Just a Walk in the Woods - Ep6
Dafydd and Sarah are taking a break up at the cabin, their last case didn't end well and it's made a little soul-searching necessary for them both. In this final episode of the two interwoven stories, Dafydd and Sarah make a mutual decision that will change their lives considerably.
We'd spent a couple of days since our night in the old fire tower. I thought perhaps it was getting easier on her. I was glad, because it wasn't for me. I was still dreaming about that trip to Duluth every night. At least it hadn't been our major topic of conversation like it was the first week we were up here. I needed to get my head straight before I brought up the other thoughts that were on my mind
I must have beaten the crap out of a dozen lowlives before I found this guy. Finally. Somebody who had actually heard of a wolf called Daniel who fit the description I had of the guy we were looking for. Don't look at me like that, once he started talking I even gave him back his teeth.
"Sounds like Daniel Hawthorne. He's a net guy. Runs an ISP."
"Where does he work?"
"North Star Connections - they have an office half way up the hill. He's the CEO."
I scowled down at the rabbit tied to the chair.
"That's no good to me. Where are his other places?"
"I don't know, man! All I know is that he owns three or four other places up here. He lives up beyond Two Harbors, and I've no idea where."
"Scram, before I regret my decision to not leave you floating in the harbor."
He fled, and I called Sarah.
"Any luck on your end, Dafydd? I think I might have a lead."
"Is your lead a guy by the name of Hawthorne who runs an internet company up here?"
"Nothing so specific, but I picked up a rumor that there's something a little hinky about one of the ISPs in this town and there's only two apart from the phone and cable companies. One of them, don't know which one, is supposed to have a lot of 'dark net' connections."
"And if one of them is being run by somebody who sounds a lot like our pornographer, what do you think the odds are of it being the other one with the dark net links?"
"If I believed in those kind of odds I wouldn't whip your furry ass at poker so bad."
"I think we need to pay a little clandestine visit to North Star Connections."
In the old days, things like this were a lot simpler. You'd bug their phones, plant a few audio bugs around the place then sit back and listen to everything going on. Bug sniffing equipment was hard to come by and if your target didn't have any reason to believe you were coming after him you could pretty much count on your bugs only being discovered by the wildest fluke. In these days of extreme connectivity we had a more difficult situation. Anything broadcasting on a strange frequency would be spotted pretty quickly and you could practically pick up bug-scanning gear as a freebie thrown in with that nice expensive Wi-Fi analyzer your network engineer just purchased.
That was why I found myself in a wiring trunk off to the side of one of the elevator shafts in the office building where North Star occupied the top two floors and most of the server room in the basement. I'd been here for just over an hour and was patiently stripping the outer insulation from one network cable after another and using a punchdown tool to clip the individual wires inside into one of several identical devices I'd brought with me. Finally I had them all done and I plugged all of my network taps into a slightly larger box and plugged that into a burner phone with an outsized battery pack attached. I grabbed my own phone and called Jason.
"Comm check on the network taps."
"Looks good from here, man. I see traffic on them all and no indication of problems on the nets I'm listening to. I'd say clean tap and good connectivity."
"Ok. You know what to do." I hung up and texted Sarah. The elevator went past me a couple of times before obligingly stopping at the floor below me and the access panel in the roof lifted. I dropped through and joined my mate inside.
"How did it go?"
"Clean. Some of those cables have to belong to North Star and Jason has a good tap on them all. Now we go and follow other lines of investigation while Jason works."
"I thought that was our only lead? What else were you planning on investigating?"
I smiled down at the pretty lynx.
"I hear the Harborside Tavern mixes a pretty amazing martini and we can investigate that rumor and meet a local contact of mine there."
Sonia Barron was a cougar, in both senses of the word. Pretty, wealthy, officially single but with no shortage of young, well-muscled male entertainment whenever she wanted. She also ran a highly discreet and well-connected escort service. If there was any fur in town who I could count on to have whatever dirt was available on somebody, it would be her.
As always, she was dressed to impress and she drew quite a few admiring glances as she walked over to the booth where Sarah and I were sitting, with a sway to her hips that went all the way to the end of her tail. She turned and spoke to the rabbit that had walked in with her.
"George, darling, be a dear and go sit at the bar, would you? I think this needs to be a private discussion. I'll join you in a bit."
