The King Tides

Chapter 24 Down the Rabbit Hole

In his experience, the best way to break bad news was over a meal. Eating food calmed people down when they were upset. He was sure there was a scientific explanation for it, not that he needed to hear it. Food soothed troubled souls.

He drove to the Pearls’ house with the smell of freshly baked bagels filling his car. He’d gotten to the Bagel Snack on Powerline a few minutes before opening and there still had been a line stretching down the sidewalk. According to the owner, the key to making a delicious bagel was the quality of the water. South Florida tap water was not fit for consumption, so the owner imported water from New York. It showed in every bite.

He parked in the Pearls’ driveway and took two bags off the seat before getting out. As he neared the front door, Carlo emerged from the hedge. He handed him a bag.

“Good morning. That’s for all of you,” he said.

Carlo glanced into the bag and grinned. “Thanks, Jon.”

“I should be the one thanking you. How have things been in my absence?”

“Karl and I were talking about that earlier. This street has way too much traffic for a residential neighborhood, especially at night. They’re after the girl, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you figured out why? She must have done something.”

It was an obvious conclusion that he’d been avoiding for days. Call it a state of denial born out of respect for the parents and their child. But that was no more.

“I’ll tell you someday over a cold beer,” he said. “In the meantime, I need to book you for a few more days until I get this worked out. Are you available?”

“Calendar’s wide open. Provided you keep bringing us food.”

“Deal.”

“Do you ever miss being a SEAL?” Carlo asked. “I was thinking the other night how those missions were probably the best time of my life.”

It was the best time of Lancaster’s life as well, until he’d spotted a little boy getting too close to his unit in Yemen. The hump beneath the kid’s shirt looked suspicious, and Lancaster’s quick thinking had saved his unit from getting blown up. He’d been a hero, but it hadn’t changed the fact that he’d shot a child, and he’d put in his papers the next week.

“I don’t miss it at all,” he said.

Pearl greeted him at the front door. The doctor looked upset, and justifiably so. If Nicki had been honest with her parents, a private investigator wouldn’t have been needed to figure out what was going on. Instead, the Pearls could have gone to the police, and gotten the Cassandra videos taken off the internet. Nicki’s lying had destroyed her parents’ faith in her and harmed their family. He handed his client the second bag.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Pearl said. “We haven’t told my daughter anything. Before you talk to her, I want to hear what you found.”

They stood in the foyer facing each other. They could hear Nicki and Melanie in the kitchen fixing breakfast. The Today Show played in the background.

“I found a dozen lewd videos of your daughter on Zack Kenny’s cell phone,” he said. “She posted them under the name Cassandra. They were made before your family moved here. Based upon things I saw on them, I think they were shot in Paris.”

Pearl brought his hand to his mouth. “A dozen?”

He nodded. It was a big, painful number.

“What is she doing on them?”

“Sometimes she’s lying in bed, other times she’s on a couch or in a chair or she’s dancing. In one, she’s taking a shower. She’s naked and talks dirty to the camera and then masturbates until she reaches orgasm.”

“Does she have sex in them?”

“Yes. In the last nine videos, she has sex.”

“Another teenager?”

“No, her partner is an adult.”

Pearl took a deep breath as if to steady himself. Lancaster placed his hand on the doctor’s shoulder and left it there. “We need to get this out in the open. That’s the only way we can move forward and come up with a solution.”

“I agree, Jon. And so does Melanie.”

“Nicki may not react well when I tell her what I’ve found. I want you and your wife to sit on either side of her, in case she decides to run. Nicki has to hear me out. Understood?”

“Loud and clear.”

He lowered his arm. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

They went to the kitchen. It had a small breakfast nook that contained a round table with four place settings and glasses of OJ. There was a basket with muffins, to which Pearl added the bagels. Melanie and Nicki were at the stove scrambling eggs and cooking bacon. The food was ready, and they fixed four plates. Melanie muted the TV, and they moved to the nook with their plates of food. Nicki sat sandwiched between her parents and dug in. She still had sleep in her eyes and wore no makeup. It was a far cry from the creature he’d watched the night before.

“I know why these men are stalking you,” he said, looking at the teenager as he spoke. “But before I tell you, I need to ask you a question.”

Nicki put down her fork. She could feel her parents’ stares, and it made her uncomfortable. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin.

“Okay,” she said.

“Before you moved to the United States with your parents, you went on a school-sponsored trip to Paris. You did something bad there, didn’t you?”

Ashamed, Nicki stared at her plate and did not reply. Melanie leaned toward her daughter and said, “Nicki, answer the question.”

“Who told you about Paris?” Nicki asked.

“I figured it out on my own. I’m a private investigator, Nicki. If there’s a secret out there, I’m going to uncover it. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“I screwed up,” the teenager said under her breath.

“I know you did. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

She took a deep breath. “We got there on a Friday night and checked into the hotel. It was late, so the teachers who were chaperoning us decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant. We ordered our food, and one of the chaperones ordered wine so we could have a toast. I think the waiter liked me, because he kept refilling my glass when it was empty.”

