I slid the basket off of our shiny, smooth granite countertop, and I looped two arms under the handle. The basket was in front of me, and if I walked too fast, my knees would bump into it.
"What did you pack?" I asked. "It's heavy."
She smiled. "It's a surprise."
We left the house, and she set the alarm. Then we slowly walked the way to the creek. It was slow only because of the weighted basket I was carrying.
Once arriving at the edge of the stream, she took the table cloth that was covering the top and spread it out. The furthest edge was inches away from the babbling edge of the stream.
The rippling water had a relaxing effect, and I felt a little tension ease out of my shoulders. Marline unpacked the basket.
There was a bottle of wine, and two wine glasses. She'd wrapped those in newspaper to keep them from breaking. There was a little block of cheese and a small loaf of bread. Next out of the basket was a small cutting board and a knife.
She set those items to the side, and then she removed two much larger containers, plastic ones. Inside one was a prepared salad. It was the kind with the dressing already on it. The other one contained lightly breaded, fried chicken. It was her specialty and nothing like the cheap, greasy fast food restaurant stuff.
At the very bottom of the basket was one more thing. It was a flat container, and it contained a marbled cheesecake.
"Wow," I said. "This is amazing." Whatever she wanted to talk about, she wanted to make sure I was in a good mood first. That scared me a little.
"Sit," she said. "Let's eat."
I did, and she started slicing little pieces of cheese and bread. I poured the wine.
We ate. Nothing much was said. I was waiting, but I didn't want to push her. She didn't respond well to that, and she was taking her time on this one.
"Ray?" she said finally when I was half through my cheesecake and the meal was almost over.
"Yes?" I said.
"You're different," she said.
I waited for her to continue.
"You seem to have a paranoid element to you. You don't park your car at the house. You use disposable cell phones. You carry weapons. Weapons are all over in our house. Our house has an amazing alarm. Your—"
"I get the point," I said.
"Well," she said. "We've never really talked about why. I figured it was a quirk of yours. Is that what it is?"
"Why?" I asked.
"I want more," she said.
I looked into her dark eyes. Whatever she wanted, I really wanted to give to her, if I could.
"I'm not sure you are ready," she said.
"Ready for what?"
"I want to start a family," she said.
Chapter 12
"Ah," I said. That's what this was about.
"I want kids, Ray," she said. "It's time for you to get past your oddities or whatever they are. It's time to grow up and get ready to be a father."
"Grow up?" I could be offended at this, but I wasn't.
"It's like you're a kid playing a spy game, sort of. Except you seem to take it serious. Too serious to be healthy."
"It is serious," I said.
"That's the problem. I think you should seek help for it," she said.
"Help? What kind of help?" I asked.
"Maybe you could see someone to help you."
"You're talking about a psychologist?"
She nodded. "And that could probably help you through your family issues too."
"I don't have any family," I said.
"I know, but you never talk about your dad or mom or anything. Are you angry with them? What happened between you and them?"
"Why are we discussing this?"
"Because if we have kids, I want them to have grandparents on both sides. I want them to have aunts and uncles and cousins," she said.
I tried to breathe slowly. My heart rate was increasing. I was torn between being honest, playing dumb, or being a jerk right now to get her to leave me. Not because I wanted her to, but because it was the safest.
I'd never be the man she wanted me to be. I couldn't because I was on the run. Permanently.
"So?" she said.
"You want kids?" I said stalling.
"I really do, Ray. Don't you?"
"I don't know," I said. "I never really thought about it."
"Will you promise me that you'll schedule someone to help you with your security issues?"
I shook my head slowly. "No," I said.
She looked hurt. "Why not, Ray? For me, please?"
I looked out at the rippling water. "It won't help," I said.
"How do you know?" she asked.
"There's more going on here than you know," I said.
"What does that mean?" she asked. A slight edge had crept into her voice. "Is there another woman?"
I looked at her. "No. Definitely not."
"You feel closed, Ray," she said. She scooted closer to me, and she put her hand into mine.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I really am."
She stared deeply into my eyes. "You've always seemed guarded and closed. When we met, it was exciting and mysterious. I loved it, and I loved you. I thought that you'd open up as we got to know each other. As we got intimate with each other, I thought that you'd reveal what was keeping you closed."
I looked down at her. I wanted to say it all. I wanted to get it off my chest, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
She continued, "But that hasn't happened. You're still closed. You're keeping something from me, Ray." Her eyes were moist now.
"I'm sorry," I said again.
"It's starting to affect our relationship," she said. "I feel myself growing suspicious of you. I don't want to, but what am I supposed to do? Ray, who are you?"
I broke eye contact. "I'm Ray Crusafi."
"That's not what I meant." She gently turned my head to look her in the eyes again.
I stared into her eyes, but I said nothing.
