Executioner's Lament

by Justin Rishel

  “Including Ventana.” Aubrey rubbed his chin and looked at Malina. “We know why Dr. Alkorn would go after Jorgetson, but why Binns-Lourdes?” He moved to the couch and sat heavily. Resting his head in his hands, he spoke through his fingers. “See if Binns’s investment firm had anything to do with Ventana.”

  Malina’s chair creaked as she spun to face her impromptu work station. He heard keys tapping and Malina humming to herself. It only took her a moment to find out.

  “Actually, yeah, they did.”

  Aubrey looked up.

  “Binns’s firm, Binn Capital, was an early investor in Ventana and a minority stakeholder with one and a half percent ownership. No seat on the board, but still influential.”

  That’s a relief, Aubrey thought. The MO was intact, all the victims were connected to Ventana.

  “Okay, so Alkorn and OFP had a motive to target them too,” Alkorn said. “The question of claiming responsibility still lingers, though.”

  “Maybe they didn’t have OFP on board yet. Maybe they were just testing the toxin or chemical or whatever. This would have been before they were arrested, so it couldn’t have been out of revenge like the others.”

  Aubrey shook his head. “Or Alkorn simply knew he and the team were going to be arrested. The arrest records showed the plot to steal from Ventana went back months. These people are exceptionally smart. They would have planned ahead.”

  He shook his head again. They were getting off track. They needed to refocus on the two families and the kids. Somehow, the unknown doctor was key. “Do you have financial records for the Binns-Lourdes and the Jorgetsons? And by that, I mean personal financial records.”

  She spun to face him and nodded. “Of course.”

  “See if there are any common payments both families made to a person or company. Let’s see if anything stands out.”

  Malina nodded again and reached for a large tablet lying on the desk. She handed it to Aubrey, then tapped a few commands on her own tablet.

  “Okay. Now you should have what I have.” She pointed at him, still staring down at her tablet. “Everyone they made mutual payments to in the last six months is highlighted.”

  Aubrey looked down the spreadsheet. It had two columns, one for each family. There was a mix of bank account draft payments, credit cards, and other electronic payments.

  He tapped the menu and filtered the lists to show only the highlighted cells. There were dozens of payments made to same companies or vendors, but nothing stood out. The Binns-Lourdes and Jorgetson families both used the same utilities provider, landscaper, and grocery delivery service. The rest were a mix of party planners, tutors, coaches, and decorators.

  No company or individual appeared to be obviously medical.

  “Unless I’m missing something …” Malina began.

  “You’re not. Nothing here looks like a doctor’s office or any medical service of any kind.”

  Aubrey threw the tablet across the couch. He hated the feeling like they were so close to an answer but couldn’t see it. He didn’t understand how so much medical equipment could just show up at those homes. The parents had to pay for it somehow, especially if they didn’t report the BSS to a hospital.

  Someone had to pay for it, he thought.

  He sat up straight. Someone had to pay for the treatment.

  “Here’s something,” Malina said, breaking his chain of thought.

  “What,” he said, distracted.

  “Looks like a payment to Nebular Medical Group. For five thousand dollars and some change.”

  Aubrey reached across the sofa and picked up the tablet again, scanning for the entry.

  “I don’t see it.” He scanned the lists several times but didn’t see anything for Nebular Medical.

  “It’s only on the Binns-Lourdes list, but it might be something.”

  He turned off the spreadsheet’s filter and saw the transaction. “What do Nebular Medical do?”

  Malina turned in her chair and began typing. After a moment, she said, “Nebular Medical Group designs and manufactures neuromuscular electrical stimulation devices. Whatever that is.”

  He watched her scan the screen. Apparently, she was a speed reader too. “Nebular’s devices use finely tuned electrical signals to stimulate muscular tissue. They’re used mostly for physical therapy for accident and stroke victims. Coma patients use them also to prevent atrophy.”

