Author Topic: Pharma (Chapter 89 Posted) {Mix}  (Read 49319 times)

Offline To-Get-Her

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 82 Posted)
« Reply #255 on: August 15, 2024, 12:52:58 PM »
Not surprised that Morgan turned to Tommy the first chance she got. Drew pretty well showed her what she means to him, what with screwing Aislinn. How soon before they re-hook up?

Nice to see Ray surviving his initial scare. Not that he's learned that he has Cancer will he come clean to sooth his conscious?

Still waiting for Bubbles to get PTSD over getting taken in the end. For some reason i see her as an liability to them all!

Can't wait for more so I'm giving a merit in hopes it spurs you onwards!
When I get around to it, I'll write

Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 83 Posted)
« Reply #256 on: August 27, 2024, 06:35:01 AM »
Thanks TGH.  I'll be honest, some of those never occurred to me and are some pretty good things for the future.  Who knows what direction I'll take?


Chapter 83 incoming.
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Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 83 Posted)
« Reply #257 on: August 27, 2024, 06:35:23 AM »
Chapter 83(nosex,setup)



“Oh, look who’s awake after all.”  The shorter one spoke, and Ray looked at him.  He was bald with a reddish beard.  “Welcome back to the land of the living.  I’m Detective George Lewis, Chester County Police Department.  That’s my partner, Xavier Harrison.”

“We’d like to ask you a few questions.  What’s your name?”  The big one boomed.

Ray said nothing.  He focused on the big black man hovering over him, wondering how long they’ve known he was awake.

“I’ll ask you again.  What. Is. Your. Name?”  The voice echoed through the room.  Ray defied him by staying silent.  The smaller of the pair of pigs, the white one, leaned over next to the bed, with his mouth right by Ray’s ear.

“HELLO!?  ANYONE IN THERE?!”  George yelled into Ray’s ear.  Ray jumped back as best he could in a hospital bed and turned to him.

‘Fuck you Pig!’ is what Ray tried to say, and is what he yelled in his mind.  “Blaaarrr, eh” is what came out of his mouth.

“Blarey?  Your name’s Blarey?”  George kept on him.

“Blaaarrr, eh.”  Ray said, a confused look overtook his face as he knew that something was wrong.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”  The black one asked as he held up 4 fingers.  Ray tried to say 4, but only “blaaarr, eh” came out.

“Blarey’s not a number.  Try again.”   The mountain of a man repeated.

“Blaaarr, eh, niiigggaaarr, blaaarr, eh.”  Ray tried yelling at the black cop, but it was just the same thing over and over. 

George looked at Xavier and laughed a little.  X gave him a dirty look.  “You think this is funny?”

“Absolutely.  His brain turned to mush, and all that’s left is random yells and racial slurs.  Like a Fox News viewer”  George said in between chuckles.

X turned his attention to George.  “It’s pretty common in stroke victims when the damage is in the rear left of the brain.  My wife sees this all the time.  They lose speech and motor functions, but when they’re angry they can scream all the nastiest shit they want.  The brain is wired in a way that speech uses a different path when angry.”  X turned back to Ray.  “Can you move your arms or fingers or wiggle your toes?”

He tried raising his right arm, but it didn’t move.  His left moved with a little difficulty and pain, but the right was a passenger on his body.  The left arm was sore and from what Ray could see covered in bruises.  His left foot moved with some difficulty as well, but the right was non-responsive.  Everything on his right side was off.  When he tried to smile or frown, the right side of his face drooped.

“Nothing.”  George said.  X nodded.

“Stroke, and a pretty bad one at that.”  X said.  “Still, that’s for the docs to confirm, make sure this asshole isn’t faking it.”

“Yep.  Let’s go tell Cappy what we know.”  George motioned to X before turning to Ray.  “And you, don’t you go hopping down the hallway on your good leg.  We gonna have a talk soon.  You’ve been a baaaad boy.”  The two cops left the room, leaving Ray trapped alone in his body, broken, with only his thoughts to keep him company.  That, and the incessant beeping of the monitoring equipment.


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Nobody at the apartment complex admitted to calling the towing company on Labor Day for the white late 90’s Beemer parked in the owner’s personal spot.  One old woman said she saw an older white guy get out and leave the car on Saturday night before leaving the lot.  She didn’t know who he was, nor could she identify him.  Just another old cracker parking in their lot.  The car was still there all day Sunday.  When Monday morning rolled around, Jolly Roger Trucking showed up and grabbed the car in a matter of minutes.  A half hour later, a city police officer drove through the lot, as part of their usual patrols but didn’t find anything that interested them.


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Adam Finnegan was not the model of health and vigor by anyone’s definition.  He would be a healthy weight if he were over 7 feet tall.  But barely breaking 5 feet on a good day has meant he’s spent his entire adult life pingponging between being a fat ass and a fat fuck.  He’s tried over the years to stay under 200 pounds, but he first needs to stay under 300 for more than a few minutes at a time.  So he decided to spend Labor Day working out.  Or at least that was his plan before he received a message on WhatsApp about his website. 

The short, pudgy auburn haired man was maybe 10 minutes into his stationary bike ride when his phone blew up.  He tried to ignore it until the seventh alert on his “other” phone interrupted him.

“WHAT?!”  Adam hopped off his bike and pulled out his Samsung Galaxy A15 in the red case from the small pile of phones sitting next to his home gym setup.  There were 5 phones sitting on the pile.  The first was his personal Android in a gray case.  The second was a black iPhone with a Chester County Police Department sticker on the back of it.  The third was another Android phone in a yellow case with a sticker of a computer repair company on it.  The fourth was an old flip phone.  The fifth was the phone in a red case.  He used it for one reason and one reason only: to communicate with members of the Club.

Adam wasn’t just in the Club.  He WAS the Club.  He built it from the ground up.  He owned the domains they used, the backend servers, the IT infrastructure, all of it.  He even had a whole separate personality he used when doing Club business.

Pedro.

He checked the red phone’s notifications.  He had his alerts set up so that whenever he was away from his rig, he could see and hear everything that happened that was important.  In this case, it was slew of messages from someone uploading footage where they tagged several other users, and a handful of conversations following up on a deal.  Adam saw that the footage was from Joe and his wife Mari, and their adventure up north to Lake Hiawatha.  Whatever happened, there was a lot of it, and still more to come.  He’d check it out once the first batch was complete.  Then there was another batch of videos attached to the same project coming from another account he recognized.  Bob, or one of his cronies, uploaded a shitload of high quality security cam files to the server and attached it to Joe’s files.  He’d have to check this out once he’s done with his workout.  But the notification that caught his eye was from a man named Jeff. 

Adam recognized all of the account numbers since he created them after all.  He used a system of identifying info and personal clues to create a unique four digit number for each user, like a code cipher that he could read.  Jeff was a good pervert who had a thing for geeky girls.  Jeff worked with the Harbor City University Marching Band as some kind of advisor and instructor, and had taken part in several trades and parties over the years.  Adam knew Jeff for a long time, though Jeff only knew Adam as ‘Pedro’.  He also knew that Jeff wasn’t one to complain about a deal taking too long or something having a hiccup, so when he saw Jeff’s messages asking if Ray had uploaded anything or taken part in his side of the trade yet, as he hadn’t heard anything yet from Ray after they agreed to a trade the week prior.  Jeff had held up his end of the bargain by making a tight little Asian slut scream and sent him the video last Thursday and was waiting to see what Ray did to the blonde slut Meg.  Ray hadn’t responded to any messages over the weekend and from what he could see, hadn’t watched the video yet so he couldn’t release it for group viewing without ‘Pedro’ signing off on it first.

Just as Adam was about to respond, a thought occurred to him.  Ray could be pretty flighty at times, but something was amiss.  If there was one thing Ray was timely about, it was fucking bitches.  If there were two things, the other was uploading his exploits for all to see.  He took his phones and left his gym and walked across the hallway to his secure room, and after entering the passcode and thumbscan to get in, entered an IT nerd’s dream setup.  The wall of monitors was recently upgraded to include 3 ultrawide monitors stacked on top of each other, and 2 43” inch TV’s off to the side of them.  He logged onto the Club’s backend servers and made quick work of the logs, showing that Ray had not logged in since last week.  He checked WhatsApp and the Club’s internal chats.  No dice, Ray hadn’t talked to anyone in a few days.  He then surreptitiously logged in to the Chester County Police Department’s servers.  Seeing as Adam was the IT Director for the department, he had every rhyme and reason to log in to his department’s servers whenever he needed to.  His only problem was that if something went wrong with Ray, it would only show up here if CCPD was the primary department on the case.  If not, he’d have to wait until Tuesday before he could log in to the surrounding departments.  All traffic was logged in and out of those servers, and he could use his official work accounts to bypass the security measures, but would need to explain why he was rooting around the city’s files on his day off.  There was nothing in the CCPD database about Ray, Meg, or anything else this weekend involving rapes or sexual assaults.  There was a case number under Harbor City PD’s purview and mention of a John Doe at Harbor City General Hospital in critical condition that was taken from the scene.  Two officers were waiting for the crime lab to open on Tuesday to get prints and DNA samples ran to confirm ID.  John Doe was described as a white man in his 50’s to 60’s.

Adam sat back in his seat and pondered his next move.  He couldn’t risk the cops finding out what Ray had in his apartment and computer, but then again he didn’t know if that man in the hospital was Ray or some other stranger.  He couldn’t risk stopping over, and he couldn’t ask anyone from the Club to go yet.  He could activate the HACF protocol on Ray’s computer if it was still turned on, but he’d have to pull that move right away.  Plus, telling a computer to Halt And Catch Fire isn’t exactly the nicest thing to do someone.  Adam thought for another moment before pulling the trigger.  He checked the connection logs and remotely connected to Ray Hibberton’s PC.  It was still on, though disconnected from the Club’s website.  Looking through the activity logs, Ray hadn’t used it in a couple days.  The last time anyone used this PC was Saturday afternoon.  No matter.  He switched the computer’s failsafe on.  It was part of the programs he had everyone install to gain access to the Club.  If something went wrong, he could remotely destroy the computer in several nasty ways.  First, he’d cripple the main OS by disabling and deleting several key files.  Then, the machine would quietly boot into a hidden partition running a small version of Linux that he cooked up himself that would do a destructive wipe and reformat of the drive, destroying the contents of the hard drive.  Finally, he would overclock the CPU and boost the voltage high enough by running some supercomputer math while shutting down the motherboard’s fan and thermal safeties, causing the CPU to overheat until it caught fire.  He knew from his nearly 20 years of working in the police department IT’s team that forensics can only do so much to recover data, and when things get really hosed, they ask him for help.  Even he couldn’t recover data from a PC that was cooked to well done. 

He thought for a few minutes before sending the HCAF commands.  Once the process starts, there’s no way short of stopping time itself or killing all power to the machine to stop it, and even then pulling the plug only puts a pause on it until it’s powered back on.  And with modern laptops almost all having internal batteries, anything that isn’t ancient or a tower PC is cooked.  But he also knew Ray’s living situation.  The old man lived by himself in an apartment on the top floor of a three story complex.  If he set it on fire and no one was there, he might cause a disaster that could possibly kill his neighbors.  What he decided to do was put in a dead man’s switch for this situation.  The HCAF program would be on standby and would execute on one of two situations.  First, if Ray did not successfully log in to the Club within 72 hours, the program would run.  That would give him until about 4PM on Thursday to do something.  Adam would check in to make sure Ray was still alive or not in the meantime.  The second contingency is if a text was sent to the program’s trigger email with the correct code.  He kept it simple.  ‘7984HCAF’.  Ray’s code ID in the Club and the program’s name.  He could send the email from from any address, including a text message from a burner phone.  Not many people know this trick, but each carrier has a built-in method to translate texts to emails for people who prefer it that way, especially the deaf.  In this case, if Adam’s out and about and finds out that the John Doe currently in the ICU really is Ray, then he can tie up that loose end before things go too far off the rails.  It took Adam a little bit to whip up the code and install it on Ray’s computer. 

Adam hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, but he would do anything necessary to protect his Club.
Always close the program you were running before exiting the holodeck

Offline To-Get-Her

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 83 Posted)
« Reply #258 on: August 27, 2024, 07:04:58 PM »
Wondering what would happen if the code takes effect just before Ray gets the ability to log in? Talk about bad timing!
Very interesting chapter that proves everyday people really doesn't want to put themselves out if it could lead to future problems!

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Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 84 Posted)
« Reply #259 on: September 02, 2024, 11:53:02 AM »
Thanks TGH.  It's something I try to remember with these characters, that everyone is eventually out for themselves but that the definition of that varies from person to person.


Chapter 84 incoming.
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Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 84 Posted)
« Reply #260 on: September 02, 2024, 11:53:24 AM »
Chapter 84(nosex,setup)



Tommy couldn’t sleep heading into Tuesday, the first day after the ‘Cabin Party’, as it was being called on the Club’s website.  The video was still being uploaded and spliced together, but the amount of raw footage was astounding.  The Club praised Tommy for his ingenuity and adaptability as all of the plans went awry early Friday with Bianca’s addition, and the compliments flowed like wine in France, talking him up for everything from his acting skills to his shrewdness, even to how well he fucked and how lovely his cock was.

So it was now, at 4AM, that Tommy found himself logged into the Club’s website with a glass of scotch in one hand watching Morgana and Drew try to sleep through the hidden cam installed in their new bedroom.  He saw the couple wake up over and over again from nightmare after nightmare, and just as soon as one would zonk off, the other would wake up screaming, expecting the worst to happen.  Back and forth they went all throughout the night.

Tommy hated what he saw.  He hated how much pain he put Morgana through.  He hated how much he hurt a friend in Drew.  He hated how they screamed and yelled at each other any time one of them wanted to feel even a little human warmth.  He hated himself for what he did, and he hated scotch.  He wasn’t now nor ever was a scotch man.  He only drank it because it’s a ‘real man’s drink’ and he hates himself right now, so might as well drink something he hates.

He switched the camera to one of the guest rooms.  Aislinn had long since passed out.  She must’ve stopped at a dispensary and picked up a bag of THC gummies and downed enough to mellow out.  She was high within an hour and asleep shortly thereafter.  Even with all of that chemical additive, her sleep was anything but restful.  Tommy figured the only reason she forced herself to sleep to begin with was she had to catch a plane back to Melbourne in the late morning.

Tommy took another sip and switched back to Morgana and Drew.  They were both up and fighting again before Drew broke down in tears and Morgana consoled him, followed by her running to the bathroom to throw up.  After she cleaned herself up, they whispered something to each other, then tried to get back to bed.  Eventually Tommy finished his drink and did the same, not looking forward to returning to work.


