Chapter 17: It Was A Fake Number
The farmhouse in Kansas was no longer a sanctuary. It had become a cage of quiet desperation. The scent of apple pie baking in the oven, once a comfort, now felt like a mockery of the rot festering in their investigation. The peace of the plains, which had initially healed their shattered nerves, had curdled into a maddening silence, screaming with their lack of progress.
Luna sat at the heavy oak table, the broken camcorder laid out before her like a patient on an operating table. Its plastic shell was cracked from the fall in the Davenport riot. She had managed to pry it open, revealing a tiny, intricate world of circuit boards and wires. A tiny ribbon cable, connecting the image sensor to the main board, had snapped clean through.
"It's useless," she whispered, her voice hollow. The finality of the statement felt like a verdict on their entire journey. "The footage… it's all on the internal memory. We can't retrieve it without this." She held up the minuscule, severed cable. It was a physical representation of their broken trail.
Noah stood by the window, his posture rigid. The wound in his side was a dull, persistent ache, a permanent reminder of their failure. He watched a hawk circling high in the vast, indifferent blue sky. It was free. It had a purpose. It could see its prey from a mile away.
"We saw him," Noah said, not turning from the window. His voice was low, a gravelly rumble of suppressed fury. "We stood three feet from him. We have his water bottle. His fingerprints must be all over it. And it's worth less than nothing. We can't walk into a police station and say, 'Please test this for the fingerprints of a man who doesn't exist.' We'd be institutionalized."
He finally turned, his eyes haunted. The resolve that had been tempered in Kansas was now hardening into something brittle and dangerous. "The number, Luna. It's the only thread we have that isn't pure phantom. It's a digital footprint. It has to lead somewhere."
For days, they had clung to that number, the one Dr. Sharma had risked her career to give them. It was their tether to the real world, a piece of data that couldn't be completely erased. They had run every search, every paid lookup, every grey-area trace they could find. The result was always the same: a secured, private line, last pinged in Davenport.
Noah picked up the cheap burner phone they used for the investigation. "We've been passive. We've been analyzing data. It's time to be active." His thumb hovered over the call button. "We call it. Right now. We see who answers."
Luna's breath hitched. "What if it's him? What do we say?"
"We hang up. We know it's active. We know it's his. That's all we need." Noah's logic was cold, a sharp blade cutting through their paralysis.
He pressed the button and put the call on speaker. The dial tone buzzed in the quiet kitchen, a sound as tense as a drawn bowstring. It rang once. Twice.
On the third ring, it was picked up.
"Thank you for calling the Davenport City Parks and Recreation Department," a cheerful, automated female voice chirped. "Our office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM. If you know your party's extension, you may dial it at any time. Otherwise, please call back during normal business hours. Thank you!"
A beep followed, then the line went dead.
The silence that followed was more absolute than any they had experienced. The hum of the refrigerator was a roar. Luna stared at the phone as if it had transformed into a serpent.
"A… a parks department?" she finally stammered, the words tasting like ash.
Noah didn't move. He stood frozen, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the table. The hawk outside let out a piercing cry. It was a sound of triumph.
"It was a fake," Noah said, the words dropping into the room like stones. "He gave her a fake number. A public, city government number. He knew. He knew someone, someday, might come asking. He planted a dead end before he even left."
The realization was a physical blow, more debilitating than the bullet. Dr. Domain Voss, the ghost, had not just vanished. He had actively salted the earth behind him. He had manipulated their one sympathetic source, turning her compassion into a weapon against them. The Architect hadn't just outsmarted them; he had humiliated them.
Luna put her head in her hands. The fragile hope they had built in this house shattered, and the shards dug deep. "We have nothing. The camcorder is broken. The number is fake. We're back to zero. Worse than zero. He's laughing at us."
For a long time, the only sound was the frantic ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hall. Each tick was a second lost, a second the Architect used to tighten his grip on the world.
Then, Noah's stillness broke. He straightened up, and a new, terrifying calm settled over him. His eyes, which had been clouded with frustration, were now clear and sharp as ice.
"No," he said, his voice quiet but absolute. "We're not. He made one mistake."
Luna looked up, her face streaked with tears of frustration. "What mistake? He's been perfect!"
"He was too perfect," Noah countered, a hunter's gleam in his eye. "He scrubbed all the records. He created a flawless fake identity. He gave a fake number. He left no digital trace. But he couldn't erase himself from the human world. Not completely."
He began to pace, the energy of a new idea coursing through him. "He worked in a hospital, Luna. For years. He had coffee with Dr. Sharma. He interacted with people. He existed in three dimensions. You can't delete that. You can't scrub a memory."
