Daughters and Sons

by Tom Fowler

  I glanced from my screen to Gloria. She wore an expectant look, like I would give her some vital task at any moment. I smiled at her. “You’ve already done it,” I said. “You pointed me down this road. When I couldn’t figure out how to get started, you gave me a direction. Now I have to see where it goes.”

  Gloria blushed. “All I did was put on a movie.”

  “You never know where inspiration will strike,” I said. “I’m going to be crunching this stuff for a while. If you want to watch the rest of your movie, go ahead.”

  “I want to be in here with you,” she said.

  “I appreciate it, but you’ll be terribly bored. So will I, but it’s necessary work.”

  “All right.” Gloria showed a gentle smile. “I’m glad you’re on the right path.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “And thank you.”

  Gloria padded back to the living room. I kept pulling character names from my memory and Wikipedia.

  * * *

  Tolkien possessed a fertile imagination manifesting itself in many ways, notably the breadth of characters he created and their colorful names. Some were rooted in dialects and languages Tolkien himself invented. None of this made my task any easier. After exhausting Wikipedia and my dog-eared copies of the book, I stared at a prodigious list. Now I needed to mangle and corrupt the names into something a killer might want to use as a handle online.

  Like many menial tasks, this could be solved with scripting. I found the code for an anagram generator. Some tweaking removed its ability to list only English dictionary words for output. I doubted the real words I could glean from a name like Aragorn would lead me to Samantha’s killer. Once I compiled the code, I fed my list into it. The newly-minted program ran them through the paces. I waited for the results, saw they would be a few minutes, and went back to rejoin Gloria in the living room.

  I told her about my plan to come up with potential handles. She looked at me as if I sported a hideous facial tattoo but nodded as if she understood. We settled in to watch the rest of the movie. The Balrog shall not pass, Boromir met a volley of arrows, and the ending invited the second movie, which I doubted Gloria would watch tonight. I returned to the office to see the fruits of my labors. The result was in droves—I uncovered way more anagrams than I could use in a lifetime. Along with an embarrassment of riches in this department, I also had no guarantee the killer used any of them. Thousands and thousands of names and only a hunch told me one would be in use today.

  Those weren’t good odds.

  Chapter 14

  I banged away at the keyboard for a while, starting and then stopping a half-dozen hare-brained ideas to cull the list into something more meaningful. Even the paring down I baked into my script left me with too much noise and not enough signal. The rise of broadband began the slow death of chat rooms like the one Samantha used. Still, I could hunt around on a service like Internet Relay Chat and see if anyone used any of the handles on my exhaustive list.

  IRC has existed for ages, basically as a chat service and a place to share files. Like most ancient Internet technologies, security has always been something of an afterthought. Despite gains in this area, IRC’s decline in popularity meant some servers were more open than others. I went after those. I dumped my list of anagrammed names into a text file and bypassed the nonexistent security. Once I was in, I checked if anyone used any of the handles on my list.

  I knew it would take a while. I used my other computer and split the text file into much smaller chunks and ran Google searches on a batch of potential handles at a time. It wasn’t the most scientific method, but I could see if any results showed merit. I expected this to take a long time, too. I went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. While I added water, Gloria padded in. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I have a feeling you’ll be up for a while.”

  “I’m sure I will,” I said. “I’m testing a few things and don’t want to stop.”

  “I understand.” She said those words a lot during this case. I still didn’t think Gloria understood, but I figured she came closer each time she said it. Before the end of this mess, we just might be on the same wavelength.

  “I’ll be up when I’m finished,” I said.

  “All right.” Gloria walked to me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. “You’ll puzzle it out.” She added a reassuring smile. “You have the best motivation.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Your love of your sister.”

  I would list those at 1 and 1A were I writing out my motivations, but I saw no need to quibble. Gloria was ready for bed, the coffee maker brewed the nectar of life, and I had work to do. I bid Gloria good night, poured myself a cup of java, and walked back to the office. Results were still pending. IRC was a big place, and their most popular servers still housed many thousands of users. I might need a second cup before everything finished.

  * * *

  While I sipped my coffee and waited, Ruby called. I hoped her stalker remained distant; I didn’t want to leave before I got results. “Did I wake you, C.T.?”

  “No, I’m working on another case.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “I don’t want to bother you, then.”

  “You’re not,” I said, even though she was. “I’m just watching data fly by on my screen.” I didn’t hear anything. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah.” Another pause. “I’m still spooked. I guess I wanted to hear a friendly voice.”

  “I’m glad you think of me.” I offered it as an automatic response, but I meant it, something I didn’t expect when I started working her case. She grew on me.

  “You’re easier to talk to than Rollins,” she said. “He’s pretty dry.”

  “He is . . . and he won’t be appreciative when you take your top off.” She chuckled. “How’s Joanie?”

  “Better, I guess. She doesn’t have any permanent injuries.” Not physical ones, at least. “The doctors want to observe her overnight, make sure the swelling around her eye goes down . . . things like that.”

