“Okay.”
“We went over the things we got out of Greyson’s apartment. There were four digital cameras, but the memory sticks were all missing.”
“Not in the apartment?” asked McKenna.
“Went over everything four times. Not there.”
“Maybe what we got in the email.”
So it seemed Massey knew this art dealer who did a Sistine Ceiling with his body in the airport garage. How does the dealer fit in? Did Massey like both kids and men? Or just child porn buddies, swapping pictures and occasionally, kids? Why was Olivia chatting with all those adult men, some in their forties and fifties? Those guys had all checked out clean. Perverts maybe, but not killers.
Where could Rachel have gone in the middle of the night? And why? Her cell phone records didn’t indicate she made or received a call at that hour. Meeting a boy? She had a dorm all to herself in Manhattan that she could use anytime, so why leave in the middle of the night? Something occurred to him. Olivia and Rachel shared a room. He found the photo. Yes, there was an alarm clock radio next to Rachel’s bed.
“I need someone to find out if Rachel’s alarm clock was set to go off in the middle of the night and I need it now,” he said on the phone. He kept sifting through the emails. His phone rang.
“Yep, it was set to go off at 12:30 a.m.”
So she had an appointment―with who? Not that Joules kid. With Massey? Was she screwing the priest?
His cell went off again. This time it was the lab. This was it.
“McKenna here.”
“We’ve ID’d the body in those bags. It’s Evan Massey.”
assey had gotten to the Richmond Hill house early to prepare. All he needed to do now was cock the spear guns. He waited in the bedroom for his prey to enter the house.
No one had seen him arrive; in any case, he was disguised. He reviewed the plan once more.
After the killing, he would wrap the body in the plastic drop cloth he had picked up at Home Depot and seal the ends shut with Gorilla Tape. Then he would put the body in the trunk of his car. No one would see that either, thanks to the direct entry from the living room. He’d dump the body in the Meadowlands swamps with diving weights attached and that would be it.
This would delay the discovery by at least a few weeks. And if by chance the body was found, there would be no connection to him. The ID he had used to rent this house was fake, and he doubted the realtor could ever recognize him through the disguise and accent. He would take the Washington job, then, after a few months, resign for personal reasons and retire to Costa Rica, pedophile capital of the Western Hemisphere. There, he could collect the royalties from his book, continue writing, and set up another children’s shelter with ample donations from expats. There would be no way to trace anything to him. This screwed up his grand plans, but he had to reinvent himself and adapt, that’s all. For money, he had access to all the Transcendence House funds, which he would raid when the time was right. He had set up a generous retirement account for himself which he would tap into in the coming months.
Once he was settled into his new home, he would have the rest of the money wired down to Banco Nacional in San Jose and no one would ever hear from him again. For the past year, he had been looking into real estate in South America, and Costa Rica was the best place on all counts―weather, generous pensionado program, cheap cost of living and, above all, lots of promiscuous kids who don’t mind selling themselves for a few bucks. Heaven.
But all that would have to wait. One more task to take care of and it had to be done right.
He had left the front door deliberately unlocked. The target would have to walk through the foyer and make a left to enter the living room. From that angle, all would be invisible from the doorway in case someone happened by.
He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes to go. Massey loaded a bolt into the first spear gun and cocked it. He repeated it for the second. One shot through the center of the body should end it. The second would pierce the throat and silence the victim. At this range, he couldn’t miss. The practice in his basement gave him confidence.
Every muscle in his body tensed as he heard footsteps coming up the front stoop. The lights were on out front and he had a view of the street from a dark corner of the kitchen window.
A figure appeared. Alone, as agreed. The figure paused in front of the house and looked both ways. The head tilted toward the address over the front door.
Massey moved into position.
An instant later, the screen door squeaked open. The doorknob turned.
Massey wiped the sweat dripping from his brow.
The screen door closed and the entry door shut behind it.
Massey raised the weapon.
Emerging out of the foyer, the figure came into view, still in shadow.
Massey took aim at the midsection, his finger curled around the trigger. The figure advanced and came into the light.
Massey fired.
The spear bounced off the target’s chest and fell to the floor.
Massey grabbed the second spear gun as the figure turned its head toward him. The priest fired, but again the projectile glanced off the torso and hung from the jacket.
“You’re careless, Father,” said the Webmaster without a hint of fear. “Careless and stupid. Lovely girl you got to masquerade as Cindy. I hope you got into her pants.”
Massey had Gabriella send the killer a photo of herself taken when she was thirteen. For the next chat session, she put her hair in pigtails and got on the webcam. The man at the other end was certainly pleased with what he saw. Massey took over as Cindy and invited “Gerard” to the Richmond Hill address, where Cindy’s friend was staying alone until her parents returned from Europe. Massey had to kill him before he was caught and brought everyone down with him.
