by James Swain
Your family lived in Dubai, correct?
Correct.
The whole five years?
Yes.
How strict is it there?
Very. They tolerated us, but that was because we had something they wanted.
Were you able to watch American television?
No. It was forbidden.
Could you stream it over the internet?
Not possible. The government censored the internet. Nicki was very upset when we first moved. She couldn’t watch her favorite shows.
He had hit a wall. If shows like Family Guy weren’t available in Dubai, then how had an episode been playing on a TV set in a hotel there six months ago? He wrestled with it and came up with only one solution. The hotel room wasn’t in Dubai or any other Middle Eastern country. It was somewhere else.
His phone vibrated in his hand. Pearl was calling him. Lancaster didn’t know what to say without devastating his client, and he decided to stonewall him.
“Hello, Dr. Pearl,” he said.
“Hello, Jon. I’m lying in bed with Melanie. My cell phone is on speaker so she can hear you. You’ve found something, haven’t you?”
He wasn’t going to lie. “Yes.”
“You sound troubled.”
“I’m very tired, Dr. Pearl, that’s all.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve found?”
“Not over the phone,” he said.
He thought he heard Melanie gasp.
“You want to speak to us in person,” Pearl said.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to come over now? I can’t imagine we’re going to get much more sleep tonight.”
“I think tomorrow morning would be better.”
“Why wait?”
“I want Nicki to be in the room with us. I have questions to ask her.”
A pause. Then, “Nicki’s involved in this situation, isn’t she?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“But that’s where this is heading. You’ve found evidence linking Nicki to these horrible men, and you’re afraid to tell us over the phone. Hold on a second.” Melanie was weeping, and her husband spoke soothingly to her before returning to the line. “It’s not a total surprise. My wife and I had a long conversation with Nicki after dinner. You were right—Nicki is holding a grudge because we refused to let her take horseback riding lessons when we lived in Dubai. We had no idea how angry she was with us. She’s been holding it in for a while.”
He’d found a possible motive. Nicki had wanted to get back at her parents, so she’d gone and made a slew of pornographic videos out of spite and posted them on the internet under a false name, never thinking the videos would come back to haunt her.
“That explains a lot,” he said.
“So you’ve figured it out,” Pearl said.
“Perhaps. I still need to talk to your daughter. What time can I come by?”
“Why won’t you tell me now?”
“Because I’m missing a piece of the puzzle. When you were living in Dubai, did Nicki take any trips out of the country for an extended period of time?”
“We took several family trips.”
“I mean by herself.”
“Let me think. There was a school-sponsored trip to Paris seven months ago that Nicki went on. She was gone five days with her class.”
“Do you know where she stayed in Paris?” he asked.
Melanie spoke up. “She stayed in the Intercontinental Hotel with the rest of her classmates.”
“Did she have a private room?”
Hesitation, then, “Yes, she had a private room.”
“Did this trip take place before or after you said no to the horses?”
“After. Is that the piece of the puzzle you’re looking for?”
Five days in a private room in a Paris hotel was more than enough time to make a bunch of sleazy videos and put them out for the world to see in cyberspace. It all made sense, and he felt ready to confront Nicki and get her to admit what she’d done. That would be the first step toward getting this situation resolved.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “What time can I come by?”
“We usually have breakfast around eight.”
“See you then.”
CHAPTER 24
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
In his experience, the best way to break bad news was over a meal. Eating food calmed people down when they were upset. He was sure there was a scientific explanation for it, not that he needed to hear it. Food soothed troubled souls.
He drove to the Pearls’ house with the smell of freshly baked bagels filling his car. He’d gotten to the Bagel Snack on Powerline a few minutes before opening and there still had been a line stretching down the sidewalk. According to the owner, the key to making a delicious bagel was the quality of the water. South Florida tap water was not fit for consumption, so the owner imported water from New York. It showed in every bite.
He parked in the Pearls’ driveway and took two bags off the seat before getting out. As he neared the front door, Carlo emerged from the hedge. He handed him a bag.
“Good morning. That’s for all of you,” he said.
Carlo glanced into the bag and grinned. “Thanks, Jon.”
“I should be the one thanking you. How have things been in my absence?”
“Karl and I were talking about that earlier. This street has way too much traffic for a residential neighborhood, especially at night. They’re after the girl, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you figured out why? She must have done something.”
It was an obvious conclusion that he’d been avoiding for days. Call it a state of denial born out of respect for the parents and their child. But that was no more.
“I’ll tell you someday over a cold beer,” he said. “In the meantime, I need to book you for a few more days until I get this worked out. Are you available?”
“Calendar’s wide open. Provided you keep bringing us food.”
“Deal.”
“Do you ever miss being a SEAL?” Carlo asked. “I was thinking the other night how those missions were probably the best time of my life.”
