Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Visit to a Chat Room by Timothy F. Dempsey

“In the Internet age,” says Timothy Dempsey, “just a moment’s weakness can lead to grave con-sequences. There are probably millions of good family men [like the one in this story] who could suddenly appear to be less than they are.” Mr. Dempsey lives in North Carolina. He has been published in several professional journals, but this is his first fiction. He is currently finishing up his first novel.

Fred was about to hit the snooze alarm for the third time when he realized he had better get out of bed. It took each member of the family a little longer on Mondays, and each of them relied on him to get things started. If he slept too late, the morning became a panic and everyone blamed him. He’d rather drag his head off the pillow now than have to listen to all the chatter that would come his way if he delayed. He swung his legs off his side of the bed, slipped on his boxers, and stumbled down the hallway. He stuck his head in his son’s room. “David, time to get up.” David mumbled, but Fred knew his words were not registering. He walked in and shook his fifteen-year-old’s shoulder. “David, it’s seven-oh-seven; I’ll be back in ten minutes to make sure you’re up. You need to print out your paper, remember?”

“Dad, go away.”

“You asked me to remind you!”

“Remind me in ten minutes.”

Fred backed out of the room and proceeded down the hallway. He knocked on his daughter’s door. No response. He knocked louder. “Pumpkin, time to get up.” Still no reply. He cracked open the door and peeked in, knowing how much Connie hated it if he looked in on her while she was dressing. All he saw was a big lump under the heavy quilt. As he shook the lump, he looked beyond it to the empty bed on the other side of the room, so nicely made and covered with a collection of colorful stuffed animals, most of them acquired, one at a time, on his business trips. As usual, he had a twinge, just a moment, of missing his other daughter, wondering what routine she used to get out of bed in the dorm. “Come on, Connie, time to roll. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

He retreated to his bedroom, noticed that his wife, Sheila, was still sleeping, and quietly slipped into their bathroom, closing the door behind him. He ran the shower to get the hot water up while he brushed his teeth. He just needed a quick rinse, having showered and shaved the night before. He dried himself hurriedly, slipped into a pair of sweatpants, and threw on a T-shirt, preparing himself for round two.

Back to David’s room. “Seven twenty-one, Son; boat sails in thirty-nine minutes.”

“All right, all right, I’m up.” That was easy. Knock on Connie’s door. No reply. Crack the door again. The lump had not budged; there were no indications that it harbored any signs of life. He leaned over and shook it. “Connie, thirty-eight minutes to liftoff.” Nothing, not a stir. He dug at the quilt trying to locate her head, pulled the quilt back and saw the mass of unkempt, tangled, and knotted blond hair. Her face must be in there somewhere. He brushed the hair back till he found it, smiled at how peaceful she looked, then all but yelled, “C’mon, Connie, it’s time to get up. Let’s go.” She half opened her eyes, barely uncovering her baby blues behind the narrow slits.

“Uumpf,” she said, but that was enough for Fred.

He bounded down the stairs, let the dog out into the fenced-in backyard, and walked up the front driveway to retrieve his Newsday. Back inside, he checked to assure that all the bodies were stirring. David was in the shower and Connie was pounding on the door telling him to hurry up. Good. Everything was normal. He put the coffee on, grabbed some cereal, a bowl, and some milk, and sat at the breakfast table to look at the paper. Starting at the back, he checked the football scores first and scanned some of the articles, happy that the Jets had won the Sunday-night game, during which he had fallen asleep. He flipped the paper to the front, just as David and Connie entered the kitchen. He glanced up at the digital clock on the microwave and said, “Nine minutes to liftoff.”

Both kids groaned at the same time. Connie said, “Dad, don’t you ever get tired of annoying us?”

He laughed, grabbed his “World’s Greatest Dad” mug of coffee, and headed up the stairs, dropping a quick and curt “Morning” to Sheila as he passed her on the stairs. Out of the sweats and T-shirt and into a golf shirt and khakis in no more than a minute. God, he loved casual dress. Since they’d stopped insisting on suits in the office, a good ten minutes of his time had been freed up every morning. He looked in the mirror and ran his hand through his thinning hair, bounded down the stairs, poured the rest of his coffee into an Amazon.com travel cup, and added some hot coffee from the pot to top it off. “C’mon, kids, let’s go, time to move out. It’s eight-oh-two; we’re two minutes late; let’s get the lead out.”

