by P. A. Brown
“Bought secondhand. Knockoffs.” Richard dropped heavily into the leather chair and rubbed his neck. “Hell, maybe his lovers traded him clothes for sex.”
David left, after promising to keep Richard in the loop. He paused in the outer reception room to put on his own sunglasses against the glare he could see beyond the tinted windows.
He called Martinez. “Any luck with DataTEK?” David asked. “Anyone remembering anything?”
“That one guy, Clarke? He sure has a hard-on for our boy, and I don’t mean that in any way Bellamere would fancy. He keeps reminding me how Bellamere is in and out all day, how he was late last Tuesday—something they all agree is really unusual. Guy doesn’t have a clue what we’re working on, but he’s all set to testify in court that Bellamere’s guilty.”
“Any chance this Clarke is a closet case? Could Chris have hit on him? I’d hate for it to come out later he’s got some kind of vendetta against Chris.”
“Nothing stands out. If it’s jealousy, I’d say it’s professional.”
That was the impression David had, too. He nodded as he rolled out of the parking lot.
“What now?” Martinez asked.
“Finally got hold of Daniel Anstrom’s mother,” David said. “They live in North Hollywood. I’m going to see her now. I’ll be just down the road from you—we can grab some supper,” he suggested.
The Anstroms’ was a three-story Cape Cod-style “cottage” nestled among half a dozen large crape myrtles. A circular flowerbed was planted with a tasteful arrangement of roses, geraniums, snapdragons, and tall gladiolas, all wilting in the lingering afternoon heat.
Daniel Anstrom’s mother was a tall, slender woman who might have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty years of age. She had an elegant, unlined face capped by a carefully coifed bowl of gray hair. Sharp hazel eyes held his when he introduced himself.
After a beat, where David wondered if she was going to forbid him entry, she stepped away from the door and signaled him to precede her into her tidy foyer.
It looked as though Mrs. Anstrom was alone in the house. David recalled that the report had been submitted by both of Daniel’s parents. He figured the husband must out of the house for the afternoon.
She led him into a tidy yellow and blue kitchen.
“I presume you are here to tell me my son is dead. That is why you came, isn’t it?”
“Ma’am?” David was taken aback by her bluntness. “Your son is still listed as a missing person. Do you have some reason to assume he is dead?”
“Of course.” She abruptly sat down on a high-backed wooden chair. Her gaze swept the room filled with light and hanging copper pots without seeing anything, including David. “My son would not remain a missing person this long unless something terrible had happened to him. My son is dead. I know this.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “But I don’t know any such thing. But I do have a possible match. I was hoping you might be able to—”
“Identify? You want me to look at this corpse and tell you if it’s my son?”
“I’ve brought some photos you might recognize.” He stopped when she took a deep breath, the skin around her mouth whitening almost imperceptibly. “Ma’am?”
“Oh please, call me Edith. My husband would tell you I am abrupt. I prefer to think I have lived too long to dance around silly conventions. I have known for some weeks now that Daniel is dead. I used to think knowing how he died was the most important thing, but now I’m no longer so sure of that.” Her eyes, when they met his, were clear and piercing. “Do I want to know how my son died, detective?”
“First I have to establish that your son is our victim.” David didn’t tell her that as the horror show escalated and the media sank their teeth into the story they might tell her more than she ever wanted to know. “Is your husband home, ma’am? Edith?”
“Yes, he is. But I’m afraid it would do you no good to talk to him. He had a stroke a little over three weeks ago and is confined to bed. His vocal cords are paralyzed.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “May I see these pictures, young man?”
He pulled out the pictures they had ID’d as Daniel Anstrom from the driver’s license that had been dropped off at the station.
Edith closed her eyes. David felt her shaking, though their only contact was through the picture. Suddenly she dropped it with a cry and her hands flew to her face.
David knew they had their sixth victim.
