“Shot put. He got second place. We’re real proud of him.”

“That’s excellent. My boy’s too young to be competitive yet, and with that surgery, well, you know the one I told you about, I’m not sure if sports will be in his future.”

He let some silence hang on the line, let the guilt set in. She would ask herself: How could she not remember such details about this faceless coworker who remembered her so vividly? A good person like Marjorie—who Burke knew was always so positive online, had a long list of friends, and was active in the PTA and volunteered at soup kitchens—would hate herself for not recalling a coworker with whom she had shared such an intimate discussion.

“Right. Right … I guess you … just have to pray it works out as it’s supposed to, Dewayne.”

“I hear you, darling. Just tough sometimes. But anyway, I won’t take up much of your time. I’m calling because we think that your user account may have been compromised.”

“Oh my, has someone—”

“Nah, we caught it early. But I’m going to need you to verify some info for me.”

Burke proceeded to name off a long list of information he had learned from online data mining—her address, home phone number, email address, mother’s maiden name, emergency contact info (which he assumed to be her husband), the name of her family doctor (which he had learned from her Facebook page), and a few other details to put her at ease, not enough to make her bored or frustrated but just the right amount of information to reassure her that he was exactly who he claimed to be.

“Okay, Marjorie, all that info appears to be intact. Can you verify your username for me?”

“Sure. It’s marjorie.connell.lva.”

“Okay, great. And your password is #Potpourri8791?”

“No, that’s not right.”

“Oh my, well looks like they changed that. Can you give me your proper password, the one you had before, so I can reset that back for you?”

“Sure, it’s IsaacAndStan#20011979.”

“That’s a great password Marjorie. Resetting that now. I’m also going to send you a link to a small program that will run a check on your computer to make sure that you don’t have some kind of infection or backdoor Trojan on your actual system. All you have to do is click the link, and it will run the scan in the background and send me the results. And be warned, it may get caught in a SPAM folder or you may get a virus warning or something. Don’t worry about that. It’s just that some of these systems work a bit too good, if you know what I mean. That’s where it comes down to trusting the source. So since it’s from me, you don’t need to worry about all that, I’m shooting that out to you now, and I’d really appreciate you running that as soon as humanly possible. If you can do that for me, I’d be mighty grateful. I’ll keep you updated if we find anything else out about the compromise.”