by David Archer
“Okay, Professor, what I want you to do is leave your stick in your pocket, but go at her like you're determined to grab hold of her throat. Don't really strangle her, 'cause I think she likes you and that might piss her off, just try to get your hands on her throat and then see what happens.”
Carson grinned and shrugged, then turned to face Anita. She was smiling, and winked at him again. “Come on, big boy, show me what you got!”
Carson began bouncing on his feet, dancing around her for a moment before he lunged. When he did, she seemed to just stand there and wait for him, and he got his hands around her throat easily.
Suddenly, without any warning, Anita punched him in his Adam's apple. She had curled her fingers so that the second knuckles made impact on his throat, and he suddenly lost all interest in trying to choke her. He was coughing and gagging, and his hands went to his own throat as he tried to stifle the gag reflex.
The crowd erupted in laughter, and Carson saw that Johnny and Anita were laughing, as well. He shook his head as he managed to breathe again, then smiled at the girl. “That was pretty slick,” he said.
“Slick, yeah, but did you catch it? That little trick works every time, because it's the last thing anybody expects. Even if they try to keep their chin down so you can't do it, just trying to keep hold of your throat means they're going to be moving around, because you'll be fighting. That chin is going to pop up, and that's when you strike.” He turned around and looked at the crowd. “Got any volunteers? Somebody big, come on.”
A big Hispanic man stepped forward, and Johnny clapped him on the back. “Hey, Manuel, get in there and try to choke my boy, would you?”
Manuel grinned and moved toward Carson, as Anita stepped back to stand by Johnny. He faced Carson for a moment, still grinning, and then the two of them began circling each other. Manuel moved quickly, grabbing at Carson's throat, but Carson slapped his hands and was able to spin away. They continued circling, and Carson ducked his grip three more times before the big Hispanic finally got his hands locked around his throat.
As Johnny had predicted, Manuel tried to keep his chin down so that Carson couldn't get to his Adam's apple, but Carson was fighting like a madman. Manuel was squeezing, though not too hard, and Carson wanted to break free. He kicked at the man, jerking and twisting and trying to get away, and that's when he saw his opening. Manuel's head went back for a second, and Carson struck.
The result was immediate. Manuel's eyes went wide, and his hands relaxed their grip. Carson shoved both hands up between the other man's arms, and he was free.
The crowd broke into applause, and two more men stepped up to volunteer. Johnny sent one of them to Carson, and the scene was repeated. This time, Carson let the man get hold of him more easily, so that he could practice the move. It took a few more seconds to get an opening, but then he was able to strike the man in the throat. He punched a little harder this time, and the fellow let go of him instantly.
The third man wasn't quite as easy. He had watched carefully, and was determined to keep his chin down. He had a good grip on Carson's throat, not actually choking him, but definitely cutting off circulation, and Carson was beginning to feel the effects. He was fighting again, kicking and punching the man in an attempt to get him to raise his chin for just a split second, but the best he could manage was a very slight gap between chin and chest. He waited until he saw an opportunity, then straightened his fingers and drove the fingertips in under the man's chin.
It worked, and his opponent gagged and grabbed at his own throat. The crowd roared, and Johnny motioned to Carson to come close.
“Now, the reason I wanted you to learn that is because it gives you an instant advantage,” he said. “As soon as he lets go of you, then you go for the kill. You take the palm of your hand and shove it just as hard as you can right into the base of his nose. That will drive pieces of bone right into his brain, and it will usually kill him instantly. If it doesn't, he'll go down and you can crush his throat with your foot. Think you've got it?”
Carson nodded. “Oh, yeah, I've got it. It's a good move, and I appreciate you teaching it to me.”
“It works. Most of the bigger men, sooner or later they go for your throat, they figure they can choke you to death. They don't realize they're giving you the best possible chance to take them out when they do it.”
“I'm gonna remember it,” Anita said. “I fight again on Saturday, and I'm going up against Elma Whiteley. She's probably the biggest bitch in the place, and about as mean as they come. She's won several of her fights by strangling her opponent, so I'm really glad I learned this now.”
Johnny smiled. “Yeah, I thought you might like it,” he said.
“Just out of curiosity,” Carson said, “why didn't you teach me this sooner? What's the point of the stick, if this is so effective?”
“The point is to do as much damage to your opponent as you can during the fight. He'll probably go for your throat at some point, and that's when you use this trick, but until then you want to do all the damage to him you can. That stick gives you the chance to wear him down, to make him hurt in a lot of different places. All of that pain builds up, and it will make him desperate to put you down. That's what you want, you want desperate, because that's when they’ll make a mistake. Grabbing you by the throat and letting you get that close, that's a big mistake. He'll be expecting you to go for his balls, so he'll keep his legs together and try to block you that way, but there's no way he can constantly keep his chin down while you're struggling. If you still got your stick, go for his eye, jab it in his ear, whatever you have to do. The idea is to make him raise his chin, because if you can get to his throat that way, he's exposed his most vulnerable point and you're going to win. Winning means survival, so do whatever you have to do.”