Sheila was standing by the coffee machine. She had turned the TV on and she was watching the Today show. He leaned down to kiss her goodbye and he could see that she was upset. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“It’s happened again.”

“What’s happened again, Hon?”

“A fourteen-year-old girl. Kidnapped right out of her own bedroom.” She looked up with tears in her eyes, then glanced across the room at her thirteen-year-old daughter. “Fred, she lives out on the Island, on the North Fork, just an hour or so from here. Oh God, Fred, this is so frightening. I don’t care what you say, I want a house alarm. I don’t care what it costs. I’m calling today. I’m going to have one installed as soon as possible.”

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you want. But we gotta go.”

After dropping the kids at school, Fred parked at the train station, ran up the stairs to the platform just as the 8:22 was pulling in. Boy, that was close, he thought, knowing this was the last train that could get him into the office by nine-thirty, about as late as he could be without suffering the stares. Happy to get a window seat, he booted up his laptop and went over his charts, assured himself that the numbers were right, and prepared his remarks. He would have to tell his manager that he’d missed last month’s quota, but just by a few thousand dollars. He would more than make it up this month.

After the ten-o’clock staff meeting, during which he took his punishment in stride, he spent the day on the phone, calling customers, checking with suppliers, and bantering with his secretary. He lunched at his desk and worked straight through until six. He left the office disappointed that he had not gotten a new order, had not started the month off with a bang.

“Screw it,” he said out loud as he entered Penn Station. Rather than run for the 6:30, he stopped for a quick beer and then settled into a corner seat on the 6:56. He looked through the evening Post, read about the kidnapping. The girl had gone to bed around ten. Her parents were sure her light was out and she was in bed sleeping when they went to bed after the eleven o’clock news. When they went to wake her in the morning, her bed was empty. There was no real sign of a struggle, but her window was open, and there was mud all over her window sill and on her white carpet. Outside her window, the flowerbed had been trampled. He closed the paper, closed his eyes, and nodded off for about ten minutes, waking magically just as the conductor called out the Huntington Station.

As he was driving to pick up David from lacrosse practice, his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and saw it was home. Sheila must need milk, he thought, knowing he was risking a ticket as he answered it, saying, “Shea Stadium.” He laughed out loud as Sheila sighed disgustedly. He was the only one who thought his tired and worn-out joke was still funny.

“Fred, where are you?”

“I’m on 110, Hon, don’t worry. I didn’t forget about David; I’m almost to the field.”

“David’s home. I went and picked him up early. Fred, you have to get home right away. Hurry, please!” There was a sense of urgency in her voice that alarmed him and then the line went dead. He did a quick, illegal U-turn and sped home, going through red lights and stop signs as if they weren’t there. In the six minutes it took him to reach his block, his heart had started racing and he was sweating and anxious, afraid that something terrible had happened. As he turned the corner, he saw a late-model black sedan parked in his driveway. He picked up his cell phone and dialed 911 as he cautiously walked up the path to the front door.

“What is the nature of your emergency, please?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “something is wrong at my house. Just hold the line for a second; I’m going in.”

“Sir, maybe you shouldn’t go in... Do you want police or fire assistance?”

“I don’t know,” he yelled, “just hold on for one second while I find out!” He opened the door and saw two men in dark suits standing in his kitchen. One of them was gray-haired and balding, early fifties, close to Fred’s age. The other was much younger, around thirty or so. He wore dark sunglasses that were unable to disguise the anger in his face. Seated at the table were his wife and his two children, all of whom looked absolutely terrified. Connie had clearly been crying. He spoke into the phone, “Police. Seventeen Elm, and hurry, please.”

The older one walked over, reached out his hand, and showed him a badge. “That won’t be necessary, sir; we’re with the FBI.”

“What’s going on?” Fred stammered.

“We’d like you to come with us, sir. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

“What about?” He was mystified.

“You might not want to discuss this in front of your family, sir.”