Both Massey and Greyson figured out that the Webmaster was killing the girls, because they had sent them to him. Greyson had sent him Kirsten Schrodinger, and Massey had sent him Belinda Knights. Both had turned up dead. And now Olivia was gone. As members of the Webmaster’s child porn site, they had been swapping kids for two years without a hitch. Then they started dying.
It wasn’t hard to find his target on the Internet. He knew where this predator lurked.
The man removed a Taser from his jacket and leveled it at the priest. “When I was a boy, I used to go to church every week and kneel in front of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. I did this for years. And look at me. He shot the priest in the abdomen. As Massey convulsed on the floor, the man calmly went on.
“The picture I sent you of that handsome young man was a Trojan horse, letting me inside your PC. Thirteen-year-old girls don’t have schedules that include speaking before the Elks and meeting with the First Lady.”
Massey’s mouth was locked in the open position, but no sound came out as his limbs flailed.
The figure picked up a spear gun.
“Quite a weapon. Three bands―you weren’t taking any chances. I used one of these on a man once. But it was underwater where everything is in slow motion.”
Massey got tangled in the wires, and the muscles of his face jumped over one another.
The Webmaster removed his jacket, revealing the body armor that covered his chest. He turned off the Taser, then kicked Massey in the face.
“Now I have a question for you. Were you in on the hit the other day?”
The priest rolled on the floor, spasming. A foot came down on his neck to steady him.
“I need an answer. Were you in on it?”
“No,” he managed to reply.
“Taking a man’s life is a serious thing. As you’re about to find out.”
He tied the priest’s hands behind his back with Flexicuffs, then proceeded to cut his clothes off. Once naked, the interrogation began. The Webmaster pulled a chair up next to the bound man like a confessor.
“I try to get to know all my victims as well as I can in the brief time we have together, but usually
they’re very young and there isn’t much depth to their lives. But you―you are really accomplished. You’ve lived a fairly long and distinguished life, and I wonder how someone like you ends up trying to commit murder. How a young girl sells her body is easy to understand―youth, money―I get that. But you went through seminary―St. Bartholomew, I believe. In Brooklyn. You became an ordained priest, and still you’re willing to kill. You were already a child predator. I don’t judge you for it, but make me understand how someone who has come so close to God can turn away and become evil, as you have become. I need to know all your sins.”
When there was no answer, he thrust the heel of his shoe into the priest’s genitals.
“I’m trying to prepare you to face your Lord. Now confess. Get it all off your chest. I’m your only salvation. Repent.”
He confessed his sins to his executioner. Krupal, the girls, everything.
“I downloaded your book off your PC―The Infinite Hypocrisy. Noble work, getting them water for their parched throats. Then, of course, you shoved your cock down their daughters’ throats. I would have done the same. We’re kindred spirits, you and I.”
The killer rolled Massey onto a plastic drop cloth and removed several plastic bags from his coat and a hacksaw. He put a strip of tape across the condemned man’s mouth, then cut off his head.
olice had Dr. Sartorius under surveillance while waiting for a court order to get into his PC based on the evidence Joules had provided. McKenna had checked on the admissibility of all this. The police couldn’t hack into anyone’s computer without a warrant, but if someone else did the hacking and turned it over to police, it would constitute probable cause.
McKenna recalled how the FBI had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, the twentieth hijacker, but weren’t allowed to get into his PC until after the 9/11 attacks. It would have been worth it to blow the case on Moussaoui to find out about 9/11. McKenna called Joules.
“I need you to bring everything you have on these men down to the precinct. I need all the downloads. A Suffolk County Police car will be there in a few minutes to pick you up.”
“No need. I’m at Cooper Union downtown.”
“I’ll send an unmarked car.”
A search of Rachel’s dorm had uncovered a camera containing the same photos that were in the email police had received anonymously a few days earlier. So Rachel had sent them. She had stayed overnight in the homeless shelter posing as a runaway. Had she―could she have stayed in the homes of these pedophiles? Could a Columbia kid be that stupid?
Joules placed his laptop on McKenna’s desk. Police were already combing through Rachel’s computer.
“It’s not all decrypted yet, but there’s plenty,” said Joules.
“Brief our Cyber Crimes guys on everything you found,” said McKenna. “They’ll need to copy the downloads and delete the child porn from your computer.”
McKenna had done a quick background check on Joules. Male friends of missing girls were always persons of interest. He didn’t expect what he’d found. The kid had been making contributions to science since he was fourteen, for Christ’s sake. Full ride to Cooper Union. Second place nationwide in that Intel contest. Just don’t blow it, kid.
After Joules was done with Cyber Crimes, he came back.
“She left the house around midnight,” said McKenna. “Which is what her alarm clock radio was set to. Any idea who she might be meeting? She just started college, did she mention anything about a boyfriend―you’re not her boyfriend, are you?”
“No, on both counts.”
“She was in the homes of these men, these pedophiles, wasn’t she?”
“She told me she was.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“She called me on Monday asking for help in decrypting the files. I asked her how she got the IP addresses of the computers and she told me she’d planted a RAT on each one.”
