A few minutes later, Baker halted on the edge of a wide front lawn and observed the busy scene. The siren he’d heard belonged to a departing ambulance. One police officer was trying to keep curious neighbors back. Another policeman stood off to the side questioning two teenage boys and a middle-aged woman. Patrick sat on the ground near three discolored patches of grass. His hands rested on his knees holding a blood-soaked cloth.
Despite Porter’s earlier statement about a kid being shot, Baker scrutinized Patrick for bullet holes. His suit jacket lay abandoned on the ground and his white shirt was definitely garbage bound. His expression said he might kill the next person to talk to him.
“Patrick!” Baker flashed his badge at the policeman handling crowd control and jogged over to his partner for the day. He halted a short distance away and bit back the urge to inquire about Patrick’s wellbeing. “Kid gonna live?”
“Maybe.” Patrick didn’t bother looking up.
“You gonna be okay?” Baker inquired, losing the second round of don’t-ask-that-question.
“In a bit,” Patrick replied. His deep blue eyes narrowed to slits. “This guy’s getting bolder. He had a kid shot in broad daylight.”
“You sure the shooter was aiming for the kid?”
Patrick didn’t answer immediately, but the way he hung his head spoke volumes.
“I ducked.”
“What tipped you off?”
“The kid who got shot stiffened. I grabbed his buddies and pushed them down. By the time I went for him, he had three bullets in him,” Patrick explained.
“How many shots were fired?”
“Four. The last ruined my suit jacket on its way to the front door.” Patrick waved toward the house.
“How did the shooter approach?”
“He was in a black car with at least one other person. I tried to read the license but didn’t get much past Pennsylvania. Mud covered most of it.”
The woman who owned the house came over and gave Patrick some damp paper towels to clean up with and took the other cloth away.
Patrick thanked her and put the towels to good use.
“I need to call Ann and get to my hotel to change.”
“Did you talk to the cops yet?”
“A little. Why?”
“Give me your hotel key,” said Baker. “I’ll pick up some clothes for you while you finish up here. Then we can return to the house. I think there’s something hidden in the mattress.”
“Take the kid’s camera with you,” Patrick suggested, indicating a camera that lay six feet to Baker’s right. “See if you can get the pictures printed. You never know what we’ll find. And pick up some food while you’re at it.”
“You’re kind of high maintenance today, Agent Duncan.”
A faint smile lightened Patrick’s gloomy expression.
“Always feed your help.”
“Any special orders?”
“Surprise me.”
Baker clicked his heels together and saluted.
Chapter 19:
The Keres Legacy
Davidson Residence
Fairview, Pennsylvania
As Ann debated herself about calling Jonathan Parker, he called her.
“Wow, great minds really must think alike. I was about to call you.”
“Hi, Ann. Brad called me early this morning with a lead on the case. I can’t get ahold of Patrick. Is everything all right?”
“Nice to know I’m tops of your ‘to call’ list,” Ann teased.
“Sorry.”
“I’m kidding. Patrick’s with Baker checking out an anonymous tip. Last I heard he was chasing somebody. His phone might be off. I’ll yell at him later if you wish.” Ann rubbed her sore neck as she spoke.
Self, avoid sleeping in leather chairs.
“What did you learn from Brad’s hot lead?” Ann asked.
“It’s a game. This whole thing: the murders, the kidnappings, the messages, everything!” Jon’s words came out in an avalanche.
“Whoa! Slow down. Start with the game part again.”
“Brad’s been tracking other sites that have similar coding profiles to the website set up for Karen’s ransom, and he got a hit. It’s a game called The Keres Legacy.”
“What is it about?”
“Upon first glance, I’d say it’s about the legacy of death. I didn’t get to look at it long, but I popped ‘Keres’ into a search engine and found that it refers to the Greek goddesses of violent death.”
“That sounds morbid,” Ann commented. “Who would want to play a game specifically about violent death?”
“You’d be surprised,” Jon noted. “Compared to what’s out there it actually seems mild, but I think you should check it out. I’ll email you the link as soon as the program finishes its analysis.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane in three hours?”
“This is too important. We’ll have to reschedule.”
“Jon.” Ann dragged out his name. “That program Brad’s running, did you write it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve got absolutely no reason to miss that flight and disappoint your kids,” Ann asserted. “I’ll follow up the Keres lead, I promise. Brad can watch the computers do their magic almost as well as you can.”
“But—”
“Take your souped-up laptop with you if it makes you feel any better. I give you full permission to call Brad, myself, and any other agent or support person day or night if you want to discuss the case. I’m sure it will be here when you get back in a week, but if we do get lucky and crack it, you’ll be the first to know. Scout’s honor.”
Jon chuckled.
“Did Rachel put you up to this?”
“Jason, but close enough,” replied Ann. “You really need to take a break. When was the last vacation you went on?”
Silence answered her.
