Dark Web

by T. J. Brearton

  PART FIVE

  TIES THAT BIND

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  “We were too late,” Mathis said. His usually coiffed hair was matted, he looked disheveled, as if he hadn’t slept at all in the past twelve hours since he’d been to court.

  Swift sat across from him, at the same table across which he’d confronted Robert Darring the previous day. After all that had happened, culminating in a spectacular end to the manhunt for Tori McAfferty, at his own property, Swift felt like he was carved from wood. Nothing could faze him. He watched Mathis strutting the same way Kady watched squirrels running about on a tree branch outside the window.

  “Darring is off the hook,” said Mathis. “Eggleston played the cord, the DNA, the McAfferty situation, everything. Judge threw the charges out. Says we can arrest him again on conspiracy or accessory, but the murder charge — dismissed. Darring spent the rest of the night in county and was processed out this morning.”

  He paused for a moment, and his eyes seemed to search those of Swift.

  “Darring is free as a bird. Dunleavy said the kid was headed over to impound to fill out the paperwork and get his car back. I don’t get it, man. I don’t fucking get it.”

  “What’s to get?” Swift asked. “We didn’t have it,” he said. “We didn’t have anything in the car, anything at the scene until too late, and that’s my fault. I’ll take full responsibility for that. We didn’t have anything in his computer or accounts, and no confession that could prove rational motive, let alone any homicide.”

  Mathis suddenly moved forward. He glared at Swift and jabbed his finger at him. “For Christ’s sake, you had something. You had the fucking headlamp. I don’t care if you take ‘full responsibility.’ Jesus, Swift. Come on. Too late for me to put in the discovery file, too late to introduce in court? And I ask for an adjournment, I get shut right down.”

  Swift shook his head. “Wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “But that’s not your call, detective! You’re not the lawyer, not the judge, not the jury. You act like this is all some sort of game.”

  Swift looked at Mathis with a level gaze. “It is. It’s his game. We’ve all been playing.”

  “No — you’re playing. And you lost, okay? Darring is toddling off to impound as we speak to do the paperwork on the vehicle. An hour from now, tops, and he’s out of here. We got the perpetrator, Swift. Last night before nine p.m. Pretty sure you were there. Tori McAfferty has been booked for first degree murder. We’ve got motive.” Mathis counted off on his fingers. “He had no custody of his son, who was legally adopted by Simpkins, we’ve got the emails showing their heated exchanges. “And,” he said, pausing for effect, “we’ve got the victim’s DNA on the piece of cord used to strangle the boy, which you found, sitting in McAfferty’s laundry room. Case closed, bye-bye McAfferty.”

  Mathis straightened his spine. He raised his hands to his neck to fix his tie, but he had taken it off earlier and it lay nearby on the floor.

  “That’s the game,” Swift said.

  Mathis gritted his teeth. “Fuck you, Swift.”

  At that moment, Captain Tuggey came into the room, with Sheriff Dunleavy close at his heels. After them, two people, a man and a woman, wearing snappy suits, whom Swift had seen once before. They were from Internal Affairs. They took up stances against the back wall, arms folded, watching like hawks.

  Swift looked at the Captain.

  “How you doin’, Tug?”

  “Better than you, Swifty.”

  Swift looked at the two IA investigators, who averted their eyes. Swift said, “We’re going to do this now, Cap?”

  “Swifty, I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt all the way here. I’ve given you time. You’ve been a good investigator, John. But lately I think you’re having some trouble. That incident with the reporter, fair enough. But we just had the prime suspect in our murder case walk out of court. No bail, nothing. Stenopolis practically apologized to him.” Tuggey held out a hand towards Mathis. “And the guy who blew up his lab and nearly killed a cop was picked up at your house. I think it’s time you took a beat. You know? Step back and let us re-evaluate.”

  “We got Camoine and his wife shooting at cops on your property,” Dunleavy interjected. “Couple of wild nutjobs. Who the hell are they; what were they doing there?”

