Rabbit Warren

     In hindsight, I really should have seen the signs, but as Emily Giffin said “sometimes you just can’t see the things that are the closest to you.”  I should have seen her pulling away, the sudden obsession with going to the gym, with her dietary changes, growing her hair back out from the bob she had worn since early in our marriage.  It all started a few months after being promoted to senior accounts manager when her boss retired.
    It was a slightly unexpected promotion, but the firm’s owner had made the offer to her at her boss’s retirement party and explained he saw in her a potential of really moving forward in her career.  He told us he wanted us both to know the job had its issues and felt as a married couple of eight years the cons to the job needed to be out there to both of us to make an informed decision.  Working hours would be a little off due to coastal clients, some evenings, client dinners, some early mornings, possibly Saturday’s, and out of town travel to meet clients at their offices.  All things that really made sense and didn’t indicate any red flags to me as I’m the vice president of forensic systems analysis for my firm and all of the cons overlap my own work life issues.
    It was three months later when the changes began, she said the gym and diet were because she was feeling fat and wanted to have more confidence, she went to college on a track and field scholarship and with being more sedentary had softened a bit so I understood.  Her hair was because she wanted to feel like her younger self and teasingly “besides, I know you liked it better that way” she was right I did.  The truly big signs were her phone was never away from her.  I’d see her pull the phone out and check it when it hadn’t gone off–a selective silent ringer.  Notifications with no identifying information in the late evening–or as I saw when they would light up the bedroom–in the middle of the night.  Sudden bathroom trips when these notifications came through.  A new polarizing screen protector that made it impossible to see her screen unless you looked straight through it.  Needing to take calls privately covering her tracks with “it’s an NDA thing, you understand” yes I did understand that and it’s why I kept a home office.
    These actions went on for a year, but the breaking point for all of it was when her boss called me asking if I was okay because she had to leave early for an accident I was in at work.
    “Chuck, what are you talking about?  The most hazardous thing I have to worry about at work is a paper cut.”
    “So no accident?  You aren’t in the hospital?”
    “Chuck, I’m working from home today, I’m in sweat pants and my college hoodie, cracking code from my desk.”
    “This is going to need to be reviewed internally then.”
    “That is your call Chuck, but could you give me a couple of days to investigate things from my end?  She’s been doing some weird stuff on this end too.”
    “You think she’s having an affair?”
    “Possibly, I mean with your call I can see  the signs are all there.  Could you send me her work calendar?  You can redact anything you need to as I can work with as simple as client ‘meeting entries.”
    “I’ll send it and her contact list over, knowing what you do I know I can trust you.”
    “Thanks Chuck.”
    Now the real work began, it not only sent me down a rabbit hole but directly into the rabbit warren taking me to levels of distrust that I knew if my feelings were wrong on this there would be no coming back from.  I have backdoor access to every electronic item we own, so step one was to open the geolocation history for her phone.  It doesn't matter where she is or if the phone is powered off, I can access it remotely, a feature set up when we were engaged so I could correct her mistaken access to settings.  The location history only went back three months before it was overwritten with new history, but with a few added scripts I now had it syncing to a new encrypted cloud back-up every ten minutes.  Now into her pictures and in a few clicks everything was syncing to the same cloud account.  Texts were the next thing to download and sync and like the pictures only took a few minutes to gather and to gather in real time.
    The easy stuff done I began going through her apps looking for anything that was not a factory install.  Most were easily matched to the app store but I found a side-loaded app that looked like it was from a local shop but that shop has no app.  A little digging and it turns out to be a hidden message app that robs a site's favicon for its icon then acts as a browser for that site only if anyone opens it.  The texts are hidden in the “contact us” section with the entry of a pass-code; I’ll give the developer this, it is a well written app and very sneaky, but any app can be cracked and I was in this one in under five minutes.  As to the pass-code, she uses the same one for literally everything.
    Inside the hidden text app I found texts between her sister, her cousin, and someone named Brian.  The texts with Brian were eye opening, went back six months, and if you started at the beginning, quickly became more and more explicit to the point she was sending him pictures she would never send me.  The metadata downloaded intact so everything is admissible as evidence and like her location and pictures her phone is now set to pair these texts with the cloud account.  The texts with her sister and cousin were illuminating as both were actively encouraging and helping with her affair.
    Sis: “You need a secure place to store your important papers.  Daedalus isn’t stupid, and once he gets suspicious this is going to hit like gasoline on a bonfire.  You won’t have time to grab anything before he locks it all down.”
