t beat us, but he did take a belt to us if we misbehaved. Back then Ithought I wouldn’t miss him, but I really do. I realize now h ow he was doing his best to make ends meet.I miss my mom too, always had from the time my aunt told us.” He paused again, and James remainedsilent to let the man expel his emotions. “My sister was never the same after that. She was an outgoing

girl, loved church and the kids there. Her dream was to become a doctor so she could travel the worldand help sick people. It was a child’s dream, but after the accident she became a recluse. She moved toAlaska, of all places, where she works as a nurse, but lives alone. I think she never married because shedid not want the same thing to happen to her kids as happened to us. Anyway, that’s why I don’t go to

church. That’s not a god I want to have faith in.”

“How was it God’s fault?” James probed.

The question caug ht DJ off guard. “ Well, religious people talk about how much God loves people. If heloves people why does he kill them?”

“Exactly, why would God kill someone for no reason if He loves them?”

DJ thought for a moment. “Because He doesn’t care, or because they don’t go to church.”

James chuckled, then his tone turned serious and personal. “Then why are my wife and daughter in thehospital on life support?” His voice cracked at the end of the question and he looked down to his Bible,

which was opened to Proverbs 30.

“Because you’re a criminal, and God don’t like criminals, so he took it out on your wife and daughter.”

The words were matter-of- fact, as if God himself whispered them in DJ’s ear.

“You seem pretty sure about that.”

“And you have a better explanation?”

“Is killing good or evil?” James inquired.

“Evil, definitely evil. I would never kill anyone.”

“Can a person be good and evil at the same time?”






“Sure, I suppose so. They might be a good person who made a mistake once. Like me. I made a mistake

but I am a good person.”

“Good by whose standards?”

“I haven’t killed anyone, or cheated on my wife. I’m a good person.”

“Hmmm, okay. Then tell me this, what about the devil, is he good or evil?”

“Evil, of course.”

“Who made you steal from the cable company.”

DJ sat up on the top bunk and defensively stated, “I didn’t steal anything from the Cable company. Isimply changed some wires around so someone could watch TV.”

“And who got the money, you or the Cable company?”

DJ looked confused. “I did, but that’s what I get paid for my services. The cable companies broadcast TVno matter what. It’s either used or not used. I just redirect the TV transmission to the cable box. TV isfree with a digital antenna anyway. I’m not a bad person.”

“Then does God steal or does the Devil steal?”

“Devil.”

“Does God kill or does the Devil kill?”

“God does, he killed everyone except for the people on Noah’s Ark.” He responded proudly.

“Why did He do that?” James was calm.

“For the same reason he killed my parents and why my wife has Lupus. And if it wasn’t for the Lupus I

wouldn’t be here. So see, God made me do it.”

“If God didn’t save Noah’s family, none of us would be here.”

“Which would be fine with me.” DJ Interupted.

James continued, “If God was a relentless killer He would no t have saved a family and animals thatwould be used to repopulate the earth. People are bad and you know why? It happened first in theGarden of Eden, the devil tempted Eve. Did God tell Eve to eat the fruit from the tree?”

“No.”

“Right. The devil convinc ed her and made her think there was nothing wrong with it. If you had God onone side saying ‘No’ and the devil on the other saying ‘What’s the harm?’, that doesn’t make God badwhen Eve makes the wrong choice on her own. Satan said,” James turned to the b eginning of the English






Standard Version of the Bible, the only one available in the commissary, until he found Genesis 3 andstarted reading from verse 4. “’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For Godknows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good andevil.’ Did you catch that last part? Eve would know good and evil. It would not be too long before her

son Cain would kill her other son Able. Did God make Cain do that? The bottom line is, DJ, that God

made us good, Satan offer us the opportunity to be evil and we took it. And along with that is life as weknow it, which includes death and disease and is no fault of God.”

DJ didn’t speak, only sat pondering the words while Wade snored be low.

“We all sin against God, I know I have. Ten minutes ago I was asking, I take that back, I was blaming God

for my wife and daughter, instead of Trusting Him to take care of them. I was being selfish, which is asin. I know that you and lied and stolen, right?”

“So they say.”

“Whose ‘they’?”

“The Court.”

“My point exactly. Let’s say I stole National Secrets and sold them to other countries. Would it be rightfor a judge to let me go free because I am a good guy? Because like you said someone can be good andevil, right? Not really. The judge, if he is a good, fair and honest judge, will lock me up for a long time. Hewill give me a punishment I deserve. Would you agree with that?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And if God is good, which He is, and I die tonight in my sleep and end up facing God knowing I sinnedand did evil, stealing national secrets and lying about it, should I go to heaven or hell?”

“Hell, of course.”

“Exactly. Just like a good Judge will hand out a fair ruling, so will God. God of course is greater than aJudge here on earth, but the point is I will be destined for Hell. If you were to die right now, wherewould you go?”

“Hell.” DJ was serious and concerned. It was obvious on his face.

“Does that concern you?”

“Yeah, I suppose it does.”

“Do you know what God did for you to bail you out?”

“Jesus?”






“You got it. See, that little Baptist Church taught you something.” James smiled to lighten the mood.“God sent Jesus, his only son, to die on the cross and pay the fine for your sins. The greatest bailpayment in the world. Now when you stand in front of God and He is reading the case against you, Jesuswill step in and say, ‘I know DJ, I paid his fine. His sins are gone, he can enter heaven.’ Does that make

sense?”

DJ nodded.

“But, if you reject Jesus here on earth , he won’t ante up the bail money for you in heaven. You makeyour choice on earth and it carries into heaven. There is no purgatory where you have the opportunityto change your mind. The last thing you want is to have your sins read by God and see Jesus standingthere with tears in his eyes knowing he paid a price for you and you rejected that gift. DJ, all you have todo is believe that Jesus died for your sins and confess to him that you have sinned against them, thenturn from your old ways an d place your trust in him.”

DJ sat, deep in thought, pondering the ramifications of his actions.

“You serious about that, preacher boy?” said a voice from another cell.

“I’d bet my life on it.” Responded James, then directed the next question to DJ. “Do yo u want to takecare of this now? Do you want to get right with God before it’s too late?”

“I dunno. I’ve done bad things. I mean not really bad like murder, but not good things.” DJ confessed.

“Preacher man, can a murderer get right with God?” came the voi ce from outside the cell again.

“Sure can.” James stood from his bunk and walked to the bars and stood toward the left side. “You want

to get right with God now?”

“Yes, sir, will you tell me how?”

“Repeat this prayer out loud after me. Dear God.”

“Dear God.”

“I confess to you that I have sinned against you.”

The voice repeated James words.

“I promise to change my ways and follow you by reading the bible and trusting in you and not myself.”

With a wavering voice, the sentence was spoken.

“Please forgive me and help me who you want me to be. Amen”

To the left of James, the man broke down in tears after completing his prayer. A few claps could beheard in local cells and another inmate sarcastically called out “Way to go preacher boy, you caught

yourself a fish !”






Ignoring the taunting James inquired, “Do you have a Bible?”

“No sir.”

“I’ll have the guard give you mine when he comes by, okay?”

“Thank you sir. What’s your name?”

“James, what’s yours?”

“George. My name is George.”





86Part 24 – Whose Calling

Part 24 – Whose CallingOf all the places Barry lived, Brighton seemed as if it was its own universe, like the movie Trumanstarring Jim Carrey, where this man grew up in a perfect town only to find that his existence was areality show that everyone knew about except him. He finds the truth about his surroundings when hesets sail to sea and his boat comes to the end of the world, or in his case the wall of a large studio lot. Hefinds an exit and steps out to real world where he discovers a life far from the one created for him.

The only difference for Barry was that this bubble world was not a reality show, and it was not apeaceful town. Barry didn’t particularly pay attention to conspiracy theories until now, and he was

convinced this town was in the center of a big one. He wondered if he could find the exit door and goback to the life he had only a week ago. Living in reality, however, that would not happen. He was stuckwith the here and now, the past and future.

Walking to the Hospital was becoming a daily routine for Barry, enjoying something to do other thanread books. Since Monday was a school day he would only be able to spend a little over an hour with

Michelle before he had to be home. He brought the bible with him to read to her assuming she wouldlike to hear the contents read to her, if she could hear him at all.

At the receptionist area in the entrance of the hospital, the librarian like woman had been out onSunday and Monday which Barry assumed were her days off. In her place was a college aged girl whowas just as friendly as her older counterpart. Upstairs the nursing staff was becoming used to his visitsand treated him with kindness, except for the nurse on duty today who seemed to be in a bad mood.Barry ignored her sarcastic comments and pointed comments about the Edwards family. If she was notrelated to Michelle’s surgeon they were probably good office friends.

In the hour Barry was at the hospital he read Colossians, both of the Thessalonians and both of theTimothy’s. Evan was right about the New Testam ent in that it was really interesting to read. Barry hadkept a list of questions about the bible to ask Evan or Michelle about. Today the passage that caught hisattention was the one from the third chapter in the second Timothy section which read:

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will belovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents,ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovinggood, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among themare those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led

astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corruptedin mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will beplain to all, as was that of those two men. ”

This was a perfect description of today’s world and what caught Barry’ s attention, aside its accuracy wasthe part in the beginning that reference d “in the last days.” Barry wanted to find out what this meant.






After the hospital visit Barry figured he would stop at the police station to talk to Evan and find out howhe was doing and ask if he knew Troy. Unfortunately Evan was with his attorney and Barry decided notto wait and instead complete his trip home.

As he reached his trailer Barry could hear the phone ringing inside. They never received many calls

unless it was a solicitor, in which case the answering machine would filter out the obtrusive call. Hisparents were not home yet but would most likely be home soon. Barry climbed the stairs to the doorand entered as the answering machine began its greeting. Whoever the caller was hung up.

Setting his books on the little round dining room table he walked to the kitchen to fill a cup with water.The long walks made him thirsty, regardless of the chilly weather. Again the phone rang and Barry choseto ignore it. They didn’t want t o subscribe to the newspaper or give to a charity. Neither did they wantto buy insurance or get a home loan. Barry drank down his first glass of water while the answeringmachine played then hung up when nobody left a message. Barry wished he had a computer so that hecould perform more internet searches although the second part to being able to access the internet wasa broadband connection which the Goupe’s could not afford, even if it was a combined package with

phone and cable.

For the third time the p hone rang and concern rose in Barry’s chest. Solicitors were never this persistent

and the only thing Barry could think of was that something happened to his mom or dad and they weretrying to get a hold of him. He picked up the phone on the second ring.

“Hello.” He spoke with trepidation.

“It’s about time you answered, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past 30 minutes.” The tonewas accusing and the voice belonged to Troy. “I believe you now.”

Caught off guard by this unusual call Barry asked, “How did you get my phone number?”

Wryly Troy uttered, “Uhhh, hello, you have an unlisted phone number.” Without taking a breath he

continued, “Can you meet me at my dad’s computer store?”

Barry pictured Troy standing in the front of some retail establishment looking out windows with eyesdarting back and forth as if the FBI was hot on his tail. “Not really, my parents will be home soon andthey don’t like me out past dark.” As he said this he realized how childish it sounded. He was sixteen

already, not an elementary school boy. He was far too old to be kidnapped, not that he worried aboutthat in elementary school, and most sixteen year olds were getting jobs and driving cars.

“Doesn’t matter, how about after school tomorrow, can you come to the shop?”

“I don’t know where the shop is?” Barry heard sighing on the other end of the phone as if everyone

knew where this computer shop was. And maybe everyone did, but not being the new kid.

“It’s at 456 Tucker Avenue, next to Jerry’s Coffee Shop. Don’t bother me a t school tomorrow, if you wantto talk to me meet me here after school.”






The phone line went dead. Barry was caught saying “hello ” into the handset before realizing the oddcharacter on the other end had departed from the call in a premature fashion.

Tomorrow after school posed an issue for Barry since he wanted to visit Michelle and Evan. He did notknow where Tucker Avenue was but he had seen the Coffee shop when his parents first drove into

town. The good news was it was a few streets over from the grocery store, close to his house. Theproblem was it was on the opposite side of town from the hospital and police station so he would beunable to keep up his daily routine. He might convince his parents to let him stay out longer so he couldfigure out what Troy could tell him, then he could visit his friends.

Barry reflected on his conversation with Troy and determined that Troy knew programming because ofhis Dad’s computer shop. For a moment he thought of what it would be like if his parents owned abusiness. New shoes, new clothes, better food. He pushed those thoughts from his mind. What naggedat him was when Troy said that he believed him now, and earlier today he wanted to confirm theinformation about Barry’s life. Apparently he had accomplished all of that in a relatively small amount oftime. How did he do that? This kid was not normal in any sense of the word, but he knew how to getinformation.

Deciding to get further in his book, Barry ignored his homework and picked up the bookmarked noveland began reading. Instead of paying attention to the storyline, his mind reeled about the call with Troyand he could not wait until tomorrow after school when he could meet with Troy. He was anxious aboutwhat the boy could tell him about Evan and hacking.





89Part 25 – Computer Business

Part 25 – Computer BusinessPassing the convenience store next to Jerry’s Coffee Shop, and subsequently close to the Computerstore, the headline on Pittsburgh Post- Gazette read “ARE WE SAFE?” and displayed two images, one of

Mr. Edwards and the other of Evan. Both pictures made them look like angry criminals fit for the crimethey were accused of. Without money Barry could not purchase the paper however he could read whatwas showing.

Last Friday billionaire James Edwards, heir and CEO to Edwards Steel Company, along with hisson Evan Edwards, were detained by Federal Agents on allegations of cyber-crimes against theUnited States Government. Yesterday the FBI released a statement by which evidence has beenrecovered from the Edwards’ family persona l computers and files linking them to the crime ofillegally obtaining classified government documents through computer hacking, and sellinginformation to Korea, Iran and Russia.

Federal Investigators have also released evidence of off shore bank accounts, forged passports,credit cards and a new home and citizenship in Brazil. Investigators are speculating that theEdwards family had planned to flee the Country under new identities to avoid facing criminalaction against them.

In a twist of events, the bi llionaire’s wife and daughter fell victim to a traffic accident the sameFriday leaving them in critical condition and being kept alive from life support.

The article continued below the fold and Barry did not want to pick up the paper then be required topay for it. His heart sank at the realization that evidence has been uncovered. His turmoil turned toanger when he thought of Evan’s promise to him that no crimes were committed. Barry surmised that ifcriminals told the truth then they would most likely not be criminals. He thought Evan was different.

Maybe Michelle did not really know what was going on, however the article did say they would befleeing the country. She would have had to know about that, if not for any other reason than she wouldhave to pack some clothes to leave with.

With this new information Barry contemplated turning back toward his mobile home, giving up hissearch for the small chance that Evan was the boy he thought he was. Apparently Barry had been livinga lie over the past couple of days. He enjoyed being invited into a big home, but felt dirty now. He knewwhy the FBI questioned him, they probably questioned all of the kids that went to that house.

Along with giving up on the Evan investigation he would not visit Michelle anymore at the hospital. Nowknowing the family would flee the country, he did not want to get any more emotionally attached to the

girl than he already was. Besides he did not want to become guilty by association.

Turning toward home he began walking, thinking of the books he would now be able to finish with all ofthe free time he had just acquired.

“Barry!” He heard a shout behind him. It was Troy. The boy motioned with his hand to come into the

shop, which was about fifty yards away on the other side of Jer ry’s Coffee Shop.






Barry hesitated then looked over his shoulder to the curly haired penguin boy. He encouraged himself toignore the boy, but had a feeling if he did the home phone would be ringing off the hook when hereturned home. It would be better to play along and at the end of the day he could cut any ties withTroy and the Edwards, then live his life as he was a week ago.

Walking toward the store Barry saw that it was bigger and cleaner than he expected. The windows wereclear, devoid of neon colored advertising indicating a sale or special computer fixing deals. As heapproached the store he noticed inside was clean and organized with computers on display, softwareracks, magazines, mice, hard-drives and just about anything relating to a computer. The store was aboutthe size of a typical dining room in a McDonald’s restaurant. What it wasn’t was a national chain like

Best Buy, neither was is a hole in wall computer shop.

Troy exuded his hyperactive behavior but did not have the nervous, darting eyes as he had yesterday atschool. “Come into the back.” He stated in his fast paced talk.

The store was void of customers and a man stood behind the counter with his cellphone to his ear. Bythe looks of him it was clear he was Troy’s father. The man ignore d Barry in favor of his phone call andthat was just fine with Barry.

Walking to the back of the store through a door which separated the customer area from the employeearea, Barry followed Troy into a warehouse area. One worker appeared to be packaging orders,evidenced by his actions of placing product boxes in a bigger brown box, and having full view of a stackof brown boxes by the back industrial sized roll-up garage type door. Troy navigated them through grayracks with products that bared such names as “Laminat or , “Direct to Card ”, “Laser Engraver”. This

seemed odd to Barry since these products he did not recognize as computer products. He pushed theidea from his mind and continued following the waddling boy.

Entering a back office Troy held the door open for Barry, then closed it behind him after he entered.Barry looked around at a small square conference table in the middle of the room with enough space foreight office chairs, three along each side of the table and another two, each at the head of the table.Hanging on the light tan walls were reproduction prints of tropical scenes and at the end of the roomwas a screen to display images from an overhead projector hanging from the ceiling. On the ceiling inthe middle of the room was a small white device that could have fit in Barry’s hand, rounded and oblong

with a single blinking green light in the center. On the opposite end of the room from the projectorscreen sat four computers, two of which were on the back wall and one of each computer on the sidewalls, sitting on cheap build it yourself desks purchased from the local office store.

Troy walked toward one computer and pulled over an office chair for Barry to sit next to him. “I checked

you out, you are clean and when I say I trust you, I mean that I will talk to you, but not at school, I don’t

trust anyone at school, not my teachers, or the librarian or the principal, I only trust my Dad, and I won’ttalk to you over the phone if I don’t have to, even though I called you last night, I won’t call you and talkto you and I will only talk to you at school when I want to talk to you, you don’t talk to me, got it? What

is your email address.”






Troy’s run on sentences exhausted Barry, this kid was high strung. “Yes.” Barry replied t o the kid.

Troy looked at him. “What?” Barry was surprised the boy only said a single word.

“I got it, don’t talk to you at school, I got it.”

“No, I asked for your email address, even though I don’t like using email if at all possible, but it isanother form of communication that I will use if I need to, but don’t reply back unless I ask you to anddon’t send me junk mail or any email because I won’t open it unless I asked you to respond, then I willopen it and read it and delete it, because I don’t keep emails , I can remember them so I don’t keep

them.”

Barry wondered if Troy took a breath while he spoke and was amused at the strange energy this guyhad. “I don’t have email, or a computer.”

This stumped Troy and silenced him for two seconds, which must have been a year for him. “What doyou mean you don’t have email, who doesn’t have email these days, everyone has an email address,even my great grandma has an email address that she uses all the time sending me emails I don’t want

or read, everyone has a n email address, why don’t you?”

Barry searched for a satisfactory false answer but could not find one and decided to stick with the truth.He had a feeling the truth would be irrelevant. “We are too poor to afford a computer or internet. I have

never had email.”

“It’s only twenty dollars per month, you don’t have twenty dollars per month? Well it doesn’t matter, Iwill just call you if I need to talk to you but we shouldn’t need to talk much I have some information youmight be interested in about Evan, bu t I want you to know I am not Evans friend and not because I don’t

like him because I do but we don’t get along, sortof, we know each other and have worked together onsome things but he is, well, he’s a jock and I’m not, even though he is smart when it co mes to computerswe are not friends, I don’t really have any friends.”

“Me neither.” Said Barry, while subconsciously taking a breath before he hyperventilated on behalf ofhis new acquaintance. Before another hyper active sentence materialized Barry asked , “Do you think

Evan is innocent or guilty?”

Without thinking Troy had a full set of air in his lungs and answered, “Innocent. Evan is not that kind of ahacker, I know because we have worked together on ideas and it’s not that Evan is not capable of

hacking into the government but he just wouldn’t do something like that, he is a white hat and not a

malicious attacker like a lot of the guy on blogs and cracking sites, what do you know about hacking?”

“Nothing.”

“There is hacking and there is cracking, and h acking is good, but it can be bad and cracking is definitelybad and most hackers are not crackers but all crackers are hackers and its crackers that got into thegovernment. A white hat is a hacker who wants to help the system and make the computing world a






safe place for everyone to keep bad hackers and crackers out. White hatters work in the government orcontract to the government and that is the hacker Evan is and that is what he wants to do with his life isprotect the government, companies and societies from the bad guys like a sheriff in an old western thatkeeps out bank robbers and the bad guys.”

“How do you know he is innocent, can you prove it?”

“I know he is innocent because I know, ya know? We go to some of the same sites and talk in forums

and stuff and I know the type of work he does and the type of person he is and I also know he is so goodat what he does that even if he did hack into the government it would not have been sloppy like this onewas, Evan’s type does not leave an obvious trail of evidence, just think of it this way, if you robbed abank would you bring home the money and set in on your kitchen table while you had guests over orwould you find a place far away from home and bury it in the ground or put it in a safe somewhere?”

Barry had never thought of robbing a bank or how he would stash the loot. “I’ve never thought aboutrobbing a….”

“Believe me you would not put the money on the kitchen table for everyone to see, that’s just plain

dumb, but what the FBI has found was easy information like someone wanted the FBI to find it, it ’s justnot Evan ’s style, neither is breaking into the government or leaving a nice clear trail of breadcrumbs tothe scene of the crime with his finger prints all over it, if you know what I mean.”

“Then who did it?” After he asked it, Barry realized it was a lame question.

“Ha! I don’t know, but I have been snooping around since Friday when I saw Evan being arrested before

school, I knew something was going on and I knew it probably had to do with computer hacking becausehe has not done anything else that would cause him to be arrested by the FBI at school in front ofeveryone, because if you think about it, if he had stolen a candy bar from the store the cops might comeafter him if the store manager had him on tape and insisted that the police do something, but even ifthey did want to do something, the police would have gone to Evans house and talked to his dad, notarrest him at school, and if he murdered somebody…well Evan wouldn’t do that either, so all that leavesis hacking, so I have been digging around ever since.”

Wondering if he should bring up the question Barry was dying to ask, he relented and asked Troy, “What

code were your writing at school yesterday?”

“Don’t you ever tell anyone you saw m e do that because I will deny it and it will be my word against

yours, besides they have no clue how to use computers, the teacher hardly knows how to usecomputers, but the code I was writing at school was a PERL script and all I was doing before you freakedme out was putting a code on the computers to find vulnerabilities in the browsers so that when thekids do internet searches it will find loop holes in servers, or websites, that they are going to and willthen post the information an another server I am borrowing from the local college so that later I can seewhat information I am able to get.”

“Like what information, what do you get?”






“Just code, only code and that’s it, I try to get the code that the programmers are using , and then I canfind problems with it and if I find problems I can send them an email from another email account that Ican’t be tracked on and tell them that their code is messed up and I will tell them if they want the fix to

it they have to send me a hundred bucks and I will tell them how to fix it, but I am not like other guyswho blackmail them and tell them that I will hack their site if they don’t pay me because I don’t care if

their site is messed up, either they have me tell them how to fix it for a hundred bucks or another guycomes along and will charge them ten thousand dollars or they will take down the site.”

“Do people really pay you to do that?”

“Sometimes, not all the times, and if they are smart then they will figure out and let me know that theyfixed it but aren’t going to pay me, and a couple have fixed it and paid me and some pay me to tell themhow I found out but most people ignore me , which is fine with me I really don’t care what they do withtheir sites, it’s their problem if it is messed up and they don’t know how to code for security, that’s the

price of doing business when you are dumb.”

Becoming more exhausted by the minute Barry changed the subject. “What did you do to verify myinformation, did you hack into the school or something?”

“That’s funny, like I would waste my time hacking into the school to figure out who you are, I wouldnever do something like that unless I really had to, besides I work in the office after lunch and they haveme file and stuff for them because I work fast and I don’t make mis takes so they like me to do theiradmin work, me and another girl, but she doesn’t talk to me, anyway, I have a photographic memoryand I just know what you said and when I was filing papers I pulled out your file and confirmed what youtold me, simple as that, I can’t believe you thought I hacked into the school for you!”

