by E Y Mak
Candice opened up the appendix to the report. It showed graphs and bars indicating the “Degree of connection.” The six victims were labeled in a hexagon on the sheet. There were no solid blue lines, which, according to the legend, indicated a direct connection.
Candice turned to the next page. The three stabbing victims, Angela, Mia, and Carly, were linked by a second degree of connection, a recruiter from Utica College. Interesting, and perhaps a lead, but not inherently statistically significant. With information free-flowing between always-on internet connections, the world was not as vast of a place as it used to be, and previously hidden relationships always came to light on social networks.
Still, something to follow up on.
She flipped next to a page, which gave a brief biography of each victim. Maybe she could find a link here. Something that the complicated computer algorithms could not detect. She looked at the clock. 11:22 p.m. She rubbed her eyes and took another sip of tea before continuing.
Angela, Mia, and Carly were the first three victims chronologically. They were all Caucasian females. Ages twenty-one, twenty-one, and twenty-two. Two college seniors and a coffee-shop barista. All three lived alone. All three were found stabbed to death in their second-story bathroom at home. Each of the bodies was peppered with at least forty stab wounds. Posthumous sexual penetration.
Candice flipped between the photos. All three looked identical. Brunette, five six to five nine, blue eyes, and heart-shaped, pale faces.
It was the hallmark of a classic sexual sadist. The Phantom derived sexual pleasure from the infliction of pain, suffering, and humiliation. There would not usually be a need for so many stab wounds. But to a sexual sadist, each stab wound was symbolic penetration.
She had no doubt that the Phantom had enjoyed the act.
“I’m going to enjoy you,” she remembered him saying to her.
There was something in his past, or a deformity of some type. Something that he had to hide. Was it his unmoving, expressionless face that had created the monster in him? A birth defect that changed the course of his life? And what is it that he has with brunettes?
She asked these questions to herself as she brushed her brown hair behind her ear.
And then, to complicate it all, was the entirely different modus operandi-the three suicides. Four, if you included Tim Butler.
It was like almost two entirely different people perpetuated these crimes. Normally, FBI protocol would suggest that this was the work of a different person. The surveillance evidence in front of Candice, however, pointed towards a single person.
Candice took another sip of tea as she pondered this inconsistency. The sky had clouded over, and the room had grown dim. The rain had begun to fall outside the window, and a soft patter reverberated melodically on the metal fire escape outside.
The sexual sadism was likely the historical motivation. The murders dated back much farther into the past. The suicides were a more recent development. But what was the intervening event? And how did this fit together with Daniel’s murder?
Although Tim may have been a relatively easy target, getting the jump on Daniel was likely no easy feat. A military man and detective like him was acutely aware of his surroundings at all times. Daniel had been found shot in a park. It was a mechanical action. A means to an end. There was no enjoyment in the murder. It was goal-oriented.
But when the Phantom had approached her, she had seen in his eyes a flicker of enjoyment, and he had licked his lips in anticipation.
He was enjoying this.
He had special plans for her.
There was no doubt that the Phantom was a psychopath. He was someone that derived enjoyment out of killing. But he had also become an assassin. Someone had identified his skills and had retained him to carry out their work.
The Phantom was a psychopath for hire.
Chapter Fifty-Three
New York, Phineas Tower
“Petri,” said the familiar Russian accent on the handset. The voice was slow, cautious, and deliberate, probably because Russell had called Petri’s off-the-grid phone number. It was a number that Petri had confided in only a few people, including Russell.
“It’s me,” Russell said, speaking into one of Patrick’s burner Nokia cell phones. He had masked his voice the old-fashioned way, changing the pitch and speaking with a slight Chinese accent. The NSA may be monitoring the phone, but he didn’t have time to hunt down a voice distorter.
“Who?” said the voice.
“The Reverend,” Russell said.
Many years ago, Russell led a task force to hunt down a digital vandal defacing government websites. The FBI Cyber Division had pursued the hacker for weeks, but the culprit was a successful evader. NASED, as he called himself, had masked his trail through a chain of seventeen proxy servers located in successively more remote countries. He was an electronically slippery foe and NASED never operated in one physical location for more than an hour at a time. They had traced him to thirty-two different locations in Switzerland, starting in Zurich and moving southeast to the town of Bilten. There, the trail had vanished suddenly.
After another week, the case had become cold, and its priority was lowered. However, several public companies had suffered a massive reputational backlash from NASED’s antics. The hacker had exposed the lax security and potential risk to the information of hundreds of millions of people. The embarrassed executives of these businesses banded together to jointly enlist Phineas to continue the hunt. A retainer of over three million dollars was set aside for Phineas to act as a digital bounty hunter.
For all of the specializations that Phineas had, however, they had not yet significantly advanced a cyber-security division. They agreed to quarterback the investigation, but then subcontracted the electronic forensic investigation to a Washington-based cybersecurity firm. Daniel and Russell were tasked to lead the pursuit, initially, as very expensive middlemen.