    Her: “I know him better than that, but I’ll get a safe deposit box for my papers and some cash if that makes you feel better.”
    Two weeks later she told her sister “I got box 703 and a separate account at Pursuant National downtown, it’s just a couple blocks from my office.”
    Her cousin, the realtor, helped her line up the purchase of a condo, again not too far from her office downtown.  Apparently her bonuses had been way bigger than she let on as she was only putting forty percent of them in the joint account.
    Her email was a treasure trove of information, all the correspondence regarding the legal information on the condo, an apparent preliminary correspondence with a lawyer regarding her options up to and including a draft divorce decree and settlement letter.
    From there it was a matter of pulling both our credit reports and looking for damage there.  She had three credit cards I had no idea existed.  None of the cards have balances but the limits are high enough that she had to use our combined income to get them, causing me to be drug into her ever deepening mess inadvertently.  My report as expected showed the hard pings from her cards and from her condo meaning she used my info for that as well.
    By the time I was done with all my digging it was nearly time for her to be back home and I had the beginnings of a very diabolical plan.  For someone whose world had imploded over the course of the day I felt I played my normal evening role well.  While she was making dinner I slipped her keys off the hook and told her I needed to run a quick errand as I wanted to grab some ice-cream.
    “Could you pick up some cookies and a jar of fudge too?”
    “Sure.”
    There was a small hardware store on the way to the store, I swung in and had them copy the odd key on her ring then finished my trip.  Once back I hung her keys back on the hook and she was none the wiser.  After dinner I sent an email to my boss letting him know I’d be a bit late logging in tomorrow as I had a sudden legal issue to clear up.  Then I sent one to Chuck asking him to keep her in the office until noon tomorrow and letting him know about Brian by his full name as Brian worked in the same building–his response was to inform me Brian was also one of his employees and he was not happy with what they are doing.
    Morning came quickly and at nine I was entering her condo.  I entered the alarm code she had given her sister then started taking pictures of everything in the unit.  Every piece of furniture, all the art on the walls, the insides of the cabinets, fridge, closets, shower, by the time I left I had over two hundred pictures and was on my way to my eleven o’clock appointment with the most brutal divorce attorney in the city.
    At a quarter to eleven I was opening the door to Hermes Legal Council LLC.  His office looked more like it was cosplaying at being a 1940s detective office.  An actual antique wood desk sat about ten feet inside from the door.  What appeared to be a manual typewriter on one side of the U shaped desk, an actual corded phone, felt desk pad with a legal pad and fountain pen on it, and a young woman in perfect period costume including hair and make-up, sitting there with perfect posture and cat-eye glasses.
    “Do you have an appointment or do you need to make one?”
    “Daedalus, to see Mr. Hermes at eleven.”
    She flipped an actual paper appointment book open, checked it and stood up.
    “Follow me please, he wishes to meet you in audience room B.”
    I followed her down a short hall and through a paneled door with a brass letter B on it.  Inside is a simple table that looks like it could have come out of my grandma’s dining room with chairs to match.
    “Would you like some water or coffee?”
    “Black coffee would be fine.”
    She returns a couple of minutes later with coffee and a coaster.  A few minutes after accepting the coffee Mr. Hermes walks in carrying his own steaming mug of coffee.  He drops a coaster on the table, then sets down a legal pad, and two fountain pens, one black and one red.  He, like the receptionist, looks like he just walked out of central casting for a 1940s detective thriller right down to the bow tie and suspenders–the only thing missing is the sound of Harlem Nocturn playing in the background.
    “So Daedalus, what brings you in today?”
    Daedalus begins with his call from Chuck then opens his laptop as he begins showing Mr. Hermes everything he has found including the pictures of the inside of her condo.  All in all it takes about an hour to review everything and Mr. Hermes leans back in his chair.
    “You have a solid case for divorce and seeing as she has already set up a new household separate from the marital home she should have no claim on it.  The tricky part is you have no prenup so everything is up for debate on who gets what, the house I can definitely secure since as I said she has already established another separate home.  Your pictures prove it meets residency requirements, closets with clothes, dresser drawers with clothes, stocked and equipped kitchen, fresh food in the fridge, and fully furnished, that’s all the needed criteria to meet the definition of occupied.  Your pictures could be questionable as some could say you performed breaking and entering, but the condo is a marital asset same as the house so technically you do have a right to enter it.  I’ll get the deed transfer pulled to see whose name is actually on the deed, that should also show us the lean holder and that will allow me to find out what information was used to secure the loan and if any of the information is fraudulent or forged.  You’ve done a lot of methodical leg work but these things take time to get ready for a court date.  I need a judge to allow me to subpoena her safe deposit box, pull her bank account records, and so on.  Can you keep up this act for possibly a few months?”
