“Like the rest of us, Natalie was convinced Carrie went up in flames with Newton Joyce when his helicopter crashed off the coast of North Carolina,” Lucy says.

“Who did she think was spying on her?”

“The Feds. Or maybe a foreign government, other lawyers, lobbyists, reporters. You name it. The law firm she was with dealt with a lot of heavy-hitting politicos.”

“And when she was moved to the hospice facility, this personal laptop went with her.” I envision it on the bedside table where Lucy had set it up.

CHAPTER 25

I DON’T RECALL SEEING BLACK tape over the camera lens on the silver frame of Natalie’s personal computer. But I’m remembering other things that were going on at the time.

Almost concurrently, Lucy was finding oddities in the CFC computer system. Then as more weeks passed she confirmed that someone had hacked into our e-mail and possibly the database. Months later after Natalie died, Lucy began to find other reasons for concern, she says.

“I was going through her computer logs, checking all processes that were running and at what times of day and night,” she explains, and it’s the first I’ve heard her go into detail about what she did back then. “And I found possible indicators of Trojan horses, of malware parading as legitimate programs, of a number of things.”

“I assume you discussed this with Janet?” I ask because Lucy’s never discussed it with me.

“I told her I wasn’t sure. For example, there can be lots of explanations for a corrupt registry file. There can be more than one reason for a number of things. And if there’s no cause for suspicion because you’re far more worried about losing somebody you love and dealing with her seven-year-old kid? Then maybe you’re not really looking either.”

“But now you’re suspicious.”

“It’s gone way beyond that.”

“You’ve decided it was Carrie who was hacking. It was Carrie who was spying on Natalie, and basically on all of us.” I don’t ask because it’s not a question.

“She was probably using a RAT, a Remote Administrator Tool to control Natalie’s computer or computers.” Lucy moves around the small galley as she talks, opening cabinets and cupboards like a fidgety kid. “And who knows how long it had gone on.”

“How old was Natalie’s laptop?”

“She’d refurbish and upgrade her personal computers, keeping them for a while. The one in question was six years old at the time, and some of the questionable files went back that far. So it’s possible she was being hacked even earlier but those computers or devices are long gone. I can’t check.”

“If Carrie had been monitoring Natalie for at least six years,” I reply, “then it wasn’t triggered by her diagnosis or even by you and Janet getting back together. None of that had happened yet.”