“Did you get drunk?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’d never had alcohol before, and I got a little woozy. Some of the other kids were messed up too.” She fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair. “We went back to our rooms and got ready for bed. It was after midnight, and I was really sleepy. Just as I was climbing under the covers there was a knock on my door. It was a girl named Mandy Schumacher. We’re in the same grade, and she was my friend. Mandy said she was having a party in her room, did I want to come? I didn’t see the harm, so I put my clothes back on and followed Mandy down the hall to her room. There were a bunch of other kids from my school there, and they were getting drunk.”

Nicki picked up her OJ and took a swallow. Her story made sense. Nicki had gotten drunk and acted out in rebellion against her parents and shot the videos.

“How did Mandy get the liquor?” he said. “Did a chaperone give it to her?”

“The chaperones didn’t know about the party. Mandy got the booze from the minibar in her room. The hotel was supposed to empty all the little bottles of booze out of our minibars, but Mandy’s room got missed. There was vodka and rum and some stuff that I’d never heard of before. The kids were mixing the booze with Coke to hide the taste, and they were all getting really smashed.”

“Did you get smashed?”

Nicki nodded and stared at her plate. Lancaster sensed that they’d reached the truly bad part of the story. He pressed her. “What happened then, Nicki?”

“What does this have to do with these men stalking me?”

“Everything. Now tell us.”

The kitchen had grown uncomfortably quiet.

“I passed out and got my stomach pumped,” the teenager said.

“What?” her mother shrieked.

“You never told us,” her father said, equally aghast.

Nicki lifted her gaze. She avoided her parents’ stares, preferring to look at Lancaster instead. “I don’t remember much of what happened. Mandy said that I threw up and then my eyes rolled up in my head and I passed out and hit the floor. I banged my head on the side of a chair, and everyone thought that I’d hurt myself.”

“Did you?” he asked.

“Luckily, I didn’t break anything,” she said. “Mandy went and got the chaperones. One of them called the front desk, and an ambulance came and took me to a hospital. When I came to, there was a rubber tube stuck down my throat and a nurse was pumping my stomach. It was really gross. I stayed in the hospital for a day, and then I was released. I was really weak, and I stayed in my hotel room for the rest of the trip.”

And made the videos, he thought. He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward and looked her in the eyes. “How many days were you in your hotel room?”

“Four.”

“What did you do during those four days?”

“I slept a lot and read a Stephen King book on my iPad. We also watched a lot of TV.”

“We? Was there someone with you?”

“The chaperones alternated staying with me. I was pretty weak. I guess they were also making sure that I didn’t get drunk again.”

“Did you?” Melanie asked.

Nicki turned to face her mother. “No, Mom. I learned my lesson. I haven’t had anything to drink since that trip, and I’m not sure I ever will.”

“Good choice,” Melanie said.

“So one of the chaperones stayed with you while you recuperated,” he said, wanting to get the conversation back on track. “Were they with you all the time?”

Nicki faced him. “Yes. I was pretty weak. They had room service bring up my meals. It got pretty boring.”

“Did they sleep in the room with you as well?”

Nicki nodded. “Yeah. The room had a couch, and the chaperones slept on it.”

“Every night?”

“Uh-huh. I still don’t understand what this has to do with these men stalking me.”

She had to be lying. The videos had been made outside of Dubai when Nicki was by herself and not under her parents’ watchful eye. The presence of a twenty-four-hour chaperone would have made that impossible. Was this another carefully constructed lie designed to hide a bigger truth? It sure felt that way.

“I’m sorry, Nicki, but this isn’t adding up,” he said. “If you got drunk and went to the hospital, your parents would have known. It was the chaperones’ responsibility to report the incident when they got home, and the school would have notified your parents. They would have also received a bill from the hospital.”

“The school didn’t know,” Nicki said.

“Why not?”

“Because the chaperones didn’t tell them.”

“And why is that?”

“Because we agreed not to.”

“We? Who exactly is we?”

“Everybody who was on the trip. The other kids were afraid the chaperones would get fired because they served us wine the first night at dinner. But that wouldn’t have been fair. The chaperones didn’t make us drink the wine or the booze out of the minibar. We did that. We made a bad decision, and it was our fault.”

“So nobody in your group talked about it.”

Nicki nodded.

“Did you agree with this, or were you talked into it?” Melanie asked.

“It was actually my idea,” Nicki said. “You and Daddy always said that I have to be responsible for my actions, and not blame other people when things go wrong. I wasn’t going to blame the chaperones for my screwup, so I convinced everyone on the trip to keep quiet.”

“How did the chaperones feel about that?” Melanie asked.

“They thanked me.”

“What about the hospital bill?” Lancaster asked. “How did you hide that?”

“That came after I got home,” Nicki said. “I grabbed it out of the mail, and paid it with a money order.”

The story was a lie. There could be no other explanation. Because if it wasn’t a lie, then his theory about how the videos had gotten made flew out the window.

