Dark Web

by T. J. Brearton

  “Wow. Berserk.”

  “What I found in other messages though was that Billy Sweet Tea had been terrorizing other gamers, too. Sweet Tea is a big player. Though it’s free to play, you can spend real money in the game for ‘bullion,’ and use that as currency to buy troops and speed up building and training processes. Sweet Tea was a giant compared to other players.”

  “But he didn’t appreciate it when Fresco started hitting him day after day,” Swift said, trying to follow along.

  “No. He most certainly did not.”

  “Are there direct threats?”

  “There’s one.”

  She handed Swift a sheet she had already pulled out and set aside. Swift snatched it and read it eagerly.

  fresco i see you got your try-hard pants on today, good 4 you. now listen here you stupid fvck, u keep this shit up go right ahead private tryhard, i’mma find u, not in the game, i know all your hideouts in here dumbshit but I’m gonna find you in real life and I’m going to kill you. you and everyone in your fucked family. you failed to even help your little butt-buddy too. You probably fail a lot in life don’t u? you hear me u stupid little fck? U must be a little kid LMAO. But you’re playing a big boy game now little kid. I’ll be seeing you. keep yer light on for me. – billy

  “Jesus,” Swift said, leaning back, holding the sheet up in front of his eyes with one hand, pawing at his jaw with the other. “This is it, right here. Sweet Tea says he’s going to kill Fresco. Find him and kill him and kill his whole family.”

  Kim Yom looked at Swift, expressionless. She was capable of divorcing herself from any emotion during a case, which was partly why she was so efficient, Swift knew. But he couldn’t help get excited himself.

  “This could be the threat that gives us intent.”

  “Or it could be two kids talking tough. You build that into your prosecution — worse, hinge it on that — and the defense shoots it right down, saying that the language only refers to in-game strategy. Rile your opponent. Get them to make a mistake.”

  “Yeah but this is the kind of stuff that causes kids to jump off bridges.” He thought of Mathis, who’d been looking to carve out a possible case of cyber-bullying, maybe a hate crime.

  She blinked at him. He knew just by looking in her eyes and hearing the words come out of his mouth that what they had was still circumstantial, no matter how scathing and brutal it read.

  “How do we connect Sweet Tea to Robert Darring? I mean come on. We’ve got the kid admitting he played the game. Got him at the scene of the crime, with a real, real shaky story about why he’s there. What if we got his personal computer?”

  “That might help.”

  She sounded doubtful. Or just unenthused, and it was starting to irk Swift just a little bit. They had this kid, dammit. He was five miles away, sitting in County lock-up, cooling his heels. They had him, and here was his online alter-ego, issuing threats. There was motive now — revenge for Braxton Simpkins’ aggressive retaliation in a war game.

  “We get a warrant, we search his place, we get his computer, we find, just like with the victim, he plays this game online and there’s his username and there’s his password and boom, we got him.” Swift slapped the printout against the palm of his hand.

  “It’s possible,” said Kim.

  He searched her face. Dammit, Kim. “Or what? We get the data from the servers in San Francisco. You said we could do that, right? With Federal intervention?”

  “We could do that, too. That could take much longer, but have far more evidentiary value.”

  “Why?” Swift’s angst was coming through in his voice. “Why would getting this guy’s computer and showing that it’s him, he’s this Sweet Tea player . . . why wouldn’t that hold up? Why are you skeptical?”

  “It’s not my place to say.”

  “What? What are you talking about, Kim? Of course it’s your place.”

  “You’re lead investigator, John. I’m your cyber-crime specialist.”

  “Well, this is a goddamn cyber-crime.” He glared at her, and then took a breath. “Please excuse my French.”

  “Oh I speak French. It’s not a problem.”

  She fell silent. She was letting him work it out.

  “You think he’s smart,” said Swift.

  “It takes a certain intellect to navigate the deep web effectively.”

  “You think there’s no way his computer is sitting on his desk in an apartment in Queens with an incriminating username and password waiting to be discovered.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “And you don’t think he’s entirely alone in his . . . activities.”

