Holiday Hack

by John Tures

“I don’t want to spy on our kids,” Kelly insisted. “I just want to know what they want for Christmas.”

Stewart sighed, looking across the family room in their tiny suburban home. “But being able to track our children’s online searches—it’s a little like ‘Big Brother.’”

Kelly shook her head. “Last year, the holidays were a disaster. Alfred and Stella got their kids exactly what they wanted. Meanwhile, the disappointment on Jeff and Lisa’s faces was obvious to even my parents. I couldn’t take much more of Stella’s self-satisfied smirk.”

“Your sister was just happy she managed to find the perfect gifts. We’ll do better by our kids this year.”

Kelly switched to a pleading tone. “And that’s all I’m asking for. You’re the best programmer at In-E-Tech…you can do it.”

Stewart considered her request. “There is this new computer language we got from a place…Moldova, I think. I’ll see if I can take a peek at their Internet queries.”

Hours later, as Kelly sipped her Moscato, Stewart emerged triumphant, with a small device resembling a flashdrive, which served as an appendage to his laptop.

“Shall we give it a try?” he asked.

Kelly nodded eagerly. “Let’s start with Lisa. I really botched it last year with that ‘British Betty’ doll for her.”

Minutes later, she squealed with delight. “This computer program of yours is great. I can see what the kids want now. I would have never guessed what Lisa prefers, but now I can see what she hopes to get. I am totally nailing Christmas this year! Thanks so much, hon!”

Exhausted the next morning, Stewart pulled back the covers, surprised not to see Kelly there. She was usually the one to sleep in late on the weekends.

After stumbling down the hall, he reached the family room. Clad in a robe, blonde hair uncharacteristically spilling out from her head instead of its normal neat bun, Kelly pointed to the kitchen. “Pumpkin Spice coffee is on the burner.”

“How long have you been up?” Stewart inquired.

“Long enough to get Jeff’s gift, plus everyone in Stella’s family, and my parents. This search engine tracker is amazing!”

“That’s why they call me the SEO of In-E-Tech,” Stewart noted.

“Wish you were the CEO there,” Kelly observed.

But by the next morning, she would be singing a different tune.

“What’s wrong, hon?” Stewart asked, seeing Kelly’s worried expression as she stared at her laptop in the early morning.

She pointed at the screen. “It’s Jeff. Look at what he’s been searching online when he’s alone in his bedroom!”

Stewart gazed at her screen.

“Don’t get too interested, unless you intend to sleep on the couch tonight,” she snapped.

Her husband blushed. “Uh…he’s just at that age….where boys…get curious about girls.”

“Girls is the right word.” Kelly glowered at the image on her computer. “She doesn’t look that much older than Jeff. And that outfit and pose are not age-appropriate!”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

“Talk to him the next time you go outside to throw the football around.”

“And let him know we were spying on him?” He couldn’t even imagine starting the conversation, much less having one like it in the first place.

          “You’re the one who built this device!” she countered.

“And you’re the one using it!” he fired back.

Kelly fashioned her hands in a “t” for a time-out. “Okay, let’s not turn on each other. Just…maybe…accidentally walk in on him without knocking when he’s been in his room by himself after an hour or so in the evening, you know. Come up with some excuse to wander in on his little online Victoria’s Secret back there, before he gets obsessed with this kind of thing.”

Stewart shrugged. That might work to solve this little dilemma.

But it would not be the last of their problems.

The next morning, Kelly was in her usual spot in the easy chair, instead of dressing up for work at the county archives. She motioned her husband over frantically.

“What are you…”

She held a finger to his lips and whispered “It’s Lisa. Look at this!”

Stewart nervously scanned the webpage. “What do you think this all means?”

“You can see as clearly as I can that Lisa’s got an eating disorder,” Kelly responded, almost forgetting to keep the silent tone.

“But…”

“It fits with what I’ve suspected. It’s the way she dresses these days and throws out food. One of the teachers at school was complaining that some of the boys, and girls as well, have been fat-shaming their fellow students. Lisa’s probably one of their victims.”

“Okay,” Stewart held up his hands. “But what can we do about it? We can’t confront her with this without revealing that we’ve been spying on her.”

Kelly fixed him with a determined stare. “You need to talk to the school counselor first. All of the teachers say Miss Maisone’s good about getting the kids to open up.”

The air seemed to return to Stewart’s lungs. “I’m beginning to regret inventing that search engine.”

Kelly gave him a look. “How can you say that? You may well have saved Lisa’s life with this program.”

But later that week, she would think differently about her husband’s invention.

Early the next Saturday, Kelly occupied her online search post once again in the easy chair, fortified by a big mug of coffee and a cruller.

When Stewart emerged from the hallway in his bathrobe, Kelly fixed him with a stare marred by bloodshot eyes.

“How long have you been up?”

“It’s Emily!” her emotions were running high. “I think her husband’s going to kill her.”

Stewart gasped. Emily was the sweet elderly lady next door, a museum docent who also baked scones for his family and walked dogs with Kelly. He leaned in to see what Kelly was specifically searching for.

“Maybe Larry’s just researching how to kill rats inside or weeds out back.”

“Undetectable poisons?” Kelly screeched. “Plus, Emily’s been terrified recently about her husband. She wouldn’t tell him how she voted in the last election. He’s become increasingly surly since Corey joined the army. He’s been getting into arguments at work. And he’s been grousing at her all of the time.”

Stewart licked his lips nervously. “This is getting to be like a Hitchcock plot. What should we do?”

