by Kenneth Eade
Brent charted the usually-safe five-minute drive home which was extended to fifteen minutes, given the lack of visibility. The pounding drops cascaded against the windshield, causing a blur that the wipers could not keep up with. He followed the trail of red lights home, past several stalled cars under the freeway overpass and over the crest to Lazy Acres Market to pick up some fresh fish for dinner.
Finally home, Brent escaped the deluge when he walked in the front door. The usual view of the Santa Barbara Harbor was blocked by a wall of clouds and fog. The wind threw the rain against the glass wall facing the harbor and flowed down it like it had been turned into a fountain. Instead of coming to the front door like she normally did, Calico cowered in the corner, looking at the rainfall on the window as if aliens had just landed on the balcony. Brent coaxed her to the kitchen with the promise of a fish dinner, and he dripped all over the living room floor on the way.
Brent called Angela to give her an offer she could not possibly refuse.
“Why don’t you pack an overnight bag and come over for a slumber party?”
“In this storm?”
“Stormy nights are the best. I’m making Sole Meuniere.”
“Ahh,” she said in her best fake French accent. “Sounds trés bien, Monsieur. What time am I expected? ”
“Whenever you get here.”
***
The cat stood vigilant and the rain continued to pour as Brent and Angela sipped Pouilly Fumé and spoiled themselves on perfectly buttered bites of sole that any restaurant would thankfully boast about. The rain had brought the temperature down outside, but the crackling fireplace made it rightfully cozy inside as it cast random shadows against the walls of the candlelit room.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gerald Finegan switched on the light, but nothing happened. He rattled the switch up and down. Still nothing.
“It’s out of order, Gerry,” said a voice from the depths of the living room.
“Who is it?”
“You know who I am,” said the voice matter-of-factly.
Finegan’s heart pumped harder. He looked around in a panic.
“There’s no place to go, Gerry.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“What message?”
The Stranger let out a sigh. “Now, Gerry, you’ve broken one of the most important rules. You’ve lied to me. I know you got my message. I saw that you read it on your email. But, unfortunately, you chose not to pay attention to it. And that is a shame.”
“Please, please,” said Finegan, sweating profusely as he saw the Stranger’s form emerge from the shadows. “No, no!”
The Stranger’s head came into view, and he was shaking it back and forth.
“It’s all that lawyer’s fault – Brent Marks. He’s the one who’s been poking into the Bekker case.”
“Gerry, Gerry. Don’t you know that everything you do in life has consequences?” The Stranger cracked his knuckles and smiled: a set of perfectly white teeth that almost glowed in the dark. “Now you have to accept those consequences.”
“I thought nobody was allowed to see your face.”
“Nobody does see my face, Gerry. Ever. You are one of the privileged.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What are we going to do, Gerry? We’re going for a ride in your car. Then you can tell me all about the lawyer.”
***
It was an unusually uneventful morning. It had rained all night, and the evaporating rain had spread a fresh-smelling blanket across the entire territory of Santa Barbara. Brent was catching up on his paperwork when he received the call from Gee-offrey.
“Congratulations, Marks.”
“What for?”
“I’m dismissing the will and trust contest.”
“What?”
“Clients want out.”
“And Finegan?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“The poor bastard jumped his car off the road and over a cliff last night. Didn’t make it.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yeah, so I guess I don’t need his consent to dismiss. We’re not letting you off the hook though, Marks. You still owe us 50 grand and we aim to collect it.”
“Well, good luck with that. I’m a little short on cash right now.”
“That’s okay. We’ll just grab it out of whatever bill you give to the estate. I’ve already picked out a new car.”
“Good for you.”
Brent hung up, shocked. Am I a conspiracy theorist, or does this sound fishy? He called Jack immediately.
“Jack, Gerald Finegan was killed in an auto accident last night. Him against the divider.”
“You want me to check it out?”
“You read my mind, Jack. Can you get out to Phoenix and find out whatever you can?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As much as it disgusted him, Brent felt he had to dig through the scum of the Internet libel to ascertain if there were any clues that would lead to the murderer of Allen Bekker or the mysterious death of Gerald Finegan. He started from the present day and worked his way back through the posts on Hotstocks. Common to all the postings was the belief that Brent and Bekker were working in tandem to cheat every investor who ever lost money in any of Bekker’s deals. The elusive Ghost was not among the defamers. He compared the subpoenaed private message transcripts with the postings, according to their correlated dates. Nothing seemed to show any revealing pattern.
