by Carter Chris
‘Hold on a second,’ Keller said, lifting his right index finger. ‘Do you mind if I try something?’
‘Try what?’ Captain Blake questioned.
‘The very first line,’ Keller explained, ‘is distinctively different from the other three.’
Once again, everyone reconsidered the cryptic text.
‘It only uses lowercase letters,’ Keller clarified. ‘And it’s also the only one out of the four lines of text where the numbers appear to split a letter sequence.’ He quickly grabbed a pad of paper and copied the first line.
‘OK, I see what you mean,’ Captain Blake agreed. ‘But what is it that you want to try?’
‘Well,’ Keller replied, urging everyone to follow him. ‘This is a long shot . . .’
He led the group back out into the corridor before guiding everyone into the small room he, Hunter, and Garcia were in before.
‘I’ve seen and used similar text lines before,’ Keller said, positioning himself behind the desk and hitting the spacebar on the keyboard to wake up all three monitors.
‘Where?’ This time the question came from Hunter.
‘On the Internet,’ Keller replied, as he waited for an application to load onto the screens. ‘This line right here . . .’ He placed the notepad on the desk. ‘ . . . could very well be a web address. All it’s missing is a suffix.’
‘A web address?’ Garcia’s puzzled eyes jumped from Keller to Hunter to Captain Blake and then back to Keller. ‘Aren’t there supposed to be a few dots somewhere in there?’
‘No,’ Keller countered. ‘This wouldn’t be your regular web address. Not your regular Internet.’
‘The Dark Web,’ Hunter said as a Tor browser appeared on Keller’s computer screen.
‘That’s exactly right,’ Keller agreed.
He turned to address the captain. ‘And that’s what I want to try. All I have to do is copy that line of text to the address bar and add a “dot onion” to the end of it. It’s the suffix used by the darknet. Instead of dot com, or dot org, or whatever, they use dot onion.’
They all watched as Keller entered the first line of text that he had copied from the diary’s cover into the address bar. He then added the known Dark Web suffix to it and hit the ‘enter’ key.
It took the Tor browser considerably longer than a regular one to load a web page onto the three interconnected monitors on Keller’s desk, but it did.
‘Bingo,’ Keller said with a smile. ‘It is a Dark Web page.’
Immediately as the site loaded, a pop-up appeared over it, asking for a login password.
Everyone exchanged concerned looks.
‘Let me see that photo you took,’ Keller addressed Hunter.
Hunter pulled out his phone and showed Keller the photo.
‘Maybe one of these is the password,’ Keller suggested.
‘Maybe,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But to what?’
‘It could be anything,’ Keller replied with a quick shrug. ‘A database . . . a private forum . . . who knows?’
‘Only one way to find out,’ Captain Blake joined in.
‘Shall I give it a try?’ Keller asked Hunter.
Hunter pondered over it for just a second. ‘Sure.’
Keller typed in the second of the four lines of text into the password text-field.
‘DOPS1207102375’
As soon as he hit the ‘enter’ button, an egg-timer icon appeared over the pop-up. A second later, a message was displayed – ‘login successful’.
‘We’re in,’ Keller announced, sounding half-surprised.
The pop-up disappeared from the screen, revealing the Dark Web site behind it.
All four of them paused, trying to understand what they were really looking at.
‘What the hell is this?’ Captain Blake asked the question that everyone was thinking.
‘I’m not really sure,’ Hunter replied.
It took him a couple more seconds to realize what he was really looking at.
That was when something new appeared on the left side of the screen.
‘You have got to be kidding me.’ The words dribbled out of Hunter’s lips. ‘This can’t be real.’
Then something else appeared on the screen, also on the left side.
Garcia’s arms dropped to his sides and he felt his heart sink to the bottom of his stomach.
‘Oh . . . fuck!’
