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.”
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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.”