
Home Meet the Black Widows Womenade Fundraiser Behind the Scenes Meet Felicia Donovan Books On-Line Safety The Black Widows Speak Their Mind Contact Links BWA Blog	THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY by Felicia Donovan Chapter One Alexandria Axelrod hunched her tall, thin body over the bank of computer screens and watched as the file opened up on-screen. Within seconds, she saw what she was looking for. “Bingo,” she said quietly to no one in particular. Katie Mahoney wandered over. “Good one?” she asked. “Listen to this,” Alexandria said as she read from the screen, “Dear Sweet Peaches…” “Sweet Peaches?” Katie laughed. “That’s what it says. Dear Sweet Peaches, I’d love to pick your fruit again soon. Will you be ‘ripe’ the twentieth at eight p.m.?” “What’s with all the fruit crap?” Katie asked. “Does he tell her he’s plucking her cherry each time?” Katie Mahoney reached into the pocket of her blazer, whipped out her PalmPilot and brought up her calendar. “Friday the twentieth at eight p.m.” she noted as she tapped the screen with the stylus. Guess I’m not going out on a date that night,” she sighed. “And neither are you,” she added, knowing full well that it was not likely Alexandria had a date that night or any other night for that matter. Alexandria ignored her as she scanned from screen to screen. Multiple stacks of computers whirred around her creating a constant low-buzz that Alexandria found very comforting. This was their Digital Operations Room, more affectionately called the Cybercision Center, where the investigators of the Black Widow Agency did the bulk of their computer forensic and analysis work. Alexandria, known by her teammates as the “Geek Goddess,” loved this windowless space. Katie Mahoney hated it. She’d rather work in her own little corner office complete with the wall poster of a shirtless Tom Selleck, a solid maple desk with a fully-loaded forty millimeter handgun in the top drawer and a fifth of Glenlivet in the bottom drawer. Just then Margo Norton, their office manager, opened the door. Margo was wearing a chocolate-colored flowing dress that nearly matched her skin. “Whacha y’all up to?” Margo asked as she glanced between the women. “Planning to tape the next Oscar-award winning video.” “Well hold your digital penetrating cameras because y’all have a visitor out here, a Mrs. Gloria Duvay, that’s D-U-V-A-Y, who just came in and she looks pretty damned jammed up even for a rich white woman if you ask me.” Alexandria’s hands flew across the keyboard as she typed in the name. She tapped another button as the image of a middle-aged woman in a Versace suit, sitting in a chair in their conference room, appeared on a screen. The woman glanced nervously around the room. Alexandria zoomed in and quickly grabbed a digital photo of the woman’s face for their records. “Got it,” Alexandria called to Katie. “Mrs. Gloria Duvay, DOB 11/14/57 of fourteen Abernathy Woods, Langton. Nice neighborhood. Husband is Richard Duvay, President of Du-Tech Architectural Designs. Business has been booming over the last few years. Net earnings up thirty-eight percent over the previous year. Seven-figure bank account on him, no listing on her.” “Sweet Jesus!” Margo exclaimed. “And the only figures I ever see rising are those damn red numbers on that damned scale every morning. Which reminds me, I just made some fresh scones, not that you would care to know,” she said flashing her brown eyes at Alexandria and muttering, “damned anorexia poster child,” under her breath. “Thanks, Margo," Katie said. "Settle Mrs. Duvay into the conference room and we’ll be right there.” Despite the large, comfortable chair, Gloria Duvay shifted nervously as the two women walked in. The first woman was tall and model-thin, with short, nearly-spiked black hair and dark eyes of almost the same color. Her pale face was expressionless as she strode in and sat down across from Gloria Duvay. When the tall woman crossed her long legs, Gloria couldn’t help but notice a small tattoo of a black widow spider on her right inner ankle. The young woman’s fingernails were painted dark red giving her somewhat of a gothic appearance. The other woman was shorter, large-bosomed and wore a deeply-cut blue knit sweater beneath a linen blazer that was stretched to capacity. She had long, curly, blonde hair with reddish highlights, very light blue eyes and a small nose which reflected her Irish roots. She extended her hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Duvay,” Katie began, “I’m Katie Mahoney and this is my associate, Alexandria Axelrod.” Alexandria gave a