  “Probably not.”

  Swift felt himself deflate, and he sat back. He tossed the paper onto the desk in front of them. After a moment he said, “Well, we’re going to try anyway.”

  “I would expect no less.”

  He glanced at her. “And you’re going to see about getting the data straight from the gaming servers.”

  “Say the word.”

  “I’m saying the word. Let’s put the spark to a bigger barrel. Go federal. Put me in touch with whoever. I’m assuming there’s an investigation into the Kapow hack?”

  Kim nodded.

  “We’ve got to tie this kid to these messages, to this game.”

  “I understand.”

  He sniffed, and scratched at his jaw some more, looking around the room, his gaze at last falling on the computer screen. “Why’s he just sitting there?”

  “Darring?”

  “Just sitting in lock-up. Like this is all in a day’s work for him. Like he’s not afraid.”

  “Because of one other thing I have yet to tell you.”

  Swift’s eyes opened wide.

  “Probably because the Billy Sweet Tea player is still active. He was online just this morning.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Mike found Callie standing in the kitchen, staring into space. He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “What’s next? You talked to the detective earlier?”

  “I did. He said he was working on something, closing in on the bad guys, and blah blah blah.”

  “Did he tell you what the autopsy report was?”

  “He said he wanted to meet with us first thing in the morning.”

  “First thing in the morning?” She buried her face in her hands in front of him. “I don’t know if I can take this anymore.” She pulled her hands away. “Mike? What are we going to do with him?”

  He didn’t have to ask her what she meant. He’d put in a call to the funeral home and made some preparations, but, ultimately, he hadn’t known what to tell them. Their son was, at the moment, evidence in a homicide case. They didn’t know how long it was going to take, and they didn’t know what they were going to do once they got Braxton back.

  “Mike, we have to decide.”

  “I know.”

  They both heard the vehicle turn into the driveway. Mike and Callie moved side by side to the front door and peered out together at the news van pulling up. As the doors of the van opened, Callie was already putting on her shoes.

  “Honey,” Mike said.

  She grabbed a coat off the rack by the door.

  “Babe,” Mike said. “Let me.”

  But she threw open the door and stepped out without responding to him. At first he was tempted to follow and scanned the floor for his own shoes, but then thought of the girls. Hannah, having a much-needed nap late in the day, was not clinging to her mother at the moment because she was sleeping. Reno was lying on her stomach on the living room floor with a book. Mike looked at her, and she back at him, her head in her little hands.

  “S’okay, honey,” he said. He turned and looked back outside as Callie reached the van. Already she was gesticulating, and Mike could see her lips moving, her eyes wide. The reporter and the cameraman looked like they’d experienced this sort of thing before, but the cameraman started to get back in the tru
ck while the reporter shouted across the hood at him. Then Callie turned to the reporter and stood toe-to-toe with her — and her hands were really flying.

  “Go easy, go easy,” Mike whispered against the windowpane.

  The reporter stumbled back as Callie got in her face, inches away from the woman’s beak of a nose. It took the reporter a moment to steady her footing, and then she shouted back at Callie with righteous indignation.

  “Ah shit,” Mike said.

  But, it worked. The reporter got back in the van, too, pointing and shouting holy hell at Callie, no doubt arguing that Callie’s situation was tragic, yes, but it was no excuse for this kind of assault, that she was just a woman with a job to do.

  Yeah, Mike thought. You got a job to do. Spread more misery. Did the world need to learn about yet another tragedy? What good did it do anybody? They might lament a tragedy with their social networking friends, maybe donate their ten dollars via text. Then they’d forget about it all twenty-four hours later.

  Callie strode back to the house as the van made a hasty exit down the driveway. The reporter cut the wheel so hard to turn around that the van slid in the snow. For a horrible moment Mike thought it would plow right into the snowbank and then they’d have two highly agitated news people stuck in their front yard. But the tires grabbed some traction and the van stopped, turned, and shot back out and onto 9N.