That made Barry feel stupid. Of course he would not do something illegal to find out information aboutBarry, but he was impressed with the photographic memory thing. “So you are super smart then?”

“I get A’s in all my classes even college prep and I could graduate early but my dad doesn’t want me toso I work in the office and as a teacher’s assistant in Physics class, helping to grade papers and stuff, its

easy work because I only have to look at the answer key once and then I can grade all of the papers and Iknow Physics so that it is easy for me to know why the problem is wrong so I can show the person whatthey did wrong. ”

Changing the subject again, this time back to Evan, Barry aske d, “How do we let the FBI know this was a

setup so that they will let him and his dad go?”

“I don’t have an easy answer for that because there are several things going on, first we have to find

information online that could let us know who hacked the government, then we have to figure out howthey hacked into Evan ’s house and loaded his computers with the information and after we have all ofthat we can let someone know, but I don’t trust anyone, especially the FBI or police, because I only trust

my dad but I have been working on figuring out who did this and I have some ideas but cannot pinpointanything now, but one thing I can say is that I’m pretty sure the hack came from Russia.”






“If the Russians got the information why did they pay for it, along with o ther countries ?”

“Don’t you get it, it’s simple, just think about it and what you would come up with is that someone in

the United States hired a hacker in another country to perform the hack then deliver them theinformation and they would sell it and give the real hacker a lot of money and then they would frame

Evan and his dad, that is how the hacking world works, people hire hackers to do things for them, justlike what Evan does with companies, it’s just a business transaction that’s all and some Russi an got richoff of it, and if I had to bet the information is probably not anything useful to the other countries and Iam also willing to bet all of the money did not come from other countries buying these secrets.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s really simple, like I told you, just think about it, if a country was buying classified information theywould want to know who they were dealing with and would want to deal with them directly or at leastsomeone they could trust, and then if the information was really that important the countries would gointo a bidding war for that information, not wanting another country to share the secret because thereis nothing worse than having more than one person, or country, know a secret, because then it is nolonger a secret, so now the information is worthless, which means the countries didn’t pay much for it,at least not enough for the Edwards’ to pick up and move away from here, because they are multi -billionaires, and why would they want to leave here and go there with such little money, because whywould you forego billions of dollars for a few million dollars just so you can hide away, it would be lameif they took that deal .”

Troy made a lot of sense, why hadn’t Barry thought about any of this, it was clear as d ay when explainedby someone with a photographic memory. “So who were the Russians hired by?”





95Part 26 – Unknown Visitor

Part 26 – Unknown VisitorBarry never dressed for Halloween, he couldn’t afford it but that did not stop him from partaking intrick-or-treating as a kid. His costume every year was that of poor boy. It didn’t take much to act the

part, and people handing out candy did not seem to mind the lack of creativity. They still filled his bagwith gobs of candy which he shared with his parents, savoring the treats for weeks.

Their home kept the porch light off, letting kids know to skip to the next place. The Goupe’s would

rather spend their money on food for their own family rather than treats for others. It was not a selfishattitude, only one of survival.

School was filled with costumes ranging from princesses to monsters and super heroes to science fictioncharacters. Barry noticed Troy did not partake in Halloween, perhaps he wanted to remain asanonymous as possible, not that normal clothes blended in on this fright ful day. Honoring Troy’sinstructions, Barry did not talk to him at school, only at the computer shop. Barry’s parents agreed to

allow him to hang out with a friend tonight, under the guise that he would go trick-or-treating. In a

quest not to lie Barry did not tell them specifically what he would be doing, just that he wanted to hangout with a friend tonight. Barry wanted to keep his promise to Michelle that he would visit her everyday, if possible.

Three o’clock arrived faster than usual. After securin g his books in his locker and grabbing the Bible,Barry darted out of the building toward the hospital. He thought about stopping by the jail to see Evanand let him know that he was working with Troy, instead he decided to see Michelle so that he could getto the computer shop sooner and find out what Troy found out over the past day.

Besides the weather being brisk, it was a great day for kids to be out and about. Past Halloween daysdelivered rain and one time snow, which did not make a fun time to be out, but usually yielded morecandy than normal since people were trying to get rid of the stockpiles of sweets purchased inanticipation of a steady crowd of goblins who never materialized.

Upon entering the hospital Barry was greeted by the friendly librarian-like lady at the front desk. Helearned her name was Betty and because their names somewhat resembled each other they greetedeach other by first names. It was hospital policy to sign in and Barry entered his name along withMichelle’s room number on t he sheet attached to the clipboard. He noticed another individual, DereckLewis, was visiting room 316 and had signed in minutes before Barry. He thought about stalling in thegift store, bathroom and patient waiting room, then reminded himself that he was eager to meet Troy touncover the mystery of who the responsible party was for incarcerating the Edwards’.

Tanya’s big smile and outgoing personality greeted Barry and he too was warming up to the nursing staff

and was not so nervous about his cover story anymore. She told him that he was the most frequentvisitor aside from the family attorney and his wife.

Stepping through the doorway of room 316 Barry heard a man speaking to Michelle and promptlyrealized that he was praying. He thought about turning to leave but stealth did not describe Barry and






his clamorous entry caused the man he assumed was Dereck to stop and look up. A broad smile coveredthe man’s face.

“Hi, are you here to see Michelle?”

The question was obvious, but Barry did catch him off gua rd. “Yes. I’ll let you have some time with her, Ican come back when you are finished.”

Standing from the chair beside Michelle’s bed, the thin, lanky man walked toward Barry. He was in his

mid-twenties with dark brown hair, cut short and mildly styled. He had warm brown eyes and calmdemeanor, instantly making Barry feel a sense of comfort being around him. He was a few inches tallerthan Barry, standing maybe six foot tall, and on his left had he wore a plain gold wedding band.

“I’m Dereck, youth Pastor a t Brighton Community Church.” He stuck out his hand to greet Barry, causing

the boy to shuffle the bible from his right to his left hand in order to accept the gesture. “Are you theone that comes in and reads to Michelle every day?” Barry must have looked surprised, since Dereck

offered a point of clarification. “The nurses told me a friend comes in and reads to her every day.”

Barry was struck by the word ‘friend’ since as far as they knew he was her cousin. He did not correct thepastor, figuring it’s probably wrong to lie to a man of God. “I’m Barry, and yes, I come in and read to

her.”

“Is that what you are reading? Looks like one of ours, does your family go to church there, I don’t recallseeing you before.” His warm tone was inquisitive and apologeti c for not noticing Barry in thecongregation.

Avoiding the going to church question Barry answered with, “I come in and read the Bible to her, figure

that is what she likes so that’s what I read to her. And no, I do not go to that church.”

“Praise God that you are selfless of your time and instead of spending time with friends, you come hereto fill up Michelle with the word of God.”

As lame as that would normally sound to Barry, he felt uplifted by the words. “I have nothing else betterto do.”

“What have you been reading?” Dereck motioned to Barry to have a seat by the window and together

they sat across from one another.

Opening the Bible to the last spot Barry said, “Last time I finished with two Timothy, now I am on Titus.” “Isn’t second Timothy an amazing book? It reveals to us the power of God’s prophesy in the way hedescribes our world today, even though the book was written over nineteen hundred years ago.” Dereckmust have picked up that Barry was not as knowledgeable about the Bible as Michelle or Evan. “Do you

have church home?”






Barry was embarrassed at this question and figured this is where the pastor would try to convince himto become a Christian. Knowing that he could not lie his way out of this, he answered truthfully. “No, Idon’t go to Chu rch. Evan Edwards gave me this Bible the day before he was arrested. I only read itbecause I know that’s what Michelle would like. I don’t really understand it that much, but the stories

are interesting .”

“What stories do you like?” the pastor asked as if talking to a long time friend.

“In the beginning of the new testament it talks about how Jesus healed people and helped the poor. Iliked those ones the best, I just wish it would still happen today.”

“I like those stories too, for the same reason. I grew up in a poor family, I am the youngest of five. MyDad left us when I was four years old and my Mom had to raise us on her own. She did far more thanmost people to keep a roof over our head and food in our mouths. And the one thing I am so thankfulfor is her faith. She relied on God for everything, and he provided for us. I see God work miracles today,but in our world it is easy for other people to appear to get the credit for God’s work.” Dereck leaned

forward, elbows on his knees and looked at Barry, then down at the bible. “What parts confuse you?”

Barry wasn’t prepared for a question and answer period, fortunately he had written question in the back

of the bible. Questions that were intended to be asked to Michelle or Evan someday. Flipping to theba ck and finding the his questions, he began reading down the list, “Things like how is Jesus God’s son,

and why did he have to be killed if he was such a good man? What is the holy spirit? What is raisingJesus from a grave all about? Who are these people who wrote the Bible, like Paul and John. Is Godreally real, and how do you know? Does God really see everything we do? How is Jesus different thanBuddha or Gandhi and if God is real, can’t you just pick a religion?” There was more on his list but he

finished by saying, “Things like that, that’s what I wrote down.”

Dereck was un- phased by the plethora of questions. “You picked up some great insight, and have verythoughtful questions. Which question is the one you want to have answered the most?”

Surprised by Dereck’s confidence in being able to answer any question, coupled with his nice guy

attitude, Barry said the first one that came to mind, without looking at the back page. The tone in whichhe spoke was accusing, revealing his true thoughts . “If Jesus h ealed people in the Bible and cares somuch about people, why is Michelle laying in that bed right now.”

“Starting off with a tough one.” Dereck embarked, un -phased. “Let me ask you something first. Why

didn’t that car hit you when you crossed the intersection on your way to the hospital?”

Puzzled by his question Barry challenged, “What car and what intersection?”

“On my way in a car made a right turn on a red light, he hardly looked at oncoming traffic. And with a

car stopped in the middle lane, the other driver could not see around the stopped car. Had someonebeen walking across the street they would have been hit. What I wonder is if anyone thanked God thattheir kid was not crossing the street at that exact moment.”






Barry thought, but didn’t respond.

“Whose fault was it when the boy ran the light? Was it the lights fault for turning Red and trying to keeporder, instead of chaos, on the street?”

“No, it was the boy’s fault. He was being a knucklehead.”

“But if the light was green, he would not have run that light.”

“Well, it wasn’t green, it was red and the kid made his choice to go through the light.”

“Exactly, it was his choice. Like the guy who ran the light and hit Michelle and Mrs. Edwards.”

The argument wasn’t convincing to Barry. “But if God is so powerful and cure blindness and leprosy andbring people back from the dead, then why can’t he make a driver stop at a red light to spare a good

person?”

“I’ll answer that with this question. How many times this week has someone asked you to do the rightthing and instead you went against them and did the wrong thing?”

The past week flashed through Barry’s mind and he could not count the number of bad decisions he

made. “A few, I guess.”

“Let’s say we were best friends, and you are a nice guy. Whenever you come over to my house I tell youto get me a glass of water. Then I tell you clean the windows in my house, and after that I tell youvacuum the carpet. How long would you be my friend?”

“About an hour or less.”

“Exactly. How can I be your friend if I make you do things? God made the universe, earth, plants, thesun, stars, water and animals. And all of these thinks obey God. Meaning he made them to do only whatthey do. An animal has never built a car or created a successful business. They only do what God madethem to do. That’s not to say that a bird’s ability to make a nest with instinct is not amazing, because itis, but that is the way God programmed it.” Dereck leaned back in his chair and rested his right ankle onhis left knee and placed his arms on the chair’s armrest. “Then God made people, and he had two

choices, make us obey him and do what he wants us to do, or give us free will. Now back to my earlier‘friend’ question. If God made us to do what he wants us to, could he make us love him?”

“Of course, I suppose.”

“Right. But if someone makes you love them, is that really love?”

“No, it’s more like slavery, or like a bad marriage where the guy treats the woman bad but won’t let herleave. Maybe she loves him, but probably not real love.”

“Yeah, so rt of like that. If I made you do all of my chores, you would not be my friend. If I wanted you tobe my friend, I would have to let you think for yourself. And of I really wanted to show you how much I






cared about our friendship, I would offer you a glass of water when you come to my house. And when Iwent to your house I would offer to help you with the chores so that we could go out and do somethingfun a lot sooner that waiting for you to finish chores on your own. How would you like me as a friendthen ?”

“Yeah, I see what you are saying.”

“Translate that back to God. He gives us free will so we can choose to either love him or not love him,it’s our choice. Then he goes so far as to send his Son to heal and help people. He wants us to know thatregardless of if we believe in him, he believes in us and he wants us to choose to know him and trusthim.”

“Okay, but Michelle is still lying there and she loves God.”

“Right, she is. She made a choice. Her Mom made a choice. Others made choices. Every day people make thousands of choices because of free will. Unfortunately she made the choice to get into the car.

Her mom made the choice of picking her up from school. The man mad a choice to read his texts whiledriving. Maybe Mrs. Edwards was driving a little fast, under the circumstances, and had she gone slowerthe light would have turned red at a different time. Combine all of these free will choices together andyou get a terrible accident. After a long answer to your question, I’ll ask you, where is God in all of this?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I asked you. Couldn’t he still have made Michelle’s light red?”

“He sure could. And he could make everyone’s life the same. The same house. The same cars. The same jobs. The same size bank accounts. But He didn’t. He let people make decisions. Some people make baddecisions that affect others negatively, and some make good decisions that affect people positively. Ifwe look for God, He is right here.”

Barry looked around, seeing nothing, hearing only the breathing machine and watching lights flash onthe machinery. “Where?”

“First of all, Michelle is alive. She shouldn’t be, even the doctors said so. Most people who don’t wear

their seatbelts in these types of accidents die. We can thank God for that. I thank God that I am having aconversation with you now. If this didn’t happen I may have never met you. This accident will cause theEdwards’ friends to pray for them, drawing closer to God.” Dereck shifted again in the chair. “Now don’tget me wrong, I don’t like seeing Michelle like this, but God can turn a bad situation into a good thing, orpeople can turn it into a God thing.”

“I still don’t get why God would do this to her…”

Dereck cut him off, “Understand that God didn’t do this to her. Man did this to her, and God can turnthis man made situation into a good thing, if man allows it. You read Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and inchapter six verse twelve Paul writes, ‘ For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against therulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces ofevil in the heavenly realms. ’ If we want to blame anyone, we need to blame Satan. It is he that wants to






take this situations and turn people against God. If you think at Satan’s motive from the beginning with

Eve, he wanted her to believe that she could experience the knowledge of good and evil despite God’sinstructions to her. And he convinced her to eat of the fruit of the tree. Ever since, Satan has been tryingto get us to turn from God and the best way he has done this is to use our free will against us so that weaccuse God of evil and give no regard to Satan. We blame God when things go bad, yet we do n’t give

him any credit when things are good. It sounds weird but we are in a spiritual battle, and Satan is tryingto keep us from God and God is telling us ‘ I will give you everlasting life, a life in paradise, if you believein me.’ What’s better, heaven or hell?”

“Heaven.”

“Yet we let Satan tell us that it’s God’s fault that this happened to Michelle. So we curse God and blamehim, giving Satan success in his job, which is to keep us from God.”

“So what about when a kid is bullied at school?”

“We can bl ame God and give credit to Satan, or we can say, ‘No matter what happens, God, I trust you. Iwant to be with you in Heaven, not alone and abandoned forever in Hell. ’ God never told us life would

be easy, as a matter of fact he told Adam and Eve that live would be hard. Childbirth would be painfulfor women, and Adam would have to work the land, with plants growing thorns and bugs that would eatcrops. We cannot blame God for our actions or others actions that cause harm on us. Just like youcannot blame yo ur parents if you get a black eye from a fight at school. It’s just not their fault.”

“I never thought of it that way. So what is God thinking with Michelle being like this?”

“I don’t know what God thinks, but I imagine he is sad that this happened to her. I imagine he is askingus to pray for her, for us to petition God for his help to heal her. But if the damage is too great to herbody, heaven will rejoice that she chose God, and she will live in paradise with God. A paradise we can’t

even imagine. Think of Hawaii or whatever vacation spot is your biggest dream. Heaven is thousandstimes better than that. There will not be accidents and people dying. There will not be famine, or rich orpoor. Everyone will be rich because they will be in God’s presence. B elieve me when I say that ifMichelle were not to make it here on earth, once in heaven she would not desire to come back.Compared to heaven, this life is evil, like a bad nightmare. On the flip side, even the worst life you canimagine on earth is paradise compared to the constant torment of Hell, the solitary confinement, thedarkness, the dry heat, the separation from people and the separation from God. Inmates write aboutsolitary confinement in Jail and say even 6 weeks is enough to drive a person insane. Think of what aneternity would be like.”

Barry let the thought sink in and it brought chills to his body. He had never thought of heaven or hellbefore like that, and he was beginning to like the heaven idea. Food, clothes, not worrying about moneyor school or bullying.

Dereck concluded with, “I don’t want to dwell on Hell, but we can praise God that we know God is with

Michelle now, and will welcome her to heaven, or heal her on earth.”






“But if God does not interfere with the bad things in life, the n why would we give credit to God for thegood stuff that Doctors do?”

“Listen to the way you asked the question, but let’s loop in your first question and state it this way. ‘ Whydoes God let bad things happen to people? And where is God when Doctors do all the work to save

people.’ Again, Satan wants us to take our focus off of a good God, and wants to make God look bad anddoctors looks good. This is the way I see it; ‘God, I don’t know why this has come upon the Edwards’ family, why their lives changed in an instant. But I trust that this tragedy will cause others to rely on you for your wisdom and healing touch, but not what we want, but what you want for us, because you knowwhat is best for us. And thank you for giving us free will, and for giving doctors the choice to learn aboutthe bodies you created so that You can use these doctors to save lives and give people another chance inlife that they may not have had if you did not create us in your image.’ You see how different thatattitude toward God is, when you know it is not his fault?”

Sitting in his chair and staring at Michelle in her bed, Barry understood what Dereck was saying. It madestrange sense to him. He kind of didn’t know why it made sense, but it did. Then a pang of remorsesettled in his stomach as he thought about his blame toward God. He knew that reaction was wrong andhe wanted to make it better. Quietly to himself he said, ‘I’m sorry God for blaming you.’

Dereck allowed Barry to wrestle with his thoughts then added, “I have to go visit Mrs. Edwards, thenhead home for the day. I’ ll let you continue reading to Michelle, I know that is what she would like.”Standing up from his chair, Derek held his hand out to Barry. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Barry, thanks

for a great conversation. Tomorrow is youth group at church, it starts at six o’clock and I would love tosee you there, if you are available. It goes until eight o’clock.”

Barry stood and shook his hand. “I don’t know if my parents will let me go, but I’ll think about it.”

“Fair enough, no pressure, just letting you know that you are always welcome. If you ever want to talk,give me a call, I think it would be great to talk more about your questions. Can I write my number inyour Bible?”

Barry handed him the Bible and his pen, “Sure, there is space on the front page.”

Dereck scribbled his name, cell phone number, work number, home number and email address. “Nomatter what, you can get a hold of me at one of these numbers, or by email.” He handed the Bible backto Barry. “It was nice to meet you Barry, I look forward to talking again.”

“You too.” Said Barry. And Dereck walked out the door, presumably to Mrs. Edward’s room. Barry pulledup a chair and began reading from Titus.





102Part 27 – Social Engineering

Part 27 – Social EngineeringUnder the guise of Halloween Barry was not expected home until late in the evening, allowing him tospend two hours at the hospital then walk to the computer shop, along the way spotting little kids incostumes and big smiles at the prospects of bags full of treats. Arriving at the computer store around sixo’clock in the evening Barry was greeted by the high strung kid who appeared to have consumed a full

pot of coffee prior to Barry’s arrival.

A customer stood at the counter where Troy’s Dad appeared to be fixing a customer’s l aptop. The manwas engrossed in his work and did not look up when Barry walked through the door. Without a wordTroy motioned to follow him into the back room, to which Barry obliged, entering the back room anddodging shelves of products which Barry had never heard of before. It was not until the office door wasclosed and Troy looked up at the green light in the small triangle on the ceiling before he began abreathless sentence.

“Oh man, oh man, oh man, where do I start, I can’t believe what I found out last night after you left, you

really won’t believe it and I shouldn’t even be telling you because this thing is way bigger than wethought, which confirms my suspicions even more now that I found this information, but you can’t tell

anyone right now and y ou don’t know me and you don’t know how I got it, got it?”

Impatient , Barry demanded, “What is it? What did you find?”

“Wow, I shouldn’t be telling you this, this is like FBI stuff but if I took it to the FBI then they would know

that can do things that I shouldn’t be doing unless I was doing it for them, which would be kind of coolbut I’m a kid and what would a kid like me be doing working for the FBI, and then I wonder if I gave it to

the FBI if they are in on this and trying to frame Mr. Edwards and Eva n and if they would ignore it….”

“What is it?” Barry interjected a little loud enough that he figured if someone was standing outside thedoor they would have heard him.

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Troy started pacing back and forth between the two compu ters onopposite sides of each other, appearing to be in deep thought as if being pressured to press the redbutton that would launch all of the nuclear missiles from the United States to other Countries. Hecontinued his galloping speech. “You can’t tell anyone, you have to promise me, you can’t say anything

not even to your parents, you have to….”

Annoyed, Barry interrupted again. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise, cross my heart, hope to die, stick aneedle in my eye if I lie.” For split second as he uttered ‘hope to die’ he remembered the conversationwith Dereck only a few hours earlier. He wanted to take that part back, he didn’t want to die, for fear

sincerely believing heaven was not an option for him, being a liar and blaming God for all the stuff thathappened to Michelle and the Edwards family. If God was like his parents, he would be in so muchtrouble, and heaven was not a place for trouble makers like him, even though for the most part he was agood kid.






“It’s Mayor Hattfield, he’s in on it.” Troy blurted, then stopped talking and stopped pacing and looked atBarry as if waiting Navy Blackhawks to deploy a team of SEALS to infiltrate the office and take him as ahostage for uttering such words against a political figure.

Barry almost laughed. “That’s it? That’s your big news, I could have told you that last Thursday.”

Troy looked puzzled, then mad. “How did you know that? You come to me asking for answers and youalready know the Mayor framed the Edwards? Why didn’t you tell the FBI? Now have done a ll of thiswork that could land me in prison if someone found out about it, and you already know, I can’t believethis, what else do you know, how did you know the Mayor was involved, I can’t believe I trusted you,

how can I trust you when you withhold information from me, because if this is going to work you aregoing to have to tell me everything you know or else I might get thrown in jail instead of you and that

just wouldn’t be fair because it is you that made me do all this, so how do you know it was the mayor?”

“I didn’t know for sure but I saw the Principal and the Mayor talking last Thursday, and it wasn’t a niceconversation and it wasn’t one that people should hear. I overheard the Mayor say, ‘Edwards, crime,

arrest and tomorrow.’”

“And what else?”

“No more, that’s all I heard.”

“And that’s your solid evidence? I mean what would the FBI would do with that kind of information, that

is here say and would never hold up in a court of law as admissible evidence to case. You really have nomore than that? You have no proof like pictures or videos or anything like that, you should have taken avideo with your phone or something like that, I hope you don’t plan on going into the CIA or something.”

Barry ignored the jab at his lack of talent for a career in i ntelligence. “How did you find out it was theMayor?”

“I didn’t say it was all the Mayor’s doing, but he’s part of it and the way I found out is with the code I puton the computers at school like the one I was writing when you sneaked up on me and freaked me out,it’s like that code, except the code I was writing at school was to find vulnerability in web browsers and

the servers they interact with and then send me information back on those breaches, but I have loadeda lot of code on those computers and one of them attaches itself to emails that are sent from schoolcomputers from Gmail or Yahoo mail and not only scans the accounts that people have sent emails frombut it also scans email accounts from people who open and read emails from a sender, the code is pretty

slick because usually you have to attach an executable file and the person on the other end has tophysically open the file to run the code, but mine is triggered by the email being opened and thenextracts itself into the new email account and acts like spider and looks all the emails and pulls in abunch of mostly useless information, but I store that information on a big server, umm, that I can’t tellyou about, and the data is indexed so all I have to do is enter a keyword and it returns all instances inwhich that keyword is found, then I can reveal the source whether it is an email or whatever.”






