by Mike Markel
“Did she tell you who ran the camera?”
“No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew.”
“What do you need me to do?”
I shook my head. “Unless you can tell us who killed Virginia Rinaldi, nothing. We need to talk to Abby, see if she’s willing to tell us who her camera guy is, what her relationship with Krista is, a bunch of other questions. Until we can talk to the players more, the only other thing is the forensics.”
“What are you waiting on?”
“Harold thinks it was a skull fracture from hitting her head on the stairs.”
“Not blunt-force trauma from a weapon?”
“No, he said the pattern of cracks in the skull wasn’t right for that. But Robin told us the vic went down the stairs twice—first time she made it all the way to the rug at the base of the stairs, where she picked up a fiber in her hair. But the killer wasn’t satisfied she was dead, so he dragged her up to the top of the stairs and pushed her off again. The second time she only made it partway down the stairs.”
“There’s no biologicals?”
“Robin says she got some tissue samples from under some of the vic’s fingernails. She’s typing the DNA now. With any luck, it’ll be Richard Albright. His DNA is in all the databases from his convictions in Nevada.”
“Okay.” The chief nodded. “Any reason not to announce it when Harold calls it?”
I looked at Ryan. He nodded his agreement. “No, put it out.”
“Keep me up-to-date on the prostitution at the fraternity. Unless we can link it to the murder investigation, I’ll separate the two cases and give it to Vice.”
“I’d really love to take that fraternity down, but give me a little more time to put the pieces together. Krista’s the common denominator. Without her, Virginia is still alive. We’re just not seeing the link yet.”
“It could be really simple. Didn’t you say Krista’s rate is five-hundred?”
“That’s what Vice said.”
“Abby Demarest goes to Krista, who she met in Virginia’s course. She offers Krista five-hundred to make the video. Krista sees it as a one-hour job—and she doesn’t have to give her pimp his sixty percent or whatever his rate is. He finds out and wants his cut. He goes looking for her at Virginia’s house. Things go south from there.”
“That could be,” I said. “But the pimp said that wasn’t what happened.”
The chief smiled. “Is he the honest pimp?”
I returned his smile. “He said he was.”
“I’m not denying that Krista is the link—or that Virginia’s relationship with her led to the murder. But Krista working the fraternity party might be unrelated to the murder. That part could be a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.” I shook my head. “Give us a little more time.”
The chief nodded. “We’ll hold a press conference this afternoon calling it a homicide. Something might break then.”
Ryan and I thanked the chief and headed back to our desks. I had a phone message from Robin. I called her. “Who killed Virginia, Robin?”
“Some guy.”
“He got a name?”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Is it Richard Albright?”
“No.”
“Christopher James Barlow?”
“That’s a nice name, but no.”
“Shit.”
“It’s a guy, but he doesn’t show up in any of the databases. You’re welcome.”
“Okay, Robin, thanks.”
I hung up and turned to Ryan. “Shit.”
“Yes, I heard you make that point.”
“I was hoping it was Richard Albright.”
“It could be him. Remember how his buddy jumped into the crowd and beat up the kid who threw the bottle? Or it could be the pimp: same deal. He doesn’t kill people himself. He subs it out. Cheer up. It could one of those two.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “Still, I wanted it to be someone with prints on file. We show him the match, he pleads, case closed.”
“Then we go put the fraternity out of business?”
“And I’m home by four-thirty.”
“So, what’s the worst that can happen now? You stay till five?”
“The networks are all over the murder tonight at five, the guy takes off, and we’re gonna have to track him down.”
“Road trip!” Ryan smiled.
I just looked at him. “You planning to grow up any time soon?”
“So I can be happy like you?” He raised an eyebrow. “I think I’ll maintain my youthful enthusiasm.”
He did have a point.
Chapter 20
It was a couple minutes past eleven when my phone rang. The screen read “Unknown Caller.” I hit Speaker.
“This is Detective Seagate.” I don’t usually make it that formal, but I figured Abby Demarest would be nervous, and I wanted to be clear.
“Um, is this Detective Seagate?”
I remembered her from our meeting in the sociology department as a big, strong girl, but that wasn’t what I was hearing now. “Abby, yes, I’m Detective Seagate. Thank you for calling.”
“I’m not exactly sure why you wanted to talk to me, but Mr. Vines—at the university?—thought I should talk to you.”
“I’m glad you called, Abby. Listen, I’m gonna tell you what our thinking is, and give you an opportunity to ask any questions you want, but first I want you to know I’ve put you on Speaker so my partner, Detective Ryan Miner, can hear what we’re saying and participate if he wants. Is that okay?”
“You’re not tape recording this, are you?”
“No, you have my word on that. We’re not recording this. Nothing you say will be entered into any record or published in any way. This is a completely informal discussion, and it’s totally off the record. Do you understand me?”
“I’m just kinda freaked out about my privacy, you know what I mean?”