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Out of the group, the only two that traveled into work on Tuesday were Tommy and James, and mostly because it’s kind of hard to work from home on a construction job.  Tommy had maybe an hour of sleep the night before.  James on the other hand acted as chipper and bright as Tommy had seen him in a long time.  For a moment, he wondered if this was James’s reaction to a hangover.  Most people are beyond miserable, he turns into Bert from Mary Poppins.  It turns out that James actually got a full night’s sleep and was well-rested.  James had a good night, chatting with Steve for a while.  He didn’t watch too much of the footage on the Club’s site, but instead just relaxed to some classical music and slept.  He awoke to a couple texts from Bianca, and they agreed to meet later on in the week for lunch to get know each other.  He didn’t bring up what happened up at the cabin, and neither did she.

The two men spent the day working, getting back in the grind of things as they focused on buttoning up the new HQ tower.  If they hurried up, they would have the exterior walls and windows up by October, sealing the building up from the elements before winter arrived.  Winters in Harbor City can be anything from mildly unpleasant to kill-me-now cold and miserable.

Tommy for one was glad to be back at work.  It was something to keep his mind focused on, and meant that the guilt wouldn’t eat at him.  At least, not in the foreground of his mind.



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Two things that suck about a crime taking place over a holiday weekend were the delay in processing from the crime labs and sharing information across police departments. 

While Harbor City Police Department does have a fully stocked crime lab of their own, they operate on a skeleton crew over the weekend, and their resources are focused on higher priority crimes like murders and kidnappings, or anything that The Brass decides is worth putting on top of the pile.  Rarely if ever is a sexual assault case put on the top of the pile, even when the perp is lying in a hospital room waiting for identification.  By the time John Doe was in the hospital for his second full day, his victim had already been sent on her way and was trying to figure out how to live with what happened to her.  John Doe on the other hand laid in a hospital bed, barely able make any noises. 

The second part of the holiday weekend that sucks is coordinating information between departments.  The rape took place in East Oakville, which is squarely in HCPD’s jurisdiction.  But because the victim was a student, the university’s PD wanted to take over and invariably squash the case, or reclassify it as a break-in.  They try to go out of their way to bury sexual assaults as that stat looks bad to the parents of incoming freshman.  To keep the university from messing things up the HCPD detective on the case, Nick Pascal, called an old friend of his from Chester County PD to come in and assist.  But since it was Sunday, his friend was off so he sent a message to the county detective on duty, Carly Graspper.

Carly was new to the force, a recent transfer from Humdinger when her old Captain was hired on as the Deputy Chief of Chester County Police Department.  Carly left her home in Humdinger, about 300 miles away from Harbor City, after she helped take down the Mayor and several council members in an underage sex trafficking sting operation.  Carly is a tiny woman, barely 5 feet tall and skinny as a rail.  Her dark hair, blue eyes, and pale skin on her tiny frame with an A-cup chest make her look half her age.  The reason why she was picked for the previous operation was when she does her hair and makeup right, she could easily pass for a junior high girl.  But after transferring to Chester County, she’s gone out of her way to dress in business suits and do her makeup to make her look older.  It’s helped a little in dealing with assholes.

Speaking of assholes, that’s what she had to encounter when she arrived at the scene of the crime Sunday afternoon.  Nick Pascal was onsite with three uniformed officers from the City and they were arguing with 2 officers from Harbor City University.  Detective Pascal, a taller skinny man with a salt and pepper buzzcut, was deep in a yelling match with the college cops when Carly showed up.  The college cops tried arguing with them, and thought for a brief moment that they could bully the ‘little girl’ into agreeing with them.  As soon as Nick mentioned the cameras and that the suspect wore a shirt to cover up some tattoos, Carly told everyone in the room to “shut the fuck up, right now.  All of you.”  It took Nick a moment to realize that County was now involved, and that Carly wasn’t going to take any shit from, as she put it “rent-a-cops with a hard-on for busting keggers.”  One of the cops from the college didn’t get the memo about picking a fight with a woman half his size.  By the time he was right next to her trying to intimidate her, she had her tazer on his balls.  “Go home.  Now.  This is now a City and County crime scene.”

Carly and Nick worked the crime scene all day Sunday.  They took witness statements, bagged up the cameras that John Doe used, saw that he was extra careful about fingerprints, and spent extra time recreating how he got in.  An extra copy of the house key was found in his bag, and it was freshly made.  There were no signs of extensive use and even had the little brush marks that come from the grinding and buffing wheels.  The car key he had on him didn’t have a key fob attached and had no logo on it, so they couldn’t just keep hitting the buttons until a car made noise.  They counted out the bus as John Doe’s escape plan because the buses stop running in this area around midnight and don’t pick back up again until 5AM.  That meant that he had a car in the area, but it could be anywhere within a short walk in a crowded neighborhood where seeing a grown man walking down the street with a backpack is the norm, not the exception.  None of the immediate neighbors had a doorbell cam and they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  None of them heard anything, which lines up with Meg’s description of events of being ambushed and gagged almost right away.  The footage they reviewed from the cameras in the room showed John Doe setting up and testing them, making sure they grabbed footage of the scene.  Then the two detectives saw the attack for themselves.  The man stood behind the door and immediately covered Meg’s mouth and zapped her with a stun gun.  He zapped her again as the tied and gagged her on the bed, then proceeded to strip her and prop her ass up for a rough fucking.  After raping her, he talked some trash before standing up.  Once he was to his feet, he lost balance, fell, and cracked his head off of a piece of furniture on the way down.  The next couple hours of video was him mostly laying on the floor not moving and Meg crying.  The footage ran out before the roommates Crystal and Zoe arrived.  They were out of town for a football game the night prior and didn’t get back until after breakfast with Jeff, one of the band leaders.  They were all on the same bus.  He dropped them off at the house after they ate.  Their other roommate was out of town visiting her parents for the holiday weekend.  Neither of them knew about the key copy that was made, nor did they give their keys to anyone recently.  Neither of them recognized the man.  Both Nick and Carly thought that was odd, since that wouldn’t explain how John Doe got the key or their schedule.  They had to find the connection.  Carly made sure that they were out of earshot of the roommates before telling him why she was so insistent on being part of this case.  She remembered a few months earlier how she was brought in on a series of cases that her fellow detectives in CCPD were working on that all had the same modus operandi.  Victims, almost all women, would arrive home to an ambush.  A stranger would attack them, subdue them, then rape them in view of at least one camera.  The victims could never identify the attackers as they were usually wearing masks and covering up any tattoos or scars.  They couldn’t recognize the men and each attack described a different attacker, usually a man.  But the two factors they all had in common was they recorded the attacks and the victim had no clue who the attackers were.  (See the last two scenes of Lake Hiawatha). Carly’s coworkers had case files over a decade ago that matched this M.O., and had one they worked from just a few months before she joined the team.  The previous case they worked was also another young woman in college, though she lived out in the suburbs and commuted.  (See The Stephanie Taylor Investigation).  They felt they were dealing with an organized group that setting up women for rape by strangers and watching the films later, likely in some kind of trade.  John Doe fit the description of one of the attackers for some of the crimes, and if they could find out who he is and how he came here, they might finally be able to crack this case wide open.

So that’s why Carly is hanging out at Harbor City PD’s SVU office early on a Tuesday morning, drinking coffee with Detective Pascal.  They were waiting for the crime lab to come back with something, anything on John Doe’s identity.  It took until almost Noon for anything to come back from the crime lab.

John Doe was one Raymond Hibberton, 60 years old from the Woodland Fields section of the city.  This was from a successful fingerprint match from a DUI he was arrested for back in the 90’s.  He avoided jail time and only received probation for a few months and a suspended sentence.  At the time, he was in the corporate world, but the information was over 20 years old.  The sperm samples were blank, showing a likely vasectomy.

Carly and Nick got to work in a flash.  She texted her fellow Detectives at Chester County Ray’s details and followed up when they had more.  Within a few minutes, she had a phone number and an address in a North Junction triplex.  By the time they were able to get a warrant for his apartment, Carly got a hold of his taxes while Nick searched the web.  Ray was an economics professor at Chester County Community College who worked a few odd jobs throughout the year.  The most common and recent of those was Red Briar Security where he moonlighted as a cable installer.  While they waited to get his bank records, the pair were able to access his phone records as well as reach out to other departments to see if they had anything.  Apparently his son Dave had filed a missing person’s report early in the morning when he failed to show up to work at the community college and didn’t respond to any calls over the weekend.  The DMV registered a white 1996 BMW 5 Series.  A quick google search showed that the car key they had was a match for that make and model.  Nick made a call to dispatch to ask a unit in the area to canvass East Oakville for a older white Beemer.  It took less than 15 minutes before they received a message back that the car was sitting in a city impound lot after Jolly Roger towed it from an apartment complex in East Oakville the day before.  Nick called the impound lot to make sure that the car was still there, if anyone had been in it, and making sure that no one went near it until he arrived.  Meanwhile, Carly had Ray’s phone and bank records.  The last texts he sent were on Friday, the day before the attack.  His last 5 phone calls were to local restaurants and one answered from a local number on Friday afternoon.  That same number had sent him a text on Monday while he was in the hospital.  A quick search showed that the number belonged to Steven Wilcox, of Empire.  His number was all over Ray’s records at different times of the day and week going back months.  Steve worked for Red Briar Security per his LinkedIn page, so it’s likely they were friends from work.  Carly had his address so she could have a pleasant conversation with him later on.  Two other numbers texted Ray on Sunday.  One belonged to his son David.  The other was unknown, but a quick run through the phone records showed it belonged to one Samuel Mapleton.  She pinged Ray’s phone through the cellular towers, and it was sitting in the middle of the city impound lot.  Once they had the phone, they could read his text messages and get more context on these relationships with Steven and Samuel.

It was shortly after 1:30PM by the time the two detectives had a warrant for Ray’s home and his car.  Since his car was in the impound lot and not going anywhere, they decided to visit his apartment first.  Carly and Nick travelled together as Carly told George and their Captain what they were up to.



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Staff meetings suck.  And interdepartmental meetings on the first workday after a holiday suck even more, usually because there’s at least one or two stragglers who took the day off to extend their weekends.  That means that someone has to fill in to cover for a manager, and probably has no say or authority to do anything with other teams.

The County Divisional Meeting happened on the first Tuesday of each month at 1PM, right after lunch time so everyone either had to fight off the post-lunch tiredness or hangriness for pushing off their meal.  The meeting had one representative from each of the main areas of the police department.  Vice, Homicide, Robbery, Special Victims aka Sex Crimes, White Collar, Forensics, Administrative, Information Technology, Traffic, Code Enforcement, Organized Crime, SWAT, and Management all had someone representing them.  This meeting is normally attended by the CO’s of each squad, either a Lieutenant or above.  But with so many people out, there were a lot of Sergeants and Detectives at the meeting. 

George Lewis represented SVU.  Adam Finnegan was there on behalf of IT.

The meeting was mostly the Deputy Chief asking how things had gone the previous month, what were the causes of any outstanding issues, how were the different groups dealing with their budgets, stuff that management cared about.  George was mostly checked out of the meeting when his phone buzzed several times.  He waited for the Deputy Chief Cartier to finish his next rant about making sure that they don’t speak to the press without talking to the PR officer first before he checked his phone.  He couldn’t help himself when he saw what was on screen.

“Holy shit.”  George said, reading Carly’s text saying that they had an ID on the John Doe, and X responding back that the man was a person of interest in a couple of similar cases from years earlier.  Carly was on her way to his apartment with Nick Pascal to execute a search warrant on his apartment and car.  X said he’d help out and head over to the impound lot and would meet city officers there.  A county uniform was on their way to talk to David Hibberton, Ray’s son.  He filed a missing person’s report earlier in the day.

“What did you break this time?”  Adam said.

“A case.  Maybe a big one.”  George said, not taking his eyes off of the screen.

“What do you mean?”  Deputy Chief Cartier asked George as kept scrolling, glancing up only when everyone else was quiet.

“Oh, City had a 261 that we’re helping them out with over the weekend in East Oakville right outside of Collegetown.  Victim was ambushed, bound, gagged, and raped in her bedroom.  Perp set up cameras to film the whole thing.  After he gets his jollies off, perp has a heart attack and cracks his head off of a nightstand.  Doesn’t die, but the roommates find them the next morning.  College cops tried to bury it, but we got there and helped city get those pricks out of there.  Oh, by the way, if you get a complaint from those college cops about one of ours pulling a taser on one of theirs, that prick deserved it.”

“Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that.  Detective Graspper isn’t one to normally threaten… oh, who am I kidding?  That’s par for the course for her if some meathead tried to flex over her.”  Cartier said.  “Continue.”

“Anyway, case lines up with a slew of others we’ve had over the years.  Home invasion, vics don’t know the perp or perps, and cameras up the wazoo filming things like it’s Big Brother.  Perp had no ID on him, and you know how things work on a holiday weekend.  Carly’s working with Nick Pascal over at City on the case.  Looks like they got a name.”  George went back to the screen and scrolled back to where he saw it.  “Raymond Hibberton.  60, living out of North Junction.”

“Ray Hibberton?”  Adam caught himself saying almost a little too quickly.  The sound of shock almost caught himself by surprise.  George was too busy reading the screen to see Adam’s face.

“You know him?”  George asked, looking up briefly from the phone.

“Used to, it’s been a while.”  Adam thought quickly, something he was very good at.  “At least I sort of did.  Is he a teacher at 4C?  Cause if so, that’s where I know him.”  Adam waited for George to read type something on his phone and for a response a moment later.

“One sec…Yeah, Econ prof at 4C.  He’s a POI in a few of our older cases of similar M.O. but he always had an alibi.”

“Yeah, he was a prick.  Kinda crazy, always manic, had a real weird vibe and all.”  Adam spoke some truth about Ray, but didn’t want to go further.  Never give George Lewis more than a sentence when he can choke you with a paragraph.  “You mentioned other cases?”

“Please don’t get him started, we’ll be here all day.”  The Deputy Chief said, trying to get the meeting back on track.

“Yeah, it’s thin.  Real thin.  We’ve had a few cases over the years that we’ve called Strangers on a Train.”  George said.

“Huh?”  Adam pretended not know what George was talking about.

“Like the old movie?”  Cartier asked.

