Shrouds of Darkness (26 page)

“It’s crucial in finding Martin.”

Yuri blows out a long breath that makes his lips flap. “Ok, I have guy. I send him over right now to do cable. I get you computers in morning.”

“Thanks, Yuri.”

“Leo, strange things are happening in my town. What you know about these strange things?”

“I’m not sure, Yuri. Just watch out for yourself.”

Yuri’s silence as he hangs up tells me that he thinks I am not being entirely honest with him. I hate to lie, Yuri is one of the few people I respect and almost like, but there are some things I simply can’t share unless absolutely necessary.

I step back inside. Marvin is sitting in my chair apparently surfing the internet on his over-sized smart phone and eating pizza.

“How far have you gotten on cracking Vtech’s systems?” I ask him as I rudely grab his arm, propel him out of my chair, and sit down.

Marvin glares at me as he rubs his abused arm and grabs a chair from my small dining table. “Hostile work environment, Leo, remember?”

“Beating you to death with your own arms, remember?” I counter.

The combined night’s revelations are putting me in a bad mood and Marvin provides a great outlet.

“I got into the onsite system and found the security logs. There is no indication of anyone forcefully entering the lab and no record of anyone touching the samples you asked about in over five years other than standard monthly security checks. I decided to dig deeper into the files themselves and ran cyclical redundancy checks on every log file starting from today and working my way back.”

“English, Marvin,” I tell him.

“You want me to dumb it down?”

“I would choose a different description if continued health is anywhere near one of your priorities.”

Marvin looks like he going to launch a retort then apparently chooses the more prudent course of action by continuing.

“I looked to see if any of the file contents may had been tampered with. Files are made up from packets of data. Each packet has what is called a header. These headers have tiny bits of code that tells the receiving computer what to expect in each packet, how many packets are being sent, and the computer that sent them. Each packet header also has a time stamp showing the date of creation and time sent and such. I found that the contents of a few particular packets did not match what the header said should be in them.”

“So you’re saying someone faked some log entries?”

 “Exactly. It’s like someone took a letter, steamed it open, took out the letter inside, and replaced it with one of their own. You think you’re getting the original letter with handwritten addresses, cancelation stamp and all, but in realty you’re getting a fake and unless you know what to look for, you never know the difference.”

I ask the hacker, “Is there any way to get the original logs to see who changed them or accessed the sample?”

“That’s what I was working on before my place got trashed. Vtech has an offsite data storage facility that backs up all of their data including the security logs. Unless the person that changed the onsite logs is a real computer whiz, I bet he didn’t check the backups and couldn’t hack the storage site’s systems even if he thought about it.”

“I made a call and you should be back online by tomorrow afternoon,” I inform him.

Marvin goes back to doing whatever it is he does on his phone while I go over current events in my mind. I have one confirmed Sheriff in on this and a strong assumption of a second one at Marvin’s apartment. I have a strong suspicion that Quinn was the masked man I fought in the warehouse. Although his voice was distorted by the acoustics of the place as well as the mask he wore, his movements were very similar to the ones he used when he attacked me in the headquarters. Of course, it could just be that I really want it to be him so I automatically fill in the blanks with him already in mind.

I would have liked to have taken a couple of them alive, particularly Quinn if that was him, but I doubt I would have gotten much information. The minions probably don’t know much and Quinn probably wouldn’t tell me who is in charge. Vampires have an ingrained sense of loyalty to their creator. It’s tied up in the genes somehow although it’s in no way total. It creates a familial bond like that of a child to a parent. It can be broken through abuse and it diminishes with time.

A hesitant knocking at my door interrupts my thinking. I open it after looking outside to see who it is. A bedraggled man who appears to have been recently roused from his bed looks at me nervously and the scent of fear seeps out of his pores. Across the street, I spy a white van with the logo of a cable company emblazoned across the side.

“Marvin, it’s for you,” call back inside, waking Marvin who is slumbering with his face pressed against my table.

Marvin informs me that the job is finished less than two hours later. Now I just need to get that computer equipment. There is one thing I can give Marvin now however.

“Marvin, I want you to keep this at hand at all times,” I tell him hand him a ten gauge, double-barreled shotgun. “It’s loaded so all you have to do is aim and squeeze the trigger.”

The gun is an antique but in terrific condition. It’s ease of use, the massive bore firing three and a half inch double-ought buckshot, and barrels sawed down to the length of my arm, make it a good weapon to have on hand.

“Damn! This is straight up old-school gangster shit right here!” Marvin crows and starts waving the gun around before I grab it out of his hands and cuff him in the side of his head.

“It’s not a toy, Marvin! I don’t even want to see you touch it unless you need to shoot someone. You got it?”

“Hostile! Marvin grumbles as he flops down on my bed and goes to sleep.

I almost kick him out of my bed but I won’t be using it and he needs the sleep if I expect him to be of any use to me tomorrow so I let him be. I mentally add an air mattress to my shopping list. A phone call breaks me out of my contemplations a few hours later.

“Leo, it’s Raj. If you have time, I think you may want to take a look at something.”

“Another attack?”

“Yes, but this one has some interesting hallmarks that might make more sense to you than to me.”

