by Robert Brown
He dried off and got dressed, feeling much better.
When he left the bathroom, he saw that Casey and Arizona were gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“What an idiot! What a fucking idiot!” Heinrich shouted, talking about both Casey and himself. “I can’t believe I took my eye off that degenerate for one second. I can’t believe she left.”
Then he noticed that she had taken both portable hard drives. His wallet lay open and all his cash was gone—some three hundred euros. Enough that Casey and Arizona could get anywhere.
“Fuck!”
He burst out of the hotel room and looked all around the floor, then downstairs and the street outside. No sign of them.
Running back upstairs, Heinrich picked up the hotel room phone to make a call to the police. However, his finger paused over the buttons and he considered his position for a moment.
What was he going to tell them? He didn’t have any evidence, only a wild story about S&M movies being made in a castle. And if he led them to that castle, what would they find there? A body lying dead from his own hand? Hell, Heinrich’s fingerprints were all over the halberd that had killed the man!
Casey sure as hell wouldn’t back him up, even if he could find her, and Arizona was just a child. They wouldn’t listen to her, and Casey was probably working on her right now to make sure she kept her mouth shut.
He thought he’d had this whole thing solved. Now he was back to square one. No, worse than square one.
“OK, think rationally. Where would she go? Not back to the castle because she’d figure that I’d search for her there. She’d probably go to a pay phone and make a call to Anders, telling him to leave the castle if they haven’t already and come pick her up. And where would they go then?”
He had no idea.
But he did have an idea who might help.
He fired another email to Biniam, explaining what had happened. It was a good thing Casey hadn’t taken his laptop, too.
While he waited for a response, Heinrich ran an image search on Dutch castles. After a few minutes, he found the castle where he had been. The image took him to Wikipedia, which gave him a link to the company that owned it. Puzzling through the Dutch, Heinrich figured out that the company offered it for rent but that it was currently unavailable. Nothing about it being used for kiddy BDSM porn, of course. He wondered if the owners knew. Maybe this was a shell corporation and Anders was bigger than he seemed.
A couple of minutes later, Biniam pinged him. Heinrich sent a message requesting a voice chat, then signed onto the secure server that Biniam used. The guy was a refugee from Eritrea and a bit paranoid. Considering what the military dictatorship there did to dissidents, Heinrich didn’t blame him.
Biniam connected. “Hey, bro. Smoking some good weed in Amsterdam?”
“I wish. Look, I’m in a jam here. I need your help and I need it fast. Charge me whatever you want; my client is loaded and stupid.”
“Ha ha. That’s the best kind of client! Anything for you, man.”
Heinrich gave Biniam a brief rundown of the situation, then told him the name of the castle and the company that owned it.
“I had time to watch some of those movies,” the computer hacker said once he had finished. Heinrich could hear him tapping away on his keyboard. “They didn’t have anything like that on their webpage. Maybe they’re using another corporation for distribution. The external hard drive had some erased files, too.”
“Erased files?”
“Several film clips of a little girl in front of a green screen.”
“What did she look like?”
“Like Heidi from that awful old movie. Blonde pigtails, about ten years old.”
Heinrich cocked his head. Another child? “Any other erased files?”
“No, just those. They had her doing all the same weird stuff Arizona was doing. I didn’t get a chance to download any of it before the external hard drive was disconnected. Sorry.”
“Damn. Hey, how did you read an erased file?”
“Windows sucks for security. A file is logged in a hard drive with something called a pointer. When you delete a file, all you’re really deleting is the pointer. This tells Windows that the space is available, but until it actually overwrites the file with a new one, it still exists. Because the hard drive wasn’t full, Windows never overwrote it. All it takes is a basic recovery program to find it.”
“I thought these guys were sophisticated.”
“Maybe this particular user isn’t, or didn’t get around to fully purging the hard drive before you took it. I’ll look into possible distribution channels for the movies with Arizona and the Heidi girl in it.”
“Please do. First look into that castle. I want to know the name and address of whoever is renting it. That might give me a way to find the kid.”
While he waited, Heinrich left his room and got some money from the ATM. At least Casey hadn’t stolen his entire wallet.
Further proof of her stupidity, Heinrich thought. If she had taken everything, she would have slowed me down a lot.
He took a look around the block again on the slim chance that Casey was still lurking around but came up with nothing.
Why did she run? Heinrich couldn’t believe it. I just showed her that Anders was putting Arizona in those movies, and the first chance she gets, she runs back to him?
Or maybe she didn’t go back to him. Maybe she got so scared, she ran off trying to escape from him. But she would have been safer with me. Within half an hour we would have been at the police station, making a statement. She would have been safe.
Or would she? Maybe she fears the police as much as she fears Anders. Not for taking Arizona and the money. Her loser husband is already halfway to forgiving her. Maybe it’s some other reason, something I haven’t found yet.
Back in his room, Heinrich paced for a few minutes before Biniam finally pinged him.
“Hey, bro. Sorry for the wait. All that Dutch slowed me down. I had to put stuff through Google Translate, and you know what a piece of shit that program is.”