“I have nothing to hide from my family. What the hell is this all about, anyway?” He was getting angry and upset now.

“It’s about a kidnapping, sir. We’d like to ask you about the kidnapping last night in Greenport.”

Sheila broke in, despite the angry look from the agent. “I already told them that we were home all last night, Fred, but they won’t listen to me. They won’t go away.”

“Why don’t you just come with us, sir?” The younger one had spoken for the first time, the impatience prominent in his voice. Fred was somehow slightly relieved when he saw the squad car pull up, with the Huntington police, who got out carefully, hands on their holsters, ready for action. As they walked up the driveway, the older agent very slowly and carefully opened the side door and held his gold badge up high, telling the police, “We’re federal agents, Officers. Everything here is under control.” The cops walked in and looked at the badge. One of them walked out and looked at the license plate on the car, then got on his radio. The other one just stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying the scene.

His partner came back after putting the radio down and said to Fred, “They’re legitimate, sir. I’m afraid there’s not much more we can do.” The cops backed out, but sat in their car to watch.

The older agent let out a big sigh, turned to Fred, and said, in a not very friendly voice, “Look, sir, time is precious right now. We are trying to find this girl. Are you coming with us or not?”

“No, not until I find out what the hell you are bothering me about it for. My wife told you we were home all night. I don’t think I’ve been out to the North Fork in twenty years. What is this all about?”

“Fine, sir, if you want to do this in front of your family, that’s up to you. Do you spend a lot of time on your computer, sir?”

“I spend some. I don’t know if it’s ‘a lot.’”

“Do you ever visit chat rooms, sir?”

“Occasionally.” For the first time, Fred’s voice quivered ever so slightly.

“Do you use the screen name ‘Hotdamndaddy’?”

Fred froze at the mention of the name. His knees buckled a little and he thought he was going to faint. He couldn’t speak. He looked at his wife, asking for forgiveness and understanding all in a fast glance. He looked at his daughter, knowing she would have the most trouble with this. She read his eyes and started crying again. “Ohmigod, Daddy, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, Pumpkin. It’s all a misunderstanding. Let me go with these gentlemen, and I’ll get it cleared up.”

As they left the house, Fred noticed the television crew just setting up by the curb, the reporter rushing to get her microphone in his face. Instinctively, he put his hands in front of his face, hiding himself, like all the common criminals he’d seen on TV. The reporter stuck the mic out and brusquely asked, “Excuse me, Mr. Miller, do you know anything about the kidnapping of Amanda Leavy?”

He took his hands down for a moment and looked straight at her, not at the camera, as he barely whispered, “No, no, I don’t.” As the agent put his hands on Fred’s head and helped him into the backseat of the sedan, he began to cry, ever so softly, to himself. As they backed out of the driveway, he could see the reporter talking to Sheila on the front steps of his house.

They drove him over to Smithtown, no one talking on the way. As they entered the office, one of them, the younger one, asked him if he wanted a drink of water. “Yes. Please,” he stammered, hardly audible.

The interrogation started: “Where do you work?” “What do you do?” “Do you love your wife?” “Have you ever been arrested?” The agents were relatively polite, but slowly they inched closer to him. The younger one began to stick his face right in front of Fred’s, commanding a hold on his eyes, gripping them like a steel trap. “How often do you look at porn sites?” “Do you own any porn magazines or videotapes?” “Do you like little girls?” The lights and the questioning were beginning to suffocate Fred. He was sweating. He was answering all of their questions truthfully. He hardly ever looked at porn sites; he was normal; he was a good husband and a good father. He hadn’t done anything.

They finally honed in on the few facts they had. “Look, we have retrieved everything off her hard disk. There is a record of where she surfed. She had software that captured her chats. The owners of the site are cooperating fully. They have determined that ‘Hotdamndaddy’ is you. Look at this.” The young one threw some stapled papers at Fred.

He glanced down and looked at the typed transcript, his eye running quickly through the cryptic lines of sexual innuendo. He could feel himself paling, the blood draining from his face as he reached the final damning passage:

Shortly after typing that question — or was it an offer? — he had grown uncomfortable. He didn’t know why he was there, exchanging sexual suggestions with a stranger. He had quickly logged out of the chat room, discomfited, if a little titillated.

