“Well, you did suspect it could be a contracted kill, and I’m sorry it took me so long to find it, but the darknet is a big and scary place.”
Says the woman who has hacked it all at least once, Andi thought. Aloud he said, “Tell us what you found.”
“Sooo, there’s this one website in the darknet that’s so shady even most of the people who use the darknet stay away from it. Some of the most terrible deals ever have been made in its darkest corners, and I mean terrible for those who were affected by them. The security there is usually pretty tight, and to be honest, it’s sheer luck the contract for your victims was booked by a new broker who’s still inexperienced enough to leave doors open for inquisitive minds to walk through.” Shireen shook her head. “Enough with the bad comparisons. Our broker was stupid and left the contract negotiations in the chat. It’s a very private chat, but practically everything can be hacked, and here you are.”
She did some more typing, and Andi and George saw a long column of back-and-forth between two parties. Thankfully, Shireen had highlighted the interesting bits. “As you can see, the broker established contact between a man named Peter LaFarge, fifty-three, from France but living most of the time in the US, here in Charleston, and one Phantom, aka Daniel Holway, thirty-six, former Army Ranger gone contract killer, who has several bases all over the world, four weeks ago. LaFarge has lost quite the sum because of some business dealings with Lawrence Miller and Harry Alexander McHill. It went to court, and guess who got the two out of it without having to pay a penny to LaFarge?”
“David Hector Portius II.” George and Andi spoke in unison.
“Exactly. LaFarge was livid, which I can understand because the fault was clearly with Miller and McHill, but Portius was a very dangerous shark who could make an old granny look like Freddy Krueger to get what he wanted.”
“A perfect motive.” George looked at Andi.
“Two weeks before the victims were killed, they agreed on a two-million-dollar fee for the murder of all three men as long as it was ‘cruel and painful.’” Shireen scrolled down to a passage that was highlighted in neon pink. “And the day after the killings took place, Holway contacted LaFarge in a private chat telling him the deed was done. Two hours later, LaFarge wired two million dollars to an account in Switzerland.”
Andi stared at the words and numbers on the screen, recalling what exactly he had seen at the lake. No matter how much he racked his brain, the insects had definitely shown him two females as the killers, not one male. Because of the input of the moths, he could be sure the information was correct because the pheromones didn’t lie and couldn’t be interpreted wrongly. Yet here he had written proof that there had been a hit out on the three men currently stashed in Evangeline’s morgue, a hit that had apparently been executed and paid for. Something was not adding up at all.
“You said Peter LaFarge lives here in Charleston?” He tried to get his thoughts in order, one thing at a time.
Shireen nodded. “Berkeley County, as you can probably imagine.” She tapped some more on her tablet. “Though at the moment he’s on a holiday cruise in the Bermuda Triangle. He left ten hours before the money was transferred.”
“Shit.” George slammed his fist on the table with the panna cotta box, narrowly missing it. “Smart bastard, removing himself from the crime like that.”
“He’ll have to come back to land eventually.” Andi shrugged. It was a pity the man wasn’t here for questioning, but not exactly the end of the world. It would draw out the investigation, no doubt, making everything more tedious. “What about the contract killer? Daniel Holway? Is he lying low?”
Shireen changed windows on the flat-screen. “Unlike the rookie broker, Holway is an absolute pro.” She must have seen how Andi’s shoulders slumped, because she went on, “As am I. It took some hacking and a substantial bribe to people I officially have no affiliation with, and I can’t guarantee the information is correct, but I’m fairly sure he’s still in the area and has one of his safe houses here. More a safe apartment. It’s in West Ashley, on Suntree Alley. I’m sending you the address now.”
“Substantial bribe?” Of course George was latching on to the potentially shady part of the miracle Shireen had worked.
“I don’t think this is something we should be burdening ourselves with,” Andi said, shooting George a meaningful glance. His partner got it, even though he looked as if he had bitten into an entire basket of lemons. To distract George from his internal conflict, Andi turned back to Shireen.
“Do you have any idea why he’s still in the area?”
Shireen changed screens yet again, showing another chat. “Because our careless broker has found him another target here and asked him to stay.”
Andi took the panna cotta box from the table and held it out to Shireen, very much in the same humble way as George had done. “You are a genius and definitely the best. Could you still keep looking into Tabitha Clemént and Josephine Garr, as well as the wives? I want to be absolutely sure they had nothing to do with the murder.” It wasn’t what Andi really had in mind, but it was what would motivate Shireen to be extra vigilant concerning them, and it would help if they could finally cross them all off the list.
He and George said their goodbyes to Shireen. After they had checked their weapons and badges, they went out to George’s car. While George tapped the address of Daniel Holway’s safe house into the GPS, Andi realized that he genuinely hoped the arthropods had been wrong for once. Perhaps there was a perfectly sensible explanation why they had thought it was two women guiding the victims to their deaths and not one man. And perhaps pigs would grow wings and start flying through the air. If there was one thing he had learned in all his years with thegeschenk, it was that the arthropods were never wrong. They didn’t have enough of a self-consciousness to lie, and their senses were so much more accurate than those of humans. If there was a misunderstanding, it always occurred on Andi’s end, due to a misinterpretation or simply ignorance. Distinguishing males and females was one of the first things Andi had learned, and after all these years, he knew what men and women looked like to most arthropods, most certainly to those at the lake. No, the solution to this mystery had to be found in the human world, because for the arthropods, things were clear.
They were silent for some time, listening to the classical music coming from the radio. The input Andi was getting from the insects was a low hum he found quite easy to ignore. Probably because he was so preoccupied with this new development.
“Is it possible that you interpreted something wrong?” The faint hope paired with the resignation of knowing how unlikely it was in George’s voice mirrored Andi’s own sentiment.
“I’ve been trying to remember every detail about that night, and no matter from which angle—or insect—I’m looking at it, it was two women. One of them was ovulating. That’s not something that can be faked or misinterpreted.”
“Damn. So what are we looking at?”
“Honestly, I have no clue. My best bet is a freak coincidence. Holway had planned to kill the victims around the time frame they died and simply said it had been his work.”
“Aren’t contract killers working under a codex or something?”
Andi shrugged. “Two million is two million. And you heard Shireen—the site where they met is bad by reputation.”
“No honor amongst criminals?”
“I doubt it.”
They fell silent until they reached Suntree Alley. After one drive-by where they scouted out the apartment, George parked at the corner to Moss Beach Alley, which was only two houses down the apartment block where Holway supposedly was. They got out and went directly for the apartment, Andi already stretching his senses. It took him a moment to find the right apartment; coordinating a human-made blueprint with insectoid ideas of space was always a bit of a hit or miss. What gave Holway away was the way the insects saw him as an intruder. Apparently he didn’t come often to this safe house, leaving it empty most of the time. Therefore the insects didn’t see him as a resident, while all the other people currently in the building were well known by their tiny roommates.
