The Protocol: A Prescription to Die (15 page)

Chapter 39

It was a cool, typical brisk, late April morning. When the mornings barely reached forty degrees, yet by mid-afternoon it would be in the mid to high sixties.

Normally, the statuesque oaks that lined the boulevard would have been fully dressed with leaves and would have provided an abundance of shade for hot, sunny days. In April, however, the trees were still brown and bare. Their buds were just starting to form, and the trees would soon prevent even a shard of light from reaching the sidewalks. Now, every possible photon reached the ground. This morning the skies were grey, and rain was falling cold, hard, and fast.

If anyone happened to be watching Eat, they would probably think his shape was a simple shadow, a trick of the haze. By the time he reached the backside of the building, he was drenched. At least the awnings in the alley provided some shelter from the frigid deluge. His shoes made squishing sounds with each step. If he needed to sneak up on anyone, it wasn’t going to work.

As he walked down the alley, trying to avoid being seen, but also not to make it obvious that he wasn’t there on sanctioned, cable company business, he scanned the unmarked vans parked along the brick walled buildings. As far as he could tell, none of them were occupied, and no engines were idling in an attempt to keep the interiors warm. Eat looked under, behind, and inside the four large, green garbage bins lining the alley. He found neither homeless people rummaging for food, nor green lawn and garden bags containing body parts.

Eat was looking for the cable hub box leading into the Gordon, Leake, and Bluthe’s processing facility. The facility where cadavers were brought, drained of blood, filled with formaldehyde, dressed, and otherwise made-up to look like they were merely asleep rather than dead, then shipped back to the funeral home to be put into a very expensive box that would be buried in the ground never to be seen again. If not that, the facility also provided the means to cook a body to a crisp, and pulverize it in a giant food processor. Or, as Eat recently discovered, it was also likely where his father was hacked with a carpenter’s hand saw, put in a collection of lawn and garden bags, secured with duct tape, quietly distributed to garbage containers around the city, then ultimately taken to the city dump. Gordon, Leake, and Bluthe multi-tasked very well. He was certain that it wasn’t only his father that was privy to the secret treatment from Gordon, Leake, and Bluthe’s processing facility. Eat just had to find the evidence to prove it, and he had the technology at his fingertips to do just that.

The front of the brick building was unmarked and quiet. Where the facility whispered anonymity, its neighbor on the west side of the alley screamed for attention. It was home to a carpet cleaner who, according to the multi-colored signage, specialized in cleaning, protecting, and repairing large Persian rugs. The door told anyone who arrived too early, too late, or on the wrong day, that the proprietor, Hank Azeed, only worked on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from ten to three.

Hank’s business must have been booming.

Eat understood the facility’s desire for anonymity. He was certain that other businesses would shy away from having a neighbor who dealt in cadaver processing and disposal. He wondered if Hank the rug man knew what activities his neighbor was involved in, and if his rugs acquired any peculiar odors of death. A pedestrian would have no idea what went on within its four brick walls. Eat doubted if Gordon, Leake, and Bluthe had anyone who managed their IT shop, and the fact that security was likely put in the hands of a non-technical funeral director, made things very easy.

The green box that Eat was looking for was the point that provided Internet access to the building. All electronic communication travelled through the wires contained in that little green box that said, “Property of Progressive Cable Inc.” All Eat needed to do was to plug one end of the thick gray coax wire going into the building into a little box he had in his backpack, then reconnect the wire from the street to the other side of his box. The last step was simple. All he had to do was enter a command on his phone to synch it with the box, and every piece of information flowing out of and in to the office building would also be sent to wherever Eat needed it; in this case, his phone. The second device was his most ingenious, the camera can. Inside of the tall, thin can that Andy had so much fun with the previous evening, were four miniature cameras and a microphone that, when powered, provided a 360-degree view of the surroundings, including sound. All each can needed was two quarter-sized watch batteries to keep it powered for more than a week. It was connected wirelessly to the box Eat planned to attach to the hub. As long as some homeless guy didn’t pick up the can and add it to his recycling collection, Eat was good to go. Eat continued walking down the alley, past the garbage containers and vans in search for the little green box.