“Yeah.  First rule of violent crimes is that they’re crimes of passion.  Rape, murder, assault, there’s almost always a personal level to it.  Someone got hurt, so they get revenge.  Someone got rejected, so they take what they want.  9 times out of 10, the victim knows the rapist, or at least has an inkling of who they are.  The cases of the loner jumping out of the bushes in the park are few and far between.  They’re just the ones that make the news.  So when we get a bunch of cases over a decade or more about women being assaulted in their homes by strangers and these strangers are filming it, that’s very suspicious.  But it reminded me of that old Hitchcock movie ‘Strangers on a Train.’  Long story short, two guys on a train bitch about their wives and how they want them dead.  One guy says he’ll help the other by killing that man’s wife in exchange for returning the deed.  Rest of the story isn’t important, but that’s what I think is happening here.  We’ve got a group of some kind that is trading rape targets, or selling them off.  I think trades are probably likely.  So, Guy A picks a woman he wants to rape but can’t because he can’t get away with it, sends the info to Guy B.  Guy B does the deed and sends the film back to Guy A, who then returns the favor by raping a girl Guy B wants to see get it.  Who knows, maybe they make a sport of it, some kind of game?  And we think that our John Doe, Ray Hibberton, is one of the guys in this group.”  George paused as he scrolled through the messages.

“Anyone talk to him yet?”  Cartier asked.

“X and I were in HC General most of the day yesterday waiting for Ray would wake up.  He did sometime in the afternoon.”  George said.  Adam tried his best to hide his panic.

“Did he say anything?”  The Deputy Chief asked.

“Yeah.”  George said, pausing for a moment.  Adam felt his heart jump into his throat.  “He said ‘blaaarrrr blaaaarr, blaarr.’”  Everyone in the room looked at George as he moaned for dramatic effect.  “He stroked out, brain’s turned to mush.  Doctor says he had a stroke when he cracked his head off the furniture.  They’re hopeful that he can recover, assuming nothing else goes wrong.  I’d love to get the confession and the names of his colleagues, but since his brain is applesauce right now, it wouldn’t hold up in court.  And we have no clue what the OpSec is like.  There’s so many questions we have, and this is the first time in at least 10 years one of these guys was caught.  That’s pretty impressive, to be honest.”  George said, looking at Cartier the whole time.

“What’s the plan?”  Cartier asked.

“Carly’s on her way to Ray’s house right now with Nick from City.  X is heading to an impound.  Ray left his car parked in some apartment lot over the weekend, got towed first thing yesterday morning.  Another reason we couldn’t ID him, he didn’t have anything on him.  Phone and wallet were in the car, and it’s old enough that it doesn’t have a key fob to play Marco Pollo with.  You know when you forget where you parked so you walk through the lot pressing the lock button until you hear a beep from your car.  So X will check out the car and Carly his pad.”

“How long until they’re onsite?”

“Not sure Chief.  They’re en route now, but the apartment is in North Junction.  Figure they should be there soon.”  George said.

“Keep me in the loop.”  Cartier said as he pulled the meeting back on agenda. 

Everyone in the room focused on George as he spoke, and George was answering the Chief’s questions.  No one looked at Adam for his reaction to this news.  He’s glad, because he felt like someone just walked on his grave.  He couldn’t wait for the meeting to end, and left as fast as politeness would allow.  He returned to his office as quickly as possible and shut and locked the door behind him.  Nearly hyperventilating, he triple checked that the door was locked and opened the VPN settings on his personal phone.  After establishing a secure, unlogged connection, Adam navigated to a mail server he controlled and sent a mail to an email address that connected to a specific computer in North Junction.  The subject line and body text were the exact same.

‘7984HCAF’.  Halt And Catch Fire.



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Sam Mapleton was not having a good day.  He slept like shit the night before, maybe getting two or three hours of sleep the whole night.  Each time his eyes closed, he saw the same thing.  The short Yakuza woman shooting the middle aged couple dead, and scrambling to pick up the shells.  They were still warm in his fingers when he picked them up.  He grabbed all that he could, not bothering to see which were from his gun and which were from the AR-15 one of the brothers gave her.  He looked up from grabbing a fistful of shells to see what was haunting his dreams.  Two people gunned down.  He didn’t know them, would never have even thought about them, but he’d never seen a person die before.  Sure, he’s seen dead people, but none of them expired in front of his eyes, and he sure as shit didn’t have anything to do with their deaths.  But there he was, actively covering up two murders.

His mind raced each time he went idle.  He put the shells in an empty plastic soda cup in the trash right after a dad disposed of a shitty diaper.  No one would want to go digging through the trash to find what was in the can, and no one would have any reason to suspect anything.  They were at least 30 miles away from the scene of the crime when he dumped the shells.  Even if someone did find them, they’d have to track the shells to the guns.  One was an AR that belonged to some hick, the other a 9mm that might be registered to some gangbanging thug, but he’d never know.  He used that gun for two rapes so far, only firing shots this time.  Then he would have a panic attack each time a detail that came up slipped past his notice, like the shots he fired before Paul and Gary showed up.  He didn’t collect those rounds.  He didn’t know if he cleaned those rounds of fingerprints before he loaded the gun.  He was 99.9% sure he wore gloves when he loaded them and cleaned the rounds after Bob asked for the gun, but there was still a sliver of doubt.  But what if some pig did find them, and he was sloppy?  His perfect alibi is shot to shit.

Sam withheld his panic just long enough to focus on work.  He was a workaholic at heart, and knew that when he needed to distract himself from the shittiness of life, there was always work.  He contacted his real estate attorney, Mark Matthews of Matthews and Finnegan, and gave him the scoop on what Bob proposed.  Mark would have the paperwork ready for him and Bubbles to sign by the end of the week.  All in all, that part of the day was pretty smooth.

Bubbles was at work the whole day.  She came home with him, took a shower, ate, and went to bed.  By the time Sam woke up, Bubbles was already at the hospital.  Her schedule had her working close to a 24 hour shift.  She texted him when she could, letting him know that he’d be coming home instead of crashing at her apartment.  She was off the next day and a half and wanted to sleep in their bed.  Plus, she needed to do some grooming in the morning.  She said it was ‘time for a change.’

So it was a bit of a surprise when around lunch time Sam received a message from Pedro, asking where Bubbles was.  He let the unknown figure from the Club know that Bubbles was at work at the hospital.  A quick thanks and Pedro was gone.  Sam wondered what this was about, but went back to work.


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Bubbles sat in the dining area eating a Snickers and drinking a coffee when her phone buzzed with a couple notifications from WhatsApp.  The name wasn’t listed, but the ID number was ‘0000’.  She was caught a little off guard by this.  Pedro rarely reached out to anyone.  Then another message came through, and a third.  ‘Get to a quiet place and message me back.  ASAP.’  Pedro never sent messages like this.  She took her Snickers and coffee and made her way to one of the break rooms where doctors could catch a few zzz’s.  After making sure she was alone, she responded.

‘I need a favor.  A big one.  We have a problem.  Ray has become a loose end.  He got busted this weekend and is in HC Gen ICU under police watch as a John Doe.  He cannot talk to the cops nor leave the hospital under any circumstances.’

Bubbles looked at the message a couple times before responding.  Was he asking her to do what she thinks he’s asking her to do?

‘Yes.  He had a stroke and heart attack Sunday.  Cops are hoping he’ll talk soon, but he’s in bad shape.  Patients die all the time in the ICU.’

She responded that she wasn’t on rotation to the ICU.  Even if she could get up there, there’d be too many questions.

‘I’ll take care of that.  You’ll be on rotation through the ICU area tonight.  I trust you can come up with something.  Look, I would do this myself but the cops watching know something about me and would ask why I’m there.  I can’t say more than that.  I can get you in his room, you do the rest.’

Bubbles thought for a long time before agreeing to Pedro’s request, but she didn’t make any promises.  If something goes sideways, she’d bail.  She wasn’t going to risk her life and career to end a friend of a friend’s life.



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Carly and Nick arrived at a white and triplex house in North Junction shortly before 2:30PM.  From what Carly had found out, the house belonged to a little old lady who’s husband passed away a couple years earlier and she lived in the ground floor.  The second floor was occupied by a tenant with no obvious relation, and the third floor was rented out to Ray Hibberton for the last few years.  From everything they could tell, Ray lived alone.  He’d been divorced for several years and lived in this one bedroom apartment maybe a ten minute walk from the 4C campus.  When they arrived, they knocked on the first floor door until the little old landlady answered and asked them to wait a few minutes.  A few minutes turned into 15 as Nick’s patience started to run low.  As he waited, two more city uniformed cops showed up, followed by the lady’s middle aged son.  A little back and forth where Nick explained that they had a search warrant for Ray’s apartment and they were going in one way or another seemed to piss off the son, but Carly took him to the side and explained that it would be much easier and cheaper to just let them in.  “You don’t want to have to pay to replace the door, and it’s a huge pain in the ass to get us to reimburse you.  You let us in, do what we need to do, and we’ll be out of your hair before dinner.”  The son agreed, but still gave the stink-eye to Nick the whole time.  Nick saw that the older lady liked his charm better than Carly’s, so the detectives made some small talk making their way up to Ray’s apartment with their respective people.  The little old lady said that Ray was a model tenant, though sometimes got a little loud on the weekends.  He always paid rent on time and was handy for things that broke.  The son didn’t like Ray because he ‘gave him the creeps’ and was always checking out his wife and daughters any time they came around.  He never said anything directly, but was always averting his gaze at the last minute when caught.

They opened the door to the apartment and what they saw shocked everyone.  The place was a mess, with trash all over the living room and kitchen, the walls covered in various pictures and documents, and bits of red string tying things around the room like a conspiracy murder board.  The lights were dim, with only one lamp having a bulb in the entire place.  Notebooks full of writings were strewn about the room covering every topic from Keynesian Economics in the late 20th century to the proper way engage in anal sex.

Oh, and the 10 kilos of cocaine and $20,000 in cash was kind of weird, too.  That was just the coke that he hadn’t already used and was still sealed up.

Nick and Carly called in for more backup as they looked around, being careful not to touch anything.  They weren’t expecting to find enough coke to kill a horse, let alone piles of papers and random drives laying about.  They spent the next couple hours working with the various officers that arrived, cataloging everything they found.  Ray had two laptops and a tablet along with a couple old phones and several drives.  One of the computers had a “Property of Chester County Community College” on it, and the other one was an older gaming laptop from a few years earlier.  Nick saw that something was off when he touched the gaming laptop and it was hot to the touch.  Carly confirmed, and they marked that down as they listed it in the evidence they found.

While Carly was searching through Ray’s bedroom, she found a box hidden in the back of the closet.  It had several pieces of jewelry, pairs of panties, bras, and photos in it.  Some of the photos were Polaroids, but most of them were obviously printed at home.  She studied them, paying close attention to the faces and body positions.  Carly saw several pics of women being raped and abused in various states of undress and distress.  There were at least a dozen different women in there, and some of the clothing items matched what was in the box.  This was his souvenir box.  Something that George taught her was that a lot of rapists like to keep mementos of their conquests as a reminder of what they did.  They like to visit them, giving them a chance to relive their crimes.  That reliving can sustain them for a long time, but eventually the memories fade and they feel like they have no choice but to go out and do it again.  He said that they usually have a preference, but if an opportunity arises, they will gladly take what they can get.  Carly knew that if they could identify the women here, they could tie Ray and who knows who else to these crimes.

The detectives also found several hard drives and flash drives that they would have to go through, not knowing what was on them.  Since Nick and his department was the primary, they would catalog everything they found and share their findings with Carly at County.  By the time 6PM rolled around, they had everything cataloged and accounted for.  Nick returned to his precinct while Carly decided that it was getting late and that she’d have to pay Steven Wilcox a visit in the morning.


—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————


At the impound lot, Detective Xavier Harrison arrived on site and spoke with the staff running the lot as he waited for an officer from County and one from the City to arrive.  After making a little small talk, the group made their way through the lot a white 1996 BMW 5 Series registered to Raymond Hibberton.  The car was dirty and the inside was kind of a mess.  The officers opened the car and took a look around.  It didn’t take long to find Ray’s driver license and proof of insurance attached to his driver’s side sun visor.  This was an old trick used by drunks and druggies to limit how many movements they had to perform when pulled over.  The pic matched the man in the hospital, more or less.  In the backseat under a bunch of blankets was a gym bag with a change of clothes and some snacks.  The glove box had every receipt for every repair going back 10 years, along with his cell phone.  They made sure to get a copy of the phone’s image before sending the physical one over to City.


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Bubbles didn’t know how Pedro pulled it off, but somehow mid-shift he got her assigned to a rotation through the ICU to check the various patients to tag along with various Anesthesia Consults.  When a patient is in the Intensive Care Unit, bad shit has happened to them, and it’s pretty common that they might need to go into surgery with little to no notice.  They almost always have something wrong that complicates matters.  A simple surgery can go horribly wrong because a heart attack patient is on a medication that could prevent clotting, or could cause a seizure, or some allergic reaction they didn’t know about could rear it’s ugly head.

So that’s how she ended up here, late in the evening in the ICU doing rounds.  She traveled with her attendee for the day, Dr. Wilson, listening to him bitch and moan about how ‘some dumbass really fucked the schedule up today’ and how he should be golfing instead of here.  Bubbles paid him no mind.  He was a brilliant doctor but a complete dick.  It wasn’t the first time he bitched about doing rounds in the ICU.  With the way his billing system works, anything he does in the ICU for Medicare patients gets charged at a lower rate than any of the surgeries he works elsewhere in the hospital.  Plus, they are almost always more complicated than what he deals with when doing plastic surgery or the occasional ACL repair.  But when he has to deal with the ICU, he does only what he needs to do at the bare minimum and sends his residents to do the shit work.

Bubbles covered her pink hair in a bouffant scrub cap and put a mask on before going into each of the patients rooms.  One by one she checked over each person in the ICU.  Most were older people suffering from the effects of aging, though a couple were younger.  One was a man in 40’s who was about 400 pounds and lost his left foot to diabetes and another was a young woman in her 20’s recovering from getting hit by a truck while crossing the street.  The woman should survive, but she’ll be in a lot of pain for years.  The man, well, unless he made some serious changes he was going to lose his other foot soon.

Then she arrived at John Doe’s room.  The records still had his name as John Doe, even though he was positively identified as Raymond Hibberton by his son David.  The first time she entered the room to check him out, Ray was asleep while his son and his girlfriend tried to talk to him.  A nurse was talking to them about what happened, how difficult any recovery would be, and whether or not Ray had a living will.  David was pretty upset about the last part, but the nurse was insistent that David should seriously consider going with a DNR order, or Do Not Resuscitate.  He tried to argue against it, but it’s when she was checking Ray’s current meds that the nurse put Bubbles on the spot and asked her to describe what CPR was really like.

