*I do not own Edgar Allen Poe, or his literary genius that wrote "The Raven".
Donatello took up residence on the largest workspace he could find, which turned out to be the table on the far end of the living room. The others made themselves scarce, leaving Donny and Greg to focus on the process of delving into Sayuri's hard drive. The purple-masked turtle's first order of business was to create a new set-up to display the recovered files, using the spare laptop to house all the new information.
Greg was sitting close by, still pouring over his records of their old communications on his laptop. The man hadn't said anything for over half an hour, and Donatello knew he was frustrated. They had always worked well together during these tech ventures. Though Greg was more known for his mouth, he was extremely talented when it came to digging up information. Donatello knew that the man would rather be searching through Sayuri's files along with him, but almost everything he'd looked at so far was in Japanese.
Donatello started out with her online account, perusing her mailbox for both incoming and outgoing messages. The purple-masked turtle searched back several months, but still couldn't find any record of her conversations with Greg from her end, or with any other contact for that matter.
"I'm not finding any messages pertaining to her investigation, not even communication with you, Heff. Her browser history has been wiped too; I can't tell what sites she's been visiting. I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with this screen name, so I'm just going to dive into her personal files, see if anything jumps out at me."
"Is there a list of anything she's recently accessed?"
Donatello performed a couple of keystrokes to look at her recent activity in editing or adding documents, and wasn't surprised to be met by another giant blank.
"There should be," Donatello allowed. "But there isn't. She didn't want there to be any record of her tracks, Heff. It looks like she intentionally cleared everything from her history as she went along."
The turtle clicked on a folder marked "Archives", and began scrolling through a list of several files. It was hard deciding where to start; everything pretty much looked the same. He was two-thirds of the way down when he caught sight of a grouping of documents whose English titles stood out to him like a sore thumb. Donatello curiously clicked on one of them and was met by what looked like a quote.
"Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;-vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore."
Donatello's forehead creased as he looked at the original date at the top of the page, and then began scanning further down the document. He was only skimming it at first, but he gradually began reading it a little closer. He'd gotten through three paragraphs of what felt like an advanced analysis of the poem, when he lined down the file and clicked on another.
"Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door;-
Darkness there, and nothing more."
He ran through a couple more sentences in English before clearing his throat. "Hey, Heff? C'mere for a second, will you? I want you to take a look at these files I found."
"You do recall that I can't read Japanese?"
"This stuff is in English. There are several files here that are definitely connected. It sort of looks like a literary thesis."
Greg glanced over his shoulder to read the quote that was currently on the screen, and then nodded. "The Raven," he said immediately. "That's Edgar Allan Poe. Sayuri is like weirdly obsessed with this poem. She used to quote it in some of her e-mails, and use lines of it as a signature."
"It's several years old," Donatello pointed out thoughtfully. "I find her use of English in this portion interesting."
"She spent a semester abroad in the United States when she was in college; that's probably where she was exposed to the poem. The Raven just doesn't have the same magical rhythm when you translate it into another language."
Donatello nodded. "Okay...she likes the poem. But why keep her college thesis? And why would it be broken up this way? It seems like it should work together as one document, don't you think?"
"I don't know, Donny."
The purple-masked turtle stared at the screen so hard, he almost felt like he could be looking through it. "I think I'm missing something."
"The paper might have had significance to her, Donny. It could have represented a memory she didn't want to let go of."
"It doesn't fit, Heff. 'One of these things is not like the others,' and I think it's worth taking a deeper look. Lemme try a couple of things with these."
Silence purveyed for a few more minutes while the turtle integrated another piece of his personal software alongside Sayuri's files. After getting it installed, he started using the program to perform analyses on the properties of one of the documents in question. Donny's fingers hovered poised over the keys while the scanning progressed, and it finally came up with a flag.
"Okay...now what do we have here?" Donatello squinted as he read the description of the anomaly, and then opened the hidden file that was within the original documents.
"What is it, Donny? What did you find?"
"There's something else hidden back here, Heff, more text in Japanese. Give me a few seconds to get into it, and I'll let you know what it says."
He perused the words for several seconds, flushing slightly as he realized it was more of a journal-type entry."All right, Greg...this is more personal, but here goes. "
Donatello centered the page, and began slowly translating it for him.
"The words from that letter haunt me. When I wake up in the morning, they are whispered in my ear. When I awaken in the middle of the night, they run through my mind without fail. One voice, of one grieving parent that I cannot get out of my head. How many others are silent, forgotten? Doubtless there are many more brokenhearted, but I feel as if this one letter speaks for them all.
'Do not forget her. Do not allow her identity to be swallowed up inside your caseload, absorbed by the sheer weight of those affected. She has a face. She has a name. She is our beloved, and we want her to be returned to us'.