“I absolutely understand. What you’re going through is a terrible thing. A terrible invasion of your privacy. And let me assure you: Our purpose is to find out who’s harassing you and threatening you—and use every resource of the law to stop it immediately. And if a crime has been committed, we’ll do everything we can to prosecute that person or persons. The county prosecutor is totally on-board with this. So I want you to know you can trust us to do whatever is necessary to protect you.” I paused. “Let me start, okay?”
“Go ahead.”
“Tell me about making the video. Why did you make the video?”
There was silence for a few seconds. “I thought you were going to help stop people threatening me. What difference does it make why I made the video?”
“Abby, bear with me. Like I said, if we’re gonna stop people from hurting you, we need to understand how the information about the video got out. To do that, we need to start with the facts about how the video was made. So let me ask you again: Why did you make the video?”
“You’ve seen the video?”
“Not the whole thing. Enough to know it’s you.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Abby, I used to work in the vice detail. I’ve seen thousands of videos. Men, women, children, animals. I look at them as a cop. You know what it says on the side of our cruisers? To protect and to serve. That’s all I’m doing.”
“The other detective, did you say he’s a guy?”
“Yes, his name is Ryan Miner.”
“I don’t want to talk about this in front of a guy. Could you ask him to leave the room?”
“Of course. I understand.” I turned to Ryan. “Detective, would you please excuse us?”
“Absolutely.” He put up his palms to ask if I really wanted him to go. I shook my head and waved my hand down to signal him to stay.
I waited a few seconds. “Okay, Abby, he’s gone. Tell me about making the video. Why did you do it?”
There was silence, then I heard her clear her throat. “It was m
aybe ten days ago. You know, Krista was at our class, maybe a month ago, at Professor Rinaldi’s house … well, I guess it was Krista’s house, too. I mean, she lived there. Anyway, Krista had been talking about what she does. She’s an escort.”
Ryan raised his eyebrow at the word escort.
“We started talking, and she was, like, really nice. She asked if I wanted to go out for a drink. I asked her if, you know, that would be all right with Professor Rinaldi. She sort of laughed, which I think she meant that the professor’s not the possessive type. Or jealous or anything. Anyway, the two of us went out for a drink. I’d heard Krista’s story in her talk to our class, but I never felt she was telling us anything beyond the official story. You know, like what Professor Rinaldi wanted us to learn about the sex business, or whatever it’s called.”
“Okay, so you’re out with Krista, at a bar, right?”
“Yeah, we’re out and having a good talk. At this point, it’s not romantic or sexual or whatever you want to call it. But one drink become three or four, then I don’t know how many, and pretty soon I’m really drunk, and so is Krista. We start talking about, you know, women. Which I’ve always been curious about. Not curious as in I ever did it. But, you know, in Professor Rinaldi’s course we talked about a lot of different things, including how sex workers sometimes separate their professional lives from the personal lives. Some of them only hang out with other women, even though they aren’t, you know, lesbians. I mean, they don’t see themselves as lesbians. I just wanted to know about Krista’s story, and she told me. We made a date for a few days later, in the evening.”
“Where did you meet?”
“My place. I knew my roommate would be out. So Krista shows up. She’s carrying a bottle of wine, and she’s got this guy with her. She tells me he’s gonna video it and give it to me, like a souvenir? Like she’s done this before. I’ve made some amateur videos with a couple boyfriends, but they were really bad. You know, a camera on a tripod. So the three of us start drinking the wine. I had too much. Anyway, Krista and I get undressed.”
“The guy’s not there to have sex with you, too?”
“You know, I didn’t know if Krista had a three-way in mind. He was a good-looking guy, and I’m not sure what I would’ve done if that was the plan. Part of my attraction to Krista was that she knew all kinds of shit I didn’t know about. It was very mysterious—and daring, you know, to a girl like me. But the guy wasn’t there to have sex with us. He really was there just to film it. Krista and I had sex, and it was fantastic. At the end, the guy packs up his gear—he’s got all these bags for the camera and the lenses and whatever. I asked him to give me the video like Krista said he would. He says he wants to edit it a little and put some titles on it and some music, and then he’ll run it by my place tomorrow.”
“And that seemed okay with you?”
“Sure, I mean, I was pretty drunk.”
“What happened then?”
“The guy left, me and Krista did it once more, and we agreed to meet again.”
“What did you two have in common?”
I glanced over at Ryan. He was rolling his eyes, like that was the stupidest question I’d ever asked anyone. Stupid, maybe, but the stupidest? Hardly.
“Professor Rinaldi. Krista told me about her—you know, what she was like, why she liked Krista. What she was like in bed. I don’t know, I’m not the best student. I can’t compete with Professor Rinaldi, who’s super-smart and super-accomplished and everything. It just seemed exciting to me that my teacher’s girlfriend was cheating on her—with me.”
“So you thought you were gonna take Krista away from Professor Rinaldi?”
“I don’t think I’d go that far, but it just seemed that I was, you know, special. A little bit special. For a while.”
“Okay, so when did you start to get harassing messages?”
“Let me think.” She paused, like she was trying to get the date right. “Two or three days later.”
“Can you describe the messages?”
