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Cyber Cop
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October 13, 2001
Vancouver, Washington
Jason Stevenson’s Apartment

It was quiet. Maybe a little too quiet. Jason knew what quiet meant; it meant that something was 
going to happen, the calm before the storm.
	Just great, he thought. He had already been caught once for hacking, but this was more 
sinister. Things were different now. Back when he was fifteen, hacking had been the thing. Now, 
convincing girls to come and see him was the thing. 
	All the lights in the apartment were off. The computer was in the living room on a desk. 
There were no lights in the living room; there was nothing but the computer on its desk and a 
chair. In the bedroom, there was a bed, and that was it. Jason didn’t need much; he made most 
of his money sitting at his computer. He worked for big companies and small ones doing web 
pages for them and keeping them up-to-date. The pay was modest, but it paid his bills.
	The glow of the computer monitor reflected off his glasses. Things were going well 
tonight, but it was quiet. He had a seventeen-year-old just about hooked to come and see him. It 
was a stretch, but it was worth it. Usually the girls he got had just come out of a relationship, 
were looking to get away from overprotective parents, or just plain bored.
	Tonight, as he sat there chatting to a seventeen-year-old in Washington, DC, he began 
pondering what he was doing. He always got this weird feeling when he was about to get 
someone to come out and see him. Most of the time, things went ok, but other times, there were 
problems. Suddenly, his computer screen flickered.
	"What the..."
	On the screen a new chat window opened up and the words "What are you doing?" 
appeared on the screen.
	"Who are you?" he typed.
	"What are you doing?" The words appeared again one letter at a time, just like someone 
was typing them to him. 
	Jason was so freaked out by the appearance of the words, he quickly signed off of his 
chat with the seventeen-year-old, telling her he’d talk to her tomorrow and shut down his 
computer. As he sat there in the dark, he began to wonder if someone had been playing a trick 
on him. Maybe it was one of his friends trying to fool him. He decided that he had had enough of 
the computer for one night and went to bed.

X-x-X-x-X

	Later that night, as Jason lay in bed, he couldn’t help but wonder who had sent him that 
cryptic message. He stared at the ceiling. As far as he knew, no one knew what he was doing. He 
had been so careful as to not to leave a trail. As Jason continued to stare at the ceiling, trying to 
make himself go to sleep, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a light. He sat up 
to get a better look.
	He had to squint at the light, it was so bright. Right in the middle, he thought he saw a 
shadow of a person. That can’t be right, he thought. Where would that light be coming from?
	Slowly, the light moved towards him. There was a person surrounded by light. It wasn’t 
just any light, no this person seemed to have a heavenly glow. It was a girl. A young girl about 
fifteen-years-old was walking towards him. No, that wasn’t right; she was gliding towards him. 
He saw her lips moving but he could hear no sound. Suddenly, his heart filled with a warmth he 
had never known before. 
	He heard the words the young girl was saying, not with his ears, but with his heart.
	"Jason, I’m an angel," she said. "I’ve been sent her by God to help you. Why are you 
doing this? Why must you hurt little girls?"
	"I don’t know why," Jason said out loud. "I guess it’s because I need to know someone 
cares about me."
	"But someone does care about you, Jason. God cares."
	The angel and the light disappeared as quickly as it had come. Jason got up and emailed 
his seventeen-year-old companion. He gave her his address and told her that he didn’t want her 
to come out and meet him, but if she needed to, she could.

October 14, 2001
Kym Cooper’s Apartment
Washington, DC

"We got him," FBI Special Agent Kym Cooper said to her partner.
	"You sure, Cooper?" her partner, David Miller asked.
	"We have enough information. All we need is an address and we’ve got him."
	"Can’t we trace him through the phone lines?"
	"Already tried. Our guys can’t get a lock on the number. We have his ISP, but other than 
that, they won’t release information on their clients unless we have proof." Cooper quickly typed 
a response to her chat partner’s question. She was pretending she was a seventeen-year-old girl 
to catch a sexual predator that preyed on little kids and nabbed them over the Internet. Her and 
her partner had worked together for nine years. They hadn’t always worked in the Internet 
section; it was brand new. They were Assistant Director Skinner’s first choice though. Both had 
been online practically since its invention and both knew their way around common problems.
	Cooper hadn’t been watching the monitor; her eyes were beginning to blur. She took a 
sip of her coffee. It was early Sunday morning. Usually, she was at home in bed at this hour. But 
she had received an email message saying that her "chat partner" would be on at this hour so 
she stayed up. She was so close to getting an address from this guy, she could just about hear 
the boys in Vancouver knocking on this kid’s door. Because she wasn’t watching the monitor, she 
didn’t see her chat partner’s response to her latest inquiry; her partner did though.
	"Don’t start the victory party just yet, Cooper," he told her as he watched the words 
appear on the screen.
	"Why?" She turned back towards the monitor just in time to see the words "We’ll 
continue this tomorrow" flash across the screen. There was a beep and a window popped up 
saying the connection had been lost. "Damn!" she said. 
	Miller put his hands on her shoulders and started massaging them. "It’s okay, we’ll get 
him tomorrow."
	"But we were so close."
	"Kym, come on. Go to bed, get some sleep. It’s late. Why do we have to stay at this till 
the wee hours of the morning?"
	"David, you know these guys only come out at night. Most of them live at home with 
mom. They can’t afford to have anyone find out what they do."
	Miller shut off the computer and led his partner out of the living room. "That’s our job, 
right?" Cooper’s apartment was sparsely furnished, she didn’t need much, but she had enough to 
make others fell comfortable and welcome in her home. The living room housed a sofa, a TV, the 
computer, a coffee table, and a bookcase filled with books.