Barry was blown away that someone could actually do this. He heard stories about hackers breaking intoemails and systems, but hearing how it was done baffled him. He was about ready to ask how he got theemail from the school system when he thought of a plausible way. “It was Mike, wasn’t it ? MikeHattfield sending an email to his Dad from computer lab?”

“Not specifically, I don’t track who the pers on was that was the sender of the code, I just know I haveemails, files and information from thousands of people I don’t know which makes it a little crazy when Isearch for simple things like president and I see a bunch of spam and email forwarded messages thatdon’t mean anything, but in this case I found hundreds of emails over the past several years referencing

the Edwards and sending money to a hacker or a series of hackers for work to be performed, and Ihaven’t been able to find the actual hackers t hat did the job yet, because they are not dumb enough likethe Mayor to use a personal email account that clearly identifies who they are, plus they know thatthese programs are out there scanning emails and stuff, so they don’t use a personally identifiab le emailaddress and they use servers all over the world to hid their real identity, like I do, but here is the otherstrange thing is that there is someone else he is emailing and I don’t know who it is but it is not a hacker,

the Mayor almost treats him like a boss in his emails, like there is someone else behind this. ”

“Like Principal Taylor?”

“No, it’s not our Principal, and from what I can tell the principal doesn’t know what’s going on, he is just

being told to monitor you and some other kids and keep them from snooping around and stuff, myname is on that list too but from what I can tell the principal is a small pawn in a huge chess game andall he knows is that he will be fired if he does not do what the Mayor or the other person is telling him todo, and I can’t figure out if the other person is another politician or a police office, FBI or someone else, Ihave no idea who it is, but I thought I would get a hold of phone records first, which shouldn’t be hard, I

just need to get into the phone compa ny.”

“How do you do that?”

“Simple, social engineering, the oldest trick in the book, which works great unless you do it wrong which

a lot of people do so they don’t get what they are looking for.”

Barry had no clue what Troy was talking about, but the same was true since he started talking to him atschool on Monday. He changed the subject and carried optimism in his voice. “So can we take this

information to the FBI and get the Edwards released? You have some good proof.”

“Ha! Are you crazy? That’s the la st thing I want to do right now, remember I told you not to tell anyone?

This can get me thrown in jail so quick for so many reasons like hacking school computers, loading codeto break into peoples email accounts, breaking into the email of a government official, housing thisinformation where I house it, and the list goes on and on and on, and I don’t want to go to jail so theEdwards can get out of jail, that’s just not my idea of a good time, because who is going to get me out of

jail, I don’t think so, this stays in this room.”

“Then how do we prove the Edwards’ innocence?”






“We have to find out who did the hacking and who is really behind the email to the Mayor. Once wehave identities we can talk to someone, I don’t know who yet, but it won’t be the FB I because that willbe a fast track to jail for me and I happen to like living a life that is not in jail, I would go crazy there,ready to make a phone call? ”

“Uh, who do you want me to call?” Barry shot back apprehensively.

“Not you, you don’t know how t o do it, I need to make a call to get the phone records for the Mayor, butyou have be quiet and not say a word or you could blow the whole operation, got it? I’ll be calling the

phone company, I need them to give me his phone records, like I said before. ”

“The phone company isn’t going to give you the phone bill.” Barry challenged.

With a smirk on his face Troy sat down in the chair at the computer opposite the closed door to themeeting room and typed in some information and brought up a series of phone numbers. He thenpicked up a cell phone and dialed a phone number from the screen. After a couple of rings he spoke in a

slightly deeper voice, one that was composed, not like the Troy Barry was used to talking to. “Oh, hi, thisis Neil Wagner from Customer Service, I was looking for Margie in monthly statements, I must havedialed the wrong number, is this extension 4645? ”

Barry cracked a smile and thought to himself, ‘This is how he is going to get the Mayor’s phone billmothly statement? Yeah right.’ He expected the person to hang up the phone, but instead theconversation continued.

“Oh, sorry about that, I guess I fat fingered the numbers. Anyway, I have a customer on the phone,pretty irate about his bill. Our computers are down in Customer Service and I can’t pull up the statement

for this guy. I was hoping to get Margie, but can you help?”

Another pause, and by now Barry was intrigued with, what did he call it? Social Engineering?

“No, I completely understand you can’t just give information like this over the phone, there’s too manywhackos out there who think they can just call in and get us to send them things I get that all the time. Iappreciate your commitment to corporate security. Tell you what, can you talk to this guy, he is prettyangry, wants to talk to my manager and get his bill resolved now, he’s about ready to blow his top.”

Barry could not believe Troy had made it this far on the phone.

“Yeah, I hear ya, that’s why Customer Service is here to handle these calls. Any ideas how I can research

his last statement?” Troy pretended to be thinking for a split second then with a bright idea moment hesuggested, “Wait, tell you what, can you do me a favor and print out the statement and fax it to me?”

‘Yeah, like that’s really going to happen.’ Barry figured this is when he would get hung up on.

“Of course I have an internal fax number, do you have pen handy? Okay, it is 972-555-9431 or 72-9431 ifyou want to do an internal dial. The customer ’s phone number is 814-555- 3355.” Troy paused as the

guy wrote dow n the phone number. “Yup, those are the correct numbers. And make i t attention to Neil,






spelled N-e-i- l. I’m the only Neil here so I’ll k eep an eye out for it. ” Troy paused for the obligatory finalremarks, then concluded his the call with, “Thanks again for your help, I owe you one.” Troy hung up thephone and frantically typed into his computer bringing up a black screen with green letters. He wasfrantically typing and Barry saw the fax number being typed in then another number and a bunch moretext. Barry did not want to interrupt, just wanted to let Troy work. In less than a minute Troy stoppedand leaned back in his chair. “We should have it in a couple of minutes.

“How? And where is 972 area code, how are you going to get a fax from there when we are in an 814

area code?”

Troy rolled his eyes as if Barry was asking how to add one plus one then he began his monolog, “The 972

area code is Dallas, that is where the cell phone company customer service department is, if I gave theguy my personal fax then of course he would know I was scamming him and he would never have sentit, so knowing that I had to redirect the phone number for the customer service fax machine to my faxmachine so when he faxes to there I will get it here, it’s a simple call forwarding command like everyone

has on their phone, so if they are away on vacation they can forward their home phones to their cellphones and g et the calls that would normally go to their house, simple.”

So many questions ran through Barry’s mind and he wanted to get them all out at once otherwise itwould take Troy a month to answer all of them. “But how do you know the Customer Service Fax

number and how did you make the fax call forward, and wont the phone company trace the call forwardto this fax machine?”

“Easy, all easy, earlier today I called customer service and pretended to be Mayor Hattfield, because Ialready have his phone number, remember? Anyway I told them I wanted to add my wife to the bill andasked them how I should do that, and of course, just like I expected they told me I needed to fax them a

letter with my signature stating I wanted to add my wife to the account and they gave me their faxnumber which was a toll free number, and I didn’t want to ask for the statement earlier because it was

in the middle of the day when Customer Service was busy and I knew if I switched the call forwarding inthe middle of the day it would rais e some concern if they weren’t getting faxes, so I waited until evening

when call times are low, according the person I talked to when I asked when the best time to call so thatI could get right through without having a hold time, so they told me around this time and I asked for hisnumber and when he left so that I could redirect my cell phone to look like it is that customer servicereps phone number, knowing he is not using it because he went home already, but all I needed to dowas find the line that the toll free number was hooked up to, which I did earlier because I have access tothe companies back end phone switches, anyway once the statement guy agreed to send me the fax,

fearing I would transfer my irate customer to him, and once he recognized the number was an internalfax number and phone number, he had no problem faxing it, so I just went in to the system andforwarded the number, then once we receive the fax I will go in, undo the forward and wipe the log sonobody knows I was there.”

On queue the fax machine issued a short ring and the Mayor ’s last phone bill exited the printer. Barrynerves were getting the best of him, he was a little frightened that it was that easy to get someone’s






information, not to mention the fact that now he was an accomplice to obtaining private informationabout a government official. After a couple of minutes the fax machine stopped printing an estimatedtwenty pages of cell phone bill.

Troy went to work on the black screen again, un-forwarding the Customer Service fax line and clearing

out any evidence that he had been there. Then he rolled the chair to the fax machine seated on the deskagainst the wall to his right, and grabbed the stack of paper. “Let’s take a look at who the Mayor has

been calling and who has bee n calling him.”





108Part 28 – Pastor Visit

Part 28 – Pastor VisitAnother night in Jail did not make the stay any less agonizing as the first. James, DJ and Wade werelearning how to tolerate each other. Whenever three people are in close quarters with each other forlong periods of time, it doesn’t take long for people quirks and habits to gnaw at the others.

Wade was a whistler, and not a good one. Most of the time nobody knew what he was attempting toimpersonate, even when he revealed the artist and title of the popular song it still was not recognizable.DJ flew off the handle after lunch yesterday when Wade was attempting a Garth Brooks song, jumpingoff the top bunk and yelling at Wade to stop. Wade was unaware of his habit and promised to stop, butsubconsciously he would start up again. Eventually DJ would slap his palm against the wall of the cell tosignal for the music to stop.

DJ couldn’t stop talking and had something to say about everything including nothing. Unlike James andWade, he did not read, or maybe it was that he could not read. His cell mates had not broached thatquestion yet, but both at numerous times had asked him to stop talking so they could concentrate on

their books.

The only complaint against James so far was his preaching, both in words and action. James’ routineincluded prayer and journal time followed by bible reading, more journaling and prayer, then breakfast,most of which he gave to Wade. James talked about God a lot to Wade and DJ, both who were of themind that religion is a fairy tale, made up by man and written by man. Even after the talk with DJyesterday, the power of Wade’s persuasion caused DJ to stand firm with his detest for religion.

Regardless it did not stop James from sharing his faith, of course he did not pursue the conversationsdirectly and he was not condemning to the men who did not share his views.

After waiting an hour for his food to be digested, James performed a series of workouts including push-ups, leg lifts, and seated dips using his bedframe as a place to hold on so he could lower himself.Nowhere in the cell was a sturdy bar for pull ups so that was omitted from his. He could perform squatsbased on his own body weight, which he did to get the little benefit of ensuring his muscles did notatrophy.

Leaving the cell was something James looked forward to, no matter the reason. Monotony was the gluethat held the day together. His commissary days were Tuesdays and Thursdays which allowed him tostock up on books, paper and any other items he may want. Unfortunately the book selection was smalland mostly fiction, with select best seller titles from science fiction, horror and action to standardliterature and surprisingly some romance. The maximum amount to spend in commissary was $50,

however, the prison store is a non-profit enterprise so items are purchased at cost. Yesterday Jamespicked out a John Grisham novel based on the number of pages and not the content. With as much timeas was spent inside of a cell, practically any novel provided enough entertainment to pass the time.

Since books could not be brought in directly from visitors, James provided a list of reading material toChuck for ordering on Amazon, requesting him to order one book per day ensuring a consistent hopperof interesting titles. Inmates were allowed a combination of up to 4 books or magazines at a time, and






when new periodicals were received by the jail, James would have to surrender his finished books to thegeneral jail population. Depending on the book he could read an average of one per day and since he didnot prefer the offerings from commissary, he provided Chucks a long list of authors and subjectsincluding Business Leadership, Business and Finance, Christian Living and Theology. Hopefully theChristian living books would be read by others in Jail, providing yet another outlet for a way to spread

the gospel.

“Edwards. Visitor.” Shouted a guard walking toward the cell.

James was in the middle of reading John Grisham but set the book under his bunk with the Bible, journalpaper and pen. He exited the cell, hearing the bars close behind him and walked toward the door thatwould lead to civilization. Being out of the cell was like a field trip, and made him thankful for thefreedom he had before jail. How much he took it for granted that he could go outside and smell freshair, or attend a football game, or volunteer for a church event. It had only been a week, but thesememories felt like the distant past. A week ago today he was sitting at a board meeting discussing thechallenges of the steel business and how to remain competitive in a global market. That too seemed likea dream, or was it that this was a nightmare. Reality played strange tricks on the mind, aggravated bythe confinement and loneliness of jail life.

Entering the visiting area James was pleased to see Pastor Tony sitting at the table in the middle of theroom. Upon recognizing the inmate, Tony stood and welcomed James with a handshake.

“Hey, my friend, how are you holding up?” Greeted Pastor Tony warmly. “It has taken me three da ys toget here, what a process.” In high school Tony was an all-star linebacker with a college scholarship toTexas A&M when he and some friends thought it would be fun to ride a skateboard being towed behinda pickup truck, until a pothole caught the wheels and threw Tony off the board shattering his knee and

ankle, and ending his promising football career. Through a series of events Tony earned his degree inBiblical Theology and began a career as a Pastor. His blond hair was cut short, but he was not going bald,it was his hairstyle of choice. Not much for exercise his pear shaped mid- section revealed his wife’s great

southern cooking.

“I would be lying if I said I was doing well. Fortunately Chuck is my attorney so he does not have to go

through the effort you did to be authorize for a visit. I do appreciate you being her. Have you been tothe hospital to see Jill and Michelle?”

It appeared to Tony that James had lost some weight, not that he had much to lose, but his face showedsigns of reduced calorie intake. “I was there yesterday morning and prayed over them.”

The words penetrated James and he began sobbing at the thought of his girls laying in those hospitalbeds. He wanted to be there to hold their hands and pray with them, and talk to them. He wanted totalk to the doctors and make sure they were getting the best care. He wanted to see their faces, and ittore him up inside that he could not be there. Jail life caused him to push out these feelings, knowing hecould lose himself in anguish if he allowed himself too. His daily routine was in place to help him fromslipping into self-pity and heartache for his family.






Pastor Tony gave him a moment then proceeded with an update. “Th ey are both stable, but in comas. Atthis point there is not internal bleeding. The hard part is the waiting game. They need to come out oftheir coma and unfortunately there are no set time frames for that. I want you know the church ispraying for them. ”

James stifled his last emotion and composed himself. “I feel so helpless, being here and knowing theyare in a hospital with nobody to care for them”

“There are quite a few people from the congregation that visit them during the day. Dereck has beenthere almost every day and he mentioned a kid that visits Michelle every day and reads to her out of theBible.”

“I still feel helpless. It is my family, it is my job to take care of them, and I can’t do that while I am here.The Judge declined my bond request and that was my last hope for being with them. If anything…”James stumbled on his words but carried on, “if anything happens to them while I am here, I don’t knowhow I will live with myself.”

The emotional pain was obvious and Tony thought of what he would do if he were in the same situation,but he knew that what is friend was going through was far more than he could imagine. Even hisaccident that blew out his knee and prevented his full ride scholarship could not compare to wonderingif two people who were loved so much would be around tomorrow, or even in the next five minutes.Tony regretted his fate, however were it not for that decision, he would probably not know who God is,nor would he be a Pastor. Sometimes he thought of living the life of a millionaire with fame and fortune,but riches on earth are left on earth, and the only thing to take to heaven is your salvation or a choice toreject God. Having more money than he would know what to do with for sixty years of his life is nothingcompared to the treasure of eternity in heaven.

As it was with Tony, God could turn this situation into a blessing. Silence between the two menharvested a new conversation. “You know me, James, I shoot from the hip, even if it hurts. The Judge didyou a favor. Talk around town is not favorable toward you. Radio talk shows are taking calls on this newsand people’s reactions are harsh, I think if you were let go, there would be bigger problems than youthink. I hate to say it but people are calling for an immediate death penalty for you because of what youdid, um, I mean, wha t you have been accused of.”

James peered at Tony with astonishment, and spoke as if speaking to himself. “People want me dead? I

didn’t even do anything, why do they want me….”

“There is no easy way to broach this subject, but I don ’t want you beating you rself up about not gettingout of here. It’s not safe out there for you.”

Out of curiosity James asked, “What do you think? Do think I am lying?”

A long pause answered the question, however Tony recovered with a politically correct statement.“James I have known you for many years now, I know who you are and I know you are a man of God. Iam not here to judge you, that is God’s job, not mine, and for me to say who did what would be wrong.






You have done a lot of good things, you have wealth and help others with it, you have been faithful toyour family and this community, and I am here to offer up support for you as a friend and Pastor,whatever the outcome may be.”

“Sounds like you think I am guilty, just like the callers from the radio station.” James let t hat statement

stab at his pastor.

“That’s not what I said. The ninth commandment is do not give false testimony about your neighbor,that goes for right or wrong. I can’t say either way. I am not you and I don’t have all of the evidence foreither side. God knows the truth and I trust that God will prevail here. I have many people asking me alot of questions that I don’t have answers to. There are people in the church who are mad and others

that are hurt that someone so influential as you are in jail right now. As a Pastor I have to be able toanswer in truth.”

“The difference is, I am telling the truth. I’d wager my life, my fortune and my family over it. God knows Iam not guilty , and I can’t believe my closest friends do not know me well enough to believe that.” A

facade of strength emboldened him, but inside he was crumbling like sandstone. Silently he asked God,“Why are you doing this to me? What did I do that I deserve this? In everything I do, You are first. How isit that I trust so much and then am let down even greater?”

“Do you know how many times a spouse has sat across from me and told me they have been faithful to

their husband or wife, only to find out later that it was not true? Or how many times someone told methey did not steal, or lie or cheat, only to find out they did? James, I am not here to talk about yourinnocence, I really did intend to go down this road with you. As your pastor and friend, I want to offermy support to you. God is a good God and everything happens for a reason and I want you to know thatI am praying for the truth to be revealed.”

“What about the congregation, have they turned on me too? Do people think I am responsible for thisbehavior that is so out of character for me?”

“People don’t know what to think, they are confused. In business you have people who like you andpeople who don’t, same with life and church. Not even Jesus had one hundred percent support from

people, that is just human nature. Let me worry about the congregation and the outside world.”

James could read between the lines and the message was clear. He was popular guy but like the Pastorsaid, he has enemies too. It just seems like now the enemy count is greater than it was before. A leatherglove of apprehension gripped James like a baseball, surrounded by a whirlwind of activity. He felt anger

that his Pastor didn’t believe him. Fear of people deman ding the death penalty for him. This must behow Jesus felt when, in Matthew chapter 27, the people cry for Jesus to be crucified in exchange for therelease of a true criminal. If society was already demanding his sentence, would he even have a fairtrial? Again he felt defeated. How could he prove his innocence, whether he was in or out of jail? “Can I

ask you to do one thing for me Tony?”

“Sure, what is it?”






“Tell my girls I love them. That’s about all I have to offer them now. And don’t stop praying, apparently I

need a miracle.”

“I’ll pray for you right now.” Tony placed his hand on his friends shoulder and prayed.





113Part 29 – Criminal Cyber Underworld

Part 29 – Criminal Cyber UnderworldSchool was never Barry’s favorite place. Moving between schools too many times to count, there wasnever enough time to have a solid friend base, and by high school people were in their clicks. If he wasan athlete it wouldn’t matter how many times he m oved, as long as he could master any game involvinga ball, he would be a hero and have friends all over the East Coast.

His parents were warming up to the fact that their son was visiting Michelle daily and that he had afriend who was teaching him about computers. In order for Barry to be out during the evening, hisschool work needed to be completed and he had to be home by eight in the evening, or there would beconsequences.

This suited Barry just fine. He spent time in class and at lunch to complete his homework, then walked tohospital where he spent a couple of hours and then over to Troy’s computer shop. Yesterday on his wayhome, Barry thought about trick-or-treating to get some candy for the week, instead his mind reeled ofhow effortless his hacker friend social engineered the guy at the phone company.

Today’s visit to Michelle put him at 2 John in the Bible, which he anticipated would be complete bySaturday, giving him two more days to read the New Testament for her. Tonight was youth group andthe thought of it gave him anxiety just thinking about going and being around a bunch of people he didnot know. As he read through the Bible he continued to write questions about the things he wasreading. In a strange way it made sense, but in that same strange way it didn’t. Sort of like the onlyriddle his Dad knew:

He who makes it doesn’t buy it, he who buys it doesn’t use it, he who uses it doesn’t know it.What is it?

Once the answer is revealed it makes sense, but until then the mind runs amuck with incorrectassumptions. Dereck offered to meet him or talk over the phone, and Barry figured he would take himup on his offer this Saturday. By then he would need to read Michelle from other parts in the Bible andwanted to know where the best place would be to start from.

The walk to Troy’s was becoming a familiar one and he was beginning to enjoy the break in monotonyfrom his usual schedule of School, then home and then spending the weekends in a good book. The stuffTroy could do half scared Barry and half excited him. Barry would not be good at this hacking game, buthe was beginning to enjoy the investigative work, like he enjoyed puzzles when his parents broughtthem home from an unknown used source. Usually at the tail end of a garage sale where people wanted

the stuff gone and were willing to give it away. That was typically how the Goupe’s secured clothes,games, and other items that would normally be unobtainable for their family. Still, even with thesebuying tactics, the Goupe’s did not have a lot of stuff, mainly because they moved quite a bit and amoving van was out of the question. If it didn’t fit in the family station wagon it did not come with them,

and the Goupe’s were not people who threw things away frivolously.

Today Troy was not w aiting at the door for Barry’s arrival and it caused Barry to pause. He had never

walked in by himself. His hew friend knew he would arrive at the store around this time, so where was








Dodging racks of products, Barry was familiar with the path now and did not pay attention to theproducts on the shelf. Now he was curious about what Troy’s Dad knew and how he knew it. “What didyou tell your Dad, and how is he so good at getting people to tell the truth.”

“I tell him what he needs to know, so he rarely digs into what I am doing, dinner conversation can be

interesting at time. My Dad was a CIA Interrogator for ten years until I was six and my Mom left us. MyDad was always away in other Countries, so he tells me now, and my mom got to the point where shewas lonely and starting not to trust him because he was away so much, at least that is what he told me,but one day after he returned home from being away for four months she left him a note on the kitchencounter and left both of us behind, so my Dad had to make a choice to stay here and raise me on hisown or find another person to take care of me, but in the note my mom said I was a hard kid to takecare of, that I had way too much energy and I wore her out, so my Dad thought I would do the same to ananny, so he left the CIA and opened the store and raised me on his own, teaching me his interrogationtactics among other things.”

“How does he do that? Can he go do that with Evan to prove his innocence?”

“It’s easy once you know what to look for and how to respond to people. It doesn’t take long for peopleto start telling the truth, and if it does they continue to build a lie until they spin a web of lies, then theyget caught like a helpless fly in their own invisible snare, and my Dad doesn’t do that anymore for the

government, the FBI and those guys already have people to do that, they don’t need my Dad, but it isfun watching my Dad talk to people, sometimes he gets them to spill their guts about something, or callspeople out when he knows they are stealing from him, we have no employee theft from the store, theseguys know my Dad will get it out of them, and once he does, they are fired quicker than he can tell themto get out.”

Speaking of the store and workers, Barry figured now was a good time to ask about the products in theback of the store. “So what is it that you sell, the products on the sides of these boxes don’t look like

what you have out in the store.”

They passed by the last rack before entering the conference room where Troy let Barry in, closed thedoor then looked at the green light on the c eiling. “People don’t know this, so keep your mouth shut

about it, and if I catch you telling anyone, even your parents my Dad will bury you six feet in the groundand nobody will ever find you, and believe me, I will get the truth out of you and if I don’ t my Dad will,so I’ll ask you, are you going to keep your mouth shut, or do you not want to know?”

Before Barry just thought it a simple question and if Troy had disregarded him he would not care, butnow curiosity cause him to need to know what was going on. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

“We sell card machines and supplies to people and businesses all over the world, machines that make

anything from an employee badge that you mom and dad probably have for work, to credit cards, andwe have material to make holographic images to put on the cards for authenticity, and we haveembossing machines if you need to stamp a number and seriously if I wanted to make credit cards Icould, I just choose not to, and my Dad got into the business because of his work in the CIA and talking








science fiction was made of and could hardly believe it was a reality. Then he thought of Evan again andpit in his stomach developed. “Did Evan buy any of these machines from you?”

“Yes.” Troy stated, deep in thought as he was reading through a forum. “Wait, no, Evan did not, but the

Edwards Steel company has purchased machines for employee badges, but the Edwards family has not

purchased credit card machines for personal use.”

