The King Tides

Chapter 32 Trust

Daniels got a search warrant, and they set out for Inverrary Resort, where Rusty rented a one-bedroom. Lancaster was hungry, and he persuaded Daniels to pull into a McDonald’s, where he ordered a quarter pounder with cheese and a large fry.

“You sure you don’t want anything?” he asked.

“I’ll just pick at yours.” She filched a french fry and pulled out of the drive-through. “I noticed that you looked through my briefcase. Find anything of interest?”

“It wasn’t intentional. Your papers were all over the trunk, so I put them back.”

“You must have seen the background check I did on you.”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“You’re quite the Boy Scout with all those medals and citations,” she said.

He placed the french fries beneath her nose. She grabbed several more and stuffed them into her mouth. She couldn’t talk with her mouth full, so he pressed her.

“You knew that about me before you came to my condo this morning,” he said. “Yet you still chose to treat me like a common criminal. I’d like to know what you saw in those reports that made you think I was a bad guy.”

She chewed silently and stared at the road. He unwrapped the quarter pounder and bit into it. He offered her a bite, and she shook her head no.

“I didn’t see anything in those reports,” she said. “The red flag was the voice mail you left me. You referenced the Cassandra videos, and that was all I needed to hear to hop on a plane and come down here.”

“You mean because I’d seen them.”

She nodded. “You’ve got a stellar background, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be a predator. You should see some of the guys I’ve arrested. Lawyers, doctors, I even busted a circuit court judge once. They were all leading double lives. In public they were very respectable people. In private they were monsters.”

“How many guys have you busted because of those videos?”

“I’ve personally busted sixteen. Other agents around the country have also made busts. The last time I checked, the total number was over forty.”

“That’s a big haul.”

“It is. And we’re not done yet.”

“Creepie and his partner are the prize.”

“Yes, they are.”

He finished his meal. The Cassandra videos were bait, and the men that took that bait deserved no sympathy. But he still wasn’t clear on why an agent in their local office hadn’t paid him a visit, instead of Daniels doing it herself. Something in his background reports had raised a red flag that had made her personally fly here from Washington, and that bothered him.

She pulled into Inverrary Resort and parked in front of a deserted valet stand. She got out and grabbed her briefcase before they headed inside. Inverrary had once been a playground for the rich and famous, with fine dining and sprawling golf courses, but it had fallen on hard times and now rented rooms to drug addicts and assorted miscreants.

“This could be the set for a horror movie,” she said.

“Wait until you see the rooms,” he said.

“You’ve stayed here before?”

“When I was in uniform, we got called here every night.”

The desk manager was a gaunt Pakistani wearing a white dress shirt. He studied Daniels’s ID and search warrant before handing it back.

“Is Rusty in trouble?” the desk manager asked.

“He’s in a lot of trouble,” Daniels replied. “Are you friends with him?”

“We are not friends. I ask because he’s behind on his rent.”

“That’s too bad. I need to see his apartment.”

They all took a creaky elevator to the third floor and were soon standing in Rusty’s one-bedroom. The overhead light didn’t work, and Daniels drew the blinds so that sunshine flooded the interior. “I guess housecleaning isn’t included in the daily rate,” she said under her breath. The carpet was torn, the wallpaper was peeling, and a sink ran in the bathroom. The desk manager tried to turn the water off and cursed under his breath.

“I will have to call a plumber and get this fixed,” he said.

“Not so fast,” she said. “We’re going to have a look around, and then a team of FBI agents is going to pack everything up and take it away to be analyzed. I don’t want any workers in here until that’s done. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

The desk manager made himself scarce. Daniels placed a call on her cell phone to the local FBI office and requested a team be sent to pack up Rusty’s things. Ending the call, she unzipped the side pocket on her briefcase and removed two pairs of white latex gloves, one of which she tossed to Lancaster.

“Put these on before you touch anything,” she said.

“Will do. What else do you have in that briefcase?”

“You’d be surprised.”

A laptop computer sat on a small desk that was bolted to the wall. Daniels pulled up the room’s only chair and powered up the laptop. The screen saver was a beach at sunrise taken from a lifeguard’s high chair, and Lancaster guessed that Rusty had taken the shot. He wasn’t going to be seeing many more of those where he was going.

Daniels tried to gain entry and was denied. The laptop was password protected.

“I know a good hacker,” he said.

“So do I,” she said.

From her briefcase she removed a black box with an electrical cord and a USB connector, and she connected the box to the back of Rusty’s laptop. Soon the device was running tens of thousands of passwords per second through the laptop. Daniels leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“The FBI hired a hacker to build them for us. It’s now standard equipment, just like the firearms we carry.”

“Can I get one?”

She shook her head.

“What if I help you catch this guy?”

The device beeped, indicating it had found the correct password. Daniels brought her face up to the rectangular screen and began her search.

“Do you mind if I look around?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He searched the room and discovered that Rusty had little in the way of material possessions. There were assorted articles of clothing, a boom box, a pair of flip-flops, a pair of sneakers, and a jump rope. On the floor of the closet was a cardboard box that begged a closer look. It was heavy, and he popped the lid to find it filled with old laptops. He carefully removed each one and placed it on the bed. There were eight in all, with models by Dell, Gateway, Sony, and Apple. Their combined value was more than all the other items in Rusty’s possession.

“What do you think of this?” he asked.

Daniels glanced at the bed out of the corner of her eye. “Isn’t that a nice collection. Don’t bother turning them on. The hard drives have been erased.”

“How can you be sure?” he said.

“Because that’s what guys who share kiddie porn do.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. He thought he understood but wanted to be sure. “Is that the game? Rusty buys a new laptop every six months and transfers his porn library before erasing the hard drive on the old one. He gets a new IP address with each new laptop, which makes it harder to catch him. He also moves around a lot, just in case the law gets him in its crosshairs.”

