The King Tides

Chapter 28 Sweet Sixteen

The conversation between Daniels and her sister dragged on. Lancaster started to feel like he was intruding and went into the kitchen to tackle the mess Daniels had made. He put the silverware into the dishwasher and set it on wash, then stocked the canned goods back on the pantry shelves. The cans all had sizeable dents in them. He could not remember encountering a law enforcement agent with such anger issues, and he wondered how long it would be before her superiors took notice.

“Do you have any more coffee?” She stood in the doorway wearing a sheepish expression, the empty mug dangling by its handle from her finger.

“For you, anything,” he said.

“You’re funny. Do you want to kill me?”

“No. You made a mistake and you said you were sorry. We’re good.”

“My sister said you were a decent guy. She was right.”

He refilled her mug while taking a hard look at her. The rage was gone, replaced by disappointment and shame. She’d been ready to make a bust, and it had gone south instead. He’d had the same thing happen to him as a cop and knew the hollow feeling it left.

“How much did you tell your sister?” he asked.

“Not much. Melanie was always the alpha. I just listened. It sounds like she and Nolan have been through real hell. Not to mention what Nicki’s been through. How did these sick bastards connect my niece to the Cassandra videos?”

“Nicki was in a high school musical. A boy at her school coaxed her into singing a song from the musical in her underwear, and he posted it on YouTube. The video’s pretty bad, yet it got ten thousand hits. Mostly from sickos who saw the Cassandra videos. One of them pretended to be a Hollywood producer and contacted the boy and got Nicki’s personal information, which he must have posted online.”

“You’re a hell of a detective, Jon. I’m impressed.”

“That’s why I get paid the big bucks. Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m assuming you posted the Cassandra videos on a site that the FBI can monitor. That allows the FBI to collect the IP addresses of the men that download the videos, and get them on your radar so you can watch them. Am I right?”

“You’re right, we do monitor them. The Cassandra videos aren’t illegal to download because it’s me the viewer is looking at. But if we catch one of them downloading other child pornography, we nail them.”

“That’s what I figured. Here’s my question. There are a dozen Cassandra videos. Based upon the date stamps, it appears you posted one video each week to keep the bad ones hooked. That tells me you had a big audience for them. How many downloads were there?”

Daniels sipped her coffee. “I don’t know the exact number.”

She was lying. Websites had cookies that allowed their designers to see how many visitors had come to the site in real time, and he envisioned Daniels checking the site a few times a day to tally the number of perverts she’d ensnared in her trap. She knew the number, but wasn’t willing to share it with him.

He went into the bedroom to clean up the mess. She followed him and stood in the doorway holding her mug. “I never would have created those videos had I known I was putting Nicki in jeopardy. The last time I saw her, she was a little kid.”

She wasn’t willing to take the blame for the harm she’d caused. He’d known cops like her before. It was all about making the bust, and if innocent people got harmed, too bad. Maybe she hadn’t realized the videos would hurt her niece, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another teenage girl out there who bore a resemblance to Cassandra and whose life would be upended.

He put his socks and underwear back in their respective dresser drawers. His Kindle was at the bottom of the pile of clothes, the copy of The Hanover Killers front and center, and he was tempted to shove it in her face, and ask her if the harrowing experience described in the book had driven her to create the Cassandra videos.

He decided against it. Rising from the floor, he placed the Kindle on the bedside table. He turned around and saw her gazing at a framed photograph on the dresser. It was a group photo of his SEAL team taken in Yemen with the team wearing facial hair disguises and head scarves. His protruding belly made it easy to pick him out of the group. She shifted her gaze to him. She did not acknowledge the photo or his presence in it, which he found surprising. Most people who had seen it wanted to know more.

“When do you plan to tell your sister about the videos?” he asked.

“This afternoon,” she said. “Melanie and her husband are taking Nicki to a birthday party for one of Nicki’s friends. My sister invited me to join them.”

“They shouldn’t be taking Nicki out,” he said.

“I told her the same thing,” she said. “Melanie said that three guards you recommended are going to accompany them. Are they any good?”

“They’re ex-SEALs,” he said.

“That works,” she said.

He went to the dining room to clean up the mess around the china cabinet. The sight of his grandmother’s ladle lying in pieces on the floor got him angry, but he kept his feelings bottled up. He placed the shards onto the palm of his hand and deposited them into a wastebasket in the kitchen. She was right on his heels.