“That’s what I thought. Tell you what. I’ll even sweeten the deal. You get your family over to Dulles, and I’ll follow up the lead right now. I have a fairly clear afternoon, aside from coordinating with the rest of the task force and making a few phone calls. I can send you a preliminary report by tonight.”
“You’d follow the lead even if I stayed put,” Jon pointed out.
“True, but I’ll flood my prelim report with frowny faces if you do that.”
“All right. I surrender. I’ll go on vacation.”
“That’s better. Now get going before you change your mind. I have a lead I’m supposed to be pursuing.”
True to her word, Ann opened the email Jon sent her containing the link to www.theKereslegacy.com and followed it through the various introductory pages. It promised a unique gambling experience and made people certify they were over 18 before actually letting them set up an account. Wincing at what the bean counters might say in a week or two, Ann typed in the information for one of the FBI’s proxy credit cards. It asked her to pick a user name and password. Thinking something like hotmomma32 might set off some alarm bells, Ann chose 1Peter31114 as a username and Nofearhere as the password.
As she scrolled through the various privacy, permission, licensing, and disclaimer pages, Ann murmured the words to the verses from 1 Peter 3:11-14. “‘[…] He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.’ Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. ‘Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.’”
Once her account had been established, Ann read through the tutorial pages. The site actually contained several different sections. One part held a crude video game wherein players worked their way through a violent single player story or entered multiplayer matches. Ann ignored this portion of the site. She moved on to the “Dabblers” gambling pages and read the instructions. The twenty-five dollars of game gold the site
required players to purchase suddenly made sense.
Choosing one at random, Ann clicked on the “Scary Noises” link. Hokey suspense music played in the background as words describing the scene slowly scrolled along the bottom in deep red font.
A woman hears a steady thumping noise upstairs. She goes to investigate and finds …
Four choices lay beneath the short description, marked by bullet points that had (1 G) written next to them.
(1 G) a strange dog pawing at the floor.
(1 G) her son pounding away at his toy drums.
(1 G) a man tapping a knife against the wall.
(1 G) her bound daughter frantically trying to escape.
Going along with the dark nature of the site, Ann chose the third option and felt an involuntary thrill as her gold total changed to 26. The animation showed the scene she had chosen then went to a congratulatory page and back to the “Dabblers” page.
I bet anything would have worked. That’s how they suck you in.
Even with that knowledge, Ann had to fight the impulse to read another scenario and place another bet.
A quick search revealed that the bulk of kidnapping and killing stories fell under the “High Rollers” section. Ann made a face at the computer screen and mentally added one more phone call to her list. Having skipped breakfast and needing something to fortify her stomach before tackling the tough call, Ann went to the kitchen and made some toast with strawberry preserves and cream cheese. She washed it down with 2% milk, the beverage of choice in this joint.
Once back in her father’s office, Ann checked the tracer locator to see if Malia had activated it yet. Finding nothing, she prayed hard for wisdom and good favor and called her boss. Normally, she would have started at the bottom of the chain and worked her way up, but she knew he would want to know about the promising lead. After the usual delay, pleasantries were swapped, and Ann settled down to business.
“Sir, I need approval to access a fairly high line of credit,” Ann said, cutting to the heart of the matter.
“For what exactly?” asked Assistant Director Lance Morgan. He kept his tone measured, but Ann could tell she’d surprised him.
“One of Jonathan Parker’s people found a website that shares a designer with the website for Karen Tyler’s ransom. I’m sure he could explain the technical aspects a whole lot better than I can. I’ve been checking out the site using a proxy credit card, but I’ve a hunch that this site is connected to a lot more cases than the Tyler one.”
“How expensive a hunch are we talking here, Agent Duncan?”
Ann quoted a conservative figure and held her breath.
“I don’t expect to exhaust the line, but I won’t have access to the right pages without enough credit to prove high roller status.”
I need to get into the archives.
As expected, Morgan protested for a good fifteen minutes while Ann listed every reasonable argument and insisted her hunch would lead somewhere useful.
“I’m entrusting you with a lot of tax-payer money here, Duncan. Get the job done,” Morgan said at last.
“Thank you, sir.” Ann tried not to sound as relieved as she felt.
Next, Ann called Patrick, but his phone was still off. She considered calling Baker but figured she really didn’t have anything substantial to report yet. Not wanting to be interrupted, Ann called Patrick’s number again and left a message saying she was following a lead and would be out of touch for a while.
Many hours and twenty-two pages of hand-written notes later, Ann had successfully matched Keres story lines to one mass murder where nine people died, eight kidnappings, two arson cases, and six murders, including Gabriel Dawson and Lillian Green. At least four murders were described in detail on the website months before the matching crime took place.
The implications staggered Ann.
What kind of a place is this? There must be hundreds of special cases here.