Troy stopped talking and focused on the screen again, scrolling and speed reading the content displayedon the page. “While you’re doing that I can continue going through the phone numbers we got lastnight?”

“Yeah, yeah, good idea, use that computer over there, once it is on I will bring up the program so youcan look up the names for each of these numbers. Do you know how to use Excel?”’

“Excel? Uh, no. They just teach us how to use Word at school.” Barry was at the other computer, turningit on, then wheeled back in the office chair to the other side to pick up the stack of phone records for

the Mayor. This was going to take a while to get through.

“After you left I scanned in all of the pages for the phone bill an used an OCR program, that stands forOptical Character Recognition, which converts the words and numbers on the page to actual characterson a computer. It took a while, but I extracted out the phone numbers, put them in excel and de-dupedthem with a count of how many times each number was either called or received, and a sum of the totaltime spent on the call so we would know who he is talking to the most, I’ll pull up the excel file when

that computer is up and you can put in names next to the numbers they belong to, then we can searchfor the names and figure out who these people are he is talking to, then that may give us some moreclues as to who is working with the Mayor on this.”

Why couldn’t Barry think like this, it made so much sense to him once explained by Troy. Last Friday

when he met Troy he was trying to get information from Google, how elementary was that? Why had henot thought about names and phone numbers and this reality of a criminal cyber underworld that only aweek ago Barry would have scoffed, based on ignorance, and set aside as fantasy. Now he was in themiddle of something that seems to get bigger and bigger with every new item they uncovered that ledthem to more things to investigate.

“Ok, computers up, its asking for a password.”

Troy pushed back from his desk and rolled in his chair, twisting to face the other computer. With quick

keystrokes he entered a password and waited a few seconds for Windows to log him in. Opening a seriesof directories Troy found the Excel document he had prepared late last night, then he opened up a blackscreen and typed in some commands that Barry did not understand, then he went back to Excel, copieda phone number and pasted it into the black screen and pressed enter. Instantaneously a name andaddress came up ‘ Don Hattfield 1673 Fitzgerald Court, Brighton, PA 15501 ’ . Troy copied the name, streetnumber, street name, City, State and Zip and pasted each in a separate column but on the same






corresponding row to the phone number . “This must be his wife’s cell phone or their home phone, just under his name, did you get how to do that?”

Troy did not provide verbal instructions but Barry followed the process and accepted the challenge tomove forward on his own, knowing if he had questions he could ask. “I got it.”

The boy’s found their spots a t their own computers and continued working in silence, performing anillegal investigation of their own in order to legally prove the innocence of the Edwards.







120Part 30 – Finding Clues

Thinking nationally he wrote down the names of corporate bank executives, a competitor company, afew suppliers and even some customers. As with any business as big as his there were political foes whohe knew wanted to shut down his business, and add to the top of that a union and he was being hit fromboth political sides, Republican and Democrat. He had plenty of enemies in Washington and took timeto document these people well.

On an international level, he again wrote down political figures and executive level individuals whom hehad interactions with in the past.

By the time his list was completed he had written down seventy-seven names of potential people whowould love to see him rot in prison for the rest of his life. Next he prioritized them based on their abilityto organize such an elaborate scheme. They would need lots of money and good contacts to be able topoint the finger at him and his family.

By the time he was done it was ten thirty and lights were going to be out soon. He closed his journal andplaced it under his mattress then said a prayer before engaging in the final conversation of the eveningwith his cell mates.

*******

It was getting close to eight o’clock when Barry would have to leave the computer shop to head home,

but he had too much work ahead of him. Asking to borrow the phone he dialed his p arent’s number andreceived approval to stay until nine thirty. He explained to his parents that Troy was teaching him aboutExcel on the computer and he wanted to finish this last lesson before coming home. His mom wasexcited that he was learning more ab out computers and with his father’s permission she let him stay

until nine-thirty. Tomorrow he could stay out longer since it would be Friday night.

Barry was half way through his list of ninety eight phone numbers that had been either incoming oroutgoing calls, including James Edwards who was in the top twenty list of callers. The rest of the namesBarry did not recognize.

Behind him Troy said, “Hey Barry, take a look at this.”

Barry left his post, rolled his chair back and joined Troy at his side, lookin g at the screen, “What?”

“Look at this post here dated in February of this year. It is someone asking about hiring a hacker for a big job, which in itself is not uncommon to have people ask for this, which usually gets ignored, but this guyis asking from right here in our town. And look how it is signed. ‘MH’.

“So somebody here is asking to hire a hacker, I agree that this is not a coincidence, but who is MH?”

“I’m willing to be it is Mike Hattfield, the Mayor’s son.”

Barry sat stunned, he knew he didn’t like Mike, this must be why. Deep down he seemed like snake andapparently he was. “Does it say anymore?”






“Someone answered the request, looks like a guy in Denmark , but he cuts the thread there telling MH tocontact him directly with the requirements of t he job.”

“So can we email this guy and ask him?”

“Hahaha, what, are you serious? No, we cannot just email him and ask, we have to research this guy tofind out who he is and if he might have even taken the job, I’m on it right now, and will looks for simil arquestions from an MH and see if there are other responses on other sites, do you have anything yet withphone numbers?”

“I have about half of the list of names, I should be done soon with the rest.”

“Okay, let me know when you are done and we will start figuring out who these people are and if wecan triangulate people against forums and the mayor. Once we find some matches we can narrow ourscope.”

Barry rolled back to his computer, entered more phone numbers and retrieved their correspondingowners name and address. Toward the bottom of the list were four international numbers that did notshow in the search tool that he was using. In the background the printer was feverishly spitting outpaper “What about international numbers? How do we get the names on those?”

“International? Really? Cool, I bet that would lead us to a gold mine, leave those for me, I’ll check themlater. I’ll have to find which country they are from and figure out how to get into those systems, but it

shouldn’t be a problem. Check ou t these sites where MH is asking all over the place for a hacker.”

Barry rolled back over while Troy gabbed the stack of papers from the printer. Pulling out a highlighterfrom the drawer he found MH on the first page, circled it and handed it to Barry. The message was the

same as the first on Troy read to him , indicating that they Mayor’s son was fishing for hackers, andseemed to get some bites, assuming the signature in these posts were Mike Hattfield.

“Sloppy, very sloppy, this guy has no idea what he i s doing posting so many requests on these forums,it’s like he is begging to be caught, we just have to confirm that he is who we think he his and we have togo through those names on the list to figure out who is working with the Mayor and why they want theEdwards’ out of the way.”

“I’m going to finish up the last few names then I have to head home. Do you have a home too or do youlive here?” The question was sarcasm but Barry half expected beds to fold out from the wall where Troy

and his Dad would sleep.

“The store closes at nine o’clock, we usually leave around ten, after everything is cleaned up, but we

don’t live far from here, if you wanted to wait we could give you a ride home.”

“No thanks, I have to be home by 9:30, I’d rather walk anyway.” Actua lly he would rather have a ride,but out of embarrassment he did not want Troy and his Dad to see where he lived, although Troy






probably took over a satellite and trained it on Barry’s address as part of the vetting process for allowing

him into the inner circle.

Barry completed the list a nine fifteen, and indicated he was leaving. “Before I go do you need to do

anything with this Excel file?”

In response Troy rolled his chair over and inspected the file, quickly scrolling through some names. Withpuckered lips he let out a whistle. “Wow, there are some big names on here, not that I would expectanything less from the Mayor but I can’t wait to find out who these other people are too, since this isfrom last month and probably has most, if not all of the people who are associated with this. Oh, and Iwon’t be here tomorrow, my Dad is meeting some friends up North so we are closing early and drivingup, probably won’t be back until around midnight so we can’t meet until Saturday but we can start

when the store opens at ten. ”

Disappointed that they would lose a day of investigative work, Barry acknowledged the meeting time onSaturday and committed to spend as much time as he could here on Saturday and Sunday. “Who are we

going to tell about this? We can’t let the FBI keep the Edwards’ in Jail, this could help them.”

“Not yet, this isn’t evidence, and at this point it is proof that we are doing something we shouldn’t be

doing, if we went to the FBI, we would be bunking with Evan, and personally I like my own bed, but ifyou tell anyone about this, I will disown you and will not pursue this any further, I will shred and burn allof this wipe my drives so there is no evidence and I will completely deny anything you say, got it?”





123Part 31 – Cup ‘o Joe

Part 31 – Cup ‘o Joe Barry awoke to a knock on the front door and knew it was not his parents, who left about a half hourago at six thirty in the morning. He heard the car start and pull out of the carport and knew his parentswould not be at the door. Rain thumped on the roof on the trailer and although it was time to get up forschool, Barry pulled the covers up over his neck and closed his eyes for one last snooze.

Another knock at the front door confirmed that it was not his imagination, it was probably a neighborwanting to borrow eggs or milk, the latter they had a little bit left, but the former was a luxury. Rollingoff his mattress that lay on the ground, lacking even a metal frame and box springs, he peeked out themakeshift curtains, adorning a flower pattern over a dark green and blue sheet. It was hideous buteffective.

The window to his room was on the same side as the door to the trailer, however the steps that led upto a small porch to meet the height of the door extended only a couple of feet past the door, and not tohis window. Two men stood on the platform, both dressed in jackets and hats that shielded them from

the rain. What was unmistakable were the gun holsters resting on their hips and the outline of a cop caron the street. The window Barry looked out of was dry, protected by the covering for the car whichwould have been parked next to his room only thirty minutes prior to now.

Carefully placing the flowered curtain back into place, making every attempt to not disturb thequietness of the window hanging, Barry did a military crawl into his closet which, like most of the house,was empty, then slowly closed the rolling door to hid him from any views the cops may have if they triedto peek in the curtains, or should they decide to break down the door and search the house. Hopefullythat would not be the outcome.

Sitting in dark silence, a third attempt was made at the door. “Barry Go - Go-ewp, Uh, Barry, is the police,are you in there? We have some questions for you.” Said the deep male voice.

One thing Barry could say about a trailer is they were not made for sound proofing, and while it was aproblem at times, today he was thankful for thin exterior walls. The two men started a conversation.“Let’s take a look around, I’ll go around this way, and you that way. We’ll meet in the middle.”

As far as Barry was concerned it didn’t matter which way they each went, ultimately they would make it

around the trailer, and it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to cover the area. Footsteps could beheard walking down the steps then around to the window of his room. The cops would not see muchpast the curtain but would be able to see that no lights were on and in the living room they would notice

an empty living room. Barry didn’t move an inch.

The cops reconvened under the car port to stay out of the rain, Barry assumed. Faint voices could beheard, and pressing his ear up against the wall, each voice was slightly magnified to the point where hecould hear the conversation.

“Is this the right address?”






“That’s what it says here.”

“I don’t think anyone lives here, there is hardly any furniture or normal living items like a clothes

hamper, dresser or lamps.”

“I didn’t see much either. A mattress on the floor in the room in the back and from what I can tell, theroom here looks empty.”

“Let’s go the school and see if he is there, if not I’m willing to bet they moved. It shows here they move

all of the time, it wouldn’t surprise me if they left town.”

“Okay, call it into the station, and let them know we are headed to the high school.”

Barry’s heart beat in his chest, feeling as if it was going to jump out. Twice in one week this had

happened, last week with the FBI and now this Friday, one week later. What did they want now? Somany scenarios ran through his mind. At one point he thought there could be a chance somethinghappened to his parents, but the comments about moving negated that idea. Was there a problem atthe hospital and they knew Barry was there a lot? Probably not. Could it have to do with hanging outwith Troy and getting the phone numbers? This was the thought that continued to bounce through hishead.

Today, he decided, would be a sick day. Rarely did he not go to school for an illness unless it was reallybad. His parents wanted him to get a good education, and skipping school for a sickness typically wasnot a good enough excuse. Outside he heard the car start and slowly move away, which should havebeen his queue to exit his hiding place. Instead he sat, unmoving for several minutes collecting histhoughts and figuring out what to do with his day. He wanted to meet with Dereck and finish readingthe bible to Michelle yet he needed to stay away from school and come up with a game plan to explainto his parents why he skipped school and went to the hospital. He was not going to stay at home in casethe cops came back looking for him again. His fear was that they would be back tonight. He formulated aplan in the closet.

When it was safe Barry crawled out from the empty closet and gently peered through the crack in thesheet and convinced himself nobody was out there. Slowly he exited his room looking at the windowsthat would give him away should someone be peering in. He did not see any movement or eyeballs.Today would not be a shower day, but he would rinse his hair in the sink. The rain would rinse more, butthe thought of taking care of his personal hygiene at home make him feel better about being out inpublic.

Making his way into the kitchen he found the phone and dialed the school. After one ring the call wasanswered. In a deep voice Barry played out the first part of his plan, “Hello, this is Bill Goupe, I am callingto let you know that my son Barry Goupe will not be at school today, he is not feeling well.” The womanon the other end of t he phone was polite and stated she would notate Barry’s absence and would

require a note when he returned from school.






Next Barry retrieved the bible from his room and opened to the front page where Dereck left his phonenumbers. Deciding Dereck was most likely getting ready for the day, he dialed the home phone. Afterfour rings an answering machine picked up. Barry did not leave a message. Dereck’s cell phone was

dialed next, and again voicemail greeted him. Checking the clock it read seven twenty. It was doubtfulDereck was at work this early, regardless he dialed the number and for the third time was greeted byDereck’s recorded voice. Barry decided he would get ready to leave and call the pastor again before heleft.

What he really wanted to do was call Troy to find out if they cops were stalking him too, but out ofparanoia Troy did not give out personal information including phone or address. Maybe this was thereason why. Then the thought occurred to him, what if the cops tapped the Goupe’s phone? If he calledTroy then the cops would go look for his friend. It was unlikely the cops cared that much about Barry,nevertheless it is better to be safe than sorry. Instead of calling Dereck on his home phone, he wouldhead to the Church and wait for the man to show up.

Throwing on pants, socks and a shirt, then brushing his teeth, Barry opted to forego the sink shower. Forsome reason he felt pressed to leave the trailer. Grabbing a spare piece of note paper, Barry scribbled anote to his parents, hoping it would imply he went to school, came home, wrote the note, then left forhis friend ’s house.

Mom and Dad,

Troy asked me to stay over at his house tonight since it is Friday night, I hope that is ok with you.I will call you when you get home just to make sure.

Barry

At some point in his young life Barry was going to have to stop lying before it made him a hardenedcriminal who would lie to anyone for no reason at all.

Finding his jacket in the coat closet he slipped it over his arms and zipped up the front, with the Bibletucked inside to protect it from the rain. Clearing the area by looking through the sheet curtains aroundthe trailer, Barry concluded no cops were near, nevertheless he proceeded with caution outside andtook a route around the back of the trailer park and out to the street where he found no appearance ofundercover cops staking out the neighborhood.

Rain poured as from a faucet in the sky, and it wasn’t long before Barry was soaked. This was a normal

experience and while it was uncomfortable it was not unbearable. Thirty minutes after leaving his houseBarry showed up at the Church. It looked new, and was much bigger than he expected. It lacked stainedglass with pictures of religious icons, however it did have a large cross placed on the front of the buildingwhich extended up through the top of the roof, reaching toward the sky. The parking lot with brightwhite outlines for parking spaces was void of any cars.

He estimated the time at eight in the morning and thought the church may not op en until nine o’clock.

Finding his way to the business office on the side of the church where a small awning protected him






from the rain, he read the business hours on the door. His heart sank when it revealed the offices wereclosed Friday.

Never had he broke the law, today however he felt like a fugitive, running away from home and trying tokeep away from the law. Under the awning his mind reeled, searching for where he would go next. The

hospital was out of the question. He might be able to pass off as a college student, if he had not alreadyvisited the hospital every day after school. Looking across the street he noticed Cup ‘o Joe coffee shop,the national coffee chain known for its warm interior and studios atmospheres. Blending in would notbe a problem there.

He made a dash for the store and opted to jay walk rather than using the crosswalk fifty yards away.Fortunately no cops were around chastise him for his law breaking act. Inside the coffee shop anuplifting jazz album was playing quietly over the speakers. One girl sat in front of her Mac with ear budwires streaming out of her long, straight brown hair. A school book was open on the table, along with anotepad and a large paper cup with plastic sipper top. She busily typed and paid no attention to Barry.Two employees stayed busy with mundane tasks while the traffic was slow. In a friendly tone they askedwhat they could get started for Barry, and for reasons mostly pertaining to lack of cash, he politelydeclined. Instead he made his way to the shelf at the end of the barista station against the back wallwhere a sign read, “Take a book, leave a book”. Scanning the small se lection of books with titles such as Advanced Java, A Night at Bloomingdales and Sally’s Last Wish , Barry opted for the book in his jacket.

A leather arm chair in the front corner of the store, by the front door, beckoned him, and he obliged.Removing his jacket and draping it across the small round table next to the dark brown chair, he baskedin the warmth, peering outside the window at the pouring rain. As he opened the bible to begin readingRevelation, he noticed a police car pull into the parking lot and drive up to the front spot. Thinkingquickly he set the bible on table next to his soaked jacket and made his way toward the bathroom. Itwouldn’t take long for the staff to make a couple of cups of coffee, and hopefully the cops were not

there to study alongside the brunette.

His back was turned as the two officers entered through the doors. “Good morning Jen.” One of the

officers said in an unmistakable voice, one he had heard less than two hours ago.

“Hi Butch, the usual today?”

“Yes Ginger, l arge latte, with a double shot of espresso.”

“And your usual too Todd?”

“Haven’t had any reason to change it up yet. One of these days I’ll get one of those cold blended drinks

with whipped cream on top. Maybe next summer.”

The second voice was familiar as well. “Please, God, make them go away.” Barry whispered. It was not aprayer, it was more of a wish.






As Barry stood next to the sink his heart leapt as the door handle rattled. “It will be a few minutes.”

Barry said, thinking on his feet.

“No hurry.” Said the second cop.

Friendly conversation ensued between the baristas and their well-known customers. The amount oftime they stuck around was becoming uncomfortable and at some point Barry was going to have tocome out, but how?

A knock sounded on the door. Todd spoke with concern, “Is everything ok in there?”

“Uh, just a little longer, sorry. My stomach is not feeling well.” That was too much information, but who

knocked on a public bathroom door?

Again more friendly chatter erupted outside the safe confines of the small bathroom with burnt orangewalls and dark metal fixtures. Barry had a plan. He would grab some paper towels and act as if he waswiping off his face as he exited the bathroom, hopefully hiding enough of his face for the cops to notrecognize him, assuming they knew what he looked like. He could only imagine seeing his face in thepost office or hanging in stores with big block letters: “WANTED” across the top. Covering his lie, heflushed the toilet and turned on the sink as if washing his hands. Grabbing a couple of paper towels, heopened the door and pretended to wipe down his face when he noticed the officers rushing away fromhim toward the front door, with Butch speaking in unrecognizable code into his shoulder mic.

Barry lowered his hands in relief, and as he did the second cop looked back, closing the door and lookedBarry directly then eyes, then turned toward the cop car. In a moment of recognition, the cop lookedback again as Barry instinctively turned toward the studying girl with headphones. Heart pounding in hischest, Barry could not think of an alternative escape plan, other than throwing a chair through the largeplate glass window and running for his life. Even that scenario ended in a bad way for him.

He continued toward the girl, from behind, as if he knew her and from the corner of his eye he noticedthe cop enter the vehicle while the driver started the car. The car backed away with blinking red andblue lights on the roof and Barry looked toward the car noticing the passenger cop squinting into coffeeshop. Barry turned toward the counter, he needed to get a hold Dereck and thought it would be a goodtime to call again. Asking the friendly girl named Ginger at the counter if he could use their phone for alocal phone call, she h esitated then said, “Usually we don’t allow people to make calls from here, butour manager isn’t here, so go ahead. The phone is right back there.” She motioned around the back wall

behind the counter.

“Thank you, I won’t be long. I was supposed to meet a friend here and want to see if he slept in.”

She just smiled and went about cleaning the items in the big industrial sink.

Picking up the phone Barry dialed the home number and after four rings the answering machine chimedthe same message as before. Knowing Dereck was not at the Church, Barry tried his cell phone. Aftertwo rings Dereck answered the phone.






“Hi Dereck, it’s Barry Goupe, Michelle’s friend from the hospital.”

“Barry, good to hear from you. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

Barry wasn’t prepared for that and ignored the question. “If you have time today, or even now, I wouldlike to talk to you. You said I could call if I had questions.” There was a slight air of urgency in his voice,even though he was trying to sound normal. Two close calls with the cops, a lie to his parents andknowing information that would get him serious trouble was cause for rising panic. To top it off he hadnobody he could go to or talk to, except Dereck who he hardly knew.

“I can meet you after breakfast. Friday are our Pastoral breakfast meetings, we should be finishing up ina half hour, is everything okay ?”

Trying to recover from pre-panic mode, Barry attempted to compose himself and put on an air ofnonchalance. “Yeah, fine. I’m at Cup ‘o Joe now. ”

“Okay Barry, lets meet at the church in a half hour. Are you sure everything is fine?”

“Yeah everything is fine, just wanted to talk .”

“Meet me at the office, I’ll be there soon.”

Barry hung up the phone and made his way to his chair, thanking Ginger for allowing him to use thephone. Deciding more cops could show up to the coffee shop, Barry put on his jacket, grabbed his bibleand walked across the street to the church, where he would wait for the youth pastor.





129Part 32 – Cat’s out of the Bag

Part 32 – Cat’s out of the Bag Barry watched an old maroon, two door Honda Accord pull into the parking lot. It must have been closeto fifteen years old with paint that looked almost new. Apparently the car was well taken care of by allof its owners. Dereck parked next to the awning, where Barry stood after sitting and reading the bible.

“You look soaked Barry.” Dereck said, exiting the car in a mad dash for the office door and protectionfrom the rain.

“My mom accidently took my umbrella this morning.” Barry lied, again.

Dereck unlocked the office door and hurried to an alarm box on the wall where he typed in a code whichwas then followed by a series of beeps, then a green light. The door closed behind Barry and the warmthof the office was a welcome comfort. Dereck flipped on the lights and Barry followed him to his office,which was to the right of the lobby, through a swinging half door, then the first office door ten feetaway from reception area.

Automatic lights came on upon entering the office, illuminating a decent sized room with an office deskoff to the left side with a computer monitor on the desk, along with some papers and books. His deskwas not clean, nor was it a complete disaster. It gave the impression that he was a busy man with notenough time in the day to finish all of his daily work.

In the corner next to the desk was a small bookshelf packed with books, which at a glance, did notcontain any fiction titles. Atop the bookshelf were three framed pictures, one of him and his wife ontheir wedding day, another of his wife and baby, and the third of the three of them as a family. In thelast picture their daughter appeared to be about a year old. Posters hung on the wall, all having to dowith Jesus and bible verses, but cool looking and appealing to a younger crowd.

Instead of sitting in the chair behind his desk, Dereck motioned for Barry to sit at the round table in thecorner opposite his desk. This table was free of clutter allowing Barry to set his bible down, then heremoved his jacket and hung it on the coat rack next to the door, where Dereck had placed his.

“Is there a problem at school Barry, school isn’t out is it?” Dereck’s words were not judgmental orcondemning, but they did set a threshold of authority, letting Barry know skipping school would not betaken lightly.

Barry did have questions about the Bible and tomorrow was supposed to be the day this would behappening, but things changed quickly. Were it not for the cops banging on his door this morning, he

would not be on the run, even though he did not know what he was on the run from. On a normal day,cops did not visit his house to play a board game or engage in social hour with the family. Thus heconcluded visits from the cops was not a positive sign of things to come. It took him a minute to gatherhis thoughts, then h e answered. “I really do have questions about the Bible, I wanted to talk to youtomorrow, but things happened today and I don’t know where to go.”

“What happened, Barry? What things happened?”






Again, Barry paused not knowing how much he should say. Troy was adamant that nobody know abouttheir own private investigation, and especially about the information they found so far and the meansby which they acquired it. “You are a real pastor, right?”

Dereck displayed a perplexed look. “Yes, why do you ask?”

“Isn’t there something where if I tell you something you can’t tell anyone? In books I read it is something

like attorney client privilege, for attorneys and their clients.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. Well I might be, I don’t know, but you can’t tell anyone, and I need to know that you won’t,

otherwise I have to go.”