Kelly fixed him with a determined stare. “Call your buddy. You know which one.”

“So you’re telling me you invented a program that can monitor others’ online searches?” Detective Dale Thomas asked.

Stewart nodded vigorously, hoping Dale would believe him.

“And you used it to spy on your next-door neighbor, Larry Wendell.” Dale fixed Kelly with a stare. “Is that right, ‘Miss Marple?’”

She hesitated, then slowly nodded.

“Well, ‘Nick and Nora,’ I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have the authority to do anything in this matter.”

Stewart lowered his head.

“But can’t you get him on some conspiracy to commit a crime?” Kelly had seen enough cop shows to think of that one.

Dale shifted his tone to resemble a courtroom lawyer. “Your Honor, my former college roommate invented a device to monitor the online activities of others, and his wife engaged in a little online snooping of her next-door neighbor….”

Dale groaned. “Ah, they’d have my badge, and my pension, within the hour. Take some advice from me. Stay away from this amateur detective stuff, and I’ll do you the courtesy of not running you two in for breaking some online spying law that I haven’t researched yet.”

          Dale gave a mock salute to Stewart, and a smile to Kelly, then departed the house.

The couple looked at each other. “What do we do?” Kelly wailed. “We can’t just go over and tell Emily. She’s been homebound since she broke her hip, and he never leaves the house.”

Stewart gritted his teeth. “Gather more evidence so we can save Emily. I’ll slip over to their trash cans tonight to see if I can find something incriminating.”

Kelly managed a smile. “Good idea.”

          But after three nights with nothing but grimy hands to show for it, Stewart knew he had to change tactics.

          Stewart realized he had been relying upon Kelly to do the searching. He hadn’t even been using the device he invented. That night, as she perused a book on poisons, Stewart fired up the laptop to look into the online activities of Larry Wendell.

          It was amazing. He could see everything his neighbor had been looking up online. It was like having a secret camera in the Wendells’ house. Then he realized it was like a form of voyeurism…potentially toxic.

Speaking of that term, Stewart noted that Larry didn’t seem to be into researching poisons. Since they had told Dale about their suspicions a few days ago, Larry’s searches seemed to be more into guns—rifles, to be exact. He had been purchasing some powerful ammo, a sniper scope, and some kind of laser-sighting device. It seemed like overkill for doing in Emily.

After a minute, Stewart stared at the screen at something he hadn’t noticed before. There was a strange blue sphere in the upper righthand portion of his screen. When he clicked on it, the screen dissolved before his eyes. When it came back, his mouth dropped open.

“Oh no!” he gasped.

“What is it, hon?” Kelly asked, looking up from her book.

“It’s a mirror image.”

“Meaning what?”

“Larry has been able to see everything we see when we secretly watch him, including our cyber-spying on him.”

At that moment, Stewart saw a red dot on the wall snaking down toward Kelly, who was still sitting in her easy chair.

“No!” he yelled. “Kelly—duck!”

She froze. Her coffee mug exploded next to her. She screamed and fell to the floor. He hit the deck a split second before his own mug disintegrated, showering him with hot brown liquid and ceramic shards.

“Kids!” Stewart barked. “Hit the floor!”

Two whumps from their bedrooms confirmed that Jeff and Lisa complied.

Stewart crouched behind the sofa. It might withstand a shot, but the easy chair where Kelly normally sat would not. “Crawl over here,” he said.

She looked at him helplessly, her legs unable to move as she trembled in fear. Another round slammed into two Christmas Tree plaster ornaments made by the kids back in grade school. A little lower and that shot would have taken out Kelly, he thought. Panic overtook him.

Stewart slithered over to Kelly and shielded her with his body, hoping his bones, or muscle, would somehow absorb the bullet and protect her life, knowing it probably wouldn’t, based on what his neighbor was searching for online. Both bodies shuddered after a loud blast.

Stewart blinked. Somehow, he was still alive. Beneath him, Kelly was still breathing rapidly. What had happened? The front door creaked open. He shut his eyes. It was the end.

“Hey Stewart!” a voice called out. He opened his eyes in amazement.

“Thanks for the lead,” Dale called out. “I played your hunch, followed Larry’s purchases, and the guns and ammo buys raised some red flags. He was firing from the rear window, but I got him.”

Stewart got up and helped Kelly get to her feet. Then he surreptitiously pulled the device from his laptop.

“Sure would like to get that program you invented,” Dale stated off-handedly, glancing back outside at the sniper’s perch. “It could help the police catch more bad guys.”

And maybe do a lot more, in the hands of a few rogue cops, Stewart thought grimly.

“Sorry, Dale.” Stewart gave a fake groan. “Looks like one of Larry’s bullets destroyed the device.”

“Too bad,” Dale admitted. “Let me go back outside and ensure your neighbor’s no longer a threat to anyone else.”

As Dale stepped outside, Stewart took the device from his pocket and headed to the kitchen trashcan.

Observing him carefully, Kelly added “Better dunk it in the sink first, hon, and throw it into the disposal, just to be sure. I think our days of spy searching this holiday season are done.”

John A. Tures began writing for the El Paso Herald-Post in high school. He wrote for his college paper at Trinity University in San Antonio and at Marquette University. He earned his doctorate at Florida State University, analyzed data in Washington D.C., is now a Professor at LaGrange College. He writes a weekly column for newspapers and magazines. He has published a number of short story mysteries and thrillers. His book Branded will come out later this year with Huntsville Independent Press (Huntsville Independent Press). He thanks family and friends for listening to his stories.