15360/An Unusual Request: Connecting the Dots

An Unusual Request: Connecting the Dots
Date of Scene:	11 July 2023
Location:	Level 1 - Labs - The Roost
Synopsis:	With the information he has, Red Robin starts to dig into Deanna's past, and to try to uncover what kind of link she may have with the mysterious Inque. The answers may be surprising.
Cast of Characters:	Tim Drake, Inque

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Tim Drake has posed:
    First things first: coffee. That's how Tim always starts off his day, after his usual morning routine (ignoring the fact that most of the time he doesn't wake up til mid-afternoon), by filling up his cup. And given today's plans, it all goes in a nice, secure travel mug.

    Because today is a computer day. He intends to spend most of it locked up in the lab, catching up on open investigations as much as he can. So after settling into the chair in front of the monitors and pulling his legs up into a fold, Tim spends a little time aimlessly scrolling through social media.

    Of course he's scrolling through Deanna Clay's socials, not his own, and he's keeping an eye out for any clues to tie her back to Inque.

    But that's not where he intends to spend most of his time today. First, he turns his attention on that trust fund... now just to hack into the bank and see if he can't find out where the deposits come from.

Inque has posed:
    Digging into Deanna's trust fund is a maddening affair, even for such a talented hacker as Tim. Getting into the trust fund itself likely wasn't that much of a problem. The problem was that trying to find out who put money into the account led a tangled web of shell corporations and organizations. Whoever set this up knew what they were doing.

    Trying to glean any clues from these agencies is like trying to hold onto a wet bar of soap. The harder you squeeze, the more slippery it gets. However, there are two that stick out. A non-profit named Wellington Wishes, and a shell corporation called Hugh Antiquities. These are the only ones Tim is able to get actual names out of. Ross Brasher frequently makes large deposits into Wellington, and Christy Spears into Hugh Antiquities.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Shell games aren't anything new to Tim, but that doesn't mean they aren't any easier to navigate. Whoever set this particular game up knew exactly what they were doing, too, making it all the more difficult to pull out useable information.

    But Tim gets two names. Brasher and Spears are both going to be targets for a deeper investigation soon, as are the businesses they've been sinking money into, but for now Tim's intending on keeping his search tight. Once he knows everything he can about Deanna, he'll broaden the investigation.

    So now he moves on to her history in the city's foster care system. The struggle with that is detangling the convoluted web of the system itself to find any information at all, and he's already finished his coffee.

    Which just won't do.

    After a brief moment away from the computer to get a refill, Tim leans over the desk and resumes typing, trying to figure out where Deanna spent her formative years.

Inque has posed:
    Working backwards, the last family she was with were the Merinos for about a year and a half. They gave her back about three or four months before her graduation. Before that were the Holtmans, for seven months. Then the Pololaniks for two years, then the Kleins, the Salvadors, and so on. The longest stretch of time was with the Baaschs for five years, when she was aged 3 to 8. Some times it would only take a week or two before she got assigned a new foster home. Some times it took nearly a year.

    Before all that she was at the Sacred Heart Convent and Holy Angels Orphanage for three years. That's where there's a dead end, at least from a computer's standpoint. The Orphanage closed a couple of years ago, the convent merging with the Order of St. Anne due to a lack of new sisters. Even though there aren't any records that one can find on the internet due to this closure, there *are* physical records still, packed in an office somewhere in St. Annes.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Add that to the list of errands he'll have to run tonight. Tim's got a busy night of patrol ahead of him once the sun sets, but for now the possibility of tracking down physical records joins his mental map of this investigation.

    A mental map that he can pull up on his computer, or show on the insides of the glass walls, which double as floor-to-ceiling monitors because of course they do. What self-respecting techie with too much money wouldn't turn any and every glass surface into a computer?

    So an image of St. Anne's joins the spider-web of pictures, digital document clippings, and hand-written notes that appear displayed on the far wall. Tim lets his chair spin around to face it, though he only considers it for a few moments before he returns to the search.

