Strong Evidence

When the police officers arrived at the school, they first went to the front office and talked with the director for a short time. The secretary then brought them into my office, inside the Computer Lab. They spent a long time with me as I laid out all the facts I knew about the case.

I told them how the young girl came to my desk one day and asked if I could help her with something weird she noticed with her District-provided laptop. I told them how she said the light next to the webcam flashes randomly from time to time for no reason at all. And I told them that I knew exactly what was going on with that. They were hesitant to believe me at first, but then I walked them through my investigation and findings. I told them how I knew her from being my next door neighbor, how I met her mom when they moved in, and how I helped them to unload all the heavy stuff from the moving truck and placed it on their front porch. I also told them about the day her mom's new boyfriend decided to move in with them, although I smoothed out some parts, like when I sensed a bad vibe around him immediately. I saved my strongest words for later, but I added a few comments on how I noticed the girl's behavior changed after that.

In the end, they asked me to stay within reach, as they may require my help later. This situation came up rather faster than I expected, as they returned to the Lab just two weeks after our first encounter. They had a tagged laptop with them this time and asked if I could help find some files on it. My heart sank as I knew what type of files they were looking for.

I called the director and asked him to send one of the nurses over. She helped me by going through all the videos and photos so I didn't have to look at them once the list of files was identified on that computer. They were hidden masterfully, but there is always a methodology to follow behind the process to save documents on a PC, and working with teenagers undoubtedly helps me keep myself updated on such methods.

As expected, the case made the news, and the boyfriend received a long sentence after the jurors found him guilty. The evidence was strong, after all. Seeing the girl returning to her previous self was good.

Locating and collecting the files while barely looking at the screen was hard labor, and although the nurse was helpful and understanding, she still made me feel like I was invading somebody's privacy.

The hardest part was identifying and locating him on the web, hacking remotely into his laptop, moving all the original files from my personal computer into his, and cleaning up when I was done, right after that first visit from the girl.