“What makes you think that, Karen?”
“The way you reacted to and treated her when you disclosed the possibility of the novel coronavirus infections within the family said that to me. Plus — and I apologize for not telling you this previously — last Christmas I overheard part of a cellphone conversation that Lisa had that made me suspicious, and there are things during the pandemic that have reinforced that view in my mind,” Karen responded.
“If I get some proof that I can use, I’ll be taking the same route that you are,” I replied.
“Her cellphone is here — can’t a techie like you find things out from that?” she smiled, handing me Lisa’s cellphone.
I raised my eyebrows, and then hesitantly took Lisa’s cellphone from her. “I’ll take a look — just to make sure that she was honest with the contact tracer about who her contacts are,” I smiled. Of course that was a lie — I wanted to see if she had communications with Upton and other potential fuck buddies.
Being an IT guy once I got past her password — which took about eight minutes — I did a deep dive into her phone. There were quite a few canceled texts and emails. In about three hours — I didn’t get to bed that night until late — I was able to locate explicit exchanges with Upton and two other potential fuck buddies, a first who Lisa apparently stopped communicating with eighteen months ago and a second who Lisa apparently stopped communicating with about nine months ago.
Using Lisa’s phone I sent texts to both of the guys who I thought were potential fuck buddies wondering if they would like to re-start a relationship. The first never answered; the second one — Josh Martin — answered the very next day. After the exchange of about twenty texts I arranged for him to “meet Lisa” at a location about a mile from my house after the sun went down. Martin was stupid enough to send me a recent naked photo of himself so I knew what he looked like (in fact I knew more of what he looked like than I cared to). Searching social media I found out that he was also married.
–δ–
Before my meet date with Martin there was a little more justice. Having been given an experimental drug that seemed to work well on children my daughter came home from the hospital. Karen, my son, and I were tested again and we all still were positive but with no symptoms whatsoever and our doctor reiterated what she had previously told us — she didn’t expect us to ever have symptoms and to be fine once our quarantine period was up.
Lisa was still in the hospital on a ventilator.
Karen watched the kids while I went to “Lisa’s” meeting with Josh Martin. Karen promised to provide an alibi should I need one, and to provide a comforting shoulder if I wanted to talk about it.
In days of face masks, goggles, face shields, and other cover-ups hiding one’s identity is easy. Therefore Martin was totally unfazed when someone with a face mask and goggles on approached him in the park I had set for the meeting. By the time he realized that something was wrong I had him in a choke hold. Using a voice changer, with the microphone hidden by my N-95 mask, I laid things out for Martin.