Take the Fourth (27 page)

He got the feeling Mrs. Polaski was also lonely as she was starting a journey down memory lane.

“Mrs. Polaski…”

“Yes?”

“What was his sister’s name?”

“Who?”

“Kyle Kraner,” Silence again. “Mrs. Polaski?”

“Yes, I’m still here… . I’m thinking… I know it’s in here somewhere… . right on the tip of my tongue… it was a long time ago.”

“That’s okay, I’ll find it.”

“Why do you need to know anyway… . doctor?”

“Doctor Bergerman.”

“Wait, I thought you were an associate of doctor Bergerman?”

Realizing his mistake as he was trying to comprehend all the facts she had given him, he quickly looked for an exit. “Mrs. Polaski I want to really thank you for your time, is there anything you want me to tell Kyle?”

“There is one thing.”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Tell him… . no, no, never mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well okay, thank you again Mrs. Polaski and have a nice day.”

“Always do, bye.”

“Bye Mrs. Polaski.”

Like shaving with a five bladed razor… that was close, almost too close, anyway what would she have done had she suspected anything…  “probably nothing,” was his conclusion. She did give him a lot to chew on during the brief conversation and though he wasn’t a psychiatrist he pretty much gathered the whole trauma thing with his sister sparked some sort of mental imbalance leading him down the road of becoming a pedophiliac. Yeah, he didn’t need a PhD to know this guy was pretty fucked up. Somehow, someway Kyle was misplacing the love for his sister within any blonde, blue-eyed little girl that reminded him of his loss and Ripley Newenburg was his current memento. And if he had anything to do with it, she was going to be Kyle Kraner’s last keepsake that’s for sure.

He went back to his machine and searched for Peach County Hospital only to discover that it had been renamed in 1997 to Peach Regional Medical Hospital. He was hoping that not only did they revamp their name but also their filing system—they did and he dug into the system with the ease of a shovel into dry sand. Doctor/patient privilege was a thing of the past in the digital age all thanks mainly to the insurance companies who rely on facts instead of the actuary tables. If a person is fat, smokes, has cancer, the insurance companies think they have a right to know so they can hedge their bets in the mortality payoff game. Whatever the case may be, it was a blessing disguise as a backdoor to the government agencies prying for the believed to be private information of one’s health. Next up for those prying eyes was Kyle Kraner.

The hospital’s official online records started in 1997 but its archived records where searchable back to 1976 so it should have been fairly straight forward to find the goods. It wasn’t. Finding the buried treasure took some backbone. All of his initial queries returned null. He plugged in all sorts of naming configurations, social security numbers, and zilch was the return each time. He checked his connection to make sure he was hitting their database by running a simple wildcard query. He selected all names and ages and waited for the results. Sure enough he was connected, his answers filled the screen. Names and ages filled his screen. He paged through several thousand names that were in alphabetical order. He just kept hitting the return key like he was on autopilot or stuck in a trance. Return. Return. Bates, Batman, Batts. Return. Return. More names. Return. More names. Return. He didn’t know his next move. Return. More names. Return. Cabera, Caden, Cadwell. Return. Return. He paused. Return. He stopped. He stared. A thought . Return. He perused the names. He perused the ages. Return. With even more conviction he hit return again. Paused. Perused. Return. Paused. Perused. He stopped. He didn’t hit return; he rewrote his query first and then hit return. He waited for the screen to fill again. He had his answer. He had rewritten the query ordering by age in ascending fashion. There was not one person under the age of eighteen in this database. He then remembered Mrs. Polaski saying Kyle might have been seventeen at the time of the accident. This database did not contain any children. No minors. Interesting. He had a new quest. He needed a new place to dig. Two minutes later he found his new “X”. A minute later he found the chest, the buried treasure, the one containing Kyle’s medical records.

Here it was, all in black and white, the reason Kyle walks with a limp. Most of his femur is supported by metal rods. His records had very detailed entries stating the time of the operation, medications received, the names of the anesthesiologist, the nurses, and even his dietary needs. The only thing that was missing was any mention of his sister or of the depression that surely followed. His mission was clear to him as soon as he read Ripley’s case file and “walks with a limp.” Now that he followed his map, found the “X,” dug deep, and found the treasure, it was like being on a deserted island with no mode of transportation. He had his treasure chest, how exactly was he going to use it was another story… . a story that wasn’t written yet.