Monday, 5:10 pm, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles Chris found himself moving through his house like a victim in some kind of gothic horror film. He tried flipping on the TV, but the only things he could find were news shows or game shows. He needed someone to help him forget. Somebody who could take his mind of this horrible mess. Somebody who could make forgetting fun.
Trevor answered on the third ring.
“Trev, how’s it going?”
“Hey, Chrissy,” Trevor’s voice was liquid heat. “Sorry I missed you this weekend.
Got tied up with work.”
“Know how that goes.” Chris laughed, relaxing for the first time that day. “What are you up to?”
“Right now?”
“Now. An hour from now. Tonight?” He dropped his voice. Nothing could get his mind off his problems better than some sexy company. “Tomorrow morning.”
“I like that. Eagerness. You missed me?”
“Come over and I’ll show you.”
“Supper?”
“I’ll cook.”
“You’re already cooking.”
Monday, 5:50 pm, Glendale Boulevard, Glendale
“Daniel Anstrom,” David said. “Twenty years old, worked at Safeway as a box boy.
If he was gay, his mother didn’t know.”
David and Martinez sat in the back of the overbright deli. David’s pastrami and Swiss on rye tasted like cardboard.
“How many of them don’t tell?” Martinez plowed through his Reuben with gusto.
The sharp smell of sauerkraut filled the small booth. “They stay—where do they call it?—in the closet?”
David changed the subject fast. “Or it could mean he doesn’t always target gays.”
Some sauerkraut juice dribbled down Martinez’s chin. He swiped it with a napkin, missed. “Poor guy if he wasn’t gay.”
David felt the skin of his face tighten and grow hot. “You think it’s easier for the guys who were gay?” He forced his voice lower when he realized it was rising and heads were turning. “You think getting a knife shoved up your ass is easy if you’ve had a cock up there?”
“Jesus, man, no.” Martinez scowled. “What’s up your—” He abruptly fell silent.
“Forget it. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
David rubbed one hand over his face, closing his eyes against the look on his partner’s face. “I know you didn’t. It’s this case. It’s hard to take, you know?”
“Oh, hombre, don’t I though.” They finished their meal. Small talk dwindled into stilted silence.
“What now?” Martinez asked after they had both handed tens to the waitress and she had retreated to make change.
“See if we can link Chris to Anstrom. I have the names of a couple of places his mother said he frequented. An arcade, and a nearby McDonald’s.”
“An arcade.” Martinez nodded. “Good place to hustle young boys.”
Monday, 5:15 pm, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles Chris bounced to his feet after Trevor rang off. Company meant he had some domestic chores to do. Change the sheets, get some chicken in a marinade for barbecuing later, make sure he had wine ready. Distractions he welcomed. He put some coffee on and went to make his bed.
In the middle of ripping the old sheets off he flashed on the night he had spent with Bobby at the motel. His hands froze and his mind spun away into darkness. He sat down hard, still clutching the top sheet in numb fingers. How could Bobby be dead? Who could have done such a thing?
He shook his head, trying to clear it of the images. Bobby brutalized. By whom? Why?
Had the killer known Bobby? Had he had the bad luck to stumble across this Carpet Killer after leaving Chris that night? The thought made Chris sick. If he had taken the younger man home with him like Bobby had wanted, would none of this have happened?
How the hell could the cops have taken an innocent encounter as a sign of guilt? It was like they wanted him to be guilty.
He pounded the wall above the bed. Dammit, he wasn’t going to let them railroad him.
Screw the LAPD, he was through being a victim.
Downstairs he booted up his computer. By the time the coffee was ready and he poured himself a mug, he was logged in and online, ready to launch his queries. First he ran some simple searches on Bobby Starrz that brought back several links of film credits.
Bobby had been a busy boy. The videos went back over three years, which meant Bobby had started when he was underage, since Chris doubted he’d been much over twenty-one.