  Aubrey stood and walked to Malina’s side. He squinted at the screen and motioned for her to scroll up the page. Then, he saw it. A photo of a device he had seen not long ago at the Jorgetsons’ home, then later that day at the Binns-Lourdes’.

  “I’ve seen that before.” He pointed at the device on the screen. In the photo, a small cream-colored box sat mounted to a wall with six cables running to six black cuffs floating in mid-air. “Yesterday. Both kids were hooked up to one of those. The exact same one.”

  “That’s the Stimuthera 700. You’re sure it’s that exact one?”

  “Positive. That’s it.”

  She clicked the menu on the website and searched for a moment more. “Prices match up. That must be what that expense is for. But why did the one family have it on their statement and not the other? They’d both need it.”

  “I was just thinking about that.” Aubrey paced. “I’m not sure that the families were paying for the treatment. I think someone else was paying and maybe the Binns-Lourdes needed a replacement stimulator. Theirs broke down and they ordered it on their own without going through the other source—whoever was paying.”

  He stopped pacing and looked toward Malina. With a deeply furrowed brow, she looked puzzled.

  “Why would someone else pay for the kids’ treatment?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He bent his head in thought and resumed pacing. “Can you get into the Nebular Medical database and see if there were other invoices for that device? We need to find out if there was one ordered for the Jorgetsons as well. Then, maybe we can find out who ordered them.”

  As she turned to begin working to infiltrate the Nebular Medical database, Aubrey’s phone buzzed. He looked at it and saw a text message from Aaron Lewis.

  Let’s talk. In person.

  “Who is that?” Malina said, without looking at him.

  “Aaron. He wants to talk.”

  “About what?”

  Aubrey shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably just a follow up on the attack at the bridge.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to need some time to work on this. Let me know what he says.”

  As Aubrey was typing his reply, his phone buzzed again. This time it was a notification from his news streaming app.

  BREAKING NEWS, the notification pop up read. He tapped the alert and the article almost made him drop his phone.

  Another BSS Case Discovered, City Shocked, Police in Denial

  After the shocking discovery yesterday of two children stricken with BSS, a third child is believed to also be afflicted with the mysterious illness. Found by his mother this morning, the mother …

  Aubrey’s vision blurred. The text dissolved in front of him as the news sank in. Another child with BSS and it looked like a fresh case.

  “What is it?” Malina stared at him. He hadn’t noticed she’d turned around. He also hadn’t noticed how long he had been staring at his phone.

  “They found another one,” he said, not looking up. “Another BSS case.”

  “You just mean one of the two kids from yesterday. Right?”

  “No, it’s a new one. The attacks are still happening.” He looked up at her with cold eyes. “I’m going to see Aaron Lewis and find out what the hell is happening. You find out what you can at Nebular Medical.” He grabbed his coat and holstered his pistol. He stopped short of the door and went back to the bedroom where he doffed his shirt and donned body armor before replacing his shirt.

  On his way out the door, he stopped again. “Tell Ted to hurry the hell up on those messages.”

  �
�He’s a computer, I can’t just …” she said as Aubrey slammed the door shut behind him.

  * * *

  Winky’s Bar was surprisingly well-lit. Sunlight poured in from the filthy windows at the bar’s narrow front. Looking around at the dingy interior, Aubrey decided he liked it better in the dark. Ignorance was bliss in a place like Winky’s.

  He passed the long, battered bar with its equally battered bartender and walked straight to the back where Aaron Lewis sat at a high-top table. A sweaty glass of water sat in front of him.

  Aubrey dropped his phone on the table in front of Aaron, the screen showing the news article about the BSS case.

  “This what you wanted to talk about?” Aubrey asked.

  “Partly.”

  “What can you tell me?” Aubrey took a seat across from Aaron.

  “It’s a new one. Not like the two you found. The mother swears she just found him like that this morning.”