 . . .

Chapter 39
 

G
reg no longer cruised the internet in his spare time; he had a new hobby now. Even though he promised Jorja he wouldn’t play with god, he became obsessed. It became his life, his existence, his daily bread. Plus, he knew damn well Jorja was doing the same, she was good but not that good at removing her footsteps from the sand. Greg, on the other hand, was an ocean wave, there was no way Jorja was ever going to find out his little secrets and he had plenty. He kept files on various people and their routines and habits. Jorja Carson was top on that list. He knew when she went to the gym, the grocery store, the gynecologist, when she went to bed, showered and logged onto the system; he even knew when she was lying to him. With clues of her whereabouts and his colorful imagination, it was blind voyeurism at its best.

Though tracking Jorja’s every move seemed to be his utopia, he loved peeking through the windows of the Oval Office just as much. Greg’s other entries in his files were the President and his staff, after all he needed to keep a close watch on the creators of this machine, and for good reason. He was astonished to even find their identification tags in the system right alongside most of America but he concluded they were probably the first guinea pigs of this absolute power or it was used to enhance their security in some manner. Whatever the reason, their entries into the database made obtaining information on them that much easier. Greg figured that if they ever found out about Jorja and himself he would have enough proof to procure his and hers safe passage from prosecution or stop a bullet to the back of their heads… so he thought. He gathered the majority of his information automatically. Being the geek Greg was, he didn’t need to sit in front of his array of computers, he just built little snippets or scripts of code that ran on the database machine and stored everything on little files; then each night he would move the files to his machine and analyze them via other snippets or scripts. Again that was for the majority of the information but out of pure addiction he did sit in front of his array of computers and watch the world through God’s eyes. The level of detail he could accumulate was simply mind boggling. For instance, last month he knew the President’s meal didn’t agree with him and he’d be talking with his private physician in the morning because he spent half the night in his bed and the other half in the bathroom. Greg almost called the doctor himself. He knew when the Vice President had meetings with the top brasses of the oil industry way before the press ever got wind or when his chief of staff went off the ranch in search of vaginal juices. He knew lots of things and he kept a record of those things, every last detail.

It was in these details he saw the devil himself. He saw the true evil, the true power this contingency held over the American people. Woven within the fabric of data he saw lies and conspiracies that the American people could not even begin to fathom and this wasn’t even including the greatest power of them all, the power of god’s watchful eyes. This evening proved to be just the case as Greg stumbled upon vile venom that oozed from the data. He was watching Scott Norwood through the system for he was out of the White House and not in the President’s back pocket. The last time Greg followed Scott he ended up getting the name of his piece of ass and adding another memento to his keepsake box. Tonight Greg thought he would be adding yet another name to Scott’s snatch collection. He was wrong. Scott went to a steak house for a meal and it took Greg until about 10:30 to find the name of his dinner mate. He was having dinner with Captain Jack Reynolds, ex—U.S. Marine. Was he a buddy or colleague, was it business or pleasure; only time and more digging could tell.

Greg quickly starting doing research and traced Reynolds from Philly to Washington aboard the Acela Express that dropped him off at Union Station just after 7:30. He predicted his hotel since he was a gold card member with Hilton and at about 11:30 proved he was correct, as he was staying in room 242. And so it began, Greg followed the rabbit down the hole, through twist and turns, digging down, way down through layers upon layers of data to the inevitable wonderland stored as bits and bytes. Without working up a sweat, Greg found his military pension records, his tax records, and found he made a pretty decent buck doing his so-called consulting work for the Beta Group of D.C. Now what he did as a consultant was still pretty much up in the air but it did have something to do with software, software for the government. He found phone records of a call from Scott earlier in the day, which he assumed correctly, is what spurred his travel plans on Amtrak. He found his medical records, his real estate taxes—he found anything and everything pertaining to Captain Jack Reynolds and it was all at Greg’s finger tips, awaiting a turn at his analytical skills in order to produce a story, a life. Before Greg turned his attention to the mounds of data that he just unearthed, he decided to take his new toy out for another spin.