    One more thing he wanted to run down, something he neglected in his original search: medical records. The next few minutes are spent violating HIPAA to the nth degree as he systematically makes his way through the long list of Gotham hospital networks to see if anything comes up.

Inque has posed:
    There's plenty of records to be found. Digging a bit into the foster hosts, Tim is able to establish what insurance they had when Deanna was with them, and from there it was easy to deduce which hospitals to hack into. It seems that Deanna has quite the medical history.

    It's easy to disregard ER visits from when she had gotten into fights in her teenaged and adult years. What isn't easy to disregard is the frequent visits to urgent care to pick up N-acetylcysteine, a prescription strength mucolytic. Digging a little further Tim would find that at age 7, Deanna was diagnosed with COPD, though nobody could figure out the cause.

    It was a serious problem for the first few years of her life, and would explain why the orphanage didn't try to find a home for her quite yet. At first, she would cough up a dark, sticky mucous, but as she got older, her flare ups would occur less and less, and the mucous turned lighter into something more normal. For the past five years or so, it had gotten to the point to where she'd only need to visit urgent care for this about twice a year.

Tim Drake has posed:
    "Huh," Tim says aloud at this newest revelation. He doesn't even add it to his murder board, not yet, just leans back in his chair and nurses his coffee for a long few moments as he parses it all.

    Given up to an orphanage.
    A trust fund with a mysterious benefactor.
    A strange illness involving a dark, sticky substance.

    He picks up his stylus and approaches the investigation board displayed on one of the glass walls. "You know, Inque," he says conversationally (to no one) as he starts to write, eyes narrowed slightly in conversation. "If you had just told us from the start, this would have been a lot easier. But I guess nothing can be easy in this city."

    When he steps back, a new line has been drawn from the central picture of Deanna pulled from her social media with the arrowhead pointed at a snap of Inque from one of the Bats' mask feeds.

    Underneath, the word "DAUGHTER" have been scrawled in Tim's blocky handwriting.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Now that is cause for celebration. A break in the case. Tim goes upstairs for a snack, which ends up being half a bag of chips. Because who's going to stop him? He even pencils himself in for an hour of video games, which in his carefully controlled schedule is quite the luxury.

    It doesn't last, though. He's itching to get back to it before the hour ends, and if he's perfectly honest with himself Tim knows that he'd rather be right back there at his computer. So he returns, throws himself half-sideways into his chair, and rolls himself back up to the keyboard.

    "Okay," he tells himself. "Time to figure out what other secrets I can uncover."

    Hugh Antiquities. Wellington Wishes. The names associated with both, Ross Brasher and Christy Spears. For the two businesses he dives into their official dealings: taxes, imports and exports, that sort of thing. The people, he does the basic searches first: government, law enforcement, socials.

Inque has posed:
    Digging into Wellington Wishes shows that it's truly set up for money laundering. It's a shell of a charity. It only has enough of an online presence to look legitimate at a cursory glance, and any amount of serious digging will show how hollow it is. Likewise, Ross is a non-entity. No socials, a fake ID, taxes expertly manipulated for write offs and shuffling money around.

    Hugh Antiquities is where things get spicy. It seems to be a legitimate business buying and selling high value antiques and art. Its listed address is a PO box, and the contact number goes straight to voicemail. Its webpage is expertly done and shows off some of the rarer items on display. A bit of digging will show that up until about two years ago it was using bitcoin for, let's say, not quite so legal purchases and sales. It seems that they managed to get out of crypto before the bubble burst.

    Christy, likewise, seems to be a real person. Her socials show off her opulent wealth and high society contacts, and her taxes seem to be legitimate, though what she lists on her deductibles is more than what a single person should have. Crucially, there is a phone number and address.

Tim Drake has posed:
    In Tim's line of work, he's seen all different kinds of crime. White-collar is maybe not the one he runs into the most, but as one of the Bats with computer skills, it's often enough that he ends up working through digital accounting ledgers or years of taxes. All of which to say, finding a legitimately illegitimate shell company is no surprise.