Fifty-Six
The man had no doubt that his plan would work. No more preparation was needed, and that was why he could afford to spend the morning sitting in front of the large wall monitor, inside the control room in the basement of the old building in Santa Clarita. For the past hour and a half, he’d done nothing but observe the three subjects he had locked up in the cells just down the corridor from where he was sitting. He could quite easily spend days studying whomever he had in those cells, as if he was bingeing on some addictive real-life TV series.
The man typed a command into the keyboard on the control desk in front of him and the image on the screen switched from cell 1 to cell 2.
It didn’t take an expert to see that the male subject in cell 2 was beginning to get agitated again. He had moved out of his prayer position, a position that he had held for almost forty minutes, and begun pacing his cell.
Pacing the cells was something that every subject eventually did. Sometimes they did it for exercise, sometimes out of fear, and sometimes out of anger and frustration. For the man, recognizing the difference between the three pacing styles was easy.
A subject pacing for exercise walked with a steady and determined step. There were no distractions . . . no interruptions. The subject either moved from the cell door to the bed, or from wall to wall, always in a continuous loop, until the subject had had enough. Some could do it for hours. Push-ups, sit-ups and squats were also common.
A subject pacing the cell out of fear walked with a very unsteady rhythm. The steps were tentative and the walking loop would be constantly interrupted, most of the time by tears.
Finally, a subject pacing out of anger and frustration followed a more distinct pattern, the steps were a lot heavier. The loop was also inconsistent, full of interruptions. Some subjects would, every now and then, punch and kick either the walls or the bed. Some would also scream at the top of their lungs, but they would do that only once and then never again. The cells were equipped with a noise meter. If the noise inside any cell went beyond sixty decibels (about as loud as two people having a conversation), two ceiling sprinklers would drench the cell, and consequently the subject, in ice-cold water.
The subject in cell number two was pacing it with heavy, angry steps, while murmuring something to himself.
The subject had been there for only two days, but he hadn’t been abducted because the voices had commanded the man to do so. No, he had been abducted because the man needed him for his plan.
The man sat back in his chair, swung his feet onto the control desk, and interlaced his fingers behind his head. He enjoyed watching his subjects’ reactions.
‘Humans are so predictable,’ he said out loud, as the subject punched the pillow on the bed a few times.
All of a sudden, a beep came from the metal cabinet to the right of the control desk.
The man’s eyes shot to it and he frowned. A second later, his feet came back to the ground and he dragged his chair closer to the unit.
The beep continued.
The man hit the spacebar on the laptop on the second shelf of the unit to wake it up.
The beep persisted.
The laptop screen came to life and the man stared at it for several long seconds before an animated smile stretched his lips.
‘Well, hello there,’ he said in a lively voice. ‘I was wondering when you would show up again.’ The man checked the computer screen, waiting for the information to load. As it did, his smile became laughter.
Fifty-Seven
Inside Vince Keller’s office, four pairs of eyes were completely glued t
o the three screens on his desk.
The look on Hunter and Garcia’s faces were a combination of astonishment and perhaps a little fear.
‘You all know what this is, right?’ Keller asked, his gaze moving from face to face inside the room. He got no reply. ‘It’s a chat room. One of those old-style ones. Remember ICQ? AOL? This is pretty much the same, the only real difference here is that this one is a private chat room.’
Keller was right. What had appeared on his computer screens looked exactly like an old-style chat room, displaying two panels. The large one on the right would display the contents of the conversation between the chat-room participants. The one on the left displayed the names, or in this case the aliases, of said participants. As the chat room loaded onto Keller’s screens, only one alias appeared at the top of the left-hand panel – Miles Sitrom – which represented them, but almost immediately two new participants joined the chat. The aliases for those were – ‘Voice 1’ and ‘Voice 2’.
Hunter’s stomach knotted. He had been right about the voices. They were real people and not the distorted creation of a schizophrenic mind.
His and Garcia’s eyes stayed on the screen.
‘Are you guys all right?’ Keller asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a couple of ghosts.’
All of a sudden, a line of text appeared at the top of the right-side panel.
