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lived just three blocks away from the place whereMcElroy died. And Skidmore—still shaking from the tremors of a bully’s death more than twenty years ago—was outraged, terrified and determined to secure justice in the death of Bobbie Jo.

7
    O ut in the mobile command center post on Elm Street in Skidmore, Detective Curtis Howard finished his preliminary review of the Stinnetts’ computer without finding any additional information to aid in the search for Darlene Fischer. He needed an IP address before he could uncover more. That task was difficult if not impossible to accomplish in the middle of the-night.
    Around 2 A.M., he packed up the computer and his equipment and took it all to his office at St. Joseph’s Police Department. He no longer had the time to do the imaging. In just a few hours, he had a training session scheduled. The computer work could not wait. Someone had to pick up where he left off and move the forensics examination of the PC forward. He called on the highway patrol’s computer wizard Corporal Jeff Owens.
    When Owens arrived in St. Joseph, Howard briefed him on what steps he had taken and the questions his preliminarysearch raised. Owens transported the computer an hour down the road to his base of operations, the multi-agency Heart of America Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Kansas City, Missouri.
    This facility—designed to coordinate and enhance the forensic computer capabilities of law enforcement in the region—was based on a model developed in San Diego. That model was first copied by the Dallas field office of the FBI in 2000. Eight agencies in north Texas participated and benefited from that center.
    After passing the Patriot Act of 2001, Congress took a look at those two offices and charged the FBI with opening more facilities across the country. In 2003 two more labs were in operation—the one where Owens worked and another in Chicago, Illinois.
    Corporal Owens linked Bobbie Jo’s computer to his own. His computer was equipped with a program that would not permit the erasure of any of the data. It also had software that enabled real-time viewing of all the data in the computer he examined.
    At 5 A.M., Sheriff Espey abandoned his search in Fairfax and headed back to Nodaway County. He was convinced that Darlene Fischer existed only on the Internet. It was up to the computer forensics specialists to solve the mystery of her true identity.
    Espey was grateful for the news coverage reporters provided on the Amber Alert for Bobbie Jo’s baby. He did not want the media getting in the way at the crime scene on Elm Street. But he did want them as an ally.
    He knew the local press was ravenous for any information and that the gathering storm cloud of national media would be unstoppable. With a murder this fresh and a child still missing, it was hard to distinguish what information needed to be withheld to solve the crime and what needed to be released to find the baby.
    By the time Espey got back to Nodaway County, mediacrawled all over Skidmore like ants on a sugar pile—and more were arriving with every passing hour. He set up an area next to the jail for the reporters and cameramen, and promised regular press conferences. The journalists took the bait and headed out of Skidmore to the county seat of Maryville.
    It was all a surreal experience for Espey. A little more than a year earlier, Espey was battered and reeling after election night. He very nearly watched his career dissolve before his eyes. Nearly ten thousand votes were cast in the November 2 election of 2004. Espey won by a mere fourteen votes. Now he stood in the national spotlight clutching the desperate hope that everything he did would validate the faith of the voters who reelected him to office.
    As truth and rumor swirled through the area, it was easy pickings for the media. Everybody knew everybody—and everyone had something to say. The desire to help find the baby