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Chapter 07
Investigation (Later April) Eliza hissed. "Oh, stop it," Sofye muttered, her tone totally unsympathetic. "YOU went out and got yourself shot. It was you who were poking around where you know there's nothing but trouble. Now, it's I that's cleaning you up and listening you hiss like a broken steam pipe." Eliza rolled her eyes but said nothing. "Now, your doing the eye roll thing." Eliza sat up. "Give me a break. I've ruined a perfectly good cape, got a rib that is going to hurt for at least two days." "Two days! You had a hole the size of my finger going in and," she hesitated, "your back was awful." She pushed her back down and smiled. "I'm sure glad you're so tough." She smiled. "Besides, we can go shopping to get you another cape!" Eliza closed her eyes and smiled. She took Sofye's hand and kissed it. She started to say something, but the night's efforts caught up with her. Sofye gently removed her hand from Eliza's grasp. Quietly standing, she pulled the light cover over her and pulled down the heavy shade. Before leaving the small bed room, she gazed at Eliza. "My mom, the vampire," she thought with a suppressed giggle. Eliza looked much better than she'd looked only a few hours before. A good day's sleep and a light "snack" on the way to "work" had been just the ticket. At the moment Eliza considered her work to be figuring out what was going on at Baynard's and how to stop it. She'd see the effects of their perversions on Sofye and had some experience with them herself. That was something she never wanted to repeat! She could kill them. Killing them would be so easy, but she knew that wouldn't really solve the problem and it meant she'd have to leave town, too. So far, she liked it here and didn't want to be forced to move and she was prepared to get down right stubborn about it. Sam Burns was sleeping more or less peacefully. His shoulder wound was more serious than it had appeared. The bone had been badly damaged and screws and a short metal brace were in place. He was expected to make a full recovery, but he was quite uncomfortable, and as in any hospital, he was under medicated, and usually, like now, the medication was late. The latent pain finally caused him to twist around, hurting his wound. That caused him to inhale sharply and waken. Eliza had taken an odd position, seating herself on his dresser to get a better view of him. The sight of a rather good looking woman, dressed all in black except for a white silk blouse, sitting on his hospital room dresser did momentarily shock him. He squinted and rubbed his eyes with his good hand. "Damn morphine does give you weird dreams," he thought Looking at his dresser, he could still see her. He started to sit up, but Eliza had mercy on him. "You lie down. Yes, I'm real and you're not dreaming. She jumped down. "Almost floated down," he thought. And walked over to him. She put her cool hand on his forehead and he felt the pain diminish and he relaxed. "I guess if you were going to kill me, I'd be dead, so why are you in my room," he paused and looked at the clock on the wall, "at 1 AM?" Eliza smile her sweetest smile and pulled a rose from a flower arrangement the squad had given him. She handed it to him. "Bringing you a flower?" Sam could see the humor in the situation as he reached for it. "I'll treasure if for the rest of my life." He sobered and Eliza knew he was wondering exactly how long that might be. Eliza sat on the bed next to him. "I think we have some common interests," she started. Sam's eyes widened and he stared at her. "You were real. I didn't dream it!" He'd half sat up and he fell back down with a noticeable thud. The pain in his shoulder made him grunt but he hardly noticed. He was so wrapped up in the returning memories, that he'd totally forgotten the very real Eliza sitting next to him. "Earth to Burns. Earth to Burns. Come in Burns." His eyes snapped into focus and it was obvious he'd remembered some of what had happened. "Thank you. Guess I don't need to worry about you hurting me. You risked your life to save me." "T'warn't nuttin'" She smiled. He reached out and took her hand in his. "You are so tiny. How did you do it? How did you survive?" Her looked at her hand in his and turned it, almost as if inspecting it to see how she did it. "What did you tell them?" She didn't bother to remove her hand from his. She told herself that she didn't want to strain him. He made an odd face. "Ah, I sorta didn't tell the whole truth. I told them I couldn't remember anything." He gave a lopsided shrug. "Well, there's sure a lot I can't remember." He sighed. "I think I may stretched the truth a wee bit when I said I thought it was on the other side of town and within the city limits." He almost looked sheepish. She nodded and squeezed his hand. "I think that was a good decision. I doubt they'll ever find anything. One will get you ten that the Deacon will clean it up and hush it up." Sam's eyes widened. "You know about that?" "I was worried about how to keep you alive, but that cover story just may do the job." "You were worried about how to keep me alive . . . That cover story just may keep me alive . . . " He realized he sounded like a parrot and he didn't like it. Eliza gave a very feminine giggle. "You're cute when you're confused." The clanking of metal on metal shocked both of them. "The nurse!" the whispered