“One stint. Wasn’t shit.”
“What for?” Gio said.
The man hesitated. “Wasn’t shit. Fucked this bitch, and the next day she call the cops talkin’ about rape. Like I need to rape anybody. I got more hoes than I know what to do with.”
Gio thought a moment. “I’m gonna need you to come down to the Bureau offices with me. Just to talk.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No, not yet.”
“Then y’all can go fuck yourself. Let’s go, Justin.”
The two men rose and left the coffee shop. Sarah moved to the seat next to Gio. She slid the card Bill had given her over to him, and he picked it up and read it.
“I’ve seen that a lot,” Gio said. “Porn producers will act like talent scouts. Get the girls into a room and convince them to have sex on camera. The girls will be new and not know what royalties and payments they’re entitled to and just sign everything over for a couple hundred bucks.”
Stefan said, “Rape is a lifetime sex offender registration. How much you wanna bet he’s not in full compliance with the registry requirements?”
16
By nightfall, Gio and Stefan had found nearly everything there was to know about California Bill. Gio had placed a single call to the NSA, and an entire profile had been emailed over, including text messages, email, history of employment, bank and credit card statements, and phone records.
As they sat in an office at the Los Angeles FBI field office, Stefan said, “No way that’s legal. Getting all that stuff without a warrant.”
“Legal and illegal don’t really have the same meanings anymore. Besides, I didn’t do it. I just got what was already there.”
The office was small and cramped and clearly belonged to someone who had been cleared out. Sarah sat in a chair at the back of the room while Gio and Stefan were at the computer, flipping through California Bill’s life like a newspaper.
“How can sex offenders make pornography?” Sarah asked. “Can’t you guys get him on that?”
“No,” Gio said. “Porn’s been determined to be free speech by the California Supreme Court. He can make all the sick porn he wants as long as he’s not on camera. But there’s a whole list of other things he can’t do. It’s tough to be in full compliance as a sex offender.”
“Right there,” Stefan said, pointing to the screen. “Says he lives with Justin Ridge. How much you wanna bet Justin’s a felon or sex offender, too?”
Gio typed in the name Justin Ridge and came up with a full page of names. He began narrowing it down by birthday and place of residence until there was only one Justin Ridge left: thirty-four years old and listed as living at the same address as California Bill.
“Two thousand ten,” Stefan said, reading off the screen, “unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Ten-year registration and he’s in his fifth year now… Gotcha, you son of a bitch.”
They leapt to their feet and grabbed their jackets. Sarah followed them out. She felt like a fifth wheel and again wondered what she was getting paid for, exactly.
At night, Los Angeles didn’t look the way it did during the day. It seemed like an entirely different crowd was out, as though the people who lived and worked there weren’t the people who came out at night.
The weather was just right: not too hot and not too cool. They had retrieved a car from the FBI motor pool, and Sarah sat in the back. She rolled down her window and let the wind wash over her as they took the 405, a freeway that Stefan warned them was notorious for how congested it could get. Occasionally, he said, it was quicker to drive from LA to Las Vegas than it was to get from one side of the city to the other.
By the time they got off the freeway, they were in a part of the city that looked completely different from what Sarah had seen: Malibu. This was what she pictured when she thought of Southern California: a glimmering ocean, green shrubbery and trees, and houses on the hillside.
“I’m starving,” Stefan said.
Gio said, “This first.”
Stefan shrugged. “Just sayin’. You hungry, Sarah?”
“I could eat a horse.”
“Well, I don’t have any, so you’ll have to settle for an awesome seafood restaurant on the beach. Destin. You been, Gio?”
He shook his head. “First time in Malibu.”
“No shit? I loved coming up here as a kid. Rich people always get the best beaches.”
Gio turned the car up a small winding hill and stopped in front of a house with a circular gravel driveway. The gravel crackled as they rode over it up to the front door. Gio turned the car off. “Porn certainly does pay.”
“Anything sinful pays,” Stefan said, stepping out of the car.
“Sinful? Don’t tell me you’re a bible freak.”
“Bought and sold, brother.”
Sarah said, “Should I wait here?”
“No,” Gio said. “Come with us.”
Sarah stepped outside and followed them up to the front door. The door was massive, at least ten feet high, and made of a thick wood. Gio pounded on it and then rang the doorbell.
“You sure you don’t want to call his PO?” Stefan said. “He might be more agreeable in a jail cell.”
“No, I don’t care about the violation. That’s not what I want.”
A moment later, California Bill answered the door. He was now wearing a robe like an aristocrat and rolled his eyes. “What the hell do you want?”
“Justin here?” Gio said.
“Yeah.”
Gio pushed the man aside and forced his way into the home. “Justin’s a registered sex offender, and so are you. You’re not allowed to live together.”
“Whatever. His PO knows all about it and don’t give a shit.”
“His PO will do what the fuck I tell him to, as will the Department of Corrections once I give the Attorney General’s Office a call and tell them that you’re both in violation of the registry. You might not get prison, but I’d bet my ass you get at least six months jail.”