And there it was.

The hub.

The little green box that would hopefully provide him more answers.

It was at the far corner of the building next to the fire escape and natural gas meter. Eat looked over his shoulder, things were still quiet. Sometimes the hubs had locks or were in the most inconvenient spots. This one was not only unsecure, but in the great wide open.

This was going to be a piece of cake.

He placed his bag down against the wall, zipped it open, and pulled out the tools he needed: pliers and a screwdriver.

“Hey,” came a masculine voice with a lisp from further down the alley by the processing facility’s back door.

Eat, jumped, swallowed hard, slowly put down the screwdriver, and pulled down the brim of his hat. He tried to think of a cover and wondered why things could never be easy for him.

“You here to fix the cable? We haven’t been able to get any of those girlie movies for a while in here. ‘Net keeps going down.”

This is wonderful, thought Eat. Just what he needed. A perverted mortician. Eat wondered if he was the man who had chopped his father into chum.

This was not what he needed right now.

Eat stopped and looked at the man again.

He looked vaguely familiar.

“Yup. The main office called it in. I’ll check it out, and see what I can do. May take some time though. You work for Gordon, Leake, and Bluthe?”

“Yup. I wash the bodies.”

Eat curled his bottom lip, and piqued his eyebrows in mock interest.

“Fuckin’ messy.”

Eat just shrugged, and read the name on the man’s ID badge hanging from his belt loop: Carl Titmueller.

“It gets pretty boring here, when there aren’t enough bodies to keep me busy all night. Been busy lately though,” he said then smiled. Eat could see the man’s tongue though the missing tooth. “Sometimes there are two of us. I can only wash them so many times before their skin starts turning too white. The soap we use is pretty strong.“

No. Eat did not know that, but played along nonetheless, “I’ll do my best.”

The man turned, pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and headed for one of the vans parallel parked in the alley.

“Hey, I was thinkin’.”

Eat stopped what he was doing, and tried to hide his annoyance. The guy said he was thinking, and Eat didn’t want him to hurt himself. He closed his eyes and waited for another request for porn to come flying his way.

“Why aren’t you wearing one of their uniforms? So people know who you are?”

The man’s missing front tooth made his speech almost comical. Eat tried not to laugh. He had punted before. Now he was going to try for the field goal.

“I’m an independent contractor. I just receive a call and go where I’m sent. It’s a living. You wash dead people. I mess with wires,” he said as he showed the guy the inside of the hub. “Pays the bills.”

“I hear ya. I have to do the same except I just get told where to pick up the bodies,” laughed the man as he hopped into the van, started it and backed out of the alley, evidently on a mission to pick up another corpse that would ultimately need a bath provided by none other than a sexually frustrated mortician with a lisp.

Eat looked at his hands. They were shaking. He was a computer geek, not a secret agent. He had already fixed their access problems. It was a loose cable. Any other problems the guy was having were at his desk. He felt he had dodged a bullet and decided to get things wrapped up, fast. He didn’t want to be here when the gap-toothed body washer returned. Eat re-opened the hub’s cover and exposed its cabled entrails to the elements. The reception inside of the building would be interrupted for only a few seconds while Eat switched the cables around. Unless they were doing something that required the Internet, they’d probably not even notice that Eat had been here performing his electronic sleight of hand.

He looked at his watch. It was almost ten in the morning. Hank the carpet cleaner would probably be opening his door for business any minute.

“Say hello to my little friend,” said Eat as he re-secured the hub’s door, and packed his tools. Where gangsters had guns, Eat had gadgets. Eat felt his were more effective. They were definitely more subtle.