“What did you find?”
“Just what you needed. The name, contact information, and address of the guy who rented the castle. You wouldn’t believe how crappy that rental company’s security was. I got through it in less than a minute! They were using some out-of-date, off-the-shelf—”
“Cut to the chase, Biniam. A child is missing.”
“Oh, right. The guy who rented the castle is named Johan Garrix. He lives at 26 Hoofdweg, Apartment 6. I’m sending you his home number and mobile phone number. He claims he’s the representative for something called Excelsior Films, Ltd. I found a website for that company but it’s very basic, and there’s no evidence they’ve ever made a film. It’s obviously a dummy corporation. Registered in Gibraltar, so I’m thinking it’s used for dodging taxes. Someone’s got some money, though. The castle rents for 2,000 euros a week.”
“Got any more information on this guy?”
“Very little. He stays off social media. I did find him in some census data and the Dutch national healthcare system. He’s a real person.”
“You found all that in less than twenty minutes?” Biniam’s ability never ceased to amaze Heinrich.
“Yeah, as I said, the Dutch slowed me down. Sorry for the wait.”
Heinrich chuckled. “That’s quite all right, buddy.”
They both logged off. As Heinrich got ready to leave, Brixton’s Skype call came through.
“Oh, crap.”
Heinrich opened the video chat. Brixton looked ecstatic. He was holding his infant daughter Serenity up to the camera so that she could see her mother and sister.
Brixton’s face fell when he saw only Heinrich onscreen. He guessed the truth before Heinrich told him. And Heinrich told him everything—the castle, his capture, the fight, the movies, Casey’s escape, why he couldn’t call the police, everything.
Brixton looked stunned. For a long minute, he sai
d nothing. Finally, he shook his head and said, “What has she gotten herself into?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. I’m going to check out the address for the man who rented the castle. As soon as I learn something more, I’ll contact you.”
“You need to call the police! Get them in on it. They know the country better than you do and they have more resources. Call them.”
“And tell them what? I have no evidence of wrongdoing. Casey took the external hard drives.”
“Casey’s been kidnapped!”
Heinrich took a deep breath. Brixton had obviously not accepted the fact that his wife had run away. Again. It was time for a wakeup call.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Murphy, but your wife left of her own volition. No one broke into my hotel room and took her. She took the first chance she got to run away and steal all the evidence. She even took the money in my wallet. I don’t know if she ran back to Anders and his film company or if she ran off because she thought she’d have a better chance of avoiding him without me. But she sure didn’t run off to come back to you.”
Brixton started crying. That set off his infant daughter, so he pulled himself together and comforted her. Heinrich waited.
After Serenity had calmed down, Brixton wiped his eyes. “I’ve been nothing but good to her. I agreed to an open marriage. I provided for her. I gave her the startup money so she and Wanda could launch their business. Why is she doing this to me? Why is she doing this to the kids?”
“Some people do nothing but take.”
A flicker of anger passed over Brixton’s face. “Don’t judge her. You don’t know anything about her. She had a rough childhood.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but she’s an adult now and she has to take responsibility for her actions. She’s a mother.”
Brixton hung his head. “You sound like my father.”
The Baptist minister? Sad that he probably has more sense than the rest of the family put together.
Heinrich decided to drive his point home. “Mr. Murphy, Casey expressed no desire to be reunited with you. She repeatedly said that she was glad to be free of you and kept telling Arizona that she would never see her father again.”
A look of profound pain contorted Brixton’s features. Heinrich couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. The guy was a hipster, a trust-fund baby, the kind of person Heinrich had always looked down on and mistrusted. He didn’t deserve this, though.
Heinrich switched to a gentler tone. “I’m going to check out that address and get back to you as soon as I can, all right?”
Brixton nodded. After a second, he logged off without saying a word.
It was only after he did so that Heinrich realized Brixton had stopped using his wife’s preferred pronoun.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Heinrich looked up the address and found that Johan Garrix lived on the other side of the city. He took a taxi. His expenses were beginning to mount up because he sure as hell was going to include the money Casey had taken from him. He figured Brixton’s daddy would be good for it.
As the cab passed through the city center, Heinrich looked at the place with a new set of eyes. On the surface, Amsterdam appeared so orderly, so civilized. The streets were clean, and the clean, happy people went about their business in safety and tranquility. Every now and then, he spotted one of the city’s famous coffee houses, decorated in bright colors, with pictures of cannabis leaves and rainbow mushrooms adorning the facade. Even those looked respectable. Controlled rebellion.
And the Red Light District had been the same. All those orderly doors with their uniform red lights through which clients could enter clean little apartments and satiate their cravings with perfect legality.
Except that wasn’t the whole story. That respectable facade hid a multitude of sins, as did most respectable facades. The permissive laws gave the criminals and freaks room to maneuver, and brought in a host of eager customers. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if you legalized marijuana, hash, and magic mushrooms, you’d attract people looking for stronger stuff, like ecstasy and heroin—both of which Heinrich had read were easily available here. It was the same with sex. Virtually every kind of sex was legal in Holland, and that attracted people looking for what wasn’t legal.