Once one gained elite, high roller status, you could write your own ending. So the site moved away from a place for gamblers to test their crime solving skills and morphed into a forum for email ordering a murder or other crime. The hard core gamblers probably didn’t even realize how their winnings were calculated. In a way, “innocent” people had been turned into unwitting accomplices. The entry, methods, precautions, motives, costs, and consequences became variables. Each detail guessed correctly earned a payout, but the highest payout always went to the person who got every detail right.
Heart heavy, Ann logged out and closed her browser. Jon’s program, Brad’s brilliant application of that program, and her hunch had struck gold. A lawyer could argue that the details were gleaned from news stories or internet articles written after the crimes, but Ann noted several small details in each case that were never released to the media. Still, she wasn’t sure where the connections between The Keres Legacy and a bunch of seemingly unrelated cases left her investigation. She had more questions than answers.
As a courtesy, Ann called her boss’s office and left a message saying her hunch had panned out. Then, as promised, she wrote a preliminary report. She emailed copies of the report to Jon, Patrick, Baker, and herself for good measure.
We have to stop this or more people will die.
Unable to resist, Ann opened a new browser, typed in a different address, and watched Karen’s timer tick down to nothing. Spotting the ransom count, she smiled.
Chapter 20:
The Story and the Bargain
Ryker’s Base of Operations
Elk County, Pennsylvania
The story appeared next to Ryker’s head sometime during the night between Thursday and Friday. He had not authorized a new draft to Karen’s story, but sometimes Reuben got ambitious and rewrote the endings to be more spectacular. Curious, Ryker peeled back the cover and started reading.
Of all the hopes and dreams the girl held for the future, dying while still a child had not been one of them. She had hoped for high marks to carry her to an Ivy League education then launch a career in science or medicine. She had dreamed of marrying a good man who would love her with all his heart and soul and fill her life with laughter.
Life can be unfair.
Like a storybook princess, circumstances and a villain made her a captive. Like every hostage fate has abandoned across time she was never the intended victim, merely flotsam swept along by a relentless current. She knew her place, but struggled to accept it.
At first, her waking and sleeping wishes centered on fantastic musings of escape or rescue, but as the days and nights sped by, she felt as if somewhere hourglass sand measured her life.
In her prison, the girl found a friend, a kind soul who ministered to her in ways she’d not expected. This friend awakened something the girl had counted lost long ago.
Hope.
Secretly, she had always wanted to change her fate, so when the opportunity arose, she seized it. The physical loss of freedom had never quenched her spirit, only doused its will to fight. When the girl’s new friend returned that precious hope, her heart was full for the first time in ages.
The girl still had a problem: her family. Ties seen and unseen linked her fate closely to that of her mother and father. She could never abide a course of action that would endanger them. She longed to turn to them for comfort and advice. She remembered the simpler times when bedtime stories were followed by two goodnight kisses. Could she somehow free her new friend and her family?
One day, the girl noticed how much she resembled her new friend. The thought planted a seed that sprouted more fragile hope. Her plan formed almost instantly as if some higher being, perhaps an angel of the Lord, had gifted her with the means to achieve her deepest longings.
She regretted having to deceive her new friend, but the greater pain by far was in having to hurt her father. He would never approve of the plan. He, of course, would stop at nothing to protect her, as was his right and duty as her father. So, the girl turned to the most unlikely person for help
: her captor.
She wrote him a missive in which she explained herself, if somewhat obliquely. She considered carefully what her oppressor truly wanted: power, money, and the chance to control lives and find worthy opponents. He already had power over her. She could get him more money, but he would never accept a simple payoff. Were she to even offer that, he would dismiss her as a delusional child. She needed to prove herself. Perhaps if she substantiated a claim to worthiness, he would accept the only thing she had to offer: her life.
Ryker read the rest of the story wherein the girl described exactly how she would die. When he finished, he laughed at the quaint tale Dara Surhan had composed, but her claim of being a worthy opponent amused him enough to indulge her fantasy. He certainly had no intention of accepting her terms, but no harm could come from hearing her out.
A quick search of her usual day-time haunts turned up nothing, so Ryker checked her room and found an unconscious Karen Tyler tucked neatly into Dara’s bed. He summoned Hank to stand guard outside the room and went to the holding cells. It made sense given Dara’s ending. He mentally awarded her a point for creativity and two more for thoroughness as he absorbed the physical changes she had made.
Dara’s hair color had always matched Karen Tyler’s, but she had shortened her hair to the correct length and worked with it until similar waves appeared. Proper application of makeup matched their complexions. Dara had even donned the clothes Karen had been kidnapped in. A thorough cleaning had gotten most of Yuri’s blood out, but faint traces could be seen if one looked closely enough. The clothes hung loosely on Dara’s thin frame, but Ryker admitted that physical size alterations were too much to accomplish in an evening.
“This will never work.” Ryker almost felt sorry he had to kill the fairy tale. “I already have an ending in mind for Karen.” He stared intently through the bars.
The Keres Case (Heartfelt Cases Book 4) Page 14