GHOST_4_Kindle_V2

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  He held out the baton and lay the wire on her palm. Erica closed her hand around it and shut her eyes.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “Do you understand why I have done this?” Jack asked.

  Erica and Pamela nodded, tears leaping from their cheeks to the cold floor. Neither of the young women could speak and they wouldn’t be able to for several minutes.

  “Return to your quarters, my darlings. I bear you no grudges. I will bring your meals soon. Lucinda is first today. Her turn. Oh, and Erica, see to it that your living space is cleaned.”

  She nodded again, half bowed, and disappeared into her quarters. Clutching her hand, Pamela slunk away as well. Jack spun on his heel and went to the first dog house. “Lucinda, my sweet, it is time.”

  A blond pixie of a woman crawled out and stood. Her huge green eyes glittered.

  Jack took her by the hand and led her out of the kennel. “You’ve been crying,” he said. “Were you feeling sorry for Pamela and Erica?”

  She shook her head.

  “You may speak.”

  “No, it’s not them. I warned them they shouldn’t disobey. They chose not to listen.”

  Jack gave a proud smile and led Lucinda into a room with a low ceiling, dim lighting, and a half-dozen quaint tables. The chairs were black wrought iron as were the decorative accents forming arches above the tables.

  He held a chair for her. “Our usual table.” She sat. He sat and took her hands. “Your tears disturb me. If you do not weep for Erica and Pamela, what then?”

  She blinked, starting new rivulets of silver on her cheeks. “I…I miss Molly.”

  “Shh, shh, shh, now. I am so sorry. But she chose to go and could not find her way back. Molly is lost to us now.”

  “I…I know.”

  “But what about Carrie?” Jack asked. “You know how she loves to brush your hair? She’s nice, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Lucinda said. “Carrie’s very nice, but I miss Molly.”

  “You have many fond memories of Molly, yes?”

  “I do.”

  “Cherish them. They enrich your soul. Learn and grow from them. And now, won’t you eat?” He pushed the plate toward her.

  “My stomach hurts.”

  Jack smiled knowingly. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  He returned with a small tray. He wiped Lucinda’s upper arm and shoulder with an alcohol solution and then dried her meticulously. Jack said, “I think this will help. It usually does.” He peeled a still-smoking patch from its plastic contact sheet and then gently pressed it onto her shoulder.

  “The chill feels good,” Lucinda said. She smiled and ducked her head demurely. Then, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back. “Oh, I think I could eat now.”

  Jack smiled. “So very glad to hear it. Perhaps later, if you’re feeling up to it, I’ll send Doctor Gary to come and see you.”

  “At play time?” Lucinda asked.

  “Of course.”

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  At exactly six o’clock, Dr. Gary came home. He placed his briefcase on the floor by the antique coat rack. “I have news, Jack.”

  “So do I,” Jack replied. “But you go first.”

  “All right. We’ve accepted Stricker and Lends’ contract. It’s final. They are throwing a huge party. All the surgeons are invited.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “It will be,” Gary said. “You’ll need to dress the part, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Jack.

  There came a sudden knock to the kitchen door. “Expecting someone?” Dr. Gary asked.

  “No, not today,” Jack said. “It’s Saturday.”

  “Still, you should change.”

  Jack disappeared down the hall, and Dr. Gary went to the kitchen door. He glanced through the draped window and saw a harried looking woman with very curly hair and very thick glasses. He recognized her at once and opened the door.

  “Ah, Mrs. Bell,” Dr. Gary said. “Sophie’s mother, correct?”

  “It’s Karen,” the woman said, glancing around nervously. “I mean yes, I’m Sophie’s mom, but call me Karen.”

  “What can I do for you, Karen?” Dr. Gary asked.

  “It’s about Thursday,” she said, trying to peer over Dr. Gary’s shoulders. “Is Jacqui around?”

  Dr. Gary kept the door semi-closed but called over his shoulder, “Sweetheart, Mrs. Bell is here,” he called. “Are you free?”