"What is it? Whatever it is, we can work through it. If it's something you've done, I'll forgive you." Her voice had quieted to a whisper. "Don't hide something from me Ray."
I leaned in and kissed her. She kissed me back.
"It's involving my work right now," I whispered. "I really can't talk about it." I was lying. Avoiding the situation.
We kissed again.
"Let me inside you, Ray. I am your wife."
I nodded. "I will," I said. "I promise."
I kissed her. The kiss grew. We made love right there next to the babbling stream.
* * * * *
Several hours later, I was back in my car and in the middle of the city. Night had come, and darkness covered everything except for where the streetlamps penetrated it.
The situation with my wife and I was unresolved. No question about it, but after our dinner, there was no way I could leave her. I needed her, and she was the thing that gave me strength and sanity in dealing with what I dealt with.
The problem was that she was right. I was closed to her. She didn't really know me, and she knew it. Something would have to happen about that, and the idea of kids . . . there was simply no way that would work. When someone, someone very powerful, wants you dead, having children is a bad idea.
I pushed those thoughts out of my head. I would drive myself crazy trying to figure out how I was going to work that out. I had no idea. It was a true lose-lose situation.
A few miles per hour under the speed limit, I continued to roll down the main drag. I was headed to the opposite side of town.
Sure enough, I was headed back to Brass Works Wholesale. There was a video of the dead woman the night she died, and I was determined to find it.
I had this crazy idea that maybe, just maybe it would show the whole thing, and I'd have the murderer and wrap up the whole case like that. Maybe something went wrong in the sex with Carlie. Maybe she was in on the voyeur stuff, and something went wrong. So they'd have to get rid of the video.
Forgetting t
o take down the page where the video was supposed to play was pure sloppiness on their part.
I pulled into the industrial park where Brass Works was. The first business was some kind of machine shop. I parked my car there. I chose that place because there was already a vacant car in the parking lot. All the lights were off in the machine shop, and it seemed that the car had been left there overnight.
By parking my car behind it, it made it less conspicuous. Also, it was far away from the Brass Works business.
I got out and locked the car up. Using the key, I opened the trunk and took an axe out. Then with that in hand, I jogged at a steady pace the distance down to the end of the drive where the Brass Works building was.
My plan here was to set off the alarm before going in. But even more than that, I was going to make sure that the alarm couldn't be reset that night.
Then after everyone left, I'd be free to spend as long in the building as I wanted.
Back at the overhead door that I'd forced open last time, I started working on it with the axe.
My idea was to chop the door down. Seriously. I was going to take the door down and out. The wood was soft and even a little rotten in parts. With the door gone, it would be impossible to set the perimeter alarm because of the open point where the garage door used to be.
Being the middle of the night, I expected them to leave it be until morning.
So I got very sweaty, and I axed the door down. Minutes ticked by as I worked. I was still clearing out wood when I saw red and blue flashing lights coming. I could see their reflection before the cars showed up.
I kicked at the wood fragments and cleared out the last bit. The garage door wasn't there anymore. Wood chips, shards, and fragments lay everywhere. It was like a giant beaver had gone at the door.
I set the axe down and wiped the handle clean. Then I went inside leaving the axe behind.
Inside I felt my way around. I'd seen tall shelving before when I was here, and I was feeling my way to it now.
I felt it. The shelves started about three feet up, and it continued up to the roof. There were some vacant spots high up that I'd seen before, and that was where I was headed now.
In the dark, I started climbing up the edge of the metal girder. Up and up I went.
I could hear a cop car coming to a screeching halt outside. My time was about up. I needed to get out of sight and do it quickly.
A flashlight beam shown in where the garage door had been. I pulled myself up onto the closest shelf. There was a little space behind the crate that was sitting there. It was not even eight inches, but that was all I needed. I squeezed back in there and squished down.
There were voices now and car doors opening and closing. I couldn't see anything, but that was good. That meant I couldn't be seen either.
About five minutes later all the lights came on. They were those kind that took a long time to warm up to full intensity, but even with a dull glow, there was a lot more light in the warehouse.
I checked to see if I was visible from any angle. Behind me was another shelf and stuff on it kept me from being seen there. My front was totally covered. To my right, the shelf stretched to the wall, and that kept me out of view, however, I was on the left edge, and I could see the floor somewhat.
Someone looking up at the right angle could possibly see me. As quietly as I could, I tried to lay myself out, stretching to the right.
Now I was almost invisible, and suspended fifteen feet up.
Voices talked around under me. Feet moved around. Time went by.
Then I heard the voice of Mickey, the owner. He was talking loudly with several police, but even with his loud voice, I couldn't make out the words.
I checked my watch to see how much time was passing. So far, it had been almost thirty minutes since I busted in.
Another forty-seven minutes passed before the lights were shut off. Something was scooted in front of the door I smashed open, and I heard a hammer banging.