After several tedious hours digging deep into the defamatory pile, Brent came across something interesting. Oddly, it seemed like an advertisement. It was a post from Truth Seeker touting a site on the Deep Web called Erasure.onion. Brent used his Tor browser to access the dark web, and then to go to the site, which had an image of a huge eraser and contact information, along with a one-line introduction to the site: Need someone erased? I’m your eraser. Contact us for further information. Then, on a whim, he decided to contact the site. To do so, he composed an encrypted email to Erasure.onion using their PGP encryption code. It had all the trappings of a covert operation, and Brent felt a little foolish about it, but nonetheless, he felt it needed to be done.
Dear Erasure,
This is the first time I have ever done anything like this. I was recommended to you by a good friend, who assured me of the highest level of confidentiality. He did not reveal what you do or how you do it, but told me that your services were very effective to eliminate my problem. Please advise of the next steps.
Sincerely,
John Doe
Brent signed the email “John Doe” to hide in complete anonymity. He then went about checking his office mail and working on a brief that was soon due to be filed in an upcoming motion to dismiss a case he had filed in federal court. The case required some potentially interesting research in the area of mortgage fraud. His client’s mortgage fraud complaint had been challenged by the bank’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Because the large banks were, apparently, above the law, it was almost impossible to call them to task on any type of mortgage fraud. The lawsuits were simply summarily dismissed in their initial stages. Perhaps a judge with a conscience would latch on to the issue. Perhaps not.
After a couple of hours, Brent received a reply to his email. Decrypted, it read:
Dear John Doe,
You will need to identify what problem you require to be eliminated in the simplest manner possible. You will be vetted as a client and, if accepted, you simply pay $30,000 in bitcoins and your problem will be erased. There is no customer service and no cancellation feature. Once you place an order, it is effectuated. Thank you for your business.
Erasure.onion
Brent read the message several times, asking himself if it was some kind of a joke or hoax. Who in their right mind would send that amount of cash to someone they didn’t know? The question and the answer were probably the same
– nobody in their right mind would do so. And how was the “problem” eliminated? He made up his mind to discuss it with Jack when he got home from Phoenix.
***
Jack met with Detective Mark Bigelow of the Phoenix Police Department. If Bigelow had been a lot skinnier and ten years younger, his body would have matched the military-style crew cut he sported. Jack guessed he must be an ex-Marine; the career type who retired when his 20 years was up, then took a job in civil service for a second government retirement.
“What can I do ya, Mr. Ruder?” Bigelow greeted Jack with a handshake without rising from his desk.
“Well, Detective…”
“Mark, please. We’re both cop types, I hear.”
“Yes, Mark. I’ve never been able to escape that, I’m afraid. I’m an investigator for the Estate of Allen Bekker.”
“I heard about that. The rich guy from Beverly Hills who died under mysterious circumstances.”
“That’s the one. I’m here to look into the death of one of the estate claimants who also died under rather suspicious circumstances – Gerald Finegan."
“Yeah, not a pretty one. Those traffic scenes are pretty gruesome. Never get used to those, even after combat.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
“Run-of the-mill accident, really. There're a lot of really dangerous curves out there on Apache Trail.”
“What do you figure he was doing out there?”
“Goin' too fast, for one thing. I don’t know what he was doing, but if you don’t pay attention on that road, you’re takin' your life in your own hands. Not a place to travel at night.”
“Can you tell me about the investigation?”
“None to speak of. Highway Patrol found him out there in the morning. Lost control of his car at Fish Canyon. It’s a seven-hundred-foot drop there, you know.”
“No autopsy planned?”
“No sign of foul play.”
“Still, I wish we could get one.”
“You’d have to talk to his family about that. Out of our jurisdiction. But I can give you a copy of the file.”
“That would be great.”
“It’ll be just a second,” said Bigelow, who rang for his clerk.
***
Jack drove out on Apache Trail. At Fish Canyon, where Finegan’s car had been found, it was a one-way dirt road. The Superstition Mountain’s colorful rocks and breathtaking vistas were worth seeing during the day, but Bigelow was right: there was no reason to go there at night, which would have been pitch black under the thin moonlight and a blanket of stars.
Fish Canyon was a spectacular drop. Using the GPS coordinates from the file, Jack stopped the car about where Finegan had left the road. The thin aluminum barrier marking the spot where Finegan had taken his last leap had still not been repaired. In its place were aluminum warning signs with blinking red lights on them. He almost stepped on a horned toad as he stepped out of the car.