“As a pastor, any information you tell me I am not at liberty to discuss with anyone, unless it issomething that directly puts you or someone else at harm, then I must report it.”

“OK, but if I did something illegal, that doesn’t hurt anyone, and actually is meant to help someone evenif it looks illegal now, can you keep that a secret.”

“I cannot promise you anonymity, but if you are in danger you can tell me and I will help you. Some

people in o ur congregation are cops and…”

“No cops, absolutely no cops. No FBI, no government.” Barry picked up his bible and stood. “Nevermind,

this was a bad idea.” He turned to grab his jacket from the wooden coat rack.

“Barry, wait, I promise not to tell anyone u nless your life is being threatened. Are you in that muchtrouble?”

Pausing with his coat in hand, Barry turned back to the pastor who was also on his feet. “No. I’m just

trying to help someone, that’s all.”

“Tell me what is bothering you, if I can help, I will.”

Barry hung his jacket back up and set the Bible on the table again and explained the facts from how hemet Evan to hearing the principal and Mayor, then the arrest and being arrested by the FBI. He talkedabout meeting someone who was helping him, not mentioning Troy, his Dad or where they worked. Hetried to imply that Troy was not a student, whether or not that made a difference was irrelevant sinceTroy would deny anything anyway. Dereck listened intently to each detail and was amazed at the partwhere they found “MH” searching for hackers in a forum, and having access to phone records. Barry

concluded with the police visit at his trailer and the close call at Cup ‘o Joe with the same cops.

“All of this so that you can help prove the Edwards innoc ence in this hacking case? I admire you Barry foryour tenacity and desire to do good.” Dereck thought of w hat to do next. Standing up from his chair theidea came to him. “I have a suggestion. You may not like it, but it may be the only thing that will help.”

Barry was skeptical but was willing to hear Dereck out.






Dereck continued. “The attorney that is representing the Edwards in this case is g ood friends with Mr.Edwards, and also attends our church. I think he needs to hear this.”

“What if he is in on it, what if it is him who planned this out, I don’t trust anyone. I don’t even know whyI told you. I guess this day has just taken a turn and I don’t know very many people in this town since we

moved in about a month ago.”

“Even if you have any amount of t rust in me, you can trust Chuck. He had nothing to gain from any ofthis. As a matter of fact, his plan is to retire in December and bike across the county. I would trust him ifit were me, but I’ll leave it up to you.”

Assuming him and Troy would be able to show proof that the Edwards did not commit a Nationalcybercrime, they would eventually need to hand over the evidence to the FBI or an Attorney. At thispoint Barry trusted the FBI less. “Okay, I’ll talk to the attorney , but I cannot tell anyone who I amworking with or he will not help anymore. ”

Dereck walked behind his desk and moved the mouse on his computer to take off the screen saver. Helogged in and opened the church directory, then searched for Chuck Finkelstein. Finding the number hepicked up his phone and dialed the number. A few seconds passed and it was obvious that Dereck hadmuch better luck with answered phone calls than Barry did. “Good morning Chuck, this is pastor Dereck

from Church, did I catch you at a good time?”

Barry felt his body fill with nerves, like when he is cold and shivers. This time, however, he knew it camefrom opening a can of worms. He felt this was going to get big, fast.

“Before you go to the Jail to meet with James, you should stop by the church. There is someone h ere Iwould like you to meet. He has some information that I think will be beneficial in the Edwards case.”Barry fidgeted during the pause. “Okay, see you in a few minutes. Just knock on the office door and I willopen it for you. Thanks Chuck. ”

Dereck hu ng up the phone and looked at Barry who looked unnerved. “You are doing the right thingBarry.” The statement did not make Barry feel any better. “We have an hour to talk about the Bible and

answer your questions. Do you want something to drink? Coffee or water, soda, juice?”

Hoping something hot may calm him he asked, “Do you have hot chocolate?”

“I’m pretty sure we do, I’ll check. I’ll get the coffee pot going for me. Nothing like a hot cup of coffee on

a cold day.”

Barry wrestled with his thoughts as Dereck was making coffee. This was too soon to tell anyone, therewas not good enough evidence to share a lawyer, and the more who knew about this the more likelyTroy would find out and stop working with him. If the police had not showed up at his home thismorning, he would be in school, then go to the hospital and probably be talking to the pastor after that,and only about bible stuff. Today’s early morning surprise altered the course of Barry’s plans, and not

for the better.






Dereck returned with a single cup and set it down in front of Barry. “Hope you don’t mind tiny

marshmallows in your cocoa, that’s all we had.”

“Thank you, I like marshmallows.”

“Well, not to change the subject around your extra -curricular activities, but you said you had questionsabou t the bible. And that I can help with. Where do you want to start?”

Barry opened his bible to the last page and looked at his question. Still nervous and paying only halfattention to his questions he just picked the ones that bouncing around in his mind. “There are so many

religions out there. If they all lead to God then why is Christianity any different?”

Dereck leaned back in his chair and smiled, “Starting with the hard ones. One thing you will find with me

is that I tend to answer questions with analogies, so bear with me while I formulate the response, thentie it back in to the question. Do you have any interest in classic cars?”

“Not really. Never had one.”

“Not a problem, I think you will get the po int though. When I was in High School, my Dad bought a 1965Mustang. It had a beautiful read paint job and new interior, but underneath it was dirty and fallingapart. I remember going to the auto part store with my Dad and he would buy parts for the car, andbelieve me, we bought many parts. Most of the time they would ask us if we wanted the OEM part or aknock off. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer, meaning Ford made the part, or it wasmade by a Ford authorized company. In most cases the part would fit, and would suffice for the purposewe used it for, but there were a few parts we bought that we wished we would have bought OEM.When we took the car to car shows, people would be impressed with the way it looked, but when theystarted looking under the hood and around the car, it didn’t tak e long for them to realize that it lookedlike a Mustang, but parts were not mustang parts. In reality, it was a fake.

“That’s what happens with people and religion. They package religion to make it look godly, and from

the outside they may be good people with good intentions, but inside they are fake and not the realthing. What religions do you know about?”

“I don’t know. I had a friend that was Mormon, and another Jehovah Witness. I have heard of Buddha’sand Jewish. That’s really all I know, but I don’t know the details about them.”

“Tell me how you perceive each one of them.”

“Mormons are really nice, they have great families, and they ride bikes and knock on people’ s doors toget them to convert to their religion . And they can’t drink coffee or smoke . Jehovah Witness’ wear niceclothes and go door to door too. They are highly restricted in what they can or can’ t do, eat, say andeven who they hang out with. My Jehovah Witness friend was in trouble for hanging out with me, after Iwould not go to church with them. Buddha’s sit and do nothing but hum, and the Jewish kids get a party

when they turn thirteen, and they have to memorize and recite something in another language. ”






“Do you see any common thread between all of those religions?”

“Uhhh, they are all trying to get to God? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Man took the word of God over the years and distorted it, making rules out of it, claiming that if you

follow their rules, that is what will please God, and therefor will get you to heaven. This is called works.You have to work your way to God. Like the Mustang, business try to make a part that is not an officialpart. It has the components of the correct part, but it does not come from the official maker. Christianityis the only religion that is not works based. The only way to get to heaven is through Jesus Christ. Thereis no other way. Matthew 7:13-14 warns us ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate andbroad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrowthe road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’ And in John 14:6 Jesus says ‘ I am the way and the truthand the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ This means that there is nothing you cando on your own that will get you heaven. You could be the kindest and best person on the planet, givingyou money to the poor, solving world hunger, helping the animals, you name it, but none of that will getyou heaven without Jesus.”

“Just because it is written doesn’t make it true though. Jesus could have been a good man like Gandhi orMother Theresa, and told everyone to follow him and because he was such a good guy, people wouldfollow him, then write a book about it.” Challenged Barry

“When you look at the Bible from a hi gh level, meaning the concept of each of the books in the bible,you will find common thread throughout. There is countless prophesies in the Old Testament that pointto Jesus and who he would be, where he would be from and what he would do for people. All of whichwere fulfilled in the New Testament. There is a saying that the Old Testament is the New Testamentconcealed and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed , meaning the prophesies told in the

old testament happen in the new, revealing and bring to light all of what the old testament meant. Forexample, when Judas sold out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, which was told in Zechariah 11. Let me seeyour Bible and I will show you. ”

Barry handed over his Bible and Dereck turned to the page and pointed at the passage:

“ Then I said to them, ‘ If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them. ’ Andthey weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the Lord said to me, ‘ Throw it to the potter ’—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver andthrew them into the house of the Lord, to the potter. ”

“Now lets turn to Matthew 26 and 27”

“Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said,‘What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?’ And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16

And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.”

“ Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind andbrought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘ I have sinned






by betraying innocent blood. ’ They said, ‘ What is that to us? See to it yourself. ’ And throwingdown the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But thechief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘ It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, sinceit is blood money. ’ So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. ”

Dereck stood and walked over to his bookshelf and pulled out a worn book about the size of a hardbackTom Clancy novel and set it on the table. “This book, Every Prophesy of the Bible identifies an abundanceof prophesy that is unmistakable that confirms again that Jesus is who He says He is.”

“So people in other religions will not go to heaven because they aren’t Christian? That doesn’t seem

fair.”

“No religion will get you into heaven, if you think of religion as man’s own effort to get to God. I believe

there are people out there of other faiths that know who Jesus is and who trust in Him and repent theirsins to Him. And I also know there are people in the Christian religion who will not go to heaven becausethey don’t know who Jesus is. It’s not about a religion, but about a relationship. Let me put it anotherway. If James Edwards was your Dad and he wanted you to have the best of everything. You, however,decided you wanted to be on your own and did not want anything he could give you. Maybe you gotmad at him one day for the wrong reason. Instead of treating him like your Father, you decided tochoose someone else like your favorite teacher at school. You still know your Dad is your biologicalfather, but you reject him because of a perception you have of him. You live your life going to baseballgames with your Dad of choice, and on vacations. He teaches you how to drive and is there when youget married. Then one day your biological Dad dies and you find out that he had a will. Curious you go tothe attorney and ask to see the will, and there is one especially for you. In that envelope there is a letteron top of the will explaining that your Dad desperately wanted you to come back home. He missed youand his heart ached for you every day and night. You meant the world to him and he wanted nothingmore from you but for you to come back to him. Since you chose to reject him and his ways, he knewyou would want nothing of his estate, so he gave it all to a local charity. How would that make youfeel?”

“I’d be pretty mad that I didn’t get anything. If he loved me that much why did he just not leave it tome?”

“Now think of whose fault it is that you don’t have his estate. Is it his fault or is it your fault that you

chose not to acknowledge him, even though you knew who he was, you chose a way that you thought

was better for you.”

“It would be my fault.”

“Exactly. You didn’t think that your real Dad cared about you, but he did. You didn’t tell him you were

sorry and acknowledge to him that he was your real Dad. And by the time you thought about it, it wastoo late. Unfortunately people run around this world knowing that God exists. Even deep inside atheists,they know God exists, but people choose their own way, ignoring the one and only God who cares about






us and only wants us to apologize for our sins against Him, then wants us to trust Him. And by the timethey know the truth, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, according toPhilippians 2:10, it will be too late. And eternity without God is horrific. Worse than anything you couldimagine here on earth.” Standing up from the small table Dereck continued, “My coffee should be ready,

I am going to grab a cup.”

The warmth of hot chocolate was more comforting than the sweetness that filled his stomach. Barryfinished the cocoa before its temperature equaled the outside air. While he waited for Dereck to return,Barry paged through the prophesy book. A knock at the front door startled Barry. ‘Must be Chuck’ hethought to himself. Dereck must have been close since it was not long before the front door wasopened. Outside the office door in the entryway Barry heard the two men talking.

“Chuck, thanks for coming over on such short notice. Come into my office, I’d like you to meet Barry

Goupe, a friend of Evan’s .”

Barry’s back was toward the door and he turned to see Dereck enter, then behind him was a manstanding over six foot who looked young and fit, were it not for the incriminating grey hair. A warmsmile formed on the lawyer’s face as he stretched out his hand. Without standing, Barry met the man’shand with a handshake and noticed a gold Rolex on his right wrist. Chuck wore an overcoat to block therain, which he removed and hung on the coat rack next to Barry’s jacket. He looked ric h, wearing a darkblue suit with pinstripes, shiny black shoes, a crisp light blue shirt and a yellow tie with a busy bluepattern.

Barry guessed this outfit, excluding the watch, cost more than his parents made in a month. Barry didnot envy money as much as he wanted the life essentials that it provided, such as food, clothes, shelterand enough extra for retirement. His parents had enough for shelter, sometimes food, rarely clothes,

and never had enough to save.

“Nice to meet you Barry, I am Chuck Finkelstein, attorney for James and Evan Edwards.”

“Hi, sir.” Barry said with nervousness in his voice.

Dereck motioned for Chuck to sit in the chair opposite Barry, while he pulled around his rolling chairfrom behind the desk and next to the table, between Chuck and Barry.

“Barry, do you mind if I give Chuck an intro to how we met and our conversation this morning?”

“No.” Barry responded, a little relieved.

“Barry and I met at the hospital a couple of days ago while we were visiting Michelle. He has been

reading her the Bible every day. Anyway, he called me today to let me know of some findings that mayhelp prove that the Edwards did not hack into top secret computers and steal information. I’ll let him

give you the specifics.”






Both eyes turned to Barry, the p astor looking eager and the attorney unwavered by the introduction. “I

don’t really have good information yet, but I think we are going to find out real soon who did this.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Chuck asked.

“I can’t say. He won’t work with me anymore if he knew I was talking to you or anyone, but I had to talkto someone today because the cops showed up at my house this morning. I don’t know why but it mayhave something to do with the information we are trying to track down.” Barry continued with his story

from the beginning, the same one he told Dereck.

“I appreciate your efforts, however, it does not sound like you have anything circumstantial. None ofthis would hold up in a court of law. That being said, I would be interested in knowing if you find moreactua l evidence. The trial is in two weeks, and the sooner we have evidence, the better.”

“We weren’t going to tell anyone until we had evidence, but with the police knocking on my door, I am

afraid they may know what me and my friend are doing, and if they ta ke us to jail, then we won’t be

able to find out who is behind all this.”

Chuck smiled and let out a small laugh, amused by the story of jail time. “Believe me, Barry, that thecops cannot do anything quick, especially track down kids who are visiting website forums. Getting thephone bill for the Mayor is a crime but it would take the police months before they would come close totracking you down, and most likely it would not be the police. You would have to continue doing this forthem to track you.” Chuck stood and sincerely said, “If you can give me actual evidence of the Edward’s

being framed, please let me know. I want them to be innocent as much as you do. I have to go visit Mr.Edwards and Evan now, and I have a lot of work ahead of me today to prep are for this case.” As Chuckpulled out his business card from his suit jacket, Dereck’s cell phone played a song, obviously indicating

an incoming call.With a look of unrecognition Derek picked up the call. “Hello, this is Dereck.”

Recognition, surprise and concern replaced the initial look on his face. “Yes I did receive a call earlierfrom Barry Goupe.” As he said the kid’s name Dereck looked at him with concern as he continued to

listen to the caller on the other end. Barry’s stomach twisted in knots b efore he knew what the call wasabout.

“I am at Brighton Community Church, where I work, talking to one of our church members, we met thismorning to spend some time in prayer.” Apparently Dereck was leaving out the key reason he was there,

which was to meet with Barry, and it seemed as if Dereck did not like the direction of this call.“We are here now, you are welcome to stop by.” Dereck shot a glance at Chuck implying ‘You need to

stay here’ .

“Two minutes?” then a short pause. “Oh, you are across the str eet at the coffee shop. Yes we will behere.” Dereck pressed end on his phone. “Barry, the cops are looking for you, the will be here in two

minutes.”





137Part 33 – Tracking Down Barry

Part 33 – Tracking Down BarryDereck answered the knock at the office door and ushered the police in. “Quite a day out there.” Barry

recognized the voice as Butch.

“Yes, typical fall weather. Soon it will be snow.” Dereck’s voice was calm and did not give any impression

that anything was out of the ordinary. “My office is right over here, you can hang up y our coats inthere.”

Chuck stood at the door and introduced himself to the two police men as they entered the office, thenhe took the same seat he had before, while the officers hung their coats and Dereck pulled over morechairs to accommodate the larger group.

“We shouldn’t be long, just have a couple of questions for you regarding the phone call you receivedearlier from Barry goopee.” Butch said as he hung his coat on the hook where Barry’s hung minutes

before, however was now an empty hook. Obviously he was the leader of the two officers. He was the

one that knocked on Barry’s door, gave orders to search around the trailer and seemed to have anauthoritative presence around the coffee shop.

“His last name is go-pay, Barry go-pay. May I ask what he has done?”

“I’d prefer to ask you some questions first, if you don’t mind.” It was a statement, not an option.

“Sure, okay.”

“Barry called you on your phone this morning from that coffee shop across the street. Officer Ganley

thought he recognized Barry in the coffee shop as we were responding to another call. When we wentback to ask questions, the helpful clerk informed us that he had made a call, and according to the phoneit showed your number. What was the reason of the call this morning?”

Dereck told Barry he would not lie for him, neither would he let the cops know that Barry was hidingunder one of the desks in a cubical on the opposite side of Dereck’s office. The lights in the main officearea were not turned on, leaving the place dark except for Derec k’s office. Barry grabbed his jacket,bible, pen and empty hot chocolate cup and hid beneath the desk after Dereck hung up with the cops.He was shaking so much from fear that he was sure the officers could hear him. He could hear them asclear as day, since the office door was left open.

“Barry had some questions about the Bible. I am a youth pastor and the kids know they can call me

anytime if they have questions, problems, or just need to talk.”

“Did Barry talk about any problems?”

“No, he only indicated he had a question about the Bible.”

“Did it concern you that he called you at the beginning of a school day?”






“No so much, it was before school started. I get calls at all t imes during the day from the kids. They call

me when they are sick and home alone, or from parties when they want a ride home, and even duringschool. I do question them, but I don’t ignore them. Sometimes I am the only one who will listen to

them.”

“Ginger, the girl at the coffee shop said that she heard Barry indicate he wanted to talk to you. She saidhe told you he was at the coffee shop, did he say that? ”

Dereck thought back to the conversation with Barry and he did not recall Barry stating out loud that theywould be meeting at the church, he only said he wanted to talk. “He did te ll me that when I asked himwhy he was calling.”

“Did you meet with Barry today?”

“This morning I had a breakfast meeting with Church leadership at Jerry’s, where we meet every Friday,

that is where I was at when Barry called. Afterwards I had a meeting with Chuck here at the church. I

told Barry he was supposed to be in school and we could schedule a time to talk when school was out,unless it was life threatening, which he did not indicate. As far as I know he only had questions aboutthe Bible.”

“Does Barry attend this church?”

“No, he does not. I don’t believe he attends any church. He is new in town, and being a pastor it is my

job to help kids, and that includes making them feel welcome to a new place.”

“So you did not set up a time to meet with Barry?”

“We didn’t schedule anything, although I use Google calendar on my phone, it is hard to check thecalendar and talk at the same time, especially with a group of rowdy pastors.” Dereck meant that as a

joke, but neither of the officers acknowledged the hum or. “Can I ask what he has done? If I can help youI will.”

“The FBI has been watching Mr. Goupe since last week’s arrest of James and Evan Edwards, and theyhave noticed him frequenting Computer Bits, over by where you have breakfast on Fridays. There hasbeen computer hacking activity from that location, specifically pertaining to looking up names andaddresses from phone numbers. While this activity was occurring, Mr. Goupe was at that location, andwalked out shortly after the activity ended.” Barry’s h eart raced and he thought of getting out of thereand running, but if he did the cops would know he was there, and that could get Dereck in trouble,besides, where could he run to? “Last Friday the FBI had questioned him in regards to his interactionsand potential collaboration with Evan Edwards. They were not able to identify any such collaboration,however, with the severity of the crime committed by the Edwards, the FBI is not taking any chances.The concern is the Edwards may have other people working with them.”

Chuck was tempted to disclose that he was an attorney and that this conversation should end beforeDereck give any additional information, but Butch was giving him information that supported Barry’s






claims, and if it concerned the FBI this much, then the boy must be on to something. So he kept quietand let the cops continue with more information.

“The computer shop is owned by Phillip Potts, who is an ex-CIA Interrogator who uses the computerstore as a front to supply illegal hacker tools, such as credit card machines, to cyber- thief’s all around

the globe. He has a son that is Barry and Evan’s age and we think Phillip and or his son are somehowrelated to the Edward’s crime, but the FBI is not going to make a move until they have real evidence . Weare looking for Barry to talk to him about what is going on at Phillip’s store.”

Chuck finally spoke up, “Is there other hacking activity going on at the computer store, other than the

phone numbers you spoke of?”

“Not that we are aware of. This is th e first hit we got, was the names and addresses, but is enough toraise a red flag. The bottom line is Barry goes into the back of the store for a couple of hours, beforeleaving to go home.”

Chuck continued to press, “Just playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe the boy has a job stockingshelves or doing inventory, unless he has a history of hacking. Has he been identified as a hacker?”

“That’s the problem, the FBI has no information on him at all, other than school records which is normalfor most kids. The difference with Barry is how often he moves. According to the FBI he continues tomove around which is ideal for a hacker. That way authorities can never get close enough to make anarrest. And since his family lives below the poverty line the dots connect nicely as to why they wouldwant to come here, in order to finish up the job with the Edwards and potentially receive a nicepayment that could make them set for life. They would essenti ally be winning the hacker lotto.”

Barry embarrassed at the poverty comment, and outraged by the accusations that he is a hacker thatcame here to help Evan so that he could get rich. He wanted to walk into the office and tell the cops thatthey have no clue who he is and why his family moved there. He is not a hacker and hardly knows howto turn on a computer. His family moves where the money is, but has never been the fortunatebenefactor of millions of dollars. Barry’s anger could hardly be contained. Th ere were two innocentpeople in jail and the FBI was worried about a poor kid who knew nothing about computers. It was as ifthe FBI were chasing chickens while the wolf waited patiently for all the commotion to die down. It wasbecoming obvious that the FBI wanted faces to plaster on the front page of news papers and did notcare about the truth.

Dereck spoke again and Barry could tel l by his tone that the officer’s comments caused him to doubt

Barry’s story, that the FBI’s explanation was plausible. “Well , like you said, he has been here for a shortperiod of time, and I do not know his reason for moving, nor do I have any knowledge of his computerskills. I only know that he has expressed interest in understanding the bible and knowing who God is,which i s why I am here.”

Getting up from their chairs, Butch handed Dereck a business card. “When you schedule that time with

Barry, give me a call. He did not show up for school today and that is odd for a kid that has nothing to






hide. We get the impression he is avoiding us, but we will catch up with him and we would like your helpin making that happen.”

Dereck stood, accepting the card and shaking both officer’s hands. “I’ll keep you posted when I hear

something.”

Dereck escorted the police to the front door a nd watched as they drove away. “You can come out now

Barry, they are gone.”

Barry shuffled out from underneath the desk and found his way to the office. Chuck started in first. “Did

you hear the conversation with the police?”

“I did, sir.”

“Barry, you are going to have to be completely honest with us if you want us to believe you. Tell us howmuch of what they said is true.”

“Only the part that I move a lot, and that we are, well, that we, I mean my parents don’t make a lot ofmoney. I don’t know anything a bout computers, except how to write reports on them and search theinternet. I am not a hacker, I promise.”

“And the friend you are working with is Phillip’s son from the computer store?”

“He told me not to tell anyone that I am working with him. You can’t say anything. If he stops helpingme, then we have nothing. He doesn’t like attention and if he knows anyone knows about what we aredoing, he will never talk to me again.”

Dereck, in his calm voiced, asked the same question in a different way. “Barry, I have been known to begullible and tend to trust people more than I should, and I have been burned by it many times in thepast. I want to believe what you say but you have to help me understand that you are truly not out hereto cash in on the Edward’s fortune and that you are really not a hacker.”

Barry thought about the question and felt like he was back in the FBI interrogation room a week ago. “Idon’t know how I can prove something I don’t know, except that I am trying to prove that the Edwards

did no t do it.”