They were nailing the garage door shut, and when they left, the alarm should still be off.
Another fifteen minutes past. Everyone was gone. The building was dark again. A little stiff, I crawled out of my hiding place and made my way down.
A little glowing alarm panel was near the overhead doors. I went over to it and checked the readout. It read that there was an overhead door fault - alarm not ready.
That meant I was free and clear to roam the building. Carefully feeling my way, I made my way up to the office entrance from the shop, and I let myself in. A few safety lights were on, and it was all I needed to see and move around.
Mickey Richardson's office was locked. I hadn't really expected that, but it was. I went to the receptionist's desk, and opened her top drawer. There was some tissue, candy, and a few coins.
I checked the other drawers. In a side drawer, I found a small ring of keys. Receptionists often had keys in case the people who were supposed to have them lose them.
I took the ring back to Mickey's office and found one that fit. I let myself in.
His desk was nice and clean, but his trash hadn't been emptied. The cleaning people obviously didn't have his office key, and didn't know where to find it.
I turned his computer on. There were no passwords, and I got lucky with that. However, I was prepared to deal with that too, if I had run into it.
Once it had booted up, I did a search for a file called wefisd33992sx.mp4, which had been the name of the file that was deleted from the website. I searched his entire hard drive, but nothing came up.
The screen glared and provided all the light I needed for this. I hadn't turned any other lights on.
I ran a search of his entire hard drive for any MP4 files. He had none on his hard drive.
There were two web browsers installed on his machine. One was the standard Microsoft browser and the other was the Google Chrome browser. I checked the history files of both. Neither yielded any visits to questionable sites, but both had private browsing functions that wouldn't leave any traces of where they'd been.
Next, I opened up his deleted files. That folder was empty. The next thing I did was download a freeware program that would scan for deleted files. No deleted file was really gone after it was deleted, and that was why I always ran the custom made Scrambler program on my work computer.
The program I was downloading was small, and the download was done quickly.
Some deleted files would be damaged by my installing this program on the hard drive, but that was unavoidable. Besides, it was so tiny, I thought it was worth the risk.
I set it to scan for deleted files that were still recognizable on the hard disk.
It found over fifty files.
To my disappointment, none of the fifty recovered files were named what the missing video was called, but on a second inspection I saw that two of the files were MP4 files.
I dragged them to the desktop and opened the first one. It was a pornographic, voyeuristic file. But it wasn't the one I was looking for. Neither person was recognizable in the video clip.
I opened the second one. This was it. Even though the picture was grainy and dark, I recognized the motel room. It was taken in the Sleep EZ Inn. Not only that, but lying on the bed was Kelly Brandt. And another woman was over top of her.
Chapter 13
The other woman turned a little, and I could see it was Carlie Smith, the last to see her alive.
I had the video clip.
I looked down at the counter to see how long it was. It said it was a little over fourteen minutes in length.
I settled in to watch the poor quality video. It was heavily pixilated, and I figured that was due to the poor lighting. They'd had the lights off while they did their thing.
The whole video hung. It froze. The counter underneath was still running. After a few moments, the video turned into giant pixels. They cleared out, and it was back on the two women.
I rewound the player to play over that spot again. The exact thi
ng happened again. It was damaged there.
As I found out, that wasn't the only place it was damaged. Multiple places through the video whole chunks were missing.
However, when I got through the damaged part, nothing was different. In fact, it was kind of boring watching the two go at it.
There was no zooming in, and the lights were off. On top of that, neither was performing for the camera. Often you couldn't really see anything at all, only the back of one of them. There was sound, but it was tinny and hard to hear.
Finally the video came to the final minute. This was what I really wanted to see. But nothing happened. The two women continued to do their thing, and the video suddenly stopped. That was all there was.
Why?
Had Mickey cut out the ending when it all went down? If so, where was that? I scanned the recovered files again. Mostly it was word processor files or spreadsheets. I opened some of them, but they were strictly business related.
I watched the final minute of video footage again. This time I noticed some darker pixilation where the window was, but that was nothing. It had looked like a rectangle grouping of dark pixels appeared seconds before the video cut off. I watched the whole thing again.
There was nothing that was helpful to me in it, but I decided to take a copy for further study anyway.
Outside in a closet near reception, there were office supplies. One of them was a spool of blank CDs. I took one and burnt a copy of the video onto it.
Before shutting down, I opened a web browser in private mode and typed in TrueVoyeurLive.com. I logged into my trial account, and I tried to find the webpage where the Kelly Brandt video should have been.
But that page was gone. Probably, Mickey had it taken down after I told him about it. To be sure, I search the whole site again. That webpage had been deleted.
I shut the computer down, relocked the office, and made my way to the shop to let myself out of a door that would lock behind me.
Outside was quiet. I surveyed the area after stepping outside. There was nothing there. No cops or anything.
Death of an Escort Page 10