“Well, it’s not like the movies.  Best case scenario, if his heart stops we’ll break his ribs pushing on his chest to do compressions.  First time I performed CPR I broke an old lady’s ribs, almost all of them.  She didn’t make it.  Worst case, they’re already dead and we’re trying for a small miracle to save them.  There’s nothing gentle about CPR.  And that’s assuming it does work fast enough to not cause brain damage.  Lack of oxygen to the brain for several minutes while trying to restart the heart will likely cause irreparable brain damage.  If he were otherwise healthy, maybe.  But looking at his records, he’s pretty bad off.  His heart might keep going, but his brain is badly damaged, and the heart is only going at this point out of habit.  He’s suffering from a stroke, heart attack, and Stage 3A lung cancer that has spread to his lymph nodes.  Even if he somehow survives the next 24 hours, he’s looking a very long road to recovery before the cancer finishes him off in the next few months.  And with his heart in its current condition, he would not be strong enough to survive chemo or any other treatments.  If he makes it the next day, you should have a consult with Palliative Care.  Make him as comfortable as possible for the time he has left.  I’m sorry.”  The last part was added by reflex.  She knows how hard it is to receive this kind of news, but she’s done it so many times over the past few years that it almost becomes habit.  Honestly, everyone dies.  It’s just a part of life, and she’s more mad than sad about it.  When her patients die, she takes it as an insult from Death itself.

David was pretty distraught over this, but thanked Bubbles for the brutal truth.  She noticed how much he looked like Ray.  Dave was a tad bit chunkier around the face, but just like Ray with brown hair instead of gray.  As Dave and his girlfriend stepped out with the nurse, Bubbles looked over Ray.  He was still asleep.  She was alone with Ray.  Bubbles stared at the readouts, going over his current medications.  He was on a low dose of Heparin for blood thinners, and Morphine Sulfate as a pain killer.  She knew that she could kill him by increasing his dosage of any of a dozen different medications right now, but all of them could be easily tracked back to her.  If she gave him anything outside of the purview of anesthesia, she’d have a lot of uncomfortable questions to answer.  Instead, she knew if she gave him something so simple and mundane as ibuprofen or aspirin could trigger a hemorrhage, and with as bad as he was it wouldn’t take much to kill him.

She didn’t know how long she was alone with him, but at some point he opened his eyes.  Ray didn’t recognize her, but she did him.  This was Sam and Steve’s friend, someone they’ve played together with, drank together with, even gangraped together with.  And here she was, standing by his bed staring at him as he stared back at her.  Here he was, completely helpless against anything she might do to him. 

But also with the slight chance that he might take down everything that meant a damn thing to her.  She thought long and hard about what getting caught killing Ray would mean, but even worse how things may go for her if he survives.  The cops could find out everything about the Club, and Ray worked with Sam on a project.  She loved Sam, and he loved her, even if they hadn’t said it yet and had weird ways of showing it.  She always played it off as something else but deep down she was terrified of losing Sam, especially to this asshole lying on the bed.

She increased the dosage from 0.2 mg/hour to 2.0, citing that the patient was experiencing acute pain and that he has a history of opioid use, hence the increased dosage.  Bubbles knew that this much was on the high end of what’s acceptable, and with everyone else would likely either overdose in the next few hours, or the interactions with the Heparin would cause a hemorrhage.  Either way, she didn’t expect him to make it to the end of the night.

As she left Ray’s room, Bubbles noticed a couple of police officers in the waiting room right outside of the ICU.  Two of them were uniformed officers, and one was a middle-aged bald man with a red beard.  He sat in a chair next to Dave and his girlfriend, talking about what they knew about Ray Hibberton.  She didn’t make it obvious that she was avoiding the cops, but went out of her way to not cross paths with them. 

It was 9:26 PM when Bubbles finished her second round of the ICU and was on her way to the vending machine when she received a page.  Code Blue in Room 2047A.  Ray’s room.  She bitched about not getting a Snickers as she put 2 and 2 together and realized where she was going.  A moment later, the Code Blue was rescinded.  She arrived at the room as the Emergency Nurse on staff informed the Attendee that the patient’s son had just signed off on the DNR earlier that day.  The Attendee looked around and saw Dr. Kim Park standing at the doorway.  He motioned for her to come in, and Bubbles did so.  The Attendee asked her to check his vitals one more time.

“No pulse, no rhythm, respirations are zero.”  Bubbles said flatly.

“Shit.”  The Attendee said, grabbing Ray’s wrist to feel for a pulse, just to be sure.  “Calling it.  Time of death, 21:27.”

Bubbles lingered around the room for a moment before heading back to the hallway.  She kept her cool as long as she could until she made it to the break room and broke down crying.  She sobbed for maybe a minute or two as she opened her phone and typed two messages.  She sent a text to Sam that she’d be home in about an hour or two, and one message on WhatsApp to Pedro.  She wrote and deleted the message at least a dozen times before she sent it.

“Ray’s dead.”  As soon as it was read, she deleted the message.  She only hoped that Sam would be asleep by the time she got home.  Telling her boyfriend that she just killed one of his friends was not on her plans for the day.



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Morgana waited until after dinner before venturing out on her own.  Drew was a mess most of the day, just secluded in his new home office as she worked from the kitchen table.  Once dinner was over, Drew did his best to act like everything was normal, but each time she came close to him to comfort him, he pulled away.  She saw how he looked at her with a mix of anger, shame, and disgust.  It took until later at night before she could get more than a few words out of him.

So here she was, right before bed, sitting on the toilet reading the instructions for the pregnancy test she held in her hand for the umpteenth time in the last few minutes.   Everything had been turned upside down in the last few days.  Saturday morning they talked about if her period still didn’t show up before they left the lake, they’d stop and get a test.  Then everything went to shit and she dealt with morning sickness and multiple sexual assaults.

As she waited for the results, a hundred thoughts ran through her mind, everything from when to who was the father.  Was it Drew’s?  Was it Tommy’s?  Was it one of the other men from the cabin?  Or did it even matter?  She thought back to the previous month, before everything happened.  She thought about the first time her and Tommy made love right after getting her IUD removed, and how after that they were almost always careful.  She thought about how she surprised Drew when he got home and how they banged like rabbits, screwing every chance they had.  She wanted to be a mom so bad, especially to have Drew’s baby.

So why was she so upset when the test showed two lines?  Why was her first reaction to want to call Tommy that she was pregnant and not her husband?

Morgana stared at the test and cried for a long while before leaving the bathroom, looking for Drew watching the telly.  Time and time again she imagined this moment, how happy they’d both be.  Instead, it felt more like a funeral.  Drew was in shock and Morgana distraught.  He put on a brave face and told her how much he loved her, but she could see a little resentment in his eyes.  She knew deep down what he really thought when she first told him.

‘Am I the father?’
Always close the program you were running before exiting the holodeck

Offline To-Get-Her

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  • But would you really want her?
Re: Pharma (Chapter 84 Posted)
« Reply #261 on: September 02, 2024, 05:49:10 PM »
So one loose end had been taken care off! now the question will Ray's laptop go up and take out more from his apartment?

Might just be me but I betting that Morgana is preggers with Dean or Tommy's baby. more than a random's rapist. Would make the story more interesting especially if it's Tommy's

Wondering if Bianca and James gets together if she'll recognize the girth of his cock from the weekend?

Will a random search of the cabin grounds reveal more casings that prove events went differently?

So many questions that can be answered that maybe a merit will get faster answers!
When I get around to it, I'll write

Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 85 Posted)
« Reply #262 on: September 08, 2024, 12:51:54 AM »
Thanks TGH.  I'll be honest, I'm still playing out who's the daddy.  I had a pretty good idea until last week, now I'm waffling back and forth.  Some of the other questions will get answered a little sooner.


Chapter 85 incoming.
Always close the program you were running before exiting the holodeck

Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 85 Posted)
« Reply #263 on: September 08, 2024, 12:54:25 AM »
Chapter 85(nosex,setup)



Steve Wilcox looked forward to getting back to the normal grind of work and kids.  It was his week with his children and had just gotten them off to school before he had a moment to gather his stuff for heading into the office.  Wednesday’s were usually in the office.  He was dressed in a green polo shirt and khakis on a brisk September morning.  It was going to be a hot one today.  Like most wage slaves, he had his pattern for leaving the house down to the minute.  His coffee, lunch, laptop, and gym bag were ready to go by the door.  He began to grab everything when he heard a knock at the door.  After a brief pause, there was another knock.  He peered out through a side window and saw a tiny woman in a business suit standing on his porch.  She waved at him as she watched him watching her.  A moment later Steve undid the locks and opened the door.

“Are you Steven Wilcox?”  The tiny brunette asked.  She looked up to Steve but didn’t show the slightest bit of fear or hesitation in her voice.

“Uh, yes.  May I help you?”  He gave her a quick look up and down.  She was a tiny woman, he figured she must’ve been a gymnast or something like that.

The woman pulled a wallet out of her business coat.  “Carly Graspper, Chester County PD.  Mind if I come in?  I’d like to ask you a few questions.”  She held the badge up in front of Steve’s face for him to get a good look at it.

Steve looked perplexed.  He’d lived in Chester County most of his life and never heard of the county having it’s own police department.  Still, he thought for a moment to see where things go.  “What’s this about?”

“It’s about a friend of yours named Ray.  I’ve got some bad news, may I come in?”

Steve opened the door and let the short woman in to his living room.


—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————


Steve felt numb as this woman told him the news of Ray’s passing last night.  He didn’t remember what he said or she said for a few minutes after that until his work phone rang.  He answered it without thinking, interrupting Carly as he spoke to his boss.

“Yeah…. Oh, sorry, something just came up, I’m gonna be late this morning…. Ray died last night…. Yeah, just found out like five minutes ago, cop stopped by to tell me…. Well, he wasn’t really close with his family…. Yeah, as soon as this wraps up I’m coming in.  See ya in a few.  Bye.”  Steve hung up the phone, and that call seemed to shake him out of his funk.  He turned back to the young woman sitting across from him in his living room and shook his head.  “Sorry about that, boss was wondering why I’m a whole…” He looked at his watch, realizing that time passed by talking to Carly.  “Wow, 40 minutes late.”

“Sorry about that, I’ll try to wrap this up soon.  So you’ve said that you’ve known Ray for a while, and that you’ve worked with him on and off?”  Carly had a sip of coffee as Steve took one of his.

“Yeah.  Met a couple years back at some networking function.  We were networking over networking.”  Steve said.  The joke fell flat given the mood.

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”  Carly said, making sure her notes were up to date.

“It was a networking event about the newest trends in computer networking.  Ran into him one day at a trade show, next thing I know I’m calling him up to help work some jobs and we hang out every so often after that.”  There was some truth to his story, but Steve was purposely fuzzy on the details.  Like, the first time he really met Ray was a Club task where they used network cable to tie a waitress to her bed and fucked the shit out of her for a few hours.

“How often would you see him?”  Carly asked.

“We’d work together a couple times a year, in between classes.  He liked to work to keep busy and nothing is worse for idle hands than downtime.  He was always pretty high energy.”  Steve said.  “You said he had a heart attack?” 

“Yes.  He had a heart attack and stroke after he struck his head during a fall.  He passed away last night.  When was the last time you spoke to him?”  Carly asked, putting on as much sympathy as she had to.

“Last time was Friday afternoon.”  Steve said.  He was starting to notice things a little more out of his fog, like how she was more interested in whereabouts than friendships and knew something she wasn’t willing to say to him.

“What happened?”

“Well, me and a couple friends had a weekend plan fall into our laps and spent it up at Lake Hiawatha.  We tried calling Ray a bunch of times to see if he wanted to come.  No response for a couple days until we were already halfway there.  He said he had some plans of his own, but thanked for the offer.  I tried getting a hold of him Monday on the way home, but no response.”  Steve said, pausing for a moment before continuing.  “Did you talk to anyone from his work yet?”

“No, not yet.  The last few people he talked to either via text or call were his son, you, and this other number.  Wondering if you might recognize it?”  Carly showed him a cell phone with a Harbor City area code and it took Steve a moment to confirm what he was pretty sure he knew.

“One sec, pretty sure that’s Sam’s number.  We both tried texting Ray on the way up to the lake.  Yeah, that’s Sam’s.”  Steve said.

“And Sam was with you this weekend?”

“Yeah, the whole time.  Him and his girl asked if I wanted to come up with them for the weekend, I said sure.  We drove up Friday, hung out the whole weekend up by the lake, then drove back down.”  Steve knew something was off from how the cop was asking questions.  “Was Ray in any trouble?”

Carly paused, thinking over her words like she was trying them on.  “Ray might’ve been involved with something, we’re trying to figure that out.  Did he ever go into any hobbies?  Anything that was off the wall?  Any strange habits that you noticed, or anything… “

“Like was he doing drugs?”

“Yeah, that’s one thing.”  Carly said.

Steve used this as an opening.  “Look, I didn’t want to say anything to get him in trouble, but I think Ray might’ve had a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Nose candy.”  Steve said.  Carly nodded in acknowledgment.  “He had this little tradition where he’d like to ‘party’ during semester break where he’d stay coked up for days at a time.  He never let it interfere with his work, but he would cut off the outside world and do enough cocaine to kill a horse.  A big reason I asked was that a man his age can’t keep up coke benders like this forever.  Sooner or later they can’t keep up.  We called him because we were worried about him.”  Steve said, putting on a little more sympathy to his speech. 

Carly sat for a moment and took a couple more notes.  Her eyes took in the bigger man sitting across the living room from him.  She felt that he was hiding something else, but couldn’t put her finger on it until after the coke thing.  She felt that Steve must’ve partied with Ray once or twice, at least about the cocaine thing.  But that’s a large leap to go from ‘let’s do coke’ to ‘let’s rape a random woman we saw online.’ 

She thanked Steve for his time and gave him her card, in case he remembered anything else.  Carly took a quick look around the living room like she was casing the joint.  It looked like a normal house for a semi-normal family.  He was okay with her using the first floor bathroom, which was just a powder room with nothing special in it.  Again, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Carly left, leaving Steve by himself for a moment, realizing everything that he just heard.  His first order of business was to text his boss that he was on his way in.  The second was to go onto WhatsApp and message Sam in a group chat seen by Pedro.  “We got a problem.  Ray’s dead.”


