by James Swain
“Can I see it?”
“I really should ask Beth first.”
“I’m sure she’d say yes, don’t you think?”
“You’re probably right.”
Fadi took out a cell phone as thin as a playing card. He opened an app and hit a command, then turned the screen. The last installment of the Cassandra videos began to play. It had been shot in a hotel room with muted lighting. An age-regressed Beth lay naked in bed, talking to the camera. A naked Fadi entered the picture. He joined her and they began to kiss. Then Beth reached beneath a pillow and pulled out a pipe, which she began to beat him with. Each blow was accompanied by a loud cracking sound. Fadi jumped out of bed, fearful for his life. Beth followed him around the room and continued to inflict punishment. Bleeding from the mouth and nose, Fadi sank to the floor. The video ended with him begging for mercy.
“That’s brutal,” Lancaster said.
“It’s intended to be brutal,” Fadi said. “The other videos portray Cassandra as a victim. Here, she is clearly the aggressor. Beth showed it to the profilers at the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences unit. The profilers said that once the perverts watch it, they will never see Cassandra the same way again, and will stop fantasizing about her.”
“When are you going live with this?”
“As soon as Beth tells me to.”
“I hope your solution works. Nicki and her parents have been through hell because of those videos.”
“I know. Beth told me what happened.”
Fadi looked sad. He’d done something against his better judgment, and now appeared unhappy with his decision. Lancaster went to the cafeteria’s bakery section and bought a chocolate doughnut. He walked Fadi to the elevator and handed him the bag.
“Please give this to her.”
The elevator came, but Fadi did not board. His conscience was eating at him, the way it did to moral people. It was hard to do good, as he now painfully understood.
“I want to fix the harm I’ve caused,” he said. “How do I do that?”
That was a good question. It was true that time healed all wounds. But there would always be psychological scars. Whenever Nicki saw a strange man staring at her, she would be fearful. All the money in the world couldn’t fix that.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” he said.
CHAPTER 43
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
The best thing about not being a cop was that the rules changed. As a private investigator, Lancaster didn’t have to concern himself with a suspect’s rights or the protections afforded him or her under the Constitution. Those things stopped mattering.
Leaving the hospital, he drove to a trendy eatery on Las Olas called YOLO, which stood for You Only Live Once. It was not the kind of place where he usually hung out, and he didn’t expect to run into anyone he knew. The lunch crowd had thinned out, and he found a parking space on a side street and called the sheriff’s office main switchboard. He asked to speak to Detective Vargas and was patched through to voice mail.
“Good afternoon, Detective Vargas. This is your old pal Jon Lancaster,” he said. “I hear you’ve been going around town saying nasty things about me. Well, I’m going to pay you back for your trouble. You and your asshole partner are in a world of trouble. I’m talking prison, loss of pension, and having your bank accounts seized. If you’d like to hear more, meet me at YOLO. I’ll be at the bar.”
He was into his second beer when Vargas came in. She was breathing hard and had worked up a real sweat. She refused to sit down. He settled his tab and picked up his beer. They walked to the back of the dining room and took a booth.
“Where’s your ugly partner?” he asked.
“Booking a suspect,” Vargas said. “I was at my desk typing up an arrest report when your call came in. I didn’t like the sound of it, so I dropped what I was doing and came over. What the fuck are you talking about?”
Vargas was playing dumb, wanting to see how much he actually knew. A waitress pretty enough to model materialized at their table.
“You want a drink?” he asked.
“Can’t, I’m working,” she said.
“You’re going to want a drink after you hear what I have to say.”
Vargas waved the waitress away. “Spit it out, Jon. The less time I have to spend in your company, the better.”
There was no love lost between them, and he decided to let her have both barrels.
“The FBI is onto you,” he said.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Let me refresh your memory. The FBI knows that a police dog trainer is stealing blow out of the stockade in his cowboy boots, and that he’s passing it on to detectives with the department who are moving it for him. The FBI also knows that you and your partner are strong-arming strippers into moving it for you. Is this ringing any bells?”
Vargas looked like she might puke. She got the waitress’s attention.
“A shot of Jameson and a beer chaser,” she said.
They shared a long, uncomfortable silence. Her drink came. Vargas belted the whiskey back and chased it down. It brought the color back to her face and helped her regain her composure.
“How did you find out?” she asked.
“That’s none of your god damn business,” he said. “What’s important is that I know, and I can help you.”
“You can make this go away?”
“I didn’t say that. There’s going to be a bust, and it will be ugly. What I can do is protect you and your partner. You won’t go down with the rest of them.”
“But the others will take the fall.”
“That’s right.”
“They might think we ratted them out.”
“Who cares? They’ll be in prison, and you won’t.”
Vargas was having a hard time dealing with the reality of what he was saying. Most criminals accepted that they might get caught and face prison. Vargas hadn’t considered this, and it was turning her inside out. She flagged the waitress and ordered another whiskey.