On this sleepless night when those words fill my mind again, I was reminded of a verse from a poem I had nearly forgotten, and it felt sadly appropriate. Lost Lenore...nameless here, forevermore. But what if Lenore is not really lost to us? What if she is still out there, waiting for someone to rescue her? Hoping that someone remembers she is missing?
I have nightmares of faceless young girls, being ripped away from their families, and shudder to think how many have been taken in reality. The Akiudo's trail has gone cold, and word of the missing falls into the background. The department wants to focus on the cases right in front of us, and that is all very well. But what about Lenore? I cannot walk the halls of the station without that question echoing in my heart.
'The investigation is not abandoned', they assure me. But when two years pass without a single new piece of evidence or intelligence being logged, how can we say we are exerting an effort?
You are not forgotten, beautiful Lenore - innocent child. I pray that somehow you can hold on, that your family's hopes will not be in vain. As for me, I can no longer sit idly by, and wait for the Prefectural Police to seek new leads. If there is something to be done, it is clear that I will have to do it myself.'"
Donatello was silent for a long moment, and waited for Greg to meet his gaze.
"There were times when she sounded a little tortured," Greg admitted. "But I had no idea of the true weight upon her shoulders. Donny, what else is in here?"
The turtle quickly skimmed a couple more passages from the file. "This one looks mostly like journal entries, all circling around the same frustration over the missing girls. I think I should try my software against the rest of these files. I know they were divided up this way for a reason, Heff."
"Then go for it."
Donatello scrolled over the six related files, and finally settled on the largest document entitled "Raven". After unlocking the hidden file, he glanced at Greg once more.
"It starts out with some more of her thoughts. This one says,
'I made my first contact with the Raven tonight - or rather, I should say he found me. I have spent months in disillusionment and despair, with all hope of picking up a sign of the Akiudo nearly broken. I did not think that an unexpected phone call from the United States of America could turn that around so quickly."
"Donny, did she date that entry?"
"It falls in the right time frame, Heff," he answered quietly. "She was talking about you."
"What else does it say?"
Donatello scrolled down the page, and was surprised to run into another large block of English. "It looks like she did keep a backlog of your communications, Greg."
His eyes were drawn to another Japanese entry in-between e-mails, and he read it silently to himself.
'My contact has much in common with the picture of the Raven, who knew nothing except to croak one single phrase time and time again. While I have come to respect and value his insight, I feel that there is not much he can do to help this investigation. I do not know why I have communicated with him this long, except that he believes the Akiudo are a live threat as much as I do, and he has become a good friend.
'I suppose it is not fair to compare him to the cold unfeeling character of the Raven. At the same time, the bird was the messenger and reminder of what could never be undone, and that is how I have been tempted to feel after all this time of knowing him. All of our theorizing has started to feel futile and meaningless.
'I feel like a part of me has become cold; that I am slowly dying the longer this is drawn out. He reminds that I am still among the living, and yet...'
"Donny?" Greg's voice brought the purple-masked turtle back to reality, and Donatello quickly lined down the file.
"Let me try something else."
Donny hurriedly clicked on the next document, and was faced with another quote.
"Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee-by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite-respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Upon accessing the hidden archive this time, Donatello was shocked to see a list of chemical components as the first addition to the document. He read through them rapidly, and his eyes flashed back to Greg.
"I think I just stumbled onto her notes concerning her Lab research!"
"Keep reading, Donny; we need the specifics of the Labs she was looking into!" Greg's voice trembled slightly with the statement, and Donatello felt his pulse rate increasing too.
The turtle caught himself holding his breath as he continued reading, and slammed a palm on the table-top when he reached a short list of the laboratories Sayuri had researched.
"This is it, Heff, this is what she must have been telling you about. There are five different chemical Labs throughout Japan that require the use of several of the components of the unique formula that the Akiudo uses, and only two that either manufacture or order almost all of them. It could even be that the missing derivatives are being covered up, in order to protect the drug's true origin."
"Was she delving into both of them?"
He scrolled a little more before responding. "It looks like the most extensive research comes out of the Lab that handles most of their own manufacturing. The place is supposedly publicly owned, but the funding...Sayuri says it doesn't add up. The Board claims that there are tons of foreign investors, but all she found were rabbit trails that led to nowhere."
"Meaning there's money pouring in, but they're hiding where it's actually coming from."
"That's what Sayuri concluded."
"It sounds dirty. What's this place called, Donny?"
"HijutoChem. The address is out of another Province, in Motobu."
Greg pushed back from the table. "I need to find us a bigger map, and then we need to have a closer look at her credit card statements leading up to her disappearance. Can you still access those from the station?"
"I copied all those files when I had the chance, Heff. What's your plan of attack here?"
"This Lab was the main source of her current excitement. I don't know what she found out from them or how, but my gut says she's still pursuing this lead. If we can link any of the old activity on her credit card to this region, it might give us a clue to where she could be holing up now. We're just getting started, Donny - are you up for this?"
"I'm up, Heff. Let's get to work."