by James Swain
Interrogations were done in a cramped room on the second floor that reeked of cigarettes. Smoking in the building was forbidden, but suspects were sometimes allowed to light up in the hopes it would lead to their cooperation. His handcuffs removed, Rusty sat with his back to the wall and stared into space. He’d been treated with contempt by every cop he’d encountered, and had to know that it was only going to get worse. Adults who abused children were not treated well by the system. This was especially true in prison, where they were often forced to live in solitary confinement for their own safety.
Daniels and Lancaster stood on the other side of the room. Daniels had reviewed the library of porn stored on Rusty’s cell phone and told Lancaster there was enough sick stuff to send the lifeguard away for twenty years.
“Tell me about your partner,” Daniels said.
“I don’t have a partner,” Rusty said.
“Then how about your friend. Tell me about him.”
“I have a lot of friends.”
“I want to know about one in particular. Tell me about the friend who’s into this stuff who you hang out with.”
“I run solo. I don’t hang out with anybody,” Rusty said.
Daniels stepped forward and dropped her voice. “If I check the calls logged on your cell phone and your emails, there won’t be one name that keeps popping up?”
“No, ma’am,” Rusty said.
“But you know other guys who are into this stuff,” she said.
“Sure. But I don’t socialize with them. You hang with other people, you inherit their problems. If another guy gets arrested and you’re with him, you’ll get arrested too.”
“You’ve been good at hiding your tracks, haven’t you?”
Rusty chose his words carefully. “I’m not going to apologize about who I am. I know these things are wrong, but I can’t stop it. So I try to be careful.”
The interrogation was starting out well. Rusty was saying the right things and also being respectful. His willingness to help also felt real.
“You’ve got hundreds of pornographic photographs and videos stored on your cell phone,” she said. “Where did you get them from?”
“Lots of places. I downloaded some, others were sent to me,” Rusty said.
“Sent to you by who?”
“Guys I met in chat rooms.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No, guys in chat rooms use aliases.”
“Really. What’s your alias?”
“Captain Rich. Richard’s my real name.”
“If I showed you particular images I found on your phone, would you remember where they came from?”
“I can try. My memory’s pretty good.”
Daniels removed her own cell phone from her jacket pocket and powered it up. She had transferred Rusty’s library to a file on her cell phone. She found a particular photograph and held the cell phone in Rusty’s face. The photo was of a naked teenage Mexican girl tied to a bed. She wore a shiny gold medallion around her neck, and looked like she would have preferred being dead to enduring any more abuse. Her torturers stood beside the bed wearing black leather masks.
“Does this look familiar?” the FBI agent asked.
Rusty’s face displayed no emotion. “Yeah, I remember that one.”
“Who sent it to you?”
“Guy named Creepie. Spelled with an ‘ie’ instead of a ‘y.’ Look, I only looked at that photo once. I’m not into torture.”
“No? Then why didn’t you erase it?”
“I must have forgotten.”
“You’re already in enough trouble, Rusty. Don’t compound your misery by lying to me. Your situation will only get worse if you do.”
Rusty had started to sweat. Looking at the torture photo hadn’t bothered him. But the thought of Daniels putting the screws to him did.
“All right, maybe I looked at it a couple of times,” he said.
Daniels returned the cell phone to her pocket. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked at Rusty like he was a rodent.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” the lifeguard said.
“The girl’s body was found in a field on the side of a highway in Houston seven years ago,” Daniels said. “She was an illegal immigrant who came across the border to find work. She was raped and strangled to death.”
Rusty shook his head in disbelief. “I asked Creepie when he sent the photo to me. I emailed him and said, ‘Did you kill her?’ Creepie emailed me back and said they’d let the girl go.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes, I believed him. Guys into S&M like to boast about it. Creepie didn’t do that. He said the girl survived, and I believed him.”
“I found three other torture photos in the library on your phone. The FBI has these same photos. Guess what? The girls in all three ended up dead.”
Rusty’s eyes went wide, and his hands balled into fists.
“Fuck me,” he said under his breath.
“Did Creepie also send you these photos?” Daniels asked.
“Yeah. He told me the girls in them survived.”
“Do you see where this is headed, Rusty? You could be charged with being an accomplice to four murders if you’re not careful.”
“I didn’t know. You have to believe me.”
“I want to believe you, but you need to do more. Did Creepie send you any other images of girls being tortured? Think hard.”
Rusty scratched his chin and gave it some thought. “About six months ago, he emailed me a photo of a young black girl he was putting through the paces, and asked me if I wanted to see more. I said yes, so he sent me the rest and I downloaded them.”
“How old was this young woman?”
“She was young, maybe fifteen.”
“What else do you remember about her?”
“She was hog-tied and had a gag ball in her mouth. It was pretty graphic.”
“How many photographs of the black girl were there?”
“Five or six.”