Without a word he did as he was told. Sonia liked her men young, energetic and obedient. As he left, she slid into the booth next to Sarah and smiled across the table at me.
"Dafydd, it's good to see you again. Such a shame it always has to be on business."
"Sonia, may I introduce Sarah, my partner and mate."
"A pleasure, my dear. However, since this is, I assume, a matter of business, shall we dispense with the social pleasantries?"
"Daniel Hawthorne. CEO of North Star Connections"
"Not a customer of any of my girls, or boys for that matter. Single, lives in a big place about four miles north of your cabin. He bought the place after old hunting lodge went out of business and converted the main building into a mansion."
"What does your particular grapevine say about him?"
"He's never been seen in public with the same lady twice, and as far as I know they are arm-candy only, he doesn't bed any of them. There have been rumors that he's gay but if he is, he's so far back in the closet that you'll never find him. What's your interest in him?"
"We think the reason he doesn't bed any of those ladies or doesn't use your particular services could be that they are just too old for him. He fits the description of somebody we're after who we think makes and distributes cub porn."
Sonia's polished veneer slipped for a moment.
"Shit and damnation, Dafydd! If that's happening up here it's going to play hell with my business too. I may have a friendly relationship with local law enforcement but if the lid blows off something like that they won't be able to keep looking the other way."
"Something like that very definitely is happening up here, even if it's not him. We've traced three kidnapped cubs up here to a wolf named 'Daniel' who apparently has a significant amount of tech available to cover his tracks."
"North Star is where you want to go around here if you want a network link that doesn't get you in trouble with the law. It's known that they purge connection records the moment they are accounted for and in the billing system. Some of my girls use it for the occasional live show."
"Given your reputation for discretion I'm surprised you permit that."
"They use one of these invitation-only sites. Nobody gets to see it who hasn't been vouched for by another member."
"Thanks, Sonia. We'll keep you posted if anything looks like it's going to pop from this."
"Appreciated, Dafydd. Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this short. George is looking a little lonely up at the bar by himself and I can't have that."
By the time Jason called us back, I was glad we were staying at a hotel in town rather than either of us risking driving out to the cabin.
"Dafydd, I've got good and bad news. The bad is that everything in their core systems is encrypted and I can't snoop on the traffic. I can tell where it goes to or comes from, though, so I've pretty much mapped their entire network. The good news is that outside that core the security on one of the accounting boxes wasn't quite so tight and I was able to crack that. I found an anomaly."
"Go on..."
"Aside from their backbone connections they have two dedicated fibers running offsite. Both were installed at the same time but the company records of the installation only show one, although they actually paid the right amount to cover both. The one they do show goes to the CEOs house. I was able to get into the cabling contractors systems and found out somebody else had got there first, their electronic records of the second job are also gone. This is where the good news gets better. Last year, the cabling contractor adopted the policy of scanning physical documents into their document management system and as part of that they paid through the nose for the past ten years paper documents to be backloaded onto the system. Whoever cracked the database did it more than a year ago, because the images of the physical job sheets are still there. I know where the second fiber goes. Also to the CEOs place so anyone looking at this end of it would think it's a redundant backup, but it isn't. That fiber terminates at a different building, half a mile away from the main house. It's also active at different times too. It's a completely separate link that anyone looking at company records isn't supposed to know even exists."
"Thanks, Jason. Excellent work, as always."
As I hung up, Sarah cocked an ear at me. I knew her body language well enough by now that I knew she was wordlessly asking for an update.
"Tomorrow, we check out of the hotel and move our base of operations to the cabin. There's a network link that on paper isn't supposed to exist connecting to an isolated building on Mr. Hawthorne's land. Tomorrow night, we find out why."
So that was how we ended up at the cabin in the first place. We were in pretty good spirits when we got here. Based on the info we'd got from Kparsi, we had pretty good reason to believe Anne was alive. What mental state she was likely to be in, on the other hand, didn't bear thinking about. On the road up to the cabin, Sarah was driving and I was making calls. We actually thought we were seeing some light at the end of this particular tunnel.
"Janet? Dafydd. We might have something up here."
"Do I even want to know?"
"We've got a line on where Anne might be being kept. Can you join us up here with some backup from the state troopers ready to roll when we call?"
"Probably. Since you didn't ask for Duluth PD I presume you're not talking about a location in town?"
