Lilith: a novel by Edward Trimnell Read Free Book Online

between the ages of 25 and 35.
    Alan handed the printout back to Dave. “Is Lorelei’s the profile that Robert went for?”
    “No. It would appear that Robert was skeptical of the Lorelei profile.”
    Strange, Alan thought. You could never tell what a man—or a woman, for that matter—was going to go for. Lorelei Monroe was, in her own way, every bit as attractive as either of the airbrushed Ukrainian Internet models. More importantly, the candid, unstaged nature of her photos would be far more believable in an online dating profile. But Robert Billings had chosen to believe in the illusion of a Ukrainian model instead.
    “Were you able to get any information about the source of the fake profiles?”
    “Yes and no. The headquarters of the dating site is in New Jersey, so they’re in the Eastern Time Zone. I made a call up there first thing, and the head of their customer data group was very helpful and forthcoming.”
    Dave tapped the printouts of the three fake profiles. “These had all been deleted from the main site. The guy up at the dating site pulled them off the backup server for me. There’s usually a few days’ gap between the data on the backup server and that on the main server, so we got lucky.”
    “And that would mean that the profiles were only deleted recently from the main site,” Maribel said.
    “That’s right,” Dave replied. “According to the site’s records, late last night.”
    “Right after Robert Billings was murdered,” Alan concluded. “So it looks like they covered their tracks.”
    “You don’t know the half of it,” Dave said. “I followed up with the cybercrime groups in Dayton and Columbus this morning. They hadn’t tracked down the photos yet, but they were able to track the IP addresses of the devices that accessed the dating sites in the previous murders to create those fake profiles. ‘Lilith”—whoever Lilith is, wasn't going to let us track him or her to a home computer. These profiles were created on tablet devices—an iPad in at least one case—working on a public WiFi. One of the networks was the WiFi at Port Columbus airport. The other two were very public networks: the guest access node of the University of Dayton’s network, and another at one of the major hospitals in the Columbus area.”
    “What about the devices themselves? Were they able to trace those? The manufacturers should have a record of who bought them.”
    “One of them, yes. That was the iPad. The iPad was originally sold to a fifty-five-year-old schoolteacher in Fort Wayne, Indiana, six months ago. It turns out the iPad was stolen from her car four months ago.
    “I don't think that Lilith was the one who stole the iPad, mind you. I think it was stolen by one of those organized rings that opportunistically steals tablets and cell phones and then resells them. That’s all underground, of course, and the same device might be sold and resold several times.”
    Dave smacked his open palm on his thigh for emphasis. “They covered their bases, all right. The Columbus and Dayton PDs have traced all of the cell phone numbers in the previous victims’ call logs. The two suspicious ones were both traced to throwaway phones. So we looked up the phones: They were both bought from large retailers with cash, no record of the purchaser given.”
    “What about credit card numbers?” Maribel asked. “For the dating sites, I mean. Aren’t there membership fees for those sites?”
    “Not in every case,” Dave replied. “A handful of dating sites are completely free and make their money from ad revenues. And most of the ones that charge a fee only charge the men. The women join for free. I can tell you’ve never done much online dating, Maribel.”
    “Are we to take it that you have a lot of experience with online dating, Dave?” Alan asked.
    Dave’s cheeks reddened slightly. “I will after this investigation. Lilith apparently didn't use any dating sites that charge the female members a