“A lot of them were, you know, fans. Horny troll fans. They liked when I did this, they liked that. You know, that move I did at 3:14 in the video. That kind of creepy thing. A lot about how they’d like to get together with me and Krista—”
“They knew the other woman was named Krista?”
“Yeah, and they knew my name was Abby.”
“That must have been confusing. Because at this point you didn’t know that the video was online. So how would they even know your names?”
“I mean, right? I’m totally confused. I’m thinking Krista showed the video to some of her friends or something. Or the guy did.”
“What form did the messages take? Were they emails, texts?”
“Both. A lot of the emails were from CMSU students—at least they had CMSU email addresses. They could’ve been employees, whatever. Some of them had addresses you couldn’t tell who they were from. A lot of texts, from area codes I didn’t recognize.”
“That must have been disturbing, knowing that people knew your phone and email.”
“Exactly, because I’m not in the phone book or anything, so how are they getting my information?”
“And the harassing messages? What did they say?”
“A lot of name-calling. You know, the obvious. Skank. Whore. Cunt. Then a bunch of names I’d never heard. Cum dumpster. Swamp donkey.”
“What else did the messages say?”
“How I shouldn’t be in Montana, shouldn’t be at CMSU. How I should go to LA or New York or someplace and just be a whore, which is what I am anyway. Some of them scared the shit out of me.”
“What did the scary ones say?”
“Some of the emails were about how the guy was going to track me down and fuck me so hard I’d stop being a lesbian. Some said I had to be removed from campus because I was polluting it. How I was indecent, like I was contagious or something and had to be killed. Really weird shit. There are some sick people out there. I’m still scared, you know what I mean? I can’t sleep. I’m not eating. I mean, I can’t even take a decent shit.”
“It must be very disturbing.”
I saw Ryan jotting a note. He slid it across his desk to mine. It said, “Will she let us have access to her email and phone?” I asked her the question.
“Sure, I don’t care. Mr. Vines from CMSU asked me that, and I told him, whatever you want.”
“Abby, how do you think the video got online?”
“You know, that’s what I’ve been asking myself, over and over. I found the video online and tracked down the company, but they wouldn’t talk to me. I don’t know who did it. It was either Krista or the guy who filmed it. Maybe the guy is her pimp or whatever. Maybe Krista’s getting into porn. Or the guy did it without telling her. You know, went behind her back.”
“Do you think it could’ve been Professor Rinaldi?”
Abby Demarest was silent for a moment. “I never thought of that.” She paused. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she found out about the video and wanted to take you out of the picture. She figured since Krista’s a prostitute, it’s not gonna be the end of the world for her. But for you—a college student—she figures there’s no way you’re gonna keep seeing Krista.”
“Holy shit. You know, that makes a lot of sense.”
“I don’t know, just throwing out ideas here.” I paused a second. “Abby, tell me about the guy who filmed the video. Can you describe him?”
“I don’t know. White, mid-twenties, average build. Maybe one-eighty. He had a neck beard. You know, the kind where you don’t shave it at all? T-shirt, dark blue. Blue jeans. Black sneakers: Chuck Taylors. He had a baseball hat on, backwards.”
“Can you remember any identifying marks? Tattoos, scars? Anything like that?”
“Not really. I was kinda paying more attention to Krista.”
“You said he spoke to you, how he was gonna edit the video and give it to you the next day
. Anything you can remember about his voice, the way he spoke? Do you think he sounded like a CMSU student?”
I heard her sigh into the phone. “I’m sorry. He didn’t really make an impression. I do remember being impressed that he really knew what he was doing with the camera equipment. He worked fast, had the whole thing set up in a minute. So maybe he’s a film student or a professional photographer. That’s where I’d look.”
“That’s good information. So you never got the video from him, right?”
“That’s right. The next day, when he didn’t show, I was going to get in touch with Krista, but I realized I didn’t even have a phone for her. And I didn’t even know this guy’s name.”
“And you couldn’t ask Professor Rinaldi for Krista’s contact information.”
“I wanted to, but I knew the first thing she’d ask is, Why do you want to know?”
“So you found out the video was online when one of the trolls told you?”
“Yeah. A bunch of them told me the Web address. I went there, and I tell you, I almost died when I saw it up there. It had, like, a couple thousand hits in three days.”
“Abby, you say you started getting these harassing and threatening messages about a week ago, right? When did you report it to the university?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“I was scared shitless. Plus, totally ashamed of what I’d done. Like I’d been tricked. You know, like those scams you read about, where assholes email you and tell you you just won a lot of money but you gotta give them a few hundred to get the money? I felt like someone had set me up, and I just walked right into it. I hoped it would stop, and I wouldn’t have to tell the university. But so many of the messages were coming from the university I felt I didn’t have a choice. There was one other thing, too.”
“What was that?”
“My parents. I was scared out of my mind they would find out.”
“They would freak out, make you come home?”
“I didn’t care about that so much.” I heard her sobbing. “It would kill them. Their little girl in a porn video—a lesbian video—on the Internet? It would kill them. That’s why I was afraid to call the police. I could just see it getting into the newspaper.”