They started in on him again. “So you like little girls? You’ve had your share of virgins?” Up until this point, the older agent could have been an executive at Fred’s company. He had been polite and businesslike. Suddenly, he slammed his hand down on the desk and screamed at Fred, spittle spraying into Fred’s face, “WHERE IS SHE? DID YOU KILL HER? OR IS SHE HIDDEN SOMEWHERE? TELL US NOW, AND WE CAN HELP YOU. IF SHE DIES WHILE YOU’RE JERKING US AROUND, WE’LL PUT A NEEDLE IN YOUR ARM FOR SURE!”

He told his story again. “Look, my brother-in-law was over for the holidays. He’s single. He’s only twenty-six. He must have used my computer to visit some of those sites. He asked me if he could check his e-mail and of course I let him, but I didn’t watch him. After that I started to get all these junk e-mails, enticing come-ons: triple X, enhance your size, adult pictures, teenage pictures, all nude... all kinds of this crap. I deleted most of them, most of the time, but every now and then I clicked on one. I went to a few of the sites, but never for very long and never for very deep. I never paid a penny. I’d only see the tamer stuff that they show for free. But I did see nude pictures. I did see what looked like teenage girls. I felt guilty, thought of my own daughters. Then one day, for some reason, I guess I was bored, I did click on a chat-room button. I slid right into this joking that you see, back and forth, a few times. I don’t know how it happened. I can’t explain it. It only lasted a few minutes and I caught myself and logged off. I never even looked at that kind of site again after that. I was disgusted with myself. I didn’t know who ‘Sweetness’ was. She could have been an old woman in Sweden for all I knew. Or a fag pretending to be a young girl. I know all those things happen and I felt so foolish. I made a mistake. And I’m sorry. But it’s not what you think. I’m not a pervert. I had nothing to do with this poor girl’s disappearance.”

It went on like this all evening, throughout the night, and into the next morning. He was exhausted, tired, hungry. His spirit was broken. Each telling he’d get harder and harder on himself, feeling worse and worse for his indiscretion, beginning to believe that he was a pervert, that he did do something to hurt this girl. He cried, out loud now, visibly sobbing. He banged his head against the table as he blurted, “What do you want me to confess to, for God’s sake?”

Just then, the older agent was called outside, and he stayed outside for a good five minutes. The younger one lit up a cigarette, blew smoke into Fred’s face. When his partner came back in, he was a changed man. He looked defeated. He walked over to Fred and said, “You can go home now.”

The younger one mumbled, “What the—?”

Fred put his head down and cried in relief, purging himself, draining his emotions into his sleeve. After a minute or so, he looked up. “What happened? Did you find her? Is she all right? Is she dead? Did you find the killer?”

The older one just repeated, “You can go home now.”

Fred pulled himself together and went to the bathroom to wash his face. He held his hands over the sink and stared into his own eyes. They were hollow and dark and he could not see himself in them. He was afraid of the depth of the darkness, the emptiness that stared back at him.

He walked towards the front door, but was stopped by the younger agent. “No, there are too many reporters out there. We have a back way.” They went down into a cellar, across a long dark alleyway, and emerged almost a block away from where they had entered the night before. Another late-model black sedan was waiting for him, engine running, with a different agent in it, one he had not met before. Again, they drove in silence. As they turned the corner on his block, he saw the throng: multiple satellite dishes, TV vans, and at least fifty people hanging around on his front lawn. He asked the agent to pull all the way up into the driveway and he made a run for the back door before they could organize to block him. The door was locked, and he banged on it till Sheila finally came and let him in. The agent left without saying a word.

As he quickly closed the door behind him, locking it before the horde of reporters could muscle in, he reached for his wife and put his arms around her. He began to sob, crying openly, and repeating, “I’m sorry, Hon, I’m so sorry.” It took him a long minute before he realized that Sheila was not hugging him back, was not responding with any feeling at all. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, her body almost rigid. He stepped back a little, sliding his arms away, but kept his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. Obviously, she had had a miserable night as well. She had been crying, her face swollen, her eyes red and puffy, her hair unkempt and damp. She wore no makeup and looked as if she hadn’t slept a moment, either.