His new toy was a piece of software that he wrote using the data stored on god’s eyes. It was simple enough to use, just input the tax ID and a date into the prompts and hit play. It had controls much like a video player, fast forward, reverse, pause, and controls for speed. It also had a screen of a map. Greg placed in Reynolds’ tax ID and today’s date and hit reverse. He then watched a video of Reynolds movements, starting in room 242 and moving backwards in time across the map and across the globe at five minute intervals. He initially had his speed setting set on two seconds per hour, meaning it took two seconds to watch an hour of Reynolds movement, at that rate it took just under a minute to watch a full day’s movement. He increased the speed just a tad and sat back and watched. He watched it like a baseball game with very little thrills. Greg didn’t know what he was looking for, if anything at all, so he just watched until it ended and it ended at Reynolds inception date into the system. The location of his inception was the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, just over four years ago. He then hit the play button, this time in fast forward motion. He again watched the dot dancing across the screen. He paused the screen when the dot was over the Atlantic. He did a bit of research and found Reynolds was on flight BA 68 heading to Heathrow. Greg continued and watched the dot as it danced across Europe and back. When the dot ended up back in room 242, the reverse button was hit again and the dancing continued. At a random point in time Greg hit the pause button. He then used some of his very cool function keys he built into the software. He hit F8 and another prompt filled the screen, he entered twenty-five and hit the return key. This opened a new panel in the window and displayed all the names and tax id’s within a radius of twenty-five feet from Reynolds at that given time. This was how he found Reynolds to begin with using Scott as the dot. Greg then continued with the backwards video for a second time, then a third, then a fourth. He couldn’t recall, maybe it was the fifth or sixth time running through the video that Greg’s new found friend scattered his life. For whatever reason Greg saw the dot over a particular place and recognized it instantaneously. Maybe it was imbedded in his brain after all the aerial views on the news or in the numerous power-point presentations Homeland Security had piecemealed together and forced everyone with a level clearance to watch, but there it was, plain as day, the site of the Holiday Massacre and the date was December 23
^rd
—the day of the massacre and Reynolds was smack-dab in the middle of it.

“Son-of-a-fucking-bitch,” Greg said aloud, “Jesus, I can’t fucking believe this. Fuck, fuck, fuck!” shaking his head, “Fucking son-of-a-bitch. This can’t be, it just, it just can’t… goddamnit! Fuck! Another fucking conspiracy, goddamnit. Just what I fucking need.”

Thinking to himself as if he weren’t in enough trouble already and now this. He reached for his phone and without thinking dialed Jorja’s number, then realizing it, he quickly hung up. The last thing he needed was to involve Jorja, actually the last thing he needed was to disobey his boss’ direct order.

Then it started, all the data was beginning to process within his cerebral cortex.

So here it was in all its ignominy, Scott and Reynolds in deep shit, up to their fucking eyeballs and then some. Did they really conspire to draw a bloodbath in the middle of an American mall, killing the innocent, killing the young, killing the old, killing over sixty Americans, just before Christmas, just so the President could look good with quick and decisive actions? If what he theorized was true, this was even bigger than the United flight 93 conspiracy. Bigger than the second shooter in the grassy knoll. Bigger, much bigger. This was a plot to kill Americans by Americans, by Scott and Reynolds, by the President of the United States, by Jonathan Whitaker, by Satan. This was pure evil. The venom so vile, so dark, Greg’s stomach was beginning to turn in knots and he felt like he was about to vomit. He started to tremble and even though he didn’t smoke he wanted a cigarette, he wanted a drink, something to calm his nerves. He made his way to the kitchen and opened the fridge and grabbed a Victory Hop Devil, the only beer he liked. He popped the cap and drank it down it one long gulp, just like his college freshman days. Within seconds his stomach rejected its contents and just like his college freshman days he spewed it back into the kitchen sink. He wiped his mouth and clasped on the floor, leaning against the cabinets, where he remained for the next forty-five minutes in utter shock.

