“As a favor to Ethan, who seemed very worried about his teacher, I agreed to attend one of the Thursday night basketball games and talk to Sandra myself. I confess, I figured I’d have a brief chat, give her a detective’s contact information for follow up, that kind of thing. But …” His voice faded away.

“But?” D.D. prodded.

Wayne shrugged, looking almost chagrined. “Then I saw Sandra Jones.”

“Not your typical social studies teacher,” D.D. observed.

“No. Not at all. I figured out immediately why Ethan had taken a shine to her. I mean, she was younger than I expected. Prettier than I expected. And sitting there on those wooden bleachers, this cute little girl tucked up against her knees … I don’t know. I took one look and I wanted to help her. It felt like I had to help her. That she needed me.”

“Oh yeah. Mary Kay Letourneau, Debra Lafave, Sandra Beth Geisel. All beautiful women. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that only the pretty ones want to sleep with twelve-year-old boys? What’s up with that?”

“I’m telling you, she didn’t have that kind of relationship with Ethan.”

“Did she have that kind of relationship with you?”

Wayne gazed at her flatly. “Look, do you want to hear what I have to say or not?”

D.D. gestured with her hands. “Speak away. This is your party.”

“That first night, Ethan sat with Ree while Sandra and I took a short walk around the school to chat. She told me she had found a disturbing photo in the recycle bin of the family computer. Only that one image and only that one time; she hadn’t discovered anything since. However, she’d been learning about Internet browser histories and data storage since then, and it was clear to her that her husband was tampering with the computer, which made her wonder what else he had to hide.”

“Tampering with it in what way?”

“Ethan had taught Sandra how to track which websites are visited by a computer. That information is stored in the history file of the computer’s hard drive, and should be retrievable. She had made a number of attempts at pulling up the family computer’s Internet browser, using various online tools Ethan had told her about. Every time she did it, however, she could only retrieve the URLs for three websites—the Drudge Report, USA Today, and New York Times.”

D.D. was already lost. “Why is that suspicious?”