“Why not just go for his nose while he's choking me? Wouldn't that make more sense?”
Johnny shook his head. “It might work, but it probably won't. You'll be too close, and can't get the right angle to drive it up into his brain. Your best bet is to hit that Adam's apple, make him think you've crushed his throat, which you haven't, and then go for the nose. I haven't found anyone yet who doesn't let go and grab his own throat when you do that. Usually, he even closes his eyes, so he doesn't see what you're about to do. You've got him, you own him at that moment, so that's when you go for the kill.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“Mr. Langley? There's a call for you, somebody who won't give his name.”
Stephen Langley looked at the image of the receptionist and frowned. “Okay, I'll take it,” he said. He poked the icon on his HD for the call, and the screen filled with the image of a man wearing a mask.
Langley gasped. “Holy crap,” he said, “are you really…”
“Call me Demetrius,” the masked man said, his voice obviously distorted. “I'd like to speak to you about the rape case you worked on a couple of days ago. I understand that you originally said the DNA from the kit taken off the victim was a perfect match for three previous rapes. Is that correct?”
Langley's eyebrows lowered. “Yeah, it's a perfect match. Why are you asking?”
“You should take a look at the report. I'd like you to tell me whether or not it has been altered.”
Langley stared at the masked face for a moment, then minimized the screen and poked the icon to bring up his reports. He selected the one from the most recent rape case and began reading. His eyes went wide when he saw how it differed from the way he had originally written it. “No, no, no! This is all wrong, how could this happen?”
“As I said,” the distorted voice said, “I have information suggesting that the report has been altered. Do you have any way to prove what you put in the original report?”
Langley thought about it for a moment. “No, the problem is that everything is kept in the cloud, now. We make one report, and then it's available to any agency that needs it. I mean, I know what I said, but there's no way to prove that this isn't my report
.”
“What about the sample? Is it still available to test again?”
Langley's eyes went wide. “Yes! We have to keep the samples in case the court wants to order a new test. I can run it again, make an amended report over this one.”
He brought up the caller on screen again. “Would it be possible,” the man asked, “for you to run the tests, then file the report in a different location? Somewhere it won't be found, to be altered again?”
Langley nodded. “Yeah, I can hide it in my own personal notes, but why? Why wouldn't you want me to go ahead and overwrite this one?”
“Because I'm currently investigating who might have made the alterations, and for now I need to keep them from knowing that you have discovered it. Your correct report will be necessary to bringing that person to justice. We can't take a risk that he could find it and alter it, as well.”
Langley licked his lips. “Look, I'm not even supposed to be talking to you. If anyone finds out, I could get into a lot of trouble. Oh, crap, the receptionist!”
“Don't worry about the receptionist. I used a different image while I spoke to her, so she thinks I'm just a balding, middle-aged man. No one but you and I know what this call is about—I took the precaution of using double encryption. If your call is being recorded, all anyone will ever hear is a repeat of a call you took a year ago.”
“Okay, that's a relief,” Langley said. “The last thing I need is to get in trouble for talking to a terrorist.”
“We are not terrorists, Mr. Langley. We are simply people who want the world to know the truth of what's going on. An innocent man was convicted of the previous rapes, and he will probably go to his death very soon. If we can prove the deliberate involvement of the police and the magistrates, we might finally wake some of the people up, and then the world can begin to take itself back from its oppressors. I will call you again when the time comes for you to replace that report. Until then, keep it between us.”
The caller vanished, and the screen closed. Langley quickly went into his call log and checked, but the mysterious man had been right; the call that seemed to have been recorded was one that he remembered from more than a year earlier.
Langley sat back and thought about what it would be like to have such skills. A moment later, he shook his head and got up to get the rape kit from the refrigerator. It would take less than an hour to run the DNA tests again, and then he would write an accurate report and hide it until it was needed.
* * * * *
Mitchell was ecstatic. In a very short time, he would be able to prove that the rape kit report had been altered, edited to make it look like the rapist was not the same one from the past. There was no doubt in his mind that Haywood Pennyfarthing was the one who had done it, and so it was time to begin looking into that particular inspector.
He worked his way into CDPA's personnel files, and began looking over Mr. Pennyfarthing's records. Strangely, there weren't many. It seemed that Inspector Pennyfarthing must work on his own schedule, for he only seemed to file reports on rare occasions. That struck Mitchell as odd, so he began looking through the man's accounts.
First was his email account, but that only reinforced the impression that Pennyfarthing worked rarely. The account was several years old, and yet there were less than a hundred emails, sent or received. The most recent ones involved Professor Pace and the rape case. The very last one, sent only two days earlier, explicitly told an Inspector Hansen that Langley's report proved conclusively that the rapist was not the same one from the previous attacks, and that Professor Pace was absolutely guilty.
It dawned on Mitchell that Haywood Pennyfarthing must be a digital man, a false person created by someone else and assigned to the Special Unit. That meant that someone else, almost certainly another policeman, was using the account illegally.