  Jack appeared a moment later, wearing a floral sundress and flats. “Hi, Karen,” Jack said, taking the door and sliding between Dr. Gary and the visitor. “What brings you here on a Saturday?”

  “Well, I was a half hour late,” Mrs. Bell said. “So I owe you a check, but I was wondering if we could…could we just push it to next week’s payment? We’re a little tight right now.”

  Jack smiled and said, “I see. Well, you’re usually so timely…sure, just apply the penalty to next week.”

  Mrs. Bell offered a great deal of thanks and said goodbye. Jack shut the door.

  “You handle them so well,” Dr. Gary said.

  “Not so different from the children,” Jack replied. “Or the pets.”

  “All require more patience than I have.” Dr. Gary strolled about the kitchen, making a show of sniffing the air. “What do I smell?”

  “Prime rib, slow cooked with scallions and garlic,” said Jack.

  “My favorite. What’s the occasion?”

  “It is bittersweet, I’m afraid. That’s the news I mentioned. We’re going to need to lose Lucinda.”

  “So soon after Molly?”

  Jack nodded. “Like you said, the tide is turning. I fear for the court’s decision. It doesn’t look good.”

  Dr. Gary shook his head. “It’s all we talk about in the clinic,” he said. “But tell me, why Lucinda? She’s always been so complacent.”

  “And obedient,” Jack said. “But she has festering attachment for our departed Molly. She won’t let it go, and you know how the temperament can spread.”

  “I understand.” Gary cupped Jack’s chin in his hand.

  Jack pulled away. “Erica will need a procedure,” he said.

  Dr. Gary let his head roll backward on his neck. “I suppose I should not be surprised,” he said.

  “No,” Jack said, his voice high and clipped. “You’ve spent too many occasions playing with our pets.”

  Dr. Gary made a clicking sound in his throat, then said, “You’ve never had a problem with it before. You are welcome to indulge as—”

  “You know it’s not the same for me,” Jack whispered.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Dr. Gary replied. “Well…I will take care of the procedure in the next day or two.” He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “And what of our little message in a bottle plan, any response?”

  “Nothing yet.” Jack sighed. “Ten cameras and not one law enforcement hit.”

  “Give it time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “But time is running out. The ruling could come in less than two weeks, maybe sooner.” Jack looked plaintively at Dr. Gary. “I’m afraid we’ll lose.”

  “Jack,” Dr. Gary said, softening the gravely tone in his voice, “we cannot lose this fight. The stakes are too high. We are on the right side. We will not lose.”

  Then, he leaned close to Jack and kissed him.

  Chapter 7

  I booked another night at the Motel 6. Another sixty-seven dollars in cash to keep my base of operations in Destin, Florida. I slept fitfully, dreamed horribly, and awoke feeling pretty much like road kill.

  Though I’d miss the hash browns scattered, smothered, and covered, I didn’t go back to the Waffle House. I might see Adelade again. She might ask questions. Worse, she might give me the credit for helping her.

  A block inland, I found a little greasy spoon called the Echo Inn Diner. $12.50 for a heaping plate of food. The home fries were tossed with onions and red peppers and then cooke
d in bacon grease. I also had a delicious crispy meat called scrapple. I asked the waitress what was in it. She said I didn’t want to know.

  When I returned to the hotel, I found the same old guy and his granddaughter occupying the hotel’s business center. I waited just outside for three hours. The whole time he played, he looked irritated, and she looked bored. I wondered why, on such a beautiful day, they didn’t go enjoy Destin outside, especially the powdered sugar beaches.

  I finally got on the computer around noon. I had business, but I couldn’t resist. I looked up scrapple ingredients. The waitress was right. I really didn’t want to know.

