“But someone sent the request. Well, now that we’ve been looking through her belongings and her online profiles, we believe we know how that might have occurred. Someone had apparently hacked into her account. They must have used a phishing scam and acquired her password and logged in that way. Anybody who has a Facebook account can look to see if someone else has logged in to their account from another device. And it gives an approximate location of the person who logged in. Most people don’t know the feature exists, and most of us don’t use it. I never have. But I will now. So we think someone did that with Jennifer’s account. They could see everything she was doing. All her messages and everything else. They could take over the account and use it just like Jennifer could. And if they wanted, they could send a friend request that would appear to come from Jennifer Bates. And they did that the night you were in the house. Jennifer wouldn’t have to have anything to do with it. In fact, even if she were alive, she wouldn’t necessarily know anyone was viewing her private information or using her account. The average person wouldn’t know or maybe even think to know. And most hackers don’t want you to know they’re there, so they wouldn’t send a friend request that way. It stands out as odd behavior for a hacker.”

Someone in the neighborhood turned on a saw, and the sound of it chewing through wood reached us in the quiet house. My phone sat quiet and still in my left hand. I wanted it to buzz or ring. I wanted to hear from Amanda.

“You said you can see where this person logged in from.”

“We can. But it’s very general. For example, it just says someone using a Mac computer logged on to Jennifer’s account in Rossingville. Not very helpful. But do you all use Macs? You seem like the type.”

“We do.”

“What web browser do you prefer? I like Safari.”

“I use Safari.”

“And Amanda?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, Safari. It’s the best one for a Mac, isn’t it?”

“Above my pay grade. Well, it turns out whoever was using Jennifer’s account was using Safari.”

“But that could be anybody.”