together. Eliza slid under the bed so quickly that Sam almost wondered if she'd been there at all. "Wake up Detective Burns. Sorry I'm late, but you know how it is." She held up the morphine injection. She whipped down the sheet covering him. "Right leg or left leg," she asked, but her eyes were clearly not on either of those two legs. He felt himself turning red. "Left he grunted," and almost immediately realized his mistake. The nurse leaned across his body to reach his left thigh, steadying herself with her hand on his right thigh. Well, it was almost still his thigh! The cold alcohol swab, the prick of the needle, and the almost instant rush of warmth, washed all those thoughts from his mind. Eliza could see what was going on in the mirror on the door. She gritted her teeth. "I should rip her lungs out," she thought. Minutes passed and the nurse finally left. Eliza popped up and realized that Sam was out of it. "Oh," she muttered to herself. "That explains it. He was totally out of it." Detective Burns never heard her leave the room and never knew that she stood watch until the sun was far higher than was good for her. The morphine induced dreams included her. He dreamed of her small, cool hand on his forehead. He dreamed of her tiny hand in his. Although it was only a few moments, he'd sensed the strength there. So tiny, yet so competent. Awake, he found her intriguing and exciting. Asleep, he smiled and felt at peace and safe. Eliza looked at the printout Sofye has given her. Her eyebrows shot up and her eyes widened. "Where did you get this?" Her shock and surprise were evident. Sofye looked smug as only a 13-year-old, about to turn 14, could. "I hacked into the Chronicle and found the mirror site for all of their archives. You won't believe what's in there!" Eliza looked at the paper in her hand and shook her head. "If this is a sample, I can." She sat at the small computer desk, next to Sofye, and let the paper flutter down. "Is there any way they can trace this back to you?" Sofye grinned. She enjoyed knowing more about computers than Eliza. What Sofye didn't know and Eliza would probably never tell, was that only a few years ago, she'd been one of the best online data miners in the business. Of course, she'd been with the library and had a multimillion dollar grant behind her. Still, she'd cracked into some of the Romanian sites with relative ease. What she didn't realize was that her work had been behind a milspec firewall and routed through three different anonymous proxies. That part of the technology was totally foreign to her. "I'm safe, Mommy. I got a proxy and went though that. It's in Finland and it'd be really hard to trace it back to us. Maybe the government could do it, but no hick newspaper could." She sat back and looked smug. Eliza nodded. She remembered hearing about proxies. She'd never bothered worrying about that stuff. The techies did that and more power to them. She just loved the hunt. She slid over next to Sofye. "Ok, you log in and give me a few minutes." "But . . . " "Humor me, ok?" Sofye sighed. She didn't want Eliza making herself look foolish."I won't laugh," she promised herself. "I will be good." She set the browser for a proxy and accessed the mirror site. All they got was a user id, password request. She entered it, telling Eliza what it was, and then a directory listing displayed on the screen. Eliza slid in and took over the key board. She did a quick copy of the URL and opened another window and accessed another site. Another Id, password request showed and she typed in masked characters. "Hope they never deleted me," she murmured. The screen painted white on blue with a blinking colon. She typed a long command string and pasted the URL of the mirror site in and hit enter. A spinning yin yang painted, slowly rotating. Sofye stared at the screen a few moments and then shifted her gaze to Eliza. Eliza had navigated so easily and typed so surely, that Sofye had not followed what had happened. As they watched, the screen repainted and a list of documents displayed, the mystery blinking colon at the bottom of the screen. Eliza squeaked with joy and type another command string at the colon prompt. A red on black downloading indication appeared with a yellow progress bar beneath it. She grinned at Sofye, "At DSL speed, this shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes. I'm surely glad I went for DSL. This would have been too much on dial up. I'll download or buy a Perl interpreter and write some scan scripts of this data. Should be easy. I want to play with some of the seek parameters, and online with open ports, may not be a good idea. In and out. That's the way I like it." Eliza grinned, evidently pleased with herself. "Wow! What did you just do? That was awesome." "I worked in data research a few years ago and we subscribed to a, ah," search service that let us scan all over the world. You know, IP addresses are allocated in blocks and are often geographically allocated. Of course, you can always do some whois and get that stuff, but that search engine takes care of that stuff. In this case, you'd given me the URL and I'd even logged in. The search engine spoofed our IP, and since we were logged in, it thought it was us. I entered a boolean search string and sucked down a ton of data that might be relevant to what we're looking for. Now, all we have to do is get creative.' She smiled at Sofye. "You