“What else do you remember?”
“They were shot inside a house. There was furniture, and the floor was carpeted. The look on the girl’s face was pretty horrible. I decided to erase them.”
“If I showed you those photographs again, would you remember them?”
“Probably. Was she also killed?”
“Yes, she was killed.”
Daniels decided to take a break. She asked Rusty if he wanted a drink, and he said he’d like a Diet Pepsi. She went to the door and motioned for Lancaster to follow her.
They went into the hallway, and the door to the interrogation room locked itself behind them. The door had a square-shaped two-way mirror. Daniels gazed through it for a moment. When she was satisfied that Rusty wasn’t going to do something crazy, she walked to the end of the hallway and fed money into a vending machine.
“You want something?” she asked.
“A water would be good. My phone buzzed in my pocket three times while we were in the room. I’m guessing that’s your sister and brother-in-law checking in. What would you like me to tell them?”
Daniels bought two bottled waters and handed him one. They both had a long drink. He sensed that she was struggling for an answer. It was rare for a suspect to open up like Rusty was doing. She needed for him to keep talking for as long as she could.
“Want me to stall them?” he suggested.
“You don’t mind doing that?” she asked.
“You’ve got a head of steam going. No need for distractions.”
“Tell them I’ll call them tonight and give them the details.” She drained the water and tossed the empty in the trash. “I need to make a phone call and make sure that Rusty hasn’t turned up on any other databases. Would you mind going out to the rental, and getting my briefcase? It’s locked in the trunk.”
“Sure.”
Daniels handed him the keys, and he walked out of the building. The FBI had recently gotten a
black eye courtesy of O. J. Simpson’s parole hearing, and he understood her desire to check other criminal databases to see if Rusty popped up. During Simpson’s hearing, the Nevada parole board had relied on the National Crime Information Center’s database of records to see if Simpson had any prior convictions. Outside of the acquittal in the murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend, nothing had shown up, and the parole board had voted to let Simpson go free. Unfortunately, O. J. had been arrested for beating up his wife in 1989 and had pleaded no-contest to the charges. The omission of this crime from the NCIC’s database had highlighted a serious problem: There were major gaps in the information sent by the states to the feds.
While Rusty was being processed, a check had been run on his driver’s license, which had revealed that he’d previously lived on Cape Cod and on the south shore of Long Island in the town of Long Beach. Daniels would call the police departments in both areas and have them run a background check. It was the only way to be fully certain that Rusty was telling the truth when he said he had no prior arrests.
Daniels’s rental sat beneath a lonely palm tree. He popped the trunk to find a soft-sided leather briefcase lying atop a clothing bag. The briefcase’s flap had come open, and papers were spewed across the trunk. He started putting them back until a name across the top of a page caught his eye.
His own.
CHAPTER 31
SOMALIA
The hairs went up on the back of his neck. He got into the rental and started the engine, and with the AC blowing in his face, read the file Daniels had pulled on him.
She had left no stone unturned. There was a report dating back to his high school days that included his report cards plus write-ups of several disciplinary problems, including the time he’d toilet papered the school with his pals.
Next up were his service papers. His missions with the SEALs were classified and would remain that way, but Daniels had still managed to get her hands on psychological evaluations that had been conducted when he’d enlisted and the week before he’d been discharged, when the navy doctors had determined him mentally fit to return to society.
The navy doctors had taken a hard look at his last mission in Somalia. He’d embraced every part of being a SEAL and had hoped to be promoted to commander, until that fateful day when he’d shot a little Somali boy with explosives strapped to his body. While a member of his team dismantled the bomb, he’d tried to stop the boy from bleeding to death. The boy hadn’t pulled through and died in his arms.
He had been overcome with grief. In war, there were two options—you could run away, or you could fight. Only this poor kid didn’t have those choices. Either he would be blown to bits by the bomb strapped to his body, or a SEAL would shoot him to death.
It had haunted him. For days he’d lain awake at night, replaying the scenario to see if he could have handled things differently. He’d decided that he’d done the right thing. He’d saved the lives of his team, and no one could fault him for that. Yet it had still felt like he’d passed through the gates of hell, and he’d decided to leave the military.
Next were his police files. These were extensive. He’d worn a uniform for five years, and his performance had been reviewed by his superiors every six months. He’d been an undercover detective for ten more, where he had also faced six-month reviews. Daniels had gone through these reviews thoroughly and dog-eared the pages that contained complaints filed against him by citizens where there had been hearings. In each case, a panel had ruled in his favor, and the charges against him had been dismissed.
The last pages of his police files listed the various commendations he’d received during his time on the force. Being a SEAL had given him an edge when dealing with crisis situations, and he’d been decorated for bravery on three occasions. When he’d retired, his boss had written a letter praising his heroism and unselfishness. That was in his file too.