—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————


Bubbles woke up later than she liked to on a day off at 8AM.  She probably could’ve slept in, but with everything that happened the last few days, she wanted to get a quick start to the day.  Sam was already awake in his home office hard at work putting things together for their new business venture.  She climbed out of bed and made her way to the master bath.  The fake tattoos were starting to peel off and her pink hair had served it’s purpose.  It was time for a change.  She drew herself a long, hot shower to scrub off the last of the temporary tattoos then applied a black hair dye over her pink hair.  She dried off, put on a black satin robe and a pair of blue cotton panties and made her way downstairs to get a coffee.  The smell of the coffee drew her down to the kitchen like a siren’s call.

“That smells delicious, what kind did you…”  She stopped talking when she walked into the living room and saw Sam, dressed in a green polo and khaki shorts, talking to two other men in suits.  “Oh, hello.”  Bubbles was taken aback.

“These are police officers, they just arrived a couple minutes ago, we’d just gotten some coffee.”  Sam said, standing as Kim stood next to his leather recliner.  The two other men stood as well.  One was a huge black man, and he approached first, hand extended.

“Detective Xavier Harrison, Chester County Police Department.  This is my partner, Dr. Lewis.”  She grabbed his hand, his engulfing hers completely.  She barely came up to his neck.

“Kim, Dr. Park.”  She freed her hand out of the black man’s grip and shook that of the bald white man with the red beard.  For a second she thought she recognized him from somewhere.  “Dr. Lewis.”  She shook his hand.

“Please Dr. Park, call me George.”

“Call me Kim.  What’s your specialty in?”

“Criminal psychology, you?”  George asked.

“Anesthesiology.”  Kim said with a slight smirk.  She looked at him again.  She knew where she recognized him from, but dare not let him know that she saw him last night in the ICU waiting room unless he brings it up.  But that’s not the case that made him famous.  “Please, sit.  What’s this all about?”  Bubbles leaned up against Sam’s chair, putting her hand on his shoulder as the cops sat back down.

“They were asking some questions about Ray.”  Sam said, looking a little uncomfortable to put mildly.

“What happened?”  Kim asked.

“Ray died last night.”  Sam said.  He seemed upset about it, but held together a brave face for her and the cops.

“I know, I’m sorry.”  She said, catching Sam and the cops a little off guard.  “I wanted to tell you last night, but it was late and wanted to tell you face to face, but you were already asleep when I got home, so I wanted to tell you before you heard from anyone else.”  She grabbed Sam’s  shoulder tighter and he her hand.

“Wait, how did you…” Xavier said, his voice a little too loud for the room.

“You were there last night, weren’t you?”  George said.

“So were you, I think.  I was the resident on-call for the ICU last night.  I’m normally assigned to the Children’s side of the complex, but for some reason I was the resident in the ICU.  We had a John Doe come in on Sunday with an ischemic stroke in the rear left quadrant of the brain following an acute coronary episode.  While performing open heart surgery, the doctors discovered that the patient also had Stage 3A lung cancer which had spread to the lymph nodes.  Patient experienced severe distress during his brief moments of lucidity.  He was CTD by the time I arrived.”  Bubbles said coldly, like she was describing a random patient and not one of Sam’s friends.  She mindlessly tugged at her robe sleeves, making sure they covered her arms completely.

“CTD?”  Sam asked.

“Circling the drain.  My wife’s an ER nurse, she says that from time to time.”  Xavier replied.

“Throughout the shift we found out that John Doe was Ray, but by that time it was already too late.  His son put in a DNR earlier in the night.  Attendee on shift called TOD at 9:27.  I’m sorry hun.  I didn’t know he was Ray until late at night, and the next time I saw him he was coding.”  Sam was sad and a couple tears came out.  Bubbles looked crestfallen as she told him what happened.

The two cops looked at each other, then waited for the couple to look back at them, signaling they were good to continue.  Bubbles wiped Sam’s eyes with her sleeve.

“Sorry about that.  So, where were we?”  Sam asked.  X looked back down to his notes.

“I was asking you to take me back through your past with Ray.  You said that you’ve known him about 6 months.”  X asked.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“How did you meet him?”  X asked.

“Through Steve.  Met them around the same time at a little get together back in the spring.”  Sam said.

“And you ma’am?”

“Me?  Last night, I guess.  Don’t think I’ve met him face to face before then, and even then wasn’t sure until later on.  What’s this about?”  Bubbles asked.  She knew what they were likely going to dig two and wanted to put a kibosh on anything that might come up.

“Just trying to figure out how well you knew Mr. Hibberton.  You were one of the last three people to call or text him before his little accident.  Also, his car was found in a parking lot for a building that Mr. Mapleton owns.”  X said.

“I’ve never met Ray until last night.  I’d call him more of a friend of a friend than an actual friend.  He’s always bouncing around, up to some stuff.”  She said looking around the room.  Sam just held her hand while X took notes.  George kept yawning between sips of coffee.  Not just yawning, but obnoxious yawning.  She noticed his yawning.  “Need some more coffee?”

“Yes, please.  I was just about to ask for another cup.”  George said as he stood.  Kim grabbed the cup from George and went to the kitchen to get her own cup.  She didn’t ask how he took it, nor did she really care.  She grabbed two cups of black coffee and a small bottle of creamer from the fridge.  She loaded up hers with the French vanilla creamer before taking all three out to the living room.  George tried to stifle a yawn as he grabbed the cup and creamer.  “Thank you.”

“I was wondering if you knew why he left his car in one of your parking lots?”  X asked.

“Probably because he’s cheap and hates paying for parking.  He knows I own the building and when the staff is looking for people parking without a permit.”  Sam replied.

“What do you know about Ray’s, hobbies or activities?”  X asked, pausing to find the right phrase without letting on how much they knew.

Sam looked at Bubbles, and they both shrugged before turning to X.  “Not much.  He taught at the community college, liked to write but never published anything that I know of or that I’ve read, and was always finding an excuse to go out and party.  Generally…”

“He was kind of a dick.”  Bubbles said.  “The party boy mentality is funny and cool in your 20’s, but it wears thin in your 50’s and 60’s.  And I never heard of him with a girlfriend or his ex.  Mostly just exploits from going to the bars and whatnot.”

“You concur with that Mr. Mapleton?”  X asked.

“I mean I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a dick, but, yeah, he was a dick.  But he was Steve’s dick, if that made sense.  If things would go crazy, Ray would be there for him.  Odds are he caused the craziness, but he would be there for Steve, and Steve felt he owed him.  They were friends who went back a while, I think.”  Sam said.

“Anything else he liked to do?  Anything else you could think of?”  X said, emphasizing that the anything else part.

The couple looked at each other again, and Sam started.  “Well, I didn’t want to get him in any trouble before, but, well, um…”

“Ray was a cokehead.”  Bubbles cut off her boyfriend.  “He did a lot of drugs from what I can tell, and his tox screen would probably back it up as well.  Cocaine was his drug of choice.  I think that’s part of why he liked teaching at the community college.  He had access to all of the drugs he could get.”  She said as she took a sip of her coffee and adjusted her sleeves again, trying to ignore George’s incessant yawning.  At least he was quiet about it this time.

“And your last few texts to him were Friday and Monday?”  X asked.

“Correct.”  Sam said.

“Why not Saturday or Sunday?”

“He asked to be left alone for the weekend, said he had some plans of his own.”  Sam replied before continuing.  “The three of us, us two and Steve, took a business trip up to Lake Hiawatha for the weekend.  We left Friday, drove up, got there Friday night and checked in to the hotel.”  Sam realized he made a mistake when he said business trip.  Never volunteer information to the cops. 

“Business trip?  Thought you said it was a vacation.”  X asked, paying a little closer attention to Sam and how he shifted in his seat.

“It was both.”  Bubbles said.

“I had a business meeting.  Well, we ended up having a business meeting up there.  We had a free hotel room for the weekend.  We went to the meeting while Steve hung around and relaxed.  It’s his first weekend without kids in who knows how long.”  Sam was beginning to ramble a little.

“What kind of business meeting?  Sounds like you went to a meeting while Steve was stuck behind for the weekend.”  X said.

“It wasn’t the whole weekend, just Friday night into Saturday.”  Sam said.

“It was for a real estate deal, and the man we met asked us not to disclose any details outside of our attorneys.”  Bubbles said.

“So he gave you a free room for a meeting?  Where was this meeting?  His office, a restaurant?”  X asked, briefly glancing at the black stained towel lying on the floor that used to be on Kim’s hair.  A stain that looks a hell of a lot like hair dye.

“Neither, it was on his boat.”  Sam said as he was getting flustered remembering his meeting with Bob Kuntzmann, trying his best not to say anything incriminating.

“After we arrived in town, we cleaned up and joined our potential business partner on his yacht for a dinner meeting.  He insisted we were a few miles away from shore before the meeting began in earnest.”  Bubbles said.  She read the room again, but something was different.  George was no longer yawning while drinking his coffee, but paying absolute attention to the story they told.  She could see he was putting something together.

“I just want to see if I understand this.  The two of you asked a friend to join you for a free hotel stay at a very popular resort, on a Friday night on the busiest weekend of the year, meeting in the middle of the lake, late at night on a Friday because he values his privacy?”

“Yes.  When you say it like that it sounds kind of crazy, but yes.”  Sam said, getting nervous.

“Who were you meeting with?”  X asked, keeping his voice as calm as he could.  ‘This is not an interrogation.  Not yet.’ He thought to himself, trying to keep calm.

“Our lawyers asked us not to-“

“What was the number on the Ballbuster Deluxe?”  George said, putting his coffee down and cutting off the Asian doctor.  He waited until everyone in the room stopped and looked at him before he continued.  “That boat that you met Robert Kuntzmann on, it was named the Ballbuster Deluxe.  What number is he up to now?  6?  7?”

Sam and Bubbles both looked like they saw a ghost in that moment.  X put the pieces together almost as fast as George did, but wanted to see where this was going.

“8.”  Bubbles said.

“Thank you.  If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to skip ahead a few chapters, get us all on the same page.  My partner and I are investigating Mr. Hibberton.”  George said as he stood up and proceeded to walk around the living room.  “You’re both smart enough to know that something is up when two police detectives who go out of their way to not describe which division they work with arrive on your doorstep early in the morning asking about your relationship with someone and they’re cagey about why they’re asking.  As the kids would say, he was up to some ‘shady shit.’  We can’t say exactly what it was, but you brought up his drug use.  He was found with a shitload of cocaine.  At least 10 kilos.  That’s a lot for the 1980’s.  But that’s not all he was up to.  Mr. Hibberton was also a predator.  A serial predator, at best.  Dr. Park, your intuition to stay away from Ray whenever possible was correct.  But then that leads us to your trip up north to Lake Hiawatha.  About 40 percent of all hard drugs coming into Chester County come from that area, and Hiawatha County is on lock.  Only one person operates anything of importance or value in and out that place.  And Mr. Mapleton, you are very successful at what you do.  You’re making a small empire in the rental markets down here in Chester County.  Everyone will have had to pay you rent or knows someone who has in the next 10 years.  That puts you in a unique position to work with a certain individual up north who is basically barred from ever stepping foot down here again.  He knows you’re big enough to notice but still small enough to control and work with.  That makes you perfect for him.  Now, everything you described, the comped hotel room on the busiest weekend of the year, the meeting at Friday night into early Saturday in the middle of the lake, a dinner proposal that probably had more than a little something extra to sweeten the deal and far enough away so that he’s the only one who’s listening and only he controls the narrative.  How’m I doing so far?”  George paused to take a sip of his coffee, reading the room.  Sam looked terrified that he had been discovered but Dr. Park look… thrilled.  Excited even.  “You say you met with anyone other than ‘Big Ole Bobby K’ up north, your story is bullshit.  No one is stupid enough to shit in his yard.  But meeting with him now opens up a whole new can of worms.  Bob can’t just be happy building resorts and casinos, no.  He owns the underbelly as well.  How long do you think it’ll take us to find out that Ray got his coke from Bob?  Now that we know what we’re looking for, it’ll be about a week, tops.  But you’re very protective about why you met with Bob.  You’re trying to protect something, and odds are it’s perfectly legit and legal, with a nice twist of social justice and fuckery thrown in.  Now, we could spend the next few weeks starting an official investigation into this new business venture, drag the lawyers into it, and go around in circles just to find out that on the surface everything is on the up and up, or you can tell us the project you’re building with his money.”  He stopped right next to Sam, face cold and expressionless.  He knew that portraying opposite emotions had disconcerting affects on people.  Nervous people expect a freak out.  When they get stone cold, almost bored disappointment, they panic.  George made a career out of this.

He stopped his monologue, waiting for someone to make a move.  The Asian woman looked almost giddy at this connection of logic the detective made while Sam took a moment to collect his thoughts.

“It’s…it’s affordable housing near well-to-do neighborhoods, reverse gentrification as he called it.  He wanted to bring a taste of the ghetto back to Hillside Estates and other places where all the snooty rich people lived.  He thinks that not only it’s needed, but will help and be funny as hell.”  Sam blurted out, trying his damndest to only say what was absolutely necessary.

George laughed, then clapped Sam on the shoulder.  “That old gag again.  Love it.  I hope one day he genuinely pulls it off, without the whole trying to use the apartments to smuggle drugs and kidnapping victims in and out of my county, like he's tried a few times before.  Be very careful working with him.  Always watch your back, and don’t ever go fishing with him.  Ryland’s boys will be trawling the bottom of the lake looking for you two.”

“What, how-“

George cut Sam off.  Dr. Park had a big grin on her face watching this.  “Dr. Park recognized me from earlier, and not just from last night.  I get that sometimes.  You’ve probably seen or listened to a few True Crime podcasts over the years.  But if you’ve had a conversation with Bob Kuntzmann that lasted more than 10 minutes, odds are he referred to some of his problems down south, one of them being ‘That Mother Fucker.’  I have put dozens of his associates in jail over the years, sent him up the river, and for a brief time I worked with him on a major case.  Now, we’re like a snake and a mongoose.  We go out of the way to needle each other, to keep the other honest.  I’m the reason he can’t work in Chester County, and I’m also the reason he’s not on Death Row.  To quote the Stones, please allow me to introduce myself.”

He took each of their hands one by one and shook them, saying their names as he did.  “Mr. Mapleton, Dr. Park.  My name is Dr. George Lewis, Detective, Chester County Police Department.  I am That. Mother. Fucker.”
Always close the program you were running before exiting the holodeck

Offline To-Get-Her

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 85 Posted)
« Reply #264 on: September 08, 2024, 03:09:35 PM »
Maybe it's just me but I don't see Bubbles being the weak point in the cover up story for the weekend. Nice to see one investigating police officer might be making a connection with events up there!