“What do you want in return?” she asked.
“There’s a guy named Zack Kenny I want you to bust. He has a library of kiddie porn stored on his iPad in the study of his condo. I’ll give you the address.”
“That’s it?”
“He needs to go down hard. You can’t screw it up.”
“We won’t screw it up. But we’ll need a good reason to get a warrant to search his condo. Otherwise, whatever we find will get tossed out of court.”
“Kenny kept a teenage girl in his condo for a few months,” he said. “The condo association found out about it, and there was a big ruckus. Everyone in the building knows, including the guard at the front gate.”
“Did Kenny screw her?”
“I’m sure he did.”
“Then it was statutory rape. Is the girl still there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then how does that help us get into his place?”
“It establishes that Kenny has a history of dealings with underage girls. You need to coerce another teenage girl to say that Kenny lured her to his condo. Get her to say that she saw kiddie porn on his iPad. Then go to a judge for your search warrant.”
“That’s a tall order. If the girl trips up, I’m screwed.”
“Would you rather get arrested for dealing coke? The feds will take everything you have. When you get out of the joint, you’ll be broke. Pick your poison.”
Vargas was twisting on the end of an invisible rope. The waitress brought her a fresh shot. She belted it back, and would have probably licked the glass if he hadn’t been looking. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and took a deep breath.
“Give me this asshole’s address,” she said.
CHAPTER 44
50 OCEAN
They ended up killing him.
It happened the next day. Lancaster was stuck in traffic on I-95 when he heard
the news. He’d just left the FBI’s North Miami office and was heading home. He’d spent three hours explaining to a roomful of agents how he and Daniels had discovered that Mates and Holloway were the Hanover killers, and his throat was raw from the retelling. His cell phone buzzed, and he picked it up off the passenger seat and stared at the screen. He subscribed to the online version of the Sun-Sentinel and received breaking news stories over his phone. A pair of Fort Lauderdale detectives had attempted to arrest a suspect in a parking lot and had ended up shooting him dead. The story was developing with more details to follow. Neither the suspect’s nor the detectives’ names were given, but his gut told him that the deceased was Zack Kenny.
He made it home and got on his computer to see if there were any updates on the shooting. There was nothing. He considered calling one of his friends with the sheriff’s office to get more details but decided not to. If Zack Kenny was dead, he didn’t want his name associated with it, even in a casual way.
Four different TV stations served the Fort Lauderdale market. Each had a six o’clock news program devoted to that day’s events. At the stroke of six, he parked himself in front of the TV with a cold beer and surfed between them. The ABC affiliate, Local 10 News, opened with the story, so he picked them.
A deeply tanned newscaster read off a prompter. A pair of Broward detectives had attempted to execute a search warrant to a suspected sexual predator in the parking lot of an upscale apartment complex in Coral Ridge when the suspect suddenly attacked one of the detectives, who was female. The detective’s partner had drawn his weapon and shot the suspect multiple times, killing him instantly. The sheriff’s office had released the dead man’s name. It was Zackary Lawrence Kenny.
He raised his beer to the screen. The world was a safer place with Zack gone. He tried to imagine how Karissa would react to the news. She would be relieved but maybe saddened. She’d been in love with Zack, and those feelings were hard to erase. He was about to call her when he got a call from Vargas.
“I just saw the news on TV,” he said. “Did he hurt you?”
“Bastard broke my nose,” Vargas said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No, you’re not.”
He sipped his beer and smiled. “How did you get the search warrant so quickly?”
“I decided that your idea of fabricating a story was a bad one,” she said, “so I went to the brokerage house where Zack worked and spoke to the head of human resources. Guys like him usually can’t keep their hands off women they work with. Sure enough, I was right. An intern had filed a complaint saying Zack had tried to molest her in the copy room. I got a copy of the complaint, then went to his apartment and spoke to the head of the homeowner’s association. She confirmed that Zack had shacked up with an underage runaway. Her statement and the complaint were enough to sway the judge to issue a warrant.”
“Sounds like you did everything by the book.”
“Damn straight. Assholes like that know their rights. Last thing we wanted was to have it thrown out of court on a technicality.”
“What happens now?”
“There’ll be two investigations. One internal, the second criminal, to make sure we didn’t break any laws. A surveillance camera on the apartment building videoed the whole thing, so we should be fine. I’m going to take time off to let my face heal.”
“What about your partner?”
“He’s been put on administrative duties. He’ll have to sit at a desk alphabetizing three-by-five cards and going through OD death certificates. You know the drill.” She paused, then said, “We kept up our end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn. I want you to tell me how you’re going to save us from getting busted. And don’t you dare screw us.”
He put the beer down, thinking hard. Daniels had confided that the FBI planned to bust the ring of drug-dealing detectives next week. The detectives would be caught receiving the coke at a restaurant and secretly videotaped in the act. This would provide a rock-solid case in court, and the ring would go down hard. All Vargas and her partner needed to do was not be present at the restaurant that day.