  Aaron Lewis’s eyebrows drew together over eyes with dark circles below them. The discoveries of the two children the day before and the BSS bombshell that morning had taken their toll on Aubrey’s old friend. They dredged up the feeling of hopelessness they all felt during the OFP investigation weeks ago.

  “Can you give me their name?”

  “Laverno,” Aaron said, staring with glassy eyes at the wall behind Aubrey.

  Aubrey texted the name to Malina with the question: Ventana connection?

  “Anything else on the kid or the family?”

  “Nothing much,” Aaron said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “Went to school here in the city, seven years old. Same as the others.” He shrugged and took a sip of water. His hands shook. “No ideas on how or when it happened. Just that it happened.” He set the glass down with a dull thud.

  “What is Chief Long’s take on it?” Aubrey asked, knowing the answer before it came.

  “Same as the other two you found. Residual poison left over from One Front for the People’s reign of terror.” Aaron sipped from an empty glass but didn’t seem to notice. “In private, she speculates it’s a copycat. They can’t say that in public because it’s just as bad to have a copycat killer as it is to have the original. People would freak out.”

  Aubrey nodded and continued typing notes into his phone. He looked up to see Aaron Lewis looking at him.

  “Marty, if you find something. You have to let me know.”

  “Just you?”

  “Well, tell me first, at least. I’ll take it from there and make sure it … gets the attention it deserves.”

  Aubrey nodded. Then, he remembered something.

  “You had something else you wanted to discuss?” Aubrey suddenly felt thirsty and scanned the bar searching for the bartender.

  “Gregory Lourdes is dead.”

  Aubrey forgot about his thirst. He felt his jaw drop.

  “When? How? I thought that .22 round didn’t penetrate his skull.”

  “This morning. And it didn’t penetrate his skull. They don’t know how it happened. All of his vitals just … crashed.” Aaron leaned back in his seat with such force he almost toppled over.

  Aubrey stared at his friend in disbelief. The police hadn’t guarded Lourdes, he knew, because they didn’t see him as having any value; he was just a distraught father deeply saddened by his child’s illness.

  A promising lead was gone. Aubrey had been attacked just as he uncovered crucial information. They were linked, had to be.

  “It was her. The woman from the bridge, she did this,” Aubrey said.

  Aaron didn’t answer, he only shrugged.

  “Any more bad news?”

  “Yes.” Aaron Lewis’s shoulders fell. “Liz Reynolds was attacked.”

  * * *

  Malina sat with the lights off and curtains drawn. The only break in the darkness came from the glow of her computer monitors. She preferred working in the dark. Back at her storage unit, she rarely turned on her one lamp. The computer screen and a single strand of Christmas lights were plenty.

  Her hands flew across the keys of her portable keyboard roll. She scoured the once secure financial documents of Nebular Medical Group. Page after page she pulled down from their internal server, scrolling and searching every record for the Stimuthera 700.

  She soon discovered that Stimuthera was a popular item sold by Nebular hundreds of times in the past six months and used in facilities all over the city. Invoices showed the quantity ordered and the requesting physician or, in the case of hospital orders, the name of a procurement officer.

  Patient names accompanied most of the invoices for individual physicians, but not for the hospitals who, she assumed, were ordering in bulk. She ran the hundreds of invoices through a search tool of her own making to look for the Jorgetsons and Binns-Lourdes.

  The invoice for the order placed by the Binns-Lourdes surfaced which matched the date and the amount paid in their personal file. Since the Binns-Lourdes ordered directly from Nebular, there was no doctor name associated with the order. She was not surprised when the Jorgetsons’s name didn’t turn up. Why would they, she thought. If someone else was paying for their care, chances are they wanted to keep the family’s name hidden.

  She decided that removing hospitals and larger therapy facilities was the next logical step. That narrowed the invoices down to around one hundred. Then, she eliminated invoices with patient names. That left forty-seven invoices. She shortened the list further by removing doctors ordering only one device.