Hoping it's not going to be a case that the police makes Ray the key piece of evidence against everyone!

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Offline JustJess_33

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 85 Posted)
« Reply #265 on: September 09, 2024, 08:21:06 AM »
Has anyone told you. You are a great writer. A lot to catch up on but my goodness it will be worth it. Thank you for the upcoming binge xx
Merit and many more xxx

Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 85 Posted)
« Reply #266 on: September 15, 2024, 07:44:15 PM »
Thanks TGH and Jess.  The kind words are just like Plethora.  It really means a lot.


Chapter 86 incoming
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Offline LtBroccoli

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 86 Posted)
« Reply #267 on: September 15, 2024, 08:37:47 PM »
Chapter 86(nosex,setup)



Aislinn’s life was turned upside down over the past week.  She arrived in Harbor City just a week ago for the job of a lifetime and a chance to spend more time with her sister.  Since then she’s been hired for said job, went on a vacation, hooked up with a really hot guy several times, was kidnapped, sexually abused, mentally and physically tortured, raped dozens of times, witnessed a murder, approached about signing a 6 to 7 figure NDA to keep everything quiet, watched her sister’s marriage crumble in real time, and found out right before she left for the airport that she’s going to be an aunt.

7 days.  As she stared out the plane’s window, an old quote ran through her head.  ‘There are some decades that feel like weeks, and some weeks that feel like decades.’  She checked her phone to make sure it was still the 21st century.

‘The Pacific never looked so lovely.  All of our hopes and dreams could end in an instant with one slip of the controls.  All our problems vanish in a second.  No more work, no more families, no more responsibilities, no nothing.  Just a slip into the drink in the middle of nowhere.’  Aislinn hadn’t had intrusive thoughts for an eternity, but going through all of what she did in such a short time was more than enough to rattle her to the core.  Nothing like having your sister being made to eat you out in front of half a dozen people and cameras to shake one’s being. 

As Aislinn looked out the window onto the nothingness below, she came to an epiphany.  No matter what she did or where she went, she’d have to live with this.  Was she going to let this define her forever, or would she do something about it?  She’d put off these thoughts until she was on the plane.  Monday was spent laying in bed and Tuesday went from flipping back and forth between crying uncontrollably, being a catatonic mess, or flipping out and throwing her stuff around.  It wasn’t until late Tuesday that she calmed down enough to pack for her return trip to Melbourne and put her affairs into order.  When she came out to say goodbye, she saw Morgy and Drew hugging, and they told her the news.  The best bright spot out of this whole mess is that she’s going to be an auntie.  But even that bright spot was short lived as she rushed to the airport, hopped on her first flight, caught the connection in L.A., then sat in the seat on the trip back home.  For the first time since the news, she’s had a moment to herself.  The one person she didn’t want to be with for the next 16 hours.

As she flew through the day, trying to ignore everything that happened to her was impossible, so she decided to do what she did best: confront the problem.

Aislinn pulled out her iPad as she listened to some classical music on her AirPods and pulled up Notes to get her thoughts in order.  First things first, what to do for her health and recovery.  After getting settled back in, she’d head to the clinic for a quick check, just to make sure none of those wankers gave her anything serious.  Then, schedule time with a therapist.  That one lady cop gave her a number for someone back in the states, but she will need someone at home.  Third, self healing and self love.  She’d allow herself a little while to have some self-destructive tendencies, but for the most part would need to fix her sights on how to get back to normal.  She deserved to be happy, and she just came out of a harrowing ordeal.  Maybe she did deserve that new Louis Vuitton bag after all.  The next part was readying for her move to the states and preparing for her new job.  As far as she knows, she has two housing offers up in the air.  She could take over the lease on Morgy’s old place, or move in with them to their new place.  Before the baby, she would’ve easily taken over the lease, but the thought of always being there for her new little ankle biter made her giddy.  At least that was until the one a few rows in front spent the next few hours being miserable.  Suddenly having her own place seemed like a much better use of company assets.  She selected the apartment.  If needed, she could find a roommate to help with bills and for the company.  Other logistical stuff would be handled once things look a little more certain, but she didn’t want to get a gas car.  She thought about a Tesla but the owner’s become a real cunt recently.  Drew said that the company will probably get her a meeting with someone from the local Mercedes dealer.  She had to admit, his ride was real nice.

She was halfway through the flight when she came back to the inevitable.  She had to go through what happened and put her Barrister’s Wig on.  She replayed everything in her mind, from coming back from the cabin to the cops leaving.  She broke down her notes into the 5 W’s and a rough timeline.  There was the Asian girl with the pink hair and green eyes, Kim.  The hair was fake and most certainly the eyes as well.  She couldn’t be sure about the tattoos, but wouldn’t put it past that skank to cover herself in fake tats for a crime.  Didn’t matter though, according to the cops she was dead along with her boyfriend.  But she was the only one she had a face for that she could identify.  Her boyfriend, the fat one, was also dead.  They were both Yanks, their accent was thick, though the fat one went out of his way to speak with an educated manner.  What do they call them, Grammar Nazis?  She noticed how he spoke versus everyone else, and how he corrected them out of habit.  She called this one ‘Fat Dave.’  Aislinn wrote ‘Dead?’ next to his name since the cops said he was likely shot by the Bouchet Boys.  That’s what that Deputy Aly called the group of hunters.  ‘Skinny Dave’ was the bloke that was skinny as a rail that went out of his way to hurt Bianca.  That one took perverse pleasure in making her suffer.  Either he was a sadist or he had and axe to grind.  She figured it was the latter, he was just too personal in his hatred.  If he was such a sadist, why not do as bad or worse to anyone else?  The final one was ‘Dad Dave’, and she wrote down what she could.  He was tall, but not as tall at Tommy.  He was a brutal fuck, and spoke in a fake voice almost the whole weekend.  The only times he didn’t was when he was either surprised or convinced it was safe.  Otherwise, it was a deep bass, like he was pretending to sing a funk song from the 70’s.  That told her that he knew someone in the party, or they knew him.  He spoke in his normal voice when it was just her and James was around, so James doesn’t know him either.  Then there were the Judas twats, Joe and Mary.  They came in so obnoxious no one noticed what Kim was doing in setting things up for the attack.

Aislinn wrote ‘Inside Job?’ on her note and circled it several times.  She made two columns, For and Against.  Suspicious Timing, Leaving, Joining in were on the ‘For’ side, while Beating, Rough Sex, Bad Luck, Just Arseholes, and Stockholm Syndrome were on the ‘Against’ side.  After sitting on it for a while, she couldn’t decide whether Joe and his wife were in on the attack from the beginning, a case of bad timing, or switched to avoid worse and dove into their roles.

As she was going through a list of all of the acts she was forced to perform so she could recount them to her therapist down the line, she received an important email.  It was from Marcus, Bob’s lawyer.

‘Dear Ms. Walker,

I hope this letter finds you well.  As per our recent conversation, I have adjusted the terms of the settlement to something that I hope is more to your liking.  The NDA terms are still the same, but I have modified the language regarding whether or not your party is ever approached by legal authorities in this matter.  As you are aware, it is illegal in the United States to include a penalty clause for reporting criminal activity and so I have cleared that section up.  Also, you would retain any rights to fictional works made off of any references to these events, as long as the publishing of said works would not occur until after the standard criminal statutes would expire.  I was curious about your desire to make sure this clause was in full effect.

As far as restitution goes, we feel that the original proposed amount was an ample amount for the pain and trauma that you have unfortunately experienced.  However, we have decided to increase the amount from $150,000 to $350,000, given the strong case you made for wanting this disappear into the rear view mirror, as well as an additional $50,000 per person you could help to agree to the newer terms.  However, the bonus is only available until the end of Sunday, due to some restrictions we face on our end.

Please reply back at your earliest convenience, and I hope that you have a safe and healthy trip.’

Aislinn read through the legal form.  Everything was on the up-and-up.  There weren’t any crazy clauses like only applicable to left-handed veterans of the Falklands War, and only redeemable on the third Tuesday after every other Blue Moon following a Penrith playoff win.  She thought about the figures for a bit.  350k was a lot of money, and getting an extra 50k per person just for getting everyone to do what they would likely do anyway was a bonus.  With 5 other people receiving similar offers, she accepted almost a little too quickly.  350k plus a fully realized bonus comes to 600k.  $600,000 would pay off a lot of debts, and her little niece or nephew would get a nice start to their college fund.  She replied back to Marcus that the terms were fair and accepted them.  Some back and forth through DocuSign and by the time she landed in Melbourne, everything was confirmed.  When she came back to the states in a few weeks, she’d have enough in her savings to buy a house just like Morgy’s if she wants.


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Adam decided to take a work from home day from the police station as he said that he was feeling a little under the weather.  He wasn’t so sick that he couldn’t come in, but just sick of commuting for the next couple days.  At least that’s the excuse he gave to his boss, Captain Jenkins.  In reality, he had a ton of work to do to protect his Club.

The man eponymously known as Pedro stood in front of his whiteboard hanging in his personal office, drinking a cup of tea as he looked at the sketch of his plan.  He thought about what he knew, what his people knew, and most importantly what the cops knew.  It was early in the morning on Wednesday.  Ray died last night, and he was pretty sure Bubbles killed him.  ‘She’s smart, so let’s assume it’s listed as natural causes.’  He would check in a few minutes to confirm, but wanted a list of all the things he would need to check upon intruding into the hospital’s IT systems.  Same with the HCPD and CCPD crime labs.

Most computer security is based on the front door approach, with a little of locked filing cabinet mentality.  The most secure part of a computer network is usually the web interface, the outward facing part of the world.  Security experts see a web site just like the outside world sees a front door.  This is where the most security is placed because this is the easiest way into the home.  They’ll give credence to the windows and other entry points, but most protection is centered around 1 or 2 points of entry.  Those points are monitored in most modern computer systems for unauthorized accesses.  But this assumes that the intruder wasn’t supposed to have access in the first place.  If someone opens the front door with a key or valid code, they’re good to go.  Now, there might be some areas that are locked off from them without some elevated access, but that once again depends on whether or not they should have access.

Adam knows that he has to be careful when traipsing around inside of protected networks.  It’s why he makes plans of what he has to do before doing them, and never plays them by ear.  He knows that the external network for the Harbor City General Hospital and Children’s Hospital Complex is protected against several layers of intrusion, but the employee intranet isn’t as robust because it is designed only for authorized users.  They never thought that anyone would hardcode a permanent Admin-level account into the main HR system under a slightly misspelled name of one of the mid-level managers that always worked from home, or that said account would have two others hidden in similar ways in case that one was discovered.  Their system would read a login attempt to the account via VPN, authorize it, and go on it’s merry way.  But he also knows that doing this several times in a day is suspicious.  Once or twice a month won’t raise any red flags.

The police systems will be a different story.  He knows the CCPD infrastructure very well.  Fuck, he built the thing.  He left just enough wiggle room in the system in case he ever needed to do something dangerous, but also knew where the acceptable risks were and how to exploit them.  He knew the document system they used for storing old handwritten notes had issues with OCR on some handwriting and would interpose digits.  He knew that if files were misplaced in the wrong case they could be lost forever without the proper tagging.  He knew that the backup system was tied to a UPS that hadn’t been tested in a few months and the battery was due for replacement but wasn’t prioritized due to budget issues.  He knew the RAID 10 system was mostly bulletproof as long as they didn’t lose multiple drives at once.  He also knew that if the server was corrupted during a power outage while a drive swap occurred, they’d be lucky to recover anything from that server rack.  As for the Harbor City Crime Lab, he’d pwned that mother fucker a decade ago out of shits and giggles and was waiting for just the right time to brick their system.

Adam knew he couldn’t attack both systems at once without casting a much wider net, and that would bring in the Feds.  He was good, but not outsmart the NSA and FBI in a counterterrorism investigation good.  If he attacked only these two police departments at this time, they’d ask why now, and the only new case that both of them are working on is Ray Hibberton’s.  That would be just enough motivation to give someone like George Lewis a reason to tear the system down, even if he looked like a dog in an engine bay any time he visited the server room.  Same with two accidents.  One crazy set of circumstances to take down heavily protected police evidence is a rarity in itself.  Twice at the same time sounds contrived.  So Adam knew he would need either a new big case to serve as a distraction, or an accident and an attack.  One had to look like a malicious attack, the other a series of unfortunate events.  Since he had access to the Chester County system, that’s the one he’d set up the accident.  Harbor City PD would be the victim of a hack.  He just had to make sure he knew what to go for once the attack was on.

He listed what evidence he would have to destroy, then committed that list to memory and wiped the whiteboard clean.  Phone records would be impossible, but he could destroy Harbor City’s copy of the phone’s image.  Ray’s computer was hopefully already dead.  The hard drives they recovered might have something, but they would have to go, too.  He wouldn’t have access to the physical evidence, but the digital copies could die off.  Assuming Ray didn’t write down every phone number and message during his coked out binges, there shouldn’t be any physical evidence.  Ray knew a few people, but almost no one kept journals anymore.  He thought about how he would destroy the hard drives, and was kicking himself for not thinking that part through before he sent the HCAF command.  There’s a chance that he could’ve sent the command on a time delay to destroy any drives, but then he calmed down and remembered that there was no guarantee that those drives would be anywhere near his computer ever again. 

Adam figured out how to destroy those drives.  He would launch an attack inside of the Harbor City IT system that would corrupt the disk drives of their evidence locker, then reach out for those drives on the network and wipe them out.  But since he didn’t know which drives those were, he’d have to wipe out all attached storage in the evidence locker, starting with the newest cases.  He knew their offsite storage solution was a tape backup once a month, and that was performed on the 27th each month and that their cloud backup system was a push not pull system.  He had a few weeks to work with but wanted to move fast.  He could write this program and get it into the Harbor City system by the end of the day if he had do.  Getting it in could’ve been a problem, if he didn’t already have access to their system thanks to being one of the county’s top IT professionals in the public sector.  He knew their security because he helped them implement the latest rounds of updates.  He knew where the weak points were to get in the network.  They were hidden well enough that no one should expect to find them, but not so impossible to find that no one wouldn’t ever find them.  He’d launch the attack from a series of VPN’s tied to an Iranian IP address and leave some vague references to All Cops Are Bad, or Antifa or some shit like that.  This would cause him to get called into the office to secure CCPD’s systems, and while doing that he’d insist on doing a safety check.  While that’s happening, a power outage would occur just as a series of unfortunate events took place, corrupting the data they received from Harbor City PD in the last two days.