  Swift looked away. “They were muscle for Simpkins.”

  Mathis snarled. “And how would you know that?”

  “Because no one is going to protect a scumbag like McAfferty,” Swift said, jerking his head around to look at Mathis. “He had no friends. Simpkins does. Not a lot, but a couple. And he’s the type to call on some muscle because he wouldn’t have gone up to my place alone.”

  “What about this money?” Mathis demanded. “That’s a hundred grand that was in the 529 account. Simpkins says it’s no longer there; I think he could’ve withdrawn it, maybe used it to pay Camoine and his wife for something.”

  Captain Tuggey came closer. “Why, Swift? Why was McAfferty at your place?”

  “He was told to be there,” Swift said. “Tricia Eggleston said they had a contact, someone who set it up for them.”

  Mathis was relentless. “But Tricia knew it was your place. Why would she send her boyfriend off to hide out there? How did some guy she never met, whose name she didn’t get, convince her of that? And why was your property chosen in the first place?”

  “Because he worked her, that’s how.” Swift ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Darring did his research. Knew where my house was, knew that if he or his accomplices wrote fake emails to Simpkins, he’d lose all faith in the police. In me. So he’d keep quiet. Darring brought Tricia what she wanted — he cut her loose from McAfferty. Her uncle is going to put up a fight, but if Cobleskill gets her emails, they’re going to find correspondence between her and Darring. I bet she was promised money, too. They both were.”

  Swift looked directly at Mathis. “But no one ever got any money, Sean. Which, by the way, wouldn’t be the full hundred yards, remember? It would be taxed when it wasn’t used for educational purposes. It would be more like sixty-five, seventy grand. But there are only two people who could extract that money — Mike Simpkins and Mike’s father, Jack Simpkins, through a long, complicated paperwork process.”

  Now Swift moved his gaze from Mathis to Tuggey to Dunleavy. “This was all a game, like I said. Mike Simpkins would look at the missing money and, knowing he didn’t take it himself, believe that there was only one other place that money could possibly be.”

  Swift leaned back and hung a boot from his knee. “But Darring never cared about any money. This is a revenge story, boys. For something that happened a long time ago.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  “Dad? How’s it going?”

  Mike had been brought through the booking process by deputies who, when they looked at him at all, acted like they were viewing livestock. One was giving him the stink-eye now as he used the payphone in the men’s pod. Even after lying awake on a narrow bed all night, he could still smell the vodka leaching out of his pores. What a mess he was. What a mess he’d always been. When his mugshot was taken he realized he probably looked like any other goon he’d seen on television, popped for meth, or child neglect, or any other scumbag thing — eyes bloodshot, hair sticking up, skin cheesy. What people never saw when they looked at those mugshots was the fact that all those guys had started out fairly decent; at least with some semblance of health and sanity, before they ended up shipwrecked on the craggy rocks of whatever tragedy their life contained — and everyone had at least one tragedy in their lives.

  “Turn to the left,” they’d said.

  He’d turned, and the light had flashed, and they took another picture, and then they finger-printed him. He was stripped of his belongings and clothing and processed along with Bull and Linda, who had been arrested unharmed. Lucky for them that in all the dark and snow they’d never hit anything. Still, the two of them were facin
g stiff charges — fleeing arrest, firing on State Troopers — these things weren’t small matters.

  “Dad, you there?”

  “I’m here, Mike.”

  “Let me talk to Callie and the girls.”

  Mike heard his father draw a deep breath and then sigh. “Where are you?”

  For a moment, Mike considered lying. But his number would’ve come up blocked on his father’s phone. And there was that distant beeping on the line as the jail recorded the call. Added to the fact that there had already been enough lying and half-truths lately to last a lifetime.

  “I’m in jail, pop.”

  “Uh-huh,” said his father. “A man can get into trouble when he’s away from his wife and kids, can’t he? It’s like you’re a different person. It’s like you’re your old self.”

  “I’m nothing like my old self. Can I talk to them, please?”