However, the Phineas role became front and center in the sting that brought down NASED. The cybersecurity firm continued to have trouble pursuing NASED. Daniel and Russell approached the pursuit simply as detectives chasing a criminal. The scope of the retainer permitted them to personally investigate each library, coffee shop, and cyber café that was used by the vandal, which enabled them to create a criminal profile of NASED. Using geographic profiling, Daniel and Russell had deduced that NASED primarily operated in towns of fewer than five thousand people. He also used cafés that were within five miles of the A3 Motorway and was likely a twentyish-year-old southbound drifter.
After meticulously eliminating all known potential locations that included security cameras—the hacker only frequented businesses without this basic security feature— they found the Gemeindebibliothek Mels und Sargans, a library in Sargans, Switzerland, where they surmised he would be next.
The takedown at the cubicle where Petri was working was anticlimactic. Daniel walked up to Petri at his cubicle and asked him if he knew where the washroom was. As Petri tried to stammer out a response, Russell popped up from in front of the cubicle wall and pulled the open laptop away from the desk, preventing Petri from being able to close his computer and deactivate his hacking tools. Caught, Petri simply smiled at Russell as he introduced himself as an agent of Phineas.
“It’s about time you guys caught up to me,” he had said.
However, Russell saw promise in Petri. Petri was a white hat. An ethical hacker. Someone who served a greater good. If the internet was the Wild West or the Middle Ages, Petri was the Lone Ranger or the knight errant. The unsung hero. Russell had made that analogy early on in his pursuit. He liked to think he was a do-gooder himself. So he had created his own avatar when trapping him, only referring to himself as the Reverend. NASED was a formidable adversary. But Russell always thought he would make a useful ally.
Not only that, he was good.
He would fill a hole that Phineas was sorely missing. So Russell convinced Daniel to hire Petri for Phineas and put
his skills to use for them.
“Rev? Shit, they are looking for you!” Petri said excitedly.
“I know. I need a favor,” Russell asked as he looked out the window to see the reflection of a row of buildings in the Shing Mun River in Shatin. Russell was in a small minibus driving aimlessly in circles in the Northwest Territories. Patrick had thought of that to avoid his burner phone from being properly triangulated.
“Wait, Rev. Did you kill Daniel?” asked Petri.
“No,” said Russell.
“Did you get new girl to do it?” asked Petri.
“Of course not. I barely know her. How is she?” said Russell.
“I hear she’s holed up at home,” said Petri.
She’s alive. He was relieved. The potential loss of a rookie on her first assignment—a volunteer assignment at that—had been weighing on his mind since he’d heard a few days ago she was missing. “She’s found?” asked Russell.
“Da. It was ordeal. Claims that she escaped from abandoned school in Hoboken. That the guy you asked me to look for had imprisoned her.”
“Did they find him?”
“Nyet. But evidence that Candice, not this Phantom, killed Daniel. I was tasked to look through your emails. There are emails that go back two years. You were supposed to meet Candace night that Daniel was killed.”
“What the hell? I just met her two days before. It’s impossible,” said Russell incredulously.
“Not according to history. There’s more. You decided to plan together to kill Daniel,” said Petri. “I read metadata on emails myself. And worse of all, they found her keys and Phineas phone near Daniel’s body.”
“Could it have been tampered with?” asked Russell.
“Possibly. But if yes, this guy is good.”
“Come on, Petri. You know I’m smarter than to leave any kind of paper or digital trail like that,” said Russell.
“Da. I told them too. Most don’t believe it. But you’ve got two with you. Old man Bob Regan. Thinks computers are magic anyway, so believes that someone stole your identities and began writing story.”
Russell was glad that Bob was on his side. He was an old soldier. A veteran. Everything was black and white to him. He had never made it past the rank of detective senior. He was the type of guy that liked the thrill of the chase and had no ambition for the bullshit that came with leadership and management. He was a pit bull that shot from his hip and went with his gut. A good guy to have on your side. And Russell had always been on Regan’s good side.
“Who’s the other?” he asked.
“Candice.”
“Wait, how do you even know this?”
“Rev, you probably should not give me access to Phineas computer,” he joked.
“Okay. I need you to do something for me,” said Russell.
“What?” asked Petri.
“I need you to get me access into a computer.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Sai Kung, Hong Kong
The first night they arrived, Patrick had shown Russell and Benita to their guest rooms in a secluded part of his flat. The rooms were identically furnished with matching mahogany dressers and king-size beds. Each room also had an ensuite and views of the bay. That first night, both Russell and Benita had crashed and slept for almost twelve hours. It was only now, almost two days later, that things had started to slow down for the pair. It was evening, and Benita was looking at the mirror set on top of her dresser. She motioned for Russell to come over. He did, standing at her door and looking in at her standing near the chest in a tank top and sweats.
“What do you think is going to happen?“ asked Benita. “Do you think we can pull it off?”
He was still mesmerized by her every word. Russell looked into her big brown eyes. The last forty-eight hours had only served to intensify the crush that Russell had on her.