  “What happened to her isn’t your fault.”

  “The hell it’s not.”

  “It isn’t,” I insisted. “Someone made the decision to follow you around. He then made the decision to assault you. Joanie chose to get in his way. None of it is your fault. You don’t control other people’s choices.” I felt strange giving a hooker a pep talk, but I meant what I said. Ruby shouldn’t view what happened to Joanie as her fault even though her doing so was inevitable. In her place, I might have felt the same way. When I thought about it, twinges of the same feeling plagued me over the years. What if I went with Samantha on the fateful night? What if I’d pressed her for details about what she was doing? Going down the what-if path led to heartache and destruction. I came to realize this in the months following Samantha’s death, though the thoughts resurfaced on rare and unpleasant occasions. Ruby would learn to get past the Joanie incident as well.

  “What you say makes sense,” she said.

  “It usually does.”

  “And you’re modest, too.” She offered a humorless laugh. “It’ll take me a while to get there.”

  I realized Ruby didn’t know her stalker followed me after I dropped her off last night. I wouldn’t tell her. Joanie’s pummeling caused her to feel lousy enough; I didn’t need to pile on with my tale of a harrowing car chase through the streets of Baltimore. The fact the stalker eluded capture again would make for an unhappy ending. Ruby didn’t need those problems right now. “How are things tonight?” I said instead. “Any signs of trouble?”

  “No. Rollins says he’s around so I think I’ll be OK tonight.”

  “You’re in good hands.”

  “I guess . . . I guess I just wanted to talk. Thanks, C.T.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Ruby.” I hung up. The conversation proved easier than I’d expected.

  A few minutes after I reheated my coffee, my p
hone rang again. This time, it was Rollins. “I’m on Ruby detail,” he said.

  “I figured you couldn’t stay away.”

  “She grows on you.” He paused. “I was wondering if you could take over for me in a few hours.”

  I glanced at my screen. I didn’t know how long it would take to get results, but I expected it sooner than a few hours. Once I got them, further research awaited. “Probably not,” I said.

  “Probably not?”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to.”

  “You sound preoccupied,” he said. “You sounded the same earlier, and then you kind of got over it.”

  “I am preoccupied.”

  “Something important?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “More important than a scared girl who needs our help?” Rollins said. This marked the first time I’d heard genuine annoyance in his voice.

  I rolled my eyes at the guilt trip. “If I didn’t think it were more important, I’d probably be out watching her right now.”

  “Well, when you’re not so busy, maybe you can take another turn looking after the girl you agreed to help.” Rollins hung up before I could say anything else. He would’ve understood the nature of my preoccupation if he’d given me a chance to tell him. One day, I would, but I wanted more information first. In the meantime, he would have to live with me splitting time and prioritizing my murdered sister ahead of a hooker, no matter how much the hooker grew on me.

  I finished my coffee and realized I never shared my discoveries about Ruby with Rollins. I would need to, but other priorities consumed my time, and he needed to come down off his huffy cloud. As long as tonight passed without stalker incidents, he would be more willing to listen tomorrow. I got up, went back to the kitchen, and made another cup of coffee. I stared into the refrigerator, pondering a snack. I ate dinner earlier, plus some popcorn on the couch with Gloria. I didn’t feel hungry right now, but if my queries kept grinding, I would. I closed the refrigerator and went back to my office.

  When I sat down, I saw results.

  Thirty-seven names from my anagram list used IRC’s major chat servers. If each one belonged to a different person, I had thirty-seven potential killers to wade through. It would make for a long night.

  * * *

  I ran into a problem. I should have expected it, but not using IRC since college, I didn’t recall its transient nature. Anyone can use a screen name when logging in to an IRC server. Just because someone is Rondel one day, does not mean the person must be the next. Users can cycle through an array of screen names if they so choose, and there is little accountability to pin a verifiable identity to a handle.

  While I could do a thorough investigation of each name I found, this came with no guarantee I could act on the results. If I were going to beat my head into the wall, I needed tangible results to show for it. On top of it all, some IRC servers allowed different people to use the same handle, though not at the same time. Even if I found someone suspicious, I would have a hard time proving a certain person used the handle while the activity occurred.

  Like a salesman selling something at a razor-thin margin, I would make it up in volume. Armed with the results, I now sought the handles used most often, and if I could glean relevant information about their use. While this crunched away, I went upstairs and got ready for bed. When I slipped in, Gloria stirred and rolled over to face me. “How’s it going?” she said, sleepiness giving her voice a husky tone I found alluring.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I have some results, but I’m not sure I can do anything with them. Right now, I’m trying to sort them and see if I have anything to act on.”

  “Do you think you will?”

  I shrugged. “No way to know. I hope so, but the Internet really does allow you to be hard to find sometimes.”