California Bill folded his arms. “What you—”
Before he could finish his sentence, he noticed Sarah. He smiled widely and said, “So you with them, huh? Too bad. You coulda been a star.”
Gio poked him in the forehead with his finger. “Hey, asshole, I’m talkin’ to you.”
Bill stepped close to him. “Touch me again and see what happens.”
Sarah could tell Gio was about to hit him. She stepped forward and said, “He just wants to talk to you. Five minutes.”
Bill snorted and stepped back. “Five minutes, huh? All right, G-man, what you need?”
“I want that list of actors and actresses in your films. And then I want you to tell me if something looks familiar.”
“What?”
“A video.” He pulled out his phone. Logging into the server, he brought up the video. He held it in front of Bill’s face and pressed the play button.
Bill’s smile went away. He watched with a curious mix of what looked like disgust and fascination. The entire video played before he mumbled, “Holy shit.” His eyes darted up to Gio’s. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars for that video.”
Gio leaned back against the wall, his hands on his hips. “I take it you haven’t seen that before, then.”
He shook his head. “That was fucking… wow. I thought my shit was sick. Two hundred thousand, man.”
“The child on that video’s probably ten.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Sold to someone we know from a store called Naughty Nancy’s.”
“In Scottsdale?”
“You know it?”
He nodded. “Shit yeah, I know it. They order our most fucked-up videos all the time.”
“Like what?” Stefan said.
“Whatever we have.” He chuckled. “The dude once asked me if I had any videos of chicks on fire.”
“What dude?”
“The owner. Jay, I think.”
Gio gl
anced at Stefan and then stepped forward. “I wanna have a tech search your computer.”
“For what?”
“To see if this video is sitting on there. Your phone and any tablets, too. I can have him up here in an hour. It’s either that or I arrest you now and call the AG. Your choice.”
He shrugged. “Fine, man. Do your thing. I ain’t got nothin’ to hide.” He paused. “Can I see the video again?”
Gio started to leave without saying anything. Sarah glanced back at the living room and noticed a woman sitting on the couch: she was nude and wasn’t looking at them. That was life in California—the bigger the scumbag, the more lovely the woman sitting on his couch.
Sarah sat on the front steps as two FBI computer systems technicians searched California Bill’s devices. So far, they had turned up nothing but droves of pornography. Disgusting, horrible pornography, they said, but nothing illegal.
Sarah wrapped her arms around herself though it wasn’t cold. Not too far off was the ocean, and she could hear the waves rolling into shore. She closed her eyes and listened, imagining she were on a ship far out at sea. The waves making the wood of the boat creak, lolling it from side to side, a storm sprinkling rain on her before the sky cleared and the sun shone brightly again.
“You doin’ okay?” Stefan said, poking his head out of the house.
“Fine, thanks.”
“Won’t be much longer. We’ve contacted several of the actors in the videos, and so far they all said it was consensual. We’ll try to catch a red-eye back to Scottsdale. I don’t think this company has any connection to the video.”
“Sorry, it’s my fault we wasted so much time.”
Stefan sat down on the steps next to her. “Don’t be ridiculous. We had to follow up on this. It was too similar. You did a great job finding those videos. And if nothing else, I know way more about scat porn than I ever thought I would.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t want to know.” He checked his watch. “You still hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Let’s go. We’ll be back before they finish up.”
“Maybe we should wait for Gio?”
Stefan looked back into the house. “I think he’s happy as a clam. He won’t mind. I promise.” He rose and held out his hand. Sarah took it, and they headed to the car.
17
The elderly couple stepped out of the home, and Oliver Farkas ducked lower in his car. He didn’t think they could see him anyway; he knew they both wore strong prescription glasses and that the wife, Gloria, had severe cataracts. It didn’t matter. When it came to caution, he would rather have an overabundance than not enough.
The couple got into their Subaru and pulled out of their driveway. They were off for a well-earned trip, one that cost them a good quarter of their savings. But Gloria was dying of lymphoma. It was a new diagnosis that the couple was still digesting, and they had always wanted to see Europe.
Farkas figured he knew more about the couple than they knew about themselves. He knew that Gerald, the husband, had a pornography addiction. It intrigued Farkas, as eighty-two-year-old Gerald shouldn’t have cared much about sex anymore. That was one of the perks of growing old, Farkas had always figured. Sex wouldn’t dominate the male mind. But now he thought that maybe it always dominated the mind, but the body’s ability to perform went away.
Once the couple had left, Farkas waited a good ten minutes. When he was certain they weren’t coming back, he started his car and pulled up the driveway. He used his garage door opener, programmed two weeks ago to the frequency of the couple’s, and then closed the garage behind him.
Inside the garage, his stomach fluttered. This was the moment that made it all worth it. Everyone else could have the act and the memory. The anticipation was what he lived for. He got out of the car.