“A rat?”
“Remote Administration Tool. It enables you to hack into the machine later and also downloads basic information you’ll need to connect like the external router address and the machine’s IP address.”
“So to place this RAT on the PC she actually had to be there in the house?”
“You don’t have to have physical access―it can be done remotely with a Trojan horse if you can get the target to execute it. But in her case, she was at their homes.”
“I don’t think she was invited there to install a RAT on their PCs. Any idea why she was there in the first place?”
“She just said that some of these men knew Olivia. She was sure about that.”
“Is it possible that she was meeting one of them again―or going to the house of another man?”
“At this point, I’d say anything is possible. She was desperate to find her sister, especially after the Schrodinger girl turned up dead.”
“How many separate PCs did you hack into?”
“Three. But some of these guys might not have PCs or maybe she didn’t get access to them. So there’s no telling how many homes she went to.”
“Did she say she was by herself when she did this―going to these homes?”
“She didn’t say, and I guess I didn’t want to ask.”
After Joules left, McKenna sat there trying to figure out Rachel Wallen. If she was doing this alone, she was putting out for the pedophiles, thought McKenna. Looks like her sister was hustling too. What the hell was going on with these kids? Giving sex was like giving out lollipops these days. The good-night kiss was now the good-night blow job.
A few minutes later, a voice came over the intercom.
“That Joules kid is back. He needs to talk to you.”
“Send him in.”
When the boy walked in, he looked at the detective as dispassionately as if he had just figured out another math problem.
“I know who the killer is.”
“Let me get this straight,” said McKenna. “You’re telling me that you connected to Massey’s PC and from Massey’s machine you connected to a second PC?”
“Right,” said Joules.
“Through Massey’s machine?”
“Yes.”
“So the Schrodinger video was actually on the second machine?”
“Right.”
“How do you know this?”
“Just before I accessed the directory that contained the Schrodinger video, the data transfer speed slowed down drastically. I didn’t think much of it until I was walking out of here just now. I looked at the properties of an icon on Massey’s machine that I clicked on before the response time slowed. It’s a login macro that connects to another computer and autofills the ID and password. Everything I captured after that was on another machine. It also explains why some files don’t have Massey as the author if you look at the properties of the files.”
“And whose PC was it on?”
Joules clicked on an email and highlighted the name at the top.
“This guy.”
chara bowed three times before her shrine and said a prayer for safety. She kissed her vihara, wishing she could take this one possession. Now she waited for Tong to tell her to fetch the beer.
When he appeared in the doorway, she extended her hand to receive the money for the last time. He was going to go thirsty today.
Four blocks from the brothel, she flagged down a cab.
“Doi Lo,” she said.
Achara could see the driver checking her out in the mirror. She couldn’t tell if he knew she was a prostitute or if he was just uneasy about getting his fare from a sixteen-year-old. Either way, she didn’t like it. He started to make conversation and she cut him off. The last thing she needed now was to leave any clues. As the familiar part of town receded, she opened the window for some fresh air. Her hand rested on the outline of the passport in her pocket. She took a small number of bills out that she would use to pay the cab. The dollars were secure against her ankles, but the bulges now showed as she sat down. She hadn’t thought
of that.
The traffic was horrendous as always and it took over an hour to get to Doi Lo.
“Four-hundred baht,” said the driver.
“That ride was worth only three-hundred.”
“Three-fifty.”
“Three-twenty-five.” She held out the money.
When she exited the cab, she waited for him to vanish from sight, then flagged down another cab. This way, the first driver wouldn’t know her final destination if questioned.
“The airport,” she said.
“Picking someone up?”
“Yes.”
This would take another forty minutes with traffic, and then she would have to elude Tong for another five hours until the flight left.
When Achara didn’t return, Tong summoned all the girls to the front porch. He took out a cane and threatened to beat every girl. No one could tell him anything. Nothing was missing from her room, so she either ran away, or some other pimp had stolen her.
One of the police he employed came up the steps and reported that someone had seen her get into a taxi two blocks away.
He went with the police officer to question the witness.
“What kind of taxi did she get into,” asked the pimp.
“New York Style Taxi,” answered the old man. Tong threw him a hundred baht.
At the dispatch office of the New York Style Taxi Company, Tong paid the dispatcher another hundred baht to find out who had given a ride to a girl of Achara’s description in the last two hours. There was only one driver. He had dropped her off at Doi Lo.
“Show me a map,” he demanded. She had taken the taxi north on 108 to Doi Lo. Who did she know in Doi Lo?
Tong called the police captain and told him to send a police car to his location with three men.
Tong rode in the police car with the siren screaming. They cut through all the traffic and got there in twenty-five minutes. This girl was going to be punished in front of the others, so he would never have this problem again. No one was going to make a fool out of him.
“How many taxi companies you have here?” Tong asked a Doi Lo police sergeant when they arrived.
The Schwarzschild Radius Page 20