"Correct. You can stage at my place, call my secretary and she can give you the GPS coordinates. You'll be roughly four miles by road or three hiking through the woods from the target location. You also won't be visible from the road."
"OK. We can be there in about four hours."
"Fair enough, Janet. We might already be gone by then but that's ok. I'll call you on your cell when we have any further info for you."
"Speaking of further info, you wouldn't know anything about why a certain drug lord in this neck of the woods would inexplicably vanish, his organization fall apart and the drug gangs in the metro buzzing like a hornets nest with rumors that he offended the wrong people and was very messily offed?"
"You always get rumors like that when somebody does a bunk, you know that."
"Yeah, but not this consistent. The drugs and gangs folks are starting to think it might be real."
"Not sure what to tell you. I've been up here a while and I'm a little out of touch on the street buzz."
"OK, fair enough. I've got to go get things organized here."
I trusted Janet, but she was still a cop. A tactical assault on a warehouse full of drugs and smuggled kids was one thing, but I didn't think it was worth letting too many folks know about the message I'd sent with Kparsi.
Dusk was falling and Sarah and I were making our way through the woods towards the boundaries of Daniel's land when the wheels started to come off the whole thing. First hint we had of it was a call from Jason.
"Dafydd, is there any chance you might be blown?"
"There's always a chance, but not too large on this one at the moment. I don't think so."
"The pattern on that second fiber line just changed. It switched over to mirroring the traffic on the first like the redundant backup it's supposed to look like."
"Gotcha. Keep me posted. Text comms only from here out, we're going to be going tactical."
As I slipped the phone back into its clip on my belt I looked over at Sarah.
"Pick up the pace. We need to hustle."
"What's up?"
"Jason picked up a hint of a possible coverup effort."
"Shit!"
We were off running, as fast as a pair of cats could go and still be relatively quiet. In less than fifteen minutes we were well inside Daniel's boundaries and closing in on the buildings location. Sarah spotted it first and tapped me on the shoulder to attract my attention then pointed slightly off to our left.
It wasn't much to look at. The only one left of the luxury cabins the lodge used to rent out, except if you looked closely the windows were all blacked out from the inside and barred on the outside. No sign of activity, no lights visible. The door was locked and no sound came from inside. I looked at Sarah and she nodded, taking up a position against the wall about half a second before I kicked the door in.
I went in low and Sarah went in high, swinging our guns to cover the main room of the cabin. Right across from us was a bank of computers, their monitors dark but their disk lights flickering furiously. I yanked the power cords so that the disk wipe obviously in progress would stop and the noise from their cooling fans died away.
Silence.
Sarah called out. "Anne, honey? Are you here?"
Silence.
No sound of movement, nothing. I think at that point we both knew.
We found her in the bedroom, wrapped in a stained sheet. Sarah gasped as she ran over and picked up the small naked pup as if she were only sleeping but Anne's head rolled over to an impossible angle. The bastard had broken her neck.
"Oh fuck, Dafydd... She's even still warm. How the fuck... By just how many few minutes did we miss taking her home?"
I was dialing Janet.
"Roll it, Janet. We have a body."
"Shit."
"Come on Sarah, let's get that sick fuck before he can cover more stuff up..."
We were heading out the door when a voice surprised us.
"Dispatch, 104. We're rolling but we need the ME. The cats found a body."
Sarah and I looked at each other in horror.
"Police scanner... Fucking idiots didn't keep radio silence or stick to phone comms."
"Well, he fucking well knows we're here now. Let's get him."
We needn't have bothered. We were close to the house when I heard a gunshot from inside. Apparently Daniel Hawthorne had been busily loading his home movie collection into a box on the back of a bobcat, a box that was probably intended to end up somewhere in the woods, in the same hole as Anne more than likely, when he heard that radio broadcast and knew it was all over.
He'd taken his 12 gauge and blown his own head off.
Pity. I'd have liked to see him go from his rich lifestyle to the special hell that incarcerated cub-fuckers get. Guess he preferred the idea of a more spiritual version.
Sarah was so furious I almost thought she was going to kill that state trooper. Her ears were flat against her skull, almost hidden in her hair and her fur was standing on end from muzzle to tail tip. She was in their faces the moment they got out of their cars.
"Whose bright fucking idea was it to break radio silence while you were staging?" The stocky raccoon seemed to shrink a little under her glare and she was on him in an instant.