It was the best time of Lancaster’s life as well, until he’d spotted a little boy getting too close to his unit in Yemen. The hump beneath the kid’s shirt looked suspicious, and Lancaster’s quick thinking had saved his unit from getting blown up. He’d been a hero, but it hadn’t changed the fact that he’d shot a child, and he’d put in his papers the next week.
“I don’t miss it at all,” he said.
Pearl greeted him at the front door. The doctor looked upset, and justifiably so. If Nicki had been honest with her parents, a private investigator wouldn’t have been needed to figure out what was going on. Instead, the Pearls could have gone to the police, and gotten the Cassandra videos taken off the internet. Nicki’s lying had destroyed her parents’ faith in her and harmed their family. He handed his client the second bag.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Pearl said. “We haven’t told my daughter anything. Before you talk to her, I want to hear what you found.”
They stood in the foyer facing each other. They could hear Nicki and Melanie in the kitchen fixing breakfast. The Today Show played in the background.
“I found a dozen lewd videos of your daughter on Zack Kenny’s cell phone,” he said. “She posted them under the name Cassandra. They were made before your family moved here. Based upon things I saw on them, I think they were shot in Paris.”
Pearl brought his hand to his mouth. “A dozen?”
He nodded. It was a big, painful number.
“What is she doing on them?”
“Sometimes she’s lying in bed, other times she’s on a couch or in a chair or she’s dancing. In one, she’s taking a shower. She’s naked and talks dirty to the camera and then masturbates until she reaches orgasm.”
“Does she have sex in them?”
“Yes. In the last nine videos, she has sex.”
“Another teenager?”
“No, her partner is an adult.”
Pearl took a deep breath as if to steady himself. Lancaster placed his hand on the doctor’s shoulder and left it there. “We need to get this out in the open. That’s the only way we can move forward and come up with a solution.”
“I agree, Jon. And so does Melanie.”
“Nicki may not react well when I tell her what I’ve found. I want you and your wife to sit on either side of her, in case she decides to run. Nicki has to hear me out. Understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
He lowered his arm. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
They went to the kitchen. It had a small breakfast nook that contained a round table with four place settings and glasses of OJ. There was a basket with muffins, to which Pearl added the bagels. Melanie and Nicki were at the stove scrambling eggs and cooking bacon. The food was ready, and they fixed four plates. Melanie muted the TV, and they moved to the nook with their plates of food. Nicki sat sandwiched between her parents and dug in. She still had sleep in her eyes and wore no makeup. It was a far cry from the creature he’d watched the night before.
“I know why these men are stalking you,” he said, looking at the teenager as he spoke. “But before I tell you, I need to ask you a question.”
Nicki put down her fork. She could feel her parents’ stares, and it made her uncomfortable. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin.
“Okay,” she said.
“Before you moved to the United States with your parents, you went on a school-sponsored trip to Paris. You did something bad there, didn’t you?”
Ashamed, Nicki stared at her plate and did not reply. Melanie leaned toward her daughter and said, “Nicki, answer the question.”
“Who told you about Paris?” Nicki asked.
“I figured it out on my own. I’m a private investigator, Nicki. If there’s a secret out there, I’m going to uncover it. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“I screwed up,” the teenager said under her breath.
“I know you did. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”
She took a deep breath. “We got there on a Friday night and checked into the hotel. It was late, so the teachers who were chaperoning us decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant. We ordered our food, and one of the chaperones ordered wine so we could have a toast. I think the waiter liked me, because he kept refilling my glass when it was empty.”
“Did you get drunk?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’d never had alcohol before, and I got a little woozy. Some of the other kids were messed up too.” She fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair. “We went back to our rooms and got ready for bed. It was after midnight, and I was really sleepy. Just as I was climbing under the covers there was a knock on my door. It was a girl named Mandy Schumacher. We’re in the same grade, and she was my friend. Mandy said she was having a party in her room, did I want to come? I didn’t see the harm, so I put my clothes back on and followed Mandy down the hall to her room. There were a bunch of other kids from my school there, and they were getting drunk.”
Nicki picked up her OJ and took a swallow. Her story made sense. Nicki had gotten drunk and acted out in rebellion against her parents and shot the videos.
“How did Mandy get the liquor?” he said. “Did a chaperone give it to her?”
“The chaperones didn’t know about the party. Mandy got the booze from the minibar in her room. The hotel was supposed to empty all the little bottles of booze out of our minibars, but Mandy’s room got missed. There was vodka and rum and some stuff that I’d never heard of before. The kids were mixing the booze with Coke to hide the taste, and they were all getting really smashed.”
“Did you get smashed?”
Nicki nodded and stared at her plate. Lancaster sensed that they’d reached the truly bad part of the story. He pressed her. “What happened then, Nicki?”
“What does this have to do with these men stalking me?”
“Everything. Now tell us.”
The kitchen had grown uncomfortably quiet.
“I passed out and got my stomach pumped,” the teenager said.