Voice 1 – This is a surprise, Miles Sitrom. Wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon. Not for a few days, at least. Have you already acquired the subject we’ve requested?
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ That was all Garcia could come up with right then. His eyes shot to Hunter, whose stare was still on the screens.
A new line of text appeared in the right-hand panel.
Voice 2 – Miles Sitrom? Are you there?
‘Oh shit,’ Garcia said, his hand cupping over his nose and mouth. ‘What do we do?’ he asked Hunter.
Hunter knew that if they didn’t reply, whoever ‘Voice 1’ and ‘Voice 2’ were would immediately know that they weren’t talking to the real Miles Sitrom. The consequences of that were unknown to him, but it didn’t take a clairvoyant to predict that they wouldn’t be good.
Hunter’s thought process went from zero to sixty in half a second. His hands shot toward the keyboard on the desk.
‘You’re going to reply?’ Garcia asked, his eyes the size of two giant marbles.
Hunter paused for a second before his fingers began typing. He could feel his heart hammering against the inside of his chest.
Yes, I’m here, he typed. And no, I haven’t acquired the subject yet.
Everyone read Hunter’s reply on the screen before their full attention moved to him.
Hunter had to think fast. He knew that he couldn’t just leave it there. He needed to explain himself before the next question came.
‘Can this computer be traced?’ he asked Keller, who frowned at him. ‘The IP address of this computer,’ Hunter explained. ‘Can it be traced from their side?’
‘No,’ Keller replied. ‘Our firewalls scramble the IP address. And we’re also using the Dark Web. No chance of tracing.’
That was exactly what Hunter needed to hear. He began typing again.
My original computer has been damaged. I have a new machine and I’m just reinstalling software, like the Tor browser. This was just a trial run to make sure that everything is running smoothly.
Garcia’s head tilted slightly right as he nodded. ‘Good thinking.’
‘But will they buy it?’ Hunter said, his tone nervous.
He was about to type something else and then disconnect when a new line of text appeared on the screen.
Voice 1 – What happened to your computer?
All eyes moved back to Hunter.
Water damage, he typed. No coming back from it.
There was a two-second gap before Hunter’s fingers began moving on the keyboard again.
I’ll be back in touch soon.
Hunter looked at Keller. ‘How do I log out of the chat room?’
Keller’s hands shot toward the keyboard and he simply shut down the Tor browser.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘We’ve disconnected.’
Captain Blake looked at Keller with a question in her eyes.
‘The Tor browser does not retain a browsing history,’ Keller explained. ‘And it automatically erases every cookie that might’ve been placed in the computer throughout the session, which is also terminated as soon as we close the browser.’
Hunter’s arms dropped heavily to his sides, as if all of his energy had just been sucked out of him.
‘This is totally insane,’ Garcia said, taking a step back.
‘Hold on,’ Captain Blake said, lifting a finger. ‘Does this mean—’
‘It means that we were wrong, Captain,’ Hunter cut her short.
‘Wrong about what?’
‘Almost everything,’ Hunter replied. ‘Our killer is certainly a psychopath, but he’s not schizophrenic, like we first believed.’ Despite the chat room not being on the screens anymore, Hunter pointed to them. ‘He’s not hearing voices in his head. He’s talking to them via a Dark Web chat room. The voices he refers to in his diary are actually other people.’ He paused, as if he needed time to recompose himself and his thoughts. ‘Other people who are requesting murders . . . specific murders. Our killer isn’t crazy, or delusional. He’s a mercenary . . . a death salesman. And the voices – they aren’t a manifestation of his subconscious mind. They are buyers. They are his online customers.’
‘Buying what exactly?’ Captain Blake asked. ‘It’s not like this killer delivers the victims to these buyers, so what is he delivering?’
That was when another piece of the new puzzle finally slot into place for Hunter. ‘Images.’
Everyone turned to face him.
