“—breaks into a cop’s house and that cop ends up dead.”
“I’d never get a fair shake.”
“You could have come to me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You’re the most trustworthy cop I know,” Wilde said, “and look at how you bent the rules when it came to finding a cop killer.”
Oren winced. “I guess I deserve that.”
Enough, Wilde thought. It was time to press ahead. “McAndrews was a cop, right?”
“Retired, yes.”
“Most cops still work after they retire. What did he do?”
“He was a private investigator.”
Just as Wilde had expected. “On his own or with a big firm?”
“What difference does it make?” Oren saw Wilde’s face and sighed. “On his own.”
“Did he specialize?”
“I don’t feel comfortable talking about that,” Oren said.
“And I still feel like vomiting from being shocked repeatedly with a cattle prod,” Wilde said. “I’m assuming from your answer that McAndrews’s work was on the sketchy side.”
Oren thought about it. “You think his work life had something to do with his murder?”
“I do, yes. What did he specialize in?”
“Most of McAndrews’s work would be charitably labeled ‘corporate security.’”
“And uncharitably?”
“Trashing the competition online.”
“Explain,” Wilde said.
“You and Hester had dinner tonight at Tony’s, right?”
“What does that—？”
“Let’s say your town has an established favorite pizzeria. You, Wilde, decide to open a competing one nearby. Problem is, people are loyal to Tony’s. So how do you cut into Tony’s customer base in the modern era?”
Wilde said, “I assume the answer is you trash the competition.”
“Exactly. You hire a guy like McAndrews. He creates fake accounts—bots—that post bad reviews of Tony’s. They flood certain websites with rumors about bad sanitation or spoiled food or rude service. Whatever. That would, of course, lower Tony’s ratings on Yelp and wherever else people check reviews. The bots might casually mention that a new pizzeria in town is much better—and then other fake accounts would join in and, ‘Yeah, that new place is awesome’ or ‘They have the best thin crust.’ Like I said, this example is small-time. But corporations are doing this on a large scale too.”
“Is this legal?” Wilde asked.
“No, but it’s nearly impossible to prosecute. Someone writes a fake bad review of you online. Do you know the odds of being able to track the real identity of the poster, especially with anonymity software and VPNs?”
“Zero,” Wilde said.
“And even if you’re somehow able to track down the identity behind one of the bots, so what? The person might say, ‘Oh, that’s how I really felt, but I was afraid if I put my real name, Tony would come after me.’”
Wilde considered that. “Did McAndrews do more than corporate work?”
“Meaning?”
“I assume some clients wanted to trash people rather than corporations.”
“Since the beginning of time,” Oren said. “Why do you ask?”
“When you look up Peter Bennett,” Wilde said, “you will see how many trolls swarmed his social media site, destroying his reputation, enflaming his former fans. Whenever the scandal would die down, these trolls would return and reignite them. A lot of the hate being leveled at Bennett was amplified by Henry McAndrews’s army of bots.”
“So someone was targeting this Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“And they hired McAndrews to do it?”
“Could be.”
“How did you figure out it was McAndrews?”
“That’s confidential. It won’t help to find his killer.”
“Sure, it will,” Oren countered. “Clearly McAndrews wasn’t as good at hiding his identity as he thought. You figured it out. Not to be obvious, but if you could track down McAndrews’s identity, so could Peter Bennett. And who’d have more reason to be angry at McAndrews than him?”
“Maybe,” Wilde allowed. “Look, Oren, I need the name of whoever hired McAndrews to trash Peter Bennett.”
“Assuming someone did hire McAndrews for that purpose—and that’s a somewhat big assumption—there may be an issue with getting you that information.”