small nod to Gloria Duvay, but didn’t smile, didn’t offer her hand. “How can we help you today, Mrs. Duvay?” Gloria Duvay looked at them both. “My friend, Donna Dormond, once used your… services… and recommended you.” Katie smiled in recognition. “Of course. And how is Donna?” “Very well. She just started a new job at a mortgage company and she’s moving to a new home in just a few weeks.” “Excellent,” Katie said. “She wouldn’t have been able to afford that, or the Jaguar, or the vacation home, without your help.” “One of the goals of the Black Widow Agency,” Katie explained, “is to make sure that the women we serve get what they deserve.” “And that men do, too,” Alexandria added quietly. Katie shot her a look as Gloria gave a small, nervous laugh. “So what is it that we can do for you today, Mrs. Duvay?” “It’s my husband, Richard. We’ve been married for almost twenty-five years. He owns his own business, an architectural firm, which he started from the ground up and has worked hard at for many years. It’s one of the leading architectural firms in the area. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Du-Tech Architectural Designs?” Katie nodded to her to go on but didn’t give any indication whether she recognized the name or not. Gloria Duvay continued. “Richard is a wonderful man and a good father to our children, but lately…things just haven’t been the same between us if you know what I mean. He seems rather…distracted.” “I understand,” Katie said sympathetically. “The other night I walked into his den and his computer was turned on. There was an e-mail from a woman named ‘BeeBee’ that said, ‘We’re on for the eighteenth at six p.m. Can’t wait.; Hugs, BeeBee.’” “Did you notice the return e-mail address?” Alexandria asked. “No. I heard my husband in the hallway and moved away. I didn’t want him to think I was snooping, but I just don’t understand what is going on.” Gloria Duvay fought back tears. “This must be such a stressful time for you,” Katie said as she leaned forward and lightly touched Gloria Duvay’s arm. Without asking, she reached over to a side table and took out a box of tissues with a decoupage cover that Margo Norton had made and offered them to her. Katie Mahoney’s twelve years as a cop interviewing people was well spent. She knew every trick of the trade to gain sympathy and trust in people and was even capable of looking a pedophile square in the eye and saying, “It must have been so hard for you with all those children around.” Whatever it took to get the job done... “And what would you like us to do for you, Gloria. May I call you Gloria?” “Yes, of course. I… I guess I’d like you to find out if he’s… involved with this woman.” “Very well. We can help you with that,” Katie said. “How will you do it? Find out, I mean.” Katie turned to Alexandria. “By the time you get home,” Alexandria began in a monotone, “You will have received an e-mail from ‘Divinity Chocolates’ with the subject line of ‘free chocolate.’ You are to open that e-mail and then delete it." “That’s it?” “That’s it.” Gloria Duvay looked at Alexandria suspiciously. “And what will that do?” “That will enable what is known as a rootkit invasion on your computer. It will launch a series of other programs including a keystroke logger. We will then be able to examine the computer, as well as record each and every keystroke made.” “How will I know this… this root thing is there?” “You won’t. The rootkit is designed to operate in stealth mode. It conceals its own presence and instantly disguises itself as other files whenever attempts to detect it are made. It will remain undetectable until we remove it.” Gloria Duvay shook her head and said, “But I’m certain he deleted the e-mail because I looked the next night and it was gone.” “The e-mail is most likely still there,” Katie said. “I don’t understand,” Gloria Duvay said confused. “Let me explain it this way,” Katie began.; “In school, we had this awful nun, Sister Mary Ignatius.; We called her ‘Sister Mary Ingite-Us.” Gloria Duvay gave a small smile. “She wouldn’t let any of us talk to each other during class or study halls, so we developed a system where we’d write notes to each other in our black composition books, but we’d tear off the sheet behind the actual note and pass that along. Of course, if we got caught, it appeared to be a blank page until someone took a pencil to it and rubbed the pencil on its edge to bring up the impression of the original note.” “Yes, I remember doing that,” Gloria said. “Well, that’s very much how a computer’s hard drive works. Even though the e-mail may have been erased, it isn’t really gone. It sits in what’s called the slack space of the hard drive for quite some time. Most people think by deleting a file or a message they’ve gotten rid of it when in most cases they’ve just shifted it around. We use state-of-the-art forensic tools to recover those files and messages.” Gloria Duvay shook her head. “I had no idea,” she said. “Most people don’t. That’s what brought Enron down,” Katie said. “I see. And how will you get these files?” “We will access it remotely from here.” “You can do that?” Alexandria smiled for the first time. “In a heartbeat.” "My goodness,” Gloria said. