The Murder That Never Was (Forensic Instincts 5)

Offices of Forensic Instincts

Ryan had been closeted in his lair for endless hours. Emma had been through a lot as a child, and if Ryan could help her find peace about why someone had killed Lisa, then so be it. Hacking into some state agency was no big deal. At the Linux bash shell prompt, Ryan typed in deminotaur www.state.il.us/dcfs.

Deminotaur was the name of the custom script he had written to unravel the layers of security between him and the prize. Minotaur referred to the infamous maze and monster from Greek mythology. The URL belonged to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Ryan sat back and waited as the hacking script performed its magic. In a matter of minutes, the outer firewall was penetrated. The next phase could take hours or days. Ryan hoped for the former as he initiated the second part of Deminotaur.

Eight hours later, Ryan had secured access to the IDCFS. He delved into the IDCFS’s database of closed cases. It was tedious work, but he managed to finally dig up “Lisa Barnes,” the name that was pinned to her basket when her birth mother dumped her on the steps of the Chicago church. From there he switched screens and obtained Lisa’s social security number via the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

He pulled up Lisa’s foster care records.

Emma wasn’t wrong to feel for this girl. She’d lived one shitty life. After the church did its initial job of placing her, she’d been bounced in and out of foster care homes all her life. At eighteen, she’d taken off after having done some drug running that Ryan doubted she truly understood or recognized the full scope of or the danger it put her in.

He went for the iffiest part first—the part that could, most likely, have gotten her killed. Drug running, no matter how naïve the runner was, could be a small, bullshit operation, or it could be part of something bigger.

After poring over the info, Ryan was convinced that, in Lisa’s case, it was the latter. The drugs she was delivering were part of a stash run by a huge Mexican drug cartel. If they suspected she knew anything more than a dumb street runner should, they’d take her out in a heartbeat.

Ryan would have to piece together the dozen years in between her drug involvement and when she was killed, figure out why the cartel would suddenly place Lisa on their radar after this long passage of time. Had she been into other serious shit for them in between then and now? Had she accidentally dug up something or seen someone she recognized from the past?

Force of habit made him delve deeper into Lisa’s specific foster care family placements. Get a feel for the person’s roots. Was she kicked out of these places for a reason? Were those reasons because the family she was living with simply couldn’t care for her anymore? Or was she a huge problem—one they were eager to get rid of? Were her overall experiences good or bad, and how did they shape who she’d become? Could anyone—kid or adult—whom she’d lived with have started her on the path to drugs, either using or selling?

If emotional analysis was needed, he’d call on Claire-voyant. He grinned, as always, thinking about the jab of a nickname he’d come up with for Claire, and about how much she did not like it. But watching her get all pissed off was just too much fun to avoid.

His concentration returning to the task at hand, Ryan read through Lisa’s case file history, covering the ten foster homes she’d lived in. There was a consistent theme: Difficult to discipline and a blatant disregarder of rules. Your basic brat.

Various transgressions spanning the eighteen years of foster care. Starting with little girl antics: Painted the living room walls piss yellow. Dumped the cat litter box all over the living room. Poured Jell-O in foster mother’s jewelry box. Overturned potted plants and taught the dogs to

pee in the resulting dirt. Removed dirty dishes from the dishwasher and put them on the kitchen shelves. Put a garden snake in the master bedroom bed as a greeting to her foster parents.

Ryan choked back laughter. Creative little tyrant, wasn’t she?

Fast-forward to Lisa’s glorious teenage years. Thirteen years old: smoked cartons of her foster parents’ cigarettes and passed them around to the other kids on a regular basis, one time resulting in a basement fire—and in her being expelled from that home. But not before the foster parents had pressed charges for the considerable damage that had been done.

Checking out those charges, Ryan made a side-trip to the Archives of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County and did the necessary hacking. Finally finding what he needed, he opened Lisa’s sealed file. Yup. That’s what her juvie record was for. Not for the drug running, which clearly no one was aware of, but for property damage. It was obviously just an angry, punitive act on the part of the foster parents, since Lisa didn’t have a penny to compensate the couple for their property loss.

Ryan rolled his eyes and went back to his original research of Lisa’s foster homes.

Next house. Fourteen years old: Lisa stole the keys to the family car and drove around the neighborhood. Fifteen years old: caught trying to hook up with a new foster kid the first night he’d moved in—a new kid who was described as being sixteen and mature, which meant hot and experienced.

And the list went on and on.

One interesting data point jumped out at Ryan. Seemed that Lisa had a tight childhood-to-adulthood friendship with another foster kid. Miles Parker. The two of them tried staying together throughout the transfers. Obviously, they were pretty successful, given that they were both fostered by eight of the ten houses Lisa had lived in.

Ryan would have to hack into Miles Parker’s file next.

But before that came a background check on all the foster parents. Ryan called up the names, ready to begin. The data came up on the screen, and Ryan did a double take.

Higgins. Kaminski. Gillman. Korman. Bridges. Todd. Flanders. Wilkins.

Just to be a hundred percent sure, Ryan checked out all the screenshots he’d taken of ScoobyDoo’s survival game.

The only names missing were Engels and Hilltop. Add those two and you’d have every psycho-villain in there.

“Holy shit.” Ryan’s hand was already moving his mouse around.

“Is there a problem, Ryan?” Yoda inquired.

“Not a problem. A crossover between two of my projects. One that really shocked the hell out of me. I’ve got to hack into a file. Now.”