  “You’ll find him,” Gloria said and rolled back. I heard her snoring not ten seconds later. I envied her ability to wake up, have a conversation, and fall back asleep almost right away. If anything roused me from slumber, I spent at least a few minutes tossing and turning. I pulled the sheet over me and settled in.

  * * *

  Samantha was home from college. I woke up early—for me, at least—but she’d already left. I spent the day at lacrosse practice, went to the dojo to train, and then finally deigned to do some homework. Samantha came back before dinner. My mother fixed something she called hunter chicken featuring mushrooms in a tasty brown sauce. She always served it over rice, which I didn’t care for but went along with because it was easier than arguing about it.

  Whenever Samantha returned from college, my mother prepared hunter chicken and a bunch of other dishes she liked. I wondered if I would get the same treatment. When my team won the JV lacrosse championship last season, I didn’t get a special meal. Still, I liked the dish, and I always enjoyed my sister’s company, so I didn’t rock the boat at the dinner table. Samantha and I could bag on Mom later, when she couldn’t hear us.

  After dinner, my sister and I lingered at the table. Our parents went off to do whatever boring things middle-aged people did when dinner ended. “How’s college?” I said once our parents disappeared upstairs.

  “Pretty good,” she said. “I’m on the dean’s list again.”

  “I had no doubts.”

  “Thanks. How about you? Didn’t lacrosse season just end?”

  I frowned and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “We did all right, but not well enough to play for the title. It’s weird—it’s a lot of the guys from the JV team last year, and we won it all. We should have done better, but we came up short.”

  “That’s too bad,” my sister said with a sympathetic grimace. “What about you? How did you do individually?”

  “I started the last six games. I did pretty well. Well enough I should start next year, too. I just wish we’d had a better season.”

  “Can’t win ‘em all, little brother,” Samantha said with a grin.

  “It won’t stop me from trying,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t expect it to.”

  “Mom said you have a boyfriend this year. What’s up with that?”

  Samantha shook her head. “It’s over is what it is. He was a jerk.”

  “What happened?”

  “He decided he liked having sex with the girls in the next dorm room,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “At the same time.”

  I liked the fellow more now but could never tell Samantha my opinion. “You really need to introduce me to these assholes you date.” I pounded my fist into my palm. “I’ll keep them in line for you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Samantha said with a chuckle. “I think I’m supposed to take care of you, though. I’m the older sister.”

  “I’m taking care of myself pretty well.”

  “So I hear.”

  I smiled. “Guilty as charged.”

  “Be careful, C.T. You’re a good-looking guy, and I know you can talk to pretty much anyone. You’ll probably live it up for a while, but if you treat a girl badly, she’ll get hurt. You don’t want to get a reputation.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” I said the words to placate Samantha. I knew she realized it when she rolled her eyes at me. “Are any of your friends home for this long weekend?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said, kicking me under the table.

  Samantha got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her a moment later. She rummaged around in the freezer before closing the door. “Mom and Dad have lousy ice cream. Want to go out and get some?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let me get my shoes.”

  I ran upstairs, found a pair of tennis shoes, put them on, and came back down the stairs. Samantha stood in the foyer, waiting with her back to me. “Ready to go, Sam?” I said, grabbing her shoulder. She toppled backward onto the foyer. Blood covered her torso, and stab wounds perforated her clothes and flesh.

  I screamed.

 
; Chapter 15

  I must have screamed when the nightmare woke me because my throat was dry and raw. Gloria sat upright beside me, looking around with wide eyes. My heart raced in my chest. I gulped in deep draughts of air to calm myself. Gloria put her hand on my shoulder. “Bad dream?” she said. I nodded, unable to speak yet. “Want to talk about it?”

  My pulse still pounded. I sucked in a few more deep lungfuls and shook my head. “No,” I managed to say. The breathing exercises slowly calmed my thumping heart.

  “Was it about your sister?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head again before relenting and telling Gloria what happened. The conversation between Samantha and me in the dream mirrored one taking place on the fateful weekend she came home. “We went out, got some ice cream at the store, came back, and watched a couple of cheesy movies,” I said.

  “That sounds nice,” Gloria said, her reassuring hand rubbing my shoulders.

  “It was.” I smiled at the memory. “She was nineteen and I was sixteen. We could have been out with other people on a Friday night and instead, all we did was eat ice cream and watch B movies on our parents’ couch. We did stuff like that a lot. Have you ever seen Mystery Science Theater 3000?”

  “Once,” she said. “I had an ex who liked it a lot.”

  The surprise of Gloria knowing what MST3K was almost rendered me speechless again. “Samantha and I loved riffing on those cheesy movies ourselves. We started it when I was thirteen, I think.”

  “What movies did you watch that night?”

  I recalled them right away. They were the last films Samantha and I would ever watch together. “The original Night of the Living Dead and Highlander 3.”

  “It sounds like you recall that night vividly.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” I said.

  “Embrace your memories,” Gloria said as she rubbed my arm. “The dream wasn’t what happened. Don’t give it any power over you.”