Shadow Tag, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  “Fantastic.” Reece wondered why anyone would read Gray’s Anatomy for recreational purposes.

  “My main interest is bioinformatics,” Danny said. “But George Church’s lectures on genetics are interesting so I’m studying that, too. I’m enjoying all the Harvard classes.”

  “Harvard?” Sam asked, looking as confused as Reece felt.

  “Danny is very smart,” Eli said.

  “But Harvard is in Boston and you’re in Toronto,” Sam said. “How does that work?”

  “Some of the courses are online with edX,” Danny said. “For others, I have to get a bit creative to access the professors’ lectures and course materials.”

  Reece scowled at her. “You’re hacking, breaching the professors’ privacy, and stealing material other students pay a fortune for. You’re breaking the law.”

  “Knowledge should be shared,” she answered heatedly. “If I don’t want the stupid piece of paper, what’s the difference?”

  “You’re stealing,” he retorted. “There’s no moral ambiguity around it.”

  Danny glared at him, her eyes narrowing behind her thick spectacles. “Society is drifting back to an eighteenth-century class system where your family’s socioeconomic position impacts your educational opportunities. Harvard and MIT hire brilliant professors and researchers, yet they deny the masses access to the knowledge. How is that moral?”

  “If you don’t like the system, work within the law to change it,” Reece countered, realizing too late that he sounded like a bourgeois prig.

  “Both of you take a breath.” Sam turned to Reece. “You’re cranky because you don’t want to admit that some of these files require a closer look. There are inconsistencies that the first responders failed to examine.”

  Feeling ashamed by his outburst, Reece laid his hand gently on Danny’s shoulder, feeling her tense under his touch. “I was out of line. If you’re still willing to help, I’d appreciate it. Your algorithm idea is good.”

  “Yeah, it is,” she mumbled, clearly not mollified by his apology.

  Reece sighed and gazed at the boxes of files. If even one of these sudden-death cases was a homicide, he had a responsibility to uncover the truth. There was no moral ambiguity around that, either. But the Crown attorney’s office investigating closed cases would incite rampant suspicion in the police department. He’d be the target of that suspicion. Reece saw no scenario in which the blue brethren wouldn’t brand him a traitor. He’d feel the same in their shoes.

  A backstabbing turncoat was exactly what he was. He wished he’d never gone back to law school.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sam

  SAM LEAPED OFF the Queen East streetcar at Yonge. A two-hour workout and an advanced Muay Thai fighting class had energized her, and she headed south at a fast walk. The closer she got to Toronto waterfront, the trickier it was to navigate around a mass of confused summer tourists. The scorching July sun beat down, and sweat dribbled between her small breasts as she wove around jostling pedestrians. She was boiling hot and parched by the time she arrived at Eli’s stunning high-rise condominium.

  Sam strolled to a tinted-glass door beside a gold placard that read Executive Entrance. Before she hit the buzzer, the door magically swung open. She grinned and walked into an empty marble lobby with four private elevators and a curved reception desk artfully designed with backlit frosted glass and swirls of glossy stainless steel.

  A uniformed concierge waved at her from behind the modern desk that discreetly hid multiple security monitors. “Caught you on the street cam,” Gerald said with a smile. “Here to see his royal highness?”

  She laughed and pulled her wallet from the back pocket of her jeans. “I’ve got a keycard for his elevator around here somewhere.” She found the black card and waved it triumphantly.

  Gerald beckoned her over and walked around the security desk to join her. “Can I bend your ear for a sec, Sam?”

  She registered the slight holster bulge under the ex-cop’s left arm. “Sure. What’s up?” At five-foot-three and less than a hundred and twenty pounds, she felt like a dwarf beside the giant man.

  “Any word on Elijah’s father?” Gerald’s eyes were dark. “I’m worried about Danny.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I’ve seen a couple of men hanging around. Not the type I’d associate with a con, but one of them was carrying.”

  Eli’s biological father was responsible for the brutal scars that marred his face and arm. The man’s hatred toward his only child was a reflection of his obsession with Eli’s mother, a woman who had escaped the clutches of her abusive husband. A month after she fled with her eight-year-old son, an unknown shooter had gunned her down during a convenience store robbery.