“Yes,” he said. He had no basis for saying that. He didn’t know if their plan would work. All they could do was strategize, prepare, and anticipate. This plan left much more to luck than he would typically accommodate as a situational parameter in a Phineas mission. But there were limited options. He just wanted to pretend that everything was going to be okay.
“How can you say that?” said Benita, breaking eye contact with him and looking down at the floor. “Here we are, two brand-new criminals leaving behind a smashed-up Mercedes, a shot-up government drone, and a terrified Mong Kok. And now we are planning to break into an international business. How do you keep so damn positive?” There was a nervousness in her voice, a quiver of fear and a hint of anger. She kept staring downwards, focusing on nothing in particular.
Russell laughed. He had no right answer for her question, so he said nothing. They just existed for the time being, in awkward silence.
Then he moved in for the kiss.
As he closed his eyes, Russell saw her lift her head to face him, closing her eyes as she reciprocated further by leaning forward. Their lips lingered softly together, and when he broke his kiss, he just looked at her. There were no more words to say. They couldn’t hold back their passion anymore. He could feel the hunger in the tenacity in which she pushed her lips against his and the speed at which her hands slid up his chest.
He lifted her up gently and pushed her against the mirror, once again pressing his lips on hers. Her body sank slightly as she responded and placed her arms around the nape of his neck. After they made out intensely on the dresser, she wrapped her legs around him as he picked her up and carried her back to the bed.
Once on the bed, he continued kissing her, first on her lips, then working his way to her right ear. She moaned as he worked his way from her ear down her neck. He then pulled off her t-shirt, bra, and sweats. Demure and docile, she let him take over.
After an hour, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling. His arm was around her as she nuzzled into his chest, softly breathing.
At this moment, Russell felt content for the first time in years.
Chapter Fifty-Five
For the next ten days, Russell and Benita holed up in Sai Kung as Patrick had his men surveil Mauritius at Fuengirola Holdings. Patrick stationed some of his low-level gangsters, both in and outside the building, with instructions that Mauritius was associated with a rival gang member considering introducing his own people into the Western Boy’s turf. This resulted in Mauritius being under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. Russell thought it ironic having criminals do his investigation for him.
The trio passed the time in Patrick’s war room perfecting an insertion plan into Fuengirola. The intelligence that Patrick had been able to gather for Russell was spotty. They knew that Mauritius generally arrived at the building at 7:15 a.m. in the morning and stayed in his office until 1:30 p.m. He then had a short lunch at Prince Restaurant on the atrium level before returning to his office from 2 to 8 p.m. Mauritius, Elva, and Dominique were always the last to leave the office at 9 p.m.
“Daytime is run pretty tight. What do you think about a night entry?” Patrick said to Russell.
“Normally, I prefer a night approach,” said Russell. “But this is a secure business tower. There’s the front-desk security, floor access by keycard, and then an office keycard. The elevators will obviously be monitored as well. They are on an older system that is not internet connected, so it will be hard for Petri to hack into as well.”
“Okay,” said Patrick.
“However, there is a typhoon coming in on Thursday. Most people are going to stay at home or go to a typhoon party. There’ll be minimal office workers on that day. Just enough for us to blend into the crowd, but not enough that they get in the way. Plus, the Observer is going to be moored in a typhoon shelter and out of the skies. Same with the drones and airships.”
Benita said, “The noon window is when Mauritius isn’t at his office. This is when we gain access to his computer and plug in this USB stick.” She placed a small, unlabeled USB stick on the table. “It’ll install an application that will give P
etri remote access to Mauritius’s computer. Obviously, Mauritius will find it, probably sooner instead of later, but we’re hoping that it’ll go undetected for some time while Petri does his work.”
Russell spoke again. “Now, one of your guys, Lan, deserves some kind of promotion, or whatever it is in your world. He managed to obtain blueprints for the tower. I didn’t want to ask how he did it. Another of your guys walked up and down all ninety-nine floors of the building. The access to Fuengirola from the internal stairwell is secured with an electronic access panel. He didn’t have a keycard, but I do.”
Russell put his Phineas phone on the table.
“I skimmed the receptionist’s keycard the last time I was there. The problem is that once I reinsert the battery into the phone, it’s going to remotely send the phone’s GPS coordinates to Phineas. Which means we don’t have much time to act. I’d give myself fifteen minutes to gain entry to his office and confirm access by Petri. Once we have information on Fuengirola, Benita and Petri will run a social media blitz.”
“Social media blitz?” Patrick asked as he examined the Phineas phone.
Benita spoke. “Yes. We’re going to leak everything before Mauritius can cover up. I’ve been working with Petri to put together a social media explosion. He‘s a crypto millionaire. He used some of his Monero holdings to buy hacked passwords for a large number of accounts—social media tech influencers, government communications accounts and even key persons in traditional media. We’ll have our message hit all of these accounts at once. It will then be retweeted within seconds to hundreds of millions of followers. Easiest way to make something go viral. He won’t be able to contain it.”