Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Half an hour later the plane landed on the dark waters next to the island. The old man carefully navigated his way to a clearly newly-constructed wooden pier.

"Here you go!" the seaplane pilot exclaimed most jovially as he helped them unload their camping gear. "Enjoy your Halloween Mystery Hunt! I'll be back to pick you up from here in two days' time."

The old man gave a final cheerful wave before flying off. The sound of the plane engines could be heard for a long while before it slowly faded away, leaving only an eerie silence in its wake. All eight detectives did not miss the fact that no buzzing insect sounds filled the night air, even though they were in the middle of a wild natural environment. There was not even the weak breath of the sea breeze, despite the fact that East Fire Island was located in the middle of the breezy Great South Bay.

Or perhaps they were simply too numb and too tired to feel or hear anything. And that was a preferred thought, Fenton muttered quietly for his own benefit.

"I can see that our Candyman has little faith in our map reading skills," Mathew commented wryly.

Fenton followed Mathew's gaze. And there on the ground, glowing eerily in the pale moonlight, was a thick silvery thread. It started at the end of the wooden pier, and extended all the way into the thick forest before them.

The eight looked at each other, shrugged, and began their hike, using the powerful torches that were provided to light the path. It wasn't long before they came to a fork in the road. The silver thread ended there.

Mathew paused to peruse the map that was provided. It was no use; it gave no indication of where to go next.

"What do we do now?" one of the detectives asked.

"We wait," Fenton replied grimly.

They did not have long to wait. A brilliant light filled the darkness and blinded them for an instant. As it slowly dimmed, the detectives soon made out a small clearing in the woods to their right. And there a man knelt and sang as he laid out a picnic mat and started to unload items from a picnic hamper.

"Who can take a rainbow,

Wrap it in a sigh?

Soak it in the sun

and make the stra'bry-lemon pie"

Fenton felt chills running up his spine. That voice…that voice! He ran towards the clearing. He knew the others followed, but he cared not. His heart hung on to the rainbow of hope even as it was drowning in sighs of despair.

"Sam…" Fenton whispered, all his fear, guilt and relief infused into the single word that tore its way out of his throat when his eyes confirmed what his heart already knew just seconds ago.

Fenton sank slowly onto his knees as Sam turned to face them, his eyes vacant and unblinking.

"Come, you must be hungry; please help yourself to some supper, courtesy of the Candyman," Sam said in formal tones.

"Sam? Sam! It's me, Fenton," Fenton gave Sam a hard shake, but his friend and partner did not show any signs of recognition at all. In fact, Sam looked just like Gray had.

"Please help yourself to some supper," Sam repeated again in formal tones.

Fenton felt close to tears, his emotions in turmoil. He could not help but feel that it was his fault that Sam ended up in this state. He could not help but feel terrified at what this meant for his sons, who had been in the hands of a crazy man for days now. And then there was his wife too. He could not bear it if he had to face all three of them against him at one go. That would be too much; far too much for him to bear.

He buried his face in his hands, and groaned his despair.

He felt someone shaking him.

"Come on, Fenton! You understand the principles of psychological warfare as well as I do. You can't let this defeat you now. We're so close, Fenton! So close!" That was Madeline trying to get through to him.

Then Mathew added, "You've to pull yourself together, Fenton. This is almost over, and your family needs you. You can’t give up now!"

Fenton shook his head. For some crazy reason, he felt there was something personal about this whole situation. But what? And why? Why him? He wanted to scream out that question, but he knew it wouldn't get him the answers he wanted.

"I know what you're thinking, Fenton. But my honest opinion? I don't think it's about you per se. I believe this is just because Sam happened to be there. It's all of us that he wanted, and we'll just have to figure out why and what he had planned before our kids pay the price," Gaby said calmly to him. "I hope this makes you feel better?"

Fenton gave him a weak but grateful smile. "I'm not quite sure what to believe at the moment, Gaby, but thanks."

Then Sam spoke again. "Please help yourself to some supper. Your children spent the afternoon preparing these Strawberry Lemon Pies. You should be able to tell them why you like them, or they would be very sad. And you don't want them to feel sad, do you?"

The detectives looked at each other again, and shrugged again. It was clear that they wouldn't be getting the next clue without first tasting the pies. They each took a bite under Sam's watchful unblinking eyes, and waited.

Sam started to move. He divided up the remaining food into eight portions and handed them one pack each. "This is for you if you get hungry later," he said, and then added, "The path you seek is the one that leads downhill."