  The contents of my stomach still roiling like a dryer full of cinderblocks, I went to work on the case history. A simple search on “Smiling Jack” netted me close to 30 million hits. I knew that roughly 29,999,800 of those were worthless mentions in Tweets and blog articles. So I went to the major news sources first: NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc. The first was a ten-year-old article from The Times that chronicled the appearance of the first “victim” photographs. In a matter of hours, the story went viral. The Internet flooded with chatter, mostly public outcry and fear. The FBI set up a task force, and local authorities mobilized. But no bodies had been found, no one identified the victims, and no one knew where jurisdiction began and ended.

  The case name “Smiling Jack” had been coined by a blogger and gained momentum by February that same year where it appeared in a Washington Post page one banner headline. The murder weapon in each of the photographs had been the same strange blade that I’d seen used on the young redheaded woman.

  Nico Mendle, a hobbyist and blogger interested in history’s serial killers, noted that the murder weapon resembled a surgical knife of the kind purportedly used by Jack the Ripper. I clicked on the link and a jpeg of the “Don Rumbelow Blade” taken at the Museum of London in Docklands appeared. It did indeed look similar to the weapon used in the photographs. There was no brass sheath, however. And the cutting edge was four times as long as the weapon used in the Smiling Jack photos. Mendle had noted the ghoulish smiles on the killer and all the victims and coined the phrase “Smiling Jack.”

  The door to the business center swung open, startling me, and there stood the old man who had been playing solitaire all morning. The little blonde girl hid behind his leg. I minimized the knife window and turned just in time to hear the old guy say, “Sorry, Carri-boo, we’ll have to come back later.”

  Caribou? That didn’t sound like a very nice thing to call a little girl. I pictured the shaggy reindeer of North America and shrugged.

  Over the next hour, I read dozens of articles spanning the next six years and, to the FBI’s credit, the content of the national news spelled out everything just the way Agent LePoast had. The “Smiling Jack” photographs had appeared on thousands of websites. There seemed to be an influx of new blogs dedicated to “the case” every month. And the popular buzz seemed to intensify each October, especially around Halloween.

  The investigation was spearheaded by techies who used every trick in their collective Web-crawling bag to trace the originator of the photographs. This proved beyond daunting because so many sites—true crime, missing persons, blogs, voyeurs, social media, and news—had posted some or all of the photos. The FBI focused on the earliest posts and even unofficially enlisted the aid of Homeland Security. But the cyber-trail was a dead end. More like a loop, really. An infinity loop.

  The photos’ first posting turned out to be a link from another posting of the photos, one that came chronologically later. One site digitally referred to the other as the originator, which shouldn’t have been possible. But, Smiling Jack—or some associate of his—had found a labyrinth of code to make it work. I made a mental note to find out just how many folks had the technological know-how to pull something like that off. I suspected it might be an uncomfortably high number.

  Beyond the “office agents” working on the digital trail, thousands of law enforcement personnel had participated in an international manhunt. A list of “interesting persons” from the web postings had been generated. Slowly, each one had been investigated. The list narrowed until no stone had been left unturned. In the end, no evidence other than the photographs had been uncovered. No missing persons. No bodies. The FBI officially closed the case, and for four years, no other photos surfaced. Until now.

  I peeked out of the business center to make sure no one was about to walk in on me. It was all too easy to imagine the old man coming back. If he saw anything in my case, he’d have plenty of questions, especially about my tools. Pressurized air hissed as I opened my silver case. I kept the lid up just long enough to get what I needed, this time, the X-drive.

  The Z-Drive, Hal included, was all finesse. It captured all the physical requirements for every kind of identification and recreated them for me. The X-Drive, on the other hand, was the equivalent of a digital bazooka. All muscle. If there was a barrier, the X-drive blew it up. If there was a fire wall, the X-drive knocked it down. If there was a back door or a trapdoor, or any door at all, the X-drive would hack, blast, and gouge until it found a way in. I had two searches in mind for the X-drive this time.