  Authorities had moved Eli from Montreal to London, Ontario and hidden him in foster care. A year later, Quebec police had arrested his father for armed robbery. The deranged man was now serving a twenty-year sentence in a federal maximum-security penitentiary, but his incarceration hadn’t prevented him from finding Eli. A few years ago, in an attempt to extort money from his son, he had sent a thug to threaten Danny. Eli had relocated them from London to a high security Toronto penthouse. Their foster parents were overseas with Doctors Without Borders and Eli didn’t worry about them too much, but he lived in constant fear for his sister.

  His motivation for being a private investigator rose from his burning need to implicate his biological father in his mother’s murder. Sam and Reece were doing everything they could to help, but they knew it wouldn’t solve Eli’s problem. So long as the man lived, everyone his son loved was at risk.

  “The board denied parole again,” Sam told Gerald. “But next July, he’ll have served his time and then he’ll be out, unless we can find evidence to convict him of murder.”

  “A twenty-year-old cold case, good luck,” Gerald said bitterly.

  There wasn’t much to say to that.

  He held her eyes. “Maybe an inmate will shank him and solve Eli’s problem permanently.”

  Gerald wasn’t wrong on that either, but she ignored the veiled threat. “Eli hired private security for Danny,” she said. “That’s probably who you’ve seen. He should have brought you up to speed. Talk to him.”

  Gerald nodded. “I’ll do that. Appreciate the chat, Sam.”

  He turned back to his monitors and she crossed the lobby to the private elevators. She flashed the card at the reader and the doors slid open.

  At the fifty-fifth floor, the doors automatically opened and Sam stepped into a modest hundred-and-fifty-square-foot space with maple hardwood floors, white walls, pot lights in the ceiling, and a window with a fabulous view of Lake Ontario. She descended a curved maple staircase to the three-thousand-foot open-concept, living space. Every exterior wall was glass. The unobstructed, panoramic views of Lake Ontario and downtown Toronto were breathtaking.

  Danny sat at a module desk that looked like it belonged at NASA. Surrounding her was a video wall comprising nine 4K UHD monitors. She’d added three since Sam’s last visit. Danny’s fingers flew across a keyboard, and code flashed on the multiple screens at lightning speed.

  “Eli’s in the pool,” she said without shifting her eyes from the wall.

  Sam grunted an acknowledgement, skirted a restored, autographed 1979 KISS pinball machine, and went through a set of sliding glass doors that accessed a garden terrace with three-directional views. The city’s landmark CN Tower appeared close enough to touch. Fifty-five storeys in the air, there was a nice breeze that ruffled her short strawberry-blonde curls. She circled the exterior of the penthouse to the swimming pool.

  Eli had opened all the solarium’s exterior glass walls, which weatherproofed the pool and hot tub for year-round use. He was lounging in a giant rubber ducky that floated serenely on the crystal-blue saltwater.

  “Must be nice to be idle and wealthy,” Sam teased. She stripped off her sneakers and socks and sat on the edge of the pool, dangli
ng her feet in the cool water. “Any regrets?” she asked

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was more stilted than usual. “I developed the video game and enhanced graphics for people’s enjoyment,” he said. “Microsoft reaches more people. Selling them the rights and innovative graphic code was the correct decision.”

  She splashed water at him as he floated by her. “But it was your baby.”

  He kicked his feet to move his duck away from her reach. “You are wrong. The horse ranch for kids with autism and Asperger’s is my baby.” He paused. “No, that is not right, either. My philanthropic foundation is my baby. Since it operates the camp, it is the same thing.”

  Eli had purchased the two hundred acres that had once been Bueton Sanctuary in Uthisca. They had demolished all reminders of the cult and had turned the wooded, lake front property into a beautiful summer camp. It was Eli’s pride and joy. It didn’t bother him that seventy-two people had perished on the land, or that Mussani had buried an additional twelve women in the woods. Eli was too pragmatic to believe in restless spirits.