  * * *

  Callie came in the front door, a blast of cold air on her heels. “Bitch,” she said under her breath.

  “Honey, listen . . .”

  She snapped a hard look at him. “What? We’re in it now, Mike. Know what she said? She saw the detective from our case. Yeah, up in South Plattsburgh. She knew, Mike. She was saying things about . . .”

  “Mom?”

  Callie looked down at Reno. “It’s okay honey.” She took Mike by the elbow and led him to the kitchen. Mike could smell the crisp winter air on her skin. “Be right back, baby,” she said to Reno over her shoulder.

  In the kitchen, her voice was breathy and frantic. “You hear what I’m saying? What happens when the rest of the press knows who his biological father was? What happens when they all make that connection? There’ll be more like her. I won’t be able to back them off with a few idle threats.”

  “Well I’m pissed at the troopers. That one cop said there would be someone posted here.” Mike put his hands on his hips and looked out the front window. He debated telling her that he had called Bull. That maybe there was a way to get some outside help. That they didn’t really have any friends here. Sarah was one thing, but hers wasn’t the type of help Mike was thinking of.

  “I’m upset, Mike.”

  “I know that.”

  He stepped closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Her arms were trembling at her sides. “We’ll have Brax . . .” she said. “We’ll have him cr . . . He can be crem . . .”

  She was trying to say cremated. She’d jumped back to the conversation they’d been having before the reporters arrived. Her face contorted as she struggled not to lose her emotional footing.

  And then her shaking subsided. The transformation was something to behold; an expression came over Callie’s face like he hadn’t seen since the early days, when she was coming to grips with the wreck of her first relationship, the abuse she’d endured, the child she’d had in the middle of it all.

  “We need protection,” Mike said.

  “Protection?” She pointed out of the room, indicating the reporters who had sped off into the snow. “From them?”

  “From them, from anyone. From Tori.”

  She glared at him for a minute. Then she turned and walked off. Mike glanced into the living room. Reno’s head had ducked back into her book. She’d been watching, listening. How much more of this could his daughters take? He followed his wife.

  * * *

  She was in Braxton’s room, compulsively folding clothes that sat in a laundry basket. Mike dimly realized that neither of them had gone into Braxton’s room since the night before his death. There was dirty laundry in there. An unmade bed. Investigators’ footprints. They had tramped through, looking over all of his stuff, taking his computer and his phone and his school and personal notebooks. He had wondered if she would ever be able to go in there. She was trying to be strong, but this was a living nightmare.

  She slowly turned and looked at him, and he moved close to her.

  “Brax was trying to protect us, to protect the girls.”

  “She didn’t know what she meant. She’s just a girl.”

  “Come on, Cal,” he said, reaching for her, taking her arm. “You know better than that.”

  She pulled away. “Don’t tell me what I know.” But her words had lost their vehemence. Being in Braxton’s room calmed her somehow. It was like she was recharging in here, centering.

  Mike spoke in a whisper, leaning close. “He’s out there. Tori is out there. He had contact with Braxton and wanted to take him, I don’t know — maybe kill us all. Braxton went out as a peace offering and . . .”

  “I can’t believe you kept that from me.”

  “. . . And he was trying to keep us safe. Now that’s my job. I’m going to protect us, but not like Braxton.”

  He looked around his son’s room. The bed in the corner with the plaid sheets still a mess. The poster of The Hobbit on the wall. The old video game console piled in the corner, forgotten. His sneakers, unlaced, tongues out, on the floor. For God’s sake the kid hadn’t even been wearing his shoes when he left.

  “You kept that from me and you didn’t tell me about the money problems either, Mike.” Her voice was low, too. Calm. She was folding a shirt of Braxton’s — a Hurley shirt, with a bright yellow X-shape on the front, and keeping her head down. “What else don’t I know about my husband?”

  He felt taken aback. “What?”

  She looked up. “You want to tell me when you started smoking?” Her eyes were cool and distant.

  She must’ve smelled it on him.

  “That what you were doing last night when I woke up and you were gone?”

  He didn’t have anything to say.