But sharing this information with Vargas was a problem. She might alert the other detectives in the ring, and ruin the bust. The FBI would realize the detectives had been tipped off, and that might find its way back to Daniels, and hurt her. His loyalty was to Daniels, not Vargas, so he chose his words carefully.
“Does your partner have any accrued vacation time?” he asked.
“I’m sure he does,” Vargas said.
“Tell him to take it, and leave town for a few weeks.”
“All right. What then?”
“When the two of you return, your problem will be gone.”
“You’re going to fix it?”
Her question gave him pause. Vargas didn’t suspect that the bust would be going down soon. She was in the dark, and the less he said, the better.
“Yes, I’m going to fix it,” he said.
“You still haven’t told me how this is going to work,” Vargas said.
“Enjoy your time off.”
He ended the connection feeling relieved. He’d made good on his promises to Vargas without harming his relationship with Daniels. Playing both sides of the fence was never easy, especially when people’s lives and reputations hung in the balance. Karissa was still holed up in Marathon, and he texted her, saying that it was safe to come home. Then he called Daniels to see how things were going. Daniels had been discharged from the hospital and was at her sister’s house recuperating.
“I’m doing shitty, thanks for asking,” Daniels said.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Fadi came by earlier. He wanted to talk to me in private, so I grabbed the walker I’m using, and we went onto the dock. He got down on his knee and gave me the biggest diamond ring you’ve ever seen. Then he asked me to marry him.”
There was a long pause, and she began to cry.
“You said no,” he said.
“Yeah, I said no. Fadi got really upset, and accused me of using him to make the Cassandra videos to capture Mates and Holloway. He took the ring back and threw it into the water. Then he said he never wanted to see me again and left.”
“I’m sorry, Beth.”
“So am I. Do you want to know the stupid part? I’m in love with him.”
“Then why did you turn him down?”
“Because he wanted me to relocate to California and leave the bureau. I’m not ready to do that. Does that sound crazy?”
“He wanted you to change.”
“Yes, he wanted me to change.”
Some cops couldn’t change but had to continue to fight crime and chase down evil. They were on a mission that often precluded them from having normal lives. He knew the deal because he’d been living it for most of his life.
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all,” he said.
Two weeks later, he took Daniels out to dinner. She was going to physical therapy every day and was already strong enough to walk without assistance. He showed up at the Pearls’ place at a few minutes before six. He’d gotten a haircut and bought himself a new pair of chinos and a Tommy Bahama dress shirt with fancy buttons.
The first thing he’d noticed was how quiet the neighborhood was. The street in front of the house hardly had any traffic. The last Cassandra video had been posted, and like magic, Nicki’s stalkers had crawled back under their rocks and stopped pursuing her.
The Pearls greeted him at the front door with hugs and smiles. Nicki told him how her parents had agreed to let her start taking horseback-riding lessons and how excited she was. Then Daniels came downstairs dressed in a pair of designer jeans and a shimmering gold blouse. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the makeup she wore made her look like an actress. Before they left, Melanie snapped a photo on her cell phone.
“Where are you taking me?” Daniels asked in the car.
“I made a reservation at 50 Ocean. The views are amazing,” h
e said.
“Sounds wonderful,” she said.
A bootleg Jimmy Buffett concert played on the car’s stereo, and she hummed along while he drove. Something had changed, and he sensed that she wanted to talk about it but didn’t know how to begin. If they didn’t get past it, the night would be ruined.
“You seem different,” he said.
“How so?” she asked.
“Like a dark cloud’s been lifted. You almost seem happy.”
“I am happy. The nightmares I’ve been having since college have stopped. I’m waking up in the morning feeling great. It’s an amazing feeling.”
“That sounds like cause for celebration.”
“What are we celebrating? That Mates and Holloway are dead? That seems a little morbid, don’t you think?”
He stopped at a traffic light and faced her. “Mates and Holloway were evil, and evil never wins. That’s what we’re celebrating.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I sure do. The world is a good place, and so are most of the people who live in it. Evil people are a minority, and they’re not supposed to win. When they go down, we have every right to pop a bottle of champagne and cheer.”
She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” she said.
50 Ocean was located on the same block as Boston’s, across the street from the ocean. He decided to park in a public lot a few blocks away to avoid the flooding.
“You strong enough for a little walk?” he asked.
“I did a mile today on the treadmill,” she said proudly.
As they walked to the restaurant, she talked about her childhood, and how she’d aspired to be a surgeon like her father and save lives. That dream had carried her to Dartmouth, and she would have gotten a medical degree and gone to work doing research had Mates and Holloway not abducted her. Lying in the trunk of their car, her life had flashed before her eyes, and she’d accepted that she was about to die. When the trunk had sprung open, bright sunlight had flooded over her, and she’d felt like she’d been reborn.
They came to the restaurant. The road in front looked different, and it took a moment for him to realize why. The water had receded, and the pavement was bone dry.