handing me that URL was like a gift from heaven. I may have taken me far too long to find it and then I'd have had to crack the password and ID. That would have taken more time and work." She paused. "By the way, how did you get that information." It was Sofye's turn to look pleased. "I looked up the Chronicle in the phone book and got a listing for the MIS department. I called the MIS director and said I was researching an article for Data Tech World and asked him if he'd mind answering a few questions. He hemmed and hawed but I used my sweetest voice and told him it would mean ever so much to me and he agreed to give me a few minutes. I asked a few questions about the shop, online capacity, brand of net work servers and stuff like that then I asked if they had online offsite backup. That must have his baby because he told me all about it and even mentioned the backup mirror site by name. He bragged about how every article for the past 30 years was archived, even the one's weren't published. Neat, huh?" Eliza giggled. "You little sneak, yes that is neat. You could be one hell of a cracker!" She paused, thoughtfully. "How did you get the ID and password?" Sofye giggled. "That was easy! I looked him up in the phone book and got his home address. Then, while you were sleeping, I hung around there until I saw a boy about my age come out and I sort of arranged we meet." She giggled. "He was nice. He took me to the mall and bought me stuff, food and we played video games. He's good. When he told me his dad worked in IT for the Chronicle I was very impressed. He's really into computers and wants to be the head of an MIS department, like his Dad, some day. He told me about raid, offline and offsite backups. He really knew what he was talking about." She grinned. "And I know too, now!" Eliza burst out laughing. "You little sneak, you got him to give them to you, didn't you?" "Mom! I'd never do such a thing. I peeked over his shoulder when we logged in at the library computer! I would never ask him to snitch on his dad." Detective Burns had another shot of scotch, purely for pain control, of course. He had another week of medical leave coming and he was determined to enjoy it to the fullest. He leaned back in his Lazy Boy, took a nice long pull on the Scotch and relaxed, letting the low music seep into his being. "That morphine sure gave me some interesting dreams." He chuckled. "When I dream about floating ladies, I sure do dream about some good looking ones. Now, some of the dreams weren't all that interesting, but I guess you can't win them all." The Scotch warmed his belly and the music warmed his mood. He had some Tylenol IV and knew he shouldn't be drinking with it, but, "A little in moderation can't hurt," he told himself. He sank into the comfortable chair, the most expensive item in the living room, and drifted, half dozing. A gentle sound caused him to start. He'd been half drifting and his startle response almost made him spill the half glass of Scotch. "Who the hell could that be?" He staggered to his feet and started to the door. He grabbed his pistol from the end table and stuffed it into his waist band, behind his back. He peered through the peep hole but couldn't really make out who it was. They were wearing dark clothing, and in the dim hall, he couldn't make out any features. "Looks like a young girl," he muttered to himself. "Knocking on my door at," he paused and squinted at his watch, "two A.M." She rapped gently on the door again and he could see she was wearing a cape and a slouch hat. Her arm was pale and delicate in the dim light. "She's cute, but she could use a fashion consultant." Considering his experiences of the previous days, he felt that caution would be a good idea. Stepping back with his right foot as he opened the door, he smiled. "May I help you?' Eliza had considered how to approach him and had not decided what she should say. Standing there, looking up at him, she felt even less sure how to elicit his help. She sighed and removed her hat so he could see her face. Her looks softened most men and that couldn't hurt, now. Shaking her head to free her hair from the effects of the hat, she looked up at him. "May I come in? I think I need your help." She managed to put a plaintive note in her voice. At the moment, Burns' primary emotion was curiosity. There was no way he was not going to let her in, but his instincts were telling him that this was one dangerous lady. Paradoxically, he felt no danger toward himself. He took two steps backward, keeping his right leg, and the gun on his hip in easy reach and nodded. "You need my help?" His stepping back and nodding indicated his invitation for her to enter. "How can I help you?" he asked, very real curiosity evident in his voice. Eliza stepped in and loosened the cape clasp at her throat. It was a jade yin yang set in iridium. Burns' eyes flicked toward the striking piece of jewelry and he watched appreciatively as the fabric of her silk blouse stretched across here clearly braless breasts. He realized what he was doing and deliberately raised his gaze to focus on her eyes, but her flicker of a smile made him wonder if she realized the effect she'd just had on him. "Damn! I'm screwing this up," he thought. Then she was standing there, hat and cape in hand, looking expectant. He felt momentarily confused. "You won't need to draw on me," Eliza said, smiling. "I came to ask