Adam went to work writing this nasty little bug.  It was bigger than a virus, but didn’t have the characteristics of a Trojan or anything else like that.  It was a small piece of malware that once it was on the system would give itself root access to reformat and rewrite every drive on the rack, starting with the newest files and volumes and moving through the rest of them.  By the time anyone would know what was wrong, anything for the last few weeks would already be overwritten with 1’s.  He’ll put a front-end message up saying to pay a certain amount of Bitcoin to a specific address that will point to the Iranians.  CCPD will think they got hacked by ransomware while the IT staff tries to save what they can.  He’d set this up so that it looked like it came from Ray’s drives, too, as a failsafe against being read.

He thought about how to erase the phone itself when the simplest idea hit him.  He wouldn’t do anything to it.  He’d change the case number and tracking number on the phone and replace it with one from a different phone.  Ray’s phone would be lost and one day when the heat died down, it would get thrown out with some other case’s stuff.

As he made his way through writing this little nasty, the WhatsApp rooms lit up with activity.  That’s pretty rare for a Wednesday morning.  It looked like Steve, Sam, and Bubbles were chatting away.  Adam looked at the messages and nearly ignored them, until he saw the newest message from Bubbles.

“WHY WAS THAT MOTHER FUCKER IN MY LIVING ROOM!?”


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Detectives Lewis and Harrison entered their unmarked maroon Ford Police SUV after taking a slow walk out of Sam’s house.  After George’s little monologue sucked the air out of the room, there wasn’t much else to talk about.  Dr. Park had a few questions for George off the record about the First Union Holy Church case, but generally speaking there wasn’t much more they could do.  Xavier entered the driver side of the car.  George closed the door behind him.  The shorter white detective sat in the seat and fumed to himself until the car was safely away from the house.  At the next stop sign, George yelled.

“FUCK!  FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!  MOTHER FUCKER!”  George screamed, pounding his right fist on the door panel.  “I fucked up.  I went too hard.”

“Gee, ya think?”  X said sarcastically.  George glared at him, but the older man knew when his partner was right.  “Yo, next time you want to do a soliloquy, quote Hamlet.  Don’t do it in my interview.”  X drove the car out of the suburban plan that Sam Mapleton lived in.  “What are we thinking?”

“From before I shit in the punch bowl or after?”  George replied, looking out the window.

“Before.  Wasn’t expecting those two to work with Bob, but I get the feeling that that’s not why they know Ray.  We need to meet up with Carly, trade notes from her conversation with that other guy, Steven Wilcox.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was up to something.”  X said in his booming, deep voice.

“First off, she failed my psychopath test.  I must’ve yawned for 20 minutes, not once did she yawn back.  Sam was too nervous or out of it to notice me, but Dr. Park not only noticed me yawning, even subtly called it out but did not instinctively yawn.  Seeing another person yawn is a reflex, and only those deep in the Cluster B Personality Disorder spectrum don’t react instinctively by yawning.  I’m not saying she’s a psychopath, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was.  Second, she killed Ray.  I’d put dollars to donuts that she overdosed him on morphine on purpose, but with how bad he was there was no way he was leaving hospital in one piece.  Figure he had maybe a 20% chance of making it through the week and even less to ever recover.  But suddenly the anesthesiologist from the Children’s Hospital side of the building is pulling a shift in the ICU.  She knows how dangerous the combination of drugs and treatments he was on could be, but increases his pain meds 10 fold, claiming it was because he was in constant pain.  He was out like a light most of the night and non-communicative the rest of the time I was there.  What did he do, blink in morse code with his good eye for more happy juice?  Finally, she said she didn’t know who he was until later, but his records indicated a high drug dependency, hence why she had to up the dosage to the maximum.  That much morphine would knock out Andre the Giant, and here she is prescribing it to a cokefiend after open heart surgery.  But even with her damn near confessing to that part of the story, we’d have nothing.  She was the intern in an area doing a job that should’ve been covered by her Attendee.  They’d sign off on it to avoid a malpractice suit from the family.”

“Yep”. X said, driving them onto the main highway of Farrell Township.  “You notice that she just dyed her hair?”

“No, didn’t see that.”  George said with a slight tone of surprise.

“Yeah, when she came down before she knew we were there, she was toweling off her hair.  When she dropped it, I noticed a few black stains on it that matched her hair.  She had just dyed it right before coming down and it was still wet.  Tells me a few things.”

“Like what?”  George asked as X drove.

“She dyes her hair a lot.  This wasn’t a Clairol grey cover box job, this was more like one of them freaky color jobs going back to black. My wife was in that phase for a bit.  Sexy as hell with the blue hair, too.  She did this mostly blind and quick.  Black is a cover up color.  Her hair is naturally black, so why dye it that deep black again?  Next, Kim either just moved in or doesn’t stay there all the time.  We know that Sam bought the house a couple months ago, only his name is on it.  They’re close enough that she sleeps here after working at a hospital in Collegetown where he owns a bunch of apartments.  That’s a decent drive when she has a place a few blocks from the hospital.  Most recent change of address for her still points to the apartment that’s 6 blocks from the hospital.  But she hasn't dyed her hair here yet until today.  She used a fresh towel that’s now gonna be her hair dying towel here.”  X said.

“A hair dying towel?”  George asked.

“Yep.  Most women that dye their hair on the regular will have a dedicated towel for dying cause they will stain it.  Either Dr. Park doesn’t care about staining his towels, or she’s never done this here.”

“And you think she likes to change her hair color a lot?”

“Too young for a ton of gray, though she’s got the right job for it, but doesn’t strike me as the type to worry about what other think of her appearance.  Didn’t that crazy ass story from your friend mention an Asian girl with pink hair?”  X said.  George nodded.

“It’s thin.  Real thin.  But not too thin to make sense.  Sam, Steve, and Kim being part of that rape gang with Ray would tie a couple things together.  How long did he say they were dating, a few months?  Kind of fast to move someone in.”

“Yeah…”. X paused as the SUV came to a stop light.  “She’s out of his league, by a country mile.  He’s at best a 5, and she’s a solid 8 to 9.  She could easily do much better than him, so why him?”

“He’s rich.  Well, rich enough.  That adds a few points right there.  And she’s probably got daddy issues.  Find me an Asian doctor that doesn’t have overbearing parents and I’ll say you found a unicorn.  But now they know that we know that they’re working with Bob, and they’ll be twice as cautious.”

The light turned green and X accelerated to keep up with traffic.  “You think he’s part of this Club thing, too?”

George thought long and hard on the question, chewing on his lip as he thought.  “No, don’t think so.  He couldn’t keep quiet about it long enough to take part.  Besides, he’s living like a king up in Hiawatha County, he doesn’t need to come down and do this.  And with as much attention as he brings to himself, I doubt any Rape Club would even think about letting him in.  If he wants a piece of ass, he’ll either pay for it, take it on his boat, or kidnap it like that Madeline Kosar girl.  This is real fucking thin.”

“Yeah.  Let’s talk to Carly back at the station, we’ll put this all together.”



—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————



Bianca was glad to be back in the office, and even more glad to see that Morgana was back too.  One day at home was enough to drive her mad, and there’s only so much stress cleaning she can do before little Sophie knows that something’s wrong with Mom.  In between work tasks she scrubbed the whole house down from top to bottom, just trying to find something to do to distract her from the pain of what she went through.  The physical marks were going away, but she knew the mental scars would be there for a long time.  But as much as she wants to go see a therapist about this, it would be just another bullshit thing for her ex to use against her.  Which is why she was taken aback by the message she received from Aislinn.

‘I signed my deal this morning?  I’m getting a little bonus for each of us that signs.  U in?  Split it with you.’

She was confused by the text, and asked about the question mark after morning.  ‘Timezones’ was the answer.  Aislinn nodded.  It wasn’t whether she questioned whether she signed it, but what time of day it was for her.  They went back and forth a bit on how.  Bianca knew she was going to sign, her only question was how to make sure that her ex-husband Phil never saw a dime of it.  Aislinn recommended putting the bulk of the settlement into an irrevocable trust for Sophie, payable only to her after she turned 18.  Only Bianca and her designated executor would have access to it before then. This way she could avoid taxes on it while keeping it away from Phil.  As long as that other lawyer Marcus agreed to things, they could make it work.

About 10 minutes later her phone rang.  It was Marcus to confirm details.  She would receive the same offer that Aislinn received at 350k minus taxes, and all of it would be listed in a trust payable only to Sophie upon turning 18, and to avoid her name being attached to this at all, the payment would come from an LLC that was set up for this specific reason out of state.  By the time Phil’s lawyers would even think to look for it, her 11-year-old daughter will be starting her Master’s degree.  A few emails later and Bianca signed.  She spent a good portion of her afternoon looking into how much Stanford would cost in a few years.



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George, X, and Carly sat in the bullpen of the Chester County Special Victims Unit.  They recently changed the name from Sex Crimes, so the door still showed the old name, but with some smartass putting a post-it over it.  The bullpen was a dimly lit conference room with a large whiteboard on one side.  A large conference table took up most of the room while the three detectives sat across the room from the white board.  A laptop was hooked up to a projector.  From it, Carly projected a picture of Ray Hibberton.  It was his faculty picture from the previous year.  Ray’s photo was up front and center in the board.  Next to him were pics of the victim Meg, her roommates Crystal and Zoe, Ray’s son David, Steven Wilcox, Samuel Mapleton, and Dr. Kim Park.  Though, it took a couple tries to get the right Dr. Park’s picture on the screen.  Next to them were a list of several potential cases that had a similar M.O. to Ray’s.  There’s a note called ‘Aly’s Story.’  No known connection between the attacker and victim, but everything was recorded.  The three detectives stared at the screen for a long moment before George spoke.

“So, let’s walk through this again.  Ray’s a teacher over at 4C.  Meg goes to HCU.  No overlap there or with her roommates.  Going through his belongings, he had a freshly made key and what looked like a schedule for Meg’s whereabouts.  So someone knew her.  But not Ray.  The roommates were out of town and were even shown on ESPN in the band if you know where to look.  Ray breaks in to her house with a copy of the key, and waits for her to get home.  He sets up the cameras, which he recorded himself doing.  Then waits and zaps her with a stun gun when she comes in her room.  He bags her, tags her, then just as he’s going for seconds, Mother Nature says fuck you in particular and tries to kill him.  Meanwhile, the day before Sam, Steve, and Kim go on a road trip up north.  They call Ray, he says thanks but no thanks, I got a thing.  No response when they call and text him on Monday on their way home.  GPS puts them in a gas station right outside of Chester County, about halfway between here and Lake Hiawatha Resorts.  At this time Ray wakes up, but his brain is applesauce.  Fast forward to the next night, and an anesthesiologist resident in Children’s gets assigned to the ICU of Harbor General, where our good Mr. Hibberton is circling the drain.  Just after the son David signed off on the DNR order that a woman doctor he didn’t get her name told him about how shitty it is to get CPR done, Old Ray here gets an OD of morphine and croaks.  We also find out that Kim and Sam are working with Bob Kuntzmann up at Lake Hiawatha.  What else we got?”  George asked, looking at the screen.

“Mr. Wilcox says he met Ray a couple years ago and became friends with Sam earlier this year.  He was vague with names and dates when pushed.  Says that Ray would work with him from time to time when he either wanted the extra money or had the extra time.  Also says Sam had an offer for a business trip and they used the weekend to hang out and get away from everything.  They tried not to spend any money up there aside from things they had to put on cards.  Says that he took a couple grand in cash with him just in case so he wouldn’t dip into his bill money.  Before I told him about Ray’s death he was undressing me with his eyes, and couldn’t help himself after things calmed down.”  Carly said, referring to her notes on her laptop and tablet.

“Dr. Park and Mr. Mapleton are in a relationship, not sure how or when they met.  Sam seemed to almost forget that she was there when he let us in.  She wasn’t expecting us when she came down.  She was just coming out of the shower in a silk bathrobe, drying her hair.  Most likely just dyed it as well, as there were stains on her towel.  She failed George’s Psychopath Test when she didn’t yawn back at him after he yawned at her over and over again.  Dr. Park was the resident on staff when Ray died, and she administered the lethal dose of morphine that killed him.  Her story didn’t line up with why she was assigned there, but the Attendee signed off on the death certificate as complications from heart attack and stroke as cause of death.  Son doesn’t want an autopsy.  Tox screen came back, Ray loved his nose candy more than life itself.  Units on site found 10 kilos in his pad.”  X said.

“At least.  He had more that was opened up but used.  Either this guy was selling on the side or he went to the Costco of Cocaine to buy in bulk.”  Carly replied.

“Now, all of this is well and good and nothing really sticks to anything, except 3 other things.  Next slide please.”  George said, and waited as Carly progressed to the next slide.  “Like I said, 3 things are off.  First, the vagueness of how they all met.  No one went into details about how they met these great friends and lovers, it was all just random meetups at bars.  X, when you met your wife Serena, if I pressed you for details would you just say ‘at a club’ or would you give me the long story?”

“It’s my wife and I almost like you, I’d give you the deets.”  X said with a small chuckle.

“Cause that’s human nature.  We remember when and how we meet our partners, good friends and the like because those are pivotal moments.  Only reason to obfuscate that is they got shit to hide, which leads us to number 2, their descriptions.  Ray matches the description of at least 2 other attacks over the years, and Steve fits a broad description of a couple others.  There’s at least a few reports from over the years where a good looking tiny Asian girl drugged and/or assaulted some women, each time the description was similar but the hair was a different color.  And X saw that Dr. Park had just dyed her naturally black hair black.  Which implies-“

“Which implies she just covered up.” Carly said, interrupting George.  “Which then brings us to point 3, the crazy story from Aly Holmes up at LHR over the weekend.  Which described a group of assailants that included a barrel-chested man with a dad bod, a fat guy, and an Asian girl with pink hair covered in tattoos.  Which if she put on temporary tats, they’d start flaking off right about now and would be easy to peel off and remove.”

“Didn’t the Sheriff say that the pink haired lady was chopped up and turned into bear food?”  X asked.

“Aly doesn’t buy it, thinks the guy that said that is on the take.  Still, they’re not pursuing anything with the pink haired lady or the fat man.”  George said.