    Wellington Wishes is a bust, same as Ross, but Hugh Antiquities... now that's something. He has something of a vested interest in antiquities, so he browses their website for some time before digging in further, and then he rolls his eyes when he discovers the use of crypto.

    Suffice it to say, he was never a fan.

    "Who are you, Christy Spears?" he asks... again, to no one. It's just him and the computers here, which offer up a steady, slow hum but no other response. He glances at the clock in the bottom right of his computer screen and sighs when he sees it's still much too early to go out and about in the cape. The effect is really lost when you see it in broad daylight, after all. So he busies himself with other investigations for a time, then does some light cardio (gotta burn off those chips somehow) before it's finally time to suit up.

    And off to Christy's he goes.

Inque has posed:
    Some of those other investigations is to look into St. Anne's, which is another dead end. About the only useful bit of information Tim is able to get out of it was that Deanna was left on the doorstep when she was, at best guess, three months old. There wasn't even a note explaining anything. Just surprise baby.

    Christy has a swanky apartment in uptown Gotham, one of those places that has a man at the door and a man in the elevator to operate it for you. While the security of these apartments are great, Christy's is better. A challenge to overcome, to be sure, but not impossible for such a talented man like Tim. Christy herself is relaxing on her couch, watching some movie on a TV screen that's bigger than most people's walls, sipping on a glass of wine.

Tim Drake has posed:
    The trip to St. Anne's is a dead-end, which is mostly expected. Tim always leaves room for the possibility of a surprise, because he's paranoid like that (he hates surprises) but it's nice to be able to count on probability to lead you true.

    Speaking of, he spends a fair bit of time calculating the probability of getting caught breaking into this apartment building. Not as low as he'd like it, so he checks and then double-checks himself as he reroutes the security measures and slips inside. Well away from where Christy is at the moment, though he does sneak forward to place a discrete camera aimed in her direction, so he'll have some prior warning if she decides to get up and move around. Time to do some good old fashioned snooping. He keeps a lookout for any computers that might be around, or any safes hidden in closets, behind paintings, or the like, or other personal documents that might give him an idea of what secrets she might be hiding.

Inque has posed:
    One of the first things that Tim notices is that some of the art in this place is worth millions. Christy obviously likes to take home some of Hugh Antiquities' acquisitions. Not the most expensive things, but rather moderately priced for the kind of art and antiques that the company regularly trades in.

    There's a laptop that's closed and resting on the dining room table. Unfortunately, getting at it would mean getting within Christy's line of sight. There's a fireproof safe tucked away in the master bedroom's closet. While it's not very large, it's constructed sturdy enough to survive a nuclear blast. Cracking into it is no mean feat, either. The security is top notch and only experts like Tim would be able to crack it.

    Inside is rather boring, however. A couple of sets of fake IDs, about 50 million in cash, and an unloaded handgun with a couple of spare clips are inside. Searching for other hidden vaults or false walls turn up nothing. Disappointingly there doesn't seem to be all that many secrets hidden here.

Tim Drake has posed:
    If the point wasn't the stealthy, Tim would've let out a low whistle at the big money up on the walls of this place. As it is, he clocks the art and moves on, but it lingers in the back of his head while he cracks the security measures on the safe.

    And now that is something.

    It's a lot of money to see in person, even for someone who has access to that kind of money himself. Mostly it's kept in bank accounts, secure vaults, and the like... not behind a rack of clothes in the closet.

    When he closes the safe, he makes a decision. Time to employ the power of Just Talk. But, of course, not without a little Bat theatrics. A little bit more hacking done through the computer in his left gauntlet, and...

    The power cuts out, Christy's giant tv screen going dark. Somewhere deeper in her apartment a clock ticks the seconds by... 5... 10... at the 15 second mark the power flickers back on, and Red Robin is standing in front of her television, arms folded over his chest.

    "Tell me what you know about the villain known as Inque."