for you help, not mug you." "Oh, damn!" She realized what his stance meant. "No, no," he stammered. "It's not that. I'm just not fully awake." He reached and took her cape and hat, half turning, he tried to make the gun in his belt less obvious as he placed her cape and hat on the end of the sofa. "Please, come in and make yourself comfortable," he said, face blazing red. He hoped the light was too dim to reveal the color to her. "So far, I'm acting like a school kid," he mused. "Can I get you something to drink," he asked as she sat down. He groaned internally. "First she thought I wanted to shoot her, now she'll think I'm trying to get her drunk." But Eliza smiled sweetly. "Do you have any Pernod or Scotch?" Sam heaved a sigh of relief. "Scotch. I do have Scotch. How do you take it?" Eliza giggled. "One straight up and a double on the side as a chaser." Burns snorted in amusement. "My kinda girl," he thought. Her walked to his bar, in the corner and busied himself preparing her drinks and getting another for himself, less this time that last. He also took the opportunity to, as surreptitiously as possible, relieve himself of the 9mm pistol in his belt. He handed her the drinks and seated himself in the recliner facing her. "Now, you said that you came to ask me for help. Just how can I help you," he asked as she tossed the shot and took a sip of her double "chaser." As she lowered the drink the light caught her face and he remembered. He remembered the "dream" in the hospital. He remembered the confusion near Baynard's, the attack, the shooting, seeing a flashing figure that could not have been doing what he was seeing. She did not seem to mind that he was staring at her dumbly with his mouth hanging open. Realizing that his mouth was open, he snapped it shut with an audible click. He squinted, shook his head and emptied the shot he had in his hand. Walking over to the bar, he poured himself a tumbler half full of Scotch and took another sip. As he sat down, she gazed at him. "Do you remember it all, now?" "No," he croaked. "No, but I remember you, now." He stared at her in confusion. "What . . ." he paused. "What's going on? What's real?" "I think you have some sort of cult, here, in town that is into major kinky crime. I've managed to . . ." "No!" he interrupted. "I know most of what you are saying. I'm asking about you!" He took a deep breath. "I saw you 'fly' straight into automatic weapon fire and I could have sworn you got hit. Then . . ." He hesitated. Eliza held up her hand, stopping him. "Would you believe that there are things in this world that are . . ." She hesitated, looking for the right words. "Really, really, strange?" he muttered. Eliza giggle. "Oh, yes," she breathed. "There is no way I can ever tell you now strange," she said, a far away look entering her eyes. Briefly she remembered the attack of several years ago, the one that had turned her. "Yes," she said. "Very strange." He looked at her closely. "Ever so pale skin, like she never saw the sun, short jet black hair and almost ruby red lips, (she'd eaten before coming), with her mid calf boots, leather skirt and white silk blouse, she was striking. "Next, next you're going to tell me you are a crusading vampire fighting Satanic evil," he blurted in a lame attempt at humor. They stared at each other for a few moments. He felt the blood draining from his head, leaving him slightly dizzy and chilly. "I hadn't planned on telling you," she whispered. He glanced over at the bar, where the 9mm was resting. Eliza saw and realized what he was thinking. "Please," she implored. "If I was going to harm you, I wouldn't do it like this. I need your help." He visibly relaxed and remembered what he'd seen at Baynard's. "It wouldn't help, would it?" He grinned a weak, lopsided grin. Sam wasn't sure what to believe. She looked so cute and so helpless, it was hard to accept the memories other than drug or trauma induced fantasies, but how and why did she come up with such a wild story that so closely paralleled and explained his phenomenal memories? Sam sighed. At this point, his major concern was his sanity. "How . . ." he started and stopped cold. She had stood and seemed to be getting taller while her features subtlety altered and there were fangs! He looked into blazing red eyes and felt all the strength leave his body. He tried to stand but couldn't. Instead he felt himself being lifted, like a child. He seemed to float toward the sofa, where she'd been sitting. He blacked out. "You look like a man that could use some Scotch," he heard her say. He blinked and realized that he was sitting on the sofa and was facing him, extending a glass of Scotch on the rocks. He stared at her. "I'm going crazy. I'm really losing it." Eliza stared at him. "You still don't get it, do you?" He had a small decorative fire place on one wall of his apartment. Eliza flitted to it and picked up a poker and blinked back in front of him. His eyes were wide. She held up the poker so he could see, and with some effort, bent it into a U shape. She dropped in onto his lap. "Get it now?" He stared at the poker like it was a snake, but picked it up and tried to straighten it. He looked up at her and took a deep breath. "I guess so. He sighed. "Guess things aren't exactly like my Momma taught me." He picked up the drink she'd handed him and took a long pull. "You said you needed my help. What can I do to help you?" |