He printed off a couple of pages that listed the production company that had done most of the videos. StarFlight Productions. A quick Google search returned a hit for an office on Ventura Boulevard in North Hollywood. Even better, it gave him his first lead. A website.
Bingo.
Opening StarFlight’s website landed him on a smarmy page featuring suggestive images without substance and a lengthy list of available titles. They even had a secure site for making online purchases. MasterCard, Visa, or PayPal. Convenient. The videos could be ordered as VHS or DVD or downloaded as streaming video. Instant porno without leaving home.
StarFlight even sold a line of sex toys for the connoisseur. Dildos, specialty condoms, and the really fun stuff like butt plugs and bondage and S & M gear in every material from silk to leather.
All that merchandise meant a back-end-database to store customer information and inventory. Was there also an employee database for the talent? The only way to find out was to gain access to it.
Chris dove into his laptop case and pulled out an unmarked CD binder. Leafing through it he found one labeled simply TOOLS. He slipped it into his D-drive, and the CD demanded a password before it opened a webpage with a list of options.
He knew if StarFlight paid big bucks to the right people their site would be nearly impregnable. But if, like most businesses, they were lazy with their IT dollars, this was going to be a snap. It took Chris all of ten minutes to determine that StarFlight didn’t invest in IT security. The site was wide open.
He needed only one more thing. He wasn’t about to launch this attack from his own PC. If anyone at StarFlight realized they were being hacked he didn’t want them—or the cops—tracing it back to him. He had to find a vulnerable PC he could hijack.
He launched his port-snooping tools from the same CD and left to refresh his coffee while his software went out on the Internet in search of a computer that hadn’t been secured against hackers. He knew it wouldn’t take long. Home users were notorious for not securing their machines. No matter how often the media warned them, their blissful ignorance making them ideal targets for what he needed.
Back with his second coffee he found his sniffers had discovered opened ports on several vulnerable machines and launched tiny, malformed packets that caused a buffer overflow. The vulnerable machines had no way to handle the overflow, so they allowed the packet in and allowed Chris in. He looked around his hijacked PC. All it had on it were a few cheesy games, chat software, and several dozen spyware gadgets installed by other unscrupulous netizens. The owner of this machine was a perfect dupe.
Chris launched his second set of tools. These would set up the hijacked machine to run the processes he needed in the background, so that even if the owner was working on his computer he’d never know what was happening.
The hidden processes ran flawlessly, and within minutes he had a perfect little zombie doing his bidding. That was when he set to work hacking StarFlight’s back-end server.
The tools he used for that were a lot more sophisticated and he was sure the police would be very interested in knowing he had them. He had password-cracking tools and decrypters as well as a whole range of key-loggers.
While the crackers and the decrypters ran against the database he refreshed his coffee one more time. Then back to check the progress of his hacking job. He was pleased to see that StarFlight most likely had chosen their operating system and their security model on the basis of office politics and management schmoozing, instead of good IT judgment—
their system was the easiest one in the world to hack.
In another ten minutes his zombie machine registered success. He was in.
Within minutes Chris had a list of every movie Bobby had participated in—Chris refused to think of it as acting—and something even better. Bobby Starrz’s real name and his social security number.
Just like David had said: his name was Robert “Bobby” Allen Dvorak. Born in Topeka, Kansas, June 9, twenty-one years ago. Quit high school at sixteen, and like so many before him, took off for granola land to become a star. And like so many before him, he was eaten up by the big machine.
Best of all, a street address on Western Avenue in the still-ungentrified part of Hollywood. Maybe just ten minutes from Chris’s. He jotted down the full address anyway, just in case his memory failed him.
He knew he should call David. Dump what he had found in his lap. Only, how would he explain how he came by it? Admit to hacking StarFlight? That wouldn’t help his credibility.
Could he just give them the information without saying how he got it? No, David would think he’d known it all along.
So, nix telling David.
Which left him playing sleuth.