Last up were the missing kids’ cases he’d worked for Team Adam in the past two years. The team’s director had reviewed each of the investigations he’d handled and given him high praise. Except for the toilet paper incident, there were no black marks against him.
He stuffed the pages into the briefcase and went back inside. The elevator was temperamental, so he took the stairs to the second floor. As he reached the landing, he had an unpleasant thought. Daniels had read his files while flying to South Florida from DC. She knew that he’d served his country with distinction as a SEAL and been an exemplary policeman, yet had treated him like a criminal while she’d trashed his condo. Those two things didn’t go together, and made him wonder what her motivation had been.
He found the special agent by the vending machines on the second floor and handed her the briefcase.
“Anything turn up?” he asked.
“Yes. Rusty worked as a substitute teacher on Long Island twenty years ago and got caught fondling a kid,” she said. “The town where it happened is still in the process of transferring their paper records to digital, so it wasn’t in the NCIC database.”
“How does that change things?”
“It means I’m not going to cut him a deal.”
“Are you going to tell him that?”
“Hell no. I’m going to show him the torture photos of a young black girl, and get him to confirm they’re the same as the ones that Creepie sent to him. Then I’m going to search his place and get my hands on his computer. If I’m lucky, I’ll get an email address for Creepie and hunt him down.”
“Is Creepie the prize?”
“Yes, he is.”
“He’s a serial killer, isn’t he?”
“Right again.”
“And he has a partner.”
“Go to the head of the class.”
“You’ve been chasing this guy for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Too long.”
Every sting was designed to catch a certain criminal or groups of criminals. The Cassandra videos had been created with the sole purpose of catching a serial killer, and he finally understood what was behind Daniels’s fury. Serial killers never stopped killing, and each wasted hour or day could result in the loss of a victim’s life.
“What kind of soda did Rusty say he wanted?” Daniels asked.
“Diet Pepsi,” he said.
She bought a Diet Pepsi and then perused the snack selections.
“What do you think he likes to eat?” she asked.
“Get him a bag of Fritos,” he said. “If he doesn’t want them, I’ll eat them.”
Daniels bought the chips, and they walked down the hall to the interrogation room. She punched a code into the keypad, and the door clicked open. Rusty sat in his chair wearing the same dead expression. Daniels placed the snacks on the table, and his demeanor changed. Ripping open the bag, he began stuffing the chips into his mouth.
“You must be hungry,” Daniels said.
“Starving. I haven’t eaten since this morning,” Rusty said.
“Here’s what I’m going to do. When we’re done, I’ll buy you a sandwich from the Subway down the street. Does that sound like a plan?”
“That works for me.”
Rusty finished the chips and washed them down with the soda. The walls of resistance had lowered, and he was ready to play ball. Rusty mistakenly believed that by cooperating, Daniels would ask a judge to go light on him, but in fact the only deal he had was the one he’d made with the devil long ago.
Daniels opened her briefcase and removed a manila envelope. Out came five photographs of the black girl who’d been hog-tied. She placed them in a row on the table so they faced their suspect.
“Let’s get started,” the FBI agent said.
CHAPTER 32
TRUST
Daniels got a search warrant, and they set out for Inverrary Resort, where Rusty rented a one-bedroom. Lancaster was hungry, and he persuaded Daniels to pull into a McDonald’s, where he ordered a quarter pounder with cheese and a large fry.
“You sure you don’t want anyt
hing?” he asked.
“I’ll just pick at yours.” She filched a french fry and pulled out of the drive-through. “I noticed that you looked through my briefcase. Find anything of interest?”
“It wasn’t intentional. Your papers were all over the trunk, so I put them back.”
“You must have seen the background check I did on you.”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“You’re quite the Boy Scout with all those medals and citations,” she said.
He placed the french fries beneath her nose. She grabbed several more and stuffed them into her mouth. She couldn’t talk with her mouth full, so he pressed her.
“You knew that about me before you came to my condo this morning,” he said. “Yet you still chose to treat me like a common criminal. I’d like to know what you saw in those reports that made you think I was a bad guy.”
She chewed silently and stared at the road. He unwrapped the quarter pounder and bit into it. He offered her a bite, and she shook her head no.
“I didn’t see anything in those reports,” she said. “The red flag was the voice mail you left me. You referenced the Cassandra videos, and that was all I needed to hear to hop on a plane and come down here.”
“You mean because I’d seen them.”
She nodded. “You’ve got a stellar background, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be a predator. You should see some of the guys I’ve arrested. Lawyers, doctors, I even busted a circuit court judge once. They were all leading double lives. In public they were very respectable people. In private they were monsters.”
“How many guys have you busted because of those videos?”
“I’ve personally busted sixteen. Other agents around the country have also made busts. The last time I checked, the total number was over forty.”
“That’s a big haul.”
“It is. And we’re not done yet.”
“Creepie and his partner are the prize.”