  A quick internet search of the remaining twenty-three doctors enabled her to remove ten more. These doctors worked in physical therapy and kinesiology facilities and she felt safe to assume that only a general practitioner or pediatrician would care for the children in question.

  Of the thirteen remaining general practitioners and pediatricians who’d ordered multiple Stimutheras, only three ordered them within the right window of time based on their best guess of when the children became ill.

  She was about to dig deeper into the three remaining doctors when her screen flashed with a new dialogue window in the lower right corner.

  Her program Ted had decoded twelve new messages.

  She minimized everything she was working on and expanded Ted’s window to full screen.

  She clicked and typed several commands, then white text appeared on black. The messages were from January 19, 2043, one day before the last set had led them to the Jorgetsons.

  IMANPOR R: Team is worried

  ALKORN L: Team or you

  IMANPOR R: Plz

  ALKORN L: Shouldn’t talk outside too dangerous

  ALKORN L: And do not forget we are doing this

  ALKORN L: No choice

  IMANPOR R: No need to remind

  SHOEMAN N: Certain no one else knows

  ALKORN L: Only us for now

  IMANPOR R: Assurances

  ALKORN L: None

  WINTHORPE S: So be it move forward

  ALKORN L: We must no choice

  Malina stared at the last two words, no choice, repeated twice in the exchange. Why did they have no choice?

  If Aubrey was right and someone else really called the shots, then it would make sense; it meant they were under pressure. They sounded worried, unsure of what they were doing.

  At the time the messages were written, they must have been planning the embezzlement scheme, if not BSS and the bombings as well.

  The Jorgetson boy would have been ill for weeks at that point, but she and Aubrey had suspected he and the Binns-Lourdes girl were probably trial runs before the full-scale assault.

  One line of text stood out: And do not forget we are doing this. Even without punctuation, the intent was clear. This was a command coming from Alkorn.

  * * *

  Aubrey returned from his meeting with Aaron Lewis, but the trip back took him quite a bit longer than the trip out.

  He hired one car using an app on a burner phone and the prepaid cash card, both provided by Malina. He gave the car
a random destination several miles from the hotel, got out and walked several blocks where he hired another car. He repeated the process twice, hiring a total of three cars. He exited the last car a full mile from the hotel and walked with his head bowed and hood up the entire way so as not to let his face captured by any cameras. He even altered his gait slightly, recalling his own company’s software that could track and identify individuals by their mannerisms and nonverbal behavior.

  Caution was a necessity, now.

  Ryan Grant was dead.

  Reynolds had been attacked.

  Aubrey had been attacked.

  There was no doubt in his mind now, they were being hunted.

  19

  Dead Ends

  Brother Rudolfo scanned the pages of former Brother Wilcott’s journal for what must have been the hundredth time since acquiring it.

  The personal effects of a deceased Member of the Order of the Coppice were handled much like that of a deceased inmate—anything of value was re-appropriated and the rest incinerated.

  Brother Wilcott’s personal effects were sparse and mundane, but the journal was of particular interest to Rudolfo. A Member’s life’s work lay on the pages of their journal. Every assessment, every Sacred Task performed was in there. One could glean a Member’s philosophy on their duties and the role they played in society at large.

  The only way for Rudolfo to determine what, if anything, pushed Wilcott to self-select would be in his journal.

  Rudolfo believed that Wilcott’s choice of venue and the method of his suicide were a message of some kind. Members were free to self-select after all; suicide was common after a long tenure when the side effects of each Task became too painful to bear. No Member he knew of had ever self-selected in public, nor had they exposed so much of themselves, both literally and figuratively to the inmate population.

  Most chose to do it in private with the very poison they used on the inmates, applied to the back of their neck in the same way. The end was quick and, it was thought, painless. Most chose another Member, a close friend or confidant, to perform the deed for them out of fear of botching it by themselves.