  “You really think that’s the best idea, Mike?”

  “I need to know that they’re okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t they be okay?”

  Mike felt himself sink. He was weak from dehydration along with the adrenaline still buzzing through him twelve hours on; he barely felt able to support his own weight, and he leaned against the pea-green wall. The hallway smelled like bad breath, old food, sweat, the end of dreams.

  “Maybe you just need to cool out,” Jack said.

  “Put them on, pop. I don’t care.”

  “No.”

  “No? Why did you take the money? I don’t understand. To pay this guy? To pay McAfferty? I could’ve killed him, pop. I could’ve killed him . . .”

  “Now you listen to me,” Jack Simpkins growled. “You listen because this could be the last time we ever talk.”

  Mike felt a jolt. The old tapes started replaying in his mind — that father he’d left behind over two decades ago, sounding close enough to be standing right beside him.

  “The girls are safe now. Safe from you, and your fuck ups, and your anger, and your violence. You know, Mike, you started out a good kid. So you got it in your head to be a filmmaker, cameraman, whatever you call it; you didn’t want to follow in my footsteps and work for the MTA. Fine. But you didn’t know, Mike, you didn’t know what it would be like to raise a family, what it was like, day in and day out. Now you know, Mike. Now you know what it’s like. It can drive you crazy.”

  Mike almost gave way to that old familiar rage. He contained it as best as he could, and kept his voice level, his internal gears grinding. “You don’t know anything. You went to work, you came home, ate dinner Mom prepared, then went out to the bar . . .”

  “You disrespectful—”

  “Then you had your affair. And I found out. And mom never recovered.”

  “She never recovered because of YOU. She knew, goddammit, she knew about it and she let it be, Mike. It was you, you standing there pointing that goddamned gun at me that she never survived, Mike!”

  The resurgence of those decades of repressed feelings was making Mike dizzy on his feet. He closed his eyes, leaned harder into the wall, and begged for God’s mercy, something he wasn’t sure he’d ever done in his life. After half a minute of silence, he wondered if Jack had ended the call. Mike spoke in a soft voice.

  “Put them on the phone, please.”

  “No. You do your time, for whatever mess you caused yourself up there. You do your time and then you can have them back — if they’ll take you. They’ll be fine with me. We have everything we need.”

  Mike opened his eyes.

  “What about my brother, pop? Huh? Do I have a brother?” Mike waited for an answer. Jack Simpkins said nothing.

  “Was that what happened to you? What happened to us? To mom?”

  Mike realized he was shaking all over, on the verge of tears. He listened, he waited, needing something desperately from his father. But after a few seconds Mike realized he no longer heard the beeping noise in the background. Jack Simpkins had hung up.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Swift had called a meeting with Tuggey, Mathis, and Kim Yom, who was back in Albany, and going to conference in. The two IA agents had invited themselves along, scrutinizing Swift’s every move.

  A few rings, and then a voice emanated from the phone. “Hello?”

  “Kim, hi, it’s John Swift.

  “Hi John.”

  “You’re on speaker. Captain Tuggey is here, Sheriff Dunleavy, ADA Sean Mathis, and two fine folks from Internal Affairs.”

  “Sounds like a party,” Yom said in her usual deadpan voice. “What can I do for you, John?”

  Swift glanced from the phone at the faces crowded around. Then his gaze dropped.

  “You said you had some results for me. What we spoke about yesterday afternoon, before Darring went to court.”

  “Ah yes,” said Yom. It sounded like she was clicking some keys on a computer. “I have those results right in front of me; thanks, in part, to our friends in New York and our friends at the Bureau.”

  “Kim, I would love it if you could share the information.”

  “Absolutely. So, Robert Darring was born in Manhattan as William Simpkins.”

  Swift glanced at Mathis, who seemed to have gone pale. Then he asked, “And how did you obtain this information?”

