All the Dying Children

by James Halpin

  With Lauren taken care of, Daly snapped open his work laptop and logged in. He had a bit of business to check into while he waited. The App Store had identified the maker of the Soma app as Sleep Song, LLC. But when Daly did a Google search for the company before, he came up empty. There was no website, no mailing address, no phone number. But he knew there had to be some record of it. He decided to run the name through an online searchable database of all corporations registered with the Pennsylvania Department of State. If Sleep Song was registered in Pennsylvania, it would be there.

  Daly keyed in the name. A moment later, a single result popped up. The business was indeed registered in Pennsylvania and was based at an address in Kingston. Daly moved the cursor over the hyperlink on the corporation name and was about to click it when George interrupted him.

  “I think we’ve got something,” George said.

  Daly looked up from his laptop and squinted as his eyes adjusted to see the equalizer on the screen in front of George. He could still see the line of steady waves moving across the screen. But now there was activity on a second channel. George leaned in closer to the screen and reached for the mouse. With a soft click, he began recording the sound Soma was producing. They sat and waited in silence, watching the sound waves rise and fall. After about ten minutes, Daly couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “Let’s stop recording and see what we got.”

  George clicked the stop button and saved the recording to his desktop. Then he closed the equalizer window that had been displaying Soma and started a new project. When he clicked play, the familiar sound of static began flowing through the speakers. But again, below the surface, Daly thought he could hear something.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked. “It sounds like there’s a voice or something.”

  George leaned in and began clicking through the effects in the program, trying to reduce the level of the static on the first channel. Soon the hissing static began to fade, exposing a man’s voice. The speaking was calm, almost monotone, like Ben Stein delivering an economics lesson. But the message was much darker. In the absence of the static, the voice sounded certain and unrelenting. The message kept repeating at even intervals, like the slow drop of water coming from a leaky faucet.

  As he listened, a chill went up Daly’s back.

  “They’re watching me always. Nothing can make it stop,” the cold, unflinching voice said. “End it now. Before they find out.”

  They sat there in stunned silence, listening in disbelief until the recording came to an end. The voice hadn’t wavered once through the monologue. The message hadn’t changed. There it was, verbatim: the kids’ last words and the cryptic note Kim Foster had left in the margin of her journal.

  “Damn,” George finally said, scratching his head. “That’s some fucked up shit. Where did you say you got this?”

  “The App Store,” Daly said. “I think someone was using it to brainwash the kids or something. Maybe it was, like, subliminal messages.”

  “Does that stuff really work?” George asked, his eyes narrowing in disbelief.

  “I don’t know. But at least a couple of the victims were using it,” Daly said. “Apparently their doctor was recommending it to them.”

  “Who’s that?” George asked.

  “Dr. Marvin Radcliffe. He’s a psychiatrist in Kingston,” Daly said.

  “Do you think that’s him on the recording?” George asked. “That’s really screwed up, especially for a shrink.”

  Daly sat for a moment, thinking. He needed to get this information to the police. Phil Wojcik might already know about it, but if he didn’t he needed to, and fast. Daly went to grab his laptop and realized he still had the search page open on the Department of State’s website. He set the computer back down and used its touchpad to click on the hyperlink he’d all but forgotten about. The corporation details appeared on the screening, showing the business had been created in May 2017 and had an active license. The only filing was the articles of incorporation. With George leaning over Daly’s shoulder, the friends’ eyes moved across to the list of company officers.

  “Son of a bitch,” George said. “There he is. Marvin Radcliffe. President of Sleep Song, LLC.”

  Daly stared at the screen in disbelief. He’d expected to see Dr. Radcliffe as a company officer. What he hadn’t expected was the name below Radcliffe’s. There, appearing for the first time next to Dr. Radcliffe, was Mr. Vincent Gillespie.

  Vice president of Sing Song, LLC.

  CHAPTER 19

  Monday, April 9, 2018

  10:22 a.m.