He stopped and pointed at the broken camcorder. "We've been trying to find a ghost in the machine. But ghosts don't leave fingerprints. Men do. We've been looking for 'Domain Voss.' But that's not a man; that's a name on a forged diploma. We need to find the face."
Luna's mind, moments ago mired in despair, began to spin, following his logic. "The face…?"
"The man himself," Noah said, his voice gaining intensity. "The man who stood in that lab and told us our son's murder was 'only the beginning.' We need to know what he looks like. Not a description. A photograph."
"The hospital would have an ID photo," Luna said, a spark igniting. "For his security badge."
"Which would have been deleted the day he left," Noah finished. "But people… people take pictures." He looked at Luna, a silent command passing between them. "Call her. Call Dr. Sharma. Now."
The weight of the request was immense. They were about to ask the woman who had already risked so much for them to dig even deeper, to potentially violate serious workplace privacy laws.
Luna picked up the phone, her hand trembling only slightly. She navigated to the encrypted messaging app. Her message was a masterpiece of carefully weaponized truth and desperation.
Anya, it's Luna Carter. I'm so sorry to bother you again. The number you gave us… it was a dead end. It led to a city office. We think Dr. Voss may have given false information to the hospital. We are trying to understand why he would do that, why he would disappear like this. It's the only thing left for us. We have one more, enormous ask. Did you, or anyone in the department, ever take any photos? A department holiday party, a group shot, a casual picture in the lab? Anything with him in it? We just need to see his face one more time. To feel like he was real. You are our only hope.
They sent the message and then descended into a new kind of agony: the wait. An hour passed. Then two. The Kansas sun began its slow descent, painting the fields in long, golden shadows. Each minute felt like an hour, each silent chime of the clock a hammer blow.
Finally, as dusk began to settle, the phone buzzed. A single, terse message from Anya Sharma.
I shouldn't be doing this. I could lose my job.
A pause. The typing indicator appeared, vanished, then appeared again. Then, a file began to download. It was a JPEG.
Luna's finger shook as she tapped the screen. The image resolved on the small display. It was a slightly blurry, candid photo taken in a hospital break room. A banner for someone's birthday was in the background. In the center of a group of six or seven lab coats was Dr. Anya Sharma, smiling. And standing right next to her, holding a paper cup of coffee and looking directly at the camera with a calm, almost bored expression, was Dr. Domain Voss.
He was sharp-jawed, just as Luna remembered. His hair was dark and neatly styled. He was a handsome man, with an air of detached intelligence. But in this photo, he was just a man. A colleague. A person.
"We have you," Noah whispered, his voice a venomous promise. He took the phone from Luna and saved the image, then immediately forwarded it to a second, even more secure number.
He then picked up their second burner phone, the one with a single, crucial contact. He dialed the direct line to Detective Michael, the one he'd secured in a moment of shared frustration back in Eldridge.
The phone rang several times before it was picked up. "This is Miller," a weary voice answered. The sound of a chaotic precinct echoed in the background.
"Michael, it's Noah Carter."
A long sigh. "Mr. Carter. I told you, if we have any news—"
"I'm not calling for news," Noah interrupted, his voice cutting through the detective's exhaustion with the force of a scalpel. "I'm giving you a lead."
A beat of skeptical silence. "What lead?"
"The man in the photo I just sent you. His name, as far as we know, is Dr. Domain Voss. He was the forensic examiner on my son's case. He retired and vanished six weeks after John's murder. Every record of him is a forgery. The medical license, the university degree, all of it. He never existed."
Noah could hear the shift on the other end of the line. The weary sigh was gone, replaced by a focused stillness.
"What are you saying, Carter?"
"I'm saying this man is a plant. He was inside your system. He had access to the crime scenes, the evidence, the investigations into the child murders. He is directly connected to the killer. He is the key. Find this face quickly !"
Noah's voice dropped, becoming low and intense, every word laden with the weight of their suffering. "Forget the databases. Forget the records he's already proven he can manipulate. I am commanding you, as a father, as a victim, use your resources. Run this photo through every facial recognition database you have access to—federal, state, international. Find out who this man really is."
He didn't wait for an argument or a promise. He had issued his order. The hunter had finally given the hounds a true scent.
"Find him," Noah said, and ended the call.
He placed the phone on the table. Outside, the last sliver of sun vanished below the horizon, plunging the Kansas farmland into a deep, velvety blue. The command post was active once more. The ghost had a face. And for the first time since this nightmare began, Noah and Luna felt the terrifying, exhilarating sensation of the hunt truly beginning.
---
Chapter 17 Ends
To Be Continued…