He scanned the cloud for other signs of Pennyfarthing's activities, and found several. It seemed that Pennyfarthing had been keeping track of various people, and one of them was Carson Pace. Mitchell skimmed over the rest of the names, recording them in a digital notepad, and then began looking them up.
He hit pay dirt on the first try. Charlotte Reynolds, one of the people Pennyfarthing had been watching, was the Domestic Partner of Carson Pace. It was possible that she was being watched as part of the investigation into the professor, but something about it just didn't feel right. Mitchell brought up another browser and googled Ms. Reynolds.
She was an author of romance novels, but was still listed as the DP of Professor Pace. Mitchell noticed, however, that she had only the day before changed her address. When he looked up the address, he began to feel a buzz of excitement. That address was listed as the home of CDPA Inspector Martin James.
He immediately looked up James in the CDPA database, and began going through his records. James had met Ms. Reynolds when she witnessed an attack some time earlier, down on Ground Level. That attack had happened just around the same time that Pennyfarthing had begun watching the couple, and Mitchell knew he had found his connection.
Returning to Pennyfarthing's accounts, he began examining the login records. Sure enough, almost every login to the account had come from James's terminals.
The question was, how could a common police inspector set up such an incredibly powerful profile? A quick search of James's personnel record gave him the answer. The man had once spent six months working in the personnel department, and his duties had included entering officers' personnel information and duty assignments. It would have been a simple matter for him to create Pennyfarthing and place him in the Special Investigations Unit, keeping the login and password so that he could access that profile anytime he chose.
It was time to make another call, but first he changed Pennyfarthing's password. It wouldn't do for James to be able to get into the account and delete it, not now.
* * * * *
Martin was just returning to the station after serving a warrant when his holo-tab chimed. He didn't recognize the caller ID, so he waited until he was in his office to answer.
“Inspector James,” he said, and then he froze. The image that appeared on the display was of a man wearing a mask, and Martin recognized it instantly. A shiver went down his spine as he realized that a call from Demetrius could not be good.
“Good morning, Inspector,” said a distorted voice. “I'm certain you know who I am, so we will dispense with formalities. I am calling you about your alter ego, Haywood Pennyfarthing.”
Martin felt sweat rolling down from his forehead, but kept his face impassive. “Alter ego? I'm not sure what you mean…”
“Inspector, let us not play games. I have already found all the evidence I need to prove that you created Inspector Pennyfarthing and have been using his profile and accounts for your own personal agenda. That agenda included framing an innocent man for a series of rapes, an innocent man who will soon be fighting for his life. This makes you part of the problem that Nostrado has been fighting for many years, but we are not without mercy. I am calling to give you one chance to save yourself.”
Martin was trembling, but doing his best to suppress it. “Look, whoever you are, I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe if you come in, we could sit down and…”
“As I said, Inspector, you have one chance. If you cooperate with me, I will make certain that no one finds out you were behind the creation of Inspector Pennyfarthing, but if you do not, I will expose you in great and graphic detail.”
Swallowing hard, Martin surrendered. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to launch an official investigation into Pennyfarthing's activities. Your reason for the investigation will be an anonymous tip that the inspector has been manipulating evidence in order to secure convictions against innocent people. Of course, it will soon come out that Pennyfarthing does not actually exist, but I will have erased all traces of his creation by that point. You will be clear, and I will feed you the necessary data to prove that Professor Carson Pace is in fact i
nnocent, and was the victim of whoever is behind Inspector Pennyfarthing's activities.”
Martin was chewing his bottom lip, but he forced himself to stop. “How do I know you won't leave me hung out to dry? If I run this investigation, our IT department will start tracing how that profile was created and used. All of that would lead back to me.”
“I'm certain you know how good our people are,” the voice said. “I assure you, I will make certain that it cannot come back to haunt you. The reason behind that promise is very simple. I will need you again, sometime in the near future. I'm sure you're smart enough to know that I will keep all of the evidence against you, ready to release it if you ever refuse my requests.”
Martin sat there and stared at the display for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “Okay, you win,” he said. “You keep me clean, and I'll be your boy.”
“I'm so glad you're an intelligent man, Inspector. Launch your investigation today, and I will be in touch.”
The display went blank, and Martin collapsed back into his chair. His mind was racing, trying to figure out just how badly this problem was going to impact his life, but he slowly got his breathing and anxiety under control. Charlotte had made it clear that, even if Carson had come home, she had decided she wanted to be with him. At this point, finding out that Carson truly was innocent might assuage some of her guilt, but he didn't believe it would cause her to go running back to her former DP.
His holo-tab chimed again, telling him that he had received an email on his official account. He logged on to the desk terminal and opened it. The message contained a lot of information, all of it relevant to Inspector Pennyfarthing's efforts to frame Carson Pace as a rapist. It even included copies of the email exchange between Hansen and Pennyfarthing, and a copy of the logs from the crime lab showing that Pennyfarthing had logged into its database just before sending the final email.