  After discovering the recording Friday night, Daly loaded a copy of the edited recording onto his computer and gave George a rushed goodbye before running from the house.

  His first thought was to call Phil Wojcik and tell him what he’d found. But he hesitated as he grabbed his cellphone and pulled up his contacts. On one hand, he’d uncovered some pretty damning evidence that Dr. Radcliffe was directly involved in the suicide cluster. On the other, he was a journalist who was expected to be separate from the police. For him to be credible, he couldn’t be seen as a mouthpiece for the cops. Not only that, but at any time he could be called upon to write about an officer or lawyer accused of misconduct. So while they often talked and joked with each other, Daly made it a practice not to share notes.

  Still, this was a far cry from identifying a source or giving the police some correspondence. Daly had uncovered actual evidence of a crime. Not only that, but a crime that was in all likelihood still in progress. Waiting to talk to an editor could mean more kids were downloading the app. More kids could die.

  Daly decided his civic responsibility outweighed the journalism ethics debate. He made the call, knowing he might become a witness and be conflicted out of covering the story.

  Even though it was Friday night, Wojcik agreed to meet up with him. Wojcik could hear in his voice that Daly had something to show him. Something urgent.

  When Daly pulled into the coffee shop parking lot, Wojcik was already waiting in his car. They shook hands and Daly plunked his laptop down on the trunk of Wojcik’s car. The detective looked perplexed as Daly logged on to his computer and pulled up the VLC media player. After a moment’s hesitation, Wojcik took the headphones.

  Daly watched as Wojcik’s mystified expression melted into disbelief.

  “Where did you get this?” Wojcik said, pulling the headphones off his ears.

  “The App Store. It’s hidden in a white noise app called Soma,” Daly said. “And you’re not going to believe who the company officers are.”

  “Vincent Gillespie?” Wojcik asked.

  “He’s the vice president,” Daly said. “The president is Dr. Marvin Radcliffe.”

  “Oh my God,” Wojcik said.

  Wojcik immediately downloaded the app himself and asked Daly to send him the edited audio clip. Then he started talking, apparently feeling generous in the face of such an unexpected break in the case.

  The police, it seemed, had already been closing in on Mr. Gillespie. Wojcik told Daly that he and a few other detectives had raided Gillespie’s house two weeks before and seized his computer. There had also been some external drives and camera equipment. Vincent Gillespie, it seemed, hadn’t been simply involved with his students. He was documenting his exploits and selling videos online.

  Gillespie knew he was caught, so he had cooperated. He’d told the police he had been finding customers in online chat rooms, places with names that would make most people’s skin crawl. The customer would transfer the money to Gillespie and he would allow the file to be downloaded to the customer’s computer via a peer-to-peer network.

  For the past couple of weeks, the police had their hands full sorting through thousands of pictures and videos.

  They had already found Kim Foster and David Kowalski. Wojc
ik thought it was only a matter of time until Justin Gonzalez and Emma Nguyen turned up in Gillespie’s video library as well.

  Wojcik figured they would probably be ready to move on Gillespie and do the perp walk in a few more days. But Soma changed that. Now they needed to revisit their conversation with Gillespie.

  The last time there had been no mention of a business partner. Now they had the dirt on Gillespie and proof he wasn’t working alone.

  * * *

  The newsroom was still quiet as Daly leaned forward at his desk to get a better look at the image on the screen. It was just a thumbnail image, but it was all he’d been able to find. Dr. Marvin Radcliffe was a portly man with glasses and shaggy brown hair. The gray suit he wore in the photo looked a few sizes too big for him and clashed with the curled mop of hair up top. Dr. Radcliffe had a graying beard and a red nose, with beady brown eyes. His mouth was curled into a slight smile, but his eyes weren’t smiling. Daly found the expression cold and flat.

  He right-clicked his mouse and saved the picture to his computer – one never could tell when a picture might disappear from the Internet – and scrolled back up to the top of Dr. Radcliffe’s website to find his office phone number.