  Sam bathed her arms with pool water, inhaling the aromatic scent from the surrounding garden. “That clinical practicum I interviewed for—there’s a patient who survived Bueton.”

  “There were no survivors. They are lying,” Eli said.

  “Reece checked with a buddy at the OPP last night. Authorities did find Fadiya Basha alive in the aftermath,” she said. “She’s seventeen now and suffers delusional disorder. Fadiya believes Bueton still exists.”

  “Bring her to the ranch,” Eli said matter-of-factly. “She will see it does not.”

  Actually, that was a good idea, Sam thought. If she accepted the internship, she probably couldn’t get permission to remove the girl from the hospital, but perhaps she could show her some pictures. It could aid in dissolving her fantasy. Accepting Emily Armstrong’s offer was ethically ambiguous, but if it served to help Fadiya, Sam could reconcile the subterfuge. The university wouldn’t. They’d have plenty to say about using a psychology internship as a means to investigate undercover. The price could be her PhD.

  “I forgot to tell you that someone from Serenity Clinic will be reaching out to you,” Sam said.

  Eli jumped off the yellow duck and climbed out of the pool, refusing to look at her. “You did not tell me,” he stated. “I was unprepared when I received the call. I do not like to be unprepared.” Eli marched out of the solarium, arms glued to his side.

  That explained his weirder-than-usual behaviour: he was annoyed with her. Sam followed him through the patio doors that led into the penthouse.

  He ignored her, and she changed tack. Eli didn’t process negative emotion well, and his feelings might be hurt, which was harder for him to deal with than anger. Moving straight to business to distract him was her best option.

  “We need to know who accessed a room,” she said. Understanding how much Eli wanted to be a respected private investigator, she added a bit of manipulation. “I told them if anyone could recover missing data, it would be you.”

  “You are wrong,” he retorted, clearly unimpressed by her flattery. “I tried. It is above my technical expertise.” Eli towelled his brown hair into damp spikes across his head. His hazel eyes darted around the ceiling. “I did not want to involve Danny without your permission.” He pursed together his lips and opened a sub-zero freezer. “Would you like a snack?”

  “Just water,” Sam said, hiding her smile. Eli always offered refreshments. A social grace his foster mother had taught him. “Can we ask Danny?”

  He opened a frozen Jamaican patty and fussed around to position it in the microwave. As he waited for his treat to heat up, he grabbed a Mountain Dew and handed her a bottle of water without looking at her. They waited in silence for the microwave to ding.

  Patty and soda in hand, Eli marched across the penthouse to Danny’s workstation.

  “Get away from me with that cat food in a mitten,” Danny snarled.

  Eli ignored her. “Can you tell us if there is missing data from CCTV footage?”

  Behind her oversized glasses, she rolled her grey eyes. “Duh. Gee whiz, like I could give ‘er a try, eh?”

  “I will access the clinic’s server.”

  She spun around and clamped her hand around his wrist. “Don’t even think about putting that can of soda on my workstation. Give me your phone. That hospital dude gave you unrestricted access to the backend, right?”

  Eli’s eyes narrowed. “It is confidential.”

  “Give it.” She waggled her fingers. “I’ll resist the urge to post the credentials online.”

  He handed it over and she glanced at his screen. Swivelling her chair to face her monitors, she began typing. The monitors on the video wall spun through images.

  Sam leaned over her shoulder. “First, I want to know if anyone had unauthorized access to the lockdown unit over the past four months. There should be a list of keycards programmed to enter the unit.”

  “There is.” Danny brought up a page of employee pictures. “So, you want to eliminate all these people?”

  “Yeah.”

  Video flipped across three monitors. Code flashed by on the other six.

  “No abnormalities in the card-reader data,” she said after a few minutes. “I can run facial recognition software, eliminate the authorized folks, and ask the system to pull unrecognized images. It would tell us if anyone snuck in using a cloned card or piggybacked on authorized personnel entry. It’ll take time to run it.”

  “Is there anything you can do faster?” Sam asked. “I’m only interested in unauthorized male access, but the camera that points to room 319 didn’t record anything.”

