The final piece, however, was the releasing of evidence against her. Patricia, as an aristocrat, rarely had gotten her hands personally dirty with her schemes. It was beneath her, at least in her point of view. But there had been one incident, about ten years prior, that she had gotten personally involved. When one of the fathers of her children approached her about the way she was raising them, she killed him. A twenty-five caliber bullet fired in the back of the head, in fact. Somehow, the initial coroner's report listed the man's death as a suicide. Such is the power of dark matter.
A little bit of changes through Albertine however, and evidence that had been suppressed or thought destroyed at first was brought to light. The first group to get it was CNN, but when they didn't act fast enough, I had Albertine blast the same information to the BBC and place a news report on most of the major news websites. Of course, the news report was written by me and attributed to a false name, totally untraceable, but the evidence was solid, and the Internet went wild.
By the time football season was over, Patricia Lanstridge was arraigned for the murder of her second child's father, awaiting trial while in jail, denied bond. Her family's home had been auctioned off to cover her stock debts, while her children were at least left somewhat untouched. She'd seen far enough ahead to give them trust funds at least, and both Melina and I felt it unnecessarily dangerous to back her children into a corner as well. They were true sociopaths, and I didn't want them desperate. Still, they would have to be corralled for the rest of their lives.
The next largest target was Monroe Cavanaugh, who’d, at first, surprised me by his appearance on the network from Pinzetti. He and Patricia Lanstridge had traditionally been at odds, but as Melina had said, politics made strange bedfellows. He was totally unknown to the public, his family having had the unfortunate fate of being African American when they first garnered influence and power back in the eighteen hundreds when Monroe's great grandfather had become the guiding influence with the patriarch of a very powerful Southern agricultural family. A stupid patriarch and a daughter who was easily seduced, the Cavanaughs grabbed the keys to power, and they'd never let go. Still, it was the post-Civil War South, and as such, they learned to pluck the strings of power truly from the shadows, a tradition that Monroe continued regardless of public perception or laws nowadays.
The man wasn’t famous at all. In fact, while he lived in a Park Avenue high-rise, if you passed him on the street you wouldn't have been able to tell him apart from any other man in New York City. He was as anonymous as anyone else, but controlled a network that could have crushed the entire city if he wanted. Yet outside of the doorman at his high rise, I doubt anyone knew his name.
He was young, only a year older than myself, and didn't have any family, so I was able to totally take him out. First, I deleted him from the world. Every database, every bank account, every trace of him in public or private records was destroyed. By the time that was done, the only thing left to prove he even existed were hard copies of his old prep school yearbook.
Next, I slipped a report into the NYPD's database that a delusional psychopath was holed up in Monroe's apartment. A court order and a raid by the police later, and Monroe Cavanaugh, now John Doe #1578, was locked up in a high-security psych ward in up-state New York for the foreseeable future.
The rest of the takedowns were along similar lines, each target being crushed utterly and completely. It took me most of the time before school re-opened, and by the time Sunday night rolled around, I was exhausted. I'd been sitting in front of Albertine for fourteen hours a day for the past few days, barely taking the time to eat, shower, and sometimes sleep.
It was nine o'clock Sunday night when Melina came up behind me, rubbing my shoulders. "Come on," she said softly in my ear. "You've done enough, and you have to get some rest before school tomorrow."
I nodded, weary. There wasn't a lot left to do, just some of the minor players who were secondary in Pinzetti's action. My eyes were watering uncontrollably, and I reminded myself for the tenth time that day that I was going to get one of those anti-glare screens for myself. "You're right, of course. All right, let me double check this last guy and then I'll shut it down for the night."
"Good," Melina said. "Because I have massage oil and soft music ready for you. No sex tonight, just relaxation."
I smiled, placing my hand over hers and rubbing the back of her hand tenderly. "You know just what to say," I said before kissing her hand. "But my stomach says we need to have some food first. I know it's a little late for just dinner, but what about coming with me to the store for some ice cream? Or maybe the fixings for a small sundae?"
"I can do that," Melina replied. "But only if I get to drive. Your eyes are shot right now."