“Do you have any proof that this happened, Nicki?” he said. “Is there some evidence that you can show me?”

A dark cloud passed over the teenager’s face.

“You don’t believe me,” she said.

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I just want to see some proof.”

“You think this is all bullshit, that something else happened,” she said.

“Nicki!” her mother scolded.

“Jon is trying to help us,” her father reminded her.

“He doesn’t believe me,” Nicki said.

Her parents’ silence was deafening. Nicki pushed her plate forward and rose in her spot. Her mother slipped out of the nook, and Nicki came right behind her.

“I’ll show you,” the teenager said.

Nicki stormed out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the study with Lancaster and her parents hurrying to catch up. An iPad sat on the desk, and Nicki took her father’s leather chair and let her fingers play across its keyboard. Lancaster stood behind her, wanting to make sure she didn’t erase anything. Nicki went into a folder called “Pictures” and pulled up a series of images that were time-stamped seven months ago.

“See for yourself,” the teenager said.

On the iPad’s screen was a photograph of Nicki lying in a hospital bed with a nurse attending to her. Her face was white, and her hair was matted down.

“Mandy took that in the hospital,” Nicki said. “I was looking a little rough.”

The next photo showed Nicki lying in a bed in a hotel room, flashing the peace sign to the camera. Two of her school friends flanked her.

“Mandy took that on the day I came back to the hotel.”

Nicki took them through the rest of the photos of her recuperation. They showed each day of Nicki’s recovery in which she seemed to regain her strength and facial color and included her friends from school and her chaperones, all of whom were female. Whatever doubts that Lancaster had harbored about Nicki’s story were put to rest.

The last photo showed Nicki and her classmates at Charles de Gaulle airport, preparing to board their flight home. Nicki looked better than in the previous photos, but she had yet to fully recover. The booze had done a real number on her, and Lancaster didn’t doubt the claim that she hadn’t had a drop to drink since.

“Do you believe me now?” Nicki asked.

He was beaten, his theory of what had happened in Paris in flames.

“Yes, Nicki. I believe you,” he said.

“Can I go upstairs to my room?” she asked her parents.

Melanie said yes. Nicki exited the collection of photos and left the study. Lancaster could feel the weight of her parents’ stares. They wanted to know why he’d put them through this torture. He didn’t have a good answer and decided to stall them. An image on the iPad’s screen caught his eye. He sat down in the leather chair and clicked on it. The photo was of Nicki taken several years ago, when she was maybe nine or ten years old. With her was a woman who could have been Nicki’s identical twin, aged twenty years. The resemblance was uncanny. They were facially the same, right down to their smiles. The older woman wore a black windbreaker with the initials FBI stenciled in white above the breast pocket.

“Who is this?” he asked.

He got no answer, and lifted his head to see that he was alone. He picked up the iPad and went into the foyer. Melanie had gone upstairs to talk to her daughter while Pearl stood at the foot of the stairs wearing a worried expression.

“This is very upsetting,” Pearl said. “I’m not sure what we accomplished here.”

“We’ve actually accomplished a great deal.” He pointed at the female in the black windbreaker in the photo. “Who is this woman with your daughter?”

“That’s my sister-in-law, Beth.”

“Is she with the FBI?”

“That’s correct. She works out of Quantico.”

“Excuse me, but why didn’t you ask for her help with this situation? The FBI’s resources are unlimited.”

“Melanie and Beth don’t have much of a relationship. Beth was interning with the FBI when she was a senior in college. She was at the Pentagon on 9/11 and lost several friends. She took exception when I took the job in Dubai.”

“Do she and her sister talk?”

“Not in years.”

“What’s your sister-in-law’s full name?”

“Elizabeth Daniels. Everyone calls her Beth.”

Melanie appeared at the top of the stairs and beckoned to her husband to join her. Pearl started up the stairs and turned to him. “If Nicki didn’t create these pornographic videos, then who did?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Pearl. I thought Nicki filmed herself and put them there, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Then where did they come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nolan, please,” Melanie called from the second floor.

Pearl hurried up the stairs. Lancaster returned the iPad to the study and went outside to his car. He knew that he’d found something important, even if he didn’t entirely understand what it was. Sitting behind the wheel, he used his cell phone to get on Google and did a search on Elizabeth Daniels, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Several dozen links came up, mostly of cases that Daniels had worked on that had been covered by the media. She’d had a spectacular career with arrests of serial killers and human-trafficking rings. An article from the Boston Globe dated seven years ago caught his eye, and he clicked on it. It featured a photo of Daniels leading a group of FBI agents in a bust of a child-trafficking ring. The article stated that underage girls were being trafficked from Mexico to Boston to be used as prostitutes, the operation generating $1 million a month. Daniels was quoted in the article thanking the Boston police for helping bring the traffickers to justice. Her title was mentioned, and his eyes grew wide. Special Agent Elizabeth Daniels ran the FBI’s Violent Crimes Against Children unit, and was responsible for the FBI’s ongoing fight against sexual predators.