“I’m on my way,” I inform Raj then go wake up Blackylocks who is still sleeping in my bed. “Marvin, wake up. I’m stepping out. Don’t open the door for anyone unless a guy shows up with your computer shit. Make sure Yuri sent him. He should tell you Molotov sent him or something to that affect. If anyone gets in, shoot them and run like hell.”

Since I prefer to keep my bike out of the spotlight as much as possible, I elect to take a cab. Besides, I can add the fare to my list of expenses. I find Raj in his office but he waves me to the exam room as soon as I enter.

Raj pulls a sheet off a body already laid out on the metal exam table. The body is less savaged than most of the other attacks but the wounds look similar. Raj begins pulling back the torn flesh and pointing out the distinct aspects of the gruesome injuries.

“At first I thought it was just another attack like the others. You can see how the flesh was torn away as if by claws and teeth. But look here. See this clean line in the muscle tissue?”

“It looks cut.”

“Exactly. Now I’m not an expert on werewolves, but I assume that a transformed wolf is not packing a knife and slicing up his meal into bite size pieces. Now look at the bone of the humorous near the elbow and tell me what you see.”

I peer into the massive gash that Raj is holding open with a pair of retractors and examine the exposed bone. “It looks like a cut.”

“And deep enough to nearly sever the arm. Come look at the X-ray I took.”

The medical examiner flips on the fluorescent light of the view box and illuminates the X-ray already in place. “Here’s the cut. You can see that it’s a clean cut that almost makes it through the entire bone. This means it was a large blade wielded by a reasonably strong individual. But the most interesting part is the top down image of the same injury.”

Raj shifts my attention to another X-ray. “Here is the same cut taken from a top-down viewpoint. The dark line is the cut. You can see by the angle that the victim probably had time to raise his arm in an attempt to ward off the blow. It cuts through the soft tissue, shears into the bone from the lateral side, and stops about three-quarters of the way through to the medial. But look at this nearly perfect triangular protuberance inside the bone.”

“The blade had a notch in it,” I respond knowingly.

“As good as a fingerprint. You find that sword or machete and you have your killer.”

I already know who my killer is. At the very least, I have it narrowed down to two suspects. When Quinn jumped me, I used one of the Sheriff’s blades to block his attack, which put an appreciable notch in both blades. This attack occurred only a few blocks from the warehouse, which makes sense since I inflicted an appreciable wound on the masked man. I sincerely doubt that the vampire I fought in the warehouse was the nervous kid I borrowed the sword from, so that leaves Quinn.

As much as it pleases me to affirm Quinn as a bad guy, I do not know what to really do with the information. Sure, I can track him down and kill him but that gets me no closer to finding the others behind this entire fiasco. When I end him, I need to do it in a way to maximize the amount of damage I inflict on his organization as a whole. Still, it feels good to have at least one certainty on this case to follow.

“I hope that helps you.”

“It does, thanks, Raj. You should have been a real doctor.”

“I like this job. My patients don’t play me to get drugs and I don’t have to worry about getting sued,” he replies, ignoring my playful insult.

I am just about to call another cab when two Cadillacs pull up, disgorging six large men toting some serious firepower. I recognize three of them as Yuri’s men, which saves everyone a lot of trouble.

“Malone, Yuri wants to see you—now,” a man I know as Yaakov, informs me.

“Tell Yuri I’m a little busy right now. He can call me if it’s important.”

“Yuri says now. He said to say please. If still you do not come, we stop saying please. Please come now.”

There is a powerful tension in the air that I am surprised not to have noticed at first. These men are very serious—and very afraid. Something must have happened for Yuri to take such a heavy-handed approach with me, so I climb into the back of the lead Cadillac, sandwiched between Yaakov and a man I’m not familiar with. I don’t bother asking questions, certain that they are not likely to answer them.

My unease increases as I notice that we are heading into Queens. Yuri’s operation stretches into Queens but not far. His operations are centered mainly in Brooklyn, so I have to wonder why he isn’t in Brooklyn now when I am fairly certain he was last night.

 We come to a stop in front of a squat, three-story building that looks more like a bunker with urban camouflage. All the first floor windows are bricked up and thick bars cover the few windows of the upper two floors. The only visible door looks like it was salvaged from a battleship.

No one stands guard outside, but once we go in, after having phoned ahead to gain entry, several men are standing guard inside and armed as though preparing for war. Men who look weary, scared, and ready for violence grip AK-47s, Uzis, and several AA-12 fully automatic shotguns.

My escort takes me to a room with a door similar to that of the outer door that leads into a room near the center of the building. The room is far too small for so many people and the combined smell of sweat and vodka nearly bowls me over. Counting my escort, there are nearly a dozen men in a room that can comfortably accommodate four. Of all the people in the room, only two really catch my interest.

Yuri sits behind a solid desk with several empty bottles of vodka and shot glasses randomly decorating its surface along with a Russian SP-12 probably loaded with some non-standard ammunition. The figure that really takes me by surprise is Freak, balled up in a corner, rocking, and silently weeping. This does not bode well at all but since I am not stripped of my weapons I figure I’m not in too much trouble.