    “I think so.”
    “That’s all I can ask, but in the meantime you can’t let on at all or she will accelerate whatever plan she has up her sleeve.  In the meantime you need to secure as much of your assets as possible.  Definitely open a new bank account that is not with your or her current banks.  Remove her as beneficiary from all life and long term care policies, 401k’s.  Tie up loose cash in investments like long term treasuries, certificates of deposit, and the like, honestly you need a financial advisor so things are tied up properly.  Try to take care of this stuff over the next couple of weeks, as the sooner the better as we don’t fully understand the scope of what she is planning in her head.  I’ll keep in touch through the email you provided and yes I do have email contrary to how I look as I just like the aesthetic."
    Daedalus left feeling lighter and not just from paying the substantial retainer to Mr. Hermes, but with the knowledge he was being proactive in his immediate future.  Each day found him doing one more thing to secure his finances.  A new bank account, closing out paid off credit cards, opening a new card in just his own name.  Locking their credit with the credit agencies so she couldn’t open further cards or take on new debt.  Changing beneficiaries on his insurance and 401k and ultimately talking to a financial advisor.  With my finances as locked down as they could get I talked to the chief financial officer at work and arranged to keep some cash in the office safe just in case she locked down my accounts in a divorce filing the CFO was understanding as her ex husband had done that to her when they divorced.
    The waiting for the findings and filings was really getting on my nerves and I decided to do something a little petty.  I went to her condo one day when I knew for sure she was two hours away at a client meeting and first accessed the local host for her security system so it wouldn’t log when the alarm was deactivated if a specific code was entered as opposed to the normal security code–essentially I gained administrator credentials to the system.  Now this was not the petty part, but on Monday I took all the toilet paper from the apartment.  On Tuesday I swapped her shoes between home and condo.  On Wednesday I brought the toilet paper back, but took her body soap from the shower.  On Thursday I swapped the shoes back, but took the fitted sheet from the bed–yes it took work but I’m petty.  Friday I brought her body soap back and took all the remotes.  Monday I brought the sheet back only to find the bed completely unmade so I just put it back on then took the flat sheet from the floor.  Tuesday I brought the remotes back, and took the salt from the kitchen and table.  Wednesday the flat sheet was back but folded in the closet, and I took the laces out of her gym shoes.  During all of this I had been in close contact with Chuck and he slipped one day that she was acting really shook up but couldn’t say anything without giving herself away.  He also told me that her and Brian were seen arguing in the parking garage, remote hallways, even in the empty break-room at one point, apparently I was getting under their skins.
    After two weeks I stopped the petty attacks on her “private” space as she was beginning to unravel at home as well.  I caught her watching me suspiciously several times and I even caught her checking my key-ring one evening like I’d be dumb enough to keep her spare key there–it was in with the spare tire of my car.  At this point her location began pinging randomly as benign at the condo sometimes three times a day so slipping in and out was no longer a good idea anyways.
    The divorce papers were served to her at her office two months after I met with Mr. Hermes and all of her personal accounts were frozen from purchases and transfers over three hundred dollars pending an audit of them.  I also got exclusive use of the marital home.  The day the papers were served I had a moving company pack up all of her personal items from the house and deliver them to her condo.  While the delivery was happening I changed the access codes on the locks of the house denying her access.
    A year after being served the divorce was finalized.  I kept my house, she got her condo.  Retirement accounts stayed with their contributors.  Some of the cash she had moved had to be returned.  She had falsely used me as co-borrower on the condo, I agreed not to pursue charges on that if she corrected it and removed me from the loan.  She had to totally reapply for the loan and the interest was not in her favor.  Ultimately Chuck let both her and Brian go due to corporate personnel ethics violations.  He told me he would have kept her but the arguments between her and Brian made too much of the staff feel uncomfortable and lead to a hostile work environment overall.  So at thirty-four she wound up back in her childhood bedroom in Ohio as she couldn’t find another employer here quick enough.  I understand she found a job there fairly quickly and her parents helped with the condo payment until she sold it at an overall loss.
    As for myself, I’m doing okay.  No plans to seriously date for a while as the betrayal wound is still too fresh.  I did repaint the rooms in the house, updated the kitchen, and bought a new car, otherwise my life continues on much as it always has.