  Danny swivelled back to her keyboard. “There’s probably data obfuscation.”

  “She is checking whether there are erased or concealed files on the data stream from that camera,” Eli explained.

  Sam had no idea how they would find missing data in a ton of video files, but Danny and Eli were unfazed. More importantly, Eli had relaxed now he was in his element. Sam didn’t enjoy having the quirky young man upset with her.

  After half an hour, Danny sat up straight and turned to face Sam. “Okay, there’s lots of advanced obfuscation. Someone was definitely inside the system messing around. From what I can tell, it happens about once a week, always after midnight. I can break the encryption, but I need time.”

  “Will that recover the missing files?” Sam asked.

  Danny shrugged. “I can get some of it, for sure, but whoever did this has mad skills. No malware or remote access tools embedded in any of the system files.”

  “Someone with internal access to the security system and advanced IT capabilities did this,” Eli said.

  “Hacking chops, yes,” Danny said. “Access, not necessarily. There’s an escape hatch on their mainframe, like a virtual backdoor. It’s well hidden but not undetectable when you know what you’re looking for.”

  “Why are they hiding activity only outside that room?” Eli asked.

  “That’s Fadiya Basha’s room,” Sam explained. “She’s mysteriously eight weeks pregnant. She’s delusional and under supervised care. There’s no opportunity for her to commingle with anyone.”

  Danny’s lips thinned and the colour drained from her round face. “What’s the matter with you?” she snarled. “She’s unable to give consent to commingle with anyone. Some douche-bag raped her.” She shoved her blunt cut black hair behind her ears. “If it happened two months ago, why go back four months?”

  “Fadiya’s delusions worsened four months ago.” Sam turned to Eli, noticing that he stood frozen rigid, his eyes darting aimlessly, and his lips moving silently. “That’s when she began to claim that Mussani was visit—”

  “Hospital personnel have violated her for four months?” Eli’s voice had risen to a shriek by the end of his question. His arm twitched at his side.

  Sam trie
d to head off an imminent meltdown and pointed at the employee pictures. “No, all those men underwent voluntary DNA tests. Fadiya’s physician did a non-invasive prenatal paternity test, and none of them fathered the baby.”

  With her back turned to Eli, Danny muttered, “There are a lot of sickos out there.” Her tone was hard and without expression. “They’d pay big bucks to get their freak on and rape a teenage girl in a hospital.”

  “That is sex slavery,” Eli yelled. He began to pace in a circle, flapping his arms wildly. “Prostitution!” he shouted.

  Sam jerked at his high-pitched screech, watching helplessly as his agitation escalated.

  Danny stood with a sigh and walked over to her brother. “What is the square root of fifteen-hundred-forty?”

  “Human trafficking!” Eli’s face was crimson and spittle flew from his lips. He hit his forehead, dodging Danny’s attempts to restrain his arm. The circle he stomped around grew tighter. “That is what happened to Danny. Her mother sold her. She was seven. They locked her up. Men used her. Police did not rescue her until she was ten. Perverts! Pedophiles! Degen—”

  Danny slapped him across the face so hard that Eli’s head whipped to the side and he stumbled back. The scar on his face was a white slash against his red cheek. He dropped to the floor and sat on his butt with his legs splayed. He stared up at his sister, a look of utter shock in his wide hazel eyes.

  Danny stood above him, wringing her hands. Tears streamed down her sheet-white face but she didn’t make a sound. Her entire body trembled.

  “I should not have told,” Eli whispered. “This is bad. This is not good. This is very bad. I promised I would never tell.” He snapped a thick black elastic he always wore around his wrist. It cracked against his bare skin and Sam winced.

  She had known that something awful had happened to Danny. She’d recognized the signs of complex trauma—the agoraphobia, the paranoia, the wall of contempt that Danny wore as a shield to avoid relationships. Sam had never imagined anything as awful as this. She wanted to reach out and offer comfort, but her instinct warned her to remain distant. Their relationship was still tentative and unstable. Danny’s defence mechanism over this spontaneous revelation could be to sever all contact with Sam. Avoidance was denial’s best friend.