Three Blind Mice

Everyone who has an email account knows what junk email is and usually just dumps it once or twice a week without looking at it. For me, it became one of those New Year resolutions you make that you have no intention of keeping.

My wife and I were out with a group of friends to celebrate and witness the new year coming in when during a band break, we all decided to share our new year's resolutions. Most had the same old same old type that dealt with becoming a better person. Or to get themselves in better physical shape by losing so many pounds.

Mine was to cut down the amount of junk mail I received by seventy-five percent. Someone said good luck with that your email address is sold to anyone and everyone who will pay for it. It became the joke of the night because everyone thought it was the most stupid new year's resolution they had heard of.

By the end of the night, they were betting amongst themselves how long I would last. Their constant teasing of me got me mad even though I thought it best not to show them that. I made a point to make sure I would be able to prove them wrong.

So here I was on New Year's Day sitting in front of my computer starting the unending journey of unsubscribing from all these unwanted emails. It was complicated because I had three email addresses all coming into my outlook account. I had to move each file from the junk folder to the inbox then delete it after unsubscribing three times.

I thought it was going to be an easy task to do, but the reality was a different matter. Some you couldn't unsubscribe to, others, when attempted, took you to another website, and those you could in my case I had to do each email address separately because some did not reveal who it was sent to.

I had gone through two cups of coffee and about forty junk emails when I got hit with an email that just did not make sense.

It read; Insta girls. We found one match for you today within ten miles. It had a picture of a lady with a line that underneath it that read; I just want you hot and ready laying naked beside me tonight. Hit contact to start towards a connection right now.

I couldn't deal with it till I figured things out in my mind. I just stuck in archives for now and continue on with what I was doing until I heard my better half stirring. For her, it was not a good morning as she was hungover.

After getting her a couple of pain killers and a couple of anti-inflammatory pills I got her back to bed. I made myself a fried egg sandwich and ate it before checking on her to make sure she was asleep.

I went back to work on cleaning up my junk folder. Over the next three hours, I had gone through a hundred and twenty of these emails. I now had three of these Insta girl emails archived. Each one had a different picture of a female, but all had the same message.

The problem was that I recognized the faces of the three ladies whose pictures were provided. One was my wife's and the others were my wife's long term two best female friends since they met while attending Penn State. The emails used their image but not their names. To me, it gave me something to start investigating.

I looked at myself and my wife's two best friend's husbands. We all had jobs that required us to be away from home during the nighttime hours with scheduled hours that changed every week depending on how our employers set them. I, for example, worked four on three off then three on with four days off. I ended up with four hours of overtime every pay period at least which was two weeks.

I took a break because I needed to get some rest. My shift at the plant started at eight pm tonight and would end at eight the next morning. During that time, I would spend the time behind the welders mask. At thirty dollars an hour, it was a decent living considering where we lived so we were not having any money problems.

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As I was leaving the plant the next day I asked one of my coworkers who was computer savvy how I could save a bunch of junk emails that I was suspicious of so that none of the embedded data would be lost.

He suggested I send a copy to a stick that could not be erased. He explained that by doing that it would be like it had been on the computer all along.

I stopped off at Best Buy on my way home. A store clerk directed me to what I wanted. After purchasing it I went home. I knew that Sue Ellen my wife of five years would have gone to the gym for her daily work out with her lady friends. That was their routine every weekday and had been since they left Penn state.

I worked on the junk folder until noon before heading to bed. I had found six more emails showing the same thing. With the three in archives, I transferred the nine to the new stick.

I was just about to head to bed to get some sleep when the plant called. The nighttime shift plant manager had given his notice and would be leaving at the end of the month. His position required him to work the evening shift five days a week and it was a salaried position. The week went from Sunday to Thursday. It had a starting salary of a hundred and twenty-five thousand a year. I was asked if I wanted it. I said yes.

Every day for the next three weeks I worked faithfully on my junk files that kept getting less and less. My collection of the ladies Insta Girls emails had grown by an average of six a day. On the third Sunday, we had Sue Ellen's best female friends and husbands over for dinner. I was beginning to get suspicious.

During that evening I took a current picture of the three ladies together making sure I took close-ups of their faces. I had eight days left before I started my new position. I wanted the close up of the three best female friends for a personal reason.

During the meal, I announced to all in attendance the news of my promotion and that I would be off from Thursday to Sunday this coming week to allow me time to prepare for the new schedule.

Everyone congratulated me including my wife. I noticed a change in her mood as soon as I revealed it. I figured it was because I was forcing a change in her routine and there was nothing else to it.

What the three ladies did not know was that I had obtained pictures of their school days at the University of Pennsylvania as undergraduates. Those images of them from back then matched what was shown in the emails from Insta Girls. At that time, I was wondering why and knew that I did not have the means to prove or disprove it.

Wednesday, I disclosed to my wife that I had to go into a meeting on Thursday for orientation concerning my new situation. I had to be there by ten and did not know how long I would be I did that to give her a sense of security. Little did she know that my appointment was at the field office of the FBI located over by the city's only mall. I was going to them to hopefully find the truth behind those Insta Girls emails.