He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what she knew. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Sheila, I’m sorry, but I didn’t do anything, you know that, don’t you?”

“Please, spare me. No more lies. I can’t take it.” She turned away from his grasp, walked out of the kitchen, through the living room where the kids were sprawled on the floor with blankets and pillows, past the blaring television. She kept going, up the stairs towards the bedroom, but he stopped in his tracks, his very being pulled as if by a tractor beam into the TV screen, where he saw pictures of the killer: a young, disheveled, hirsute man in a dirty flannel shirt and torn jeans. Fred sat down on the edge of the chair, noticed the CNN logo in the corner, and tried to read all of the text crawling along the bottom of the screen: “Drifter followed victim home from local mall. Suspect chose victim at random. No prior relationship. Victim apparently strangled. No signs of sexual assault. Long Island salesman freed.”

His vision had tunneled, he could only see the television, and it took the third or fourth time that David called, “Dad, Dad, snap out of it,” before he could acknowledge his son’s presence.

“What, David, what?” He was defensive, almost screaming. “What do you want?”

“Whoa, that was scary... Are you okay?”

He lightened up a little. “Yes, son. I’m fine.”

“Why did they suspect you? Do you know this girl? Do you know the killer? Did you have ANYTHING to do with this?”

He saw that his son was near tears and that his daughter was just as frightened, hugging her pillow tightly to her chin, attempting to squeeze out the fear. “No, no, of course not. Apparently, I was once in the same on-line chat room as her, that’s all. There’s nothing more.”

At first relieved, David then seemed puzzled. “What kind of chat room? I didn’t know you even knew about chat rooms.”

“David, it’s not important. The important thing is that I had nothing to do with this. It was all a big misunderstanding. I love you, and I love you, Connie. I am so tired; it has been a terrible ordeal. I have to go see your mother.” When he arrived in the bedroom, he saw that she was asleep, curled in the fetal position, fully dressed on top of an unmade bed, hugging her pillow in much the same way that Connie had been hugging hers.

He took a long, hot shower. As the sweat and grime flowed down the drain, he tried to wash away the dirty feelings, but the pounding water was unable to cleanse his spirit. He slipped beyond remorse into emptiness. He felt that his very soul was vacant. He had hurt his family, and the whole world knew it. He had suggested something filthy to somebody’s daughter. He felt shame dragging him into an abyss, deeper than any darkness he had ever feared. For just a nanosecond, he imagined slitting his wrists with his straight-edge razor. He pictured his lifeblood flowing into the swirling drain, imagined himself crumpled into a heap on the floor of the shower, and wondered how long it would be before Sheila would find him.

He shook his head as he turned off the faucets, forcing the evil thoughts away. No, he said to himself, you’ll get through this. Your family needs you to get though this. He used the razor to shave and then peeked out the window to see that the number of reporters and cameras had been halved. But there were still a few satellite-dish equipped vans, one from the Long Island cable news channel. At least the national networks had bailed, he thought, as he went down to make some coffee, turning off the television as he passed through the living room, stepping over the children, both of whom had finally found some solace in sleep.

He saw that the phone was off the hook, the receiver sitting in the towel drawer, and he took it out and hung it up. It rang instantly. “Fred Miller. This is Eyewitness News. Can you tell us why the FBI arrested you?”

“I wasn’t arrested, just questioned.”

“Then tell us why they suspected you.”

“Uh, not right now. Give us some space, please.”

He hung up and the phone rang again immediately. “Is this Fred Miller?”

“Yes.”

“Joan Summers, Cable News 12. I’m right in your driveway. Can you come out for an interview, please?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to clear your name and tell your side of the story?”

“No.”

He hung up and the phone rang again. He stuck it back in the towel drawer.

Forgetting about coffee, he sat at the kitchen table, held his head up with his hands, and cried uncontrollably, muttering to himself, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” But he was no longer clear for what.

