Vandermein

VI

Sophia, my 5-year-old daughter, was sitting in my office chair, her little legs hanging from her Monsters Inc. nighty and kicking in the air.

"Hey sweetie, what are you doing up?"

She had that sleepy thousand-yard stare and seemed to look right through me. "I had a bad dream." My little girl still pronounced her r's as w's, so it was more dweam than dream.

"Oh no. What did you dream about?" I picked her up and sat her on my lap.

"I dreamed you died. It made mommy really sad."

"It didn't make you sad?"

"I was sad! But mommy was sadder because she couldn't have sex anymore." It's worth mentioning that we stumbled through an early version of 'the talk' a couple days before.

"That's right. If I go, mommy never gets to have sex again."

"She'd be sad."

"She sure would be."

Sophia squeezed me tight. "Don't die."

"I'll do my best, sweetie. Why don't we get you off to bed?"

She was asleep before we made it to her bedroom. I've been told before that my love for my kids contradicts my hyper-libertarian bent. But I think that's a misunderstanding. Anyone with children knows that our kids are as much a part of ourselves as our own hearts, if they are hurt, then so are we. As rational, self-interested mammals, we cannot help but to protect our offspring. So, no, my affection for kids is not a compromise on my part.

But in holding Sophia's sleeping body in my arms, I couldn't stop thinking about the pictures Boone showed me earlier. How many little bodies were being scooped out of the sand just like this, right now? I felt a pang of what I could only describe as sympathy. Soon, phone calls would be made to parent who had been holding out hope that their kids would be found alive, only to be told the worst news a parent could hear.

How I would rage against the world if one of them were mine. I burn the planet to cinders; there would be no end to my vengeance. And now an upwards of perhaps a hundred parents would shoulder that same fury. How could I, in good conscience, not let them kill me too? It's what I, a rational mammal, would do.

Sophia laid down without a fuss and I returned to my office.

All of my computers were top of the line, only able to unlocked with my fingerprint, retina scan, password, and voice. The password itself changed hourly according to an equation involving the Julian calendar, year, and Greenwich time zone. I never wrote the equation anywhere, so even if someone dragged my lifeless corpse to the terminal, they'd be helpless to access my files.

I unlocked my machine and checked on the status of the investigation. They had pinpointed the owner of the vessel only to run into a series of false companies, forming a circular series of reference points, shells only revealing shells.

The bodies were mostly of children, though some were teenagers and at least a couple were in their 20s. Currently, the body count was at 102. The news had picked up on the story quickly, and the scene was polluted with choppers and microphone-wielding news reporters who were slowing progress.

Few of the victims had been identified up to this point, but those who had been were reported missing between one and three weeks before. The families had not been called yet, but the police departments were getting inundated with phone calls from desperate parents begging for information.

A motive still wasn't clear. The vessel was blown part by some kind of incendiary device and sank shortly after. The coast guard had divers recovering corpses from the sea floor now, but it looked like a week-long job at least.

I started doing some of my own digging, comparing serial numbers from the ship with known smuggling groups and transatlantic tax-evasion services. These were databases unknown and inaccessible to the police.

After an hour, I found the owner's name.

Frank Vandermein.