Chuck jumped in, “Or you could be pretending to care, and instead trying to find cover from us toprotect you while you finish what you came here to do?” His words were harsh and accusing.

Barry had enough and shot back, “And you are the Edward’s Lawyer? I feel bad for them, seems to meyou want them in jail. If you are not even going to take an honest look at both sides then they are asgood as life in prison. As I sit here and listen to these lies about me, it makes me believe the Edwardseven more. All people want to do is blame and point fingers, but nobody wants the truth. Everyonewants their version of the truth, or at least the version of the truth that other people want them tobelieve. Come to think of it, I am looking for a person who is behind all of this, who is trying to takedown the Edwards, how do I know it is not you? You could have millions of dollars transferred to your






bank account right now to pay for that Rolex and expensive suit. Instead of proving myself to you, whydon’t yo u prove to me that you are not behind all of this, working with the Mayor and trying to takedown the Edwards. Seems like a perfect plot to me. As their attorney, your only interest is to prove theirguilt so you can retire next month with all of their money. ” Barry stood, grabbing his jacket from his lapand putting his arms through the sleeves before zipping it up. “ As a matter of fact, I remember seeingyour name on the list of phone numbers that called the Mayor. It didn’t hit me until just now, but the name was Charles Finkelstein. So prove to me, Mr. Attorney and best friend to James Edwards, that youare not the mastermind behind all of this. Prove to me that you are not the one who worked with theMayor and had his son look for hackers on forums. Prove to me that you are not the one responsible forputting Evan behind bars last week. Can you prove it?”

Barry had enough of this. He was back to where he was when he first moved here. He can’t trust

anyone. He looked at Dereck who had concerned look on his face and stood in an attempt to preventBarry from waking out. Barry said, “Don’t expect a call from me. I heard the cops, I’m not giving themany more ways to find out where or who I am. If I call again, it will be with evidence of who is behind all

of this.” Barry’s accusing eyes moved to Chuck, who did not stand, but did wear and indignant look onhis face.

“Don’t leave Barry, not while you are mad, let’s calm down, we can figure this out together.” Dereck was

not pleading, instead he used his calm demeanor in an attempt to defuse the situation.

Barry ignored the Pastor and walked out the front door into the rain, leaving Dereck holding the doorbehind him, making one last attempt for the boy to return. Barry kept walking.





142Part 34 – Police Chase

Part 34 – Police ChaseRain pelted Barry as he left the church, with Dereck calling after him. This was the reason, he decided,that he didn’t trust anyone. Nobody was trustworthy. People make assumptions based on looks and

comments from others, never really wanting to get to know him and who he really is. Everyone exceptEvan, Michelle and maybe Troy, although Troy was too paranoid to trust anyone.

His head must have been a rain magnet as it drew in the water from the sky and formed a waterfalldown his back, soaking his shirt and inside of his jacket. His feet acted like tree roots and sucked up thewater from the ground rendering his socks useless as a piece of clothing that were supposed to keep hisfeet warm. He hadn’t zipped up his jacket hood, and for some reason decided to leav e it that way. Hepassed a restaurant and could smell breakfast cooking, which activated his stomach and the familiarfeeling of hunger. He brushed it off, but had wished he took a few minutes to eat a bowl of cereal priorto leaving the house.

From the other side of the street a cop car approached slowly, cautious from the rain, no looking for

criminals specifically. Barry tensed and without staring down the officer, he looked out of the corner ofhis eye and noticed the men inside were not the two who plagued his morning. As the car passed Barryfelt a sense of relief, however his step quickened. Just to ensure the car was continuing in the oppositedirection, Barry turned slowly to glance over his left shoulder. His stomach sank when he saw the brakelights illuminate and the car making a u-turn on the street.

Still trying to appear calm and unaffected by the authority figure, Barry turned toward the restaurantand walked along the other side until the police could not see him, then he took off running, splashingthrough puddles that engulfed his feet into a small pond. A brick wall backed the restaurant and Barrydid not know what was on the other side, but whatever it was, it was better than the options on this

side of the wall. In a Spiderman leap, he grabbed the top portion of the seven foot wall, momentumcarrying his legs over in a pole vault motion. There was a benefit to malnutrition and it was lack ofweight.

Barry didn’ t look to see if the police had spotted the chase, and he wanted to bridge the gap betweenhim and the cops. He found himself in a residential area, and more specifically in someone’s back yard.

The home was nice, by his standards, but most people would probably classify it as lower-middle class.Worn and dirty plastic toys were scattered around the back yard without any grass. The best path wasprobably not over the walls and into the back yard people’s homes so he opted for the front yard .

Running by the side of the house and passing a window he scared the lady in her kitchen while washing

dishes. He said “sorry” but he knew she wouldn’t hear him. He wanted to go left which would get himcloser to the hospital but that was an inlet from the street into this neighborhood. He crossed the streetand opted to jump the gate into the neighbor’s back yard. As his feet splashed into a muddy puddle, he

heard a car rounding the corner, engine revving too high to be a law abiding citizen. Through the cracksin the fence Barry spotted the cop car with red and blues flashing, but no siren. As it sped by he saw thelady across the street fly through the front door, wearing a robe that became an instant mop, to flag






down the car. Apparently it worked, but Barry did not stick around long enough to find her pointingtoward the backyard in which he occupied.

Instead, Barry climbed up onto the brick wall separating more neighbors and ran along the wall in thedirection of the street. He figured it was best to hide out in the department store on the other side of

the road, rather than a neighborhood where cops would be patrolling and neighbors could be insidegiving cops clues as to where he was. As he balanced on the slippery wall it occurred to him that hisPittsburgh Stee lers jacket might as well of said “Barry Goupe” on the back. His jacket was old and worn,

one of a kind, and it would stick out like a neon sign. Making a hard decision, he started to remove the jacket, but then was caught off balance. Stopping to regain his equilibrium he removed the jacket andthrew it into the back yard junk pile into the house on his right, being careful to keep the wording on theback of the jacket covered as he aimed for a spot that would conceal the jacket long enough so that itwould take the police a while, if ever, to find it.

Now cold and completely wet he continued across the wall as he heard another cop car enter the street.Approaching the edge of the neighborhood where houses ended and a crosswalk flanked by treesframed the street, Barry jumped down from the wall and hunkered behind a tree. The street signindicated it was Tabor Street. He remembered a Goodwill store not too far from here, and decided thatis where he would go. At least it was a familiar place for the Goupe’s .

Bible still in hand, Barry considered lobbing that over the wall, but he didn’t. He was compelled to holdonto it for now, although it too was becoming a thick paper sponge. Walking in the opposite direction ofthe entrance to the street he f led from, Barry’s eagle eyes looked up and down the street, searching for

any more signs of the local authorities. Knowing the town was small enough to not employ and army ofcop cars, he took his chances to cross the street into the shopping center across the street. A high schoolboy without a jacket was as much of a target as was wearing the coat, but it was a risk he would take.

Instead of entering any of the stores in the strip mall, he calmly proceeded to the opposite end of thecenter, furthest away from the neighborhood, then walked around the back and headed toward themain street he was originally on prior to the police sighting. After emerging from the cover of buildingshe continued his stealthy movements around buildings and trees to avoid any detections by lawenforcement. Another cop car flew by with sirens blaring, fortunately Barry ducked behind an industrialtrash can and was undetected by the occupants. He was a few blocks away from Goodwill and washoping to encounter no more black and whites.

At the front door of his most frequented clothing store, he felt his adrenaline wane, ushering in cold and

the realization he was completely soaked to the core. His Bible fared a little better than he did, but notwithout battle wounds of its own. Stepping inside the store, two female employees were hanging upclothes, engaged in random conversation. Looking up from her task she greeted Barry then concerngrew on her face. “Are you okay?” she asked in a motherly fashion.

A lie immediately formed in Ba rry’s head, or a small lie anyway. He drew from past experiences andTroy’s social engineering, then applied them to now. If his parents knew what he was about to do theywould probably lock him in his closet until he was forty. He was shaking from the frigid weather outside






which would add believability to his story. “These kids, they cornered me and…” Barry paused for effectas he twisted his face in response to a fake shooting pain in his side, “they pushed me down to theground and….”

“You poor thing, come back here, let’s get you dried off and call your parents.” The kind woman grabbed

his arm and led him to the back of the store.

“Thank you miss, they took my umbrella, backpack, jacket, lunch and wallet . I’m sorry to bother you like

this.”

“Oh, no prob lem dear, this is no bother. You remind me of my oldest boy, tall and skinny, and alwaysbeing picked on. He is in the military now and doesn’t get picked on anymore. He is a drill Sargent and

secretly I think it is because of all of the times he came home with black eyes and bloody lips. This is hisway of getting back and the way kids treated him.” They entered the back and she grabbed a towel and

handed it to him, which he promptly used to dry himself off. “Do you wear size 28 jeans?”

Barry had no clue but responded in the affirmative.

“I thought so, that is the size my son wore for a long time.” She disappeared into the front of the storeand appeared with a set of Levi’s that looked practically brand new, a long sleeve sweater that was thickand looked softer than a blanket, a pair of hiking boots, clean pair of socks and a red and blue checkeredpair of boxers. Barry blushed at the thought of underwear. “Here, try these on in the restroom.” Shesaid, handing the wardrobe to Barry. “If it fits you can have it .”

“Are you sure, I don’t want to take these things from you. This towel is good, I can make it home and

change into dry clothes.” Barry knew this plea would fall on deaf ears, which is what he was hoping for.

“Honey, this is called Goodwill. People g ive us this stuff for free, and we have so much of it, what is oneoutfit for a good cause?” She gave him a wink and followed up with. “Now what is the phone number Ican call to reach your parents?”

“They work at Edward’s Steel and can’t be reached by pho ne. At least I have never tried. They havenever given me their phone number there.” That was the truth. “I can give you my home number, but

they are not there. I just live a few blocks older on Tabor Street, but I should be able to make it toschool. And I can leave my Bible here for collateral, at least let me pay with that until I can come back toget it and pay for these clothes.” It occurred to him that it must be about ten thirty in the morning,

which made for a gap in his story. She didn’t seem to pi ck up on the inconsistency of his explanation.

Obviously impressed by the Bible believing youth she said, “This must be a divine intervention. God waswatching out for you today. The Bible says that if God takes care of the birds and animals, then whyshould we be concerned about how he will provide for us. You keep your bible, and I will find anumbrella for you while you change.”

She turned toward the front of the store again and Barry entered the bathroom where he completelydried off before putting on the recycled clothing. As she guessed, size 28 fit perfectly and so did the






sweater which felt as good as it looked. It was a natural light brown color and provided warmth he hadnot experienced with clothing in the past. He could tell the price tag on this would have been worththree shirts, even at the hand-me-down store. The boots were a little loose, but it would allow him togrow into them, assuming he was going to keep them long enough.

He figured tomorrow he would return to the store and exchange these clothes back for his old ones andhis parents would never know. But again he thought of more roadblocks to the truth. This implied thathe would not be sleeping at home, which he wouldn’t be, and that tomorrow would not be raining and

that was the unknown. He for sure could not go home with a completely new set of clothes and if hedid, his parents would demand that he return the clothes back to the store, while they personallyescorted him to the store and apologize for their son’s behavior.

Leaving his clothes folded outside the bathroom door and on top of table that appeared to be set up forthe sole purpose of folding clothes, he went into the store to find the nice lady holding up a thick jacketwith a rain resistant outer coating. It did not have a hood but what it lacked in head cover, it gained inthe appearance of furnace level warmth.

“I really can’t take all of this stuff without….”

“Nonsense, we didn’t pay a penny for this stuff, and if you noticed the sign it says ‘good -will’ meaning

we are go od willing it to you. Now don’t argue with me, I won’t take no for an answer.”

Barry was thankful for the kindness and felt bad that the situation was not exactly as he had portrayedit. He slipped on the coat, thankful that it too also fit him.

“Here is a stocking cap for you and an umbrella, that way your head will be warm and dry.”

“This is too much, I…..”

“Nope, not another word. I insist, this one is on the house.”

“Thank you so much, I really don’t know what to say.”

“No need to say anything. Just rem ember this when you run across someone in need, and do what Jesuswould do.”

Barry struggled against lying about his faith, or lack thereof. It was bad enough to lie about kids thatbeat him up and taking his stuff, but lying about God, wasn’t that even wo rse? This was not the time to

break into the truth.“Oh, I almost forgot. A backpack.” She walked toward the other end of the store and pushed some itemsaround before calling out, “All we have are girl colors and patterns, I don’t think you want anything likethat. How about a computer bag?” She lifted up a small black bag with handles and shoulder strap.

Barry knew at this point not to argue. “That would work just fine, I really appreciate it.”






“I’m sorry we don’t have a ba ckpack for you, but you only have one thing to put in it, so it should workgood for now, until you can find another one.”

Placing his Bible into the bag he thought that this was a better option anyway. This new look with acomputer bag would throw off the cops. They would not be able to recognize him at all. As a matter of

fact, Barry did not look poor in this outfit, for the first time in his life.

“I really can’t thank you enough, I will be back, I promise.” Barry meant it, even if it meant he would be

back in a week or a month or a year. He would find a way to pay for this.

He turned toward the door, computer bag strap over his shoulder and umbrella in hand, ready to inflateas he walked out the front door. It was still morning, and Barry did not know where to go from here.There was nobody else to trust. Except Troy who was gone until tomorrow.





147Part 35 – Oreo Cookies

Part 35 – Oreo Cookies“I just had an intriguing conversation with a boy named Barry Goupe, do you know who he is?” Chuckimplored James, looking for any truth in the story from the cops. They sat across from each other at thesame table by the window which they had met at since the first day. Both men would rather beoutdoors and if only a window was available for James, he would take it.

“The name rings a bell, but I can’t place it.” James was obviously straining to place the name, eyes

squinting as he looked down at the ground as if the recognition could be found on the floor.

“He is about Evan’s height, very skinny and black scraggly hair. Probably doesn’t shower often.”

James face changed and he looked at Chuck, “Yes, I met him once. I think it was the day before or acouple of days before we were arrested. Evan and Michelle brought him by the house after school. I wasout front talking to Don when the kids go t home. He was polite, and very shy.”

The description fit Barry’s exactly the way he said. Chuck was starting to give weight to the validity ofthe boy’s claims. “You never met him before that day? Do you know his parents or how long he hasbeen in town?”

“No, I don’t recall ever meeting him before, and I don’t know his parents at all. Have them been here a

while?”

“They moved here about a month ago . That’s the first time you met him or is family?”

James was puzzled at the insistence of the questions. “Why is there so much interest in the family and ifI know them? I have only met Barry once, last week.”

“Barry skipped school today. Apparently last week the FBI brought him in for questioning but they couldnot find any good reason to keep him, but they have reason to believe that Barry may have been in onthis, meaning that they are implying that he is also involved with you and Evan.”

“That’s absurd Chuck, at least from a standpoint of us working with him. We did not hack the

government. Maybe his is the one who set us up.”

“That’s the problem, if his goal was to put you in jail, then he would not be trying to find ways to gatherevidence in your case.” James looked surprised and Chuck continued. “He skipped school today because

the police showed up at his house this morning before he was up for school. They spooked him and hedidn’t know what to do so he called Dereck…”

“Our youth pastor?”

“Yes. He called Dereck this morning and met with him at the church. Dereck thought his story would

interest me, which it did, but to make a long story short, the cops showed up at the church while I wasthere. We hid Barry because we did not know what was going on. The police told us a story that wasinconsistent with the kid’s, but his story matches what you told me.”






“Does he have anything to show that we didn’t do this?” A glimmer of hope resonated throughoutJames.

“Nothing that would hold up in court. They do however have some names and are chasing leads right

now. What he said sounded plausible, but there is nothing sub stantiating.”

“Who are they ?”

“Do you know Phillip Potts, the owner of the Computer store by Jerry’s Coffee Shop?”

“Not personally, no. Barry is affiliated with him?”

“Barry has been hanging out with Phillip’s son Troy, and they have been the ones who have done a littlehacking of their own. Trying to find who is responsible for all of this.”

“And? What do the y have?”

Chuck contemplated his responses and with calculated words he told James only what he wanted him toknow. “Like I said, they do not have anything that would hold up in a court of law. They have given mesome names, of people you know, which I will not disclose at this time, solely for your safety. And don’tfight me on this one.”

At the thought of someone coming to his aid to free him and his son from the bars of jail, James feltbetter now than he had in two weeks, although he wondered why the boy was doing this for them.What was his motivation, he had only met him once, and if he was in town only a month, Evan wouldnot have known him long either. “Thank you Lord.” He said audibly. This was an answer to prayer which

he would record in his journal when he returned to his cell. He would also write these names down andpray fervently for these angels. That must be who they are, because he hardly knows them and they areout there being chased by the law to help people they hardly know.

“I talked to Evan before I came here to get his story on the boy. He only met Barry that same day that

you said you met him. He was being bullied and school and Evan stopped the antagonizing boys, theninvited Barry to the house because he looked lonely. Being new to town Evan thought it would be agood idea to get him around other kids so he would be welcomed at school. So the stories jive, now allwe need is for these kids to find the smoking gun.”

“Can they get something in two weeks? Our trial is not far away. Is there anyone you can have help

them?”

“I don’t know when or if they will find anything. The thing is they have already been a little sloppy, whichis why the FBI and police are not taking any chances. I can’t have someone break the law to help a courtcase, that wouldn’t hold up well in front of a judge. I will stop by the computer store tomorrow and talk

to Phillip and let him know to call me if they f ind anything. I don’t know where the kid is, I admit I

accused him of the same things the cops did, taking their side. It rightfully made him angry and he left.






I’d like to talk to him again and let him know I am on his side. He may be all we have to help turn thiscase around. ”

“That would be a good idea, we can’t lose them. If they have evidence, we need it.”

“By the way, Barry is the boy who is visiting Michelle and Jill every day in the hospital and reading theBible to Michelle. That is where Dereck met him. Barry walked in while Dereck was praying overMichelle and they ended up having a conversation about Jesus. Dereck gave out his phone number andthat is how Barry got a hold of him.”

Excitement being replaced by melancholy, James asked, “How are my girls doing. Any improvement?”

“No improvement, they are both stable but still in comas. The doctors say there are no timeframes for

this. It could be days, weeks, months or years before they wake up. And only then will we know the trueextend of their in juries.”

“Is there any way I can see them? I’ll go there in chains and handcuffs if I can just see them and tell themI love them.” He knew his request would not be granted, but nobody will say yes if the question is not

asked.

“I wish I could say that the re was.” Chuck changed the subject back to Barry. “I’d like to find out moreabout this Barry kid, only out of curiosity. I don’t understand what motivates him to help. Evan and

Michelle have far more friends than most kids, and none of them are doing anything but living theirlives. And this kid moves here a month ago and meets your kids a week ago and is now their advocate.Each account of the events that took place for how you all met is consistent with each other, but what isthe motive to risk your own life for the sake of others you hardly know? The cops are after him and heknows the activities he is engaged in are illegal and he knows that if he gets caught he will be facing atrial of his own. And the impression I received from him is that his family does not have money for legalrepresentation, which would make him simply a number in the justice system and nobody would bemotivated to set him free. He has to know all of this, yet he continues to pursue what is right .”

Both men pondered that last tho ught. James was thankful for the boy’s tenacity and he thought that ifmore people were like him the world would be a better place. To Chuck’s point, their friends have for

the most part abandoned them. Only a few people visited over the last week, but most came for apurpose, whether business related or out of obligation, such was the case of his pastor. As Jamesthought about it further, he wondered if Chuck would have visited if he was not representing him in thiscase. Or would he be off riding his bike, training for this cross country trip? He ran through the names of

those who visited him, and come to think of it, only one person stopped by to visit out of sheer kindnessand oddly enough the visitor was not a man of faith, but it was his pool guy Rich.

Rich has one of those expressive personalities combined with a positive outlook on life. He will talk toanyone, anytime, anywhere. James hired him on the spot ten years ago as he was starting his poolbusiness. The young man at the time was bold enough to walk up to the front door on a Saturdaymorning, dressed in a polo shirt and Dockers. He was polite to the staff who opened the front door and






when he met James his sales pitch was more of a conversation about pools and his passion for that lineof work. They talked for close to an hour while Rich tested chemical levels in the pool, checked theequipment and made some recommendations for cost savings and better water quality.

Over the past ten years James became a mentor to Rich and taught him things about business that

applied whether it was a multi-billion dollar corporation or a fifty thousand dollars per year servicebusiness. Rich built a healthy clientele and now had three pool stores, which he was starting to expandinto warmer regions such as Florida and California.

James had countless conversations with Rich about faith, but Rich continued to contend that he comesfrom a family who are really good people. They help each other out, take responsibility for themselves,work hard and don’t do anything illegal or wrong. He was a good person here on earth, and it wasn’tthat he was an atheist, he knew there had to be a higher power, but rested on the thought that hewould be rewarded for being a good person. He admitted to James that more times than not it was thereligious people who tried to cheat him in one way or another, or who were hypocrites who did notpractice what they preached. He told James that the Edward’s family was an exception to the rule and ifRich ever became a faithful man it would be because of the influence of the Edwards, however, he washappy with his life and would not change a thing.

It was Tuesday when Rich visited, and he brought some homemade Oreo cookies that his wife wasfamous for among friends and family, and were James ’ favorite dessert. They consisted of a sweetcreamy vanilla filling sandwiched between two soft chocolate cookie wafers. They were about fourinches round and twice the thickness of a store bought Oreo, and he brought a dozen of them. Jamesreluctantly shared them with his cell mates.

The visit with Rich was refreshing. He came simply as a friend, having a conversation that could have

taken place at home, on the couch by the fireplace. There was no motive, no condemnation, and as amatter of fact, Rich seemed to be the only person who did not look at him with skepticism. He expressedhis concern for James and his family and offered any help. He even went so far as to say he knewbeyond a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent. Rich was the epitome of a real friend.

Looking out the window James answered Chuck’s question, “Its kindness and compassion for eachother. That’s what makes people help others. It has nothing to do with fame or fortune. Look at Mother

Theresa or Gandhi, their lives were spent serving others and not for any monetary gain, but simply outof kindness and compassion. That must be what drives Barry.” Turning toward Chuck he looked hisattorney in the eyes. “I’m willing to bet that whatever you find out about Barry, you will not uncover the

mo tives of his heart.”





151Part 36 – Smoking Gun?

Part 36 – Smoking Gun?A new identity is what Barry needed to move through the town unnoticed. Shortly after leaving Goodwilla squad car passed him at a crosswalk. Despite his inner desire to run, it was evident that the cops werelooking for someone else. Someone with wet clothes and Pittsburgh Steelers jacket. This did not preventhim from tipping the umbrella lower to mask his face, which was not unusual in a downpour. The closerthe handle was to the body, and the underneath side to the top of the head, the more controllable theumbrella in a gust of wind. In either case, the police continued on their way, and so did Barry.

There weren’t too many places to go on a rainy school day, except for the library. That would take the

better part of the day, then he would have to think of where to spend the night. He was not far from theplace of solitude and as he got closer, a sense of peace came over him. It was more than a quiet place,free from the complexities and bustle of the world and provided a force field that protected him fromthe outside environment. Bullies did not hang out at libraries and for years they had been a home awayfrom home.

As he narrowed the distance gap between him and the large new structure that was a recent gift to thetown, funded by the town’s taxpayers dollars, he considered what genre he would burry himself in. A

good spy novel would be preferred, or maybe he would pick up the youth novel that kids at school hadbeen talking about where the kid could produce electricity, or the trilogy that is set in the future where agirl is chosen to fight in an arena on behalf of her town in order to be rewarded with food. Regardless ofthe reading material, he hoped his favorite spot was available, in the far back side of the building, on thesecond floor where two full pane windows met at the corner, overlooking the garden below. There wereseveral soft chairs pointing toward the widows and Barry took the liberty of moving one diagonally,pointing toward the corner and secluding him from anyone else who may choose the garden view.

