CHAPTER 30
Joe stared at the picture on the tablet. The hair was darker, the area around the eyes less wrinkled, and this younger version of him had no beard or mustache, but there was now no doubt it was him. Joseph Hartwell, financial analyst from New York. Reported missing four years ago, current whereabouts still unknown.
Joe sighed. “That seems so long ago now.”
“You worked on Wall Street?” I made it a question, though the profile on the tablet already answered it. My goal was to get him talking.
“Yeah, for a while. Worked for one of the big investment banks. Did research, crunched numbers… basically gave the thumbs up or thumbs down on mega-investments and super-loans and all that. I used to bump elbows with hedge fund managers and CEOs. A real big shot, I was.” His gaze wandered to the sky, like he was looking at some memory projected against the clouds. “None of it meant a damn thing, really.”
“Was that where you met the demons?”
“No. Not there. People like to say Wall Street… bankers… stockbrokers… that they’re evil. But they’re just people doing a job. Some of them are egomaniacs and others full-on sociopaths. But evil? No, they’re amateurs compared to the Demons. The Demons were before that. The Demons are right here in Penbrooke.”
And then in some recess of my brain, the final pieces clicked together. “The fraternity. The Hallowed Hall of Alumni.”
“You’ve seen them then,” Joe confirmed. “The Demons with dead eyes.”
Brian began tapping furiously on his tablet. “We do have a slightly higher than expected number of Omicron Upsilon Iota members in the list, but still low enough to be random variation.”
“They won’t all be listed as fraternity members,” Joe explained, “not publicly. It started with the fraternity, but it’s bigger than that now. The evil seed that grows a wicked fruit. The Demons are everywhere now.” He began to fidget and glance around nervously, as if he expected a demon to show up at any moment. Whatever happened to Joe so many years ago, it was clear it had damaged him in some way.
Dee stepped up and gently took Joe’s hand. “Please Joe, we need to know about these Demons. We need to fight them, and to do that we need to know what we are up against.”
“They’ll hurt you,” he insisted, “it’s what they do. They hurt people like you.” He pulled away from Dee, but she held onto his hand even tighter.
“I won’t let them. I’m stronger than that. We are stronger than that. Together we can beat them, but you have to help us.”
Joe looked down at his feet, but nodded and began speaking again.
The story came out slowly at first. Joe would slip off track and begin dwelling on some unrelated subject. Other times he would just clam up completely and only start talking again after some gentle prodding from me or Dee. Gradually, he seemed to become more comfortable with the telling. Eventually his oratory even gained the character of eager confession. Some burden seemed to lift from him as he spoke, and the words came more quickly and freely. When Dee suggested we all go inside and continue the conversation, Joe surprised us by accepting. At some point during his unburdening, he had also shed his claustrophobia.
And Joe wasn’t exaggerating. These people, these demons of his, really were evil. The heart of the conspiracy was a web of blackmail. They targeted freshmen college students, sons of wealthy or connected families, academic scholarship students with bright futures, the next generation of leaders. They recruited them into the fraternity with promises of brotherhood and support, a social network that could be depended on to advance their career for the rest of their lives, and that was true to some extent, but it came at a terrible price. Little by little they corrupted them. Enticing them to more reckless and thoughtless behavior, whispering in their ears all the while that they were above the restrictive morals of their inferiors. Eventually they were led to some act so morally reprehensible and criminal that their was no way out of the trap. After being shown the video evidence, the choice was clear and stark. Pledge unfailing loyalty to the conspiracy and continue receiving its support, or betray it and be destroyed. Very few chose the latter, and those that did usually didn’t live long. An all too convenient suicide usually resolved the problem while serving as a warning to others.
Not all the fraternity members were ensnared by this trap, and not all those ensnared were fraternity members. The conspirators had grown skilled over the years at reading just how far a person could be pushed, how far some could be led down a dark path before bolting back toward the light. Only a select few made it into the inner circle. Once the trap was closed on them, they were quickly tasked with recruiting and grooming new candidates, both from within the fraternity and without.
The source of blackmail wasn’t alway the same, it depended heavily on the weaknesses and predilections of the individual, but Joe’s trap was all too common, or so he claimed. It involved drugs and ritualized sex. Consensual at first, but with an increasing dark overtone that included bondage and simulated violence. His confession degraded into sobbing. He blamed alcohol and drugs. He blamed the lies they told him. He swore the young woman was supposed to be a volunteer. That’s what he was told before the event. But it didn’t look like that on the video they showed him after.
Significantly higher than the national average. That is what the WEAV meeting had said about sexual assault cases on the Penbrooke campus. My head spun with the implications.
We sat there quietly for some time after Joe finished his story. His sobs had reduced to silent shuddering, his face buried in his hands. Dee reached for him as if to squeeze his shoulder, but stopped, her hand frozen in midair. Her face was a confused mix of sympathy, anger, and disgust. She looked at Joe like he had suddenly been replaced by a stranger.