“But let’s assume they are part of this rape gang and they went all the way up to LHR.  Why?  Why not just do the whole thing down here?  Why drive 3 hours each way to do what they could….” X’s voice trailed off as an idea hit him in the face.  “This wasn’t their first attempt.  They tried something here and it failed.  It was small in comparison.  Something went wrong, like they lost access to the house or a guest came to visit or a victim changed habits.  What did Aly tell us about those other people?”  X said. 

Carly was already ahead of him, pulling up info for another slide she put together.  This listed all of the people that Aly told George about.  On the screen showed a beautiful blonde woman and her tall husband on their wedding day, a skinny man who looked like Clark Kent, a middle-aged man with very angry eyebrows, a skinny brunette from a modeling site, and a very attractive well-endowed woman in her 40’s all on the left side of a slide named ‘LHR CABIN’.  The right part of the slide showed a picture of Kim Park with poorly photoshopped pink hair, Sam Mapleton, Steven Wilcox’s headshot from LinkedIn, a skinny yet well-defined swimmer, a picture of Kate Gossling, the prototypical Karen, and Stone Cold Steve Austin covered in blood.

“Really, that’s who you pick for Karen and Ken?”  George said, laughing a bit.

Carly continued, using the mouse to highlight each person as she described them.  “Aly described Mary as a real Karen, and Kate Gossling was the OG Karen.  And Joe bled like a stuffed pig after getting hit in the face, and I thought Stone Cold from back in the day.  But the story goes like this.  Everyone here on the left works at or with Pharma’s HQ.  Angry eyebrows and Clark Kent are James St. Croix and Thomas Gearheardt.  They’re working in construction of the new HQ.  The married couple is Morgana and Drew Williams from Melbourne.  She’s in some auditing department or something like that, working for Bianca Jones, the mom of the group.  The skinny model here is Aislinn Walker, Morgana’s sister.  Drew and Aislinn are both barristers, lawyers down under.  Even got those funny powdered wigs and everything.  Drew and Aislinn work for Pharma’s legal department.  When they came up to LHR, it was just the six of them and everyone hooked up in pairs, though Aly suspects that Thomas, Tommy to his friends, is screwing Morgana and has been for a while.  Fast forward to Saturday morning, they all go on a hike.  They split up, but are close enough to call out to each other.  Tommy and Aislinn go off the trail to knock boots while Morgana and Drew are talking about her morning sickness symptoms being something more.  James and Bianca run into the Asian girl who calls herself Kim.  I’m using Dr. Park’s picture with pink hair.  She’s pretty bad off, showing signs of a bad fall and a possible concussion.  Bianca goes mother hen on her and tries to take care of her.  While James and Bianca are taking her back, Joe and Mary, our Stone Cold and Karen, show up and she tries to kick these guys out of their own cabin.  Everyone gets back and a big fight breaks out.  As they’re going around in circles, Kim suddenly feels better and takes position by the back door.  3 men carrying guns enter the cabin and hold the place up.  The three guys were described as a fat guy, a skinny guy, and a muscular dad-bod type.  They called themselves Dave, so I’ll say that none of them are named Dave.  They subdue the crowd but at some point Drew and Joe try to play hero.  Two of the Dave’s subdue Drew and the other either pistol whips or buttstock smacks Joe in the face.  He falls to the ground, gets up, and has a crimson mask like Stone Cold Steve Austin from his Wrestlemania match against Bret Hart.  I watched a lot of wrestling with my dad growing up.  Anyway, the Dave’s play rock paper scissors on who gets to fuck Morgana first, then they all take turns on all of the women, and even Kim gets herself a piece of Drew’s ass.  The Aussies hate Mary with a passion and so when given the opportunity to fuck her over, they do and vice versa.  They all get separated at night where the rapes continue.  Sunday, Mary and Joe switch sides as long as they don’t get hurt anymore they’ll do anything the Dave’s say.  Another day and night of gang rapes and everyone is spent.  Then the crazy shit on Monday morning.”

Carly advanced to the next slide.  This listed the “Bouchet Boys” along with a few other names that Aly told George about.  Most of them are mug shots of the various members of the Bouchet Boys.  A couple are known associates of Bob’s, one is of Bob, one is a pic of Pete Davidson from SNL as a known accomplice, and finally a pretty woman with black hair and two large dogs.

“Monday morning, just as everyone’s leaving, Kim loses her phone and Fat Dave stays behind.  The Bouchet Boys, Hiawatha’s Most Wanted, rolls up after gaining a half a dozen members including one fat fuck who gets first dibs on Morgana’s ass.  Aly thinks that’s Bob Kuntzmann.  Another round of gang rapes, now including Kim getting some just desserts and a sex slave in training that matches the description of Madeline Kosar, heiress to the Kosar Development Group and missing since last week.  Hell, even the dogs got in on the act.  At some point the boys drag Kim out into the lot and supposedly whack her.  Her and Fat Dave are listed as deceased but unidentified.  Later on the K9 unit finds bits of her clothes covered in blood and a toe.  Still waiting on the ID to come back on her.  Aly suspects it’ll be someone sort of connected to Bob’s business.  Then the staff shows up, sees 3 women and a man tied up in the living room, and calls Bob, then Bob’s lawyer, then the Sheriff on the non-emergency channel.  They refuse to pursue charges in the matter and are acting like they just want this behind them.”

Carly finished, reaching for a bottle of water.

“So what are the ties between these groups?”  George asked.

“Mr. Wilcox looks like he’s the only one with a direct connection to anyone from the cabin.  He works at Red Briar Security on their corporate side and appears to work with Pharma with their construction projects.  Where James and Thomas work.”

“That's thin.”  George said, looking at the screen.

“Real thin.”  The other two cops said in unison.  They all looked at the screen, wondering how and if the pieces fell together.

“Anything else happen that was strange?  Any plans thrown off at the last minute?”  X asked, rubbing his chin as he leaned back in his chair.

“What are you getting at?”  George asked.

“Do we know what their original plan was?  Like, how many people were supposed to go to the cabin at first?”  X clarified his thoughts as Carly looked through her notes and George went through his texts with Aly.  They both had the same info, but Carly was faster.

“Got it.  According to Aly’s interview, Aislinn and Bianca were last minute additions.  Aislinn arrived Wednesday as a surprise and Morgana invited Bianca at the end of work Thursday.”  Just as Carly read that, something clicked into place in George’s mind.

“That's why they called Ray.  Backup.  Ray wasn’t part of the original plan, and neither were the other two girls.  It was just Morgana.  She was the initial target.  At least one of those 3 guys are on the inside.  How else do those people know which cabin to go to?”  George waved at the three men on the left.  “I’ve got dollars to donuts that at some point in the previous month or two Morgana had a close call with one of those men, she just didn’t know it at the time or didn’t know it was them.  That’s why this happened out of town.  And they called Ray for backup because 3 people with guns could subdue 4 people for a weekend and have their fun, but 6 is pushing it, especially when they want to rape 3 of them and film it.  That’s 1 person on camera and gun duty.  They need more people.  That’s also where Skinny Dave comes in.  He was likely brought in at the last minute.”

“And the Karens, they on the inside too?”  X asked.  George thought about that for a moment.

“I wanted to say no, but why that cabin?  Out of all of the cabins they could’ve gone to for a romantic holiday filled with bondage gear and cameras, why this one?  It was the plan.  But they showed their faces so they had to just be there until given an opportunity to flip.  Worst case scenario, they’re in on it.  Best case, bad timing.  Let’s assume worst case.”

“So, who would be the inside man?”  X asked.

“What do we know about them?”  George asked.  Carly was already 3 steps ahead of them.

“No one in the first two groups have any priors.  Bianca Jones has a few calls about disturbing the peace and harassment, but it looks like the standard asshole ex-husband game.  No one else has anything other than a couple speeding tickets except Ray.  DUI back in the 90’s and some calls about domestic disturbances.  He was a POI in a couple of these previous cases, but always either had an alibi or we couldn’t tie him to the crimes.  James has lived in Harbor City for at least a decade, Tommy’s from Chicago, went to school here for a few years and stuck around after getting a real job.  Drew and Morgana came to Harbor City a couple years ago and just bought a house in your neck of the woods, George.  They’re in Hillside, almost neighbors.  Aislinn was in town for a job interview and Bianca was a late addition.”

“Maybe that’s why Clark Kent looks familiar.  Think he was at Chuck’s 4th party.  I’m ruling out those three women right off the bat, and Drew.  This rape club requires people to be available to make trades work, and there’s no way he can catch a redeye from Melbourne because Cindy from accounting is home alone tonight.  It’s at least Angry Eyes, if not Clark Kent as well.  What do their social medias look like?”  George asked.  Carly was pulling up Instagram and LinkedIn for both.

“Tommy is private on Insta and Facebook.  LinkedIn is pretty normal for both.  James only shows pictures of architecture.  He only follows a few other architects and the occasional sports match.  As for the rest, Bianca is on lockdown.  Aislinn has a public page showing some modeling work but it doesn’t get updated often and a personal one that’s private.  Drew is also private.  But Aislinn’s public page shows that everyone here except Bianca follows it.  Dr. Park is private.  Sam doesn’t have one but Mapleton Realty has a public Insta.  Steve only has a LinkedIn page, where he’s connected to Drew, Tommy, James, and somehow you, George.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.  Chuck Hartman knows both of you.  Aside from Steve’s LinkedIn, no other connections.”  Carly said.  She looked through her notes as the men stared at the screen.  “Aly said she had the feeling that Tommy and Morgana were hooking up from the interview.  Tommy tried to gloss over part of the assault where they made him and Morgana have sex in front of Drew, and Drew’s body language said that he suspected them of having an affair.  Aly says that Tommy likely tried to downplay it during the interview but thinks it’s because he was a little too good at cucking Drew.”

George looked at the screen for a moment.  “So, here’s what I’m thinking.  Either Tommy or James, maybe both are part of this club.  If both, James was in first.  He sees the pretty Morgana and wants a piece of her, but knows he can’t have her.  So he sets her up for one of these other guys, either Steve or Mikey Phelps there to attack her for him.  But something goes wrong.  Maybe it’s a home invasion but they moved and no longer have access or schedules changed or she now works from home.  Whatever.  This backfires, and Tommy’s rented a cabin up at LHR.  James calls up Steve and tells him the plan.  It’s crazy, but he’s in.  He sets this whole thing up, but James finds out at the last minute that Morgana’s sister and boss are coming.  He could back out, but can’t or won’t.  He’s in too deep, so he tells Steve to bring some backup.  Steve calls Ray, no answer.  Steve calls Phelps, no answer.  Steve calls Joe and Mary, they respond and are on their way.  At some point Phelps responds that he’s in.  Ray’s a no-show because he has a date in Collegetown.  East Oakville to be precise.  They work out a plan where they use the good doctor’s charm to get into the cabin and begin the Labor Day Fuckfest.  Wait, James is boys with Bob, right?”  George asked.  Carly checked her notes once again.

“Yep.  Aly said that James swore at Bob like no one she’s ever heard.  They come back a few minutes later arms over each other like they had a good laugh.”

“Won’t.  He won’t back out because he’s shitting in Bob’s yard, and Bob wants a piece.  The only way he’ll let James do this is if he gets some of Morgana’s ass, but that requires the first part going through.  That’s why all the backup.  And we won’t know what was up with Bob’s part until we find out who that toe belonged to.  They wanted to fake a death, and used Dr. Park to cover it up.”  George said, leaning back in his chair as he sipped his coffee.

“What about Tommy?  He could be the inside man, or an extra insider.”  X said.

“How you thinking?”  George asked.

“Tommy’s got a crush on Morgana, damn near stalking her.  Let’s say they’re knocking boots.  He wants her all to himself, get Drew out of the way.  Drew’s already half out the door with his job.  Can’t kill him, she divorces him she gets nothing if she’s cheating, but maybe use this to make Drew want to leave.  Tommy sets up the previous attack and tries to all White Knight her, but it falls through.  That’s why he rents the cabin, makes sure that plans don’t fail a second time.  But all the extra people throw a ripple in things and he’s now balls deep in a crazy plan he has to see through.”  X said.

George nodded along.  “I like it.  Either one of James or Tommy is a stalker, or both.”

“But what can we do with this?”  Carly asked.  She pulled up a map of where they were and where the attack took place.  “This is way out of our jurisdiction.  Even if all this happened like you said, unless we can prove that part of this took place down here, we’ve got nothing.”

“Except Ray’s part in this and his ties to the rest of the Club.  If we can prove they included him on the conspiracy down here, we might have a case for this attack.  Otherwise, we have to keep our eyes out for them in the future.  What did we get from Ray’s raid?”

“A bunch of crazy notes, some hard drives, a laptop, a phone, and a bunch of old tech.  Let me see if City is done cataloging things yet.”  Carly navigated to the web portal where Chester County Police can interact with City cases that both are working on.  She tried to log in, but kept getting error messages like ‘ACCESS DENIED’ and ‘THIS SERVICE IS NOT AVAILABLE’.  “Hmm.”

“What Hmm?”  George asked, not liking the sound of Carly’s reaction.

“Connection must be down.  I’ll check to see what we got from the phone on our side.”  Again, Carly navigated to a different interface, this one for Chester County Crime Lab.  She went through the process to pull up the phone’s image, but was met by another problem.  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.  X, did that phone have anything on it?”  Carly asked, looking at the large black man.

“Yeah, locked and everything.  Had a pic of an old dog on the lock screen.”

“You swear?”

“Absolutely.  I followed correct procedures for bagging and tagging the evidence.”  X said.

“Well how did this happen?”  Carly navigated to the phone in the crime lab.  It showed an Android phone, reset to factory settings.

“IT WAS NOT LIKE THAT WHEN I PUT IT IN EVIDENCE YESTERDAY!”  X’s voice grew louder and louder as he forgot that he was inside and ignored his hearing aid.

“X, I’m just saying-“  Before Carly could say anything, three loud knocks on the door preceded Captain Janella Jenkins opening the door in a rush.  The light skinned black woman in her late 50’s to early 60’s stuck her head in.

“We’ve got a problem guys, City’s crime lab got hit by a hacker.”
Always close the program you were running before exiting the holodeck

Offline To-Get-Her

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Re: Pharma (Chapter 86 Posted)
« Reply #268 on: September 16, 2024, 05:41:19 PM »
Well it seems that the trio is slowly putting things together but as stated without physical evidence that's all they have things they can never prove now that police evidence is being tampered with!

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Offline MarvThor
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Re: Pharma (Chapter 86 Posted)
« Reply #269 on: September 17, 2024, 11:55:52 AM »
Totally riveting.