Emerging from the rain into the library, he closed the umbrella and was met with a familiar smell ofbooks, wooden bookshelves and a mixture of new building. Passing the main desk, the librarians werebusy sorting and checking in books and did not acknowledge his entrance. This was not a retailestablishment so a greeting was not necessary, in addition the theme was ‘quiet’ which would have

been broken if every patron were greeted out loud.

In previous towns he lived in, the libraries used card catalogs to find books, for which Barry understoodand was comfortable with. This place, however, used a program on their computers to search the virtualcard catalog. Ready to click on the familiar path to fiction novels, he noticed an option for news andperiodicals. Out of curiosity he clicked the option and followed the prompt to search for a randomsubject. Off the top of his head he thought ‘James Edwards’.

Results appeared as fast as a Google search and headlines from local and national newspapersappeared, including those from recent days. Looking for dates from about six months ago, the numberof articles did not subside. Apparently Mr. Edwards was constantly in the news.

In one article he was praised for volunteering at local charities. In another he talked about potential jobclosures at his company. Some praised his leadership at work, while others condemned his capitalistic






approach. He continued scrolling through the pages into dates over two years ago. This was gettingboring, and a good book was sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting for him.

He moved the mouse to the top to go back to the main menu when a name in the article summarycaught his eye. It was a name that was high up on the Mayor’s c all list and it also rang a bell but he did

not know from where. If he was not mistaken there were more inbound calls than outbound. Barryclicked on the article title and began reading.

“EDWARDS STEELIN INTERNATIONAL TALKS– Edwards Steel CFO Sam Miller proposed a plantoday to bring Edwards Steel into an international forefront. Over the past ten years as CFO, Mr.Miller has navigated the tumultuous times of change, returning positive profits to the family runcompany, while other steel companies close their doors.

In an effort to give the company an edge on its competitors, Mr. Miller has proposed a plan tobring Edwards Steel into a top performing international manufacturer by entering into thedefense business. Prior to joining Edwards Steel over ten years ago, Mr. Miller worked in thedefense industry where he started his career after graduating from Stanford University. ”

Barry scanned through the rest of the article without reading any further details. He pulled one smallpencil from the cup and a quartered sheet of recycled paper and noted the name Sam Miller .

Performing the search again he entered in the CFO’s name and clicked on the first link, which was anarticle in the local paper regarding the arrest of James Edwards, and a statement from the CFO that allwould be ok at the company until James returned. Scrolling further an article published last year byDefense Quarterly caught his eye, in which Sam Miller was quoted, “The defense industry is notrestricted by the borders of our country, but thrive throughout the world. A steel producer such as

Edwards Steel has the resources and capacities to expand into other lucrative lines of business includingdefense. By opening plants abroad this amazing company can positively impact the world with aninternational footprint.”

Later in the article James Edwards went on record as saying , “Taking jobs out of America does not reflectthe values that Edwards Steel was founded on, nor operates on. We are good at what we do andventuring into a completely different industry is risky and not a good value for shareholders. EdwardsSteel distributes steel products to the defense industry and that is as far as we will go into newmarkets.”

As Barry continued to read there was consistent debate over this topic with arguments both pro and

con. With profits sliding over the past five years resulting from lower demand in steel from automanufacturers as well as competitive pressures overseas, Sam Miller continued his campaign to convertthe company into an International business, incorporating the manufacture of parts for military vehiclesand weapons, claiming the company could make the products cheaper if they used their own steel, andmoved the company to parts of the world where workers would not form unions and would not requirethe higher wages being demanded by United States workers. His claim was that profits could doubleover the next 5 years, and they could continue to see double digit revenue growth for years to come.






James continued to argue that jobs in America are shrinking and to take them out of this Country wouldbe irresponsible as an employer. Furthermore the cost of constructing buildings and tooling to makeproducts they had never made before would eat into the cash reserves held by the company, or wouldcause them to significantly increase their debt. Both options would reduce the value of the companyand the stock market would react with a lower share price and a devaluing of perceived worth, and hewould not gamble with his or other people’s money.

In a revelation Barry put the pieces together. “This must be it.” He thought to himself. “Sam wants to get

his way and James is blocking him from getting what he wants, this has to be it, this has to be thesmoking gun.”

Instead of skipping articles, he opened each one and skimmed the contents for any other ties that mighthelp prove his theory. He found another article from the local paper where the Mayor was quoted,“There has been talk about the potential globalization of our local steel company, for which I support

one hundred percent. A global identity would bring more cash into an American company, andspecifically into this town, creating more jobs and thriving place for work and home for our citizens.”

A clear picture was beginning to develop and it showed these men desiring a bigger company. It wasthen he recalled his conversation with his High School librarian, Mrs. Cline, regarding the Mayor. Whatwas it that he did and when did he move to Brighton? Barry opened a new search, this time for MayorHattfield, and he scanned for the timeframe in which the Mayor would have arrived, of course not asMayor, yet.

An article appeared with a headline that read ‘A NEW MAYOR IN TOWN’ and displayed a photograph ofa younger Don Hattfield, smiling his politician toothy grin and waving to a crowd of supporters. Nothingin the article indicated a plan for putting the Edwards behind bars, however, it did talk about how he

had moved from California last year at the urging from his friends at Edwards Steel. His export businesswas still in operation and Edwards Steel was one of his largest clients. The article talked about the hightaxes in California and a better way of life for his seven year old son Mike. He vowed to the citizens ofBrighton that he would help make this town family and work friendly.

Apparently he was doing a good job because a decade later he still held the same office. Scrollingthrough articles over the years, only a few mentioned Sam Miller along with Don Hattfield, and theywere in the context of ribbon cutting ceremonies, campaign donations and developing a work friendlytown. It wasn’t until a year and a half ago that arti cles were being written about a defense division beingproposed to expand the company and bring it out of its slump.

From the beginning the Mayor was supportive of the idea, claiming it would create more jobs and bringmoney into the town. The message continued to be the same in all of the articles, as if was a marketingcampaign to obtain acceptance from shareholders so that they would pressure the company to makethe changes. With Mr. Edwards standing firm each time it was clear the campaign was not working,therefore they had to take drastic measures to remove Edwards from the equation. Barry was glad thiswas real life and not a thriller novel where the bad guys commit murder to get what they want. Hewondered if that was a consideration.






This information needed to make its way to Troy but that would not happen until tomorrow at nine inthe morning. Unless Troy had been arrested by the police, then this whole thing would be over untilTroy got out of jail. The cops at the church did not say anything about arresting another kid, their focusseemed to be on Barry. Maybe that was a good sign. Regardless of where Troy was now, Barry could donothing about it. He was not going to walk into the police station and ask if Troy had been brought in.

That would be li ke walking into the lion’s den at the zoo. Both scenarios would not play out well forBarry.

He placed the scribbled notes on a quarter piece of paper into the bible as if it was a bookmark. Then hesearched for a fiction novel and set up his reading area to his liking, and read as the rain came downoutside and his mind raced with new information and names that could be critical to the Edwardsfreedom. Unfortunately his mind liked to wonder when there was something worth thinking about. Itwas dark before he realized he was half way through the science fiction novel.

As he entered the library his intention was to check out a book but with all of his new found knowledgeon computer hacking he pictured the FBI monitoring everyone who checked out books and could tracehis whereabouts on the spot, summonsing helicopters, spotlights and squad cars. Okay, he had a vividimagination and that would probably not be the case, but there could be a tinge of reality in there andhe did not want to take the risk.

He would, however, call his parents. Hopefully the staff would recognize him and allow him to use theirphone. It was about the time his parents arrived home and he wanted to talk to them as soon aspossible. The problem was if the cops were camped out in their driveway then he would be inimmediate trouble and would have to hang up on his parents and flee the building.

The lady behind the counter was nice enough to hand over the phone, then walked away to give him a

little privacy.

“Hi Mom, it’s me, did you get my note on the counter?” He attempted to sound calm despite the fact his

stomach was in knots while he pictured the trailer surrounded by law enforcement with blue and redlights flashing on top of the cars.

“Oh, we just got home and I saw your note but have not read it yet, but I’ll read it now.” She pausedwhile she read the letter. Then she spoke but not to him. “Bill, Barry wants to stay over at a friend’s

house tonight, what do you think?”

In the background he heard his father say, “Sure, that’s fine.” H e pictured his dad getting his drawing

materials ready for the evening.

“It’s fine with both of us. Probably for the better too, there is a cop car at the entrance and it looks likethey are waiting for something to happen.” Barry’s anxiety spiked then was relieved to know his parentshad not been confronted. “What is the phone number to your friends house?”






Looking at the digital readout on the screen of the phone he read off the numbers to her. “Five, five,

five, six, one, nine, zero. Do you want to call me back to make sure the phone works?” She had done this

on several occasions and he did not want to take a chance of the library answering.

“Yes, I will call you right back.”

Barry hung up and waited a few seconds when the phone rang. The librarians looked up and started forthe phone, but Barry picked up instead and received angry looks from the employees. “Hello?”

“Hi Barry, its me. Have a good time, I love you.”

“I love you too mom. Bye.” Barry hung up the phone, apologized to the librarian with a lie, and walked

to the hospital where he planned to spend the night. As he made his way to the familiar medical facilityunder the protection of his new umbrella, he could not help but wonder whether or not Troy was in jail.The suspense was too much, but he would know tomorrow, which was too far away.





156Part 37 – Red Light

Part 37 – Red LightSleeping under the stairwell on the first floor of the hospital was not ideal, but it was private and out ofview of staff and security cameras. After visiting his comatosed friend and finishing reading Revelation atnine in the evening, he walked by an empty room and grabbed a pillow from one of the beds. Oddlyenough as he passed by staff in the halls, they did not give any thought to the boy carrying around thepillow as if it was a normal everyday occurrence. He supposed it may be because people actually do staythe night with their loved ones and pillows are requested often enough to make Barry look like anothercaring family member. If a pillow was that easy, maybe food would be too.

After dropping the pillow under the dark hidden stairwell, Barry searched for other items such as towelsand a meal. The towels were as easy as the pillows and he made sure there was enough to turn the hardfloor into a makeshift mattress. Probably not so far from camping and staying in a sleeping bag, whichhe had never owned. The food proved to be challenging. He knew from being in Michelle’s room that

there was always left over meals, he just had to find a food cart with stacked trays of untouched foodthat was in an area away from the nurses stations.

Scouring the first floor he found a cart by the entrance to an area containing rooms and possible anurses station which could not be seen from his vantage point. With no one in sight, he quickly grabbeda tray and started his way toward the stairwell. As he reached the door a hospital employee roundedthe corner and gave Barry a suspicious look.

“What are you doing with that tray?” Accused the man who did not appear to be a doctor or a jan itor.Even more fortunate for Barry he was not a Security Guard either.

“Uhh, they said I could take this to my Grandma. She’s in the third floor waiting room, she’s stubborn,

you know, and won’t leave to get food. Tanya, the nurse upstairs, called down here to see if there wasextra food we could bring to her. You can call her if you want.” Barry’s heart was beating in response to

the familiar feeling of anxiety.

“Hmmm, no that’s ok. They should have delivered that directly though.”

“I know, they said they would but it would be about a half hour, so Tanya asked if I could get it and they

said it was okay if I came down.”

“Alright.” He mumbled as he walked away in an obvious annoyance.

Barry breathed a sigh of relief and entered the door of the stairwell. He placed his food on the stairs,

hopped over the railing, grabbed his food from the stair and set up his sleeping quarters for the evening.People complained about hospital food, but he found it to be delicious. Had he not encountered the badmood employee, he would have chanced another outing to grab another tray of food. In any case hewas satisfied and although his hunger continued to persist, the feeling was nothing new.

Sleep was intermittent during the night, with the occasional interruption of a door opening and closingand someone walking in the stairwell. He did sleep and felt refreshed upon waking up to a more






frequent sound of people traveling up and down the stairs. It seemed to be a good alarm clock, althoughhe had no sense of time.

He thought about how to dispose of his camp site including the food tray, but with the increased staff hefigured it would raise more eyebrows if a visitor was walking around with towels, a pillow and a food

tray with dinner remnants. In the end he decided to leave the items, besides, he may need to pretend tostay over at Troy’s again and will reuse the bedding tonight.

Reclaiming his umbrella, coat and bible, he hopped over the railing and exited out the first floor door.Looking at the big clock above reception, he read the time as seven twenty-five in the morning. Thecomputer store would not open until nine o’clock and that would be when he would know if Troy was incustody or not. The walk to the store would take an hour and Barry would have to be cautious knowingthe FBI had been staked out to watch him enter the store.

Yesterday’s angry weather subsided into a moody overcast day with light drizzle, enough for Barry to beable to use the umbrella, which he was thankful for, so he could add another layer of disguise. Hewanted to call his parents but feared that the cops may have appeared at the trailer looking for him,which would have prompted his mother to call the library and discover his lie. It was a week ago that hepromised not to lie to them ever again. He really did not like being the cause of distrust with his parents.

Along the way to the computer shop Barry did not stop at the police department, Goodwill, church or acoffee shop. Instead he focused on his destination. Upon arriving he noticed a car parked in theotherwise empty parking lot. It belonged to Troy’s father , an old Nissan Maxima in very good condition.

Barry decided to head around to the back of the shop, fearing the FBI or cops would be stalking the shopwaiting for him to show up. He didn’t see anything but figured he did not want to take any chances.

Cautiously he walked the alleyway behind the small strip mall and found the back door open to theshipping department, where the two shipping guys were getting set up for the day.

Checking one last time for cops, Barry walked up to the open roll- up metal door, like that of a garage. “IsTroy here today?”

The man closest to the door was startled but recognized Barry. Then he m otioned toward the back. “In

the office.” He turned to continue his work.

“Whew, no jail.” Barry thought. His pace picked up as he walked to the back office and opened the door.This time Troy was startled. Barry needed to somehow announce his entrances be tter. “Hey, I have

some information, I think I know who framed the Edwards.” Troy looked up at the triangle in the ceiling, causing Barry’s eyes to follow again, and the light wasgreen. “Close the door.” Troy said with exuberance, as Barry shut the heavy wooden door. “ I know whoit is, I spent the day yesterday while we were traveling, hooked up to our satellite phone hot spot,scouring the forums and talking to hackers, I the names of the hackers that did the actual hacking and Iknow who paid them to do it, and I know how all the data got onto the Edwards personal computers, I

just don’t know why they would want to do it, I don’t know what the motive is.”






“Who do you think it is? I think it is a guy named Sam Miller, the CFO of Edwards Steel.”

Troy shot B arry a double take. “How did you find that out? That’s who ultimately paid the guy to do it, Imean it went through the Mayor’s personal accounts, that he tried to make not traceable to him, but hedid a really bad job covering who he was and hackers aren’ t stupid, they have resources to figure out

who people are and they told me names, and it was a simple matter of hacking the guys who paid themto hack, so how did you find it?”

“Before I tell you how I know, the cops are looking for me. They came by my ho use before schoolyesterday and pretended not to be home. I told my parents I stayed at your house last night but I sleptat the hospital. I don’t know if they are looking for you too, I don’t think they are but whatever evidence

we have, we need to get it to the Edwards attorney as soon as possible.”

“Whaaat? The cops are after you and you came here? Not cool, Barry, not cool.” He moved to hiscomputer and started frantically typing. “Most of my research is stored on the cloud, but I need to getthe rest o f it uploaded there and off this computer. If the cops get in here I can’t let them find anything,

and if the cops show up here don’t say anything but ‘I want my attorney’, don’t ever say anything

without an attorney present, you got it? Did you come in th e front door where they could see you?”

“Ok, I won’t say anything to the cops, but I plan on avoiding them, and I came through the back, I didn’tsee any cop cars around when I got here.”

“If any cops or FBI show up looking for us, my Dad will let us know with a button under the front deskthat will ring a bell back here, that is my sign to wipe the computers, and if that happens while you arehere, press control, alt, F6 at the same time. The computer will blink and in a matter of seconds it loadsan alternate windows operating system on the partitioned disk, then in the background begins

formatting the hacking partition, which is a very small portion of the disk so that it can complete the taskquickly, and once that is done, then it makes that partition look like it is the system setup, like mostcomputers have these days, and all references to ip addresses and storage locations on the cloud areerased and cannot be recovered, and as a test to prove that I have opened a computer up to the hackerworld after I tested it and nobody could recover the old partition, they said it looked like a regularcomputer, slick huh? Me and my dad made a code word for the control, alt, F6 command, we know if wesay ‘What’s up’, then whoever is by a computer, we press that c ommand .”

“What do you mean by a cloud, how to store stuff in the sky?”

“Seriously, you don’t know what the cloud is? It’s were stuff is stored, think of the internet with storage

space, there are places out the that have storage available online and space is comingled together tostore information and it called the cloud, what’s cool is I can store my stuff out there and nobody can

find it but be and if someone did find it they would have to decrypt it with a code only I have, and if theytry to hack the encryption, it moves to another spot on the cloud and that version is deleted, but bequiet a minute while I get this stuff loaded, I am almost done, then you can tell me how you found outabout Sam Miller.”








Another jumped in grabbing Barry first while the other grabbed Troy , “You both have the right to remainsilent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to anattorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights Ihave just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

Troy responded, “I understand my rights, I want to speak with my attorney.”

Barry, following Troy’s lead repeated the same, except he did not have an attorney and there is no way

his parents could afford one, which meant he would be appointed an attorney whose job would be tokeep him in Jail. He was so close to getting the Edwards out of jail, if he could have had a few moreminutes with Troy they could have combined their stories and prepared proof to send to ChuckFinkelstein. As he thought about Chuck he remembered the business card in his Bible and the phonenumbers for Dereck. If was allowed one phone call he would call Chuck, but he needed the Bible. “I’dlike my Bible please, it’s on the desk over there.” His voice was full of nerves and crack ed under theemotion.

“Grab the Bible.” Said the agent who was handcuffing him to another one in the room.







162Part 38 – One Phone Call

however, trust me when I tell you that I have seen criminals just like you who have nothing and whowant to get ahead and are willing to do whatever it takes to get on their feet. It would make sense thatyou could find Evan online and work with him to gain access to national intelligence for a small cut ofthe pie. And your innocence has been testing with you running from the cops, if you had nothing to hideyou would have no reason to lead a little chase yesterday, which I have to say was pretty clever that you

slipped away from them. The only way to get out of life in prison without parole is talk to us and make adeal for, well, I could probably get you out in a minimum of five years but no more than ten.”

“As I said, I will wait for my attorney.” Barry did not say what he wanted to say which was she had

nothing on him because he didn’t do anything. She was human pit -bull and he did not know how muchlonger he could take her beratement before he completely exploded and said something he wouldregret.

As if on cue, Chuck walked in the interrogation room. “Agent Hansen, I assume you are making my clientfeel at home rather than encouraging him to relinquish his Miranda rights?”

Her face revealed the shock of the realization that the high powered attorney representing the Edwardswas claiming to represent this nobody of a boy. With a glare, she responded through clenched teeth.“He’s all yours.” She said as she exited the room.

Looking at the two way mirror, then back at Barry, Chuck smiled. “Follow me to the attorney clientroom, where prying eyes and ears don’t exist.” As they walked out of the room and turned left, Chuckopened the next door revealing Troy in a similar conversation with the lanky Agent Horn. “I believe thisconversation is over, Troy come with me.”

Barry did not see the look on the agents face, but hoped it was similar to that of Agent Hansen. Troy

smiled slightly at Barry, but there was a bit of anger behind the stone face, obviously because he wasraided and thrown in jail, but none other than Mike Hattfield. It wouldn’t be long before him and his dadrep laced the Edward’s.

Entering a room less intimidating with a rectangle table and the same uncomfortable chairs as the priorroom, Chuck motioned for the boys to sit as he closed the door behind them. Approaching the table hereached his hand out to Troy an d introduced himself and the two shook hands. “Boys, I hear you havesome information for me. Who wants to go first?”

Not wanting to let a good conversation go to waste Troy spoke up first. “I want to know why I am here,

they have nothing on me, I demand t o be let go.” Short of throwing his fist on the table like a gavel, Troy

was not going to give up any info until he had answers.

“They actually do.” Chuck said, sitting in the metal chair across from both boys. “ The phone companytraced a hack from the computer at your computer store to the phone company records where aconnection stayed open for a couple of hours while phone numbers were entered into a search whilepersonal and private information was retrieved. Their network administrators traced the hack andcaptured all of the data that was searched for then called the FBI with the information. It led back to this






town where, of course, there is a huge case surrounding hacking. Anyway when the networkadministrators combined those numbers and performed their own search for a correlation, they found acommon theme with the numbers that pointed back to Don Hattfield. After some additional researchthey discovered a statement was ordered by an internal employee who happened to be off duty at thetime of the request, and it happened to be faxed to a fax machine that never received the fax, yet therewas confirmation of the send. Does any of this sound familiar? Keep in mind if you don’t tell me thetruth, I can’t help you, especially if this activity relates t o the evidence you want to provide me for theEdwards.”

Barry opened his mouth to confess it all, instead Troy cut him off. “There is no way that can be tracedback to me, I put IP redirects on all of those queries, there is no way they have….” Troy became silent ashe thought back to the night they were gathering that info. He looked at Barry with new knowledge. “I

can’t believe I didn’t set up the mask before setting up your computer to search for those numbers. I

remember I was in a hurry and just logged you on to the other computer, but I hardly use that one andforgot to set up my non- trace program. How stupid, I can’t believe I did that.”

Chuck was amused by the monolog. “So you are telling me you did that?”

Ignoring the specific question Troy continue d. “I’ll tell you what I found that will get the Edwards out of

Jail, and will put another father, son and Edward’s Steel employee in jail.”

“Go on, I’m listening.” Chuck had a yellow legal pad and fancy pen waiting to write.

“In the hacker world it’s like anything else, people know people and those people know people, likefacebook, anyway, there aren’t many people who can hack into America’s intelligence agencies so thatnarrows the field of hackers, and like any career people want to show off their work, now hackers know

to keep stuff on the down low for the outside world, but the hacking world is a different story, in theunderground you know who did what, if you know where to go and who to ask the correct questions to,so I have been all over the forums lately and found a group of guys in Russia who were hired by DonHattfield to do a hacking job for him, now he did not blatantly hire someone, he tried to set up a fakebank account and pay the Russians anonymously, a high six figure value, by they way, b ut come’on youare dealing with hackers, it didn’t take them long to figure out who they were dealing with, just a simple

code embedded in an email and it spiders through accounts and within hours you know more aboutsomeone than you ever wanted to know, but they did the job with the help of a couple of governmentinsiders that Don knew, he wanted to make sure they hit the right place at the right time so they couldfly under the radar, get the information and peg it on the Edwards.”

Chuck frantically wrote on his sheet of paper and managed to break in while Troy took a short breath.“Then how did the data get on the Edwards computers in their homes, and how did files get put in their

filing cabinets?”

Now Troy was curious. “Files in file cabinets? I don’t k now anything about that, except that MikeHattfield, Don’s son, loaded programs onto the Edwards computers through a USB drive, it wouldn’t

have taken him long, all he needed was access to the computer for thirty seconds and he could execute






a program giving the hackers full access to the Edwards computers, allowing them to place theincriminating files on their computers, including all of the source code and everything they did toactually perform the hack, making it look like the Edwards did it, and I imagine that if Mike was willing todo that he would have had access to the file cabinets too, and all of this I have in emails and on forums,but the guys in Russia don’t know that I know who they are, but I traced money trails to them along with

emails and triangulated that to forum user names and I know who they are.”

Chucks hand was working overtime with the pen. “Do you know about the bank accounts, homes, fake

passports and airline tickets out of the country as well?”

“That’s easy. It doesn’t take a geni us to make a fake passport, and they were made in America by somelocal hackers that Mike found in forums who did them for a couple of hundred bucks, and for the homesand bank accounts in Brazil, come’on, that country would sell a home to anyone and open bankaccounts with the kind of money that was put into them. As easy as it is to make fake documents, its justas easy to forge a bank account signature and house title, especially when the house is paid with cashand a large amount is wired to the bank, all you really need is a valid signature and they are none thewiser, and I have emails on those too, Don Hattfield is not the sharpest knife in the drawer when itcomes to anonymity and secrecy, he thinks that creating a Gmail account under a different name willprotect him from people finding out who he is, the problem is he sent emails to his personal email andwould then send emails on to the guy at Edwards Steel, Sam Miller.”