Inque has posed:
    "Shit," Christy says when the power goes out, draining the glass of wine and standing up to stumble to her cell phone to lodge a complaint to the apartment managers. She doesn't really get a chance to as when the power comes back on, there's Red Robin right there demanding answers.

    The expression that Christy has isn't one of surprise, but rather one of resignation. "Well, it's about time one of you showed up," she says. "I've been waiting for /days/." She wanders over to the kitchen and starts digging around in the drawers. "Relax," she drawls. "I've been told to cooperate."

    "Personally? Not much," she says, pulling out a stainless steel meat tenderizer. "She like the finer things in life, and has a good eye for art." She waves the meat tenderizer around, gesturing at the expensive paintings. "This is her apartment after all."

    She walks around the kitchen island over to where her laptop is sitting. "I've been her proxy for the past ten years or so. I don't know if you noticed, but she doesn't exactly pass for human, so she needed somebody to do the daily stuff. Pay rent and utilities, be a face to put on the web page, that kind of thing."

    Then without showing any kind of emotion, she starts beating the shit out of the laptop with the meat tenderizer. She sighs dropping the instrument of destruction, "It was a good job while it lasted, too."

Tim Drake has posed:
    Somehow, Tim manages to only look mildly nonplussed when the meat tenderizer comes out and subsequently turned on the laptop. "You know if I had any interest in that, I would've grabbed it first, right?"

    Behind his mask he's rolling his eyes, but only just a little bit. Bad guys can be so dramatic.

    No, he's not going to acknowledge the hypocrisy of that mental thought.

    He juts his hip out slightly as he shifts his weight from one foot to the next, cape swaying behind him. The information Christy is giving up is interesting, to be sure, but nothing he finds too terribly surprising. Nothing that registers on his face, at least, which remains passive as he watches the destruction continue. At least this particular villain isn't into clowns and creepy circuses... yeah, big improvement there.

    "You have a way to contact her, I'm assuming?" he asks, and then reaches into one of the pouches on his belt. He withdraws something small, and he approaches Christy, arms at his side to show that he's not intending to attack her, before he holds out his hand. It's a mini USB drive. "You can pass on a message to her, then, for me."

Inque has posed:
    "Oh, that wasn't for you," Christy says. "It's a company laptop and they're /very/ strict about security." She shrugs, "And now that I've been compromised..." She lets that hang in the air for a bit before going on.

    "Of course I have a way of contacting her," Christy says, walking over to the door to pick up the large laptop bag and sling it over the shoulder. She walks up to Red Robin and takes the thumb drive from him and looks at it. "I'll pass it on," she says with a shrug. "But odds are she'll just toss it. Who knows what's this thing."

    She breezes past the vigilante, dropping the thumb drive into the bag. "She's got a burner phone with your name on it," she says heading into the master bedroom. "Well, not /your/ name specifically," she amends looking over her shoulder and giving Tim a playful smirk. "But she said that when you come and visit to give you the number."

    She walks into the closet and crouches down and puts in the code to open the safe. "She won't pick up, so you'll have to leave a message." She pulls out the fake IDs and quickly flips through them to make sure they're still in order before dropping them into the bag. "Give her a time and place to meet her, and she'll oblige." She, then, starts unceremoniously stuffing the cash into the laptop bag. When it's full, she stands up and pulls a business card out of the bag and offers it to Tim. On it is just a single phone number. "Here you go. Anything else?"

Tim Drake has posed:
    That earns a head-tilt from Tim, though he only says, "It's safe." Whether or not the thumb drive gets used, well, that's no longer up to him, so he only shrugs it off. And then he's following after Christy, walking room by room with her until she's crouched by the safe and Red Robin is, casually, leaned against the doorway. Though there's still a certain rigidity to his form, ready to move if she so much as thinks about going for the gun in that safe.

    But so far she hasn't, and Tim's grateful for a civil conversation. Most of the time, there isn't even any talking. So this is nice.

    "Nope," he says, popping the P, and his fingers twitch. The lights go out again.

    After another slow count to 15, the power comes back on, and Red Robin is nowhere to be seen.