The door leading into the home was up two stone steps, and he used the key he had made. Farkas had been here before, twice. He had watched the home for over a month, finally sneaking in through a back window one night and stealing a key. He came back the same night after he’d made a copy and returned the original.
Hacking the couple’s email proved not to be difficult either: two Post-it notes clung to the computer on the side of the monitor and had all the couple’s passwords. From there, he learned about the couple’s trip to Europe. He could have the house to himself for over three weeks.
Once inside the home, he shut the door slowly. The house smelled like Farkas thought old people’s homes should: menthol and strong perfume. The inside of the refrigerator was packed with medicine as were the cabinets. The couple, as far as he could tell, survived on medication, both herbal and prescribed.
Farkas searched the home to ensure no one was there. When he felt comfortable, he retrieved his gym bag from the car. The basement bedroom was the most insulated. It was underground and had walls so thick someone could scream and another person upstairs wouldn’t be able to hear them.
Farkas stepped inside the bedroom and opened the gym bag.
First, he took out the plastic sheets—transparent coverings that he duct-taped to the walls. Next, he removed all the furniture and laid the plastic sheets down on the floor. He retrieved only the bed and placed it in the center of the room. Like a shrine. A shrine to what, he didn’t know, but he still liked thinking of it that way.
The room was ready. He took a tripod out of his bag and set it up next to the bed. He then attached a smartphone to the tripod. Everything was set. He smiled to himself as he looked over the room. Then he hit the shower.
He stared at himself nude in the mirrors. He had lost weight and not in a good way. It looked unhealthy, as though he wasn’t eating enough. And in fact, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember if he’d eaten that day.
Afterward, he would have to replenish himself.
The only other noticeable thing about him was the deformity: a caved-in orbital socket. His right eye looked as if it had collapsed in on itself. In reality, his father had thrown him as a child. The story told in the Farkas home was that his father had come home drunk and was unaware that he had been born and brought home. His mother handed Farkas to his father, who promptly tossed him against the wall.
The next day, his father had no memory of it, though his mother had once told him his father had wished to kill him. One less mouth to feed, he had allegedly said.
Farkas took the stairs and went out to the garage. Opening the trunk, he saw the boy lying there, unconscious. He would be unconscious for another couple of hours. And when he awoke, Farkas would begin.
He lifted the body and went back inside.
18
Destin was the nicest restaurant Sarah had ever been to. It sat on the beach not fifty feet from the water, and the patio looked out over the ocean. Farther down the beach were other restaurants and businesses, and it looked as though teenagers were out looking for something to do. Sitting on the hoods of their cars, hanging out on the sand, or slowly driving down the road and honking at friends, it looked like a scene from the 1950s rather than modern America.
They were seated on the patio, and Stefan ordered a beer. A cold beer sounded as divine as anything right now, but Sarah resisted. Instead she got a cranberry juice and decided on ordering something light.
“So you have to tell me,” Stefan said, “what exactly you’re consulting on. You said you’re not a profiler, but Gio won’t make a move without you. It’s like you’re his good luck charm or something.”
She chuckled. “That’s probably as accurate a description as there is.”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. “What are you doing here, Sarah? Really.”
She hesitated. The word “psychic” wasn’t one she liked using; it had too many negative connotations from too many fakes and swindlers, but there really wasn’t another word that described her.
She took a breath and said, “I’m… a psychic.”
Stefan didn’t react for a mome
nt, then he burst out laughing. After a few seconds, he nodded and said, “Okay, I get it, it’s not for me to know.”
“No, I’m telling the truth.”
He stared at her a long time. “Sorry I laughed. It’s just… Well, you know.”
“Yeah, I do.”
The waiter came and took their order. Sarah asked for a salad and a bowl of clam chowder while Stefan ordered a steak. When the waiter left and they were alone again, Stefan looked out over the ocean.
“Must’ve been nice living here,” she said. “Were you born here?”
He shook his head, his eyes still on the sea. “We moved out here when my parents divorced, and I lived with my mother. She remarried right away, some hippy cop into the free-love movement. Of course he cheated on her constantly. Then my mom started to cheat on him. That’s what California does to people. Something happens to them where morality just slowly slips away, like a Band-Aid sliding off. You don’t even notice it.”
“Wow. That is incredibly depressing.”
He laughed.
“You must be wild at parties,” she said with a grin.
“I guess that’s why I don’t get invited to many parties.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed.”
“Believe it or not, this burnin’ hunk of man love flies solo most of the time.”
“So there’s no Mrs. Stefan?”
The drinks came, and he took a long swallow of beer. “Nope. Never married. You?”
“Same.”
“Who needs it, right? Somebody sitting on the couch when you walk in, yelling at you about not doing the dishes.”
She chuckled. “You think that’s what marriage is?”
“Well, that’s what it was for my mom and the hippy cop.”
“Did they stay married?”
“Yes, actually. For twenty-two years. Both totally cheating on each other, and neither of them saying anything about it. Maybe that’s the key? Sleep with as many people as you can while you’re married and don’t discuss it.”
Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) Page 7