  “As you had instructed, John, we did a Bureau search for new birth records coming online in the NYC metropolitan area for the past five years and found a hit for Robert J. Darring, dating two years ago. As you know, New York City police, under Deputy Inspector Jonas, did a search on Darring’s apartment and seized his laptop, which yielded little. But in the apartment a few photos were found. Those pictures were scanned and sent to me. One photo clearly identifies Jack Simpkins, currently residing in St. Augustine, Florida.”

  Swift raised his head again for a moment. Everyone was rapt with attention.

  Yom went on. “The woman, we didn’t have a comparison for. So I used facial recognition software to cross-reference her image with any image of Darring’s. None were found. I also cross-referenced the image with all of the players involved in the Simpkins’ homicide case, including his grandfather, Jack Simpkins, the one in Florida, and there was a match. There were actually two matches. The woman is Pamela Falcone, and she’s a Facebook user. She had a picture on her account of her and Jack Simpkins; our best guess the shot was taken twenty years ago. The other was on another social media site, not as popular anymore, called Myspace, and it showed Pamela Falcone again with Simpkins in a group photo. The Myspace page was for a bar in lower Manhattan.”

  Mathis could no longer restrain himself. “Fascinating,” he said. “And what does it all mean? We’re supposed to believe Robert Darring is Jack Simpkins’ son? His bastard or something? There’s no way the man would sign a paternity statement if he—”

  “We found the paternity statement at St. Luke’s Hospital,” Yom interrupted, “and records for child support payments dating back to his birth, but ending when Darring — or, William Simpkins — turned eighteen. Juvenile records are confidential, and I’ve been working on trying to get them open, but from the outside alone it appears that Simpkins was in all sorts of trouble with the law in his youth, went into rehab at sixteen, saw counselors, the whole works.”

  “Thank you, Kim,” said Swift.

  “You’re welcome, Detective. Good luck.”

  Tuggey leaned forward and pressed the button to end the call. Mathis’ expression was still a picture of skepticism. “This is . . .”

  “This gives us motive,” Swift said. “Jack Simpkins signed the paternity statement not because he was coerced or blackmailed. He signed because he was going to leave his wife for Pamela Falcone. But then his wife got cancer. And his son, Mike, found out about the affair. As far as William Simpkins a-k-a Robert Darring was concerned, he lost a father, who had probably never spoken to him or acknowledged him beyond the paternity statement. Probably shut the mistress out, too. Sent the payments until William was eighteen. Then, nothing. So, William, with an
obviously antisocial personality, oppositional-defiant, like Kim said — ‘the works’ — he harbors this hate, and it festers, and he grows into this astute hacker. And he plans his revenge.”

  “Jesus,” said Mathis, all trace of skepticism vanished. “But what about this whole thing with the game — The Don? I don’t know everything about these games but I believe it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, just jumping in and expecting to be able to find someone — for Darring to find Braxton Simpkins, who was using an alias, and on any number of servers.”

  Swift was ready. “Kapow was hacked into almost three months ago, just before Christmas. It wasn’t as major as some of the other dark web hacks — didn’t register on the top five lists, or anything — but it was enough for Darring to be able to find Braxton Simpkins, push him around a little, toy with him, threaten his family. We’re still waiting for the full disclosure, but I’m sure when we see the rest of Kapow’s data we’re going to find that Braxton was threatened to the point where he believed he had to sacrifice himself, or else his family would be murdered. He had no way of knowing who the aggressor was, only that they had his identity, knew where he lived, and if he told anyone, went to the cops, anything at all, they would be killed. Plus, to his young mind, these types of things might not have seemed extraordinary. These games are violent, they encourage use of threats, as well as cheating and lying; the perfect place for someone like Robert Darring.”

  “And we just let him go,” said Tuggey. “Christ, guys, how did this happen? Darring just walked away. I don’t understand.”

  Mathis spoke up, and his tone had changed, becoming almost wistful. “Because we arrested and charged him as Robert Darring. A person with what we thought was a valid birth certificate and social security card. He did all of this as William Simpkins, who was kept entirely concealed from us.”