“What?” her mother shrieked.
“You never told us,” her father said, equally aghast.
Nicki lifted her gaze. She avoided her parents’ stares, preferring to look at Lancaster instead. “I don’t remember much of what happened. Mandy said that I threw up and then my eyes rolled up in my head and I passed out and hit the floor. I banged my head on the side of a chair, and everyone thought that I’d hurt myself.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Luckily, I didn’t break anything,” she said. “Mandy went and got the chaperones. One of them called the front desk, and an ambulance came and took me to a hospital. When I came to, there was a rubber tube stuck down my throat and a nurse was pumping my stomach. It was really gross. I stayed in the hospital for a day, and then I was released. I was really weak, and I stayed in my hotel room for the rest of the trip.”
And made the videos, he thought. He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward and looked her in the eyes. “How many days were you in your hotel room?”
“Four.”
“What did you do during those four days?”
“I slept a lot and read a Stephen King book on my iPad. We also watched a lot of TV.”
“We? Was there someone with you?”
“The chaperones alternated staying with me. I was pretty weak. I guess they were also making sure that I didn’t get drunk again.”
“Did you?” Melanie asked.
Nicki turned to face her mother. “No, Mom. I learned my lesson. I haven’t had anything to drink since that trip, and I’m not sure I ever will.”
“Good choice,” Melanie said.
“So one of the chaperones stayed with you while you recuperated,” he said, wanting to get the conversation back on track. “Were they with you all the time?”
Nicki faced him. “Yes. I was pretty weak. They had room service bring up my meals. It got pretty boring.”
“Did they sleep in the room with you as well?”
Nicki nodded. “Yeah. The room had a couch, and the chaperones slept on it.”
“Every night?”
“Uh-huh. I still don’t understand what this has to do with these men stalking me.”
She had to be lying. The videos had been made outside of Dubai when Nicki was by herself and not under her parents’ watchful eye. The presence of a twenty-four-hour chaperone would have made that impossible. Was this another carefully constructed lie designed to hide a bigger truth? It sure felt that way.
“I’m sorry, Nicki, but this isn’t adding up,” he said. “If you got drunk and went to the hospital, your parents would have known. It was the chaperones’ responsibility to report the incident when they got home, and the school would have notified your parents. They would have also received a bill from the hospital.”
“The school didn’t know,” Nicki said.
“Why not?”
“Because the chaperones didn’t tell them.”
“And why is that?”
“Because we agreed not to.”
“We? Who exactly is we?”
“Everybody who was on the trip. The other kids were afraid the chaperones would get fired because they served us wine the first night at dinner. But that wouldn’t have been fair. The chaperones didn’t make us drink the wine or the booze out of the minibar. We did that. We made a bad decision, and it was our fault.”
“So nobody in your group talked about it.”
Nicki nodded.
“Did you agree with this, or were you talked into it?” Melanie asked.
“It was actually my idea,” Nicki said. “You and Daddy always said that I have to be responsible for my actions, and not blame other people when things go wrong. I wasn’
t going to blame the chaperones for my screwup, so I convinced everyone on the trip to keep quiet.”
“How did the chaperones feel about that?” Melanie asked.
“They thanked me.”
“What about the hospital bill?” Lancaster asked. “How did you hide that?”
“That came after I got home,” Nicki said. “I grabbed it out of the mail, and paid it with a money order.”
The story was a lie. There could be no other explanation. Because if it wasn’t a lie, then his theory about how the videos had gotten made flew out the window.
“Do you have any proof that this happened, Nicki?” he said. “Is there some evidence that you can show me?”
A dark cloud passed over the teenager’s face.
“You don’t believe me,” she said.
“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I just want to see some proof.”
“You think this is all bullshit, that something else happened,” she said.
“Nicki!” her mother scolded.
“Jon is trying to help us,” her father reminded her.
“He doesn’t believe me,” Nicki said.
Her parents’ silence was deafening. Nicki pushed her plate forward and rose in her spot. Her mother slipped out of the nook, and Nicki came right behind her.
“I’ll show you,” the teenager said.
Nicki stormed out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the study with Lancaster and her parents hurrying to catch up. An iPad sat on the desk, and Nicki took her father’s leather chair and let her fingers play across its keyboard. Lancaster stood behind her, wanting to make sure she didn’t erase anything. Nicki went into a folder called “Pictures” and pulled up a series of images that were time-stamped seven months ago.
“See for yourself,” the teenager said.
On the iPad’s screen was a photograph of Nicki lying in a hospital bed with a nurse attending to her. Her face was white, and her hair was matted down.
“Mandy took that in the hospital,” Nicki said. “I was looking a little rough.”
The next photo showed Nicki lying in a bed in a hotel room, flashing the peace sign to the camera. Two of her school friends flanked her.
“Mandy took that on the day I came back to the hotel.”