  “Or at the hospital?” She dropped a folded pair of jeans and crossed her arms. It was like being in her son’s room had not only centered her, but emboldened her. Not that Callie needed much to embolden her; Mike just hadn’t been expecting this.

  “Honey . . .”

  “All these years you never smoked. I’m not that stupid. And I don’t care if you do smoke. It’s just, you know, something a husband tells a wife. ‘You know, I used to smoke.’ Right? Simple. Not telling me that. That’s fucking weird, Mike. Makes me wonder. Makes me wonder about other things. About you in New York, and your friends. You never say much about your youth. I know you and your dad had it out somehow, but I let that go. I figured it was normal father son stuff. But Jesus, Mike, you never told me you smoked. You’ve picked it up again, you’re going off in the night. We have money problems, you don’t tell me. Braxton’s fucking biological father starts emailing him, you email back and threaten the guy’s life, you don’t tell me. Who are you, Mike? You want to tell me that?”

  “Callie, I’m not him. I’m not Tori. Don’t treat me like this.” Mike could feel the hurt and anger begin to rise.

  “You’re a man,” Callie said. He’d never heard her speak like that before. Totally detached. Unemotional. As if medicated. So much for being centered. “You’re all like that. Your idea of protection just gets people hurt. Just like Braxton got hurt. You tried to protect him by threatening Tori, and look what h—”

  Mike slammed his fist down on the dresser. Braxton’s things — his wallet and chain, a necklace, a belt, trading cards, a cup still half-filled with grape juice — all shook. The belt slipped off the top, the cup spilled and grape juice ran down the side of the dresser and pattered onto the carpet.

  Callie looked at him silently. Her expression was flat and mournful and righteous at the same time. It said ever
ything. He had just proved her point.

  She pushed past him and walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  A day passed. McAfferty was still at large. The search grid covered half the state of New York, into Vermont, and border patrol was on high-alert all along the edge of Canada. Video surveillance was scrutinized, passport checks were vigorous, tourists were pulled over and searched. Kim Yom continued to surf the web using Tor. She’d retreated to her motel. She said it was quieter there, and Swift knew the substation was cramped. He spent three hours during the afternoon ignoring the phones and business of the station, tucked over the keyboard of his own desktop PC, trying something he never had before.

  Since his last meeting with Kim Yom, he hadn’t been able to get the child pornography racket off his mind. It wasn’t really something you wanted invading your thoughts, but Kim’s mention of the FBI stings had given him an idea. Once online, he surfed to the Kapow website and selected the game The Don. To join was fairly simple — you needed a legitimate email account and had to create a user name and password. He worried about the integrity of Kapow, about giving out his personal information. So he created a new email account for himself, replete with a fake name and birthdate (he made himself twenty-five years old), and used this for the game. As he went through these simple steps he realized that, even without Tor, there were simple tricks for hiding your identity online. He was sure his true identity was still discoverable to anyone with the know-how to access it. He wondered about the strange emails he’d continued to receive over the past couple of days, and how his debit card had failed to function, despite having sufficient funds in the account. He thought he would mention this to Kim at their next meeting and see what she thought. She was like an IT therapist. He grinned to himself.

  And then grew serious as he wondered if it was somehow connected — the hold on the debit card and the hack of Kapow, the incursion into the victim’s laptop.

  Setting himself up with the fake email and user account had taken him nearly an hour. He felt like an old dog, willing to learn but slow to grasp new tricks. Then the next obstacle. He needed to introduce himself to other players in the chat window. He watched the stream of chatter for a while, and noticed that you could click on each player name, which brought you to a profile. Each had varying levels of Power, Respect, and Experience. Here he was, what the gaming crowd called a “noob,” without any experience points to his name — Kady. If he started asking questions, or looked for another player, he might arouse suspicion. So he spent the second hour teaching himself how to play. It was slow going. Each upgrade to a resource building in the game took time. The more advanced the level of building, the longer the time it took. The same went for building the troops, his army, to attack others. Within an hour he’d exhausted his resources and had built little.