The detectives picked up their respective packs and made ready to go when Fenton paused for a moment. Guilt warred against necessity. He was leaving Sam behind again…

High above, thick and grey storm clouds gathered, blocking out the moonlight. Then a streak of whiteness flashed across the sky. In the distance, the rumble of thunder could be heard, and Fenton felt the first droplet of rain-water on his cheek.

Something told him that there would be no rainbow when the sun rises tomorrow morning.

oooooo

Meanwhile, back at Cohen Tech Solutions, everyone was crowding around Phil Cohen and his computer as he explained his theory on how an invisible agent made his way to Gray and left the FBI building.

"So all that bastard did was to insert a program to 'tag' certain colored pixels? That was it? And the AI uses fuzzy logic to just delete the object and blend it in with its surroundings?" Max asked.

"Well, that was my hypothesis when I found out that the entire FBI surveillance system was fully digitized and operating at 16-bit color capacity," Phil said. "That translates into approximately 16 million colors for your hacker to choose from, and he needed only one, really. So on the day of intrusion, he just had to make sure he was wearing clothes in the exact color that corresponded to that digital color code with minimal skin exposure, and the fuzzy logic program does the rest of it, fudging that figure off your records. Yeah, that's potentially what happened."

Max stared at the screen as he digested what Phil just told him.

"What I don't understand is how the Candyman got that program into the FBI system in the first place. That is, if you were right, of course, Phil," Chief Collig commented.

"That is also something I am trying to figure out," Phil admitted. "And it’s the key reason why I think that there must be another solution to this puzzle – one that I haven't figured out just yet."

"Why do you say that?" Officer Con Riley asked. He was still feeling bad about not remembering what happened the night before, and promised to make up for allowing Laura to be kidnapped from right under his nose by helping out in whatever way he could.

Phil sighed and explained. "It takes an extremely complicated program to be able to do what I described. As you can see, the relatively simple program I cooked up was only doing the job partially, leaving noticeably obvious fudges. And this program is already taking up over five megabytes of space and slowing down my processor. What I am saying is, this program is huge and takes up lots of resources. So it is highly unlikely something like this would go unnoticed by any IT department…unless that IT department is REAL incompetent."

"Or if the department is already compromised," Max announced in an angry, grim voice.

Everyone turned and stared at Max, surprised by his open admission of that possibility. That kind of admission was simply not FBI policy.

"It has recently been brought to my attention that my forensic department has been tampering with our reports on the Candyman case. So I believe it is fair to assume that the IT department has been similarly compromised by whichever branch of Secret Service that wanted to get their hands on the Candyman for whatever reason."

"What?!" The few FBI agents with Max spluttered in disbelief.

"That was from that informant you met earlier?" Chief Collig queried and got a curt nod from Max.

Yeah, think how I feel! Max thought wryly. He shook his head a little, as if to clear his thoughts.

A number of curses rang through the room. The curses were quickly followed by a series of apologies when they registered Phil and his father were in the room with them.

"I AM 18 and legally adult, and I DO grow up watching Hollywood blockbusters," Phil announced in an irate tone.

"We were being polite to your father, Phil," one of the FBI agents responded.

"What about the second security recording? The one just before the explosion?" Max cut in and asked Phil.

"That one is easy, sir. Someone cut off a chunk of the recording, did some splicing of the scenes, and edited the time records. And I can tell you straight off that whoever did it was interrupted, so he or she did not have time to finish his job properly. He or she did not manage to fully delete and clean out the storage medium. As a result, I am able to recover these scenes…" Phil said.

With a few expert touches on the keyboard, he brought up the deleted scenes:

Everyone in the room within sight was sleeping and the gramophone started to play. Then Arthur Gray was singing and moving jerkily around the round room, moving in and out of sight. Soon he was at the table doing something. The detectives woke up and watched. Gray handed some pieces of brown paper to Fenton. Madeline started to lead Gray back to his makeshift bed when he began to speak.

'I was the Thirteen…The time now is 7:55am…. There will be two cars in the alley beyond that window with further instructions.'

Then both Arthur Gray and Sam Radley collapsed. The detectives adjusted their watches and then left the room as instructed.

The gramophone started to play again. Gray stood up, walked over to the gramophone and did something to the music player. He then picked Sam up, and carried him out of the room.

"Nothing happened for a while," Phil said as he fast-forwarded the scenes until:

The gramophone started to spin faster and faster until it could be seen that the entire contraption was vibrating strongly. Maniacal laughter emanated from the horn. And the screen went blank as the gramophone exploded.

"That's all I got," Phil said with a worried frown on his face as he turned to face everyone else in the room. "I hope that's enough…"

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.