That or let David and his homophobic partner hang him out to dry, which they were doing a damned good job of right now. It was nearly six o’clock when a knock announced Trevor had arrived. Chris saved his information, released his captive PC, and shut his tools down.
Trevor handed Chris a plastic bag that clanked heavily. Chris opened it to find two bottles of wine, a Diamond Hill Cabernet and a Kistler Chardonnay.
Trevor shrugged. “Wasn’t sure what you were cooking.”
“Kistler’s perfect. Only had it once. Let me get this put away—”
“Hey, no welcome kiss?”
Before Chris could respond, Trevor pulled him forward, his hand closing over the rapidly swelling bulge between Chris’s legs.
Both of them were breathing hard by the time Trevor let them up for air.
“So, what are you feeding me?”
“Chicken.”
“Good.” Trevor didn’t move away. He pressed his mouth against the hollow of Chris’s throat. “I love chicken.” He slapped Chris’s butt and shoved him toward the kitchen. “Go on, let’s open this wine and get cooking.”
A pair of pepper trees in a stone alcove flanked the barbecue. A chaise longue and a couple of Adirondack chairs with cushions crowded around a small, round table, filling the rest of the narrow space. Chris set the bowl of marinating chicken on the table and got the propane grill cranked up.
When he turned around Trevor was sprawled on the lounger with a full glass of wine in one hand. He beckoned Chris over and held out the wine glass.
“Come here.” Trevor hooked an arm around his waist and pulled him down on the chaise. “I want you here with me. This is one night you’re not getting away from me.”
Chris didn’t bother telling him he wasn’t trying to get away. Then he wasn’t able to talk as Trevor pulled him into an embrace. He had Chris’s shirt off and was working on his jeans when his hands skidded off the BlackBerry still attached to Chris’s belt. “Get rid of that damn thing, will you?”
Chris set it under the chaise longue where it wouldn’t get crushed by a misplaced foot.
Things got very hot very fast. From under the lounger came the soft but insistent chirp of his BlackBerry.
Chris groaned and gr
oped for it. Trevor grabbed his hand.
“Fuck, no,” he growled. “Don’t—”
“I have to. It could be work. An emergency—”
He plastered it to his ear, trying to ignore both Trevor’s scowl and the sight of his aroused, half-naked body.
It was Des.
“Oh God, Chris, he’s gone. I don’t know where but I just know something bad has happened—”
“Who’s gone?” Chris slithered out of Trevor’s octopus arms and sat up on the edge of the lounger. “What’s going on, Des?”
“It’s Kyle. He’s been so depressed lately. Ever since that horrible thing at the Pit. He says his looks are gone and he’ll never work again.”
Chris tried to ignore the way Trevor’s hands wandered across the landscape of his bare chest, or how his erection pressed against Chris’s back. Trevor bit his other ear and murmured some very enticing obscenities into it.
Des burst into sobs. “Oh God, I’ll die if anything happens to him. It’s all my fault.
He’s been so full of self-doubt lately. I should have been there for him—”
“Come on, Des. Kyle isn’t going to do anything. He’s just being a drama queen. You know how he is—”
“No! He’s not like that. He’s full of pain and I should have helped him. Now he’s gone and I have to find him before he—I have to find him.”
Chris nearly groaned aloud when Trevor slid the zipper of his jeans down. He forced himself to focus on Des’s voice. “Okay, I’ll come by in the morning. We can look for him together”—and maybe the damn fool would come home by then. “I’ll call you—”
Trevor took the phone out of his hand and spoke into it, “Call him later,” and hung up.
“Hey—”
Trevor stood up and dragged Chris to his feet. “You are coming with me.” Back inside, Trevor extracted a DVD from his jacket pocket. “I brought something to inspire us—” In the bedroom the phone rang. Chris ran for it, ignoring Trevor’s furious look.
It was Kyle.
At least it sounded like Kyle, though Chris had never heard the younger man sound so panicked.