‘The camera we found inside the coffin in Deukmejian Wilderness Park,’ he said, mainly addressing Garcia and the captain. ‘The killer wasn’t filming it for himself. He was streaming it live so that the people behind the voices, however many there were, could watch. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s selling. That’s what he’s delivering – live streams of torture and death. The people behind the voices are ordering their specific sick pleasures online. They tell him what the victim should look like, how the victim should be dressed and what-have-you. They tell him what they would like him to do to them – how to torture them and, ultimately, how to murder them. And who better to deliver these people their torturous, sadistic fantasies than a . . .’ Hunter paused again. ‘Sonofabitch!’ He shook his head and let out a humorless chuckle. ‘But of course,’ he said as realization settled in. ‘The alias.’ He turned to face Keller. ‘Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?’
‘Sure,’ Keller quickly handed Hunter both.
Hunter wrote the alias down before explaining. ‘Miles Sitrom – the first word isn’t pronounced Miles, it’s pronounced “me-les”. Hunter’s pronunciation changed completely. ‘And the second word – Sitrom – it’s “mortis” spelled backwards. It’s Latin. Miles Mortis means “Soldier of Death”.’
Fifty-Eight
The air inside Vince Keller’s already claustrophobic office seemed to have become even heavier and harder to breathe. Garcia and Captain Blake’s eyes stayed on Hunter as they mulled over his words.
‘You can’t really be serious?’ Captain Blake asked, her eyes wide.
‘He’s correct,’ Keller confirmed, nodding ever so slightly. ‘Miles Mortis does mean “Soldier of Death” in Latin.’
‘Sonofabitch!’ Garcia spit the word out. ‘I guess this confirms the ex-military question once and for all.’
Keller frowned at him, but kept the question at the tip of his tongue to himself.
‘How about the other two lines of text on the diary’s cover,’ Captain Blake asked. ‘Are they also Dark Web sites?’
‘I don’t believe they are,’ Keller replied. ‘The configuration of letters and numbers seems
wrong.’
‘Well,’ the captain pushed. ‘Can we give it a spin just to be sure?’
‘Of course.’ Keller confirmed. He addressed Hunter. ‘Can I see that photo you took of the cover again?’
Hunter handed his phone to Keller, who reopened his Tor browser and quickly typed the third line of text from the diary’s cover into the browser’s address bar. He added a ‘.onion’ suffix to the end of it and hit the ‘enter’ key.
This time the new page loaded in the blink of an eye. It was an error page.
‘Unable to connect’.
‘Nope,’ Keller said before repeating what he’d just done, now using the fourth and last line of text from the diary’s cover.
The same error page reloaded onto his screen.
‘Unable to connect’.
‘Like I thought,’ Keller said. ‘These aren’t web addresses.’
‘So what the hell are they?’ Captain Blake asked. The irritation in her voice was undeniable.
Hunter turned to face Keller as, all of a sudden, a new piece of the puzzle fell into place.
‘On the Dark Web,’ he said, ‘the currency used is Bitcoins, right?’
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Keller confirmed.
Hunter’s eyes moved to his cellphone, which was still on Keller’s desk.
Keller’s stare followed Hunter’s and his face lit up. He knew exactly what Hunter was about to suggest.
‘Those two lines of text,’ he asked. ‘Could they be Bitcoin accounts? Or passwords to accounts?’
‘They certainly could,’ Keller confirmed, a ghost of a smile dancing around his lips. ‘And if your theory about this guy selling murders on the Dark Web is right, it does make a hell of a lot of sense.’
‘Can we track them?’ Captain Blake asked. ‘These Bitcoin accounts?’
‘Not at all,’ Keller replied. ‘If these are passwords to access an account or accounts, there’s no way we can track those accounts. Even if these were account numbers, we still wouldn’t be able to do anything. The whole reason for the Dark Web is anonymity. We could have his account and password, we could log in to it and we still wouldn’t get a name. Bitcoin accounts are not regular bank accounts.’
