08/06/2024
Episode 4
They stood on either side of Toni’s workstation chair, looking at a blown-up image of a State of New Jersey driver’s license on her monitor.
“The license was issued to a Lizette Marie Moreno last year in October,” Toni said. “Her birthdate is June 2nd, 2001. That makes her a couple months away from turning twenty-two.”
“She does look like your AI image,” Eric said. “And Mrs. Atwell said her neighbor was twenty-two when she last saw her.”
Di punched him in his shoulder and said, “Oh my God. You can’t be serious.”
“Hey, I know it’s just a coincidence. I’m just saying.”
“Hang on guys,” Toni said. “Check this out: I ran a background check on Lizette Moreno. So she has this driver’s license, issued last year. She has a birth certificate, and a Social Security number. After that? Period, stop, the end.”
“Meaning?” Di said.
“Meaning other than those three pieces of data, this chick doesn’t exist. No job history. No education history, no yearbook photo, no social media presence, nada.”
“What twenty-one-year-old female isn’t on Instagram or Tik-Tok or somewhere online?” Eric said.
“Was her driver’s license a renewal?” Di said, and Eric knew that despite her disbelief, her investigative curiosity had been poked awake.
“Nope,” Toni said. “If her driver’s license is legit it’s an initial issue.”
“Can you tell if the DMV database has been tampered with?” Di said.
“I checked,” Toni said. “If it was, then it was done by someone who’s as good at what they do as me. Expert hacker level.”
“Whether we believe Mrs. Atwell or not, this is interesting,” Eric said.
“This isn’t all,” Toni said. Her fingers flew over her keyboard, and she pulled up another image, of another driver’s license. “This one was issued two years ago, in Pennsylvania, to Siobhan Michaels.”
“That looks like the same girl, but with her hair pulled back,” Eric said, and to Di, “What do you think? Could this be a doppelganger, or is somebody pretty good at identity theft?”
“The thing is, these identities weren’t stolen,” Toni said. “The weird part is just like with Lizette Moreno, Siobhan Michaels doesn’t have any data on file except a driver’s license, birth certificate, and a Social Security card. Other than that, neither woman exists in anyone’s photo database.”
“But they have addresses on their licenses,” Eric said. “That’s a place to start.”
“Start what?” Di said. “Do you really want to work this as a case for Erma Atwell, or are you more interested in this mystery girl, who isn’t a case for us? Because after seeing this, I think we’re getting into something other than a possibly senile old lady thinking she saw a ghost.”
“Speaking of ghosts, there’s one more thing you need to see,” Toni said.
More keyboard action, and a new image appeared on the monitor, this time of a painting of a young woman dressed in garb from at least two centuries ago. The woman’s face looked like Toni’s AI image and the photos of the two young women on the driver’s licenses.
“What’s this?” Di said.
“This painting is of someone called the Lady Linares. She looks like the chick your client described, doesn’t she?”
“Pretty close,” Eric said. “Actually, not even close. It looks like the same woman.”
“And still a coincidence,” Di said. “How likely is it that your program pulled images off the internet that matched what Mrs. Atwell described to you and threw it back at you as a result?”
“I designed my program to create images from scratch based only on my input, so not likely at all,” Toni said.
“That painting looks like it was painted way back when,” Eric said.
“The article says it was possibly commissioned in 1461 or 1462,” Toni said. “Now, check this out, because here’s where it gets good: It says Lady Linares was the companion and advisor to Maria Despina. Guess who Maria’s husband was.”
Eric shrugged. “No idea.”
“Maria Despina was the wife of Radu III of Wallachia, also known as Radu the Handsome or Radu the Fair. After converting from Christianity to Islam in 1448 Radu joined the Ottoman court. He became the commander of the Ottoman Sultan’s infantry and took part in a campaign against his older brother, the King of Wallachia.”
“And all this has what to do with Erma Atwell’s delusion?” Di said.
Toni grinned up at them and said, “Guess who Radu’s brother was.”
“Again, no idea,” Eric said.
“Radu’s older brother was Vlad III, also known as Vlad the Impaler, and also known as Vlad Dracul, a nickname that translated means Vlad the Dragon.”
“Hold up,” Eric said, “Are you talking about the dude who was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel?
“That’s the dude,” Toni said.
Eric said, “So this Linares chick from the 1400s, who looks like the young woman Erma Atwell saw last week, who looks like her neighbor from back in 1964, was friends with the sister-in-law of the dude who inspired modern vampire lore.”
He looked at Di, expecting that she might roll her eyes or punch him again, but she didn’t.
Private investigators Eric Adams and Eve Diane Clayton don't typically take missing persons cases. Those are jobs for the police. But the old woman wants them to find her former neighbor, a woman she had not seen for almost sixty years until she spotted her in the mall a week ago, a woman she claims...