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The field officer at the local FBI office was a very nice lady. I noted that she wore no wedding ring. She introduced herself as Ruth Susan Truscott. Ruth was about my age and a real beauty. Even dressed professionally you knew she was hot. With hazel eyes, long brown hair, a nice full rack, full ripe lips for me if I was single, she could be what I masturbated to in my daydreams. I thought for a moment that she might be a lesbian.

I explained to her my story as I knew it and what brought myself here before her.

She said, "They are all emails linked to an offshore pornographic ring that we have been trying to get a link into in order to shut them down. You're not the first that has brought these to our attention."

"Then I might have the link you need," I explained. "The three emails I have are of three particular ladies whose picture being used is from their Penn University days. I have over three weeks of these emails on the stick. I'm here because the three ladies are my wife and her two friends."

Ruth's eyes lit up as I handed her my stick. It was if I had excited her for some reason for, she said, "You can't be serious."

"These emails three weeks of them I found in my junk mail over the last month. Each one is sent from a different email address, but the message is the same. You will also find a recent photo of the three ladies, their maiden names, their legal address, and their married names." I said as I handed her the stick. "I have also provided you with their birth dates and social security numbers because I was so concerned. I also made sure I got their current image as close as possible to how they were posed in the yearbooks."

"Do you realize what a break this might be for us," She said as she uploaded their university pictures into a face recognition program.

It took about three minutes until the computer declared that they had a match on all three.

"Jack Daniel Patterson you nailed it," Ruth said. "These three ladies have been on our watch list for years. Until today we have not been able to link their images to anyone who was real. The first thing we will do is a background check on all three of these ladies to see what we can find. It may be nothing more than stolen images being used with false names. If that is the case, I can let you know within days."

"With the history of Penn State," I said. "We can't be sure. I would appreciate it if you could keep me informed."

"Is your cell phone linked with your wife's," She asked?

"No, but I do have a second number on it that she doesn't know about," I explained. "My employer has just set it up as a confidential contact for me and upper management."

"Then that's the one I will contact you on," She said. "When I have questions, I need to have answered or further news."

After I gave it to her I said, "Make a note to remind yourself to only call me in the am. At noon its shut off so I can sleep because I work midnights."

"What do you for a living may I ask," Ruth said?

"Until this week I was an industrial welder working a twelve-hour shift," I said. "Starting this coming Sunday, I am the new nightshift plant manager."

Ruth smiled and said, "is that the Overton farm equipment company that builds all kinds of horse trailers, flatbeds, and truck trailers?"

Yes," I said in total surprise. "How did you know."

"My stepfather is the man your replacing," she explained. "Mom and he bought a 'Casey's' convenience store to run. After twenty years he's looking forward to having a normal life with normal hours."

After leaving I went to the bank to arrange a new account. With the bank's account reps help, I was able to redirect my new payroll check into it and arrange to have my current net pay amount transferred into our regular account for now.

I did it because I was worried about what the FBI would find out because my gut was telling me that there was more to this situation than anybody knew. Most will never know how wrong I wished it was.

I began to suspect my thoughts about my wife and her girlfriends might be right because my wife was not her normal self for the next four days. She was short, standoffish, and moody. My change in plans had caused problems for her. Her conduct was proving that. The problem was that she couldn't explain why to me. That only served to create doubt because so far in our relationship I'd thought she had been honest.

Sunday at seven as I headed out the door towards working my first shift as a manager, I notice a change in my wife's attitude. Just before I headed out the door, she decided she needed to have a quick shower. Her explanation was that she felt she need to be completely clean for the night. It left me wondering why.

I stopped at an older neighbor's place at the end of the of the cul-de-sac on the way to work and asked him if he was up to paying attention as to when my wife left and returned for a week or two. He agreed to because it would help motivate him to try readjusting his sleeping pattern. Since his last hospital stay, it had been the pits. With that done I headed on in.

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It had been two weeks since I had stopped in at my neighbors place so that Sunday when I stopped in to see him, he was ready. He had done a detail list of dates, times she left, and times she returned. In general, they showed that she left between eight and nine at night four nights a week and returned between two and four the following morning.

More importantly, it established a pattern of behavior I felt needed looking into. His house was perfect for what he had done for me. It sat at the corner of our little subdivision at a three-way set of lights. There was only one way in and out.

Since the company, I worked for had set up an email account in their computer system for me internally. I made out an email detailing what I had found out and how I had learned it and sent it to the email address Ruth had on the card I had been given.

I then sent Ruth Susan Truscott a text message telling her to look for an email from me relaying the address from which I had sent it.

I was sitting at home bright and early working on trying to get rid of more junk email that Monday morning when a call came through on my work phone number. My wife Sue Ellen was with her lady friends at the gym.

"Good Morning Jack," Ruth said. "Thanks for the information. I need to know the hours the other two husbands work because we want to tail their wives too."