The others sets had been installed in the wee hours of the morning. One was in his mother’s apartment at the assisted living center. Eat had made it there while she was still sound asleep; she still snored like a Banshee. Another was in Nordstrom’s office in the same building as his mother. Eat had “acquired” an access badge and copied its RFID sequence to his phone. All it took was a quick press of a button on his phone, and her office door clicked open. The third and final can was connected to the vending machine in the staff lounge where he’d met Dr. Fraser. The last one had been tough, as hospitals were rarely quiet, but he had just tried to act like he had a purpose, a reason for being where he was. Masquerading as a cable repairman wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be.

Then it came to him.

He recognized the man he’d just talked to.

He had been standing next to Nordstrom in the hospital break room.

Chapter 40

Eat had access to technology that most only dreamed of. The majority of the tools he used were designed and programmed by Eat. Some of the tools he accessed surreptitiously, but he was sure no one ever noticed. He was good enough to never leave tracks.

He had server farms across the United States, and in ten other countries around the world. If any one farm was compromised, he could shut it down and access another. Data copied to one farm was immediately copied to the others then compressed, segmented into even smaller pieces. It was a technology that no one else in the world used or had access to. The main farm was in his warehouse, but as long as he had an Internet connection and either his phone or laptop, he was good to go.

Eat sat in his Mini Cooper a block away from the processing center. He placed his laptop on the passenger seat on top of his backpack so he could easily see and type. He plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and moved his finger across its touchpad. The screen instantly activated and accessed the closest and strongest non-secured wireless Internet connection. Based on the information shown on the screen, the access point was 256.745 feet away.

When he was at home or in the office, he was able to command Mother using voice instructions. On the road, he was forced to use archaic technology, his fingers and a keyboard. He clicked on the screen icon that looked like a piece of pie. A simple black, promptless screen appeared.

Eat typed the code to initiate access to 314159.

>KNOCK KNOCK

>WHO’S THERE

>EAT

>YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO ENTER YOUR ACCESS CODE

Eat flipped to another window and copied the current access code that was displayed on the screen. This part of the access puzzle changed every fifteen seconds, and constantly transmitted the current hexadecimal access code to the main computer at the local server farm: Mother. If what he typed and what Mother had in memory did not match, she would ask one more time. She was a patient lady, but she had her limits. If the second attempt failed, Mother put the farm into protect mode, and shut down all external access until Eat was able to intervene. A timer popped in the upper right corner of the screen and clicked down from thirty. Eat copied the code next to Mother’s prompt.

>98AFC409BDE1AA3471

The timer stopped at twenty. Mother liked what he sent her. She wanted more information.

>ENTER YOUR PASSPHRASE

Since the computer he was talking to was Mother, he thought he’d use something that was somewhat appropriate and easy for him to remember.

>GRILLEDCHEESE

Each farm had a primary server and every server had a name. Mother was in Minneapolis. The server in Albuquerque was Father. Portland was Andy.

Mother liked his passphrase. Now she wanted something more concrete.

>LEFT INDEX AND RIGHT THUMB

Eat pressed his left index finger and right thumb onto the blue boxes outlined on the screen. Within seconds, a small light moved from top to bottom, then left to right, on each square. The system randomly requested two fingers to be scanned for final access. Without sensing the pressure of his fingers on the screen, he could have sat for ten minutes and Mother would not have done a thing. When the timer expired, Mother would reset the system, and clear the screen. If the prints did not match, Mother would have instantly denied access, moved into hazard mode, and started the shutdown processes to protect, and quietly distribute, all of 314159’s data. There was only one other person who could put the pieces back together. When hazard mode was activated, an email and text message was sent to Eat and his backup.

>HELLO EAT

Apparently Mother was happy to see him.

>HELLO MOTHER

Before installing each data interceptor and camera set, he programmed each one with a name. So instead of having to refer to each device with a virtually impossible to remember twenty-five digit number, he could use a simple word. Now he had to test each installation. Eat wanted to see the view from the mortuary facility’s camera.