Dee pulled her hand back, stood, and walked over to her exercise mats. Her danger room. She nudged a piece of scrap wood with her foot, then deftly flipped it into the air and snap kicked it with her other foot. It soared through the air and struck the cardboard celebrity cutout square in the chest. She stood there, her back to us, staring at that cutout, her hands clenched in fists at her side. Brian started to rise, but Liz shook her head.
“Just give her a minute,” she whispered.
Dee walked back and sat down, her usual composure restored.
Joe looked up, his eyes swollen and red. “It never goes away. The things you do. They come back. I’d thought I’d buried it. Locked it away forever. But then she said… she said she wanted to go to Penbrooke. My own daughter. She wanted to go to Penbrooke, and I said no. She didn’t understand why, and I couldn’t tell her. And I got mad and yelled and I couldn’t tell her. It all started to come apart then.” He buried his head back in his hands. “It never goes away.”
The quiet hung heavy in the air. It was Brian that finally broke the silence.
“So, what do we do now?” he asked.
“The mission hasn’t changed,” Dee responded, “now we just know what’s at stake. We take them down. No matter the cost.”
“Yes, but how? We don’t have any solid evidence of anything.” Brian threw his tablet onto the coffee table. “All we have is the crazy ravings of…” He looked over at Joe.
Joe raised his head from his hands. “The ravings of a crazy homeless man,” he supplied. “Don’t be afraid to say it. It’s true after all. And you’re right, it ain't worth squat. Nobody will listen to what someone like me has to say. Not against the likes of them.”
“There must be something we can do.” Liz said. “If we could get access to where they… do this stuff. Maybe find the video tapes. What can you tell us about that?”
“I don’t know where it was. We were always taken there blindfolded. We went down a lot of stairs. No windows. Probably a basement. That’s all I know. As for the videos… I don’t know anything about them. I only ever saw the one they showed me, and I don’t know where they keep it. I suppose that
’s standard operating procedure for blackmail.” He took a breath and let it out slowly. “We’ve got nothing.”
Dee stood, a glimmer of the earlier fire burning through her composure. “No, that’s not true. We do have something. We know how they operate now. We know what they do. We can use that against them. We have a window into their inner workings. I’m planning to jam a crowbar into that window and pry it open.”
“Yes, but how?” Brian asked.
“Simple, I’m going to give them a Trojan horse.”
We all stared at Dee while understanding slowly sank in.
I was on my feet now also. “No,” I shouted. “Just no. We will find another way. Something less… insane.”
“There’s that word again,” she responded. “I know you’ve never been totally on board with the whole superhero thing, but I really wish you would stop questioning my sanity, Barry.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.” I started to explain, but then saw the hint of amusement in her eyes.
“Is she really suggesting what I think she’s suggesting?” Liz asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “She really is planning to let a gang of serial sexual predators carry her off. She’s going to use herself as bait.”
“OK, I think I have to agree with Barry,” Brian chimed in, “that’s insane.”
“It’s risky, yes, but is it really any more insane than anything else we’ve done?” Dee began pacing as she spoke, and I couldn’t help but think of one of my professors giving a lecture. “This is really just another form of social engineering, and remember, that’s what I do. It’s my superpower. I’ll convince them I’m just another victim, but I have no intention of actually being one. They’ll fall right into our trap.”
“But first you’ll have to fall into theirs,” Liz countered, “and good grief, Dee, think what could happen.”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “I’ll wear a wire, and a tracking device, and I’ll have my team watching my back. Besides, you know I’m not exactly harmless, right?”
Now Liz was standing too. “But you’ll be seriously outnumbered, and they drug their victims.” She turned to Joe, “That’s right, isn’t it? They use date rape drugs. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Joe nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I never really learned the details. I didn’t want to.”
“Drugs slipped into a drink, most likely,” Dee countered, “and I’ll be on the lookout for that. That’s how we’ll identify them in fact. I’ll only pretend to be affected.” Now Dee turned to Joe as well. “Joe, I need as much detail as you can remember. Anything that might tell us how they select their victims, where they look for them, where they take them.”
Joe began pulling at his hair. “I don’t know. Don’t know don’t know don’t know. They tried to make some of us help, and some did. Some did gladly even. But I never did never did. I kept their secrets. I did favors. Approved loans and investments and anything they asked like that. But I stayed as far from the Demons as I could. I never went back. Not after that one time.”
“Anything you remember might help us,” Dee insisted. “Even the smallest detail might be a useful clue.”
It went on like this for a while. Dee prying details out of Joe. Joe teetering on the edge of relapse. They danced at the edge of a precipice. Joe would seem about to slip back into paranoia and psychosis, and then Dee would pull him back with a few calm words, only to resume prodding for details again.
A plan began to gradually form.
“I can’t believe we are actually considering this,” Brian said at one point. I just nodded in numb amazement.
“It’s going to work,” Dee assured us. “We have a plan. We have the skills. We can do this.” She turned to me. “You can do this, right Barry? You’re OK with your part?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m more worried about your part.”
“Don’t be. This is why I became a superhero. To defend the innocent. To defeat the guilty. To stand up for justice. I’m not worried. In fact, I think I’m going to sleep the best I’ve slept in years. Tonight, I’m going to sleep the sleep of the righteous, because tomorrow… tomorrow we hunt Demons.”