“Sorry, buddy: I’m the intruder,” he said to the lizard as he brought his binoculars up to his eyes and peered down into the canyon, spotting the likely point where the car had been found with its unlucky occupant. It could only have been suicide, he thought. Suicide or murder.
Jack drove back into town, resisting the urge to drive on for more sightseeing. Finegan’s car had already been taken to the impound lot. It was a twisted mess of metal that once had been a Volvo, touted as the safest car in the world. Not for Gerald Finegan. The car had not been dusted for prints. No sign of foul play – no reason. But Jack had been given permission to examine it and he gave it a thorough once-over with his evidence kit, although he didn’t expect to find anything.
After a couple of hours of poking around the car, Jack dropped in on the Augusta funeral home where Finegan’s body had been taken.
“We’ve got instructions from the family to cremate him,” said the Funeral Director, a wily-eyed, tall, balding man, with a thin strip comb-over. “Good thing. There wouldn’t be much we could do for him.”
Jack thought it an ironic choice of words as he looked at the mess of blood and bone which was once Gerald Finegan.
“Still, we tried to clean him up. A little.”
Jack poked around as much as he could. Finegan was not one to talk to his neighbors, and had no friends to speak of. If there were any clues to be found, they were about to go up in smoke.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Brent met Jack for lunch the following day at The Wine Bistro on Coast Village Road in Montecito. It was a cozy location on the picturesque street. Brent waited for Jack at a quiet corner table on the patio.
“Brent, how romantic,” Jack teased as he approached him.
“Jack, I didn’t know you cared. How was Phoenix?” Brent asked, as Jack took a seat.
“Hot.”
“Besides that.”
Jack briefed Brent on Phoenix over Brent’s Ahi on rice cakes with green caviar and Jack’s pork spare ribs.
“You should try this, Jack. It’s really good,” said Brent, holding up a pink piece of fish attached to a bit of rice cake.
“No thanks. I prefer fish when they’re not still alive.”
After Jack’s report, Brent gave his own on the Internet sleuthing he had done.
“I thought we agreed no more investigation?”
“What’s gonna happen? I’ll get electrocuted by my mouse?”
“No, seriously, Brent. You interacted with someone or a group of someones whom you don’t know. That probably wasn’t the greatest idea.”
“Why not?”
“They said they would vet you, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, they didn’t ask anything about you, right?”
“Right.”
“That proves they have the means to check you out without asking.”
“I used an anonymous email.”
“I suspect it's not a big challenge for these guys to find out who you are,” said Jack, wiping a dollop of barbeque sauce from his bottom lip.
“What do we do?”
“We wait. But we have to be proactive. I’m going to put a guy on you 24/7. And you should stay at Angie’s. They probably won’t track her down.”
“What about Calico?”
“Close up the house. Take the cat with you. In fact, you should pack now. I’ll go with you.”
“Seriously?”
Jack’s look was deadly serious. “Once they find out who you are, we could have trouble. Remember that crazy guy who was trying to kill you a few years back?”
“Yeah. Joshua Banks.”
“Just pretend he’s after you again. But this time, you won’t see him coming.”
***
“You don’t look very happy to see me,” Brent said to Angela as he stood on her doorstep. “Or my cat.”
“It’s just that I thought Jack and I told you no more investigating. Now you may have gotten yourself into trouble.” Angela opened the door, stood back, and gestured them inside. “Come in.”
“I’m sure you’re both exaggerating,” Brent said as Angela shut the door.
“Two men are dead already. We can’t be too careful.”
Brent let Calico slink out of her carrier, and she began to explore Angela’s apartment. She looked even more paranoid than Angela and Jack were acting, crouching low to the ground as she checked out every corner and looked for the best hiding places.
“You could take a lesson from your cat,” said Angela.
“How long do you think I have to stay here?”
“Is it difficult for you?”
Brent smiled. “Of course not: it will be great. That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. It’s difficult to answer. We don’t really know what’s going on yet, if anything.”
***
“Angie, you’re going to the window every five minutes like a coke addict,” said Brent as Angela popped up from the table for what seemed to Brent to be the fifth time.
“I’m
sorry. Just doing my job.”
“Just don’t forget I’m your boyfriend, not your subject.”
Angela smiled, and her cheeks turned pink. “I know. I guess when I get into ‘work mode’ I get very serious.”
“No kidding. It’s like you turn into another person.”