  Wojcik had promised to give Daly a heads-up with enough warning that he would be first when the police made their move, but he still had work to do on his end. It wasn’t just enough to have the story first. He wanted to be so far ahead of the Other Paper that the unsuspecting reporter whose lap it fell into would be taking notes on his coverage.

  He reached for his phone and dialed the number listed on Dr. Radcliffe’s website.

  “Good morning, Dr. Radcliffe’s office,” a woman said.

  “Hi, I’m Erik Daly with the Observer. I’m trying to reach Dr. Radcliffe.”

  “What’s it in regard to?” Her voice had lost the false chipper tone it had when she answered.

  “I wanted to ask him about some of his former patients ...”

  “He can’t talk about any patients,” the woman cut in. “It’s against our policy.”

  “I’m not trying to discuss the patients’ treatment. I just want to ask about some allegations that came up about Dr. Radcliffe,” Daly said.

  “Well, he doesn’t talk to reporters,” the woman said. All pretense of being polite was now gone.

  “Can we at least ask him and let him decide?” Daly asked.

  A long pause was followed by a disinterested voice asking for Daly’s name and to repeat which paper he was with.

  “I’ll have him call you,” she said.

  “What about my phone number?” Daly asked.

  “Oh, right,” the woman said. “What’s your number?”

  Daly dropped the phone into its cradle, knowing there would be no return call. He needed to get to Dr. Radcliffe, and he wanted to do it before the media circus descended at the perp walk. Once the handcuffs went on and the TV camera lights were shining, most of them shut down. If he could catch Dr. Radcliffe off-guard, he might talk. Even better, he could make an admission.

  Rather than sit and wait for a call he knew wasn’t coming, Daly decided to stake out Dr. Radcliffe’s office. Lunchtime was approaching. With any luck, he would catch the doctor on his way out for a sandwich.

  He arrived at the office in Kingston fifteen minutes later and pulled into a parking space along the street. From his vantage point, he could see the front door to the office as well as a side entrance that probably led to employee parking in the back. He cut the engine and waited.

  The narrow boulevard was lined with maple trees with branches that met above the pavement, creating a jungle-like canopy that permanently shaded the neighborhood. Lining the strip were small law and medical offices, broken up by the occasional convenience store or deli. All the properties had fresh paint and trimmed lawns. It was a good neighborhood in a worn-down and struggling region, an island in a stormy sea.

  Occasionally, small groups of people emerged from the offices and walked down the sidewalk past Daly, heading to a nearby lunch spot. But the door to Dr. Radcliffe’s office hadn’t twitched. For more than an hour, Daly sat in his car listening to Fats Waller hammer away on his piano. After witnessing most of the lunchtime crowd make their returns to work, Daly decided he’d had enough. He pulled out his key and slammed the door, making a bee-line to the front door of Dr. Radcliffe’s office. His receptionist probably wouldn’t be any more endearing in person, but Daly was prepared to wait Dr. Radcliffe out if he refused to see him.

  But before Daly reached the front door, he heard a faint bang from the side of the building. He stopped in his tracks, then turned and headed toward the noise.

  The noise of a slamming door.

  Daly rounded the corner in time to see a suited figure disappear behind the back corner of the building, walking quickly down the sidewalk to an employee parking area. Upon seeing the figure, Daly burst into a sprint to catch up. He’d only seen a glimpse from the back, but it could have been the man he’d seen on the website.

  The office appeared to be a reconfigured old house, as many in the area were. It was a quick sprint for Daly to get to the back. When he did, he saw the man pulling at the door handle of a shining black Lexus LS. The man looked up, startled, as Daly emerged from around the corner about ten feet away.

  That’s him, Daly thought. That’s Dr. Marvin Radcliffe.

  “Dr. Radcliffe?” Daly asked.