The attorney stopped writing and looked up at Troy in utter dismay. “Did you s ay Sam Miller, CFO ofEdwards Steel?”

“Yeah, he is the guy behind all of this, he funded it with company money, I am guessing, paying off the

Russians, purchasing the fake identities and purchasing the house in Brazil along with the large deposit

into the overseas bank, it is obvious through these emails that he is the ring leader and the Mayor is apawn who is trying to advance his career and has been promised a big political future as well as a hugeexpansion of his business if this thing goes the way the y planned, which it is up until now.”

“And you have all these emails and documents that track all of this stuff to them and the Russians?”

“Yeah, it has all been backed up to the cloud, nobody can access it but me, which is hard to do when Iam here.”

“And what was Barry’s involvement in all of this?”

“Not much, he found me at school and asked for my help, so I did some investigating, althoughtechnically he is responsible for matching the names to the phone numbers, otherwise he hardly knowshow to turn o n a computer, no offense Barry.”

Feeling a pang of malevolence Barry wanted to deck him for taking all the credit. Sure Troy was thesmart one that found all of the online stuff, but if Barry had not initiated contact with him he wouldhave never pursued it.






“So what was the motive behind this, I wonder?” Chuck asked as a question to himself, although

directed at Troy if he knew, figuring Barry had little or no involvement as he originally claimed yesterday.

This time Barry answered ahead of Troy. “Its because Sam Miller wants to change the company. Hewants to make it into a company that manufactures defense products, figuring Edwards Steel already

makes the steel that they can buy below wholesale allowing the manufacturer of tanks and missilescheaper than anyone else. Aside of that he wants to take the company international to manufactureproducts cheaper outside of the United States. And with Mayor Hattfield on board with all of this, he hasa political foot in the door.” Barry was surprised at his a rticulate response, as was Troy and Chuck basedon the expressions on their faces.

“And how do you know that?” Asked Chuck.

“It’s all public news available at the Library where I spent most of my day yesterday. Once you read

articles and start placing names together with motives, it creates a pretty clear picture.” Barry was

proud of himself that he could contribute to the conversation.

Chuck pressed on with more questions. “If I got you a computer would you be able to get me the

evidence you are talking ab out Troy?”

“No, I won’t do it in here, I want to be released first.”

“That would be impossible until we have actual verifiable evidence. And even when we have thatevidence, there is still the matter of you obtaining the Mayor’s phone bill from the phone c ompanyusing illegal practices and hacking into the phone company to look up personal information. If theevidence pans out I’m sure the courts will look past this infraction and release you, but at this point all

you have is a story with nothing to back i t up.”

“Then I want to talk to my Dad. He can get the information and make sure it makes it into the righthands, whether it is you or someone else.”

“If what you two are saying is real, I wouldn’t plan on getting too comfortable here. You won’t be locked

up for long. And I have to say I am impressed that you were able to find this information, and I wouldask that you do not mention any of this to anyone else. If Don Hattfield and Sam Miller catch wind ofthis they could disappear, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they have a backup plan. I’ll let the FBI know we

have no evidence yet and will only involve them once I have the printouts of your research. They canquickly and quietly make an arrest. In the meantime Troy, I will get your Dad, who is waiting in the lobby

to see you.” Chuck moved his gaze to Barry. “And for you, Dereck said he was calling your parents and Iwill follow up with him to see where they are. And one last thing, if the FBI corners you, don’t say

anything at all. I am your attorney and I will represent both of you if what you say is true.”

Chuck gathered his things after calling down the hall for the officers to take the kids to their holdingcells. With a cheerful look on his face he stood from the table and looked at the boys for what seemedlike would be a departing speech, instead his cell phone rang and he pulled the phone from his suit coatpocket and excused himself from the boys, while he walked into the open doorway.






“Hi honey, why are you calling me, you know I am meeting with clients?” He listened for a moment and

then his face dropped, smile disappearing, as he placed his hand on the doorframe to steady himself.The color ran from his face replaced by a pale shade of white as if a ghost had just passed by. “What

time did it happ en?”





167Part 39 – Bad News

Part 39 – Bad NewsChuck sat across from James and by the look on the attorney’s face James knew something was

drastically wrong.

“What is it Chuck, why did you have to see me so urgently?”

Chuck looked up at his friend with tears welled up in his e yes. “It’s Jill. She….she’s gone. She didn’t makeit.” Pent up emotion flooded out and his voice constricted, hardly able to speak. “She passed away a

couple of hours ago just before ten o’clock.”

James burst out in anguish, unaware of his surroundings, wi th a verbal plea. “No, no, no. Not Jill. Not myJilly. Why God? Why her and not me? Why did you take her?” His questions were heard by all visitors inthe room, as the people fell silent to observe the spectacle. “I couldn’t even say goodbye to her, I aske dand I couldn’t even say goodbye to my wife. What am I going to do now. How am I going to live without

her, Chuck?” Rivers poured from eyes, washing his cheeks and soaking his orange prisoner shirt. “Tell

them they need to get her back, I will pay whateve r they want, they can have all my money, I’ll stay in jail forever, tell them to bring her back. They are doctors, that is what they do, Chuck, they have to dosomething.” This hit too close to home. People he knew had died and he realized now how shallow hisempathy was. It is something to grieve with someone, but when this was his wife, the love of his life, hisbetter half. “What do I do now? What do I do now?” His words trailed off as he succumbed to the

realization of the death of his wife.

Chuck did not respond, allowing his friend to have a moment, and allowing time to compose himself inorder to be strong.

“How is Michelle?” came an inaudible whisper.

Inhaling a deep breath in preparation to steady his voice, Chuck responded, “She is still alive.”

Conflicting sobs of pain and joy racked the man’s body and Chuck did not pretend to know what hisfriend was going through.

“God, I don’t understand. Why me? Why her? God let this be a dream. Let me wake up next to my wife,

please don’t do this.”

Chuck remained silent and continued to be choked up with grief of his friend, and he said his own silentprayer for the Edwards family.

“Do you know what the last think I said to her? I said, ‘Call Chuck, there is a misunderstanding and he’lltake care of this.’ Why didn’t I tell her I loved her? She would have known to call you anyway. I used my

last words to her to say something meaningless. I should have told her how much she means to me. Ishould have told her to stay home and wait. There are so many more things I could have said, instead Iwasted words. Precious words. I would pay to be able to go back and say the right words, to say thewords, ‘I love you Jill.’” He folded his face into his hands while his shoulders reacted to his heartbreak.





168Part 39 – Bad News

The room resumed i ts lull of chatter, although looks continued to glance at James’ way. People seemed

to be drawn to pain and suffering like a magnet looking for metal.

“Is this my fate? A life in prison for me and my son? A daughter who will not have a mother to watch

after her and teach her how to be the amazing woman her mother was? Who is going to take care of my

daughter, Chuck, who?”

“You are, my friend, you are going to take care of your daughter.”

“Don’t placate me, that doesn’t help anything for either of us.”

Moving closer to his friend, he said in a low voice so nobody could hear, “I’m not placating you. Withoutrevealing any information yet, it looks like you will be a free man in the near future.”

“What do you mean? What information do you have?” A look of c onfusion washed over him.

“Remember the boy I was telling you about who reads the bible to Michelle? Apparently he and a friend

has some information that will set you and Evan free without a blemish on your record. You cannotrepeat any of this to anyone right now. I am in the process of obtaining the actual hard copies ofevidence now, and once I have them and can present them to the Judge, you will walk out of here toyour freedom.”

James was stunned, he didn’t know what to think . There were too many things happening at once,learning that his wife had died, and that he was only days away from seeing her in the hospital. Hestruggled with the excitement of the thought of not being in jail, measured against the loss of hisspouse. Would he be dishonoring her if displayed an emotion other than grief and mourning? His insideswere an emotional tug of war, not knowing whether to cry or jump for joy. Then guilt crept over him.

What about being able to see his daughter, and reuniting with his son? He coveted being able to seethem again, and with the recent news of his wife, the urgency to see Michelle burned inside him.

“Chuck, do whatever you have to do to get me out of here, no matter the expense. If you have some

information that set me free, then get it. How long before I can get out here?”

“This is Saturday at noon, we are looking at Monday at the soonest. Judges are off during the weekend.”

“Do me a favor and knock on that judge’s door, I want out of here as soon as possible, and if I shouldn’t

be here to be gin with, then I don’t want to wait another minute. I have to see Michelle, I just have to.”

His eyes filled with tears again, but he was filled with resolve leave the jail, and the first place he would

go was to Michelle’s side.





169Part 40 - Released

Part 40 - ReleasedPhillip Potts wanted his son out of jail. He knew what his son had done, and beneath the crime hecommitted, the results were to expose the people who needed to be in jail. The CIA broke the law togather information to bring criminals to justice. Making fake passports is illegal, yet the CIA does that toget agents in and out of countries undetected. They bug buildings and monitor phone calls and performplenty of illegal tasks to solve a crime.

If the CIA did not perform these normally illegal functions, then the United States would belong toanother country today. So while his son social engineered the phone company and hacked in to gainpersonal information, it was more than the FBI did, or any law enforcement agency for that matter.

He knew where Troy saved the data on the cloud, they talked about it on their trip yesterday. He helpedhis son where he could to track down the guys responsible for this. Troy was a true genius when it cameto computers and together they made an amazing team. As a CIA Interrogator he knew what went on inthe minds of these people and he knew how to extract information from them using simple words that

came across benign but were packed with enough power to extract confessions that people neverthought they would disclose.

Phillip was more than willing to work with Chuck and printed out the voluminous documentationprepared by his son, showing forum posts, emails, money exchanging hands and property and bankaccounts being purchased and set up in Brazil. This information was worthy of any great CIA bust.

Stepping out of his car in front of the police department where Charles Finkelstein arranged to meethim, he grabbed his Zahal bullet proof, combination locked briefcase and walked into the station, not tosee his son, but to present this information to FBI, in front of Mr. Finkelstein, who was the organizer ofthis meeting.

Being ushered back into the mock headquarters set up by the FBI for the purposes of this bust, Phillipentered a conference room with standing room only, Chuck at the head of the table dressed in a suit,with a tall lanky guy standing on his left and pretty woman to the left of the attorney, with brown hairand blue eyes. As he entered the room, he shut the door behind him.

“You have the documents?” Asked Chuck, standing as he reached his hand out to shake Phillip’s hand.

Phillip returned the gesture. “It’s all right here, I’ve reviewed it Troy and can say it is accurate and

correct. For those of you who do not know, I am retired CIA, and this is the real deal. Arrests need to bemade two accomplices and the ring leader. Sam Miller is the CFO of Edwards Steel and is the mastermind behind all of this. Next is Mayor Don Hattfield and his son Mike Hattfield. Together theyimplemented Sam Miller’s plan including planting evidence on James and Evan Edward’s computers andfile cabinets, arranging for fake ID’s and passports, setting up bank accounts in Brazil as well as

purchasing property. They hired a group of Russian hackers to infiltrate United States intelligenceage ncies, along with additional help from political friends of Don Hattfield.”






Agents scoured the bound folders marked with various segments of crimes, each containing emailsbetween the CFO and the Mayor, then links to email accounts that they thought would provideanonymity, which proved there was no such thing for the average citizen.

Other folders showed requests by Mike Hattfield to the hacker world advertising the work that was

ultimately awarded to a Russian group. Information about the Russian group was also contained in thefolder. Agent Hansen was looking through then one and began placing pieces together. “Guys, this is theRussian cell we have been trying to get our hands on and they keep slipping away from us, now we havethem. Phillip, will you son, upon his release from jail, contact these guys again and make arrangementsto meet them in the United States for an even bigger job than the last one? We want to lure them intoAmerica so that Russia will not have jurisdiction over them, then we can arrest them for crimes againstour Nation and get these snakes out of the cyber world.”

Phillip grinned from ear to ear in a proud moment that any parent has when their child is trulyexceptional and does something not many people can do. This must be what parents feel like when theirathlete son runs the winning touchdown at the first Super Bowl of his career. “I think he would be happyto work with the FBI to capture this guy.”

“Boy’s we have some arrests to make.” As she stood from her chair she shook Phillip’s hand. “Thank you

for this, and as for those boys, they will be released from custody as soon as I talk to the Sargent.” She

was on her way out the door when Chuck cleared his throat, implying there was another item ofbusiness to take care of. “And yes, I will get the paperwork started to release James and Evan Edwards.”

She continued walking but Chuck interjected, “I want my clients released by tonight.”

Backing up from the hall into the room she gave him a look of indignation. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then

she walked off.Chuck stood and faced Phillip, sticking out his hand he said, “Mr. Potts, thank you for bring this to us, I

don’t know what we would have done without all of these documents.”

“Don’t thank me, thank my son and his friend. They did it all.”

“What do you say we go get them, they have been here long enough.” Both men grabbed theirbriefcases and walked toward the counter at the entrance of the holding cells.

Similar to hospital waiting room, people sat in chairs waiting to see people under custody. Chuck walkedup to the counter and spoke to the clerk. “We are here to see Troy Potts and Barry Goupe.”

In a bulldog sort of fashion the woman, old in age and obviously unmarried, responded without lookingup from her monotonous task. “No visitors now for either one, they are still in processing.”

This time Phillip spoke, “I suggest you call your Sargent, he is getting news now for their release.”

“When I get the call I will notify you, sign in here.”






From behind a woman asked, “Did you say Barry Goupe?”

“Yes I did.” Chuck answered. She was walking toward him from a seat by the wall, where a man

continued to sit. Making an assumption he asked, “Are you his mother?”

“Yes’sir, we got a call say’n our boy was in jail. We was worried last night w hen the police knocked onour door look’n for him. He told us he was at a friend’s house, but he lied about it. We didn’t knowwhere he was til an hour ago when we got a call from a man we don’t know and he said Barry was in

jail.”

“I can explain it all to you. Is that your husband over there?”

“Yes’sir, this here is Bill and my name is Kelly. I don’t know where my manners are.”

Walking toward the seated man, Chuck introduced himself as an attorney. By the look on the Goupe’s

face they were both concerned a nd relieved. “In my book your son is a hero.”

Bill spoke with clarification and confusion. “You talk’n about my boy Barry, right? Cuz he doesn’t domuch special but read.”

“I’m talking about your son. Have you heard about the case against James Edwards of Edwards Steel andhis son?”

“Yes’sir, we work at the mill, we do cleaning, janitorial. We hear lots of things.”

“That makes three of us. I am a corporate attorney for Edwards Steel and a good friend of James. Your

son and his friend produced evidence today that exonerates the Edwards from the accusations againstthem.”

Interrupting Bill said, “I told him to stay out of trouble. I’m sorry he ex -honeered your friend.” A look ofdisappointment overcame the man’s face, but his wife had a look of confusion as if she thought thatmeant something good not bad.

“Exonerate,” Chuck explained “means that the Edwards will go free. Barry and his friend proved they didnot commit the crime.”

“You sure you got the right boy?”

“I promise you, Barry has done nothing wrong. A ctually I take that back, but what he did do will not be

held against him nor will it ever see the light of day in a court room.”

Looking at his wife Bill blurted, “See, I told ya that boy was a gitt’n to be a trouble -maker. He turnssixteen and someth’n flips in his head and he becomes defiant. I don’t know what we’re gonna do withthat boy.”

“Mr. Goupe,” Bill flinched at the formality, it made him feel important, and strange. “Your son was the

only person in this town who believed the Edwards and set out to prove all of us wrong. With the help of






his friend Troy, they found the people who are behind all of this. Your son will be out of jail within thehour and I would encourage you to let him know what a brave and incredible thing he has done. Were itnot for him, two innocent people would be in jail for the rest of their lives while three other crooksroamed the streets of Brighton.”

The Goupe’s sat in silence, processing this information that made no sense to them. How did theirintrovert son take on the FBI and legal system and win? The looked at each other, with tears of joywelling up in Kelly’s eyes. “Thank you sir for telling us this.” Her voice cracked.

“He has been an inspiration to me. Every day he visits Michelle, James’ daughter, in the hospital andreads her the bible.”

Kelly looked perplexed. “The Bible?”

“Yes, where do you go to church, I have not seen you at ours.”

“Uh, we don’t go to church, we aint the religious type.”

“Does Barry attend a church?” Now Chuck was perplexed.

“No sir, he stays home with us on Sundays. Until last week he was always home. This week we neverseen him, he was always gone, said he was at a friend’s house or the hospital.” Said Kelly.

“That is true, he was at the hospital. Most of Michelle’s friends did not visit and those who did nevervisited more than twice. Your son’s commitment to the Edwards is awe inspiring.” He gave them

another moment to process this new information.

The raspy deep voice from behind the counter called out, “Bill and Kelly Goop, Phillip Potts a nd CharlesFinkelsteen, please come to the counter.”

“They must have received the release orders. I want you to know that Barry will most likely have to

show up in court for his evidence and explanation of his involvement with this case, but it will only be toput others behind bars.”

The all stood and walked toward desk, eagerly awaiting a reunion with Barry and Troy.





173Part 41 – Epilogue

Part 41 – EpilogueThe FBI made three successful arrests, this time with the correct suspects, Sam Miller, Don Hattfield andMike Hattfield. Their jail sentence would be long, and most likely would not be eligible for parole sincethe crime was against the United States of America.

Barry and Troy were released to their parents and Barry told his Mom and Dad the true story of all thathappened that previous week, and did not leave out any details. He even told them about Goodwill andhow he owed them for his new clothes.

James and Evan Edwards were released from jail Saturday night, at the request of the FBI and the Judge,who’s Satur day was interrupted to approve the release. James and Evan visited the hospital where room314 was empty and 316 remain occupied by Michelle. The two spent most of their time beside thehospital bed reading to Michelle and recalling the good times they had with her. Barry continued hisdaily visits as well.

The following Friday Jill Edwards was laid to rest on a beautiful day in November. There was standingroom only in the mortuary and long train of cars that followed the hearse to the gravesite where thefinal goodbyes were made without a dry eye in the crowd. The lives she touched was many and herinfluence spread far outside the town of Brighton. Michelle was not there to see her mother buried.

James Edwards found internships for Barry’s parents at the S teel Mill, providing opportunities for themthat they would never have otherwise had. In addition to their internships he provided full scholarshipsto night school where they could earn an associate’s degree, and should they want to continue, theycould r eceive their Bachelor’s degree as well. Their pay increased significantly, compared to their

previous salaries, and while they rented the trailer, they had enough money now for a steady supply offood and enough to save for a home, a dream they never thought would come true. With their raisesthey bought Barry some new clothes from the local discount department store, as well as paying for theclothing Barry acquired on that rainy day in November when he was being chased by the police.

For Barry, he was awarded a full scholarship to the University of his choice upon graduating from HighSchool. This motivated Barry to study more than he ever had to bring up his grades in order to qualifyfor a high ranking school. He did not yet know what he wanted to major in, but the CIA soundedfascinating after hearing stories from Troy’s Dad. Barry did not want to be in law enforcement, but

Intelligence was fascinating to him.

Barry and Evan became good friends, while Troy kept a distance. Troy liked his anonymity and preferred

minimal interaction with others. This did not prevent him the three boys from hanging out at theEdward’s from time to time, or the computer store. One day when in the meeting room and Troy looked

up at the green light, Barry asked what that light was for. “It’s a bug detector.” Troy replied “My Dad and

I knew Mike Hattfield was bugged when he walked through that door. We knew the Feds were going toknock down our door any minute.”

Over time Barry warmed up to Dereck again and began attending church and youth group. He learnedthat Jesus is the son of God and that He died so that Barry could have eternal life in heaven. In exchange





174Part 41 – Epilogue

Barry knew he had to repent his sins to God and choose to follow Jesus. Being a voracious reader, hedevoured the Bible and asked powerful questions to Dereck. Barry felt a deep burning desire inside totell people about Jesus, and help them understand that heaven and hell are real. He took evangelismcourses at church and lived out what he learned as much as he could. His mother and father wereunresponsive to his quest for seeking God and trying to get them to change the way they saw Jesus, but

they could not reconcile the fact that they were good people and that should be good enough for God.Barry made it a mission to help his parents understand, no matter how long it would take.

Michelle awoke forty-six days after the accident, with her Dad beside her bed. It took several daysbefore she gained full consciousness and another week before her cognitive skills were at a point whereshe was functioning on her own. She could not remember the events surrounding the accident and shesaid her last memory was seeing her mom pull up to take her somewhere, but she forgot why hermother had been there. Upon learning of her Mother’s d eath, she lapsed into a state of depression forseveral days.

After her release from the hospital, she spent time at home and did not go back to school until thesecond semester. During that time Barry spent time with her most every day. Michelle had littlerecollection of Barry but as time passed some memories came back to her, including the one of himbeing by her side as her Mom drove up at the school. It was a bittersweet memory.

Barry asked Michelle about Robert, her boyfriend, and she gave him an inquisitive look and an innocentlaugh. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I am not going to date until I am older, I want to focus on my studies fornow.” That was both a relief and a disappointment for Barry. However, time was on his side, and they

had developed a very close friendship.

As Michelle learned about Barry’s commitment to her in the hospital and the bible readings he had

performed to her, she recalled hearing God’s word and the soothing feeling that gave her. She could notexplain her thoughts while in the coma, it was truly a gap in time, but as she thought back she couldremember a sense of peace falling over on a frequent basis.

Chuck retired and completed the bike ride of a lifetime, traveling over three thousand miles, fromCalifornia to Boston on his bike with a small group of other devoted riders. Upon returning home,retired life was not keeping him busy enough so he wrote a fiction novel, based on a factual story, thatparalleled the life of Job in modern day time. The characters names in the novel were all fiction, exceptfor the hero whose name he preserved in honor of the boy who proved that God does work miracles.That c haracter’s name is Barry Goupe.





175Author’s Note

Author ’s NoteThis story was originally intended to be a parable of short stories for my blog (www.seanmcclure.com)to get across the point of how people are so easily deceived by lies that are spread through gossip andmedia. The premise started with Adam and Eve, hence the name Evan Victor Edwards (E.V.E).

The intention was for Evan to be framed for a crime he did not commit and henceforth his popularity,reputation and trust that people had in him were diminished. Being a godly boy would not help hiscause as the lies of the deceiver breaks the barriers of trust that bind us together. This story wassupposed to have no more than ten parts (chapters) which would be no more than two pages each, toensure each blog post was not excessive.

As the story progressed, Barry Goupe complicated the story line by wiggling his way into the forefront ofthe book making himself the main character. Additionally he demanded an explanation of who he was,where he came from, and the struggles he faced in life. While the story took a fork in the road to focuson Barry, I wanted to stay true to the deliberate intention of overlaying the storyline with biblical

accounts, and specifically that of Job.

Days prior to starting this story I read through Job and at the beginning of the book I noticed something Ihad not noticed before. My memory told me that it was Satan that asked God to test Job, when in realitySatan told God he was in the earth, moving to and fro looking for someone to test.

“And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on

the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?’” Job 1:8

This hit me like a ton of Bricks. God know Job would not turn from Him, regardless of what Satan coulddish out, short of death. The book of Job is devoted to Job’s situation and the nay sayers around him.

While his friends provided sound theological reasoning for why Job was inflicted with disease, and losteverything he head, they were ultimately wrong in their assessment. It was the youngest of the group,who would not have had the theological experience as the others, to actually bring forth the truth.

After reading Job I thought, “Has God ever told Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant {place yourname here}’”? Using my name, it became pers onal and I realized that I have an opportunity to trust Godand not curse Him, and prove my faith to the point that Satan has nothing on me.

How many trials have you undergone and been told it was your sin that caused it, or God must havewanted it this way. I contend that God has a tremendous amount of faith in us, yet he wants to prove tous that we can get through it by trusting in Him only, and not ourselves or others.

That simple thought changed my life, and I hope you internalize it as well and really think of how muchGod loves you and wants you to trust in Him for everything. This one is for you:

And the Lord said to Satan, “ Have you considered my servant {Your Name Here}, that there isnone like him/her on the earth, a blameless and upright man/woman, who fears God and turnsaway from evil? ” Job 1:8



Barry and the Cyber Thief [DRAFT]176Author’s Note

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Barry and the Cyber Thief