"George works for St Francis hospital as a male nurse," I replied "Ben is a state trooper. The only other thing I can say they both work nights like me. All three of us work twelve-hour shifts. Sounds like you have found some things out."

"We have," Ruth said. "I can't say much more than that because it's still too early in the investigation. I can say that you and your friends are the three blind mice. For now, for all concerned its best it stays that way."

Her words got me thinking about my wife and my relationship down through the years. Sue Ellen and I had met just after she relocated here to work on her first romance novel. I have to admit she made a good living writing romance stories for the online market and brought in as much as I did.

Sue Ellen or Susie as she preferred to be called was and still is a very classy lady. For those from the deep south, she was the gentile type. A little too much feminine in nature to attract my attention so I never paid her any mind that first time I had met her at my parents' house. Susie was my parent's new neighbor one farm over.

I had dropped in unexpectedly because I wanted to borrow my father's old scythe to cut down the five-foot-high yard of weeds and grass on a piece of property outside of town that I had bought with the banks help via a tax sale.

Since the owner had died, I had gotten the title of it right away. It was my idea to clean it up and resell it in my spare time. The twenty-eight-acre piece of property was impressive. Most of the land was made up of rolling treed hills it was perfect. I just wanted to clean up the front and back yard before I checked out the rest of the place.

I had been working at it for about two hours. I had just pulled my truck into the driveway and started cutting it down from there. Anything I uncovered I piled it in front of the truck planning to deal with it later. So far it hadn't been anything major.

Susie pulled in beside my truck driving a fairly new version of the beetle. Sticking a fancy very wide rimmed had on her head she stepped out of her car. I stopped what I was doing and approached her.

"What can I do for you, Ms. Rowe," I asked as I placed the hand tool against the side of my truck.

She smiled as she handed me a coke as she said, "Are you always this stern to the young ladies you just met?"

"Yep, it makes it quite obvious to most females right away that I'm not marriage material," I said. "Saves us both a bunch of bull shit we both don't need."

"Perhaps you're just reading me wrong," she quipped back. "I could be here for another reason."

"The only way that could be true," I said. "Was if, you were coming from Sunday mornings service and you were going door to door to get your service hours in. Maybe that's it you're a religious person out to convert me."

"Well I was at your mother's as you well know and she can get kind of preachy," Susie said. "She asked me to drop off some lunch to you and something for you to drink."

I laughed and after taking it from her hands I put in the box of the truck.

"She also said I had to verify for her that you ate it," She said.

I wanted to swear but I didn't, so I picked it up dropped the tailgate and started to eat the egg salad sandwiches.

Susan Ellen started to laugh and said, "When you get pissed off you show it without saying a word. I think it's cute."

"She's got to learn I declared my independence years ago," I said. "And stop trying to play her matching making games."

"She always picks females with an attitude that has high maintenance coming through by their image," I said. "Not worth a salt when going through tough periods."

That's how it all started. When she left, I thought she would not be back, but I was wrong. My mother told her about my work schedule. The next time Sue Ellen showed up driving a nice looking ford truck in blue jeans and started working with me.

She had bought a brand new brush cutter which when we figured out how it worked it cut down the cleanup time drastically. After we had cleaned up the yard, we went inside the house to see if it was worth salvaging or not. It wasn't.

"What are you going to do with this," Susie asked as we were touring the house. "This would cost less to tear down than to fix."

"That was my impression when I bid on it," I said. "Now that the main yard is cleaned up, I will have it surveyed and parceled out. If laid out right I will have one main road down the middle, with four cul-de-sacs running off of it. The lot with the biggest piece of land with it I will keep for myself."

"So, you're going to subdivide it," Susie said in surprise. "Then build a new home for yourself."

"That's the idea because that way I should have no mortgage," I said. "It will make the cost of raising a family a lot easier. But first I have to see if I can sell the timber."

It was she that got us going for our first date because I still wasn't interested. She just kept checking for me to see if I was here working on the place. Sue Ellen just was not my type. But she was persistent and kept chasing me. It was over a year later that we got married.

Her second romance novel was a constant seller in the online book market. I read a part of it and thought it was nothing but a female smut book. Based on what I now knew it didn't make sense because she did not act like that in our own bedroom.

Until now I had thought it was a great imagination but now, I was not so sure. I was asking myself what she was doing and who was she doing it with on her nights out. I had asked her numerous times what she did well I was working, and she had explained she was doing research or working on her next novel.

Since she had incorporated, her writing was owned by the corporation, so the tax rate was a lot less because of where she set it up. I worked hard for what I did, she could sit at home and type it into the computer.

Now looking back, I was trying to figure out why she and her two friends had moved to this region in the first place. It didn't make sense because none of them had family here unless it wasn't their choice.

It got me thinking for a couple of days about the detail in her characters in the smut books she was writing. Since the major female character could be her were the men she wrote about former lovers or current ones?

It was while I was working on cleaning up more junk mail that it clicked. The name of the girl in the Insta Girl email was the name of the major female character in her books.