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Katie asked. “Incidentally, Alexandria is one of the leading Digital Security experts in the country. She learned her stuff from the ground up by hacking her way into organizations like the FBI and MicroGage.” Gloria Duvay eyed Alexandria suspiciously. Alexandria showed no expression when she said, “The FBI was easy. MicroGage took a while.” "And do you still do this?” “Not since I arrested her,” Katie said.; Alexandria watched satisfactorily as the look of shock registered on Gloria Duvay’s face. Gloria Duvay was astounded. “And now you work here together?” “Yes. Alexandria discovered that her boyfriend, a fellow hacker, was using his talents to help organized crime organizations digitally hide and launder billions of dollars, so when she threatened to turn him in, he set her up. He was very clever to leave no evidence to charge him with, but he made sure there was plenty to hang Alex with. The company Alex was caught hacking into was petrified of the public relations debacle it would face if its customer base found out their credit card numbers had been compromised, so they refused to prosecute.” “You were a police officer?” Gloria Duvay asked giving Katie a quick once over. Katie laughed. “Hard to believe, but yes. That’s why I was so good at undercover work because I don’t exactly look like a cop. My specialty was undercover narcotics investigations until I realized that the bad guys were using more and more technology to hide evidence, arrange for drop points, solicit children for sex, launder money, etc. I started one of the first computer crime and computer forensics units in the state. The state police now have their own division but the backlog of computers that need to be examined is three years long because they’re so poorly funded. Unfortunately, cases are being dropped because they can’t process the evidence quickly enough. I was working undercover trying to penetrate an illegal drug ring when I found out that my husband, who was a fellow police officer, was having an affair. When I filed for divorce, my real identity was somehow leaked…” Katie paused “…which almost cost me my life. As if getting shot wasn’t bad enough, I was accused of tampering with evidence in a case and got kicked off the force. I lost my pension and my benefits.” “And your ex-husband?” “He was promoted to Captain a few months ago.” “He didn’t get punished for it?” “The police department did its own internal investigation and every officer that possibly could have been interviewed was. Needless to say, the internal investigation was closed out as ‘unfounded.’ No one produced any information. That’s okay,” Katie said as she glanced at Alexandria, “sometimes justice takes a little longer.” Gloria Duvay shook her head. “Then there’s our office manager, Margo Norton,” Katie went on. “Her husband once asked her to deliver a backpack to someone but neglected to tell her it contained cocaine.” “Dear heavens,” Gloria said. “I arrested her as soon as she handed the package over to me. She’s now raising their young son alone. Our finance director, Jane Landers’ ex-husband insisted throughout their forty-one years of marriage that she wasn’t even capable of paying their bills. She earned her CPA after he took all their money and his girlfriend, to Bermuda. Bermuda refuses to extradite.” Katie paused.; “So you see, Gloria, we have all been wronged by our men in one way or another. That’s why we fight so hard to make it right for women.” “My goodness,” Gloria Duvay said, “you must all hate men.” Katie glanced at Alexandria for just a second before answering, “Not at all. We just despise the type of men who think they can dump on women and get away with it. We fight back by gathering evidence utilizing the latest technologies in computer forensics and high-tech surveillance equipment. That equipment accounts for fifty percent of our resources.” “What’s the other fifty percent?” Gloria Duvay asked. “Women’s intuition,” Katie answered.