Greg eventually propped himself back up and again opened the fridge, this time removing his old standby, the Dew. He opened it and took a swig, swooshing the neon green liquid between his teeth and gums to remove the nastiness of the stale beer puke from his mouth. He then wisely chose to spit his first sip rather than swallow. The same with his second. The third sip went straight down and to his surprise, didn’t return, though his stomach was still in knots. He then made his way back to the computer to face reality, to face the evil.

Again Greg wanted so much to pick up the phone and tell Jorja of his findings but now it was up to him to save his own ass because if they ever found out he knew, his ass would definitely need saving. He turned his attention to the past and tried to scrounge up any data, any other coincidences, anything in order to back his claim. He just couldn’t believe that Reynolds just so happened to be in the right place at the right time and take out two of the assailants. He envisioned Reynolds was there as a security blanket making sure the plan went down as it should and maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. Maybe nobody was supposed to get hurt or killed and the assailants acted under their own accord. Maybe it went down without a hitch. Maybe just wasn’t good enough and whatever the truth, Greg wanted answers and maybe with his trusty little tool he could find them.

He spent the next few days deeply entrenched in the system, both at work and at home. It was easy to do while in the office since nobody except Jorja really knew what he did in the office but supposedly he was one of the best in the business. His firewalls proved just that. If the mainstream hackers knew Greg’s mind was preoccupied they would have tried to dance around his security systems to find, if any, their vulnerabilities but as luck would have it his firewalls went unchallenged and his playtime with God’s eyes expanded almost exponentially. From the moment he logged in until he called it a day he was pounding away trying desperately to find something, anything but to no avail. Now awhile ago when he first started toying with the system he had found the name Ehsan Nejem and assumed he was the mastermind of the mall massacre since some form of black-ops extinguished his ass in the hills of Pakistan less than a month after the mall shootings. Only a few key individuals, the President’s inner circle, and Greg’s prying eyes ever saw the red stamped memo and the rest of America was none the wiser. He did find it quite odd that these people who knew of Ehsan didn’t expose him to the rest of the world and decided to keep a known terrorist and his deadly deed at bay. It was a conspiracy in the making. Greg’s thinking at the time, was that maybe this Ehsan Nejem guy used to be on the books of the American spy network and turned out to be a bad apple. That would be a good enough reason to send him to his awaiting vestal virgins without bullhorning the fact that Islam extremists were once again responsible for American bloodshed. Fitting this piece into Greg’s new found conspiracy puzzle he now assumed Ehsan was just a scapegoat for the black-ops and the rest of the red stamped memo in-crowd. Greg feared the true conspiracy was to bestow even more disquietude into the hearts of Americans by accusing the very people who live within its borders. America was becoming lackadaisical and numb to the “T” word since it has been used at least once during each and every episode of the evening news since nine eleven. America was also growing sick of the loss of sovereignty the Constitution upheld. A few wackos who took innocent lives for their twisted cause gave the government an excuse to take away the liberties America was built upon. More people die in a year from walking across the street than all the combined terrorist acts on American soil, yet the streets are not made any safer; instead wiretapping is legalized, database records are open to the government, and the private lives of the American citizens becomes more difficult to protect… all in the name of terror. But America is awakening from its deep slumber and removing the wool from their eyes. They have seen their freedom being slowly stripped away but America is starting to learn. America is starting to understand. America is starting to fight back, fighting back for their lost freedoms taken away by the Bush Administration, the senate, the house, their government. Greg’s new theory was that this government was trying to disrupt their new found renaissance in freedom by turning America on itself. Hire some rogue agents to band a group of derelicts and racist pigs together, brainwash them, and let them loose on the
masses
with guns and ammo. Make America cringe in fear again. Make it wilt as it tries to protect its citizens from its very own backyard. If American can’t protect itself from its own people… enter the Whitaker Administration with swift and decisive action. Pull the wool over their eyes again, protect them from the terror, protect them from themselves, and take away even more civil liberties by hiding behind the legal mumbo jumbo peppered throughout the bills of the senate floor and America would be none the wiser. This was a conspiracy in the making for sure; adding yet another layer of deceit, a conspiracy neatly wrapped in another conspiracy. No one would ever believe it.