“DADDY! DADDY! LET ME IN!” He awoke with a start, unaware until waking that he had fallen asleep. He lifted his head off the table and felt a twinge of pain in his neck. He looked at the back door and could see his oldest daughter, Susan, peering through the blinds, several reporters sticking their microphones in her face, trying to get their cameras in position to see into the house. As he unlatched the door, he opened it only slightly, creating just enough space to let his daughter in but keep the flock out. Susan hugged him and began to cry. “Oh, Daddy, what’s going on?”

“Everything is going to be okay, Sugar; I didn’t do anything. It’s all a big misunderstanding.” He said it as if he were trying to convince himself. “What are you doing here? What about school?”

“I know Mom told me not to. But I couldn’t help it. I started driving almost as soon as I hung up with her, after she called to tell me the FBI took you into custody. Oh, Daddy, what was I supposed to do? Go to sleep and then to class? I just couldn’t, so I got in the car and started driving. I kept switching stations, trying to get news. I didn’t want to call Mom ’cause she’d tell me to go back, but I kept calling my friends to keep me busy. I was so relieved when they said they had arrested someone else, but just for a moment. Then I thought about that poor little girl. Oh, Daddy, did you know her?”

He sighed and looked at his feet, realizing that it was going to come out, no matter how many times he denied it. “Let me put some coffee on.” He shared the truth. As the rest of the family awoke and joined the klatsch, one by one, he retold the story, using the same words, the weight of which seemed to double with each admission. “I’m not a pervert. I have never cheated, never even thought about it. I looked at a few dirty Web sites, got embarrassed, and stopped doing it. But the e-mails poured in and every now and then I clicked on one. I don’t even know how I got in this chat room or why I became Hotdamndaddy.”

Each telling had less conviction, and he started to wonder just who he was. Was he a pervert? How could he adopt such a name? Who was he fooling with his lies about virgins? What did he expect out of such an exchange? Why had it titillated him? What were they going to say at work? Would they fire him? Would Sheila forgive him? Or Connie? How was he supposed to go on with his life?

Meanwhile, he could see it in their eyes, could see that they read his guilt and his shame; they felt his doubt. He could not defend himself, didn’t even try to defend the truth. How could he defend what he didn’t understand? But he did rationalize the unspoken judgments. After all, he was still the same person that he had been the day before, a good father and a good husband. He had so much love in his heart for his family; he would never knowingly hurt any of them.

He pleaded with Sheila. “Go outside with me. We have to get rid of the reporters. They won’t leave us alone until I go out and talk to them.”

“You got yourself into this; get yourself out of it.”

Susan and David went with him, but Connie remained aloof and distant. He stepped out, a child under each arm, and motioned for the reporters to gather and get ready for him to read a statement. He was shaking so badly that he had to hold the sheet of notebook paper with both hands. His voice faltered and cracked as he read: “My heart goes out to the family of Amanda Leavy. Their loss is impossible to fathom, and we should all respect their privacy and allow them space to mourn in peace. I have never met Amanda or any of her family, never spoke to them, never heard of them before last night. The FBI found my name in an Internet chat room that she had visited at the same time as me. Apparently, we had a short exchange. I respect the FBI, and all the police, for vigorously investigating all leads and for tracking down all possible clues. I was relieved, of course, that they were able to arrest her killer so quickly. I regret that a small indiscretion on my part diverted their attention, however briefly. I further regret the pain this incident has caused my family. I have nothing to add, other than to ask that you disassemble your stakeout and allow me and my family to get on with our lives. Thank you.”

Fred hugged his children, each in turn, and began to retreat to his front door. He heard some of the individual questions stand out from the cacophony of shouted voices: “What was the nature of your ‘indiscretion’?” “What is the name of the chat room where you met Amanda?” “What, exactly, were the words that you exchanged?” “Where is your wife?”

He lost his composure momentarily, and turned back in anger. “I told you, no more questions. Just leave me alone.”

As he entered the living room, he saw that Sheila had been sitting, watching his performance on television, surrealistically able to look up and see the back of his head through the blinds while the cameras focused on his face as he spoke. Her head remained still, as just her eyes reached up and grabbed his. He could not see even a trace of recognition, not a hint of the love they had shared for so many years. She spoke in a dry monotone, not a single inflection betraying her feelings. “You know, in time, you’ll have to answer those questions.”

Copyright ©; 2005 by Timothy F. Dempsey.