Heinrich remembered what his own city of New York had been like back in the Eighties. Dirty streets, muggers, graffiti, drugs, porn shops, and hookers everywhere. It had been like ancient Babylon. He wondered if there had been more perversion and addiction, or less, than here in this Disneyland of vice.
So, what was the solution? A shithole like the old New York with strict laws that nobody obeyed, or a sanitized city that permitted most things and winked at everything else?
Strict laws sure weren’t the answer, and neither were government solutions. Those idiots always screwed things up. Heinrich remembered reading, back in the Nineties, how the Missouri State Legislature had decided to ban anal sex, obviously to stop homosexuals from having any fun. Why they should have cared whether two guys got it on was something Heinrich never understood. After they passed the law, the press took a good look at it and realized it actually banned all sex. The law was quickly changed to oppress only gays and not everybody. Not until 2000, when the press discovered a regular bestiality convention happening on a Missouri farm, did the state legislature get around to banning sex with animals.
Free Press: 2. Government: 0.
The cab pulled up to Hoofdweg. Heinrich got out and looked around. A respectable neighborhood of tidy apartment buildings. Not a trace of trash or graffiti. He strolled up to number 26 and noted a small park opposite it. A few people walked their dogs or jogged on the paths and well-manicured grass. A playground stood in the middle, abandoned at the moment because it was a Friday and school had not yet let out.
Heinrich approached the apartment building’s door and checked the listings of apartments. Johan Garrix was listed for Apartment 6. This guy kept a low profile but didn’t hide. That suggested he was probably a front man and kept away from the dirtier aspects of the operation.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching, Heinrich slipped the lockpicks out of his pocket and got to work on the front door. It opened easily.
He climbed to Apartment 6, nodding at a middle-aged woman descending the stairs. She didn’t give him a second glance. Heinrich had found that if you looked like you belonged and acted like you belonged, people would assume you belonged. It helped if you didn’t have a weeping child and a slutted-out woman along.
The hallway was quiet—not surprising for this time of day. Heinrich waited until he heard the woman go out the front door before he knocked on the door of Apartment 6. When he didn’t get a response, he brought out his tools again and jimmied the lock.
The apartment was unremarkable—a tidy living room, kitchen, and bedroom with new IKEA furniture and a few Dutch Masters prints on the walls. A small telescope stood on a tripod near the window. Heinrich looked through it and saw that it was aimed at the playground. The telescope was set far enough back from the window that it wasn’t visible from the sidewalk below. He figured that when the room’s lights were off, the contrast with the bright sunlight outside prevented park-goers from seeing the telescope, too. Heinrich noticed three small scuffs on the wooden floor beside the window, in the same pattern as the tripod legs. The marks showed where Johan put the telescope out of sight at night when he turned on the lights and the interior of his apartment became visible.
“This just keeps getting worse and worse,” Heinrich muttered.
A small desk held a laptop, but Heinrich knew it would be password-protected, so he didn’t bother opening it. Instead, he started rummaging through drawers. For several minutes, he didn’t turn up anything suspicious. It was only when he moved to the bedroom that he struck gold.
Sitting on the bedside table was a flier for an S&M party at some sex club in Amsterdam. The date was listed as that night. Inside the bedside table, Heinrich found a
blindfold, a pair of handcuffs lined with pink fur, and the biggest bottle of lube he had ever seen. It was only a third full. In another drawer, he found an expired gym card with Johan’s picture on it. Heinrich used his phone, which he had recharged in his hotel room, to take photos of it all. He took photos of the telescope, too—a general shot and one lined down the shaft to show that it was aimed directly at the playground.
Heinrich paused, momentarily at a loss. He had hoped for more. This guy obviously tried to keep his nose clean, but his perversions bubbled to the surface. Johan couldn’t resist having a telescope when there was a playground just across the street, and he must have had the occasional guest over to use that gear in the bedside table.
That flier told Heinrich what he really needed to know. Johan Garrix would no doubt be at that party tonight. The real question was: How was Heinrich going to get him to spill the beans in a room full of people having kinky sex?
Heinrich’s phone buzzed and he quietly cursed. He should have put it on silent. Pulling it out, he saw a message from Brixton.
“My father, David Murphy, is taking the next plane to Amsterdam. He lands at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I wish I could come but I have to stay here and take care of Serenity. He’s booked himself into your hotel and I’ve given him your number. I hope he can be of some help.”
Some help? Heinrich thought. More likely, he’ll just get in the way. I can’t see a Baptist minister excelling in this sort of environment. At least he won’t be here for the S&M party.
Having nothing else to do until that night, Heinrich went to a café for a much-needed coffee. There, he checked the website for the party. It said “invite only.” He fired an email to Biniam, asking him to put him on the guest list.
Before he had finished his coffee, Biniam emailed him back. “You’re in. Why do these freaks have such bad online security? I put you under the name John Smith. You know, I’ve never actually met someone named John Smith. I guess someone must have that name. Your fetish name is The Penetrator. Penetrate some hot ones for me, bro.”