"Umm, I got lost on the way in, had to call dispatch for directions. The phone wasn't working. Coverage sucks up here."
She had him by the throat in a flash, claws partially extended and she was shaking with rage as she hissed in his face from a range of about two inches.
"Your fucking radio call killed that little girl. You want to come and see her mom with me when we tell her that her six year old daughter will never grow up? You fucking should. She was still warm when we found her. You fucking blew the entire thing with only minutes to go. You might as well have rolled in here, drawn your weapon and shot her yourself. If you hadn't made that fucking stupid boneheaded RADIO call we'd be calling her mom right now and telling her that her daughter was alive and safe instead of finding her wrapped in a stinking cum-stained sheet with a broken neck, you shithead!"
She shivered and practically flung him away.
"Get yourself the fuck out of my sight before I lose what little self-control I have left and do rip your miserable throat out."
The trooper wisely made himself scarce.
Near as we could tell, from the recordings and from the remaining data on the computers, this little shit had been up to this since he moved into the place. The collection of recordings showed us a total of twelve victims, the cops got to work trying to identify the others and scour the woods for burial sites.
Janet, Sarah and I had a more difficult task. The following morning we made the two and a half hour drive back to Minneapolis and went to Marie Willis' house.
The moment she opened the door and Janet said "Ms. Willis, can we come in?" she knew... she looked at me in desperation, her eyes pleading for some hint that what she feared wasn't true. I had nothing to give her. I set my face like a raw swabbie being bawled out by the Master Chief and that told her all she didn't want to know. Silently she stepped back from the open door. As soon as it was closed, Janet continued.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Willis, but we have recovered a body that we believe is that of your daughter."
"Believe? It's not certain? Mr. Owen, could they be wrong?"
"Marie, the cops aren't allowed to say they are certain until after a formal identification. Sarah and I were the ones who found her. I'm so sorry Marie, but your little girl is gone."
She folded like a puppet with its strings cut. Sarah caught her before she hit the deck.
"Go on, Janet. Get. We'll talk her through the process and what happens next. We'll stay with her and make sure she's OK."
As Janet turned to go, I stopped her and added, in a lower voice for her ears alone... "You might want to give the smokeys a heads up that, as I act as her lawyer as well as the PI she hired, I will have to advise her of the chances of a successful suit against the state troopers. If she should choose to pursue that course, because of my involvement in the case I would have to refer her to a colleague."
A day later, Sarah and I packed our bags, drove back to my cabin and locked the gate of the turnoff behind us. We just wanted to shut ourselves away from the world for a while, away from the folks who don't get it, who haven't seen the kind of shit we have. I made one call after we got there, asking Janet to make sure that as each of the victims were identified, I'd get to go along with the officers breaking the news to their parents. Call it penance if you like, it would be close to accurate.
_As we walked through the woods I realized we'd been hiding out up here, alone with each other and our thoughts for nearly two weeks. Theoretically we could pretty much stay here forever apart from trips into Two Harbors to buy supplies. However, that kind of isolation was something neither of us wanted.
"Sarah..."
She stopped and looked at me.
"You've stood by my side since that day in a Rochester warehouse, you've been my partner and my mate and both of those have cost you more than I have any right to demand..."
"No, Dafydd, only one of them. I'm not sure I'm cut out to be your partner any more. I don't know what that means for us as mates..."
This was the moment.
"Sarah, partner has more than one meaning..." Dropping to one knee I pulled that box out of my pocket and held it up to her, opening the lid. "Whatever the future holds for us... would you consent to walk that path at my side, as more than my mate, as my wife? I warn you I don't have a decent track record as a husband... but Sarah Marshall, will you marry me?"_
"Dafydd, I can't have kits... you know that..."
"And what's that got to do with anything? We can always adopt. There's kids out there need folks like you to take care of them and they aint getting it. And you know what? They'll call you Mom."
"Get up, you romantic idiot..." She pulled me to my hind-paws and kissed me. When we came up for air I grinned.
"You didn't answer the question."
"Yes. On one condition."
"Name it."
"I keep my PI license current, I can't deal with the daily dip into the cess-pit any more... I'll mostly be home taking care of the kids we adopt... but there are going to be some where you need me and some that I won't be able to leave alone. Those, I'll have your back like always. And you change your share of diapers if we adopt a newborn!"
"Done it before, can do it again."
"Then Yes, Dafydd, with all my heart."
Fin.