“That’s the game,” she said. “The smart ones also get new email addresses.”

“How does that work?”

“Gmail lets a user create multiple email addresses under different aliases. There’s a tutorial on YouTube that explains how to do it.”

“The internet is heaven for these sick bastards, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. We still catch them, it just takes longer.”

The minutes dragged on. He went to the room’s only window and gazed down at the rear of the property. A narrow concrete sidewalk ran alongside the brown fairway of the resort’s eighteen-hole golf course. The golf course was no longer in use, and a family with several small children sat on a blanket enjoying a late-afternoon picnic.

The sidewalk was busy with residents of the hotel having a cigarette or taking a stroll. An elderly man pushing a wheelchair came into view. He wore an orange tracksuit and was pushing an emaciated woman who appeared to be in the final stages of life. As the wheelchair got close to the others on the sidewalk, they moved out of its path but did not speak to the elderly man or the dying woman. Watching this happen gave him pause, and he thought about the near-abduction of Nicki at the Galleria mall. Nicki’s abductors had used a wheelchair, and now he understood why.

Daniels slapped the desk. She pulled out her cell phone and typed in a text message, then punched the screen with her forefinger.

“You found Creepie’s email,” he said.

“Yes, and I just sent it to FBI headquarters in DC,” she said. “The FBI has an unwritten agreement with the country’s internet service providers. When we want to find out who an email belongs to, the ISPs will tell us without a subpoena. It comes in real handy during investigations.” Her fingers tapped the desk impatiently. “We’ve been searching for these monsters for a long time. Let’s hope this leads us to him.”

He hoped she was right. In his experience, two criminals working as a team could go for years without getting caught. One member of the team committed the crime, while his partner cleaned up the incriminating evidence.

They waited for Washington to get back to Daniels. She wasn’t very talkative and continued to search the contents of Rusty’s laptop. He sat down on the bed and rubbed his wrists. They were still chafed from Daniels’s handcuffs.

“I’ve got some extra-strength ibuprofen if you need it,” she said.

“I’ll live,” he said.

Her cell phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and answered it.

“What have you got for me?” she said, unable to hide her excitement. She listened, and her face crashed. “There’s no record? How can that be?”

She got her answer and ended the call.

“God damn it,” she swore. “There’s no record of the email address in any of these ISP databases. It’s as if it never existed.”

“How does that work?”

“The hell I know.”

There was a knock on the door, and Lancaster went and answered it. The Pakistani desk manager and a team of FBI agents wearing hazmat suits stood in the hallway. He turned and spoke to Daniels.

“Your boys are here,” he said.

Back in the car, Lancaster decided to play his hand. Daniels had refused to share any meaningful information with him except by accident, and he thought he knew why. She still didn’t completely trust him. Her distrust had little to do with him, and was a byproduct of her investigation.

“Tell me how to get back to your place,” she said.

“Are we done?” he asked.

“Yes, Jon, we’re done. Thanks for your help.”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee? I’d like to talk with you.”

“About what?”

“Your niece. These stalkers aren’t going away. One is going to get his hands on her, and Nicki’s going to get hurt or killed. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

“I’ll deal with Nicki’s situation in due time. Meanwhile, you can keep protecting her. My sister and her husband have plenty of money, and can afford your services.”

“That’s pretty callous.”

Her jaw tightened, and she stared at the road. “Don’t judge me without knowing all the facts.” The rental sped up. She was itching to get rid of him. It was time.

“Creepie’s a cop, isn’t he?” he said.

Daniels pulled onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes, then turned in her seat to stare at him. “How the hell did you know that?” she asked.

“The way you handcuffed me gave you away.”

“Why? I always handcuff suspects.”

“You left them on for too long. Your sister told you that she’d hired me, yet you didn’t make a move to release me. You were still suspicious.”

“That’s pretty flimsy reasoning,” she said.

“I’ll agree with you. It was flimsy reasoning until we questioned Rusty and you took the cuffs off him in the interrogation room. Rusty was a pervert, yet you didn’t feel threatened by him. You knew Rusty wasn’t Creepie because you ran a background check and saw that he’d never been a cop.”

“That’s still flimsy reasoning.”

“There’s more.”

“Keep talking.”

“Creepie and his partner are the same pair that tried to abduct you at Dartmouth College. I read The Hanover Killers before I called you. The book’s author said that every male in Dartmouth submitted to DNA testing and it didn’t do any good. In the book’s epilogue, the author speculated who the killers might be. One theory was that it was two cops from a nearby town, since the cops never submitted to DNA testing. Well, those cops are still abducting young girls and killing them, and you’re chasing them.”

“That’s very good, Jon. I’m impressed.”

Her opinion of him had changed. He could see it in her face and especially in her eyes. He’d demonstrated enough deductive reasoning to put them on equal footing.

“Come on, let me buy you dinner,” he said. “There’s a place nearby called Country Walk that serves really good food. We can talk in private there.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’ve got to get back to DC.”

“But I want to help you.”

Daniels shook her head. She was as stubborn as a mule, and he decided to play the last card in his hand. “If I told you that I have a video of Creepie and his partner trying to abduct your niece, would you change your mind?”

Her eyes grew wide. “What are you talking about?”

“Did your sister tell you about what happened at Galleria mall?”

“Melanie said two men tried to grab Nicki, but Nolan stopped them.”

“I have a surveillance video taken at the mall. Let me show it to you, and explain why I think it was them. You can judge for yourself.”

“All right. But I need to pay for my own dinner. Bureau rules.”

“Whatever you want,” he said.

She asked her phone for directions to Country Walk, and an automated voice gave her instructions. Then she merged into traffic and got back on the road.