  “Yes?” he said, a slightly nervous smile appearing on his lips and a look of confusion flashing in his eyes.

  “I’m with the Observer. I wanted to ask you a few questions about some patients,” Daly said.

  “I can’t talk about patients,” Dr. Radcliffe said.

  “Your receptionist told me,” Daly said.

  “Well, then you know.”

  “Did she tell you I called?” Daly asked.

  “No. But I just left through the back, so she didn’t see me,” Dr. Radcliffe said. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Erik Daly. With the Observer.”

  With that, the smile, the perplexed expression, and the cordiality were gone. In their place was a flat, hard stare on Dr. Radcliffe’s pale white face. In his eyes, Daly thought he could see a flash of something. Hatred, perhaps. Or anger.

  Whatever it was, it was clear that there was not going to be any interview this afternoon. But just when Daly thought Dr. Radcliffe would throw him off the property, the doctor began speaking in a low voice.

  “You’re not secretly recording this, are you?” he asked.

  “No. I wouldn’t record without you knowing,” Daly said.

  “Erik Daly, huh?” Radcliffe said, his expression relaxing. He took a couple of steps toward Daly and looked upward to some squirrels scampering across a power line.

  “I remember hearing your name,” Dr. Radcliffe said. “What was it? Oh, that’s right. Wasn’t there a fire at your house?”

  “That’s right,” Daly said, not sure how to respond.

  “You lost everything, right? Even your precious daughter almost went up in flames, from what I heard,” Radcliffe said. “I’m surprised you got out.”

  The expression on Dr. Radcliffe’s face had turned to something else. He squinted slightly as he looked to Daly, his unblinking eyes never wavering from Daly’s gaze. When Daly looked down, he could see Dr. Radcliffe’s hands clenched into fists, his knuckles turned white with anger. He was no longer a doctor. He was a caged animal.

  For the first time, Daly felt in danger. He cursed himself for running into the secluded lot behind the office, and for not telling John Richardson where he was going. He found himself feeling some relief that he’d left Radcliffe’s website open in the browser of his work computer when he left. At least they’ll know where to start looking, he thought.

  Instinctively, Daly took a few steps back as Radcliffe advanced
toward him.

  “How did that fire start? The papers didn’t say,” Radcliffe said. This time, Daly waited in silence.

  “You really should be more careful, having a beautiful daughter like Lauren around,” Radcliffe said. “I can’t imagine what a loss that would be. But I guess you can, can’t you?”

  Radcliffe turned and took a step back, pushing a button on his key fob to unlock the car.

  “You take care now, Mr. Daly,” he said as he walked to the door. “And do be careful. Remember, curiosity killed the cat. You never know when someone might decide to throw a firebomb through a window at the Mountain Motor Lodge.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Monday, April 9, 2018

  3:43 p.m.

  Daly hadn’t even finished telling John Richardson what happened when his editor jumped in and cut him off.

  “You’re off the story,” Richardson said.

  The move was expected, but it still stung to hear the words. Daly thought about putting up a fight; after all, there was nothing concrete to conflict him out of the story. But he decided it would be futile. He had become a possible witness in the case, which meant he could be called to testify. Which obviously meant he couldn’t cover the story. And while Radcliffe had not come out and admitted involvement in firebombing Daly’s home, his thinly veiled threats made clear how he felt about it. It was enough to warrant taking him off the story to avoid the perception of bias.

  It was the biggest story of his career and he lost it because someone burned down his house and nearly killed him.

  Goddamn it.

  Richardson called across the newsroom and summoned the city reporter, Joe Reed. Reed was a lanky guy with a mop of shaggy brown hair that always hung down into his eyebrows. With his perennially rolled shirtsleeves and unfastened top shirt button, Daly couldn’t help but think Reed looked more like the member of a boy band than a serious journalist. But although Reed was relatively new out of J-school and still in his late twenties, he was a solid reporter with a flair for words and a knack for sniffing out good stories.