“That was old, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“It was a family heirloom,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I’ll replace it. It’s the least that I can do.”

He nodded and returned to the dining room and put the rest of the pieces back into the china cabinet. Replacing a broken ladle was easy; fixing her niece’s situation was not. It would require taking the Cassandra videos down from the web and coming up with a strategy to protect Nicki from further harm. So far, Daniels hadn’t said that she was going to do any of these things. Maybe she had a plan and didn’t want to share it with him. Or maybe the sting was so important to her that she planned to keep it going, and didn’t care what happened to Nicki. It sounded cruel, but he’d seen stranger things in law enforcement. Daniels glanced at her watch and frowned.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I told Melanie I’d meet her at eleven thirty, and it’s already five after eleven,” she said. “I don’t want to be late and get things off on a bad foot.”

“I hope it goes well with your sister.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to accompany me.”

“Why is that?”

“I want you there when I talk to them,” she said. “It’ll make things easier.”

For who? he nearly asked.

“If you think it’ll help,” he said.

“I do,” the FBI agent said.

The Harbor Beach Surf Club was a members-only yacht club located on Highway A1A that charged more to rent a dock slip than most people paid for their mortgages. Lancaster had driven by its gated entrance many times but never been inside.

Daniels’s rental was a silver Dodge Challenger. It was from Hertz and was part of their Adrenaline Collection. She drove like a New York cabbie, her right foot alternating between hitting the gas and slamming on the brakes. It was like riding a bull, and he kept his hand pressed to the dashboard and prayed she didn’t rear-end another car.

“How much farther?” she asked.

“It’s less than a mile up the road,” he said. “Do you always drive so fast?”

“I have a need for speed. Does that bother you?”

“You could get pulled over. A1A has its own patrol.”

“I’ll bat my eyelashes and talk my way out of it.”

She hit her blinker and turned into the club. A security guard found her name on a list and put a pass on her dashboard. They drove a short distance to the pavilion where the birthday party was being held. The club dated back to World War I, and there was nothing fancy about it. Just a marina, a brick pavilion that had restrooms and a covered area with picnic tables, and a private stretch of beach on the other side of A1A.

After parking, they got out and approached the pavilion. It was decorated with silver helium balloons and streamers with the birthday girl’s name. About fifteen parents and the same number of kids were eating burgers and dogs and making lots of noise.

The Pearls sat at a picnic table in the shade. Nicki was eating a hot dog and looked like she was having a good time. Her parents sat to either side of her. Neither was eating. Carlo stood nearby, wearing an untucked white shirt to hide the firearm he was carrying. Although Lancaster didn’t see Karl or Mike, he knew they were nearby.

The Pearls stood up. Nicki put her dog on a paper plate and rushed her aunt. They hugged, and Daniels got choked up and wiped away a few tears. Nicki’s parents stayed in their spots wearing thin smiles. Daniels broke free of her niece and came up to them.

“Hey, Melanie,” she said.

“Hey, Beth,” her sister replied.

“You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you.”

“I wish you’d told me you’d moved back.”

“I’ve been busy. You know how it is.”

Daniels was a bully, except when around her older sister. Then she was a wimp. Daniels shifted her attention to her brother-in-law.

“Nolan.”

“Beth.”

“You look good.”

“That’s funny, I don’t feel good,” Pearl said. “Melanie tells me that you tore Jon’s condo apart before calling us. I can’t say it surprises me. You were always one to shoot first and ask questions later.”

An awkward silence ensued. There was not enough pavement for Lancaster to stare at. Nicki came over and broke up the party.

“They’re going to cross A1A so they can go swimming in the ocean,” the teenager said. “Can we go too? I brought my swimsuit with me. It’s under my clothes.”

“Let’s ask Carlo,” Melanie said. “Carlo, what do you think?”

“Is this a public or private beach?” Carlo said.

“Private. Only the club’s members can use it,” Melanie said.

“That should be okay,” Carlo said.

“Yay!” Nicki said.

The birthday party was abandoning the pavilion for the beach. The partygoers walked single file down a gravel path through the mangroves. The Pearls were the last to leave, with Carlo behind them talking on his cell phone to his partners. Daniels stayed behind, shamed by the exchange with her brother-in-law. In her hand were the keys to the rental. Did she really think she could just leave?

Lancaster went over and snatched the keys out of her hand.

“You’re not wiggling your way out of this one,” he said.