  First, I took the original “Smiling Jack” web link, the one that sent the FBI into the infinity loop, and ran the X-Drive on that. Five minutes went by. Ten. Up popped a red error message. This did not bode well. Whoever Smiling Jack really was, he was absolutely brilliant. From what I could tell, it hadn’t so much kept the X-drive out, but rather had let it through…an easy slide but only to useless places. It was like opening a locked door for a pursuer but greasing the floor so that he slid right on by.

  Jack, or whoever Jack employed, had written a code that managed to stonewall the X-drive. I’d bet all $934 of my remaining dollars that the FBI wouldn’t be quite as successful.

  Law enforcement agencies rarely release all of the details of a case to the press. It was one way to filter crime tips. Anyone who knew something about the case that had not been revealed to the general public would be taken very seriously. Surely the FBI had withheld something. Maybe it wasn’t enough for the FBI to keep the case open, but it might be enough for me. I needed everything they had.

  I brought up the FBI home page. Naturally, the ultra powerful, ultra secretive law enforcement agency would keep their internal databases walled off from their public face online. But most webpages, most servers, most anything networked and connected to the Web, had a back door. Garden variety hackers wouldn’t find those back doors. Even Digital Age industrial spies might not find the back door if the system of encryption was sophisticated enough. Fortunately, the X-drive was very good at backdoors.

  Five minutes later, thanks to an obscure digital trail—an order of drinking straws for the FBI cafeteria—I had access to one of the Bureau’s mainframes. Cases didn’t have searchable titles like “Smiling Jack,” so I had to find another way. The problem was, the FBI had built-in monitors for sensitive information. They’d created beneficial viruses to trace and capture invading algorithms and domains. The X-drive posted a red bar graphic showing that I had three minutes before my information was captured. If it was, the FBI would know my X-drive’s identifiers. If they back-doored into my X-drive, they would discover some things. And then…they would come looking for me.

  As I searched frantically, the red bar graphic continued relentlessly on.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  FBI Special Agent Dee Rezvani began her vacation by stepping off a plane at Panama City Beach Airport. The humidity hit her like a wet towel, and she knew immediately that she hadn’t packed enough full changes of clothes. Welcome to the Florida Panhandle, she thought, pulling at her blouse so it wouldn’t stick to her back.

  Like the flight, she paid for a rental car on her Visa card. Everything had to be on her own dime. Assistant Director Barnes hadn’t left her any choice about that. Rez shrugged and slid up onto the high seat of the Nissan SUV. She’d saved enough money over her seven year
s in the Bureau to live comfortably without new income for quite a while. She cranked the engine. Six cylinders—decent power. Better than the heap she drove around in D.C.

  Even with a decent salary, Rez didn’t treat herself to much. No sprawling condo with pool and tennis privileges. No new car. And, other than an occasional filet mignon from the grocery store, no high-end groceries either. In fact, Rez didn’t allow herself much of anything aside of work.

  She had no family, which wasn’t really by choice. Not a lot of friends. No husband or boyfriend, certainly not from the Bureau. The male agents fell into two camps, neither of whom appealed to Rez in the least. Some were too strong: cocky, overpowering, or even slimy. They saw her as an entitlement or achievement, someone to ogle and tell dirty jokes about later. Other agents were too weak: unnerved by her looks or intimidated by her abilities. Rez was looking for a secure man who would love her, respect her, and challenge her. Special Agent Dee Rezvani had hunted and captured dozens of criminals, but she’d yet to get so much as a sniff of the man she really wanted.

  Not that she’d spent much time actively looking.

  Too busy in school—MS in forensic science, MA in law—led to too busy in career. Through diligence and laser-sharp attention to detail, Rez had risen from recruit to field agent to special agent in just three years. Her work eventually led to the capture of Sid Hain, the killer known as “the Scientist” due to the horrific experiments he’d performed on his victims. Rez had been made a Violent Crimes Division Leader and moved to D.C. where she’d flourished ever since. And that all left little time for personal or romantic life.

  Which was why she was taking a vacation to find a serial killer.