>DISPLAY MORTUARY

The screen instantly divided into four quadrants. Three quads were dedicated to a camera. The fourth was for the display of the data travelling in to and out of the building. The view from the cameras was crystalline and the lighting was perfect. He put his finger in the middle of one of the camera boxes and moved it around. The camera’s point of view moved with his finger. When the image on the camera was centered on the license plate of one of the vans in the alley, he used his thumb and forefinger to zoom in.

The image was perfect. He asked Mother to access the DMV records for the van he was watching.

>VEHICLE RESEARCH

Mother wanted him to be a bit more specific.

>STATE

Mother had access to several databases that were not part of 314159’s repertoire. This included the DMV, vital statistics from each state, and even some not-so-familiar databases that those at the federal level only know about.

>MN

>PLATE OR VIN

>GLB 004

Eat assumed that GLB represented Gordon, Leake, and Bluthe, not the more commonly known Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual reference. Although, he had to admit, it would be funny.

>WORKING . . .

Eat didn’t understand why Mother bothered telling him she was working on his request. She barely had enough time to display the message when the results appeared.

>OWNER: GORDON, LEAKE, AND BLUTHE

MAKE: Ford

MODEL: Econoline Van

YEAR: 2009

LEIN HOLDER: N/A

ASSOCIATED INFORMATION: Traffic Violation. DATE: 02/12/2011. DRIVER: Carl Titmueller. Offense: Speed, 80 In 55. FINE: $450. STATUS: Outstanding. PHOTO: Click Here.

Eat clicked on the link Mother provided. A typical unflattering driver’s license photo appeared on the screen of a man named Carl Titmueller. He was smiling when he should have been keeping his lips together. Even on his driver’s license photo, he was missing a front tooth.

Just like real life.

He was definitely the man he saw with Nordstrom at the hospital. Now he had another puzzle to solve: why would the gap-toothed wonder be driving a funeral home van and be with the woman heading up an insurance company?

Eat decided that he’d need Mother to help.

>RESEARCH CARL TITMUEULLER. MINNESOTA

>WORKING . . .

RESEARCH BARBARA NORDSTROM. MINNESOTA

>WORKING . . .

There was a second man with the group at the hospital. A tall guy. Huge. Big ears. Eat closed his eyes and tried to bring back the image of the man’s badge.

He typed another command.

>RESEARCH BUTCH RHEUMY MINNESOTA

>WORKING . . .

Eat moved the mouse over to the screen quadrant that displayed the data transfers. As his mouse pointer moved into the area, it expanded to fill the entire screen. To most, the data was closer to Greek than anything remotely comprehendible. It was a mass of numbers and letters with a seemingly unrecognizable pattern. Eat was able to quickly glean through it and search for any valuable nuggets. Most of it was just surfing data: porn sites, news sites, someone bought a book. He was looking for email that might point him in a particular direction.

He scrolled through the data then stopped.

“Carl will be by tonight to make the pickup. 10:30. Be ready. BN”

Eat scrolled down a bit more and found what he believed was the response.

“We’ll be ready with six. Have him bring more tape. TL”

Each email had an address indicating where the message was sent from. The message from BN was sent from 45.23.555.099.

>RESEARCH 45.23.555.099

>WOR . . .

Mother didn’t even have time to tell Eat she was contemplating his request before she displayed the results on the screen before him.

She was good.

>2312 W. Oak, Edina, MN. Aequalis Health Services, Inc

“Bingo,” said Eat. “Now let’s see where the other started from.”

>RESEARCH 85.001.555.583

>WO . . .

>786 NE Baxter Circle. Edina, MN. Gordon, Leake, Bluthe Funeral Homes

Eat smiled. The fog was clearing and the picture was starting to come into focus. The connection between Barbara Nordstrom, Aequalis Health, Tim Leake, and GLB Funeral Homes had just become solid. He was finished for now. Mother would send him an email with the results of his other requests when she had exhausted all of her available resources.

He said goodbye to Mother.

>GOOD BYE

Mother’s screen closed and Eat’s normal screen reappeared with all of its icons, and a background picture of Mount Everest.